This is a nostalgic post for me. If you’ve been reading my blog since the very beginning (which you probably haven’t unless you are my mom), you may remember my third blog post.
At the time I had no intention of blogging and was planning to do strictly videos. However, I was on vacation with no video equipment and wants to put something on my site, so I wrote a few blogs, including one about interest bearing checking accounts. Notice the lack of bolding and coloring of words or pictures. Not a very pretty first blog.
Anyway, I was reading my Google News feed and this topic came up again with The Best Rewards Checking Accounts for Large Balances. And yes, personal finance is a custom news topic in my Google News feed. I’m a dork.
It reminded me of my third blog about rewards checking; how you can literally get free money just for having a checking account with a small bank. I encouraged everyone to open one of these accounts and start earning free money.
Except, I didn’t do it myself. I’m a hypocrite, suggesting that you do one thing and then doing another.
I typically keep about $5,000 in my checking account. If I had a 3.51% account for five months, I could have made over $70 in that amount of time, and I’d still be getting more free money.
So why haven’t I done it? The main reason is because I never use my debit card. To qualify for the rate, you usually have to do 5-12 debit card transactions a month. I use credit cards for their rewards, so I would have a make a concentrated effort to swipe that thing 10 times.
I also have a lot of stuff that is automatically pulled out of my checking account and I don’t want to to through the hassle of changing those things. Call me lazy, but that doesn’t sound like fun to me.
So now that I’ve been reminded of the missed opportunity of free money from my checking account, and I am trying to decide if I should take the plunge now, or just keep my old account with 0% interest.
Readers, I’d love to hear your experience with these things. Does anyone have an interest bearing checking account? If so, do you find it hard to meet the requirements? If not, why not?
Kevin McKee is an entrepreneur, IT guru, and personal finance leader. In addition to his writing, Kevin is the head of IT at Buildingstars, Co-Founder of Padmission, and organizer of Laravel STL. He is also the creator of www.contributetoopensource.com. When he’s not working, Kevin enjoys podcasting about movies and spending time with his wife and four children.
Well…I don’t. Mostly because I have a small emergency fund (my monthly expenses are l.o.w. thanks to no rent, not utility bills, no car payment, etc) and everything else is invested.
While we’re being honest, I’ve sucked it up at the teeth whitening deal. I bet i’ve done it about every other day. I went to the dentist today though and was told I must have excellent home care. Ha!
I don’t have it for the same reason you don’t have it. It’s a pain in the butt. There are too many things to do before you can get that interest. I keep about $2,000 in the checking and transfer money to/from saving account as needed.
Kevin, I thought about these banks that offer high interest rates but make you jump through hoops and you miss one, you erase anything accrued.
I don’t think I can win. After a lot of research, I chose a bank that is free with no min. balance requirement, provides free checking and where I don’t have to use debit card for purchases.
I wrote about this very topic.
Hey Kev-
I have PNCs Virtual Wallet ( which I love) it gives you 3 accounts (spend, reserve, growth) the spend and reserve make no interest, however the growth makes 1% up to 10K. I know it’s not much- but like you said it’s free money. The debit card they have runs on points and their credit cards run on the same points. The two can be linked (credit card earning 4 pts per dollar and debit earning 2) to get you the most bang for your buck…literally. The points add up to gift cards places, but also cash cards.
No minimum balance for any of the accounts and you can move the money around within the three accounts. Also comes with a lot of sweet budgeting/tracking online tools to see where money is spent when the debit card is used.
Just a suggestion. 🙂
I don’t like hoops, so we only leave $1000-$2000 in our brick and mortar bank and the rest of our cash is at ING earning 1% and change. The majority of our savings are in the stock market either via individual stocks we chose or target date mutual funds with 80% in stocks…