With the plan of moving, comes a lot of little individual preparations for moving. The one I am currently working on is finance. Not the financing of moving, but my collection of financial accounts.
I’ve always had a presence at a local brick and mortar financial institution, but I’ve also had long-running accounts at online-only banks as well. This recent move has me convinced to go 100% online. The reason for this is two-fold. First, there are no national-level physical banks that I trust. My current bank is a local credit union, and while I do love them, they aren’t going to be in my new location. Second, there is little compelling need to tie yourself to a physical bank anymore.
To expand on those points, I wanted a physical bank in case I needed to go and talk to someone about my account. In my years with the bank, that has never happened. I also wanted to have the bank’s ATM network available to me. In my specific case, I agreed to a $1500 min balance to access a much wider network of ATMs without fees. But my newly chosen online bank will reimburse me up to $10 in ATM fees. I don’t hit the ATM often, so that’s plenty. And of course, they also have a wide network of no-fee ATM’s, too.
But here’s the real motivator. Like I just said, I have at least $1500 tied up in my checking account, earning very little interest. I have the bulk of my money in online savings accounts earning 2% interest. But I was recently introduced to T-Mobile Money, which will pay 4% interest on a checking account up to $3000. That’s double the rate of my savings account and who knows how much more than my current checking account. So my plan is to keep around $3k in my new T-Mobile account and the rest in my online savings. No more $1500 (actually more with the ebb and flow of the balance) missing out on interest.
I’ve been through the migration process before, but it’s been a number of years. After setting up the new checking account, you need to link other accounts to it so you can do transfers. That takes a couple of days. You have to set up bill pay accounts on the new account and disable automatic payments on the old account. There’s a rule I keep to on my bill pay setup. I never authorize anyone to pull from my checking account. I will always push payment from the checking account. I will allow charging of my credit cards, since I have a means to dispute the charge, but no one is allowed to touch my cash. Then finally, I have to modify my direct deposit to go to the new account.
After all these changes, then it becomes a watch and wait game. I have to figure out which account needs money transferred to handle the upcoming bills until everything is transitioned. It’s a little tense. But by next month, I’ll be on my own, online, and free to go anywhere.
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