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Comment by loeg | Hacker News Reader

You've described any bank worth being a customer of. Monthly fees are a huge red flag (even if you can avoid them with hoop-jumping). USAA (just for ex.) also reimburses ATM fees. I'm not a fan of "overdraft protection" in general, but maybe Schwab provides a relatively non-predatory version of it.

Citi's nickname is "shitty." I forget what put me off about Simple but in general debit cards don't enjoy the strong consumer protections that credit cards do in the US.

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Agreed, my credit union does all those things and pays 10x more interest than Schwab (2% vs 0.20%). That being said, its easy enough to get ~2% in a money market as well, so there's no compelling reason to keep more than a few months expenses in a checking account.

If you're with one of America's 4 largest banks (Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo), expect a bad time.

What credit union is this? Didn’t realize there were any that reimburse worldwide ATM fees...

First Tech and BECU both do this, pretty sure the smaller credit unions like Verity and People's CU also reimburse ATM fees and offer high yield checking & savings accounts.

I don’t think First Tech refunds ATM fees worldwide. Only at CO-OP Network ATMs which are in the US.

First Tech does not reimburse ATM fees worldwide. Unless things have changed in the last year, they do add a 1% transaction fee for using a foreign ATM. For this reason, I now use a Schwab checking account for international travel.

Vermont federal credit union has 2%+ interest and ATM fee reimbursement with their “rewards” checking account.

While you are technically correct, I don't think you should be so dismissive... a majority of Americans are using banks that DONT offer those things, so pointing them out is a good thing for people to hear, and to demand of the bank they use.

I didn't intend to come across as dismissive; apologies. I understand how it reads that way.

I intended to make a more general statement about relatively good banking products, while GP's note only talks about Schwab in particular. I.e., yes, Schwab is a good option, and there are lots of other good options. (Lots of bad ones too.)

I totally agree that a lot of people don't know these things or have good personal finance knowledge in general, and agree that raising awareness of what constitutes a reasonable banking product is a good thing.

but maybe Schwab provides a relatively non-predatory version of it

They will pull from your brokerage account, if you have insufficient funds they'll take out a margin loan and I think the only fees there are interest.

ING did something similar where they'd only charge you interest for overdraft stuff.

>if you have insufficient funds they'll take out a margin loan

That's not my experience with them. I've had them as a checking/brokerage account for 10+ years. I tend not to keep much money in checking so I run into timing issues once a year or so - where a check I wrote will present before the funds to cover it arrive in my account. I've definitely had them pull from the brokerage cash, but not from savings. They have never opened a margin loan to cover it.

Also not my experience. Accidentally had a timing issue once, and was overdrawn for a week before an ACH more than covered the difference.

On day four they called me to make sure I was aware. I explained that I had already started a transfer several days earlier, and they said "no problem" and thanked me for being a customer.

No overdraft fees, no pulling from my brokerage account, no margin loan. Never heard anything about it ever again.

It's happened to me a couple times as I don't keep cash in my brokerage account. To cover the checking account, they'll pull from the brokerage account, and if there's insufficient cash in the brokerage account, they take a margin loan. vOv

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