Hacker News Reader

Comment by kasey_junk | Hacker News Reader

Usaa is the single best “bank” in the USA. Unfortunately their charter prevents lots of places from using them.

I’ll note they are much different than a “small” credit union in terms of reach & technology.

i have a zero fee, zero minimum account with schwab that also gives me access to their ETFs with no trade commissions or monthly limits, and the ETFs themselves have extremely low expense ratios. also they reimburse any ATM fees in full every month. what advantages does Usaa have over this setup?

Among others, USAA doesn't require a brokerage account to bank with them. I don't think it's really a comparable situation.

In their competitor comparison[1], you'll note they don't list USAA or any credit unions, because it would look basically the same as the Schwab account. Low or no fees, low or no minimum balance, decent interest rates, etc.

There's no reason for you to switch, either, but not everyone needs or wants a Schwab brokerage account too.

[1]: https://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/banking_lending/checkin...

Schwab refunds unlimited ATM fee, whereas USAA refunds up to $15. Schwab also has worldwide no foreign transaction fee, something that USAA doesn't have.

IMO Schwab is still the best because I travel a lot. There's no downside to keeping an empty brokerage account

They open the brokerage account when you open a checking account with them, but you're not required to fund or use it. I use it for my personal investing and love that when I overdraft my checking it just immediately takes it from cash in my brokerage (rather than savings which has a limit on monthly withdrawals or charging me a fee). There have even been times when there wasn't enough cash in my brokerage acct and it just went negative.. I didn't let it stay that long enough to find out if there were any consequences but for the few days it was like that there weren't any.

USAA is one of the most progressive banks in the country technologically speaking as well. They had 2FA deployed long before everyone else, app money transfers, picture check deposits and lots of other things long before any of their competitors.

USAA also usually has very competitive personal loan rates and mortgage rates. Their insurance rates are usually unbelievable. Their customer service is top rated as well.

I keep checking in with USAA on auto insurance, and they consistently quote double my current premiums... they may have a bias against quick cars, though.

They almost certainly do due to their population of 19 year old customers with more money than they’ve ever had before. It’s a cliche joke at this point...

*not a joke the military death rate on motorcycles...

I will defend Schwab to the death. I belong to a credit union as well for physical cash depositing purposes, but use Schwab for every other banking need. I can pull out currency from any ATM that supports Visa in the world for free - that's worth its weight in gold. Their customer service has been top notch as well - I've called them to ask questions about services that they don't even offer and gotten informative answers about how and where to go about it.

i've never actually tried this, but i believe you can deposit relatively small amounts of physical cash into a schwab account at an ATM. i am lucky to have a branch near me, where i have only ever received excellent service, but i could imagine that a credit union could have better customer service overall.

What's the issue with their charter?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com