Money Crashers » Banking

Earn $100 For Signing Up To A New Chase Personal Checking Account

Erik Folgate — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:36:02 +0000

Recently, I received a flyer in the mail from Chase offering a $100 credit for opening a personal checking account to new customers. Existing customers are not able to cancel their account and sign back up to receive the $100 credit. Here are a few more things to consider about the offer:

The $100 will be treated like interest income, so you’ll need to report it as such on your taxes.
In order for this account to remain free, you have to abide by Chase Bank’s rules. Keep your direct deposit or make five debit card purchases each month to avoid a $6 monthly fee.
And don’t try opening the account, withdrawing the money, and closing it right away. Chase makes you keep it for at least six months, or they’ll take the money back.

To apply for the account online and generate your own coupon code, click here. This is a pretty sweet deal if you were already looking to switch banks. The offer ends October 16th, 2009.
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Earn $100 For Signing Up To A New Chase Personal Checking Account is a post from: Money Crashers

USAA Offers Check Deposit Feature With iPhone

Erik Folgate — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 04:26:00 +0000

The Texas based bank, USAA, released an update to their iPhone application that allows customers to deposit a check through the iPhone. Simply snap a photo of the front and back of the check, and the application will process the check electronically. You never need to physically send in the paper check.

Security issues? USAA realizes that this could bring about security problems, and that is why they are only allowing the feature for customers with another account with them such as an insurance policy or a line of credit.

A feature like this really appeals to someone like me, and it will especially appeal to small business owners or freelancers that get paid in the form of a check. They can easily process a check at the time they receive it. Even with the security issues, I suspect that larger banks will soon follow suit with this iPhone/smartphone feature. Here is a video tutorial of the application from USAA:

The Way2Save Savings Plan By Wachovia

Erik Folgate — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:16:43 +0000

I was talking with a friend the other day about the Way2Save Wachovia savings plan, and he has had a great experience with it so far. He and his wife were able to save almost $2,000 in less than a year without consciously making an effort to save on a consistent basis. Bank of America had a “Keep the Change” savings program that is similar to this, and I am sure other banks have similar plans, but after reading about Wachovia’s program, I think it’s one of the better automatic savings plans for people that have a hard time saving money. Here’s how it works:

Sign up for a Way2Save account and any Wachovia Checking account and start saving. We’ll transfer $1 from your checking account to your savings account when you:

Use your Wachovia Check Card to make a purchase
Pay a bill online, including through Online Banking with BillPay note 1
Make automatic payments

Get paid to save with Way2Save

Earn a premium Annual Percentage Yield (APY).
Receive a bonus just for saving.

Save even more, by setting up recurring transfers for as little as $5 (up to $100) every month for even more savings and interest.

Here is the annual percentage yield breakdown:

Year 1: 5% of the eligible balance, up to $300
Year 2: 2% of the eligible balance, up to $300
Year 3: 2% of the eligible balance, up to $300

Fees Associated With the Account:

Account Closing Fee – Waived
Monthly Service Fee – Waived first year and thereafter with qualified transactions (automatic transfers), otherwise $5.00
Teller Withdrawal Fee – First three per month free; $3.00 each thereafter
Person-to-Person Transfer Fee – $3.00 per item
Overdraft Protection Transfer Fee – Waived with linked checking and Way2Save accounts, otherwise $10.00 per transfer

So, the APY isn’t great, but it’s still a no-brainer way to save some extra cash, especially if you want to develop an emergency fund without thinking about it. Also, there could be potential for getting nickel-and-dimed by some of those fees, but most of them are waived if you are active with the account.

Are you using this program? If so, we’d like to hear from you. What is the good and bad about this program?

How To Avoid Banking Overdraft Fees

Erik Folgate — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 03:01:00 +0000

There are many things that I hate paying for in life, but bank fees are definitely in my top three for most hated expenses. When you deposit your money into a commercial bank, you are already doing them a favor, because that increases their ability to loan more money to other customers and make money from the loan interest. Nickel and diming you with exorbitant fees is not good customer service, yet many banks still try to get away with it. Now with the government sticking their noses in banking interest rates and foreclosure costs, banks will look to fees more than ever to make up for lost revenue.

Overdrafting your bank account is not the bank’s fault, it’s your fault. This is a fee that you can prevent by taking a few steps to ensure it doesn’t happen. Here are some tips to make sure that you never pay an overdraft fee.

Stop using your debit card so much

The debit card is a great banking invention. It has made writing checks obsolete, but it has also made it harder to keep track of transactions. Before the debit card, you wrote a check for big purchases and paid cash for minor purchases. Now, you can go through an entire day using your debit card five to ten times on small and large purchases. The debit card is one of the biggest reasons for overdrafts. My wife and I do two things to avoid excessively swiping our debit cards. We give each other petty cash every two weeks to use on whatever want like a latte, lunch, or any other small purchase. We also take out cash for entertainnment, groceries, and household products.

Change your overdraft limit to $0.

Banks try to trick you into thinking they are providing a service to you by giving you an overdraft limit of “X” amount of dollars. This ensures that a check won’t bounce or your debit card won’t get denied. Then, they’ll slap an overdraft fee on you of $35, oh and by the way, it’s $35 for every transaction that goes through past $0, so you could end up with two or three $35 fees. Set your overdraft limit to $0, and your debit card will not be allowed to overdraft your account. If you are balancing your checkbook and keeping track of checks that you write, you should never have a problem with a check bouncing.

Use the ING Direct Checking Account

If you hardly ever write checks and your main deposits are your paycheck, the ING Direct checking account might be a good option for you. You get a debit card, the ability to write checks to anyone with an address, pay bills online, and set up direct deposit of paychecks. If you overdraft on your ING checking account, there are NO overdraft fees. It gives you a $500 overdraft limit and charges you a 7.25% APR on the overdraft amount. It’s still a fee, but much less than $35, unless you let it sit in the negative for a long period of time.

Here at Money Crashers, we want to help you keep more money in your pocket. Paying bank fees should not be in your vocabulary. They aren’t necessary, you have options, and if you are ever charged with a bank fee, most banks will credit it back to you if you take the time to call customer service and ask for them to remove the fee. I have had multiple overdraft fees removed, because I called customer service, explained the situation, and showed them that it was not a regular occurrence. Don’t pay overdraft fees!

Savings Tip: Eliminate Your Private Mortgage Insurance

Erik Folgate — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:54:27 +0000

There are a great deal of people who are paying private mortgage insurance premiums every month that don’t need to be paying them anymore. The market value of real estate has definitely gone down the past two years, but many of you still have 20% or more equity in your home, which qualifies you to remove the private mortgage insurance from your mortgage. If you think this might be you, do the following:

Purchase an appraisal from a certified housing appraiser.
Calculate your home’s equity based on the amount of the appraised value. Divide the balance of your mortgage by the appraised value. If this number is less than .81, then proceed to the next step.
Contact the bank or mortgage company that services your loan. Explain to them that you received an updated home appraisal which shows that you now have 20% or more equity in your home, and ask them to remove the private mortgage insurance from your monthly payment. They will ask for a copy of the appraisal and possibly other documents to support its value.

Remember, do not order an appraisal unless you are fairly confident that it will appraise to an amount that would put you in the 80% or less range. These reports cost anywhere from $250 to $500, so I don’t want you throwing away your money. Do your research before ordering a report. You can visit websites such as Zillow.com to see their market value estimate for your home, and it allows you to see what comparable properties are selling for in your neighborhood.

Getting your PMI removed can save you thousands of dollars per year and shed quite a few dollars off of your monthly mortgage payment.

Organize Your Savings With The ING Direct Orange Savings Account

Erik Folgate — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:12:53 +0000

Many other bloggers have written about how to set up sub-savings accounts with ING Direct’s Orange savings account, so I won’t go into a huge tutorial about how to do it. Recently, I decided it would be a good idea for us to start categorizing our short-term savings. Lately, we have simply thrown money into the account, and used it for whatever short-term savings goals we had. However, I know there were some times that we used it for things that we didn’t plan on using it for a few months prior. ING Direct has a cool feature in their Orange savings accounts. You can set up as many sub savings accounts as you want. Here’s a quick run-down on how to do it:

How To Set Up Sub Savings Accounts With ING Direct Orange savings account

Log in to your account.
Click on the “open an account” link at the left hand side of the screen.
Click on the drop-down box and click on the orange savings account. You can choose whether or not to make it a single or joint account depending on if you are married or not.
Choose the funding source to be either your checking account or your main savings account. Then, choose the nick name for your account. Choose a name related to your savings goal such as “New Car” or “Vacation Fund”.
Agree to the terms of service for the account, and you are done!

A lot of people get confused about opening sub accounts, because intuitively, it feels like you are opening up a whole new savings account. Since you already have a savings account, you can open up limitless amounts of sub accounts, because you can move money from one account to another instantaneously.

My Sub Accounts

Emergency Fund
Car Maintenance/Savings
Clothing (don’t want to bother keeping it in an envelope anymore)
Vacations
House Maintenance

How To Access Your Money Instantly

I have always worried about the time where I needed money in my emergency fund, but I didn’t have it, because it takes two days to transfer the money to my checking account. Then, it dawned on me to open up an ING Electric Orange checking account. They will send you a debit card, and you can instantaneously fund the checking account from your savings account. I have an iPhone now, so if I need money loaded on the debit card right away, I can log onto the website from my phone, transfer money to the checking account, and use the debit card right away.

Use Specific Short-Term Savings Goals

Creating sub accounts will help you organize your short-term savings and specify your savings goals. Let’s say you want to save up $1,000 specifically for remodeling your bathroom. You can set up a sub account in ING and set up a separate automatic investment to go from your checking account to your “bathroom remodel” savings account. Catch my drift? Try it out, and let me know how it goes. Also, if you are already doing this, share your success or failure stories with us.

Dow Jones Index Drops to 6800 For The First Time In 12 Years

Erik Folgate — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 02:08:28 +0000

I don’t know what to tell you. Even Warren Buffet has lost confidence in our economy. Much of the country is not paying attention to the fact that we are 10 percentage points away from nationalizing a bank, the government pledging about $1.5 trillion dollars in 6 weeks, and the largest insurance company and auto maker dwindling to nothing.

Here are my thoughts on why the stock market continues to go south:

Investors are reacting negatively to the massive amounts of spending in the Obama economic recovery agenda.
Investors started out requesting bailouts of large companies, but now they think it’s a bad idea to keep pumping money into a lost cause. AIG is looking like a lost cause. I have no idea what they got themselves into, but for a company like that to fall as hard as they have in one year is insane. What did they do, back every subprime mortgage in the country?
Continuing to invest in the stock market will either backfire or make you look like a genius in a few years. It will backfire if the recession runs deeper and takes a decade to recover from. It will make you look like a genius if you buy stock shares at a 50% discount, and the stock market surges back to 14,000. You’ll double your money and have a ton of shares at a discounted price that continue to grow. What will happen? I have no idea. If you are in your 20’s or 30’s, you might want to bet on our economy recovering in the next 5 years.

What Can We Do?

I am going to start building up a large emergency fund. If the worst happens, it will be magnified three fold in this economic climate. Consider piling up a large amount of cash in an online savings account, and continue paying off debt. Reducing debt will reduce the amount of risk in your life. Ask yourself this question: Do I want added risk in your life during these times?

Updated Online Savings Account Rates

Erik Folgate — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 03:01:06 +0000

I am a big proponent of online high-yield sa vings accounts, because they offer much better savings rates than most traditional savings accounts, and they are a little harder to access. You might think ease of access is a good thing, but it’s not a good thing if it’s too easy to tap into your emergency fund or short-term savings. I agree that easy access to the money when you need it most is important, but online savings accounts help take away the urge to spend that money on things you don’t need. Given the recent plunge in the stock market and the financial meltdown, the online savings rates have declined quite a bit. The good ole’ days of getting a 5% savings rate is long gone, so here is are the updated rates of the top four online savings accounts.

FNBO Direct offers 2.60% APY, with no monthly fees, no minimum balances, and Ã¢â‚¬Å“no stringsÃ¢â‚¬Â. $1 minimum to open. Named best online savings account by KiplingerÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s Personal Finance magazine, December 2008.
HSBC Direct offers 2.25% APY, no fees. $1 minimum to open. Named Ã¢â‚¬Å“best online savings accountÃ¢â‚¬Â by KiplingerÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s Personal Finance in 2006.
E*TRADE Bank offers 2.15% APY, no fees, an automatic savings plan. $1 minimum to open. I am thinking about switching to this one, because I like their brokerage account.
ING Direct offers 1.85% APY, no fees, an automatic savings plan, web interface. No minimum. GRS readers love ING Direct. This is the bank that I currently have a savings account with, but I am thinking about switching to E-trade, because I like the stocks, ETF’s, and mutual funds that E-trade offers.

Like I said, I am not satisfied with my Sharebuilder brokerage account. They don’t offer any mutual funds or index funds other than a few of their ING funds, and their individual stock offerings are limited as well. ING Direct has a great online savings account, but I don’t like having accounts spread out among different banks. I like it all in one place. My checking account has been at Bank of America for the past 6 years, but I am getting ready to close that account and support a local credit union. I like the idea of members owning interest in the credit union, rather than a bank trying to keep its shareholders happy. Plus, Bank of America’s stock price is looking really scary right now, and the thought of it being nationalized scares me.

Post your thoughts and questions about online savings accounts you’ve used or currently use, and do you have any suggestions about where to park my checking account?
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Updated Online Savings Account Rates is a post from: Money Crashers

Is It Time To Pull Your Money Out of Bank Of America?

Erik Folgate — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:27:28 +0000

I just read this article on CNN Money, and it made me a little worried.

We have our primary checking account with Bank of America, but I am about ready to close the account and switch to a credit union. I have kept our checking account with Bank of America for two reasons. We have a lot of bills that automatically draft from that account and our paychecks are set up with direct deposit into that account. I know that I can change all of that, but it would take a lot of time to get done. The other reason is that Bank of America can be found almost anywhere in the Southeast. The convenience of finding an ATM wherever we are has been nice. But, I think the time has come.

Bank of America’s stock dipped below $4.00 a share earlier today before rallying to rise 4 percent for the day. Bank of America has received over $45 billion dollars from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, also known as TARP. But, this money has not helped them. Their eyes were too big for their stomach when they snatched up Countrywide and Merrill Lynch back in the summer and fall. They’ve had a hard time dealing wth these acquisitions. Ironically, Bank of America could become the first bank owned by America.

I know that my money is FDIC insured, but I don’t want to be like those people who had money in IndyMac banks and had it frozen from a few days time. That would be devastating to us. For those of you with a Bank of America account, what do you think about this? Are you going to switch banks? Related Posts:

Is It Time To Pull Your Money Out of Bank Of America? is a post from: Money Crashers

Should Obama Limited CEO Compensation?

Erik Folgate — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 16:26:18 +0000

Yesterday, President Obama announced that he would limit CEO compensation of private corporations that received bailout money from the federal government. The moment that a private company receives government money, they are taking taxpayer’s money. The government doesn’t have their own money. They have our money. So, Obama and many Ameriicans want this bailout money being used responsibly by these private corporations. They don’t want them using the money for executive bonuses, vacation retreats, and corporate jets. I agree and disagree with this issue.

Why I Agree With What Obama Did

If financial institutions, automakers, and other private corporations want to beg for government bailout money because it’s the easy way out of their problems, then the President has every right to impose regulations and limitations on them. What are these executives going to say? They were the ones that were too lazy to figure out a way to save their companies, so they looked to the government. The government was glad to help, because they knew that it would expand their power over the financial sectors. Obama is merely flexing his muscles now that the country owns a piece of the financial sector.

Why I Disagree With What Obama Did

This is one step closer to nationalizing banks. Again, this isn’t “Obama’s fault”, and I don’t fault him for what he did, because it’s the executive’s faults for asking for the money in the first place. No company is too big to fail. Companies will come and go, and the ones that make mistakes will sometimes fail. The ones that do not provide good customer service and a good product will not survive. These financial institutions should have merged together and bought each other out. That would have been the sensible thing to do. They could have come together, re-organized, re-structured, and split back up when they got their crap together. Instead, they looked to Uncle Sam, and now Uncle Sam is saying “Waaaiiiiiitttttt a minute”, you’re not getting that money with no stipulations.

What’s your take on this? Is this one step closer to nationalizing banks? Do you think executives deserve the pay they receive? Does Obama have the right to limit their compensation? I think he does, but it scares me that he does have that right. Related Posts:

Should Obama Limited CEO Compensation? is a post from: Money Crashers