Hey BP community! I’m a recently minted two-time house hacker trying to keep a responsible amount of cash reserves while keeping accounting simple.

For those of you who have been doing this awhile, how do you structure reserves across your portfolio?

I have two duplexes valued around $205k and $255k (hooray for Midwest pricing) and right now I keep $5k in an Amex HYSA for each property. Rent gets deposited there, and lender payments come out monthly. I also keep a separate $10k HYSA as an overall portfolio reserve.

my main question is, do you keep a small checking balance for smaller repairs? It hurts a little to have money sitting at 0%, but I can’t write checks from an HYSA. Right now I usually pay smaller repairs out of pocket and upload receipts into TurboTenant. I haven’t had any major expenses yet, so I haven’t had to dip into reserves.

I’m curious how others balance maximizing interest, keeping clean accounting, and maintaining responsible reserves. Do you keep reserves by property, one big portfolio pool, or some mix of both?

I'm really wanting to make this as "automatic" as possible and utilize the accounting software turbotenant offers so anyone with expertise on that, I would be especially interested to hear.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts!