Too many bank accounts?

Banks, Insurances & Third Pillar
1

Hello!

I am a 18 year old living in Lucerne and have a lot of accounts. I have one at Luzerner Kantonalbank (cuz my parents made it for me) with no credit card but with a stucard. I also have a Zak account with their mastercard and a revolut account, for traveling and paying for foreign transactions (Zak Mastercard has a fee of 1.25% for these).

I also have 900fr invested using Trading212 (now worth about 1k)

I was interested in the Viva Bank accounts of Credit Suisse as they offer great interest (for Switzerland at least) and also cheap cinema and a 50fr sign-up bonus.

Can one person have too many bank accoutns here, as long as they are not some expensive account?

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2

I have many bank accounts/brokers/credit card issuers and I see no problem. Of course it takes time to manage it and to do the tax declaration, but for me the most important thing is to have the best services, that means the best savings accounts, the best credit cards, the best broker etc. and it is definitely worth my time.

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3

If you can handle your finances and don’t fall into the debt trap there is no problem. But with 2-3 cards you can do very easy and quickly heavy financial damage to yourselves with >50k in dept, before any kind of alarm would set off. But just asking yourselves this question and here in the forum, I think you are a very smart guy and will not fall for this trap.

4

My limit is 1k anyway (just working part-time so my income flunctuates a lot) and I am trying my best to manage everything very well. Currently also trialing YNAB to budget and see where my money goes.

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5

Why should he/she?

I have declared 20 or so on my last tax return (13 payment accounts and a couple of savings accounts, depending on how you count it).

Well, part of it will go to YNAB (in fees), if you don’t cancel after the trial.

6

20?
That’s a lot for just swiss accounts. Or maybe you have 2m chf and spred them 100k per account.

7

Oh, it‘s on a global basis. Only three or four are Swiss.

8

As long as each account you have has an actual purpose and you don’t mind the associated cost (be it financial or otherwise), I think it’s fine. If you start having “dormant” accounts you don’t actually have any use for, you probably want to look into closing them. Even “free” accounts have an administrative cost (be it when doing your taxes, changing address,
).

Related story (that I found totally relatable at the time): https://monevator.com/maximise-savings-rates/