pb4uski
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
... I am currently managing my budget and spending with spreadsheets and Mint. While I don't mind the work, it does take up a bit of time since I have to consolidate activity across multiple investment accounts. I also have to manually transfer funds from my investment account to my checking account as needed to cover any remaining needs to balance the books. Then I need to figure out what to do with any remaining dividends that were unused. Leave as cash or reinvest? And what happens if my needs exceed the amount of dividends I receive monthly? Do I sell stock or do I dip into emergency fund temporarily?...
WADR, you're overthinking it.
I have an online savings account that yields 4.3% that sits between my retirement portfolio and the checking account that I use to pay our bills. When replenished, it has a year's worth of withdrawals and $25k emergency fund. I have an automatic transfer of $x from the online savings account the checking account that I use to pay our bills on the first of every month... my monthly "paycheck". I replenish the online savings account back periodically with a transfer from our retirement portfolio a couple times each year based on the retirement portfolio's cash flows, maturing bonds, etc. Any uninvested cash in the retirement portfolio is in a money market accountthat yields 5.22%.