A little while back, I set up an account with Wachovia to try to earn their bonus money. I thought I was doing fine until the first statement came in and I was fined $50 service charge for not having enough money in the checking when it tried to transfer to savings or something.
In all of this job fretting, I forgot that I set up $100 a month of automatic transfer to take advantage of Way2Save's 5% APY savings program.
Now, I'm trying to decide what to do with it. I'm basically thinking of either closing the account, or sticking $1200 in there and let the way2save program run for a year until the 5% APY expires.
But whatever it is, I have enough on my plate already, so I don't want the hassle of keeping up with this account. The $50 bonus for opening the account is already lost from the service charge, so, what would you do here?
On a related note, I also opened an account with PerkStreet Financial. I just got their welcome letter earlier this week, but I don't have a debit card from them yet. I think after 3 months, PerkStreet will actually pay me $75 total, but I do have to keep up with it. That is, at least one transaction per year. Plus, they offer 1% cash back for all purchases (which honestly isn't that great of a deal for me because I've been locking down on my spending).
Once again, what would you do here? Perhaps set up an automated bill pay? Close the account? Or something else?
For reference, my current credit union account is doing just fine. It pays 3% APY for my balance there, and although it requires 12 transactions per month, I have no trouble keeping that up.
Too many banks maybe
December 11th, 2009 at 01:36 pm
December 11th, 2009 at 02:14 pm 1260540877
December 11th, 2009 at 04:59 pm 1260550778
As for the new one "Perk Street". Stick it out and reap the rewards.
Whenever I open accounts to just get the rewards, and I get my paper work in the mail, I paperclip or staple everything together and make notes on it what the requirements are. They are kept where I pay my bills, so I look at them a couple times a month to make sure I am on track. When, that account has been fully satisfied, I usually transfer everything to one of my two general accounts (My regular savings account or my ING account) and close out the one I just reaped the rewards on, once the money has been transferred. I only try to do a couple of these kinds of transactions a year, so I don't have too much cash sitting in too many accounts. It is just too much personal information floating around.
December 11th, 2009 at 05:49 pm 1260553796
December 11th, 2009 at 06:18 pm 1260555531
December 11th, 2009 at 06:21 pm 1260555717
As for PerkStreet, yeah, I'm going to try to stick it out to get the reward money there. It requires even less than Wachovia, and it's only 3 months versus Wachovia's 12 months.