New Financial Institution
I have decided that I am going to open a savings account at a new financial institution. There a few reasons that I am going to do this. The first reason is that my current financial institution is too far away for me to use on a consistent basis. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for me to drive the 21 miles round trip to make a deposit there. That’s about a 40 minute trip to the bank and back. This bank is directly north of Seattle, and I hardly ever travel north of the city. This makes it especially inconvenient because I have to make a special trip to the bank just to take care of my business. With gas as expensive as it is, it is almost worth taking a hit on the ATM fees just to avoid the trip.
Instead of take the hit on the ATM fees, I figured that I would just open a regular savings account with ATM access at an institution that is located down town. This would help me in my new savings strategy. My new savings strategy is cash only. The plan is to transfer somewhere between $100-$150 a week from my current checking account to this new one. At the end of the week I would put back any cash that I didn’t use and then take out an additional $100-$150 for the next week.
I went downtown today to look at a few different institutions. The one that I was thinking about going with, Washington Federal Savings, did not have an ATM outside their building, so that pretty much defeated the purpose of joining them. Next, I went to Evergreen Bank, but they require you to have a $300 minimum balance in their savings in order to avoid the $8 fee. That didn’t sound like much fun to me, so I decided not to sign up for either one.
So I didn’t accomplish my mission, but here comes the ironic part. When I got home today I had my monthly statement waiting for me from my institution. When I opened it up there was a flyer inside of it. I assumed it was your typical refinance your loan flyer. When I took a closer look I found that it was an advertisement for a service called MoneyPass. MoneyPass is an ATM service that many banks have begun to use in order to expand their ATM network. The best thing about MoneyPass is that it is FREE! In downtown Seattle, the banks that are a part of this network are US Bank, Watermark Credit Union, and Northern Trust. Based on punching in a few random zip codes around the area, it seems like US Bank is the only major bank that uses the MoneyPass network, and the rest are small institutions.
This is the first time that I have heard of MoneyPass and if it becomes as popular as I think it will, I imagine people will start to see it around a little more often. It is a great idea and a no brainer for people who have been paying $2-$3 per transaction. According to the MoneyPass website, these are the main benefits to their service:
- No surcharge at ATMs that participate in MoneyPass
- Access to thousands of ATMs across the nation
- Convenient, accessible locations that include bank and credit union branches, convenience stores, grocery stores, restaurants, discount retailers and many more
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