To further detail the exact amount of effort: I get paid once a month, so once I month I go in, look at what I’ve got, subtract off my estimate for everything else, leave a few hundred dollars of slush, and come up with some excess amount. I then go over the brokerage site and issue the transfer for that excess. At the same time, I review the state of the brokerage account. I think it’s pretty minor, and it gets my cash over to the brokerage firm where it can sit in a money market account. That pays a pittance these days, but it has been a significantly larger pittance than anything my bank would offer me for the last 15 years.
(And then you’ve got access to a variety of bond funds, so you can easily transfer the cash into a fund which matches your exactly risk tolerance. Or otherwise invest it. All useful things to be doing, which your bank does not usually facilitate.)
To further detail the exact amount of effort: I get paid once a month, so once I month I go in, look at what I’ve got, subtract off my estimate for everything else, leave a few hundred dollars of slush, and come up with some excess amount. I then go over the brokerage site and issue the transfer for that excess. At the same time, I review the state of the brokerage account. I think it’s pretty minor, and it gets my cash over to the brokerage firm where it can sit in a money market account. That pays a pittance these days, but it has been a significantly larger pittance than anything my bank would offer me for the last 15 years.
(And then you’ve got access to a variety of bond funds, so you can easily transfer the cash into a fund which matches your exactly risk tolerance. Or otherwise invest it. All useful things to be doing, which your bank does not usually facilitate.)