Closing some bank accounts
Unlike some bloggers, I quit the rate-chasing game fairly early. I tried to keep up with rising rates at ING Direct, HSBC Direct, Emigrant Direct, Citibank and Bank of America. Along the way, I also had to open a savings account when I opened a new loan for my truck at an area credit union. Lastly, I already had a (poor performing) savings account at Bank of America (0.5% interest rate). That’s a total of 7 savings account.
Just like I said 6 months ago, “I can’t handle all these accounts!“. It’s simply clutter. So here’s what I did:
- Closed Emigrant Direct. I only had about $9 in there anyway
- Closed Citibank. I had about $100 in there, but the main reason I opened the account was to take advantage of a $50 bonus for opening the account
- Will close one BoA account. I’ll close the wimpy 0.5% account since it requires a $300 minimum balance and that money could be earning 3-4% more elsewhere.
- MIGHT close HSBC Direct. A friend talked me out of closing this account, for now, because it’s pretty competitive, but we’ll see
- Keep the BoA Money Market. Actually, this is where all our money is right now. It’s still competitive (but not the highest), and it’s at the bank with our checking and online billpay. It’s just easier to manage it at one location.
- Keep ING Direct. Even if ING isn’t competitive with its rates, I can earn up to $500 per year if I use up all my referrals. And you get $25 too!
- Keep the credit union account. It’s always good to have a credit union, even if you just have the account to be able to apply for their loans.
At least this will get us down to either 3 or 4 savings accounts, and reduce the number of online or print statements we receive. Unfortunately, since I waited to close them till 2008, I’ll still get 1099-INT forms next year for the little bit of interest I earned on each this month.
How many savings accounts do you have? Are you going to try to get rid of the clutter? Any reason I should have kept them all open?
I vote close them – I’ve opened up a few myself trying to rate chase and it’s just not worth it. At some point, your time becomes more valuable.
That many savings accounts is too many for me. It would only make sense to have them all once you’ve got $100k in each one to keep it FDIC insured, and that might be a while.
I have two accounts; a checking at a local bank and a Vanguard money market account.
The Vanguard money market account always offers competitive rates, and they are a mouse-click away from the best mutual funds in the business.
IMO, there’s virtually no justification to opening a savings account for a $25 bonus. More paperwork, more hassle, more opportunity for identity theft, all for $25? No thanks.
Anonymous, having the savings at Vanguard is a good idea. I’d like to refute your comment about the ING bonus though. You get $25 now, but you also then get 25 referrals for savings and 25 for checking that YOU can earn up to $500 on. I make much more in referrals than the little bit of money I keep in the account makes in interest.
Yeah, I can agree if you’re a blogger that collecting the bonuses from your blog readers makes sense.
But as a blog *reader* rather than a blog *writer*, I likely won’t ever reach that $500 level. I refuse to pimp extraneous savings accounts to my friends and family, so $25 would be my limit.
Not worth the hassle.
I have about 6 myself. I keep saying I am going to close the ones I don’t use but I haven’t got around to it yet.
No matter what, I’ll always keep ING open. Even if the only have $5 of MY money. LOL The interface has me sold.
Quick question, you said:
“Even if ING isn’t competitive with its rates, I can earn up to $500 per year…”
Do they refresh your referrals every year?
Single Ma, actually, I only assumed that they’re refreshed roughly each year. I’ve never sold out (as I’ve never promoted them well), but we’ll see.
I’m going to sound like the biggest idiot ever, but, erm, how do you close an account? Do you just call and have them transfer the money over somewhere else?
Vixen, I wasn’t sure at first either, but I just called them and said I wanted to close the account. Emigrant required me to transfer out all the funds, then send a message within their help system to request the closure. Citibank is just sending me a check and closing the account.
Probably feels good to consolidate things. I was like you with accounts spread out at several different banks (online and otherwise). I recently consolidated and feel much more in control of the finances.
I find it rather hilarious that reading through my RSS feed I see we posted on the same subject at the same time this week. (link in url behind my name) I finally got my last check last week from some old accounts I’ve been closing out and posted about my own consolidation adventures. (showed up today)
IMO, I think each account should have a unique purpose or it’s overkill. Meaning, if I have two accounts for my emergency fund…it’s too much. Right now I’ve got a primary checking w/ a military credit union that I’ve had for years and do my insurance/banking/creditcards/etc. all through them. I also have a local bank w/ a checking/savings account for my emergency fund and ease of check-cashing via drive-thru. Then each of the 6 kids have their own savings accounts that they’re slowing growing.
I haven’t looked into the whole ING thing yet, but sounds pretty nice and I may have to use up one of your referrals doing the same thing. 🙂
@vixen – all three banks I called just asked me what address to mail the check to and closed it within just a couple minutes.
I had the same problem of keeping up with constantly changing savings account rates. I found that many account comparison sites were not comprehensive and since then the bbc has carried an item that those sites only included accounts where they got paid to do so. That was of absolutely not use to a saver trying to distribute funds around a number of different accounts.
Sounds like what I used to do back in the day with long distance telephone companies. I was very successful in playing them against each other. You can do the same thing with cell phones today, but it’s a longer process since you usually have to sign a long term contract to get the good deals.
I’m leaving my HSBC account active, even though my rate is now at 3.80% with them as of 1/29/08.