Keep life and money simple
As a part of my career, I worked in different places in India and abroad with various companies and the first thing that was done as part of the induction was to open a bank account where the company had the account. And then I had the preference of banking for convenience which meant a branch near my residence.
Over time, I had about 15 accounts with private, foreign and nationalized Banks in Bangalore, Mumbai, Jamshedpur and Chennai plus 2 NRE accounts thanks to my stints abroad. The recent addition has been the bank account linked to my demat account. All this is just mine. Add the accounts of my mother, wife and kids (I am supposedly managing their finances as well).
This effectively means managing about 25 cheque books, ATM Cards, pay in slip books, pass books, statements, letters to be written, letters received, TDS statements … . Worse, I had a few thousand rupees in each account to boot!
What started as a necessity became a real pain! I started cleaning up the mess by closing accounts where I can (it is sometimes messier and time consuming).
My takeaway:
Just keep one or max 2 active accounts at any time and close others when they are no longer needed. Enjoy your life.
