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?