Let me preface this post by saying that I am no expert on this topic. In fact, I'm not sure that anybody is. I still think it is worth discussing and hope to learn as much from you all on this as you do from me. One of the most tricky things that my household deals with financially is cash flow.
It's a total first world problem, I'll be the first to admit. I mean, most doctors have more money in their checking accounts than the average household in this country has in net worth. Occasionally my wife logs into our online checking account and is surprised to see a high five-figure or even low six-figure amount sitting there. Our investing account was smaller than that for years and years and our monthly budget is an order of magnitude less than that so you can see why that would be shocking. But it occurs due to issues with cash flow that I bet a lot of doctors struggle with, and that's what we'll be talking about today.
What Is Cash Flow?
Cash flow is completely distinct from budgeting and your savings rate. It also has little to do with your investment portfolio. It is basically the process of most efficiently getting the money to where it needs to be at any given moment. There are all kinds of factors that come into this and make it tricky.
Banking Logistics
For example, let's consider how I get money from the WCI checking account into my other accounts. I cannot “push” money from the business checking account to my personal checking account. I can “pull” money, but that is limited to about $5,000 every couple of days. If I needed to move $30K, that would mean logging in every 2 or 3 days for two weeks. I can pull the money into our individual 401(k), but that money cannot then be transferred anywhere else. I could write out a check and mobile deposit into personal checking, but mobile deposit is also limited to $5K a day. So we ended up settling on using that checking account's “Bill Pay” feature. We'd just pay a bill into our checking account. Then the credit union changed their bill pay (basically broke it) so we could no longer do that, at least if we wanted that check to get there in less than 2-3 weeks. However, our online savings account at Ally allows us to pull in much larger amounts from that business checking account. So that is the method we currently use. But that means if I want to move money from business checking to personal checking, that's a two-stage and about four business day process.
Budgeting
The Onion of Lower Granary Canyon, Moab, Utah- Water flow is way more interesting than cash flow
Budgeting and cash flow planning are separate. For example, our monthly budget, what our family actually spends after-tax, is about $10K. (Some of you will think that's a lot and some of you will think that's not very much at all, but it is what it is.) Our actual income in any given month may be 3-10 times that, with pretty dramatic variation.
That means the money going to investments and taxes dwarfs the actual tracked budget. If “every dollar has a name,” the name on most of those dollars is federal taxes, state taxes, charity, Roth IRAs, 401(k)s, taxable accounts, etc. Part of the way we've dealt with such huge variation in our monthly income is to properly manage cash flow. We fund the investment accounts more in the fat months than the lean months.
However, part of the solution to our cash flow issues is simply to set our lifestyle at an amount such that even in our worst month we still feel like we have money coming out of our ears. Bad month? Okay, that means less goes to taxes and charity (since we set those as percentages of income) and we'll have to put off funding that 401(k) or 529 for another month.
It doesn't mean the kids go hungry, we don't go skiing, or we can't pay the utility or insurance bills. It has zero effect on our lifestyle; it only affects our financial independence date. Having a high savings rate certainly helps cash flow, but budgeting and cash flow management are still pretty distinct.
4 Cash Flow Considerations
There are four main items to think about when determining your cash flow processes.
#1 The Return on Your Money
For example, my savings account pays 1% but my checking accounts pay 0%. My investment accounts have an expected return much higher than 1%. From a return perspective, I don't want to have money sitting in checking that could be in savings and I don't want money sitting in savings that could be invested.
#2 Availability
The second is the cost of not having cash available when it has to be available. Usually, there are fees associated with that. For example, if there is nothing in my checking account when a check hits, that would normally be associated with a fee from my bank and probably another one from whoever I wrote the check to. So as “overdraft protection” we have a credit card. If I write a check the checking account can't cover, it goes on to the credit card as a cash advance and the interest starts ticking. By the time I notice that and pay it off, I've paid at least a couple of days of interest that I wouldn't have had to pay with better cash flow. Not having cash available could also cause you to miss out on an investing opportunity or a purchasing opportunity.
#3 Hassle Factor
I don't even look at my investments on a monthly basis. I'd prefer not to have to look at my checking account that often either. I suppose if I was willing to spend a great deal of time and effort logging in every day I could run my checking account balance lower than I do, but it just isn't worth the hassle, especially when the alternative account only pays 1%. So what if $20-30K sits in checking a couple of weeks longer than it has to. It's not worth my time to be chasing it all over the place.
#4 Safety Factor
Finally, there is the safety factor. Risks of identity theft, loss of a device, a transfer error, etc all go up the more you mess with your cash flow and the more you seek to minimize hassle and increase returns.
Credit Can Help With Cash Flow
I'm not a big fan of being in debt. Our only debt is our mortgage, and as noted in previous posts, that will be gone soon too, or at least the ability to make it disappear will exist. But credit can improve your cash flow dramatically. Sometimes there is a cost for that, sometimes there isn't, and sometimes you're actually paid to do it.
For example, I'm now making my quarterly estimated federal tax payments by credit card. It costs me 1.87% to do that. However, my Fidelity AmEx (now Visa) pays me 2% to do it. It's nice to make a little money, but the cash flow improvement is dramatic. Instead of the IRS depositing my check on June 15th, the credit card company may not pull it out of my account before August 5th! I get the use of that cash to ease my cash flow problems and boost returns for almost two months longer.
Speaking of Taxes
Taxes, especially for the self-employed but really for everyone, provide their own cash flow issues. Many financially naive employee doctors aren't aware of the difference between what is withheld from their paychecks and what they actually owe. Sometimes they even look forward to getting a big fat tax return check, not realizing that what they're really doing is making Uncle Sam an interest-free loan. The self-employed have similar issues. They are responsible to do their own withholding and make sure all their taxes get paid. That can get especially tricky in a state like Utah where you are allowed to pay the entire tax bill for the year on April 15th of the next year.
However, even if you have to make quarterly estimated payments for your state (and of course the Feds) that amount is only somewhat related to the amount of taxes they actually owe. This is an issue we've had the last 2 or 3 years with our payments as we ended up writing a huge extra check in April each year to cover our tax bill. I think we've finally stumbled upon the best way to manage this issue.
To stay in the “safe harbor” and avoid any penalties and interest, each quarter we send the IRS 1/4 of last year's tax bill multiplied by 110%. So even if we end up owing a lot more than 110% of what we paid last year, there won't be any penalties or interest. We've been doing that for at least the last couple of years. But this year we're keeping an amount in our savings account earmarked for taxes equal to 27% of gross earnings. Last year our tax bill was 25.2% and for various reasons I expect it to be a little higher next year percentage-wise. But 27% ought to be pretty close for us.
The June quarterly estimated payment has always been the tricky one for us. My partnership sends us a check at mid-month each month from February to December, but the January check (from December earnings) comes out the last couple days of December as an estimate to be trued up with the February check.) The “truing” can be positive or negative. But at any rate, that means that you get three paychecks to make your April quarterly estimated payment, but only two checks to make your June one. You then get three more before September and the January payment is cake, since you get four months to save it up (just be sure not to blow it on the next year's Roth IRAs or HSA.)
The Partitioning of the Savings Account
Our savings account is really a dozen different savings accounts, all earmarked for different purposes but all lumped together. Our emergency fund is there, our allowances (the money we can blow on anything we want without needing permission from the other) are there, the money for next year's disability insurance is there, the money for next year's life insurance is there, the tax money is there, the money we plan to donate to charity that year, and even amounts for upcoming investment account “bills” are there. Altogether it is a sum that is a multiple of our emergency fund. The idea being that if something happens such that we're living on emergency funds, all the other upcoming bills are already taken care of. Maybe we'd be better off investing more of that, but having all that cash helps us to worry less about money and to stay the course in a market downturn.
The Hassle of Changing Banks
One last comment about banks–changing banks is a pain with all the accounts and bills that are tied together with automatic payments. I'm willing to put up with some minor hassles and lower returns to avoid the major hassle of changing banks. I suspect everyone feels the same. That's why banks are willing to pay so much or offer such nice benefits in order to get you to move your money there. Your account then becomes somewhat sticky and less likely to leave, even if rates or service gets worse. But depending on how much hassle you are willing to deal with, you may find that changing banks (and brokerages) frequently can be worth a few hundred bucks.
What do you think? What cash flow techniques do you use to minimize hassle and fees while maximizing returns? Any tips or tricks for your fellow readers? Comment below!
awesome post! so happy to see a cashflow article by WCI. it’s a rare one 🙂 i totally believe in managing cash flow with the assistance of credit is one way to maximize rate of building net worth. otherwise, it’d be pretty impossible to be completely debt free (student and credit/consumer debt) as a PGY2 and on my way to FI by 2023.
i think with the annual income WCI enjoy, credit may be more utilized to maximize return and achieve FI sooner. for instance, even though i only have 60k of taxable income in 2015, i have had enjoyed 250k in total credit card limit, just built up over time of spending a lot (think medical school tuition) and paying down responsibly (think 2 jobs in med school and med student loans.)
if WCI wants, i’m sure he can build up this credit limit to the high 100k’s if not 1 million. if that’s the case, he can easily have any new open credit card in the 100k (since I have cards in 50k’s as a mere PGY1 with income 50k).
then, he can really put those sitting cash into higher ROI accounts 🙂
if anyone’s interested in maximizing return on your money rather than lending big banks below inflation rate money, check out this post “cash is king, credit is queen” or my blog.
http://www.hcplive.com/physicians-money-digest/contributor/dr-wise-money/2016/06/cash-is-king-credit-is-queen
Funny… I just replied to an old post of yours last night about cash flow. In my situation it doesn’t make a ton of sense to have an emergency fund, but we are doing it for the hassle/convenience factor.
Also changing banks is at least a little easier when your moving since you have to re setup utilities and mortgage anyways. My wife and I have always had separate accounts in different banks with all bills tied to mine, and then she transfers money to me when she has 5k (xfer limit) or so. The problem with that was that it can take 3 days for the money to come in so in a pinch it doesn’t work… Hence need a higher buffer (emergency fund). So I am just getting a personal account with her bank and pay off bills from her main account. We should need less of a buffer and I don’t usually spend a lot on myself so if we get in a pinch I can instantly xfer from my personal to put in the main
Cash flow management is an extremely important concept if you own your practice or a side business. You have to leave enough money (working capital) in your business account to keep checks from bouncing and not so much as to miss investment opportunities. It does take a while to get used to doing this. I check my business checking almost daily. I think this is important to catch errors and fraud. I have found numerous errors over the years and some fraudulent charges. The sooner you find stuff like this the easier it is to rectify it. I know of several practices in my area who have been embezzled so letting your staff know you look at stuff is a form of internal control. The people I know that we’re embezzled let their business manager manage everything with no system of checks and balances. It is easy to monitor things now that all is online. I simply do online transfers from business to personal checking at the same bank. I simply write an online check to vanguard from my business account to add to investment accounts. This system is so much easier than paper checks, deposit slips, and phone calls.
How do you pay your employees online? Do you use direct deposit or billpay or something else? We are researching this issue now.
Actually payroll is still paid by paper check. Almost nothing else.
Do you use something like Mint or quicken to monitor your accounts?
For personal finance its easy to monitor dozens of accounts (checking, credit card, loans, etc) with mint and see if something looks suspicious right away. Businesses are more complicated so I was just wondering if you had a program helping you.
I use quicken for MAC. i find that Personal Capital and Mint work fine for personal accounts. I like Quicken because I can create my own categories and tags.
Yes I originally wanted to go with quicken but it’s not web based and I like to monitor stuff with my phone Mac and pc… The one disappointing part of mint is that tags seem more difficult than they should be and I don’t think you can sort by tags from your phone
Yes quicken is a program you have to download. I have used it for years. If I have an immediate question I pull up my account on my phone. I use Vanguards site to look at my investments and monitor asset allocation. Quicken allows me to categorize and monitor my expenses easily. I can generate a report on business and personal expenses by category. I am sure one could do this with their own excel spreadsheet also. The point is to find some software you like and start using it.
Rules are made to be broken. Call your bank and tell them what you need. My bank had a 5k limit on mobile check deposit. I pushed them. It took a little while but got it up to 25k with no change in the amount I keep with them. Our brokerage had a transfer limit of 10k. I have to call to get a temporary increase for what I need it to be. The last time they made me do something similar they eventually just upped my limit. Transferring between business and personal account was frustrating before I had these changes made.
Good for you Dr. Mom. I had to deposit. 55k check recently when a hospital investment bought me out. It was the first time I had been inside a bank in years.
By researching online, I found out our bank would treat us differently (higher limits) if we lived in a bigger city than where we are. That did not sit well with me or local bank management.
The other tip I have with cash flow management is that I segregate what WCI refers to as his saving account partition. I keep our emergency fund in a FDIC insured money market at our bank which is our overdraft protection. As you know Hatton, we live in a location where occasional loss of power and loss of internet is not out of our reality. I could earn a little more with an online account but sometimes other factors override that decision. I keep all the rest of the partitioned savings account in our brokerage account. I can easily transfer money from either place to our checking account when needed. I don’t have any limits between savings account and checking account held at same bank. The transfer is immediate.
I like a local bank when you have a business. Yes I have never had an issue transferring in between accounts at the same bank. If there is a limit I don’t know about it. The only limit I have come across is mobile deposits.
I use mobile with usaa for up to 100k per day
This might be a bit granular, but WCI for your partitioned savings account, are they literally partitioned within the account or do you have a separate accounting (excel spreadsheet) for the money in that account? If they are partitioned within the bank account, what bank do you use?
Just a spreadsheet.
Capital One 360 allows partitions, it basically creates a bunch of sub accounts which you can name different things. Transfer to main account, then when it gets there, you just spread it out where you want among your choices.
CapitalOne 360 makes it particularly easy to create new partioned accounts, nickname them, and set up custom transfer schedules for each if anyone is looking for savings accounts that have more visible partitions than a spreadsheet you have to maintain (but I like my spreadsheets too, so whatever works for each person).
Ally bank has similar features and their rates are better than CapitalOne 360
I was taking a look at my Ally savings accounts last night, and I see no “partitioning” feature. How do you access and use it?
I just open a new Ally account for every separate partition. If there is any downside to this, I’m not aware of it.
Although it takes up-front work to switch banks, it also takes ongoing work when your bank makes it difficult to manage your cash flow. Not able to push money to your other accounts by ACH is simply not acceptable. Now that you know what features you need, make it part of your selection criteria. The good thing is you can have your new bank account and your old bank account running at the same time. Only when you see everything is moved over you close your old bank account.
Would it be easier if you build a reserve in fat months and pull back from such reserve in lean months, as opposed to varying your investments and donations? Only you can decide what works better for you.
Threatening to leave our bank magically enabled them to give me the tools I wanted.
I do that a lot with cable company etc, but never thought to do it with a bank… Thanks dm
Good to know. I think it would be a nightmare to change banks with a business. It is a no brainer after retirement however.
WCI’s comments are directed toward high-earning professionals, but from experience, I can tell you that all of his suggestions work just as well for those of us in the middle class (or below). I have developed a spreadsheet that addresses both budgeting and cash flow. Of course, it probably is easier if your income does not vary a lot. The spreadsheet has estimates of income and major expenses for three months or so ahead, and when I close out each month, I can see how close the estimates have been. Since my income usually exceeds my necessary expenses, I can plan how to use the flow of extra cash. My investments are largely in tax-deferred accounts, so they present little cash flow problem. Ever since working my way out of debt (created in large part by a now-gone wife), my life has been much easier due to good planning.
Decades ago my (now ex-) wife and I set up our cash flow strategy right out of college. We aren’t doctors, but our jobs provide a very irregular income stream. More than half of our income came from non-base-salary sources back then, and as we progressed in our careers “lumpy” events like stock option vesting, stock grants, bonuses, etc.. became the bulk of our income. This of course made budgeting challenging and many of us are aware of the temptations that arise when your checking account suddenly has a surfeit of cash.
Back then money market funds offered higher rates than most savings accounts (3% – 4%, I believe). So I opened a Prime Money Market Fund at Vanguard and set all of our income streams to direct deposit into this account. Then I set up an automatic withdrawal from that into our checking account. At the time the withdrawal was $4,000 per month, and over the years it increased to $10,000 per month.
I always referred to this account as our “slush fund”. It was simultaneously our emergency account, our new car fund, our vacation savings fund, etc… And of course whenever the balance would grow too high (for some arbitrary definition of too high), I’d transfer it into one of Vanguard’s excellent investment choices. While MMF have obviously lost their luster, we stayed with Vanguard’s MM funds for simplicity, and because at this point interest from the MMF is dwarfed by investment returns.
Over the years my wife and I came to jokingly refer to this system as artificially induced poverty. While in reality we were affluent, this system “hid” our income from us such that our spending stayed very conservative. We’ve been very successful in our goals of enabling early retirement (even post-divorce), and, silly as it sounds, I credit the bulk of that success to this cash flow system.
So when you got divorced how did you change your cash flow system and how did she?
Recently (past month) I thought a lot about combining systems with my wife… But never thought about how to split them up
We’re fortunate to have no debt, and liquid assets that far exceed our home’s value (this was another benefit or our cash flow system; it encouraged us to buy less home than we could afford). So splitting up the assets is easy.
I’ll still continue the system, but with one income obviously there will be less excess in the cash flow system (moreso because my ex- made more than I). I’m changing it a little to use a high yield savings account and, until returns get better, I’ll probably ladder medium-term CDs in the slush account. Though the bulk of my assets will stay with Vanguard.
I’m trying to help my ex- set the same system up. In my opinion not only does it lend itself to increased savings but it also simplifies finances considerably (which I think is tremendously important to financial success). But at this point her income on its own makes her a 1%-er, which makes it a tough sell to do even the minimal up-front effort required for this. She doesn’t need to budget, and I’m not sure she *wants* to think about this stuff.
I’d hate to recommend designing a joint system with the intention of making it easy to split up. But I will say that the excess cash generated thanks to our artificial poverty did vastly simplify that process. Friends who have split up who were house rich and cash poor had a very different experience….
“She doesn’t need to budget, and I’m not sure she *wants* to think about this stuff.”
Yes it’s been a challenge to get my wife to think about budgeting… I think she wants to budget in theory and she is getting there slowly but she just doesn’t think about it when she’s at the store…or when faced with a “do I buy this or not” decision… She will usually buy it. So that’s an issue that we work on. It’s hard to talk with someone who has spent 12 years after college studying, working hard, sacrificing, only to make a large salary and say… Well I cannot afford this or that because I am so far behind my non DR peers with student loans and retirement … The sentiment is usually simpler… I make a lot so i don’t need to budget
I sincerely can relate to your pains….
I manage cash flow through liberal use of credit. I know exactly what will be coming out of checking for the month, as those are either fixed, predictable costs or are credit card bills that have 20-30 days of float that pushes the due date to the next pay period after the statement date. I track these expenses in Excel, with a tab per month.
Everything extra (or short) goes to or comes from my Betterment taxable account. For this slush fund type purpose I use a 35% stock allocation sub-account. (By “everything” I mean that I keep monthly expenses + $500.00 in there, nothing more. I do have a few small savings accounts so that I could get a few thousand in cash immediately in a pinch.)
With my method I get harvested losses on the downside, get the gains on the upside (that are far greater than those even from online savings accounts), and live on the banks’ floated money. Cash flow isn’t an issue given that credit is such a great buffer for those with self control and enough money in reserve somewhere to pay the bill when it’s due.
Example of how Betterment has done for me since December 2014, when I switched to this method: $2351 in harvested losses. 6.0% time weighted return on the 35% stock subaccount. 11.6% time weighted return on the 75% stock subaccount.
Now that’s an interesting approach. I bet the taxable transactions are a bit of a pain to keep track of, but they can probably be downloaded into Turbotax automatically.
Yes, Turbotax downloads transaction information directly. This happens around the 12th or so of February, iirc, which is just as well since other tax documents often are a bit later anyway. Inputting the pages upon pages of 9 pt font transactions would be impossible, and the summary PDF that one can download from Betterment prior to auto-import doesn’t have enough information to do this by hand even if one had dozens of free hours.
I do something similar. I know basically to the dollar expected bills, etc…for the forward month and check with mint when I get paid and assume a few k of spending for safety, I try to keep about one full months of bills/spending in checking. Then I send my taxes to my taxable account (in muni bond funds) and then my IRA gets funded. Anything left over I then over fund either the taxable or IRA (if IRA not full yet). Usually this means I just sent everything after a month or so to taxable account. Takes less than 2 mins.
I put everything possible on the credit card for the travel rewards, security, and simplicity.
Over funding certain accounts and thinking ahead just has to happen if your paycheck can vary by multiples of 6x, which is my largest intra-year difference I’ve had. Luckily the lows get higher every year, but its still about 3x so far this year. Its much easier to not need the money you saved than magically come up with something later on.
Anyone come across better way of managing ear marked funds in an account than an excel sheet and having to manually update it?
I ear mark funds in my savings account but end up forgetting what it was set aside for – all ends up in the same pile.
I haven’t found an online service that allows me to do this.
Thanks
YNAB. Google it, or see WCI’s post on it.
how does YNAB do this? I thought that was just an external program that cannot actually make changes to your account or label funds?
I’m new to the cash flow side of things. Certainly a 1st world problem. Entering second year as an attending and I am in great need of simplifying life. I have 3 savings/checking accounts. One through credit union, one at same bank as mortgage and of course DRB. (FYI DRB sold my loan back to MOHELA, PITA, but in return they also have the “savings” tabs within their account now one could use instead of a spreadsheet to track specific savings goals!)Having the ability to save time is most important to me, but I do also want the best interest return on my money while having decent liquidity of the funds.
Anyone have suggestions for the highest interest returns these days, that is also easy to manage (online bank?, local bank?, investment firm?)?? Pointing me to an article would work as well. Thanks!
I’ve been happy with Ally Bank as far as ease of use and returns for a savings account. Haven’t tried their checking.
Wow, I had no idea cash flow could be so complicated! Husband and I are both on salary so it’s super easy. Our checks direct deposit into checking, savings, mortgage, and retirement so we hardly ever have to transfer money unless we are paying for something we’ve been saving for out of our long term savings account. It’s interesting to see how others do it.
Found this website via bogleheads and what a timely post! I was wondering about cash flow as it relates to a dual income household.
Right now – we have:
1. TD bank student account (which I have had for the LONGEST) – emergency fund – move this or what? I doubt I am getting 1% return
2. USAA Checking account – his W2 paycheck is linked to this account and bills are paid – balance hovers around 10K or less
3. Bank of America – her checking account where W2 is linked – bills/student loans are paid and balance hovers less than 10K
4. Local credit union account – his business checking account – this is only our second year of business – balance is 6 figures right now – we are currently paying estimated taxes as per the 110% safe harbor rule – taxes owed will be more as the business is growing – not sure what to do with all of this money – leave it here? 3rd quarter 9/15 taxes are coming up and we have more than enough
We max out all of our tax deferred, HSAs, backdoor Roths. We currently do not invest in taxable as focused on paying down student loan debt and to start attempting to save for a house down payment, which in our super HCOL are would be 150k plus.
Any ideas on how to simplify above and move money around to where it can work for us the best?
1. Ally Bank pays 1% and I’m sure it is at least as easy to use.
2. Same
3. What? Two different accounts at two different banks? Might want to combine unless one of you is planning a divorce soon. You can each have your “own money” without having to hassle with two separate banks.
4. Transfer out more than you need and invest it. Make sure you understand what types of tax-advantaged accounts you’re eligible for. (Sounds like you do.) Put it toward the student loans more likely or at least the house downpayment fund.
1. Just put in the joint app for Ally last night. 3-5 biz days to hear back
3. Two diff accounts – this was what we always had before we got married. We like BofA due to ease of bill pay, and like USAA b/c of its ease of use with online services, etc. How do you suggest we combine? In addition, any suggestions on how to allocate “own money”? We floated this idea, but never got around to implementing
4. Business income has doubled since last year, and our 110% safe harbor will surely fall short. Do you recommend contributing more quarterly or just wait for that 4th quarter payment and pay a big lump sum? Also, trying to figure out where to park this future tax money.
5. House savings – open yet another account for this? suggestions welcome
3. Just put everything in one or the other or somewhere else. All bills, all paychecks. You don’t have to, but I think it’s probably better in the long run for finances and the marriage.
4. Pay a big lump sum in April. But make sure you have it.
5. It can be in the same account as the emergency money.
Wow, great post! I am a realtor in Nevada and starting to make my own investments to boost my monthly cash flow. This article helped me out tremendously.
Like other commenters, this topic is a bit new to me (first year attending), so a much appreciated post.
One solution I have found is with our online bank–Capital One, which allows digital checks (up to $50,000). It takes about two days for a check submitted by phone to transfer from our local bank (where we hold our mortgage) to get to either our savings or money market account with Capital One. It’s free, and we can then transfer between accounts with them at no charge.
I guess this is just one more tool to utilize in the digital age.
Thanks again. Love the blog!
Interesting how different it is with different financial institutions.