When it comes to bank accounts, less may be more if your goal is to save money, new research finds.

The report, from researchers at the University of Utah and the University of Kansas, found that test participants who had multiple bank accounts saved less than subjects who had a single account, suggesting that consolidating accounts may help you spend less.

It appears, said Promothesh Chatterjee, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Kansas School of Business and one of the study’s authors, that if you have multiple accounts, it becomes easier to justify spending from one account because you can reason that funds are available in the others. “If you have a single account,” he said, “you know exactly how much money you have and how much you’ll have left.”

The report will be published in the May issue of Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, a journal that tracks applied psychology.

The report is based on four related studies, involving 566 subjects, who were randomly assigned to have either a single liquid bank account, or three accounts. (The subjects were college students who received partial course credit for participating.) The students earned money — up to $100 total — for completing certain tasks on a computer. They were then given opportunities to buy items (in one case, the items included university T-shirts, notebooks and a computer mouse) with their earnings, or have the money added to their savings balance.

“In this research, we demonstrate that individuals allocating their earnings to a single account saved more than those who spread their earnings across multiple accounts,” the report says.

It’s not that people can’t do the math to add up the multiple accounts, Professor Chatterjee said. “But somehow, when we are motivated to spend, we don’t want to do the accounting.”

The finding suggests that having one account — or at least, one checking and one savings account, rather than multiple savings accounts — could encourage savings more effectively. If such an arrangement isn’t practical, or if you are strongly attached to multiple savings accounts, the report says, one alternative may be to use a software program that consolidates your accounts onto one screen, so you can see  your total balance in one place.

Do you have multiple savings accounts? If so, do you think that helps, or hurts, your attempts to save?

Article source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/fewer-bank-accounts-may-result-in-more-savings/?partner=rss&emc=rss