Separating money in bank account without opening another account
"There are some banks that offer ""pot"" accounts like this (off the top of my head I think Intelligent Finance does, although they call them ""jars"").  The other option for charity specifically would be a CAF account:  https://www.cafonline.org/my-personal-giving/plan-your-giving/individual-charity-account.aspx"
"The official guide can be found here, but that can be a little in depth as well.  To make good use of you need at least a little knowledge of double-entry bookkeeping.   Double-entry bookkeeping, in accounting, is a system of bookkeeping so named because every entry to an account requires a corresponding and opposite entry to a different account. From Wikipedia Another way to think of it is that everything is an account.  You'll need to set up accounts for lots of things that aren't accounts at your bank to make the double-entry system work. For example you'll need to set up various expense accounts like ""office supplies"" even though you'll never have a bank account by that name. Generally an imbalanced transfer is when you have a from or to account specified, but not both.  If I have imbalanced transactions I usually work them from the imbalance ""account"", and work each transaction to have its appropriate tying account, at which point it will no longer be listed under imbalance." If your old bank has online billpay, you might be able to either use that to send a check to yourself, or do an ACH transfer directly into your new account. The bank won't let you because: Differences in required account features — Business accounts have different features (many of them legal features) that are required by businesses. For instances: Do you want to be able to deposit cheques that are written out to your business name? You need a business account for that. Your business could be sold. Then it wouldn't be your business, so it wouldn't make sense to put the business account under your personal name. The bank account and the cash it holds is a business asset and should be owned by the business, so when the business is sold the account goes with it. This is especially the case for a corporation that has shareholders, and not a sole proprietorship. For a business, you could also, in theory, assign other people as signing authorities on the business account (e.g. your corporate treasurer), and the individuals performing that role could change over time. Business accounts allow for this kind of use. Market segmentation — The bank has consciously undertaken to segment their product offerings in order to maximize their profit. Market segmentation helps the bottom line. Even if there were zero legal reasons to have separate personal vs. business accounts, banks would still make it their policy to sell different account types according to use because they can make more money that way. Consider an example in another industry: The plain-old telephone company also practices segmentation w.r.t. personal/business. Do you want a telephone line for a business and listed as such in the phone book? You need a business line. Do you want a phone line hooked up at a non-residential address? You need a business line. Here it's clear it is less of a legal issue than with the bank account, and it doesn't matter that the technical features of the phone line may be identical for the basic product offerings within each segment. The phone company has chosen to segment and price their product offerings this way. Q. Why do companies choose to charge some kinds of customers more than others for essentially the same underlying service? A. Because they can. Almost any financial institution has the technical ability to do this (simply called sweeps, auto sweeps, or deposit sweeps); the issue you face is finding an institution that is willing to do it for you.  I think you will have the most luck at your primary financial institution where you currently keep the majority of your banking relationship.  You will have better luck at small-town banks and credit unions.  The mega banks will likely not waver from their established policies. Deposit sweeps are common for business accounts.  They are usually tied to a savings account, which is usually held within the same institution, however this is not a requirement.  The sweep can send money to any US bank if you can provide the routing number and account number.  The sweep will establish a peg balance, or floor balance, on the checking account.  At the end of the day, any amount above the peg is swept into the savings account automatically. I doubt you will find what you’re asking for within an online banking system.  You will likely have to go into a branch and speak with a personal banker.  Explain to them you want to establish a sweep on your checking account and want to send the funds to another financial institution.  You will have better luck asking for a peg of $100, or some other small amount.  They may not take your request seriously if you want to completely empty the checking account to zero. There is very little difference these days between account types. The fee structure and interest paid is different, but the actual mechanics, and as noted by others, the coverage by deposit insurance is identical. So look at how much money you have in the account(s) you have; are you maximizing the interest that you could be receiving, even from the small amounts that the banks will pay? If you could get more interest from the savings account, and only write one or two cheques per month, you might be better off with that account only; but given common fee structures, you likely would not want that as your primary account. Another reason for separate accounts is more psychological.  You might be able to train yourself to not dip in to your savings if you don't have a chequebook. "How can someone use the account number to withdraw money without my   consent? They can use your account number to game your banks phone support and try to phish their way into your account. Banks have gotten very good at combating this, but theoretically with just the address he lives in, your name, and a bad bank phone rep, he could get into your business. The account number would just be one more piece of information to lead with. I have 1 savings and 3 checking accounts with the same bank. Would they be able to gain access to the other accounts? Dependent on how incompetent the bad bank rep I referenced above is, sure. But the odds are incredibly low, and if anything were to happen, the bank would be falling over itself to fix it and make reparations so that you don't sue for a whole crap ton more. Is there a more secure and still free option that I have overlooked? Opening up yet another checking account solely for accounts receivable and transfer to accounts payable would keep your financial records more transparent. Also, banks are doing ""money transfer by email"" now, so I don't know how great that is for business transactions, but in that instance you're just giving out an email linked to a money receiving account instead of an actual account number. Paypal is also a pretty good EFT middleman, but their business practices have become shady in the past 5 years." I am not a lawyer, but the big thing to consider would be how you would split the money should either of you decide you want to close the account (or, at least her/his portion of the account).  I suspect you'd also need to determine how to split the capital gains/losses for tax purposes.  I can't really see any benefit to a joint account, unless you needed her money to qualify for some of the lower cost funds, and even then the difference in cost would be fairly low, much lower than the cost of having to potentially hire a lawyer to sort out all the questions. Allowing others to share access to your Bank Account; i.e. giving then the login id and password has its risks; There are two basic ways you can separate your investments from the dollar (or any other currency). IngDirect has this concept of sub accounts inside a main account - that might be perfect for what you are looking for. To clarify, you basically have one physical account with logical sub account groupings. I see three ways to do this. Note that I kept saying interest. I assumed for this answer you were only considering money being saved in a savings account. Money that is to be invested for the long term (college fund, retirement) have much different rules for contributions, use, deductibility, age rules: that they would tend not to be mixed within the same account. "Your first and second paragraphs are two different cases. Moving money between a checking account and a savings account will credit Cash and debit Cash, making a GL transaction unnecessary, unless the amounts in the two bank accounts are tracked as two separate GL accounts. You might have account 1001 (Cash-Checking) and account 1002 (Cash-Savings). In that case, a movement of money between these two accounts should be tracked by a transaction between the GL accounts; credit checking, debit savings. It won't affect your balance sheet, but depending on your definition of liquidity of assets  it might affect working capital on your statement of cash flows (if you consider the savings account ""illiquid"" then money moved to it is a decrease in working capital). Basically, what you are creating with your ""store credit"" accounts for each client is an ""unearned revenue"" account. When clients pay you cash for work you haven't done yet, or you refund money for a return as ""store credit"" instead of cash, the credit is a liability account, balancing an increase in cash, inventory, or an expense (if you're giving credit for free, perhaps due to a mistake on your part, you would debit a ""Store Credit Expense"" account). This can be split out client-by-client in the GL if you wish, avoiding the need for a holding account. The way you want to do it, you'd have a ""Client Holding"" account. It must be unique in the GL and to the client, and yes, it is a liability account. To transfer to holding, you simply debit Unearned Revenue and credit Client Holding, logging the transaction as ""transfer of client store credit"" or similar (moving liability to liability; balance sheet doesn't change). Then, as you sell goods or services to the client, you debit Accounts Receivable and credit Revenue, then to record the payment you credit AR and debit Client Holding (up to its current credit balance, after which the client pays you Cash and you debit that, or the client still owes you). To zero out a remaining balance on the Holding account, debit Client Holding and credit Unearned Revenue. I don't think the Holding account, the way you want to use it, is a good idea. If you want to track each customer's store credit balance with a GL account, then create specialized Unearned Revenue accounts for each client who gets a store credit, named for the client and containing their balance (zero or otherwise). If you don't care about it at the GL level, then pool it in one Unearned Revenue account (have one Store Credit account if you must), and track individual amounts off the books." You can use an intermediary online bank account.  For example, ING Direct has the ability to link to other real banks.  You can link to both your old and new banks. Once linked, transfer the money from old bank to ING.  Then transfer from ING to new bank. There are delays, and you can't transfer directly from bank-to-bank, but this should work, and should be free. The same concept should apply for something like PayPal or another online financial service. Do you have direct deposit of your paycheck? If so, almost every employer will allow you to split the paycheck into two accounts. You could open one account for savings, and one for spending. Put $x from each paycheck into the savings account, and the rest into the spending account. Keep the savings account totally separate, with its own ATM card. There should be no way to get money out of this account except by using the SEPARATE ATM card. Now, get a dish of water. Put the ATM card in the dish of water. Put the dish of water in the freezer.  If you are ever tempted to spend your savings, you'll have to wait for the block of ice to defrost. Hopefully, while the ice is defrosting, the urge to waste money will pass :) I know of websites that do this, but I don't know of banks that do. Is there any reason you want to do this at a bank rather than use a service?  My main concern with using a bank for this would be the risk of overdraft fees