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Checking Accounts: 5 Benefits to Improve Your Finances
Money SmartsNewsMarch 12, 2020
Your checking account is about far more than having somewhere to safely store your money and obtain debit card access. You can take advantage of your checking account to move forward in reaching your financial goals. These five checking account benefits can help you on your path to financial stability.
1. Budget Easier
Using a checking account for your purchases and deposits allows you to keep track of your exact income and expenses.
When you operate using other methods such as cash only, it's more challenging to track how much you spend. Therefore, it's not as simple to create a monthly budget.
When you're ready to develop your budget, you can review your income and expenses from the last three months based on your checking account statements. That information will help you determine your budget categories and amounts, along with any areas in which you're spending too much.
2. Automate Payments
If you’re repaying loans or credit cards, one of the worst things you can do is miss a payment or pay late, as it can harm your credit score. Sometimes you have no choice but to miss a payment due to financial hardship, but other times, it's as a result of mere forgetfulness.
A checking account with bill pay allows you to remove that possibility by automating payments. All you have to do is set up automatic bill pay to ensure your payments are made on time every month. Never worry about paying late fees or having your late payments reported to the credit bureaus.
3. Meet Your Savings Goals
Saving money can be a challenge.
According to a study by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, two-thirds of Americans would struggle to come up with $1,000 in an emergency.
Are you one of the two-thirds? If so, you can use your checking account to automate your savings by making automatic transfers to your savings account each month.
If you're on the other side and have at least $1,000 in the event of an emergency, you can still take advantage of automatic savings to build upon what you have already saved.
4. Know Your Financial Standing
With the convenience of a checking account, you can quickly review your finances at any point to determine how much money you have available.
This knowledge enables you to make well-informed choices related to how you will spend your money and how much you could be saving, investing, etc. to move you forward in your life.
5. Protect Your Money
As long as your checking account is with an insured financial institution, your funds are protected for up to $250,000 per depositor per account.
If you have a bank, it will be insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) while a credit union is protected by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA).
This insurance means that in the event of a financial mishap, including identity theft or fraud, any money taken from you will be returned to you as soon as possible.
If you solely use cash or keep your money in accounts places that don't provide insurance coverage, you are not protected if something unfortunate happens.
Choosing The Best Checking Account For Your Finances
When you select a checking account, it's essential to look at the options that will offer you the best features so you can reap all the benefits possible.
At GLCU, we offer no monthly fees, no minimum balance, mobile check deposit, and an instant-use Visa Debit Card.
You're striving to improve your credit, and while a checking account can help you do that, you want to choose one that gives you all of the benefits and features you need to make your journey even easier.
Learn more about our checking account options today.