The Amount You Should Never Leave in Checking | IRS Watching In 2026

Most people have no idea how much money they're silently handing to their bank every single year — and the IRS is watching more closely than ever in 2026. In this video, I break down the exact amount you should keep in your checking account, what happens when you go over, and the five-bucket system financial planners use to put every dollar to work. If you have more than a month or two of expenses sitting in checking right now, this video could put hundreds — or thousands — of dollars back in your pocket. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📌 CHAPTERS 0:00 Introduction 0:12 The $800/year quietly burning in checking 2:31 Why your bank pays you nothing 3:46 What $20,000 in checking is actually costing you 4:04 The 10-year compounding loss 4:13 Inflation: the second blade 6:37 The $10,000 cash reporting rule (CTR) 7:54 Structuring: the federal felony most people don't know about 9:44 7 behaviors that get your account flagged 11:54 FDIC insurance — the $250,000 magic number 15:13 The formula for exactly how much to keep 15:55 Real example: the $4,000/month spender 17:52 The five-bucket system 19:07 Emergency fund math — $960/year for free 25:51 5 mistakes that quietly undo the whole system ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📋 FREE 2026 SENIOR BENEFITS CHECKLIST The 7 government benefits most senior homeowners have never claimed. Includes the property tax freeze form, the Medicare premium reduction filing, how to check if your Social Security check is being underpaid, and how to protect your home from Medicaid estate recovery. Simple one-page checklist. Completely free. 👉 https://cole-mercer.kit.com/checklist ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔔 Subscribe for weekly videos on Social Security, Medicare, and the money rules they don't teach you in school. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #IRS #CheckingAccount #PersonalFinance #HighYieldSavings #BankingRules2026 #FDIC #MoneyTips #RetirementPlanning #SeniorFinance #ColeМercerFinance