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Savings and Checking Made Easy with Radius Bank’s Hybrid Account

June 24, 2015 by Lazy Man 8 Comments

Years ago, I created this website with the tagline, “Making my money work, so I don’t have to.” I noticed that due to compound interest and living below my means, the choices I made in my early 20s had paid off handsomely by the time I turned 30. Those choices weren’t anything special, just basic ones such as maxing out my Roth IRA and 401k.

This idea of working smarter instead of working harder that lead me to create the “Lazy Man and Money” website. I wanted to show people that you don’t have to work hard to manage your money. If you do it right you can even retire early. What’s so hard about writing those annual Roth IRA checks? It took me all of a few minutes. Setting up the 401k was even faster than that.

Nearly ten years of blogging later, I’ve come to realize that there is a finite number of items that fit this criteria. Nowadays I assume most readers have this basic information and are looking to dig deeper. Today, I’ve got something new that should change how people manage their money.

Before I get to that though, let me talk about one of the biggest problems of managing money the “Lazy” way. It’s the old checking account/saving account conundrum. I need to write checks (even if they are automatic bill pay) via my bank account. The money in that account earns no interest. Alternatively, I can earn interest in my savings account, but I can’t easily pay people from it.

Thus, I’m left doing a money shuffle. The idea is to keep as much money in the savings as possible to maximize interest, while keeping just enough money in the checking so that I don’t bounce any checks.

Today, I learned that I don’t have to do the money dance. I found out that Radius Bank’s Hybrid Account acts as both a savings and checking account. It’s one banking account to rule them all.

Here’s how it works… You can use Radius Bank’s Hybrid Account just like any checking account. You can pay people from it just as you’d expect. The big difference is that account balances over $2500 earn an interest rate that is extremely competitive with the top high-interest savings accounts. How competitive? Radius Bank’s current 1% interest rate is actually better than Capitial One 360, Ally Bank, Everbank, and Bank of Internet.

So you get the best of both worlds… convenience of writing checks with an impressive interest rate.

If you are looking for gotchas, you are a smart consumer. I wish you luck, because I couldn’t find any. There are no monthly fees or minimum balance (other than the initial $10 to open to open the account). In addition, ATM fees are rebated back to your account. (That is one of my favorite features of any bank.) And of course you get typical FDIC insurance.

I think this is a game changer. Once people get a taste of this, why would anyone go back? Who wants to shift money in separate savings and checking accounts?

What do you think? Would you going to sign up for the Radius Bank’s Hybrid Account? Let me know in the comments below.

Filed Under: Banking Tagged With: checking, Radius Bank, savings

Goodbye Bank of America, Hello USAA

January 27, 2012 by Lazy Man 4 Comments

If the title wasn’t exactly clear, I’m changing my banks. This post is actually quite a bit overdue. I had been gradually doing it for a couple of years now. I would have written about it earlier, but I didn’t realize it until recently. That’s how gradual the change has been.

It’s not that Bank of America has done anything in particular to lose me as a customer. I know many were upset by their announcement to charging fees on debit card purchases (though Bank of America changed its mind on the fees). I wouldn’t have been affected by it since I rarely use my card as a debit card. It comes down to the fact that USAA is a better fit for me and my family.

What sets USAA Apart

The first thing that comes to mind is customer service. I know everyone has their favorite companies when it comes to customer service, but in almost every case it seems anecdotal. I could show you ten bloggers and each of them would have a favorite web hosting service – and a lot what they’d talk about would be the customer service. With USAA, it close to unanimous that their customer service is the best. What I like the most is that when I call I get the person’s direct extension in case I need to call back or follow up.

The other thing that sets USAA apart is that they actually give you money back at the end of the year if they have any left over. I know that sounds odd. I don’t have the full explanation unless it is this Wikipedia entry, but my wife has multiple times gotten a check back at the end of the year. (Since she is the sponsor of the account, more on this later, I don’t have the full details of what they sent for the both of us. When it’s money in my favor, I tend not to ask too many questions.)

It’s taken me a little while to embrace USAA. When I first looked into it, I was curious about the brokerage accounts. I compared them to Zecco who had been offering free trades at the time. I didn’t see their rates as being competitive. However, Zecco has since started to charge for most (if not all) trades now. The gap has closed to where the customer service and the ability to have my savings, checking, insurance, brokerage, and IRAs in one place far outweighs a couple of dollars a year I pay in putting my Roth IRA money to work in an ETF.

Recently, I was able to consolidate the 401ks from three old jobs into one Rollover IRA. I can’t tell you how much simpler it is to be able to log into one web site and see it all.

Why I may keep Bank of America

While USAA is great for any number of reasons, I still see a need for my Bank of America account. It’s not that I have any allegiance to Bank of America, but that I feel the need to have a bank in the real world – one with branches and people who I can talk to face-to-face. There are a couple times where this has come handy – usually when I need to have a certified check of some sort.

In some ways my banking has become a little microcosm of my business. It is 90% done through the Internet, but 10% done in the real world. I don’t see that changing any time soon. USAA gives me a bank that has the online tools that match my business.

So Bank of America, this isn’t really good bye like I said in the title. We can still be friends. I am just looking for more out of my banking relationship.

(Though it might seem that USAA sponsored this post. They have not. I just really like them and I think you will too. That is if you meet the eligibility requirements which typically require some military connection.)

Filed Under: Banking Tagged With: bank of america, checking, Insurance, ira, savings, USAA

SmartyPig: Gift Card Redeemed

June 14, 2008 by Lazy Man Leave a Comment

smartypig-logo.jpgLast week, I finally got around to starting up my SmartyPig account again. You may recall that I had trouble when I tried in the past. However, the questions their verification partner asked me about my financial accounts did not match what I knew to be true of my financial accounts. SmartyPig promptly mailed the documents necessary for me to be manually verified and once I got around to filling it out, set me up right away. I’d have to give them an A+ for customer service, but then I might not be the typical customer as they asked me to try out their service.

So with my gift card in hand and an activated SmartyPig account, it was time to see if I can deposit this gift card. The first thing I did when I logged in was go to the tab that said, Redeem a Gift Card (makes sense, right?). When I got there, the page said that I had to add a bank account first. My heart sank, thinking that this was going to take 3-4 days while SmartyPig deposits a few cents in my account and I verify that later (something that I’ve done with a couple of financial institutions in just the last week). I was pleasantly surprised that this was not necessary – I was able to set up my bank account right away.

Setting up the bank account was fairly easy, but it took me two tries. One of the pieces of bank information that SmartyPig asks is the bank’s phone number. I had expected to only need my checkbook for bank routing numbers and account numbers. For the phone number, I had to retrieve my wallet. Though I’m Lazy, I’m not that Lazy, so this didn’t upset me much. I pulled out my bank card to look on the back and entered in the number in the format of 1800xxxxxxx as I didn’t see SmartyPig request a specific format. I then put the card and wallet away and focused on the routing numbers. When I had finished entering those, I submitted the form. Turns out that I didn’t enter the phone number in the xxx-xxx-xxxx format. So I had to get out my card again and re-enter the number. But I also had to re-enter my bank account’s information again since the form didn’t say that. A suggestion to SmartyPig: either be very clear about the format of the phone number you want or accept pretty much any form that a person could put in.

So now that I had my bank account set-up it was finally time to enter in my gift card. I go to the Redeem a Gift Card tab and enter in my gift card serial number and pin. I get ready to click submit, but I realize there’s no submit button, just one that says Decline This Card. That scares me quite a bit, I fear if I click that it will void the card and all my work will be for nothing. I do notice some text after the pin that says I haven’t set up a savings goal yet, so I couldn’t redeem the gift card yet. I don’t know why it asked me for the serial number rather than just tell me to set up a savings goal. Once I set up a savings goal, I could easily redeem the card.

I set up my goal to be $250, which I estimate is how it’s going to cost me for an upgraded Asus Eee after I sell my old Asus Eee. With the gift card I’m 20% of the way there. I’m happy that my account will be earning a decent interest rate of 3.90%.

Overall, I think SmartyPig has a great idea, but a few minor things need to be ironed out. Once they clear up the minor usability issues, my only question is about the idea of the gift card. If you know someone has a SmartyPig account the gift card is a fantastic gift idea. If the person does not have a SmartyPig account set up, I think there are too many hoops to jump through (the issues I had in signing up, setting up and linking a new bank account, giving up your social security number to another place, having to create a specific savings goal). I would only get someone a SmartyPig gift card after I exhausted the options of cash, checks, savings bonds, Amazon gift card, or an Ebay gift card.

Filed Under: Review Tagged With: account numbers, bank information, bank routing numbers, checkbook, customer service, financial accounts, financial institutions, gift card, savings, SmartyPig, typical customer, wallet

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