Anyone here have a Sapphire checking account, and have any thoughts on it?
Currently I have 2 Chase "total checking" accounts, each of them getting hit with $12/mo maintenance fees because I don't have direct deposit and usually don't maintain the required average daily balance. The fees don't really bother me that much, but I'm considering closing one of them and converting the other to a Sapphire checking account, which has a $25/mo fee ($1 more than my existing $12+12 fees). But it has free ATM fees with no FTF, which could be valuable as I withdraw cash abroad several times a year. Also, not going to lie, it would be cool to have a debit card that matches my CSR 
Am I missing anything though? I don't want to convert the account and then get surprised by something bad that I wasn't aware of going into it.
Total Loan Balance: $43k / $65k
Total SL: $78k
@coreysw12 wrote:Anyone here have a Sapphire checking account, and have any thoughts on it?
Currently I have 2 Chase "total checking" accounts, each of them getting hit with $12/mo maintenance fees because I don't have direct deposit and usually don't maintain the required average daily balance. The fees don't really bother me that much, but I'm considering closing one of them and converting the other to a Sapphire checking account, which has a $25/mo fee ($1 more than my existing $12+12 fees). But it has free ATM fees with no FTF, which could be valuable as I withdraw cash abroad several times a year. Also, not going to lie, it would be cool to have a debit card that matches my CSR
I have a Sapphire account. I like it for the free wires and ATM usage worldwide. There's some other stuff with it I'm sure but the only reasons I went with it were the above, and that it was free. I don't think it's worth $25/month, though -- there's CUs and banks out there that will waive those for far less than $25.
I have a few other checking accounts with other banks already (that are free) but at this point I'm not really interested in switching away from Chase, and I'm ok with $25/mo. I think I'll talk to a banker on Friday about moving forward with the switch. Thanks!
The second account is a relic from back when I didn't have any credit cards (so I paid for all my purchases and bills with my debit card). I got a second checking account, which was my "bills" account, where I always made sure it had enough money to cover my bills. The only money that went in or out of that account was for bills. Then, whatever money was left went into my first "discretionary money" account, which is what I used for buying stuff with day to day. I did it to avoid accidentally causing a bill to fail to get paid because I went to McDonalds one too many times that week, or whatever.
These days it's a non-issue, because all of that just goes on credit cards, and literally the only thing I use my checking acocunt for anymore is depositing paychecks into it, and paying credit cards from it. Don't need 2 checking accounts for that.
I think I paid $9 in fees total when I took cash out in Japan, I only mention that because that is a consideration, if you do take cash out several times a year and do have to pay a fee may still be a lot less than $300 a year in checking account fees. Setting up DD on a single Chase account for free total checking may be the better option. Personally I would never pay a monthly checking account fee, there are too many free options out there. I bank with Chase and they are great but if I didn't have free checking with Direct Deposit I would leave them.
If you think the $25 a month is worth it for your needs, go for it but I don't know that the no FTF ATM's for less than 10 times a year where it is used is going to be worth the $300 a year in fees.
That's a good point. And when I travel and withdraw cash abroad, I put the ATM/FTF fees on my reimbursements so the company pays for them, which gives me another idea - maybe I can talk my company into reimbursing me for the monthly Sapphire fee in lieue of reimbursing my foreign ATM fees. If so, that would remove any doubt about whether I should do it.
Unfortunately direct deposit isn't an option for me, I work for a small company where the owner processes payroll himself, and he's unwilling to get away from paper checks. Sometimes I've avoided the fee by transferring $500 from my brokerage by ACH, but it's hard to remember to do that every month.
