Where do you bank? / Online banking Options

[cmac]

I currently bank at Wells Fargo and am satisfied with that, but I have been hearing good things about banks that are online based.
For example, ING and etrade .
Looks like you can earn ~4% interest on savings and checking in some cases.
Anyone have any experience with this?

[Spectatrix]

I've been using ING for savings for years (currently 4.5% interest) and have been using them for checking for over 5 months now (4.0% interest). They're a great bank, wonderful security and customer service. I recommend the savings account wholeheartedly and the checking IF you don't do much in the way of paper banking. If you get direct deposit and use online bill pay, rarely receiving or sending out paper checks, it's perfect.

They use an ATM network called AllPoint, which has ATMs located in most Walgreen's and Exxons, as well as various other places.

This post has been edited by Spectatrix: Aug 31 2007, 02:06 PM

[cmac]

that's the one i'm actually considering. i do very little paper banking at all. probably 1 check every 6 months or so. i pay all my bills online etc. it's just something in me that is a little skiddish about not having a physical bank to be able to go to. i'm curious about the "linked" accounts that ING has. you apparently transfer money from your current checking/savings to their checking/savings. still looking up info...

[Seeker]

Most physical banks have an online banking website you can use, if they don't then they must be some fly-by-night banking operation.

Personally I use Texans Credit Union and they have free online banking.

[impala454]

i use bank of america, my main likes are:
1. atms everywhere
2. very nice online banking & integration with bill pay and recieving e-bills
3. electronic transfers between accounts are really easy and instant
4. the keep the change thing is kinda nifty

[cmac]

i have free online banking with wells fargo, i'm just considering moving to an all online bank. no physical branches. much better interest rates on everything

[impala454]

you guys who are going after savings interest returns... how much money do you have in there? at our age you guys need to be taking a little riskier investments than just throwing everything into some <5% savings account.

[cmac]

i have a large amount of money in savings and then i also have my 401K and an IRA.
i never see the money that goes into that.
my savings is mostly for emergencies i guess, but if i can earn 5% on it banking through an online bank vs. the .2% i get at wells fargo now, then i'm thinking that's a good deal. in addition to the interest earned through a checking based online vs. the 0% now.

[GOB]

yeah, ING is really good

BofA has a great online system, too

[Seeker]

I don't know about you guys but I'm opening an off-shore account in Panama and creating a shell corporation there for my American businesses to "license" from. A $300 dollar a year corp fee and sheltering my money from taxes = win.

[jwttu]

(directed to impala)its important to have a savings for emergency expenses and to save for travel/small luxuries. If you have all your money in investments its hard to do with anything with it. Ideally you should have some liquid investments such as savings/MMAs

personally I use Capital One's MMA account. I get 5% APY which is pretty good and Capital One is a very stable bank.

[jwttu]

I don't know about you guys but I'm opening an off-shore account in Panama and creating a shell corporation there for my American businesses to "license" from. A $300 dollar a year corp fee and sheltering my money from taxes = win.

you could always invest your money with the nigerians

i think its funny that when Hurricane Dean was headed toward the Cayman Islands that the people who had their money invested in those "banks" were getting worried about what may happen to it

[impala454]

(directed to impala)its important to have a savings for emergency expenses and to save for travel/small luxuries. If you have all your money in investments its hard to do with anything with it. Ideally you should have some liquid investments such as savings/MMAs

personally I use Capital One's MMA account. I get 5% APY which is pretty good and Capital One is a very stable bank.

oh i agree you gotta have some rainy day/emergency cash, was just curious... i mean if you got 10-20k sitting around it's worth investing half or more into something that will get some better returns

[Spectatrix]

that's the one i'm actually considering. i do very little paper banking at all. probably 1 check every 6 months or so. i pay all my bills online etc. it's just something in me that is a little skiddish about not having a physical bank to be able to go to. i'm curious about the "linked" accounts that ING has. you apparently transfer money from your current checking/savings to their checking/savings. still looking up info...

I've been banking with them for years, so I can probably answer any questions you have.

You technically have to maintain a checkling account at a brick-and-mortar bank. Usually you'd deposit a paper check there and then do an electronic transfer of funds to your ING account (there's no fee for this). You can also just mail your check to ING if you want, though they discourage that. I did so recently because I was peeved with Compass (my "linked" bank).

For ING's checking account, they don't send you a book of paper checks and they claim they won't process checks you write if you order them from a third-party checking company. However, you can fill out a "send paper check" form on their website to have them mail a check on your behalf. Obviously that doesn't work for all situations, but I personally have never run across a situation where I need to write a check spontaneously, so I just transfer money to my Compass account and write the check from there if I know I need to mail a check with a form or hand it over to someone in person.

For bill pay, they'll process the payment electronically if the recipient takes electronic checks or they'll mail them a paper check if they don't. Works pretty much the same as every other online bill pay I've seen.

They use a fee-free ATM network called AllPoint, as I mentioned before, with pretty decent coverage. Better coverage than most banks, though I admit it feels a little weird going into Walgreens for the ATM.

It's 4.0% APY, as I said before, paid monthly. One neat thing about it is that they show you an updated tally of how much interest you've earned already that month.

[cmac]

so do you just transfer most of your money from your linked acct into the ING account and keep the linked acct at a minimum?

[Spectatrix]

Yep. I typically keep my linked account at a balance of $0, unless I need to write a physical check for something. My direct deposit and all of my bills go through my ING checking.

[cmac]

nice. i guess i'm not understanding what the point of the linked account is then. i mean why won't ING allow you just to go straight through them? convenience for you maybe?

[Spectatrix]

I think it's a cost-cutting measure. By requiring you to have a linked account, you're more likely to deposit checks at that bank and make the transfer electronically. That's cheaper for them than processing a paper check. If you want to know more about that, you can always call them up and ask.

But really, if your Wells Fargo account is a free one, I recommend just keeping that and more or less ignore it. That's what I do with Compass.

[schwab]

i currently have bank of america, wells fargo, citibank, and schwab. with citibank, you can get a 5% on a savings account...and they have atms at every 7-11 in the US, which is nice. Their online stuff isnt as nice as boa or wells, but its not bad

[Seeker]

citibank, although owned by the illuminati is pleasant to use, never had a problem

texans credit union if you live in DFW is the absolute best bank to work with

if i were to open an extra checking/savings account i'd do it at capitalone

i'd avoid chase, wellsfargo, and compass like the plague

[Rocky]

I do what Christine is talking about I believe -

I have my wells fargo checking account, but i put actual savings into an ING savings account for the 4.5%

And I have my fidelity shit as well.


gimme your email address and let me refer you to ING and you'll get 25bucks added to your savings account upon creation

[JRockTTU]

I've got ING like everybody else. If you want a place that atleast has a little bit of brick to them you can sign up online for WaMu and you get a free checking account that is absolutely free and a savings account that gets you 5%. They let you do everything online and everything, including bill pay, is free. I think it's about the best deal you can get with a bank that you can still go to if you need to make a quick deposit or talk to someone face to face.

[cmac]

can i do checking and savings with ing?
the info on both says "we will link it to your existing checking account."
i can't find any info on that on their site.

[jwttu]

you might want to check bankrate.com to see who has the highest rates right now

[cmac]

nevermind. figured it out.

[schwab]

im telling you citibank...checking account for free wiht some low interest rate, as well as a savings with a 5% interest rate......and no fees (if you keep 1500 between two accounts)

and every 7-11 as well as ASB (some bank in lubbock) has ATMS for free

[fingercuffs]

Wells Fargo

[Rocky]

ooooooh do me!

sup rocky?

Fuck me in the mouth you wild bitch

[Spectatrix]

can i do checking and savings with ing?
the info on both says "we will link it to your existing checking account."
i can't find any info on that on their site.

Yes, you can do both with ING, but you still have to have a linked account.

Thus I have two checking accounts (one through ING and one through Compass that I barely use) and one savings account (ING).

[Spectatrix]

I use Wells Fargo, but only because they're the biggest bank in College Station and have ATMs everywhere. I'm sure that as soon as I move elsewhere, I'll switch banks. Y'all are making ING sound pretty damn sexy.

ING is pretty sweet. There are other banks out there with higher savings rates (5% vs. ING's 4.5%), but ING has been pretty good about raising their rates over the years, so I haven't been inclined to switch. I figure that as soon as I do, ING will up theirs to 5.25% or something... lol. Plus I've only heard of one bank around Austin that has a better interest rate on checking, but it comes with a bunch of stipulations (direct deposit, X number of purchases a month, etc.) to get that rate. One of the things I've always loved about ING is that they don't have any of that crap. No minimum balance, no direct deposit required, no number of purchases required a month, etc.

They also have awesome customer service, available every day, 8 am to 8 pm (central time, I think), but I've rarely had to call them.

This post has been edited by Spectatrix: Sep 1 2007, 07:42 AM

[Mommy]

I have a money market account with Capital One that I love. It gets almost 5% interest and I can easily transfer money in and out of it from my Bank of America account... which if Bank of America stays the way they are now, I will never leave them. They have been outstanding to me. I also have the Keep the Change Savings account, 2 checking accounts, a credit card, and a brokerage account through them. All of my accounts show up in one nifty page. Bank of America has by far the best online banking I have ever seen. Capital One has very few physical banks and the one that I did find told me to go online to sign up for an account. I really like it. Its nice when I get my student loan disbursement, to throw it in there and earn interest on it while a lot of it sits there for a couple of months. When I need more, I just transfer it back to my BofA account.

[pebkac]

I <3 ING Direct. Best part is that if you overdraft your account, they don't charge you huge fees. They give you an overdraft line of protection that they charge you 12% interest on and won't let you exceed it (unlike banks like Wells Fargo who will cheerfully charge you $33 for that fifty cent pack of gum you bought).

ING direct is really awesome if you're bad about overdrawing your account like I am.