[ky70]

I'm biased but after tweaking my cash game starting stacks more times than I care to admit, I settled on this perfect handout (for my purposes). I hand out identical stacks of the .25 chips and the $1 chips for all buy ins $50 and under. This way, as the buy-in is decided for a particular cash game, all I have to do is adjust the number of $5 chips that I hand out (see below).

$20 Buy in:
16 x .25
16 x $1

$25 Buy in:
16 x .25
16 x $1
1 x $5

$30 Buy in:
16 x .25
16 x $1
2 x $5

$40 Buy in:
16 x .25
16 x $1
4 x $5

$50 Buy in:
16 x .25
16 x $1
6 x $5

I have my chips already pre-separated for a $20 buy-in (16 x .25 and 16 x $1) and simply add the appropriate
number of $5 chips for the set buy-in for the night. Almost maintenance free.

The same thing can be done using 12 x .25 and 12 x $1 as your foundation (I use to also use the 12,12 and 1 setup as my starting stack breakdown), but I like having more chips on the table. And as jdunford points out, this works really well if you have 4 x 25 chip trays.