Pragmatic Finance

This is a story that makes you shake your head. Matthew Shinnick tried to sell some bikes using Craigslist. His trip to Bank of America was not the usual trip I am accustomed to. It ended with him being handcuffed and arrested in the middle of the bank, taken to jail, and out 14k in legal fees. If you ever needed any more motivation to stop going inside and to just use the atm then this is it. Read the rest of this entry »

MBNA cards have one of the most unique features available: the ability to pay off a credit card using another credit card. I’m sure many of you have paid bills using bill pay from your bank or used a credit card site to pull funds from your bank but this feature is a little different.

If you have an MBNA card you have the option to pay the bill online. If the card is considered one of their own cards and not one of the cobranded ones then you also have the ability to pay other bills with it.  The kicker here is that you can select other credit cards as bills.  Interestingly, their system considers the Fidelity cards to not be cobranded. Read the rest of this entry »

Online savings accounts are a great way to save money with a good and guaranteed return while having excellent liquidity. As they have increased in popularity there are more and more companies jumping into the competition. The big question is which one is best? Although some people only really consider the interest rate paid, there are many other important features and considerations to look at. I have many of the popular ones and plan to review all of them. Before I do I think it’s a good idea to write down the important features to consider when choosing one. And of course my opinion on how important they are.

Interest Rates

The current interest rate is one of the most important factors in choosing an account because this determines how much money you will earn. However, it’s not always wise to simply choose the one that just raised their rates to the highest APY, especially when Read the rest of this entry »

As I previously wrote, a great method keeping track of your accounts and finances is by using Yodlee to consolidate them into one place. Yodlee has decided to upgrade to something called the MoneyCenter Platform. They have a demo and some screenshots to show off the changes and new look. It looks like they are enhancing the ability to manage and categorize expenses and transactions. They also say they are adding a financial calender and Yodlee billpay using credit card accounts. It will be very interesting to see how the latter functions. I use the MBNA billpay feature on their cards and it is incredibly useful.

USAA is a military affiliated financial services organization whose trademark has been one of if not the lowest auto insurance available. They define military affiliation as someone who is currently serving or retired from the military as well as their children and spouses. You can also get membership by being the spouse or child of a current or former member. While their insurance is only available to those with a military affiliation, their banking has been available to anyone. It appears, though, that they are no longer going to offer banking services to people who don’t fit these categories after June 30th. People who are already members are supposed to be grandfathered in. So if you’re not already a member with an account, don’t have a military affiliation, and would like to use their banking services this could be your last chance for a relationship with USAA.

I have been using USAA’s banking services for a couple of months now and it is great. Some of the benefits are free checking and savings with no minimums, free checks for the life of the account, refunds up for atms up $15 per month, and quickpost. Quickpost is a service where you can send a deposit via UPS for free and the money will post to your account within one business day, no charge. Although I used to think this wasn’t too useful, I recently was paid with a check in a town where I didn’t have any banks that I had accounts with. It saved me the trouble of opening a new account and transferring the money later. USAA only has one brick and mortar bank in San Antonio so this might be very useful to someone who would use it as their main bank.

I haven’t looked at how long it takes to ach push money to another account, but when I have pulled money in the past it has shown up immediately. If you have ever used HSBC’s transfer service this is quite a shock

They also have a performance first savings account, I presume to compete in the online savings arena. However, it’s tiered and ranges from 4.51% to 4.88% as of the date of this post. This is probably the only thing keeping me from using them as my primary bank, as I wouldn’t qualify for the higher rate. If USAA would just raise the rates on this to near the top…

Oh, and I have to say that USAA has the best customer service I have ever encountered. I have spoken on the phone to them several times about banking and insurance, and each time they were extremely friendly and knowledgeable and almost no wait time on hold, even when they had to transfer me to another agent to answer a question. I was transferred with in about 3 seconds. There is a ton of more information in a post fittingly titled, The Ultimate USAA Bank Thread over at Fatwallet. Although some have become concerned recently by some of the changes, such as the membership limitation and changes to ach limits, overall they have an extremely good reputation.

EmigrantDirect has raised the rate on their online savings account to 4.8% apy while Citibank is now at 5%. Gotta love competition in the marketplace. It also appears that there are some new players that are in the online savings accounts arena. Well, I don’t know how new they are but I hadn’t heard of them until now as far as rate leaders go.

The first is BankUnited which is offering 5.25% apy. It has a 5k minimum deposit to open and you need to keep $300 to avoid a monthly service fee. Bank deals has provided alot of information about the account. However, some of the details are a little sketchy as the website, disclosures, and customer service representatives have given different answers as to what minimum has to be maintained to get the 5.25% apy. Another negative is that it appears that you can’t link it to other accounts so you would need to do ach pushes and pulls from another account. I think I will hold off for the time being until we find out some more info about them.

OneUnited is a little unique if you read their company profile. Here is a little excerpt:

OneUnited Bank is the first Black-owned internet bank, the first Black-owned interstate bank and the largest Black-owned and managed bank in the country with offices in urban communities of California, Florida and Massachusetts. Its mission is to provide affordable financial services to support economic development in urban communities and maintain superior financial performance to maximize shareholder value.

It has a competitive 5% apy and alot of the features that I have come to expect from online savings accounts such as ach, no minimum balance requirement, and the ability to add external accounts. You can also get an atm card with it but it appears to charge a $1 fee for withdrawals at other atms. The biggest negative that I see is that interest is compounded quarterly, not monthly, so if you closed your account you might end up losing a couple of months of interest. I decided to open an account this weekend. So far everything has been online. I will write a review of it after I get it completely open and get a chance to play around with it for awhile.

If you are a rate chaser you’ve probably already heard that HSBC raised the interest rates on their online savings account to 4.80% APY. They had this rate for a promotion that ended after April and have not been one of the leaders since. What is interesting to me is about a month and a half ago I read an article at the New York Times that discussed the incredible growth of online savings accounts. If the site makes you register to view it you can always go by Bugmenot first.

What stuck out in the article were a few quotes by Kevin Newman, the head of personal financial services at HSBC Bank USA. He said that HSBC didn’t feel compelled to offer the highest rates any longer because they felt that online savings accounts customers were much more loyal than say credit card users who would change products looking for the best rate. I am very surprised he would say that, even if they believed it. Heck, after becoming frustrated with the number of days to transfer funds to an external account I was already considering changing banks. Those comments confirmed to me that I should find another account as my primary online savings.

This latest rate increase moves them to the top tier of rates. This increase is particularly interesting to me. I wonder if they saw too many people moving money out and changed their tune. I kinda agree that his logic will probably be right when the market is saturated and the average joe has an online savings account. But right now most who do have one are financially savvy and willing to consider other banks if they see higher rates or beter services. I, myself, assumed after reading that article that they would stay near the middle of the pack from now on. So I moved my money to the money market savings at GMAC Bank which not that long ago was also raised to 4.8%.

After Citibank raised their rates to 4.75%, it seems some other banks are doing the same. HSBC raised their rates the rate on their online savings account to 4.65% apy. I’m a little dissapointed. I thought if they did make a move it would be at least to 4.75% to match Amboy, GMAC, and now Citibank. I already moved most of my money out after their rate dropped from 4.8 to 4.5. I guess with this rate increase I will keep the rest in for awhile as I will lose more interest during a transfer.

Presidential raised the rate on their premier savings to 4.87% apy and their internet checking plus to 4.50%. I haven’t tried either of these because of the minimum balance and direct deposit requirements but these increases make them very attractive to those that have this combo.

Citibank raised the interest rate on their esavings account to 4.75% apy. This was actually very surprising to me. I didn’t think they would be near the top for rates. If they continue to remain competitive this might be a good account to use because of the ease of transferring funds to a checking account. I have one of these accounts that I opened for more thank you points but I think I will keep my money with GMAC. Their money market account has the same interest rate and allows limited check writing. I will keep my eyes on Citibank, if for no other reason to see how competitive they keep their rates.

Ok, so I have been opening up alot of accounts in the last couple of months to get bonuses and try some online banks out. I recently applied for an E*trade money market account for a $50 bonus. It appears the deal is still ongoing until 05/31/06. Shockingly, I was denied for the account. I didn’t even know banks would reject you for a bank account. From the wording it sounded like they were saying it was denied by ChexSystems. I guess there is a limit to the number of accounts you can open in a certain time period. ChexSystems appears to be similar to a credit agency, only for banks. Like the credit agencies, they will send you a free copy of your ChexSystems report if you denied an account due to information on the report. I figured I would request my free copy if for no other reason to see what was on it.

Well, about a week later I received it. It was pretty bland, no where as interesting as a credit report. In fact, it really only listed the bank accounts I’ve opened in the last few years with the dates opened. I’m not sure if it was the number of accounts that I had opened recently or if it was due to the fact that I had opened a Netbank and GMAC account earlier that day.

Ok so several months ago I noticed a couple of charges on my Citibank checking account that I didn’t make. I sat there dumbfounded for a minute before I began to frantically search for my debit card which was no where to be found. It was pretty obvious the charges weren’t mine as I was only using the account to pay a bill per month to get points in their thank you program. In fact, I had don’t even remember carrying it in my wallet. One was a restaurant purchase for over $100. I’ve never spent that much at any restaurant and I’ve never even been to the one in question. Anyway, I didn’t notice until almost a month after the charge and then called them up. I figured I was out of luck because of the time lag. When I called I was quickly transfered to a very nice lady who sounded like she had done this before.

They closed the current card and sent me another one. They also credited me the full amount on the charges immediately pending an “investigation” into the charges. Well I recently got a letter from them saying they had credited my account after investigating the charges. Guess that was their way of saying they determined it was really stolen. I was actually surprised at how quickly everything was worked out. I was expecting to be liable for the first $50 as I had read that somewhere in the past but they completely credited me. I almost felt bad as I know I am not that profitable of a customer. Well, almost hah. Moral of the story? Well, you should be careful where you place your debit card because you never know who might decide to go use it.