{"id":79,"date":"2012-01-09T13:21:03","date_gmt":"2012-01-09T18:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xkahn.zoned.net\/blog\/?p=79"},"modified":"2012-01-09T13:21:03","modified_gmt":"2012-01-09T18:21:03","slug":"getting-rid-of-bank-of-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xkahn.zoned.net\/blog\/2012\/01\/09\/getting-rid-of-bank-of-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting rid of Bank of America"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been a Bank of America customer for 12 years or so, ever since I moved to Boston from New York. I picked them because they were everywhere, and I didn&#8217;t ever want to switch banks again. When the big &#8220;Bank Transfer Day&#8221; came, I decided to switch banks too. I was annoyed about the plans for the new $5\/month fee, but I wasn&#8217;t all that happy with Bank of America anyway.<\/p>\n<p>I decided on <a title=\"Cambridge Savings Bank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridgesavings.com\">Cambridge Savings Bank<\/a> because they are close by, they refund <strong>all<\/strong> ATM fees other banks charge you, and they pay 2% interest on checking account balances. (BTW &#8212; there are many banks that pay <em>more<\/em> than 2% interest on checking accounts. Check out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.depositaccounts.com\/checking\/reward-checking-accounts.html\">depositaccounts.com<\/a> to find banks near you. Don&#8217;t forget to change the filter options to show local banks and credit unions.)<\/p>\n<p>However, I still don&#8217;t like switching banks, so I searched around for questions to ask a potential bank <strong>before<\/strong> you open an account. Here are the questions I came up with:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Fee Questions:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Do you have overdraft fees and how can you avoid them?<\/li>\n<li>What fees are there for checking accounts?<\/li>\n<li>What fees are there for savings accounts?<\/li>\n<li>Are there fees to transfer money to\/from my account?<\/li>\n<li>Do you charge debit card fees?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Convenience Questions:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How many ATMs are available in my area?<\/li>\n<ul>\n<li>Which ATMS accept deposits?<\/li>\n<li>How long does it take for a deposit to clear?<\/li>\n<li>Are large deposits delayed? How much is a large deposit? How long is the delay?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<li>When we travel to&#8230; \u00c2\u00a0XXX how can we get money and are there fees?<\/li>\n<ul>\n<li>XXX == countries and states and regions you typically travel to<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<li>How do we make deposits?<\/li>\n<ul>\n<li>Bank ATMs? Smartphone app? Bank network ATMs? Local branch? Non-local branch? Affiliate bank branch? Computer application with a scanner? Mail?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>When things go wrong:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What happens if we lose a debit card?<\/li>\n<li>What are your procedures if a card is stolen?<\/li>\n<li>Do you look out for potentially fraudulent charges?<\/li>\n<li>What happens if we become overdrawn?<\/li>\n<li>How do charge disputes work?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Rates:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How do I qualify for your best rate?<strong id=\"internal-source-marker_0.6117261899635196\"><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Anyway, it helped us choose our bank. Hopefully it will help someone else too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been a Bank of America customer for 12 years or so, ever since I moved to Boston from New York. I picked them because they were everywhere, and I didn&#8217;t ever want to switch banks again. When the big &#8220;Bank Transfer Day&#8221; came, I decided to switch banks too. I was annoyed about the\u2026 <span class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/xkahn.zoned.net\/blog\/2012\/01\/09\/getting-rid-of-bank-of-america\/\">Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xkahn.zoned.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xkahn.zoned.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xkahn.zoned.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xkahn.zoned.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xkahn.zoned.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/xkahn.zoned.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82,"href":"https:\/\/xkahn.zoned.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions\/82"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xkahn.zoned.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xkahn.zoned.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xkahn.zoned.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}