I woke up to several emails this morning about Bank of America’s new plan to charge a $5 monthly fee to debit card users if they use those cards for purchases:

Bank of America will begin charging a $5 monthly fee at the beginning of next year for customers who make debit card purchases.

Whether you use your card for one purchase a month or 20, you will pay $5 per month starting in 2012. It doesn’t matter if you select “debit” or “credit” at the point of sale.

If you don’t use your card at all, you won’t be assessed a fee, and you can still use ATMs as much as you want without getting hit with the new charge. Plus, customers with certain premium accounts will be exempt from the charge.

Obviously, this is big news for Bank of America customers, but I think the impact of this will affect the customers of other banks as well.

A few Bank of America customers will jump ship. Most will not. While this type of fee is annoying, most Bank of America customers affected by this fee will largely ignore it and just pay it each month. Some will jump ship, sure, but the bank wouldn’t be charging this fee if they didn’t believe it would be a net gain for them.

Should you jump ship? If you rely on your Bank of America debit card for making purchases, this will essentially become a $60 a year fee. That would be incentive enough for me to jump. However, I probably wouldn’t jump immediately. Why?

I expect some other banks to follow suit. Bank of America wouldn’t be making this move if they didn’t believe it would help their bottom line. Given that, I fully expect other banks to match this move in the next year or so.

Thus, if I were with Bank of America and thinking of jumping, I wouldn’t jump until the end of the year when I can see if any other banks are adding similar fees. The longer you wait, the more time you have to see if the banks you’re eyeing are adding such things.

Other banks will laud their free debit card usage in an effort to attract customers. Over time, fee-free debit card usage at the point of sale will become a feature to promote rather than an expectation, sadly.

This may push people to simply use credit cards exclusively at the point of sale. This is what I do already, so such fees by my bank wouldn’t make any difference to me. I simply use a credit card for all point of sale purchases, then pay off the balance in full every month.

Should you make this leap? Using credit cards as your primary purchasing vehicle requires some level of self-control. If you have a history of getting into debt trouble with credit cards, I wouldn’t make this move.

Of course, my belief is that this type of move is part of what Bank of America is hoping for. They’d rather have people carry a balance on a Bank of America credit card and one way to do that is to gently discourage people using their debit cards to buy things.

All in all, this isn’t a great move for banking customers, but it’s not devastating, either. If I were the customer of a bank making a move like this, I would probably be tempted to switch banks, not just because of the fees, but because it sends something of a signal that I wasn’t a fan of a move like this.

A few weeks ago, I put out a call on Twitter and on Facebook for detailed posts that people would like to see. I got enough great responses that I’m going to fill the entire month of July – one post per day – addressing these ideas.

On Facebook, Patsy asked about “Online Banking… Paperless statements etc… Good idea? Cons: hackers, spouse doesn’t use computer much, so what happens when the other spouse dies?”

Patsy is really asking two separate questions here: how to protect your identity when using online banking and how to plan for account access if the partner using the account heavily dies.

Online Banking and Personal Security
People don’t like to hear it, but it’s true. You alone are the key to avoiding identity theft. In an online world where sophisticated criminals can get a lot of value out of your personal data, you have to protect it. You are aided by the fact that banks do as much as they can to keep you secure, but they’re not infallible. You have to do your part, too. Here are some essential steps.

Use strong passwords – and don’t repeat them. If a site allows you to use a password, use one that is long, does not include common words or names, and does include a variety of letters and numbers. Your best bet is to use a random password generator like this one. Use a strong password like this for all of your vital accounts – and use a different one for each vital account. Take action and change your passwords on your vital accounts right now.

Use antivirus and anti-spyware software on your computer. Good software like this is a great investment. I’m a big fan of AVG, but do your own research and find a great antivirus and anti-spyware package that meets your needs. Take action and get a strong antivirus and anti-spyware package on your computer.

Don’t store your passwords in an easily-accessible place. If you keep your passwords written on a sticky note on your monitor or under your keyboard, your identity is only as secure as the location where your computer is. Don’t leave such information in such an easy-to-access place. Take action and use software like a KeePass to keep all of your passwords secure.

If your bank mails out sensitive information by email, stop getting electronic updates. Most banks have enough sense to keep truly sensitive information (like account numbers and so on) private, but some banks will email out statements with such information on it. If you get such documents in your email, your identity is only as secure as your email (which isn’t really very secure). Take action and if your bank sends out such information, request that they stop sending it to you.

These four steps will go a long way toward making your online banking more secure.

Online Banking and Future Planning
At the same time, what do you do if you use an online bank and your spouse knows nothing about it? Most online banks do have procedures that helps survivors out in the event of an account holder’s passing, but you need to do your part in avoiding this process or at least making sure it goes off without trouble.

Keep basic information, such as a list of your accounts, in a safe and secure place. Simply make a list of your financial accounts, with account numbers, account holder information, and PINs, and keep that list in a very secure place. A safe deposit box at a bank is a good place to keep it, for example. This document will help those you leave behind to go through your accounts and take care of them as needed. Take action and create such a document today, then immediately store it in a secure place.

Update such basic information lists regularly. Account lists and other such information can grow stale over time, so you’ll need to update the list regularly. If you choose to keep an electronic copy of this type of document so you can update it regularly, keep that document on an external storage device that you can also save in a secure place. Never keep it on your main hard drive. Take action and find a secure place for electronic versions of your lists, and update it regularly.

Make sure the executor of your will at least knows where such information is. You may want to include a mention of it along with your will, just so that in the event of your passing (or in the event of both you and your partner passing), the information can easily be found by parties who will need it. Take action and amend your will appropriately.

These steps will make sure that your account can be managed upon your passing.

One common tactic I see on personal finance blogs is what I like to call “rate chasing.”

This tactic usually involves carefully watching the yield rates on savings accounts over at Bankrate.com (or a similar service), always signing up for one of the top accounts, and transferring their savings to that highest-yield bank.

For me, at least, I don’t find this tactic of much use at all. Here’s why.

The interest difference between a good bank’s interest rate and the top interest rate is pretty small. I took a look at Bankrate’s 50 newest additions to their database and sorted them by APY. The best rate found on that list was 1.40%; the median one (the one in the middle) was 0.95%. In other words, you’re gaining just 0.45% by choosing the top bank over a random bank.

That’s not much money. Let’s say you have $5,000 sitting around to play with in this fashion. The amount you’ll gain over the course of a year is $22.50 by rate hopping from the median bank above to the top bank above. And, in truth, it’s usually worse than that.

It takes time to locate the right offers. In order to keep up with these offers, you have to visit sites like Bankrate very regularly to find out what’s on top today. This is a small, continual drag on your time as you have to actually evaluate the top offers to make sure there’s not some sort of catch and to make sure that the rate was actually reported correctly to Bankrate.

It takes time to sign up for new accounts. If you do find a new offer, you have to sign up for that account. This can be an arduous process depending on their sign-up procedures, sometimes requiring mailing documents back and forth and waiting quite a while – another source of eating away at your valuable time.

The more accounts you have, the more identity risk concerns you have. While banks have amazingly strong security procedures, no security system is perfect. Each individual bank might have a 99.9% chance of keeping your personal data safe this year, but if you have fifty accounts out there, the chance of all of your accounts being safe this year drops to 95%. Identity theft is a real mess to clean up, so it’s worth your while to minimize the number of access points to your personal data.

Diminishing returns are in effect. Let’s say you’re at a bank offering 0.5% on your savings account. You can earn at least a little by hopping to an account earning 1.3%, right? That’s $80 extra per year on $10,000.

But once you’re in that 1.3% account, the benefit of the next leap is much smaller. You might dig for a while and find a 1.5% account, earning you $20 for the jump per year. The next time, you have to search a long while to get 1.6%, earning you $10 more.

My approach is simple. I usually encourage people to simply get an online savings account with a great customer service reputation and a reasonably competitive rate and just stick there without worrying about what other banks are doing with their rates.

Would I ever rate hop? Yes, in certain situations, I would rate hop. First, the interest rate competition in online banks would have to heat up. If you were seeing a top rate of 6% APY versus a median of 3%, then you’re talking about some significant interest. This is particularly true if you’re dealing with a large balance – say, $50,000 or more. 3% of $50,000 is $1,500 – that’s definitely worth your time.

But that doesn’t reflect the reality of the banking market and it also doesn’t reflect the day-to-day reality of most people. So, for now, I have to say that rate chasing is a pretty ineffective tactic for spinning more money out of your savings.

Katie writes in:

I was wondering if you could do an article on how to set up an online savings account? I remember you mentioned using them and getting a high return on interest, and I think I’d like to switch my savings account over to one. What kind of benefits/penalties have you come across?

The first thing to look at is what the differences between a “normal” bank and an online bank are.

With a normal bank, you have your usual checking and savings accounts. They issue you a checkbook with which to write checks and (usually) an ATM card to access your account. When you need to deposit something into your account, withdraw some cash, or make another transaction, you usually visit a branch location, visit an ATM, or use the bank’s online banking services.

With an online bank, all of the above is (typically) true, except that there is no physical branch location to visit. You conduct all of your business with the account via an ATM or via the online banking service.

What do you get in return for a lack of a physical branch to visit? You usually get a better interest rate than you would at a brick-and-mortar bank. You also usually get a very good online banking system and online bill pay service. Most online-only banks usually have minimal fees – no maintenance fees or other things like that. Typically, you get top-notch phone-based and internet-based customer service, too.

For a lot of people, that’s a trade they’re happy to make. The loss of a physical bank can be a big change, but the other benefits of the account make up for that.

How to Distinguish Between Online Banks
There are several things I look at when considering whether to use an online bank.

First, are the rates offered at least reasonably competitive? Banks change their exact interest rates all the time, so I don’t view it as a requirement that an online bank have the best interest rate in the land on a certain given day. However, the rate should be within a percentage point of that. I usually use BankRate.com when researching banks.

Second, is it FDIC insured? I look for the FDIC logo when I visit the website. I usually also follow up at the FDIC website using their bank search to make sure that the bank is registered with the FDIC. The FDIC is essentially insurance for your savings and checking (and CDs) that guarantees up to $250,000 of your account in the event of a bank failure.

Third, is it well-reviewed? Search Google for online bank reviews, particularly reviews of the banks you’re interested in. Get a diversity of opinions; don’t just rely on the first one you see. I have a series of online bank reviews ready to go for The Simple Dollar and will begin posting them soon (once I have a minor legal issue resolved with regards to them).

Fourth, does it offer all of the services you need? Do you need to have a paper checkbook or will online bill pay and an ATM meet all your needs? Do you need a very wide ATM network? Do you need easy access from your cell phone? Do you need Quicken compatibility? Do you have any other particular needs with regards to the account? Know what exactly you need with regards to the account and keep those needs in mind as you look at a few banks.

Fifth, once you decide on a bank, open the new account, but don’t close the old account. Transition slowly in order to ensure that you didn’t forget about any automatic payments or anything else like that. You may even choose to leave the account at your old bank open, particularly if it does not have any annual fees or maintenance fees, because of the convenience of the local branch.

Funding your new account is done electronically. You simply request a transfer using your new bank’s online banking system and the money moves automatically.

Good luck!

Kimberly writes in:

A few months ago (yep, one of those New Years Resolutions!) I pledged to get a better grip on my finances. I found some personal finance blogs to read and decided to start off by simply tracking where our money went.

But it’s impossible!! Every time I sit down with our bank and credit card statements, a big chunk of the money is going away to places I can’t figure out. There are vague entries on the bills and so on.

What can I do?

I’m going to assume Kimberly is single. If she’s not single, the first thing she needs to do is sit down with her partner along with a copy of all of their bills and the suggestions in this post and come up with a game plan they can approach together.

First of all, it’s absolutely the right move to sit down at the end of the month and review your spending. Simply knowing where your money goes can help you figure out some very simple things to do to improve your personal finance situation.

That being said, I think Kimberly’s problem could be a very common one. It’s due to the fact that the statement at the end of the month can only provide so much data.

Take ATM use, for example. If you stop by an ATM and withdraw some cash, you’re suddenly finding yourself with money that can be spent without any real paper trail. If you want to keep track of what you spent that money on at the end of the month, you have to keep the record. Your bank statement won’t be able to help you a bit. Counter withdrawals from a bank have the same problem, as does “extra” cash taken off of your debit card when you make a purchase with it.

To put it simply, whenever you spend cash, there is no paper trail unless you create that trail yourself. Your bank and credit card statements can’t keep track of your cash for you – and if you use cash quite often, you’ll find such statement use pretty much impossible.

You have two choices here.

On one hand, you can change your habits and stop using cash. If you rely on your bank card for most of your purchases, your statement becomes your paper trail for you. It will identify, at the very least, where all of your purchases took place, which, for me, is usually good enough.

On the other hand, you can start keeping a money diary. Just pick up a small notebook and keep it on hand. Whenever you spend money for any reason, jot down the date, the amount, and what it was in your pocket notebook. This might not catch everything (you might just forget about it sometimes), but if you have most of your spending in there as an entry, it can often create the picture you need if used hand-in-hand with your statements.

Which solution is better? It really depends on your comfort level. Try the one that seems the most appealing to you and see if it works. If it doesn’t, try the other one.

Another problem that might be causing this is poorly-worded entries on the bank statement and/or the credit card statement. If Kimberly can’t decipher what some of the entries mean, the data is useless.

If you find yourself with a lot of entries that should have meaning, but do not, you may want to seek assistance with reading your statement. If you still have trouble, you should consider seeking another financial institution. Such entries will always cause you trouble – and they certainly don’t need to be vague or unclear.

Good luck! You’re on the right path to taking control of your finances. Don’t let this little road bump deter you!

This is part of an ongoing series about how to trim the budget of the average American. As this series focuses on such broad-based tips, some will work for you and some will not. You’re invited to mention in the comments the tips that you found to be the most useful for inclusion in a comprehensive budget trimming guide at the conclusion of this series.

Cash Contributions (optional retirement and cash savings) – $1,821

The average American family contributes $150 a month to their retirement plans and/or to their personal savings – and that’s a commendable thing. In fact, this is one part of a budget that should grow bigger while other parts grow smaller.

So, rather than focusing on “trimming” this section of the budget, I’ll instead mention strong techniques for maximizing the “bang for the buck” one can get from their personal savings and retirement dollars.

Start (and maintain) a cash emergency fund. Having some cash in a savings account at your bank can make an enormous difference when an actual crisis comes about. If your car breaks down and you have $1,000 saved up in cash, it’s not a worry – but if you don’t, you’re going to be paying some serious finance charges. Saving a bit now for emergencies actually saves you a ton of money later on.

Find a bank that doesn’t bleed your savings with fees. ATM fees, maintenance fees, access fees – banks love these fees. It’s one way banks make money. Of course, some banks put fewer fees on the backs of their customers – and if your bank is loading you down, you can find financial benefits from finding a better bank.

Open a Roth IRA. For most people (those earning under $100,000 a year, roughly), the Roth IRA is a great way to start saving for retirement, even if you don’t have much to save. It’s easy to set one up through Vanguard or Fidelity or your investment house of choice. They’ll just take a bit of money from your checking or savings account each month and invest it for you for your retirement. Then, when you’re 59 1/2, it’s all yours – tax free.

If you’re unsure of your retirement investments, choose a “target retirement” fund. If you’re trying to piece through complex and confusing investment choices in your retirement plan and can’t make heads or tails of it, a “target retirement” plan is usually the best choice for you. It automatically maximizes your risk when you’re young – keeping you heavy in stocks – and then scales back to more safe investments when you get closer to retirement. It does the leg work so you don’t have to.

Automate as much of your savings as possible. Automatic savings plans make it incredibly easy to start saving. Simply instruct your bank to take a small amount from your checking account and put it into your savings account (even if they’re at different banks) each week. You won’t miss $10, but at the end of the year, it’s turned into $520.

Set up savings plans today for your big goals tomorrow. Dreaming of taking your whole family to Disneyworld in a few summers? Start saving now. Set up a savings account at an online bank and instruct the bank to take $40 from your checking account a week. In two and a half years, you’ll have $5,000 for that trip. You won’t have to go into debt to do the things you want to do – and starting now means you only have to spend lunch money each week to get there.

Look for a bank that offers a strong interest rate on savings – and keep much of your savings there. You don’t have to keep your savings at the same bank as your checking account. You need good customer service and low fees for your checking account. For savings, the interest rate matters a lot more. Shop around and find an account that offers a great interest rate, then open a savings account there. Not only will your money earn more, but you’ll find it’s much easier to save if it’s not easily accessible at the ATM with the card in your pocket.

Lock up some of your savings in CDs. If you have quite a bit of savings – more than a couple months’ worth of living expenses – consider putting the extras into CDs. CDs – certificates of deposit – are basically like special savings accounts with your bank. In exchange for agreeing to not touch the money for a certain period of time (say, a year), the bank gives you a much better rate of return on your money. If you don’t need that cash right away, put some of that extra cash into CDs and earn a little more with it.

I want your help! In the comments, please let me know which of the tips you find most useful for trimming these costs. I’ll include the top choices in a comprehensive budget trimming guide at the conclusion of the series.

We all did it at the beginning of our financial lives. We grew up. We moved out. We opened accounts at a bank on our own, quite often a different bank than the one used by our parents.

And we had to figure it out. How should we pick a bank? How do we move the money over? What should we put in our checking account? Our savings account? What are these CD things?

Michael writes in:

I’m a student, just trying to firm up my financial situation after having read your blog. For the last several years, I’ve used Washington Mutual largely because my parents had an account there but since being taken over by Chase, customer service has gone downhill, and the interest rate on my savings account is ridiculously low.

I’m looking at having an interest-bearing checking account and a savings account at different banks, to maximize my savings. However, how easy is it to transfer money from an account at one bank to one at another? Also, I’ve seen money market accounts, savings accounts, and no penalty CDs? What’s the difference, and how would you allocate money between them?

My first comment would be that I would value customer service strongly at the bank where I held my checking account, but view it as more of a secondary factor at the bank where I held my savings account. The bank with the checking account will handle the vast majority of your transactions for you, while the savings account bank will just handle a small number. So, when you evaluate your checking account bank, ask around and Google for information on their customer service.

Transferring Money Between Accounts
How does transferring money between accounts at different banks work? If a bank features online banking, it’s usually just as easy as logging on and requesting such a transfer. Most likely, if you’re seeking a high-interest savings account, you’ll be getting an account that’s managed primarily online, as most of the best interest rates are offered by online banks such as ING Direct, HSBC Direct, and so on.

In those cases, the online account is often “linked” to your checking account. That means you record the information about your checking account (the account number and the bank’s routing number, which you can get from them upon request or often simply from their website or from Google. Once that’s set up, you will be able to initiate transactions either way – both from checking to savings and from savings to checking – with just a few mouse clicks.

Such transactions are done electronically and usually take around two business days to complete.

Choices for Savings
Michael also wondered about several different options for saving his money. Let’s look at them.

Savings accounts are the default choice. Savings accounts allow you to deposit money as you please and withdraw money up to six times a month. Savings accounts usually have a fixed rate of return that doesn’t change all that often. Usually, high interest savings accounts change their rates whenever the Federal Reserve changes rates, so if you hear about Ben Bernanke on the news, pay attention to your rates.

Money market accounts sometimes offer a higher rate of return than straight savings accounts, but the rate of return on a money market account is variable and is quite often not as high as the online offerings. It changes based on the state of the money market – to put it simply, the money you put into that account is invested by the bank in highly secure government investments. Those investments change rates regularly (based on what the government is offering at a given time, which is usually related to the demand of the market) and thus the rates you get in the account go up and down. On (extremely) rare occasions, money markets will return nothing at all or just a tiny, tiny fraction of a percent – at other times, they’ll blow savings accounts away. Most of the positive legacy of money market accounts comes from the early 1980s, when they returned money hand over fist because treasuries had absurdly high rates of return.

CDs are much like savings accounts, except they have a higher rate of return. The big difference is that you can’t actually touch the money you’re saving during the life of the CD. So, if you picked up a one year CD with a sweet interest rate that’s much higher than your savings or money market options, you wouldn’t be able to touch that money for a year without a stiff penalty. The “no fee” part you mention is something that’s offered by a lot of banks today – the days of charging fees to buy a CD are rolling into the past.

Splitting Up the Money
So what should Michael do?

In my experience, money market accounts and online savings accounts are usually very comparable. If anything, I’ve consistently seen online savings accounts offer a slightly larger return over the years I’ve been following them, but money market accounts at your local bank will likely trounce their savings account rates.

When compared rates between maoney market accounts and online savings accounts are close (say, within half a percent or so), I generally stick with banks that have a good customer service reputation, but I don’t view it as being as important as it is with my primary bank that holds my checking account and handles most of my transactions. Rate-hopping (or rate arbitrage, as some call it) isn’t worth the effort, in my opinion, unless you’re moving around high five-figure or six-figure amounts, in which case I wouldn’t have a large portion of that in a savings account.

What about CDs? CDs can be a really great way to tack on a bit more return for your savings, but it’s often easy to get caught up in CDs and put more of your savings into it than you should. I would make sure that I had a healthy emergency fund in my cash savings (a savings account or a money market account). If you’re single, this would probably be about two months’ worth of living expenses. The ability to just grab cash when you need it to deal with an emergency is vital.

The big question I’d ask myself is why I would want to put money in CDs. This goes beyond just earning a higher rate of return – if you just want that, put the money in a CD that will mature within a year and keep recycling it (unless you have a year or more worth of living expenses in your savings account, then you can shoot for longer ones). Are you saving for a particular goal? When do you expect that goal to come to fruition? If you have a goal in mind, buy the highest rate CD that matures before that goal.

Of course, if you’re finding that you want to get more aggressive with saving for goals, you can begin to look into index funds… but that’s another story entirely.

Good luck, Michael.

One of the biggest things I encourage people to look for when they open a bank account is that the bank is FDIC insured. Most banks operating in the United States offer this insurance. In an era where people are more than a little worried about bank failures and the like, FDIC insurance is vital.

But what exactly is it?

Charlie writes in:

What exactly is FDIC insurance? How does it work? [A local bank] went under recently and seems to have been bought out by another bank and from what I understand the accounts are intact. Is that FDIC insurance at work?

(I edited out the bank in Charlie’s question for privacy reasons.)

What Is FDIC Insurance?
FDIC insurance refers to insurance policies created by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which is an organization wholly run by the government of the United States. The FDIC sells insurance policies to banks which insures the checking and savings accounts at those banks against the failure of those banks. Thus, when you open an account with a bank, that bank purchases insurance on that account for you from the FDIC.

FDIC insurance covers checking accounts, savings accounts, certificates of deposit, money market accounts, and cashier’s checks. It does not cover stocks, bonds, mutual funds, money market accounts, US treasuries, safe deposit box contents, or other such items.

Most banks that operate in the United States buy this insurance. When they do, they’re required to display the FDIC logo on signs in their business as well as on their websites.

FDIC insurance insures deposits up to $250,000 per depositor. This means that if your bank fails, the first $250,000 in your account is insured by the FDIC and will be returned to you in the event of a bank failure.

What Happens If My FDIC Insured Bank Goes Under?
If a bank that offers FDIC insurance becomes insolvent, the FDIC takes over that bank and all of the accounts held there. One of two things then happens.

In one type of takeover, called the “purchase and assumption” method, an already-existing bank takes over the accounts of that bank as well as some (or all) of the loans that bank has given out to customers. This purchase is usually done quickly. For you, the customer, this means that one morning, you’ll wake up and your bank account will be with a new bank. This is what happened when Wachovia failed and was taken over by Wells Fargo, for example.

In another type of takeover, called the “payout” method, the FDIC liquidates everything that’s left in the bank and then issues payouts for insured amounts to customers. So, if you have less than $250,000 in your accounts, you’d receive the full amount – if you had more, you’d just receive $250,000.

In either case, the process is really straightforward, usually involving minimal hassle from the customer. At most, you’ll simply need to open an account at a different bank (if your bank isn’t bought out or if you don’t like the new bank).

What If My Bank Doesn’t Have FDIC Insurance?
If your bank fails, you’re out of luck. You get nothing at all.

This is the reason why I encourage people to use banks that provide FDIC insurance. Luckily, almost all banks in the United States do offer it, but it’s worth checking just to make sure.