How many separate bank/brokerage accounts ?

[frayne]

Just out of curiosity how many different bank/brokerage accounts do you have ?

I have three, Fido, Vanguard and a local bank savings/checking account.

[rodi]

All in - too many.

One brokerage for the kids 529's. Dh has an IRA there.
2nd for my stuff, but multiple linked accounts: IRA, inherited IRA, taxable, and linked checking.
third for another of my IRAs - planning on rolling this over.
2 more banks - husbands old IRAs - he's reluctant to move these and they don't have good online access... drives me nuts.

So that's 5 institutions and we haven't even gotten to our main household stuff.

At our credit union we have several accounts. Main checking, main savings, a few more of DH's ira's, kids savings account, account with our tenant's security deposit, etc...

[ExFlyBoy5]

Man...that's too much w*rk to try and figure that out! Associated with 5 banks for different reasons, 2 brokerage houses (multiple accounts) and I am sure I am missing something...

[braumeister]

Alas, I'm afraid I'm a poster child for what not to do here.

Four credit unions, with a savings and a checking account at each.
Five banks. FWIW, I'm counting my Fidelity Cash Management and Schwab Investor Checking accounts in this group.
Three brokerages (Fidelity, Vanguard, and Schwab).
Plus one additional credit union where DW keeps a small account.

Frankly, I'm not happy having so many accounts, but I had good reasons for opening all of them, nothing has changed in that regard, and I'm happy with the service at all so I'll probably be keeping them for years yet.

[Walt34]

Four.

Credit Union checking and savings account that I've had since the 1970's. They count it as one account with different names.

One local bank checking account that we opened when we moved just because they have ATMs all over the place.

Vanguard IRA for me.

TSP account for DW when she worked at FDA.

[W2R]

Quote:

Originally Posted by frayne Just out of curiosity how many different bank/brokerage accounts do you have ? I have three, Fido, Vanguard and a local bank savings/checking account.

Same here, except some of my funds are within the TSP instead of being at Fido.

[Taxman59]

Fido - 401k
Bank - Checking/savings Joint
Different bank - Savings mine
Treasury Direct - one each
Wells Fargo - 2 taxable, 2 IRA
Wells Fargo - Kids education $$
Annuity
HSA
Totals to 13. WOW, no wonder DW wants us to simplify the retirement plan!!

[razztazz]

One bank account

One brokerage

One mutual fund in an IRA at the same place as the brokerage but it's outside of my actual brokerage account

[Animorph]

Two brokerages, one that was required for stock options I think, but I still use because they offered a Solo Roth 401k.

Four mutual fund companies, covering funds that were not offered, had transaction fees, had higher minimums, or were closed at my main brokerage.

One company 401k that I'm slowly rolling over into an IRA. I have to liquidate to cash in order to roll over, so I don't want to do it all at once and be out of the market for over a week.

One HSA manager for our HSA accounts, which I'm treating as a Roth equivalent.

Multiple accounts at all institutions, hers, mine, and ours, and the mutual fund companies usually assign an account number to each mutual fund held there.

All tracked in Quicken, so while it's not something I intend to continue forever, it's not hard to follow now.

ETA: Two online banks and one brick and mortar bank and one credit union.

[rodi]

Crud. I forgot about Penfed... I have a small savings account, an untapped HELOC, and a credit card with them.

Way too many accounts/institutions.

[mpeirce]

Quote:

Originally Posted by braumeister Alas, I'm afraid I'm a poster child for what not to do here.

I'm not convinced this is necessarily something to avoid.

I recall back in the bad old days 2008 financial crisis I was happy to have our assets distributed amongst a number of different institutions. It's not inconceivable that in similar or worse circumstances certain banks or brokerages might not make it easy to get at your money for a while.

So I'm happy to have accounts with a few banks and a few brokerages and to not keep all of my eggs in one basket.

The only downside I can see is at tax time I have to download a couple of extra forms - which is trivial to do.

So I'll happily keep it up.

[Cobra9777]

Most everything is consolidated at Fidelity where we have 3 IRAs, a taxable brokerage account, HSA, and a cash management account that we use for normal banking functions. Outside Fidelity, there is DW's 457b (she's still working), Ally Bank (next 2-3 year's cash), and a Wells Fargo checking account, which isn't used for anything except those rare instances when we need some type of brick-and-mortar banking service not available with Fidelity's CMA. I keep $1500 parked there to avoid the $6/mo fee.

[emerytura]

Fidelity-401K, Vanguard- brokerage acc., Credit Union- checking and saving. Two year ago closed multiple banking accounts, and moved all to Credit Union.

[Fishingmn]

Too many. Just at my local bank I have -

- Savings Account
- Checking Account
- Money Market Account
- Rental Income Checking
- Business Checking
- Savings account to hold security deposits from tenants
- Savings account to hold money for our fantasy football league

[hnzw_rui]

Hmm, looks like 2 savings, 2 checking, 3 money market, 457 core plan, 457 Schwab PCRA, and Vanguard brokerage (currently Roth only but hope to add taxable once I'm earning more).

[TallTim]

BofA

- Checking
- Savings
- Kids' individual accounts (summer job earnings, gifts)
- Coogan accts for each kid (needed if your kids earn any $ in the entertainment indus)

Fidelity
- Brokerage (small for cashflow and backup checking to BoA)
- Regular IRA
- Roth IRA
- DW's Roth iRA
- An Inherited IRA
- UTMA accts for DD and DS
- 529 Accts for DD and DS

TDA
- main brokerage

I pretty much ignore the Fidelity accts; set it and forget it stuff w/ reinvested dividends mostly. DW uses the BoA accts to manage the household on a day-to-day basis w/ Fidelity as backstop. Together, Fido and BofA have about 25% of our liquid NW
I manage and use the TDA brokerage acct almost exclusively and it has about 74% of our liquid NW.

Constantly getting calls and email from both TDA and Fido to move things to them from the other guy - it seems there is an unintended consequence to using Fldo's retirement planner or TDA Wealthbuilder and including an account from the other in the calculations by name. Yeesh.

Anyway, I may or may not move all of it over to TDA in the near term, now that I'm actually RE and we could use that for all of our needs ... if the price is right. I may do a bake-off Fido v. TDA for 100% of all assets and see who offers best overall deal for fee and trading costs.

As a side Q -- do any of you have experience with using Fidelity or TDA as your sole account for household checking as well as brokerage?

[aaronc879]

Bank(credit union)
-Money Market
-checking

TD Ameritrade Brokerage account

Chase
-Rollover IRA

JP Morgan
-Rollover IRA

Vanguard
-Roth IRA

By end of year I plan to open new Taxable IRA with Vanguard and transfer/close Chase and JP Morgan accounts. That will leave me with 5 accounts at 3 institutions.

[meierlde]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mpeirce I'm not convinced this is necessarily something to avoid. I recall back in the bad old days 2008 financial crisis I was happy to have our assets distributed amongst a number of different institutions. It's not inconceivable that in similar or worse circumstances certain banks or brokerages might not make it easy to get at your money for a while. So I'm happy to have accounts with a few banks and a few brokerages and to not keep all of my eggs in one basket. The only downside I can see is at tax time I have to download a couple of extra forms - which is trivial to do. So I'll happily keep it up.

About the only downside is having to handle the dormant accout issue every three years to multiple accouts. If you have more than the FDIC limit in one bank you can do some multiple account titleing or use other banks also.
Other than the dormancy issue its just another item to type into turbo tax once a year.

[easysurfer]

Vanguard funds, an online checking and a local checking (sits idle mostly).

[hnzw_rui]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aaronc879 By end of year I plan to open new Taxable IRA with Vanguard and transfer/close Chase and JP Morgan accounts. That will leave me with 5 accounts at 3 institutions.

I'm trying to figure out if you meant Traditional IRA or Taxable Brokerage Account.