In todays world, people can barely count on their fingers the number of different financial accounts that they have: loans for school, emergency funds, investment funds, mortgage - the list could go on and on. With so many accounts to put your money in, it can be hard to know exactly what to do.

The good news is that there is a simple principle for maximizing the power of your money across all your financial accounts and it amounts to moving your money out of low-interest accounts and itno high-interest accounts.

The first step is to make a list of all your accounts along with their interest rates (either positive or negative).

Hypothetically, lets say that youve got a total of $6,000 in credit card debt at 15% interest. Youve also got a $125,000 mortgage at 6.5% interest. Other accounts might include a savings account with $25,000 making 3% interest, and a retirement account with $40,000 making 10% interest. Most people probably have more than four accounts. In fact, if you are like the average American, it is more likely that you have upwards of 10-15 accounts.

Ok. So we have four accounts. The question that we need to ask is whether our money is being used in the best way across these accounts? In other words, are we currently maximizing the power of our money? It turns out that we are not.

The main reason is that there is too much money wrapped up in the low-interest saving account. What you need to do is move the money out of your savings account and put it into those accounts with the highest interest rates (both positive and negative). In this case, the highest interest rates are the credit cards.

Once weve paid the credit card accounts, wed still have $19,000 left in savings: still far too much for such a low-interest account. In its current state, the money in the savings account is not being used effectively. The next step is to look for the account with the next highest interest rates. This account turns out to be your retirement account at 10% interest. Dont be tempted here to pay down your mortgage! Youll be losing out on tax benefits plus close to 3.5% interest per year.

Once youve maxed out your retirement contributions, go onto the account with the next highest interst rate, and so on until youve distributed your money into the accounts with the highest interest rates.

You can always maximize the power of your money by letting it flow into accounts with the highest interest rates. By using this simple principle, you can maximize the power of your money in todays modern economy.