Short-term cash account?

[Angus_Mac]

For way too long I've just kept 6-month's (or more) worth of expenses in a USAA checking account, earning .01% interest. I have two questions: 1) How much should I keep in a checking account (e.g., to pay monthly bills from)? 2) Where else should I keep this money that would yield a better return? This money just needs to be liquid enough so I could access it for some sort of financial emergency.

[RWD]

1) I keep enough in our checking account to cover the next month's worth of bills and loan payments plus the current balance of all our credit cards. Everything above that I periodically sweep to the savings account
2) There are a lot of higher interest savings account options. I use Ally which is up to 2.2% right now. On a quarterly basis I sweep most of this to investments in our brokerage account.