A US banking question

Capital One, has the 360 Savings account that pays 1.9%. No fees, and can be linked to various accounts for transfers. However, it is also limited to 6 per month.

Brent in Az said:

Capital One, has the 360 Savings account that pays 1.9%. No fees, and can be linked to various accounts for transfers. However, it is also limited to 6 per month.

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It is really easy to open these online accounts but could be a total nightmare doing withdrawals / closing. Some online banks will want you to go to your local bank to get a "signature guarantee" to send to the online bank before they will release funds. Not only is that a big extra step but many local banks don't even do signature guarantees anymore. Then you are really screwed.

I'd be asking what documentation is required for withdrawal before opening the online accounts.

I once got called in for what was supposed to be a session of my boss at that time giving me a chewin'out that my monthly business expense report for travel taken at my boss's request and exactly in accordance with written guidelines including corporate travel schmoos purchasing & scheduling the business class airfare from Houston to Frankfurt, Germany on rather short notice to expedite a technical proposal from a petrochemical process license holder (time zone dfferences and different work cultures made extracting productivity from this licensor was at a snail's pace vs a Stateside technology licensor), caused my single monthly total BER to exceed my boss's approval authority level and was now waiting in an electronic box that belonged to his boss for approval, and thus attracted what my boss perceived as "undesirable attention" from above.

Little did my boss know his boss had already discussed the matter with me and it even exceeded HIS approval authority and would now go to a VP for approval, in an absolutely not punitive matter, just wanting to let me know my BER may take longer to get approved and might require some additional Q&A.

My boss's boss had even grinned when I offered this solution: kick my BER back to me to portion into two BER'S; one for the airfare only, and another for all the other expenses, and everything would then fall in less-than-VP approval levels. There were zero written rules on how many BER's could be submitted by an employee each month; there was only verbal communication that supervisors appreciated only one BER per direct report each month as a courtesy to minimize time supervisors spent on reviewing and approving BER's. Which went unsaid non-compliance with this request would be remembered in supreme detail during annual performance evaluations, of course.

I related this to my boss during my "session", my BER was approved in a timely manner at VP level with no questions asked from above and no return for me to re-partition, and zero further "sessions" summoning me occurred for this specific issue. I think the two highest dogs on the chain enjoyed a chuckle over my proposal during happy hour somewhere.

I was never sent on international business travel again. The Stateside licensor won approval to proceed and the end result was an extremely successful project by all metrics all the way through comissioning.

There is a higher probability for success eating an elephant one bite at a time rather than trying one big gulp, metaphorically anyway. It's the only potential idea I have to contribute for your situation.

Congrats from me as well on entering the realm of such issues in today's financial world!

sgt_zim said:

The wife and I are buying rental properties and I ran into an issue at one of my banks last month.

I had no idea the federal government regulated the number of withdrawals or transfers out of a savings account. I've been warned that if I do it again, my savings account will be converted to a checking account.

How do you guys deal with needing to move around money? Having that kind of money is a relatively new thing for us, and we're a little baffled at it. But mostly, I'm pissed that the federal government is THAT GD involved in my banking. SARs and "know your customer" are bad enough. This is insane.

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The more important question: what kind of nut job has a savings acct? The yields are ridiculously terrible.

Go to fidelity.com. Get a brokerage checking account. (free) Get free checks. You can deposit and withdraw just like a checking acct. FREE. All you want. Free. And the balance is swept into a respectable, guaranteed sweep account that yields a decent interest rate. (1% or so?)

Any time you want, you can buy stocks, etfs, and bonds with the proceeds in that acct also, so instead of it rotting at 1%, you can invest in superior financial instruments. You can liquidate those instruments instantly, and the funds can be withdrawn in less than 5 biz days. So if you know you need money in 6 months...put it in a bond fund at 5% until you need it!