Being able to weigh the benefits of different places to put money is important too. I had an ex who was big on Ramsey and really wanted to pay down our 1.8% rat

Being able to weigh the benefits of different places to put money is important too. I had an ex who was big on Ramsey and really wanted to pay down our 1.8% rate mortgage and put "rainy day" money into a savings account that also yielded 1-2%. I argued that the the first priority should be maintaining a consistent $5k in the main chequing account and calling that the the rainy day money, since doing so would cause us to have a $20/mo service fee waived and we'd avoid the semi-regular NSF feeds we were getting dinged with from preauth utility bill debits. Monthly interest of 2% on $5k is only about $8 a month; our interest rate would have needed to be 5%+ before it was worth it earning that before first getting the account fee cleared (or, of course, just switching to a bank that offered fee-free chequing accounts).