There are some online, interest bearing checking accounts. I would love to maximize my dollars, but I have obvious qualms with an online bank being my primary account. However, I very seldomly need to go to my current bank for any reason, so it may be a good fit.
Thoughts?
@Simba501 wrote:There are some online, interest bearing checking accounts. I would love to maximize my dollars, but I have obvious qualms with an online bank being my primary account. However, I very seldomly need to go to my current bank for any reason, so it may be a good fit.
Thoughts?
If you can do all your banking online then there should be no issues. I use alliant as my primary checking account, I like them because they give me decent interest rate for checking account. I mostly use DD or check scanning .
My primary bank account is USAA, which has no brick-and-mortar branches. I have never needed such a thing though. I get great customer service and all of my bank transactions are done online, except for the very occasional ATM withdrawal, but USAA refunds any related ATM fees anyway.
EX:694 TU:744 EQ:777
ive seen SimpleBank and know many people who use it, and I'm a big fan of Schwab myself. i also heard really good things about fidelity as well.
pros: Schwab is pretty amazing customer service-wise, everything moves fairly quickly, and you save a ton on fees since you don't really pay any. Checks are free, withdraw from any ATM and get reimbursed end of month, etc.
mid: only get .1% or .15% monthly back, which is pretty much nothing. you'll find some other online banks that offer more in their checking, but this is still better than nothing.
cons: i had to mail in several forms to Schwab to connect my various bank and savings accounts to my schwab account (you can bypass this if you flow the money through the brokerage account, which is connected to the checking and is also free). the only thing i have trouble doing is depositing cash since I don't like carrying more than $40 (and sometimes have friends pay me back in cash or receive cash as presents), so I have to deposit the money into my bofa account and transfer it from there. this only happens once a month or so so it's a nonissue.
@milkshakes wrote:ive seen SimpleBank and know many people who use it, and I'm a big fan of Schwab myself. i also heard really good things about fidelity as well.
pros: Schwab is pretty amazing customer service-wise, everything moves fairly quickly, and you save a ton on fees since you don't really pay any. Checks are free, withdraw from any ATM and get reimbursed end of month, etc.
mid: only get .1% or .15% monthly back, which is pretty much nothing. you'll find some other online banks that offer more in their checking, but this is still better than nothing.
cons: i had to mail in several forms to Schwab to connect my various bank and savings accounts to my schwab account (you can bypass this if you flow the money through the brokerage account, which is connected to the checking and is also free). the only thing i have trouble doing is depositing cash since I don't like carrying more than $40 (and sometimes have friends pay me back in cash or receive cash as presents), so I have to deposit the money into my bofa account and transfer it from there. this only happens once a month or so so it's a nonissue.
This is what I'm thinking about now. I've read that you can make ATM deposits; not sure how accurate that is. I suppose I could keep my current checking active for this purpose.
i dont know if any schwab ATMs exist and ive never done any banking activities at a Brick & Mortar schwab location so I wouldn't know if they take cash deposits. but you can't do deposits on other ATMs (tried with an Alliant ATM, who shares the same network as us, as well as with big bank ATMs).
