Truly free checking?

[disneysteve]

They do have a new eBanking account which is free if you go paperless and teller-less, but you still pay fees to the owners of other bank ATMs.

I would pay to use foreign ATMs but I don't count that as not being free checking.

When I say free checking I mean that there is no fee to have the account, no fee for online banking, no fee for bill paying, no fee for the mobile app, transfers, or deposits via my cell phone (which is how I make virtually all deposits now).

I am not a B of A customer any longer, but I just want to pipe up and say that the 50k doesn't have to be in cash. They include all of your accounts. So if say, you own ETFs in your IRA, that can count.

That's true but still isn't appealing. Why would anyone want their IRA with Merrill with super high fees and load funds?

[bUU]

I would pay to use foreign ATMs but I don't count that as not being free checking.

I consider having to pay for my first batch of checks to be NOT truly free checking. Truly free means you can put $50 into the account, and later write a check for $50, and the money will be there.

When I say free checking I mean that there is no fee to have the account, no fee for online banking, no fee for bill paying, no fee for the mobile app, transfers, or deposits via my cell phone (which is how I make virtually all deposits now).

Understood. Many more accounts will satisfy your less stringent requirements. Fewer accounts (but including Schwab and Fidelity) will satisfy my more stringent requirements.

[Mr Nice Guy]

Petunia, no mortgage or car loan for me but thanks for considering that approach.

[Petunia 100]

That's true but still isn't appealing. Why would anyone want their IRA with Merrill with super high fees and load funds?

I was curious, so I checked. With 50k of assets at B of A, you can have a "Platinum Privilege" account. That includes free checking (free checks, free stop payments, etc.) and up to 30 free trades per month in your Merrill Edge brokerage account. If you choose to hold ETFs, there are no loads and the expenses are quite low. Looks like a pretty good deal to me.

[ShawnaC123]

Capital One 360 (formerly ING Direct) has free checking, plus depending on your credit, you can get a decent bit of overdraft protection for free, only pay a small amount of interest on the money until you pay it back.

Only drawback is that there are no branches, but they have remote check deposit so that isn't really a dealbreaker for me anymore.

[Gailete]

Capital One 360 (formerly ING Direct) has free checking, plus depending on your credit, you can get a decent bit of overdraft protection for free, only pay a small amount of interest on the money until you pay it back.

Not only does Capital One 360 have free checking (if you want some actual checks that runs you $5) but they have free savings accounts also and as many as you like to divide up for your savings goals. They also connect to Sharebuilders if you want to invest in stocks and mutual funds. You can direct deposit checks into your checking account.

We also have checkings accounts with two banks here in town with no fees as well. But they aren't national banks. During all the banking stuff that was going on, my bank got a #1 ranking for being such a good bank.

[disneysteve]

Since I've always had free checking, I'm not really familiar with any other kind. What are some of the things that banks typically charge for when they don't offer free checking.

[bUU]

Bank of America charges $25 per month if you don't have the $20k minimum average daily balance on account ("Premium"); $15 per month if you don't have the $5k minimum daily balance ("Enhanced"); $6 per month ("Essentials"); and $12 per month you use a teller ("eBanking").

[disneysteve]

bUU - I just looked up BoA and the terms and fees vary by state. Here in NJ they are much better than what you listed. E-banking is free. MyAccess checking is free with either direct deposit or a $1,500 balance. Regular checking is also free with a $1,500 balance. Sounds like you live in a state that allows much higher bank fees.

[bUU]

Those fees are applied when you don't maintain the minimum balances, etc. "Truly free" checking doesn't have such restrictions, remember.

I just cleared cookies and checked for New Jersey.

"eBanking" - Otherwise, "$8.95 monthly maintenance fee"
"MyAccess® Checking" - "Otherwise, $12 monthly maintenance fee"
"Advantage with Tiered Interest Checking" - "Otherwise, $25 monthly maintenance fee"

Pretty much the same as Massachusetts - except that that middle account has a $5,000 daily balance requirement instead of $1,500.

There is no truly free checking at Bank of America; not even in New Jersey.

[disneysteve]

"Truly free" checking doesn't have such restrictions, remember.

Understood. There is a big difference between needing a $1,500 balance and needing a $20,000 balance though. If my balance ever fell below $1,500 I'd have bigger things to worry about than what fee my bank was going to charge me.

I don't have a problem with banks charging fees that are simple to avoid. To me, free checking means there are no fees that I have to pay to maintain my account. I don't pay a penny to BoA. Never have. So as far as I'm concerned, that's free. I realize others are using a different definition of free though.

[bUU]

Understood. There is a big difference between needing a $1,500 balance

It's $5,000, here in Massachusetts; not $1,500. So there is a difference between the two states that I missed earlier.

and needing a $20,000 balance though. If my balance ever fell below $1,500 I'd have bigger things to worry about than what fee my bank was going to charge me.

I would consider my checking account balance being more than $5,000 to be a failure, since it means I'm leaving small, but still significant, compound interest on the table. Bank of American pays 0.01% interest on checking; 0.10% on money market accounts; 0.08% on savings.

Ideally, I'd have a good idea how much I spend each month (working on that) and have that amount in my account on the last day of the month(ly billing cycle, if nec.) The account balance would vary over the month, but never exceed that amount. It would dip down to $300-$400 on occasion throughout the month. And remember: That $5,000 is a minimum daily balance, not a minimum average daily balance. (The $20k balance is based on average daily balance.) So I would definitely get hit with the fee each month.

So when you're trying to figure out how much your "free" checking actually costs, don't forget to take the amount of money they insist on freezing there in their practically-no-interest accounts, and figure out how much interest you're missing out on by having that money there. For me, it was $31.25 per month. (It would be $12.50, now, with the new, lower minimum balance.)

The new "Enhanced" account is actually not horrible. It "costs" only $3.50 a month. However, I cannot recall all the extra services I got with Premium (which was Platinum). I know that I took advantage of a free estate account when my mother passed away. (I had to call in twice to get them to reverse the fee, when the fee-reversal order, associated with my own Premium/Platinum account expired.)

[disneysteve]

I actually have no minimum balance requirement since the other way to avoid a fee is to have direct deposit which my wife does from her job. Otherwise it would be $1,500 and I'd never have less than a couple thousand in there anyway.

[Gailete]

Whenever I have had a bank that announced it would now be charging fees 'for our convenience' –HAHA, I promptly went to a different bank in town that was offering free checking and opened an account there. Unlike DisneySteve, I rarely have $1500 in my checking much less maintain a balance of that much so we would always be caught with fees from banks. I use my checking accounts to pay bills not for emergency money or whatever someone would have $1500 in their checking account for. Sorry I can't even conceive of that!

One of the reasons that I like the on line Capital 360/ING checking account is they will send payments for me, including mailing checks if the company that needs the check isn't in their databank for electronic payments. There is no charge for these checks so I try to pay all bills through ING as that means no stamps to buy and use which becomes a savings of around $60 at least over the course of the years!