A system for managing financial accounts includes one or more account holders. An account holder data structure is associated with one or more financial accounts. The financial accounts are defined to flexibly respond to the needs of the account holders. A balance is also associated with each of the one or more financial accounts, and an overdraft balance is associated with at least one of the one or more financial accounts. The balances, including the overdraft balance, are accessed through the accounts by one or more access methods, such as prepaid debit card or stored value financial cards. When a transaction initiated with an access method attempts to access an amount in a balance which exceeds the available amount of the balance, the access method accesses an amount in the overdraft balance through the overdraft account to complete the transaction.