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Good Bank Accounts?
mensch-o-matic
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm going to be heading off for college soon and i was wondering if anyone knew any good banks for students, especially travelling ones. the bank of america near my house has a neat student banking program (no overdraft fees, no minimum balance, free anti-identity theft protection) but if there's another bank around with a better deal i'd love to hear about it. links to those sites would be appreciated! thanks
mensch-o-matic on
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Of course YMMV. Credit Unions are another thing to look at.
Oh, and definitely do the online banking thing. Makes life very easy.
Usually, the standard rates are always better long-term than a student plan. They also have better returns on savings, cheaper checks (or often free), plus very limited fees on a global basis. Remember that "Student Plans" are just another way for Banks to make money, usually by exploiting with double or triple charges fees that new account holders generally make, as most Student Account holders are first time bankers.
Any of the major institutions are comparable. I've been with SunTrust, Bank of America, and Wachovia(now Wells Fargo). All are fairly comparable. Find out which bank will be the most convenient for you with the best offers and go with them. Shop about, if you will.
It may well have just been the bank I was working with (SunTrust). The University is huge, and only has SunTrust atms on campus (or anywhere near it, at the time. Going to an off-campus ATM (Suntrust or otherwise) equated a $5.00 fee. It was $7.00 if you went to another banks ATM (not counting the fee from that bank). In short, If I needed cash in a pinch I'd loose about $10.00 of a $20.00 bill to fees. This was only one of the issues. You got checks, a book of fifty, but to obtain more you had to pay a $40.00 ordering fee, plus a $5.00 pick up fee.
Overdrafting was "free" the first time, meaning that on your first offense they wouldn't charge you. However, should one of their fees go through while you had less than a 0 balance it nullified the free overdraft charges. If you had a 0 or lower balance for longer than 24 hours, you were charged a $20.00 fee. This would trigger a Overdraft fee of $30.00 per transaction (your initial plus the lack of coin for the fee places this at $60.00 minimum). So for Free overdraft protection, you would in essence be paying $80.00 minimum if you didn't replenish your account in 24 hours.
Then, to close a Student Account, you had to pay a $50.00 closing fee else you would rake up their overdraft charges from the 0 balance fine. To this day I have not paid this, and have this account open (7 years later) with $5.26 in the account (you get fined for having less than or equal to $5.00).
Not to mention, as the University and the bank has a deal going, any holds on one were transferred to the other. Library book late? ATM account is frozen, etc. Complete crap on Finals week.
Yes, all of this was in the packet they had me sign, across five pages of 6 point font. Other students in the area had similar experiences with the other major carriers. This may no longer be true, as all of the banks are hurting for business these days, but be sure to check everything before you opt in. Also: bring a magnifying glass.
dude, thats a problem with that particular bank not student accounts in general.
in general if its a name like HSBC or bank of america or citibank or wachovia or something that actually has a name worth mentioning, they aren't going to screw you over. they want you to carry your bank account with them over to when you graduate and get a high paying job so screwing you over is against their interest.
SunTrust is a Major bank in the S.E. US, comparable with Wachovia or WaMu in saturation for the region. At the time, the other banks (BoA, WaMu, Wachovia) has similar plans with similar fees. My roommates all had similar problems (with the exception being the guy working with the Navy Credit Union, those guys are hardcore).
My point is, regardless of how good it looks, the model in 1999-2003 was to make money via fees as the total deposits in student accounts is usually negligible. This might not be true now. Check to make sure before hand, what can it hurt?
Also, be sure to check the student rate, then the normal rates at another branch. Shop around, you are a customer, after all.
nope, starting out fresh
At one point banks were making deals with colleges to sign students up and basically link the checking account to the school. I know my student ID had a magnetic strip that made it also my ATM card through BB&T. Now though, you can go into a bank and basically say "I'm a student" and as long as you fall into the right age range (usually under 25) they give you a student account.
YMMV but this was very unprofessional and, from what others have told me, not too uncommon. Just be aware they have their share of issues, and their customer service sucks.
I wish I'd kept my University Federal Credit Union account though. It had all the features of the BofA account, fewer limitations, better rates (for savings or loans), and lower standards for lending to customers. It had sufficient ATMs locally, but not really outside the city.
Her phone or gas/electric bill was overcharged by a matter of two digits, causing all sorts of overdraft fees & everything else you could imagine.
The utility coming being a utility company wasn't eager to refund the money in any sort of timely fashion, and a month on she went to the bank to see about having the charges reversed. They were entirely unhelpful, to the point of stonewalling her - I started going in with her every few days to see if I could help, each time we'd be shunted off to a different manager, told we needed to speak to someone else, who would invariably tell us that they could do nothing, and/or to take it up with the utility company again. This shit went on for months before her father finally had his lawyer make a few calls to right the situation.
I would also consider looking at Citibank. This is the bank I will be switching to, since they actually have international branches in the place I will be moving to overseas, and it's a major bank like BofA.
Weaboo List
No account fees, free checks, a variable interest rate (at 0.75% right now, but was as high as 2% when things weren't so crap), and they reimburse all of your ATM fees (obviously, as they don't have Schwab ATMs!). Also, you can make deposits at any Schwab branch.
Pretty much the best thing ever.
and Schwab looks pretty neat, but not really for me