re: After your bills are paid.....

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if someone wants to potentially sue me i'm definitely not gonna make it easy (by...keeping a bunch of cash in a local checking account)

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You're worried someone is going to sue you for the $2,000 in your checking account?

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the actual figure is probably proportional to your income/expenses.

Someone making 400k a year with 10k a month in expenses is going to want to have a wider berth in checking than someone with less IMO.

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+1

Exactly. There's no universal dollar amount that applies to everyone. I keep the minimum average balance that my bank requires for the type of account that I have plus one month of average expenses.

Every single dollar that gets deposited into our joint checking account gets allocated to a budget item.
Bills, Misc, Savings, Food, Entertainment/Dining Out, etc. etc.
There is no "left over"..
If by some chance we get some sort've lagniappe money (i.e. overtime, bonus, gift), more than likely it will go to savings.

The only true way to manage your income, and save, is to know where every dollar is going, and track your spending.
In our house, money is never "just sitting"...

After the bills are paid....

We keep enough in checking to buy groceries, gas, and maybe do something fun until the next check hits.

And we don't have a massive emergency fund. We have a 'handle-the-headaches' savings account.

Everything else goes to retirement, college, and big vacation savings. We just don't leave it in there to be tempted to spend it.

I get paid once a month and I usually run my checking down to about $10.

Savings is a click away IF I need it. This method keeps me disciplined by putting my money in all the right places first.

Usually keep $1-2k floating in the checking account as it's easily accessible for cash if we need it and unexpected expenses.

We have a separate high yield savings account that serves as an emergency fund. Just takes a couple days to get money out if we needed to hence the reason for extra in the checking account

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I usually have 5k left after monthly expenses

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Ha. I remember my college days.

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This thread surprises me. I wasn’t expecting such lean checking accounts.

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I think the ease of transfer between checking to savings, and use of credit cards allows for ultra-lean checking balances. I can throw nearly everything on the credit card and just transfer the balance from savings to checking to pay off the card on the due date. This allows for ~29 days of interest growth on all credit purchases.

$400-ish for savings, then $1000-1500 for gas, groceries and any additional items (for two people)

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Is the additional interest at 1.5% from savings a material benefit? I’d worry about forgetting to move the cash over and then overdrafting.

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Well, it's different for everyone. My wife and I have some large monthly expenditures so we're talking about $5-7k/month. ETA: (I expect this amount to increase in the future.) Our savings account currently pays 1.75 and I view this option as picking up free money. Is it worth my time? To me...yes.

I asked earlier in this thread, and was unanswered, if anyone has positive experience with transfer automation. I'm looking to switch some of our banking to Capital One to leverage the new Eno application (chatbot). I believe the future of banking will allow users to automate these transfers, and eliminate the risk of overdraft that you mentioned.