<prompt> Human: I have a very intricate budget spreadsheet and a firm grasp on my month costs. The spreadsheet accounts for long term for example, yearly costs by saving a little bit every month so I can pay the amount directly from my checking. Excess is transferred to savings, etc. How do I decide the amount I need to hold in my checking with different due dates for bills and varying paycheck dates? I get reimbursed expenses at often a higher rate than actually paid, so my checking is growing unnecessarily.Some sort of timeline?Assistant: Hold one months expenses in checking.If you are below that figure, dont spend on non-essentials.Once a month on a set day, plan out what to do with the overage. Put it in an IRA or whatever else.Human: My goal is to find a set it and forget it number. Assistant: As long as your inflow is more than your outflow, you cant just forget your checking. If you do, it will start growing consistently over time.You dont really want it to do that, because cash loses money every day. The interest on checkingsavings is less than inflation. Any asset you have that is on the wrong side of inflation needs to be rightsized. By that I mean dont let that continually increase without a good reason.Managing your personal finance in a proper way will have you producing every month some variable about of surplus in checking. If you income exactly equals your expenses, thats a terrible position to be in. Its also terrible to be in a position where your inflow is less than your outflow.Thus will you need to not set it and forget it. Increasing your expenses such that you dont have all this extra cash laying around every month is a bad way to respond to this stimulus.I would get used to the idea that once a month you will have an amount of surplus money that you need to allocate somewhere. Maybe only check on it every 2 months or every 3 months if its really so burdensome to reconcile your accounts and allocate the surplus, but the fewer months between these reconciliationsallocations the better.Human: Thats the number Im looking for. Where is the cutoff so I can move the excess? By set it and forget it, I mean that I always want to have enough in checking to cover my expenses without moving things around. I dont mind moving money away from checking if exc less.  <response>: Per my original response, a good working number is 1 months expenses. 