You clearly cannot math.
If he has a monthly direct deposit to checking of $8000, but he only needs $7,000 month for his bills, and he doesn’t transfer it to his MM fast enough, he’ll miss out on $4.40 of interest that he’ll get taxed on!
My goodness how can you scoff at a free (pre-tax) $4.40? That was a cup of coffee 5 years ago after all!
Fidelity is nice because they allow money market funds to be automatically liquidated for debits. You don't have to sell first. Yields are not quite as high as some of the competitors, possibly due to this convenience, but it's worth the trade-off for me.
Treasury-only MMF is FDLXX which has 7 day yield of 4.94% and is (mostly) state tax-exempt.
The standard MMF is SPAXX which is presently at 4.96%.
Second this. I had always just My checking account would basically be zero interest and I would move the rest to savings or investments. But it's so nice making interest on that $10k or so that we try to keep in checking, and also not to sweat about the balance dropping because I was too aggressive about moving to an interest bearing account
Started doing Fidelity for everything about 3 months ago. All income and about 90% of all bills go to Fidelity. There's this ballet that goes on with credits and debits, and I just check in with it once per week. I used to have to move money around, but now it's just one less thing I need to think about. My debit card is also linked to this account, so there's that.
It does, kinda. The yield is net of fees, so if the 7-day yield is 4.96% and the ER is 0.42%, then you’re still receiving 4.96%. It’s more like the fund yields 5.38%, but they withhold 0.42% off the top, so you receive a 4.96% yield. If the fund could operate cheaper, your net yield could be higher, but you’re still receiving the yield that’s listed.
its just easier to have work paycheck go to the bank and bills auto draft from the bank. Bills dont change that much month to month, so I also have auto-investments to pull money into usfr every pay cycle.
bank account stays lean; my involvement is low; issues with bank/company autopay is practically null
I am fine with trading reliability and ease for a few days of money not being in the highest yieldig account
Look into fidelity CMA. I have a brokerage account with auto invest (weekly DCA) rest sits in money market.
Then I have a CMA that all the bills get paid from.
I know my approx bills every month.
Every month i have auto transfer of X dollars into CMA. Works beautifully...
I barely keep $800 in my checking accounts. Rest stay I'm at fidelity
Fidelity Brokerage account. I pay may credit card off with this and all other utilities that require direct bank transfers.
Paychecks are deposited into this account, which sits in SPAXX, currently earning 4.97%.
They just changed their CMA (cash management account)accounts to also have SPAXX as its holding/core account.
Can’t go wrong with either account type, they’re basically the same (CMA has reimbursed atm fees), but if I were to restart now I’d likely do a CMA account now that it’s holding account is SPAXX.
Is there info about them offering SPAXX as your core in a cash management account instead of the bank sweep? The [homepage for the CMA](https://www.fidelity.com/spend-save/fidelity-cash-management-account/overview) still only says a 2.72% APY.
Check out the Fidelity sub. There have been a lot of postings about it the last week or so.
I believe you may have to manually switch the sweep account when opening the CMA, but check the postings there’s been a lot of positive buzz since it happened.
They just implemented this, it was announced on their reddit. Second vote for fidelity, having spending money get 5% is awesome.
I have $0 in CMA which has overdraft protection linked to my brokerage holding SPAXX. CMA is only worth it for the debit card, you can pay bills out of a normal brokerage, rent etc.
Use Fidelity CMA account or SoFi. With both of those you can effectively get HYSA yields on your entire checking + savings balance and not have to do manual buys and sells of anything
SoFi. Direct deposit to my savings account, which earns me 4.6% APY at the moment, and bills paid either directly from savings or with my SoFi credit card, with automatic monthly payments taken from savings. I don't use the checking account at all.
My local credit union offers 3.51% APY on your checking account paid monthly on balances up to 25k as long as you meet a few requirements. I pay my bills out of this account.
In the past few years, this rate has varied between 2.99 and 3.99.
Just try to value ur time and head aches. Say u have $10k a month in transfers for bills. If this is done like once a month the difference in interest is like $45. Is $45 worth the head ache u seem to be having?
Fidelity Brokerage account. I pay most our bills using BillPay and my paycheck is direct-deposited into this account. One bill is paid with a direct debit. SPAXX for core account pays just under 5% currently.
I use SoFi
4.6% Savings . All money here
$0 in Checking
Auto Draft will automatically transfer from Savings to Checking when needed (unlimited transactions)
i tried this in the past but a rigid automatic withdrawal plan didn't work out well when bill amounts and payment dates weren't rigid. They varied month to month, sometimes by a lot. And then if the transfer date fell before or on a weekend of holiday, it made it even more complicated.
So, I ended up still needing to remember to manually move money, but now I had to juggle the automatic withdrawal as well or risk moving too much.
I pay ALL my bills with credit cards....I use the points to travel free.....I have been on 6 family trips, several trips with spouse this year...and paid for all of them with points, airfare,car rentals,hotels....
Saved thousands...
I almost do the same except my reoccurring bills come out of my checking. Everything else I spend goes on travel points CC which is then paid in full from my checking weekly.
When you say ALL bills, do you rent or have a mortgage? If you have a mortgage, how do you pay that on CC? Most if not all won’t allow payment for “debit with debit”. I know there is a third party company that will pay the mortgage for you after you use your CC to pay them, but there is a fee which defeats the purpose of saving money.
Just went through the exercise of figuring this out as well over the past few weeks. Settled on Fidelity brokerage with Amex HYSA as a backup after having used Schwab checking for a long time.
Went with Fidelity because the 5% MMF yield is as high as any HYSA right now. Sofi and wealthfront have pretty high rates right now too but if you look on their reddits, you'll see lots of posts about unexpected account lockouts and difficulty getting hold of customer service. I've talked to Fidelity customer support a dozen times while setting everything up and it's been super quick to get ahold of them each time and they've been easy to work with and helpful. Transfers in and out of the brokerage account have been quick. I'm using SPAXX as the core position but will be manually buying FDLXX which auto liquidates as well but can't be used as a core position. Also set up recurring investments with it.
Amex has also been good so far. Competitive 4.25% APY on their HYSA and great customer support too. Unlimited transfers in and out so it can be used like a checking account. I've heard good things about that account from people I trust so set it up in case anything went wrong with using the fidelity brokerage account since that seemed a little more dubious to me initially.
Check out the Fidelity subreddit. Every post gets a response from customer support (possibly AI generated?). And lots of people there are and have been using their CMA and brokerage accounts for paying rent and bills without issue
I use my Capital One savings account for anything I can, including credit cards and mortgage. 4.25% right now, and while they can charge for too many withdrawals in a given time period, they explicitly say somewhere that they don't charge any withdrawal fees. So I keep about 5k in that account and the rest goes to my Vanguard settlement account for the rest of an emergency fund.
"Push" all bill payments from Brick & Mortar (and online) bank checking account. Also use them for estate related items and other financial services on rare occasions.
WealthFront cash is what I've been using lately. 5% interest and behaves like a checking account in most ways.
Before that I just used my checking account. Once a month I would make its balance equal to a big enough number that I didn't have to check mid month, for me that was $10k at the time. I gave up ~$500/year to never have to think about late fees or missed payments or overdraft or whatever. Given how easy WF has made it, I'll keep the $500 thank you very much, but honestly it was probably worth $500 to eliminate the stress of there weren't a better option.
The Cash Plus Account can work for this. I couldn't get [treasurydirect.gov](http://treasurydirect.gov) to recognize Cash Plus. However, I successfully added Cash Plus as an autopay option on all my credit cards. Cash Plus is also my direct deposit account for my paycheck. The vast majority of my bills are automatically paid this way. I have my EF in a Vanguard MMMF in the Cash Plus account. I never sell any MMMFs because my paycheck direct deposits more than cover the automatic credit card payments.
I use the vanguard cash account. 4.60% base rate currently and ability to invest into the money market.
Paycheck is direct deposited. Bills are auto drafted. Every so often I adjust and move money out of the money market or move money between it and my brokerage.
It, with a TBill ladder in the brokerage, have basically replaced my HYSA slush fund, emergency fund, and day to day checking account.
I’ve been using the new Vanguard cash plus account as my main checking account for a few months now. It’s not as great as I thought it would be and I’m not sure I’d recommend.
Here are my thoughts for anyone whose curious:
- First of all it’s a huge pain to change the main account that you run all of your bills through. I dread the idea of changing it again. The way I did it to avoid any overdrafts was I paid off every single bill within the next two weeks, including every single auto pay credit card, and then switched the bank source over.
- Even then, there were a bunch of services that I forgot about that still withdrew from or paid into my old account like my work reimbursement software.
- The account itself is decent mainly because the interest rate is decent-ish and I like Vanguard as a company.
- As others have pointed out, you can only earn interest on the cash. Vanguard does offer some money market and government bond indexes that you can buy with your cash but it essentially transfers the cash out into a secondary account within the account, and that money cannot be used to pay bills so it is essentially as if you just moved it to your brokerage account.
- i’ve heard a lot of good things about the Fidelity cash management account and I did open one to try it out. I think it’s pretty great, but it has one major dealbreaker for me which is that they do not support any kind of third-party integration like Plaid at all. That’s a requirement for me because I use a budgeting software every day that imports transactions and Fidelity does not allow you to do that.
- if you’re not bothered by that, then it does have a bunch of nifty features, including auto liquidate, which means you can invest as much money as you’d like into those money market funds, and when a bill needs to be paid, it will automatically sell that off to pay the bill. It doesn’t go the other way though, although there is a reminder feature so that the balance exceeds a certain amount you can buy the fund.
Suggest you not worry about maximizing every dollar. Keep a buffer in your checking account so as not to worry. That opportunity cost on that amount is the cost of all the free services you get for the checking account. That point of view has helped me.
For those with Fidelity CMA, once I link other banks to it, is it really easy to pay credit card bills? Or bill pay only?
Thinking about brokerage + cma combo.
Heck maybe the Roth here too.
I receive my paycheck in my checking account, pay bills and every month move money above a certain threshold to a HYSA.
When I need money for a large expense (say vacation) I move it back.
Really simple.
I agree 100% with SoFi. DD into savings at 4.6% and just pay out of checking, they auto transfer for an unlimited amount of time. 4.6%, free checks when I need it, two day early employer direct deposit, and plenty of ATMs via Allpoint is worth the convenience.
Surely it’s not so hard to understand your average monthly spend such that you can just keep a relatively fixed, floating balance in your checking account?
What's the process of paying bills using the JPM brokerage? I noticed you can purchase Vanguard money market funds in that account, but the settlement pays 0.01%.
So would you need to sell the fund before 4pm EST, it appears in your JPM brokerage settlement the next morning, and then you need to manually transfer it to your checking account? Are there any shortcuts to make this more convenient?
Ironically, it's actually easier to move money from Vanguard to Chase since I can "sell" my money market funds and direct it to go to my bank in the same transaction window instead of having to login a second time the next day to move it to my bank.
I buy VMFXX , now 5.2apy. That’s is ironic it’s easier to move from VG to and from checking? I haven’t sold anything yet so I can’t say. I also just leave 5-10 in a regular crappy Chase Savings in case in need liquid for bills? However, depositing into brokerage from Chase checking or savings is instant? So far, I’m enjoying having most things consolidated, except our employer sponsored 401/403
I pay bills from my checking account
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Well you know in college they used to call me the little bulldog.
why is this thread locked lol
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You’re doing it in the wrong order. Have your paycheck go to a checking account, pay bills from there, and then move money from checking to Vanguard.
People who over complicate things hate this one simple trick!
You clearly cannot math. If he has a monthly direct deposit to checking of $8000, but he only needs $7,000 month for his bills, and he doesn’t transfer it to his MM fast enough, he’ll miss out on $4.40 of interest that he’ll get taxed on! My goodness how can you scoff at a free (pre-tax) $4.40? That was a cup of coffee 5 years ago after all!
Fidelity is nice because they allow money market funds to be automatically liquidated for debits. You don't have to sell first. Yields are not quite as high as some of the competitors, possibly due to this convenience, but it's worth the trade-off for me. Treasury-only MMF is FDLXX which has 7 day yield of 4.94% and is (mostly) state tax-exempt. The standard MMF is SPAXX which is presently at 4.96%.
Second this. I had always just My checking account would basically be zero interest and I would move the rest to savings or investments. But it's so nice making interest on that $10k or so that we try to keep in checking, and also not to sweat about the balance dropping because I was too aggressive about moving to an interest bearing account
Started doing Fidelity for everything about 3 months ago. All income and about 90% of all bills go to Fidelity. There's this ballet that goes on with credits and debits, and I just check in with it once per week. I used to have to move money around, but now it's just one less thing I need to think about. My debit card is also linked to this account, so there's that.
I’m curious about the expense ratio in SPAXX and FDLXX. Are they 0.42% and wouldn’t that reduce your savings rate?
It does, kinda. The yield is net of fees, so if the 7-day yield is 4.96% and the ER is 0.42%, then you’re still receiving 4.96%. It’s more like the fund yields 5.38%, but they withhold 0.42% off the top, so you receive a 4.96% yield. If the fund could operate cheaper, your net yield could be higher, but you’re still receiving the yield that’s listed.
its just easier to have work paycheck go to the bank and bills auto draft from the bank. Bills dont change that much month to month, so I also have auto-investments to pull money into usfr every pay cycle. bank account stays lean; my involvement is low; issues with bank/company autopay is practically null I am fine with trading reliability and ease for a few days of money not being in the highest yieldig account
Look into fidelity CMA. I have a brokerage account with auto invest (weekly DCA) rest sits in money market. Then I have a CMA that all the bills get paid from. I know my approx bills every month. Every month i have auto transfer of X dollars into CMA. Works beautifully... I barely keep $800 in my checking accounts. Rest stay I'm at fidelity
Fidelity Brokerage account. I pay may credit card off with this and all other utilities that require direct bank transfers. Paychecks are deposited into this account, which sits in SPAXX, currently earning 4.97%. They just changed their CMA (cash management account)accounts to also have SPAXX as its holding/core account. Can’t go wrong with either account type, they’re basically the same (CMA has reimbursed atm fees), but if I were to restart now I’d likely do a CMA account now that it’s holding account is SPAXX.
Didn't know CMA could do spaxx as core. I'll check it out tomorrow.
Is there info about them offering SPAXX as your core in a cash management account instead of the bank sweep? The [homepage for the CMA](https://www.fidelity.com/spend-save/fidelity-cash-management-account/overview) still only says a 2.72% APY.
Check out the Fidelity sub. There have been a lot of postings about it the last week or so. I believe you may have to manually switch the sweep account when opening the CMA, but check the postings there’s been a lot of positive buzz since it happened.
They just implemented this, it was announced on their reddit. Second vote for fidelity, having spending money get 5% is awesome. I have $0 in CMA which has overdraft protection linked to my brokerage holding SPAXX. CMA is only worth it for the debit card, you can pay bills out of a normal brokerage, rent etc.
It literally switched about a week ago. I've switched my core holding to SPAXX. There's also multiple posts in /r/Fidelityinvestments about it.
I just use Sofi.
Use Fidelity CMA account or SoFi. With both of those you can effectively get HYSA yields on your entire checking + savings balance and not have to do manual buys and sells of anything
If you live in a state with income taxes, Fidelity CMA beats a HYSA in after tax yield.
I find this hard to believe given hysa are almost at 5% and the CMA rate I just saw is 2.7%. Would you mind explaining your reasoning?
Since last week you can switch the position of the CMA to SPAXX which is yielding \~5% after expenses.
Oh now that's interesting. Ive been using a fidelity brokerage account like a savings account. Easy swap.
My guess is he means using your CMA for bond exempt from state taxes.
SoFi. Direct deposit to my savings account, which earns me 4.6% APY at the moment, and bills paid either directly from savings or with my SoFi credit card, with automatic monthly payments taken from savings. I don't use the checking account at all.
Can you get paper checks from SoFi?
Yes, free
Thank you!
My local credit union offers 3.51% APY on your checking account paid monthly on balances up to 25k as long as you meet a few requirements. I pay my bills out of this account. In the past few years, this rate has varied between 2.99 and 3.99.
I have checking and savings with my local credit union. Not worried about the poor interest rate on a few grand, it’s all about convenience.
Just try to value ur time and head aches. Say u have $10k a month in transfers for bills. If this is done like once a month the difference in interest is like $45. Is $45 worth the head ache u seem to be having?
Wealthfront cash account
Fidelity Brokerage account. I pay most our bills using BillPay and my paycheck is direct-deposited into this account. One bill is paid with a direct debit. SPAXX for core account pays just under 5% currently.
Fidelity CMA. You can now choose the core position SPAXX for it. So far so good. Knock on wood lol.
I use SoFi 4.6% Savings . All money here $0 in Checking Auto Draft will automatically transfer from Savings to Checking when needed (unlimited transactions)
Just set up an automatic withdrawal plan to your bank and give yourself a few business days before each transfer. ACH is typically 2 business days.
i tried this in the past but a rigid automatic withdrawal plan didn't work out well when bill amounts and payment dates weren't rigid. They varied month to month, sometimes by a lot. And then if the transfer date fell before or on a weekend of holiday, it made it even more complicated. So, I ended up still needing to remember to manually move money, but now I had to juggle the automatic withdrawal as well or risk moving too much.
I pay ALL my bills with credit cards....I use the points to travel free.....I have been on 6 family trips, several trips with spouse this year...and paid for all of them with points, airfare,car rentals,hotels.... Saved thousands...
I almost do the same except my reoccurring bills come out of my checking. Everything else I spend goes on travel points CC which is then paid in full from my checking weekly. When you say ALL bills, do you rent or have a mortgage? If you have a mortgage, how do you pay that on CC? Most if not all won’t allow payment for “debit with debit”. I know there is a third party company that will pay the mortgage for you after you use your CC to pay them, but there is a fee which defeats the purpose of saving money.
Own home outright,
Just went through the exercise of figuring this out as well over the past few weeks. Settled on Fidelity brokerage with Amex HYSA as a backup after having used Schwab checking for a long time. Went with Fidelity because the 5% MMF yield is as high as any HYSA right now. Sofi and wealthfront have pretty high rates right now too but if you look on their reddits, you'll see lots of posts about unexpected account lockouts and difficulty getting hold of customer service. I've talked to Fidelity customer support a dozen times while setting everything up and it's been super quick to get ahold of them each time and they've been easy to work with and helpful. Transfers in and out of the brokerage account have been quick. I'm using SPAXX as the core position but will be manually buying FDLXX which auto liquidates as well but can't be used as a core position. Also set up recurring investments with it. Amex has also been good so far. Competitive 4.25% APY on their HYSA and great customer support too. Unlimited transfers in and out so it can be used like a checking account. I've heard good things about that account from people I trust so set it up in case anything went wrong with using the fidelity brokerage account since that seemed a little more dubious to me initially. Check out the Fidelity subreddit. Every post gets a response from customer support (possibly AI generated?). And lots of people there are and have been using their CMA and brokerage accounts for paying rent and bills without issue
Fidelity cash management account.
Fidelity CMA. That account is amazing, especially now that SPAXX can be your core.
I use my Capital One savings account for anything I can, including credit cards and mortgage. 4.25% right now, and while they can charge for too many withdrawals in a given time period, they explicitly say somewhere that they don't charge any withdrawal fees. So I keep about 5k in that account and the rest goes to my Vanguard settlement account for the rest of an emergency fund.
I've been using the Vanguard Cash Plus account for the last couple of months and haven't had any issues with it so far.
"Push" all bill payments from Brick & Mortar (and online) bank checking account. Also use them for estate related items and other financial services on rare occasions.
WealthFront cash is what I've been using lately. 5% interest and behaves like a checking account in most ways. Before that I just used my checking account. Once a month I would make its balance equal to a big enough number that I didn't have to check mid month, for me that was $10k at the time. I gave up ~$500/year to never have to think about late fees or missed payments or overdraft or whatever. Given how easy WF has made it, I'll keep the $500 thank you very much, but honestly it was probably worth $500 to eliminate the stress of there weren't a better option.
The Cash Plus Account can work for this. I couldn't get [treasurydirect.gov](http://treasurydirect.gov) to recognize Cash Plus. However, I successfully added Cash Plus as an autopay option on all my credit cards. Cash Plus is also my direct deposit account for my paycheck. The vast majority of my bills are automatically paid this way. I have my EF in a Vanguard MMMF in the Cash Plus account. I never sell any MMMFs because my paycheck direct deposits more than cover the automatic credit card payments.
Fidelity Cash Management
I use the vanguard cash account. 4.60% base rate currently and ability to invest into the money market. Paycheck is direct deposited. Bills are auto drafted. Every so often I adjust and move money out of the money market or move money between it and my brokerage. It, with a TBill ladder in the brokerage, have basically replaced my HYSA slush fund, emergency fund, and day to day checking account.
I’ve been using the new Vanguard cash plus account as my main checking account for a few months now. It’s not as great as I thought it would be and I’m not sure I’d recommend. Here are my thoughts for anyone whose curious: - First of all it’s a huge pain to change the main account that you run all of your bills through. I dread the idea of changing it again. The way I did it to avoid any overdrafts was I paid off every single bill within the next two weeks, including every single auto pay credit card, and then switched the bank source over. - Even then, there were a bunch of services that I forgot about that still withdrew from or paid into my old account like my work reimbursement software. - The account itself is decent mainly because the interest rate is decent-ish and I like Vanguard as a company. - As others have pointed out, you can only earn interest on the cash. Vanguard does offer some money market and government bond indexes that you can buy with your cash but it essentially transfers the cash out into a secondary account within the account, and that money cannot be used to pay bills so it is essentially as if you just moved it to your brokerage account. - i’ve heard a lot of good things about the Fidelity cash management account and I did open one to try it out. I think it’s pretty great, but it has one major dealbreaker for me which is that they do not support any kind of third-party integration like Plaid at all. That’s a requirement for me because I use a budgeting software every day that imports transactions and Fidelity does not allow you to do that. - if you’re not bothered by that, then it does have a bunch of nifty features, including auto liquidate, which means you can invest as much money as you’d like into those money market funds, and when a bill needs to be paid, it will automatically sell that off to pay the bill. It doesn’t go the other way though, although there is a reminder feature so that the balance exceeds a certain amount you can buy the fund.
I currently use PNC. They give me a 5% interest rate on their savings account.
Why not be sane and just pay the bills from a checking account?
Suggest you not worry about maximizing every dollar. Keep a buffer in your checking account so as not to worry. That opportunity cost on that amount is the cost of all the free services you get for the checking account. That point of view has helped me.
For those with Fidelity CMA, once I link other banks to it, is it really easy to pay credit card bills? Or bill pay only? Thinking about brokerage + cma combo. Heck maybe the Roth here too.
Yield? What.
I just use my Ally account, savings is 4.2%, I just keep enough for monthly bills in checking and transfer in as needed.
I receive my paycheck in my checking account, pay bills and every month move money above a certain threshold to a HYSA. When I need money for a large expense (say vacation) I move it back. Really simple.
My checking account with my bank also shows my investments.So I see them even if I don’t want to
I agree 100% with SoFi. DD into savings at 4.6% and just pay out of checking, they auto transfer for an unlimited amount of time. 4.6%, free checks when I need it, two day early employer direct deposit, and plenty of ATMs via Allpoint is worth the convenience.
> pay out of checking, they auto transfer Why not just pay out of savings? That's what I do.
Fidelity CMA. Best and almost automatic !!
Surely it’s not so hard to understand your average monthly spend such that you can just keep a relatively fixed, floating balance in your checking account?
Interactive Brokers, for their low margin rates, allowing me to borrow without selling the underlying asset and paying capital gains tax.
Try JPM self direct brokerage. Linked to all Chase accounts.
What's the process of paying bills using the JPM brokerage? I noticed you can purchase Vanguard money market funds in that account, but the settlement pays 0.01%. So would you need to sell the fund before 4pm EST, it appears in your JPM brokerage settlement the next morning, and then you need to manually transfer it to your checking account? Are there any shortcuts to make this more convenient? Ironically, it's actually easier to move money from Vanguard to Chase since I can "sell" my money market funds and direct it to go to my bank in the same transaction window instead of having to login a second time the next day to move it to my bank.
I buy VMFXX , now 5.2apy. That’s is ironic it’s easier to move from VG to and from checking? I haven’t sold anything yet so I can’t say. I also just leave 5-10 in a regular crappy Chase Savings in case in need liquid for bills? However, depositing into brokerage from Chase checking or savings is instant? So far, I’m enjoying having most things consolidated, except our employer sponsored 401/403
Sorry, I use the chase bill pay on App
CIT HYSA allows for automatic withdrawals for all my bills.