Organize Your Savings With The ING Direct Orange Savings Account

by Erik Folgate  
Filed under Banking, Investing, Spending and Saving, Taxes

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Many other bloggers have written about how to set up sub-savings accounts with ING Direct’s Orange savings account, so I won’t go into a huge tutorial about how to do it. Recently, I decided it would be a good idea for us to start categorizing our short-term savings. Lately, we have simply thrown money into the account, and used it for whatever short-term savings goals we had. However, I know there were some times that we used it for things that we didn’t plan on using it for a few months prior. ING Direct has a cool feature in their Orange savings accounts. You can set up as many sub savings accounts as you want. Here’s a quick run-down on how to do it:

How To Set Up Sub Savings Accounts With ING Direct Orange savings account

• Log in to your account.
• Click on the “open an account” link at the left hand side of the screen.
• Click on the drop-down box and click on the orange savings account. You can choose whether or not to make it a single or joint account depending on if you are married or not.
• Choose the funding source to be either your checking account or your main savings account. Then, choose the nick name for your account. Choose a name related to your savings goal such as “New Car” or “Vacation Fund”.
• Agree to the terms of service for the account, and you are done!

A lot of people get confused about opening sub accounts, because intuitively, it feels like you are opening up a whole new savings account. Since you already have a savings account, you can open up limitless amounts of sub accounts, because you can move money from one account to another instantaneously.

My Sub Accounts

1. Emergency Fund
2. Car Maintenance/Savings
3. Clothing (don’t want to bother keeping it in an envelope anymore)
4. Vacations
5. House Maintenance

How To Access Your Money Instantly

I have always worried about the time where I needed money in my emergency fund, but I didn’t have it, because it takes two days to transfer the money to my checking account. Then, it dawned on me to open up an ING Electric Orange checking account. They will send you a debit card, and you can instantaneously fund the checking account from your savings account. I have an iPhone now, so if I need money loaded on the debit card right away, I can log onto the website from my phone, transfer money to the checking account, and use the debit card right away.

Use Specific Short-Term Savings Goals

Creating sub accounts will help you organize your short-term savings and specify your savings goals. Let’s say you want to save up $1,000 specifically for remodeling your bathroom. You can set up a sub account in ING and set up a separate automatic investment to go from your checking account to your “bathroom remodel” savings account. Catch my drift? Try it out, and let me know how it goes. Also, if you are already doing this, share your success or failure stories with us.

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