Initial Setup

4 accounts at a local bank: 1 personal checking for each of us, 1 joint checking for bills, and one savings account

Current Setup

A local bank houses our joint account and my wife’s personal checking account. I use ING Direct for my checking and our joint savings accounts.

Problems with current setup

Transfers between ING and our local bank take 5 business days to happen, meaning unbudgeted finances (unexpected car repairs, etc) are difficult to pay quickly. Also, our current system requires I transfer X dollars bi-monthly to my wife’s account. This process must be done manually as ING does not let you automate sending paper or electric checks. ING’s lack of paper checks are a dealbreaker for us, even though we probably only write 1 check a month. It is difficult to tell people you deal with on a day to day basis (like our Nanny) “the check’s in the mail.”

Goal

Have all 4 accounts (2 personal checking, 1 joint checking, 1 savings) at a single bank with the following requirements:

• Paper checks
• High yield savings
• Reliable check deposit (B&M would be cool, but I’m willing to go with snail mail too)
• ATM/Debit Card
• All the accounts must be linked together so we can transfer funds between them immediately

A few “nice to haves” would be:

• Ability to tie in an investment account
• A B&M locale somewhere within 100 miles or so in the rare cases where we must deposit a large amount of cash (drug deal, robbery, mob hit, etc)

Fortunately, or unfortunately (depending on how you look at it) there were only a few banks that met my list of requirements. The two with the best reviews were HSBC and Wamu. What put Wamu first on the list was:

• Free overdraft transfer protection with Platinum checking
• Free paper checks for the life of the account
• Wamu has investment accounts available

On the free overdraft transfer, the theory here is that since you are automatically protected you could perhaps keep all your money in the high-yield savings account and just make overdrafts from the checking. Not sure if this is a loophole or if they would eventually stop it, but it’s a good theory.

I’ve set up the initial Platinum checking account. What sort of sucked about that was it had to be done over the phone and they needed a check mailed to them (which took several days). Anyway, I’ve got the account now with the inital minimum $1000 deposit.

Next up, turn the Platinum into a joint account, open two other checking accounts and a savings account. I hope to have a review of my experience in a few weeks.