Thanks for visiting Ultimate Money Blog! If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. The other day I was talking to my mother about how all of our savings and emergency fund is at ING.  I have been an ING customer for years, and have had nothing but good experiences with them.  They offer a really competitive rate on their high yield savings accounts- of course it’s not much now, but what savings accounts are paying a good rate now?  I really like banking with ING because they don’t require a minimum balance and no monthly fees.  I’ve also got a few accounts set up with them for specific purposes, like car insurance, escrow, and our emergency fund.  It helps me keep those expenses separate and make sure I have enough money for each event. My mother was concerned about the safety of using an online bank.  She doesn’t do online banking at all and I don’t think she ever will.  That’s fine.  She just said I may want to think about moving my money [...]

Working at the bank provides many benefits, and one of them is that it’s really easy to keep an eye on my bank accounts.  I can just pull up our checking accounts, credit card, and mortgage all with the click of a button.  We keep our savings account at ING so I have to log on to another site to be able to check our savings accounts.  I noticed that I check our bank accounts with our main bank a lot more than I do our savings accounts because it’s much more convenient.  After I checked our checking accounts for the sixth time today, I realized that maybe that was a little obsessive. When I didn’t work at the bank, I checked our checking account about once a day.  I would check off the transactions that posted to the account and then check the balance.  It worked very well for me!  Now I check our checking accounts at least a few times a day.  I think I probably could cut that down to once a day! With our savings accounts, [...]

There’s a new law going into effect on August 15, 2010.  It’s called Regulation E (Reg E), and deals specifically with overdrafts.  Basically now you have to choose to Opt In or Opt Out of overdraft protection. Currently many banks will approve your debit card even though there is not enough money in your account.  Effective August 15, every banking client will be opted out of overdraft protection unless they choose to opt in. Should you opt in or opt out? Opt In for Overdraft If you choose to opt in for overdrafts, your card may get approved even though the funds are not available in your checking account.  This may be good in the event of an emergency where you are stuck with absolutely no cash and your car has broken down, or even to avoid embarrassment when you’re out to dinner with a date and your card would normally be declined.  On the other hand, opting in to overdraft protection would not be a good idea for someone who doesn’t balance their checkbook.  I definitely wouldn’t recommend opting [...]