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H110Hawk posted:They're trying to shed the promises they made ING Direct customers. I moved to ally and it's better in every way. For now. Same. Switched to Ally and haven't looked back.
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Feb 16, 2020 16:47
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I've had my main banking at online banks for probably a decade now, zero regrets. I maintain a checking account with a brick and mortar bank just to get access to their ATMs for cash deposits (and teller services maybe once a year). It's even easier now that both the main banks I use support Zelle. After the first time I sent a non-trivial amount of money between the two, I can send right up to the daily limit either direction pretty much instantly. Even without that / before Zelle was a thing, moving money between banks is not hard. Just means you might need to plan it out a few work days in advance.
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Apr 25, 2020 22:24
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H110Hawk posted:Zelle is a loving nightmare if anything goes wrong, I would suggest avoiding it if feasible. It's all the hassle of something normally going wrong, but both banks point at Zelle and Zelle then flips you off. (Based on reading peoples experiences on reddit for example.) Great when it works, but the money is just gone while you fight through layers of stupid. On one hand, I can see how that would be, on the other I have yet to have any issues of any sort. The vast, vast majority of the time I'm just using it to move my minimum safe direct deposit amount from my paycheck back to an account I actually use. H110Hawk posted:I don't even carry my "main" checking account debit card, there is no use in doing so anymore. If I need more than $200 or whatever cash from an ATM I'm going to know about it before I leave the house. I should probably get in this habit. I only use one of them to deposit cash / see a teller, the other to withdraw cash, and combined between all of that I might use either of them once in any given month. On the other hand I keep zero money in one and next to zero in the other. I also have a checking account that I literally only use to write checks in those rare, rare cases that's the only thing someone (i.e. a school) will take. Zero balance unless I have a check pending. I'm the same way with Paypal. Mostly because I'm too lazy to link it to a newer checking account, partly because I like having that air gap.
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Apr 26, 2020 02:31
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Guinness posted:Just use normal ACH and plan ahead 48 hours. It’s free, reliable, and traceable. I set up an account at a local credit union to see if they could replace my current brick and mortar bank. They wanted to charge me loving $8 to send an ACH transfer to my online bank.  So yeah I initiated the transfer the other way around for free, but who the gently caress thinks they can charge fees for that in 2020?
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Apr 26, 2020 20:26
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Also Ally doesn't penalize you on having multiple actual savings accounts and splitting poo poo up that way.
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Jun 1, 2020 22:54
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Gaj posted:If you want to see more of my fathers behavioral issues, check out the Things Boomers Like thread in GBS. Youll be in for a wild ride when you check my posts. Did so, was entertained. I am now absolutely certain that your dad, if he actually consulted an attorney and was honest and clear about everything, would insist that they made up problems that didn't exist before.
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Aug 28, 2020 03:33
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:Discover dropped to 0.8% which may or may not be competitive anymore, but they've been a great online savings for me in the past. That's what Ally is at too, and I don't think anyone else is going to be far enough above that to really matter.
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Sep 3, 2020 00:08
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I have had an increasing number of banks and the like refuse to send texts to my Google Voice number because they somehow have it flagged as a land line.
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Sep 19, 2020 22:26
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tinytort posted:It's the Jonathan Coulton cruise, though - the company isn't going anywhere, This seems like an extremely naïve take in TYOOL 2020.
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Sep 25, 2020 16:48
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Space Gopher posted:I learned a real good lesson about this when I took my phone out of airplane mode landing in LAX to find a fraud alert waiting for me. When I called Chase, they were kind enough to let me know that my card was locked out. I was on a work trip with a few other folks from the office, and thankfully, a co-worker was able to throw down their card to cover my hotel reservation for the first night. Without that help, I would have had a real rough time. Chase is the absolute worst / most paranoid about randomly flagging accounts for fraud and locking cards. I do still have some Chase credit cards but I only use them for specific online purchases and never actually take them anywhere because of that. I do all of my banking through Ally. I keep an ancient BofA account to have access to their ATMs for cash deposits, and their tellers for the rare time I need to notarize a vehicle title or get a cashier's check / cash for a large purchase. Seeing as I average doing one of those things less than once a year, the hassle of moving money back to BofA ahead of time for a large cash purchase is worth it.
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Sep 30, 2020 18:42
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If the situation isn't fragile / abusive / emotionally loaded, just run with it for now. That isn't to say you don't look for ways to start gaining some independence where you can by gaining experience at this job and using it to find a better-paying one, but:Thanatosian posted:We are in a capitalist hellscape, take whatever help people better off than you are willing to give. This bears repeating. The safety net / small cushion your parents are providing you is worth far more than its immediate monetary value. They're shielding you from the extremely high costs of being poor.
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Dec 27, 2020 06:06
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:drat that took a turn Hoooooly poo poo. Yeah, I wasn't considering that angle. Silly me, not looking at my kid as future money laundering.
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Dec 27, 2020 23:15
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Yeah, how often do you need large amounts of actual cash where a check or wire transfer won't do? For me that's been vehicle purchases and even I manage to only do that once a year or so at my worst. I do 99% of my banking with Ally. I keep a BofA checking account open with literally nothing in it and just funnel the bare minimum of my direct deposit through it to keep it fee-free, and transfer money back into it if I'm going to need to pull it out as cash. Also comes in handy to get access to their notary services, and I use their ATMs to deposit any cash I end up getting.
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Dec 29, 2020 17:32
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Yeah, that sounds like a middleman trying to wedge some profit in there. Scammy as gently caress when you go to lengths to sound 'like' the utility company but have to provide a clear statement that you are in fact not the company you're trying to mimic.spwrozek posted:Also look into exactly how your utility does this. We don't have a lock in like you are saying (I work for a large utility) but we have fixed monthly pricing. So you always pay X/month and then they adjust it for he next year based on the usage. Yep, I have this with my electric company. They adjust my rate every quarter, and they're pretty generous about it - my account carries a "negative" balance for a good chunk of the year, when I'd normally have $200-250 bills that jack up my automated bill payment 'system'.
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Feb 8, 2021 18:04
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Dik Hz posted:As long as the expense is incurred after opening the HSA, you can do whatever. The only real limit is on contributions. Yep, this. You don't even have to reimburse within the same year, if you rack up a big enough expense that it takes you a while to put that much money into your HSA.
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Mar 9, 2021 06:32
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Humerus posted:The interest will get charged on the whole amount if it's not completely paid off too. So like if he does 3k on the card and has all but 500 paid off when the 6 months ends, he's paying interest on all 3k. Not always the case. In my experience it depends on whether the offer is a promo purchase offer or an "introductory 0%" offer. The former, yes, every one of those I've ever done has the interest still getting calculated the entire time on the balance, the statements show the amount of deferred interest, and if you don't pay off by the end of the promo term then that interest gets tacked on. Any time I've opened a new card with 0%, it's a true 0%, with no deferred interest. Omne posted:poo poo, divide the total by five just to be safe Also this. I'm always a month early on when I pay off any 0%.
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May 7, 2021 14:54
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Sundae posted:Has anyone run into a case where a 401(k) plan will not allow loan or withdrawals for home purchases? I ran into that last year when I bought my current primary residence; had to come up with the remaining money from elsewhere because Fidelity straight up said "Nope, we do not allow loans or withdrawals from your 401(k) except for hardship, and home purchase is not hardship." I've never heard of a 401k specifically disallowing that, but then again on my home purchase the lender required me to show proof that I actually could take out a loan for the purposes of buying a home. So it must be a thing with some plans.
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May 7, 2021 23:01
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Thumbtacks posted:Well poo poo, okay. That sounds pretty doable. I have a few dents so I’m probably going to lose some money on it for that but whatever. It's especially viable right now because Carvana and the like are dumping VC money into paying higher prices for cars, and it's a seller's market. As long as the car looks good on paper (no crash history, not a shitton of miles, etc) you should get a pretty damned decent offer without having to do a thing other than sign over the title and hand the keys over.
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May 18, 2021 21:25
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Dross posted:The Toyota dealership where I bought my 2014 Corolla a few years ago has emailed me like six times this month begging me to trade in my car and upgrade, I’m like are you kidding me I’m in position to pay it off this year and I’m very much looking forward to not having a car payment. That's just classic dealership tactics, a lot of people basically treat the loan term as the interval to own/replace a vehicle.
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May 18, 2021 22:32
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H110Hawk posted:Remember that if you fail to meet the terms of the promo you owe all back interest as though you carried a balance . So easy math straight line on the $1000 at 30% interest, that's an average annual balance of $500 so they will tack on more than $150 in interest. It's more than that due to it compounding. This depends on whether the offer is a deferred interest offer, or a promotional rate. The latter will only start calculating / accruing interest from the time the 0% period ends. If it's a deferred interest offer, I believe the lender is required to show the amount of deferred interest on your statements as a "if you don't pay the balance by X date, you'll be charged Y".
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Jul 16, 2021 12:33
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H110Hawk posted:Fair enough, I don't track those deals too closely and always assume the worst. Helps with The Fear of God around not trying to be too clever. They intentionally make this poo poo confusing. In my experience deferred interest is far more common with promotional purchases on store cards, than they are on balance transfers.
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Jul 17, 2021 05:29
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Stealing a quote from AI chat and asking a followup question to it here.BigPaddy posted:I am not a financial advisor. I'm in a position where I'm going to be making a 5-figure purchase, putting it on a long term 0% loan, and I already have the full purchase price set aside for it in a 0.50% savings account. I've never done any investing for any purpose other than very basic IRA/401(k) retirement savings, but this seems like a great time to put most of that money in something that's going to do a lot better than a savings account. Is there anything else I need to consider here beyond leaving ~15mo worth of payments in the savings account, using the rest to buy a bunch of VTI, and then selling off another year's worth of payments when the savings account gets low?
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Aug 19, 2021 16:59
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To be clear, the loan is going to be either a five year or seven year term, so the most I'd be pulling back out at any one time is ~25%, though I suppose that doesn't really move the needle that much on "good idea vs bad idea".
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Aug 19, 2021 19:26
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Over a long enough period of inactivity they'll just close the account for you. On cards I've had for decades now (jesus christ what is time) that period has been a year+ and they give me a heads up and I go make some piddly purchases to keep that credit age high. I don't know how soon they'll start giving a no-activity new account the hairy eyeball but I really doubt it'll be within the first month.
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Oct 4, 2021 16:09
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Pizza Segregationist posted:Ok that makes sense and I’m going to stick with the plan of charging small expenses and paying off the balance in full each month. I was just worried that not taking advantage of the 0% apr period was basically “leaving money on the table“ If you charged $10k in expenses to that card today, stuck $10k in a savings account that you absolutely will never possibly touch for any other reason, and sat on it for a year, the amount of money you're "leaving on the table" is about $50. If you gently caress up and don't pay it off before the promo period ends, you get hit with about $1600 in interest (assuming 15%). That's not even remotely worth it, especially when you're new to credit cards as a whole. The only ways to "make" money with credit cards are rewards points and/or signup bonuses, and even then those only make sense if you're only doing so for purchases you're making anyway and paying off in full each month.
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Nov 15, 2021 19:29
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To be fair, you do need to play the game - getting a credit card and using it responsibly is a great idea. But if you're able to do that and likewise keep any other bills / loans paid up as required, you don't need to worry about the actual score. The number is meaningless unless you are in a situation where you need to use your credit, and even then it really comes down to are you over or under a specific threshold. Banks don't care if it's 741 or 790 or 820, they just care that it's over 739.
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Nov 15, 2021 19:42
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Dross posted:It's annual benefits enrollment time and I'm planning to upgrade to a silver medical plan and open an HSA. Assuming I can reasonably forgo the funds from my paycheck, is there any reason why I should not just max the annual contribution? None if you don't need the money immediately. The worst case scenario is that you end up with annual medical expenses in the same ballpark as your maximum contribution, basically giving you a similar effect to deducting your medical expenses but up front and without requiring itemized deductions. Best case is your medical expenses are way below your HSA and it becomes another way to invest without taxes.
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Nov 18, 2021 01:25
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Yes, but even without that you still get 1%. Which is double what I'm getting at Ally.
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Jan 14, 2022 15:04
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If the HELOC is at 4.5% then there is no way the interest rate on the card is equal or better. Whether or not it's deferred interest instead of no-interest, the lowest-cost option is still "pay it off with the HELOC just before 0% expires". The only way "keep paying the CC off slowly" makes sense is if somehow the credit card is both not a deferred-interest promo, and the interest rate on the card is better than the 4.5% on the HELOC.
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Apr 22, 2022 18:44
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Uthor posted:I get around this stuff by having an account at a brick and motor bank and use the online only bank as my savings account. This is (mostly) my approach. I've been primarily online-only for a long time now (first ING/CaptialOne but now Ally) but I still keep around an ancient BofA checking account that I keep fee-free by having $250 of my paycheck sent there while the rest goes to Ally. I use it either to deposit cash at BofA ATMs, or if I need an amount of cash not easily obtained by ATM withdrawals I'll transfer it back to BofA first and then go see a teller. Large cash transactions like that are the kind of thing where I only average one a year anyway. I very much like that Ally has no limits (that I've seen as of yet) on number of accounts. I have a separate checking account that I use just for actual physical checks or Venmo transactions and money only goes into it when there's a transaction to be done. I keep most of my money in savings accounts flagged (and set up for autopay) for various bills.
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Jun 1, 2022 18:57
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I've never heard of early payment penalties or the like on mortgages. I'd bet there's probably a way for her to log into her account on Chase's site and see a current payoff amount right there.
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Aug 4, 2022 20:27
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Can confirm, I've seen that fraud on my Ally debit card which I've only (and rarely) used at ATMs. I will give them some credit for the level of controls they offer, I didn't have a single transaction go through because I already had it set up to block anything other than an ATM withdrawal. And yes, I've had hilariously long wait times every time I've tried to call and get it fixed. Seeing as I basically never use the card and have it fully locked, I just hang up and maybe get around to it another day.
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Aug 19, 2022 20:59
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H110Hawk posted:A lot of banks now REALLY try to make you use Zelle instead of raw ACH. ING Direct now Capital One 360 used to, but I haven't used them in years since I switched to Ally. My bank at least holds the money when they mail a bill pay check for several weeks, which might get you what you want here. Neither Ally nor Citi allow it that I can see unless your landlord also banks at Citi. This, all around. Ally lets you have multiple checking accounts with no deposit requirements of any kind, so I have one checking account that only gets used when I have to either actually write a check or push something via Ally's bill pay. I only move money into that account when it's going right back out in the form of one of those payments, which has come in handy a couple of times when my payees take their sweet time cashing a check. But also, every bank I've used billpay with (BofA, ING/Capital One 360, Ally) will withdraw the funds from your account immediately when you use billpay, even if you have them send a physical check. When the bank sends a physical check via billpay, they're sending it on one of their accounts, not yours.
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Aug 22, 2022 23:22
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Zelle is fine until it isn't, that's the biggest problem. If something goes wrong, you now have up to five parties (you, the other person, your bank, the other bank, and Zelle itself), and three of those organizations really don't give a poo poo. There's a lot going on behind the scenes that they purposely don't expose. The limits they/banks publish are not always hard limits; there seems to be some form of trust rating going on where if you use Zelle on a regular basis, especially to receive money, it's easier to send that person large amounts that may be in excess of those limits. But if the recipient is new to Zelle, it might get completely blocked for a few days. I would only use it in transactions where having the money either fail to transfer instantly or otherwise get hung up in limbo is not going to be a critical problem. I've had a few businesses request payment in Zelle after they've already done the work (a painter and a tree company) and in those cases I'm not worried about it - it's more their problem than mine and I'm not going to end up late on rent because of it. I've used it for moderately-sized (low hundreds) Craigslist/FBM purchases too. I wouldn't use it for, say, buying or selling a car where the money needs to change hands at the same time as the title, or for a rent payment where your landlord can make your life miserable because it's "late", or for moving around any amount of money you cannot be without for an indeterminate amount of time.
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Aug 23, 2022 18:48
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H110Hawk posted:It's silly with inflation at lol %. Especially with a 2.5% interest rate. Savings accounts are approaching that rate. If you buy an I bond right now, it'll be at nearly 4x that rate for the first six months.
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Sep 29, 2022 15:37
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:I can't remember the exact math, but I dimly recall working out that if I bought the cheapest available new-built EV (~$30k), it'd take 10+ years to pay itself back in the form of reduced per-mile and maintenance costs, compared to buying a reasonable (~$20k) new conventional car. That $10k price delta pays for a lot of gas! I think this math is rapidly changing since the number of reasonable new gas cars available for less than the price of a Bolt is getting very small. But I agree that OP is leaving out a lot of details and trying to stretch really hard to say that their 1998 Accord is somehow costing them more per month than my shitbox Jeep. If a tree fell on the Accord tomorrow, the best bet for OP would be a cheap Prius for now to get through the next 6-24 months while OP gets their finances completely in order. And I picked that scenario carefully. Unless there is something structural and terminal wrong with that car, even a dead engine or transmission would be a financially viable repair in today's market.
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Oct 30, 2022 22:01
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You're probably thinking of Plaid that requires a login, though in that case it's used to verify that the account in question is indeed yours and the actual transfer is still just ACH. Zelle (as far as I know, I've never tried to use it any other way) requires that your bank already supports it - so it's less "you giving Zelle your account info" and more "Zelle already has it". I'd wager the majority of banks in the US support it now. I would be cautious using it, because Zelle offers approximately gently caress-all for support if something actually does go wrong. But the vast majority of "Zelle fraud" you'll find is just an evolution of existing fraud techniques, phishing / phone scams / etc. It's less that Zelle is insecure and more using the fact that many people are unfamiliar with it to convince them to "send money to yourself" or "provide a verification code". There's no mechanism I'm aware of for someone (or Zelle) to withdraw money from your account without you specifically initiating it, unless you give someone else that ability through one of those phishing scams. Your own call on what you're comfortable with but I use Zelle a few times a year to deal with person-to-person cash payments, almost always outbound, and I've never had a problem with it.
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Nov 1, 2022 18:26
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dpkg chopra posted:I'm not forced to switch plans or pay for the second heallthcare, right? I can just not enroll and keep paying into my wife's plan? Or am I missing on some obvious benefit by not going with my employer's plan? You shouldn't be forced but I would still evaluate the cost difference. It seems like it is unlikely (but possible in our hellscape) that the cost to add you to your wife's plan is significantly less than the cost to have your own plan through your employer. I'd expect your employer to significantly-to-completely subsidize the cost for your personal healthcare coverage, whereas hers probably isn't subsidizing the cost to add a dependent by nearly as much.
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Jan 24, 2023 20:47
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dpkg chopra posted:Edit 2: in my case, I'm fairly confident that I could get away with an HDPA and financially responsible enough to make sure to set the premium difference into a medical emergency fund, if that changes anything. I would absolutely go for the HDHP + HSA for you, then. When you have the HDHP you can deposit pre-tax money into the HSA. You can withdraw at any time for qualified medical expenses, or for whatever you want at retirement, without paying any taxes on that money.
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Jan 28, 2023 04:01
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You can reimburse yourself from the HSA, so yes, absolutely pay with a rewards card first and get at least something for it. There's no time limit on when you reimburse yourself, so if you can absorb that expense without reimbursing yourself yet, better to invest the HSA when you're able to and wait. The only thing that should change your behavior on when you get what care is if you've got some known issue that will be at or very near either your deductible (so that you only pay coinsurance on further medical expenses for the year) or, worse, your max out-of-pocket (so insurance pays everything from then on for the year). $650 should be nowhere near either number for a HDHP. That really only happens if you have something expensive hit - pregnancy, significant surgery, etc - and does so in a way where you actually have other medical procedures that can be done in the same calendar year. Negotiations: lol, lmao, healthcare is an absolute gently caress. Your actual healthcare professionals have no clue what they're charging you for the service they're doing. Their billing department is going to submit to your insurance, get back whatever agreed rate they have with your insurance provider, and bill you that. They're only going to "negotiate" if they have a strong reason to believe you'll stiff them on the bill entirely and they decide that getting some is better than sending you to collections. The best I've gotten - which I didn't even ask for but they offered it out of the gate - was a two-ish year payment plan on a large expense with 0% interest. IOwnCalculus fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Jun 12, 2023 |
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Jun 12, 2023 04:34
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