Hacker News Reader

Comment by gonehome | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure why anyone uses banks instead of just using Fidelity for everything.

You get a brokerage, you can have your retirement accounts there, you get free checks, debit card with free ATM access, software that's best in class for finance (even if it's still mediocre compared to consumer software).

You can configure automatic bill pay, automatic investments, free money wires to external banks to pay rents, no fees for anything really, no useless savings account or restrictions.

Even the phone support is better than any other financial institution I've ever had to deal with.

Zero fee total market index funds, no fees really for anything.

I think the only reason people don't use them is because they don't know it's an option and they use whatever bank their parents used.

View on HN

One reason I can think of is that (to the best of my knowledge) you can't deposit cash with Fidelity.

I generally like online banks, but for me personally, I regularly have scenarios where I need to deposit hard cash. And so far, I've found the only way to do that is to have an account with a conventional bank or credit union.

Fair point - I rarely deal with cash (and when I do I can just give it to a friend and have them apple pay or Venmo me).

Supplier diversity is an important part of financial risk management. Fidelity is good, but you don’t want to have all of your wealth tied up in a single institution.

Well, statements like "what doesn't everyone just use x" usually haven't been thought through too much.

One main reason is that I don't like the feeling of having all of my money stored by a single company. Especially if that company is operating with the goal of making profit. May be irrational, but having a single point of failure for all of my hard earned money just doesn't sit right.

I suspect most people are not using bank accounts as one account among many for financial diversification - the bank account is their sole account.

My question could have been more specific - I see little reason to prefer a bank to fidelity.

It is government insured up to 1.25M though - so I think the risk is minimal short of government collapse.

Do you get your direct deposit (assuming you have a normal job) to your Fidelity account? I've been considering moving everything to Fidelity.

Yep - works fine and was easy to set up.

The reason I use a local brick-and-mortar bank is to get access to a safe deposit box. Besides banking is free as well. ( No fee for account maintenance, ATM, free checks, free Zelle payment to friends etc.)

You may want to rethink the safe deposit box: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/business/safe-deposit-box... - they’re not very safe and the banks aren’t interested in the service.

I like the rewards from my bank's credit card for the utilities I use and the purchases I make. I won't get those benefits with just any debit card.

Yeah - you should still use a credit card, but you don't need your bank's account for that.

In fact, bank credit cards are among the worst in terms of rewards. You'd be better off with a different one most likely.

Is Fidelity better than TD Amertirade? I didn't realize this was an option.

I haven’t personally used both seriously, consensus when I searched around to consider switching was that Fidelity’s software/service was better so I stayed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com