I'm having a 'small' budgetary dilemma. And I know this is a stupid question, so please only constructive responses.

What do you do when you have multiple short-term things to save for. i.e. not monthly expenses. Right now we have quarterly water bill. Every six months car insurance. Every year life insurance, license plate renewal, AAA membership, multiple business organizations, etc.

Do you just have a savings account and keep a separate spreadsheet for what's what? I'm afraid I just won't keep up on it and become confused and it'll be a lost cause. I want something ridiculously simple. Like an online savings account that I can separate into smaller pseudo accounts, like tabs or something. Does that exist?

Right now our monthly budget is excellent. But with the periodic stuff, we just use the money we have extra that month instead of putting it toward our debt payoff. (Obviously, this is interfering with our debt snowball time-line.)

I believe you can start multiple savings account at ING and label them whatever you want to help you keep track of what you're saving up for.

Cleverbeans is right.
You can open a new account, and call it "car insurance", and put however much you want in that category. I'm not sure if there's a limit to the amount of categories, but I have two, and it works great.

not sure if there are any PNC banks near you, but they have something called a virtual wallet that lets you do this. it is actually 3 accounts in one, spend (a regular checking), reserve (a secondary checking account that is where you get to save for specific short term goals), and growth (a high yield savings, currently 3%). you just add the money to the reserve account and then it lets you create goals that you can allocate that money to. the virtual wallet has some other features that encourage saving too, like you can set it to ask you if you want to move $1 into the growth account everytime you do certain actions or click a pig icon.

http://pncvirtualwallet.com/

I have an account that I contribute to monthly to pay all my bills. I factor in monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, and annual expenses. so for example, if the registration on my car is 50 dollars annually, I contribute 4.17 per month for the registration. When it comes due, I have that amount ready to go without thinking about it. It can be tricky at first when setting up, but makes budgeting easier in the long run. I also have all my bills automatically deduct from this account so I don't even have to think about paying bills on time. This only works for anticipated expenses. I use targeted savings for larger items (car, house, vacation).

I do this. It is one of the reasons I love ING. <3 <3 <3 ING

Thanks so much everyone!

I checked out the PNC wallet idea, very very cool. I think it might be the winner!

Many utilities will let you carry a credit balance with them. In other words, you could pay your water bill every month and it will build up a credit until the bill is actually due... then you start over. Car insurance may let you do the same thing (on a prepay basis). Smaller stuff like the license plate renewal and AAA membership, I would just cash-flow when it comes due. You pretty much have to do a new budget every month if you want it to be exact, anyway, right? You should have enough give in your budget that you can add another $50 category in any given month.

I opened an account called "Money Market", and move money to another account called "Checking" to cover an expense. Then I use Mint.com or Yodlee.com (still figuring out which I prefer) to track each expense and monitor them relative to my budget.

One thing that works well for me for short term savings goals outside of my sub-divided ING accounts is using my money management software (moneydance) to create the categories, and i label the categories with the goal.

So I have my "main checking account" - total $1000
a sub account is "XMas presents - goal $200" and allocate money in there until it hits $200. The nice thing about the way that it reads in my software is that when i click on the "main checking account" to examine my registers, it looks like I only have $800 in there.

It's a nice psychological thing where I can see when I'm going to hit zero in my expendable income (so no more eating out for a while) while still having easy access to the XMas money, in case i see the perfect gift.

ING is great, but the delay can be a bit much when you want true liquidity, which is easiest by just mentally/on your computer subdividing your primary checking account!

I would rather prefer to put all the money in one account and keep a data with me (something like spreadsheet) and mention the amount for each type. It saves time and I don't find it confusing.

Quicken lets you do something similar as well (Quicken 2008, not sure about other versions)

In quicken, it has what are called "Savings Goals" which are linked to an account (in my case, its my savings account) I set up an amount X due in Y months. It will tell you how much you'll need to pay in each month to meet the goal. Then each month, I transfer that amount into my savings account, and then transfer it out when the bill is due.

You can then choose to view either your actual savings account balance or your savings account balance minus and money put aside for goals. I find it very easy to use, and its been working for my wife and I.

I use this not only for irregular expenses, but for saving for things like a vacation or new furniture or whatever.

Agreed. One excel spreadsheet with various categories of saving is simple and easy.

Just a heads up on the PNC account:

If you sign up for the virtual wallet thing, you can only write something like 3 checks a month. They expect you to do everything electronically. Additional checks cost something like $.50/each. This may or may not be an issue for you. It was an issue for me, so I chose not to get it.

Ah, thanks!
I only write one or two checks a month, at the max. Pretty much right now, its the quarterly water bill. And the annual insurance bills.
Most everything is electronic, or I use cash.