Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge

Yes indeedy. I did it.

I am cheesed off with Wachovia for charging me to download from within Quicken, but not so cheesed off as to kill that account. I really do feel more comfortable with a brick and mortar bank locally. So this means my Philadelphia based checking bank is going the way of the dinosaur. I feel so bad because I opened that account in 2003 at the bank branch I used to go when I was a little kid with my piggy bank. I still think of it as my bank, even today, though I don’t even take cash out of their ATM’s when I go home. Screw the sentimentality, let’s talk brass tacks on why I chose ING.

1) I already have a relationship with them: I really didn’t want to go through the annoyance of learning a new GUI with Virtual Bank or NetBank. It was extremely easy for me as an existing account holder to click a few clicks and open a checking account.

2) It’s paying 4.00% APY: My old checking account paid no interest at all and was free with direct deposit. Seems to me, for the $1000+ deposits I would make there for my fixed expenses, I might as well earn some interest on the float while the funds were still in the account.

3) It uses Quicken! Sounds crazy, since all banks pretty much have an interface with Quicken. But for some reason my old bank in PA was really behind the times on this and did not integrate well with it. I had to get crazy stuff set up by calling a rep, etc. It was phenomenally stupid, so I didn’t bother with transaction download. Because this is a low-traffic account for fixed expenses. I could pretty much balance it once or twice a month with Quicken’s reconcile feature and it would work just fine.

4) My girlfriend did it first: One of my local friends was asking me about it. I told her I really didn’t know much about it, but then she decided to do it because of Reason #2. She seems pretty happy with it and has no serious complaints other than the fact the ATM card hasn’t arrived yet. But for me, I won’t even use the ATM card since I have my local brick-and-mortar bank which is convenient enough to home and office.

5) I think there is a hard credit pull: There is an overdraft protection feature that offers you X dollars of credit. I am pretty certain this means they’ve done a hard credit inquiry. Yes, I realize this possibility may drop my credit score, but I don’t really care since I haven’t opened a credit account since June 2006 and have no plans to open another for any reason whatsoever in the next 2 years. EDIT: Per Reader Dave, there is no hard credit pull, via the ING FAQ. THANKS DAVE!!

I haven’t done anything yet with it. I am in the process of transferring over my direct deposit from work. I did set up some of my regular outgoing expenses and that was fairly easy. I don’t like going entirely paperless, but I don’t think this transition will kill me, and perhaps it will help me tame “the paper tiger” around the house. I keep too much paper crap and it’s bugging me. I actually spent some time de-cluttering the mess on my desk and I am happier as I write this post.

PS - I just noticed that the DST change has effected the posting of my posts since March 11th. I just added an hour to the time on this post to reflect the accurate time.