No, you don’t need to be military to work with USAA bank. USAA insurance is another matter. “…certain products, including investments, financial planning, life insurance and banking products — checking, savings, CDs and credit cards — are available to the public.”
Wells Fargo will move your cheese constantly. Chase is only slightly better.
USAA rocks. They have terrific customers service and they don’t yank your chain like the money center banks do. Admittedly, I signed up for their credit card when they had zero late fees. They later put those in. But stunts like that are rarer than at most other places.
ATM Fees: “USAA does not charge a fee for the first 10 ATM withdrawals and refunds up to $15 in other banks’ ATM usage fees each month. A 1% foreign transaction fee applies to withdrawals outside the United States.” Sometimes an ATM with fees above $1.50 will reject your USAA request in my experience. YMMV.
USAA’s brokerage fee structure encourages frequent trading, which is odd for an otherwise consumer-friendly cooperative. (USAA members own the organization.)
MfM’s other recommended financial institution is Vanguard, but they don’t have a bank. I trust them a little more than USAA, and I trust USAA a lot more than your average organization.
Flagstarr offers online banking that I use efficiently. I recently had a large sum to place somewhere other than Flagstarr and took a look at Ally Bank. First, they could not transfer funds from either of two separate banks. Then they did not send deposit envelopes in over three weeks. In the meantime, they sent me two change of addresses in two separate envelopes when I have been at the same address for over 20 years. And their email to me had an unreadable font. So I went online to close the account and they refused to do it without a phone call. There is no money in the account anyway. I just told them to keep it open for 50 years if they wished.
So they can be great or lousy. Watch for bad signs early on to distinguish which category they fall into.
Understood. It is why I am asking around a bit before committing to anything. I have a little bit of time before my bank starts with its new fee structure, so I want to make sure I have something decent as I’d prefer not to change my account again for at least a few years.
Never had any dealings with Capitol One. Is the take over likely to generate any changes in ING Direct? That is something I’d like to avoid as the changes are what drives me nuts!
I’ve been using State Farm Bank (the same as the insurance company) as my primary bank for a decade or so. Other than a couple in Indiana, I don’t believe they have any branches. It’s all online and through the mail.
Nice features:
[ul]
[li]Free bill pay. Direct transfer to major companies, or free mail-a-check to anybody not in their system. Schedulable.[/li][li]Electronic transfer in/out of my other non-State Farm accounts. Schedulable.[/li][li]Electronic transfer out to other peoples bank accounts. Not schedulable.[/li][li]Photo smart phone check deposit or scanner based PC check deposit.[/li][li]ATM fee reimbursement.[/li][li]Pre-paid envelope mail in deposits.[/li][/ul]
The only bad feature is the terrible interest rates, which probably aren’t much worse than most major banks. If there’s an internet bank with better interest and similar features (there probably is), then they might be worth looking into.
I also have insurance through State Farm and my accounts are linked, so I can view everything with one login, but that wasn’t an important feature for choosing them as a bank.
State Farm is a large company, and particularly on the insurance side, I’m sure they’ve screwed over lots of people. I’ve never had a problem with them, and the few times I’ve contacted the bank’s customer service they’ve been pleasant and were able to quickly help me. One example is getting a 3-4 year old canceled check so I could prove to the state I’d paid my state income taxes.
I banked with NetBank for awhile, for a place to park my money market funds back when money markets actually paid interest, and then they got taken over by AIG. Not only did they pay slightly less interest than NetBank but they had a silly password requirement that would lock your account after like 3 tries and would only reset by mail. So it wasn’t then worth it to me to go through the hoops of remembering passwords that I only use once a month if that, in order to get less than 1% interest.
Seconded. I signed up with Schwab when I was going to be overseas for some few months, and I’ve never seen any reason to go back. You do have to open a brokerage account, but you don’t actually have to fund it. You can just let it sit there with a zero balance forever, which is more or less what I’ve done so far (and probably will continue to do, as my investing options are somewhat constrained by my job).
Might be less appealing if I was depositing a lot of paper checks or cash, but it’s worked damn well for me with my direct deposit and such.
I never really did a lot with the money when it was in ING. But when I had NetBank, it was a hassle getting a Cashier’s Check, having to wire the money to my WaMu account, then waiting for the wire to clear, then getting the cashier’s check from Wamu, but that was because I had to have it the next day. With ING their transfer-to-brick-and-mortar utility might work faster.
I think that takes them out of the running for me.
So, the only option on deposits is Direct Deposit or mail it in? No taking a scan of a check or anything like that? Of course, that is not much different from anyone else. Not that many places are going with the scan a check to deposit model as yet.
I’ve been using Etrade Bank for a decade now. No fees. ATM fees are refunded. (Tiny, currently) interest on your checking account. Free Bill Pay. There is a minimum balance you have to maintain, but I don’t remember what it is. I don’t have any complaints.
What is their fee to use the debit card at a store? I looked on the site but I guess I’m missing it. I assume you can just use the ATM like a credit card to avoid the debit card fee. But place in Chicago like Aldi Food only take debit cards