Banking - The Finance Gourmet

Are High Interest Checking Accounts Worth It?

Written by Finance Gourmet Leave a Comment

There are a lot of high-interest checking accounts out there these days, but is a high-interest checking account worth it?

The answer depends not only on how you use your checking account, but also the details of each account. As is so often the case with personal finance, the devil is in the fine print details.

Check out my Acorns review.

High-Interest Checking Qualifications

The first thing you want to look at is how to qualify for a high-interest checking account. At most banks, getting the highest interest rate on your checking account requires you to make a minimum number of debit card transactions. That is because the bank earns money on each one of those transactions. In a way, with every debit card purchase you make, you earn the money the bank uses to pay you the higher interest.

You also are usually required to get a direct deposit into the checking account each month. For many people, the only direct deposit they could get on a monthly basis is their paycheck. The idea is that by requiring a direct deposit, the bank is motivating you to actually use your high-interest checking account as your usual checking account. This is to keep you from opening a new bank account with high-interest checking only to earn the high interest, which doesn’t generate fees for the bank.

High-Interest Balance Limits

Too many people get seduced by a shiny, high rate on their checking account without reading all the details. The vast majority of true high-interest checking accounts have a limit on how much money actually earns that high interest rate. For example, the Greater Nevada Credit Union has a high-interest checking account called Aspire Checking that earns 3.0%, which is way higher than most savings or money market accounts earn. However, that 3 percent is limited to only the first $15,000 of balances. Everything above that earns a much more normal 0.05% interest rate.

Typically, the higher the rate, the smaller the balance that qualifies for the rate. At the Gateway Metro Federal Credit Union, you can earn a whopping 6.02% APY on one of their checking account products. The catch is that rate only counts on the first $1,500 in balances. In other words, you would come out ahead earning the lower 3.0% interest rate on $15,000 than the much higher 6.02% interest rate on just $1,500.

Is Credit Karma legit or a scam?

How To Use High Interest Checking Accounts

As always, I recommend doing the actual math before doing anything. Exactly how much interest is 3% on $15,000, for example? It comes out to $450 per year. Is it worth it to jump through all the hoops for $450? Only you can answer that question.

The best way to use a high-interest checking account is to just put the amount of funds in that allow you to earn the high interest, and put the rest of your money elsewhere, like a money market account, or even a good savings account. However, that’s what all of those rules and qualifications are for, to make you actually USE the account, and not just soak up the highest interest rate possible.

At many banks and credit unions, you can transfer money between accounts online, for free. To maximize your interest earnings, take advantage of that by putting excess funds where they earn more money, usually a money market account, especially if you have a higher balance since most financial institutions pay more interest on higher balances.

Barclaycard Rewards MasterCard Review

Written by Finance Gourmet 1 Comment

The folks at Barclay Card are nothing if not persistent. A buddy of mine is overseas. I picked up his mail, and there are at least a dozen Barclaycard MasterCard mailers in here. It got me wondering, is the Barclaycard Rewards MasterCard good or is the Barclaycard MasterCard a waste of money? Without further ado, here is the Barclaycard Rewards MasterCard review.

Barclaycard Rewards MasterCard Reviews

The Barclayscard MasterCard rewards card is issued by Barclays Bank Delaware. Barclays Bank Deleware was originally Juniper Bank, but was bought by big British bank Barclays in 2004. There is no actual bank, it only issues credit cards in the U.S. In addition to the Barclaycard Rewards MasterCard, the bank issues co-branded cards, such as an American Airlines credit card, the JetBlue credit card, and a Priceline.com rewards card.

As always, different customers can get different terms and conditions for the same cards, but in this case, it looks the Barclaycard Rewards MasterCard is setup as a points rewards credit card.

For every $1 you spend on gas, utility, and grocery stores, you earn 2 point. Note, that Target and Walmart are specifically excluded as grocery stores for the purposes of 2x points.

Then, you earn one point for each dollar spent everywhere else.

Barclaycard Rewards MasterCard Redeem Points

Without a Barclaycard Rewards MasterCard catalog, it’s difficult to tell just how worthwhile the points are when it comes time to actually redeem Barclaycard rewards points. However, even though I don’t actually have the Barclaycard Rewards Catalog, the mailing does state that you can redeem the points for statement credits, deposits to checking and savings accounts, and gift cards. The starting rate for Barclays Card rewards point redemptions is 1,000 for $10.

That’s a pretty standard point redeem schedule for most cards. For example both Capital One card rewards, and Citibank rewards use similar pricing tiers. So, based on the 2x points earned, that would make the Barclaycard MasterCard a good deal, but based on the 1x points, that would make it average.

The amount of points you can earn is not limited, which is a good thing. A recent sneaky trick of fine print for some credit card scams is to limit the amount of points you can earn each quarter, or each year, particularly from higher earning categories.

As an added sweetener, it offers “free online access to your FICO credit score.” The fine print does not say which FICO score it shows, nor how often your credit score is updated.

For non-FICO scores, there are plenty of free ways to get a free VantageScore from companies like Credit Karma, WalletHub, or Credit Sesame.

Barclaycard Rewards MasterCard Reviews Terms and Conditions

Since the Barclayscard points are an average offer, a good review of Barclaycard Rewards card comes down to the terms and conditions.

There is no annual fee for the Barclaycard card, so that’s a point in it its favor.

There is an introductory interest rate of 0% for 12 months, but after that, the interest rate is crazy high though. The current rate shows 23.24%, but that’s based on a 3.5 percent Prime Rate. The rate is variable, and is calculated at Prime plus 19.74%. The cash advance rate is even higher calculated at Prime + 21.99%.

Balance transfers are eligible for the 0% rate for 12 months, but there is an upfront balance transfer fee of 3 percent, so you aren’t getting off that easy.

Foreign transactions have a 3% transaction fee, so this card is right out for international use.

BarclayCard Deal or No Deal

My understanding is that Barclaycard is primarily marketed to those with lower credit scores, so that might explain the very high interest rates. Obviously, if you are going to carry a balance, the Barclaycard Rewards MasterCard is not a good card for you.

If, on the other hand, you have some damaged credit, and you won’t be carrying a balance, a no annual fee card with 2x points for grocery stores and gas might make the Barclaycard a good card for you.

Overall, for my Barclaycard Rewards Mastercard review, I’d have to give the Barclaycard Rewards MasterCard an average, or 3-star review.

Round-Up Savings Plans

Written by Finance Gourmet Leave a Comment

Savings is really easy. You just spend less than you have, and voila! Savings!

Of course, talking about it, and doing it, are two different things. Recently, there have been several new products that offer to help make your savings easier. There are good reasons for this. Automatically saving money without you having to do anything is one of the most successful ways to save money.

Some people have been using the IRS to do automatic savings for years. The idea is simple. You give your employer a W-4 Form with less deductions on it than you actually have, and they take more money out of your paycheck than necessary. Since the money comes out before you get it, you never have a chance to spend it, or even miss it. After a year, all of that extra money has built up into a sizable amount that you get back as a tax refund when you file your taxes.

The disadvantages to this method, are also its advantages. Changing your W4 is often difficult making adjusting your savings troublesome and time consuming. Of course, this also means it isn’t worth it to make changes just to have a little extra cash this weekend. Withdrawing the money early is all but impossible. Of course, this means that you won’t spend it impulsively either. The most common disadvantage financial professionals cite is that you are essentially giving an interest-free loan to the government. Then again, the average savings account pays so little interest these days, that the advantages of automatic, untouchable savings outweigh the tiny amount of cash you might earn.

How Does Round Up Purchases for Savings Work?

The idea of the round-up for savings account attempts to mimic the automatic nature of the IRS savings technique, along with the “you won’t know it’s missing,” aspect, while still giving you access to your money, and even paying interest.

Some companies like the Digit App, or the Acorns App will automatically take money and save it for you. Here is my review of Digit app, and my review of Acorns app.

These days, banks are getting in on the action. They have some advantages over other automatic savings services. First, you already have an account with them, so there is no reason to sign up for anything new, or pay any additional fees. The other advantage is that they have actual access to your transactions and therefore can offer the service slightly differently.

All of these round up and save the change services use big bold marketing that describes the process like this:

You buy something
They round up the purchase to the next dollar
They take that money and put it into your savings account.

None of them actually do it this way because constantly transferring a few cents every time is prohibitively expensive and difficult. It is still a legitimate service, and definitely not a scam, but the mechanics might not match up with your expectations.

Acorns, for example, keeps track of your ongoing charges, and once you have accumulated $5 worth of rounding-up THEN it transfers $5 to your Acorns investment account. Statistically speaking, every 10 to 11 transactions should trigger a $5 transfer. So, it might be more accurate to say that every time you buy approximately five things, they will transfer $5 to a savings account.

Your local bank or credit union may do the same thing, but they may be able to do an even smaller and quicker transfer because of the intimate nature with your account.

For example, a local credit union in Denver offers a round-up savings account where it takes every charge you make on your debit card, and rounds it up. Again, that does not mean that if you make 11 transactions, there will be 11 transfers of less than $1. Instead, they make a single transfer at the end of your day of your total round ups for the day. This is a lot closer to what those How It Works graphics look.

In fact, unless you check your account during banking hours, this version of Round Up Savings comes very close to the real thing.

Difference Between Round Up Savings and Acorns

The difference between Round Up Savings type of accounts and Acorns type of accounts is subtle. Assuming you manage your funds sporadically, or if you have plenty of cash flow, it won’t really matter. However, if you are the type of person who checks your account daily and manage everything down to the penny, the difference can matter.

Consider this:

You buy a bagel for $2.38. Your “round up” should be $0.62.

Fair enough.

If that is all you buy that day, the bank version of Round Up mentioned above will transfer $0.62 to your account at the end of business.

The Acorns type service will do nothing.

Let’s just say for the ease of example that you do this every day, and spend no other money.

That means that the bank will transfer $0.62 every day, and your balance will drop by $3 every day.

But, with the Acorns version, nothing will happen for 8 days, except for $2.38 will come out of your account. On the 9th day, Acorns will transfer an extra $5.58 from your checking account.

Again, if you keep a $400 cushion in your checking account, then who cares? But, if you are the kind of person who checks to see exactly how much money you have left to spend each morning, this could be jarring.

Either way, automatically saving money is a great idea. Although to make real progress, you need to save more than a few pennies here and there. So, either link one of these services to your primary spending card and monitor your account closely, or just do the “pay yourself first” thing and transfer $250 (or whatever works for you) into your savings the day you get paid. Missing money is missing money, no matter how you slice it.

Beware of any additional fees or charges. A service like this is not likely to be worth even a $1 per month service charge. Find a free version of the service if you want to save your money this way.

WalletHub Review Is It Legit or Scam Free Credit Reports

Written by Finance Gourmet 4 Comments

WalletHub reviews are mostly positive, but let’s take a deeper look into exactly who WalletHub is, and what they do.

WalletHub is an online financial service that offers personal finance tools for users. The main offering is a daily free credit score, and the related free credit report. After taking a close look, here is my WalletHub review.

Is WalletHub Legit, or is WalletHub a scam?

In order for a company to pull and use your credit report, and then calculate a credit score, it will need to collect personal identifying information. This is exactly the kind of information you don’t want to be handing off to a scammer, so the first item of business with a company like this is determining if Wallet Hub is legitimate or not. So, the first step of any WalletHub review needs to be finding out who they are.

WalletHub is an offering by a company called Evolution Finance. The company was founded in 2008, according to Bloomberg, and has been mentioned numerous times in the media. The original product was a credit card comparison website called CardHub. You can still get there if you try, but most clicks on CardHub.com will end up redirecting you to WalletHub, suggesting that WalletHub is the company’s main product going forward.

In other words, if WalletHub is a scam, it’s a very long con, across two websites. In this case, we can probably proceed under the assumption that WalletHub is legit as a company.

Just because it is a real company, however, doesn’t mean that it isn’t a scam. There are plenty of companies out there whose entire business model relies on playing just inside the legal boundaries. The most common free credit score scam, or free credit report scam, is the subscription to something in order to get the “free” stuff. For example, this Credit Check Total review shows how they offer three credit reports and credit scores for just $1, but in the fine print, you are actually enrolling in a 7-day trial that automatically becomes a recurring $29.95 per month subscription.

The good news is that WalletHub does not ask for a credit card. There is no subscription, and no ongoing fee. The service really is free to you. So far, this WalletHub review is going pretty well.

How Does WalletHub Really Work?

Now that we know WalletHub isn’t just an elaborate ruse to steal our Social Security number, it’s time to find out what is really going on.

The big splashy graphics say that you get a credit report daily, along with 24/7 credit monitoring, and, of course, a free credit score. So, how does Wallet Hub really work?

Sign up requires your first and last name, as well as an email address. At the email address stage, clicking “Continue” also agrees you to the terms and conditions for the site. (We’ll get to that in a minute.) Next you setup a password, and then it asks for your address. I hate giving out my address, but they may need it to verify your identity for a credit report.

Next up, is a potential deal-breaker for some. It wants you cell phone number in order to “send important credit alerts and improve account security.” I don’t like the sound of this, but that is up to you. Other free credit score services like Credit Karma don’t require a cell phone number.

Once you are signed up, you do get a free credit report. The credit report itself comes from TransUnion. As you may know, there are three major credit reporting bureaus, and TransUnion is one of the, so the credit report is real enough.

Check out my Acorns review here.

Of course, WalletHub has to make money somehow, and that somehow, is that they sell your information to lenders, as well as advertises offers to you that they would get some sort of kickback or commission on if you signed up. This is the relevant part of the Terms and Conditions.

4.5.1. I understand that I am providing written instructions in accordance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and other applicable law for Evolution Finance to obtain and exchange information about me with third parties at any time for so long as I have an active WalletHub account. This includes but is not limited to a copy of my consumer credit report and score from consumer reporting agencies as well as exchanging credit data with lenders to identify offers that you may be prequalified for. You also agree that Evolution Finance may use and analyze your information, including but not limited to: (a) providing you a better experience; (b) providing you with customized recommendations and general information about you; (c) serving you targeted offers and other communication based on your information; (d) running statistical analysis; and (e) aggregating your data with other users data and publishing the results in a way that cannot be linked back to you.

So, basically, they can (and will) tell credit card companies, or other lenders about you and your creditworthiness. Those lenders may then send you mail, email, or maybe even call you, with offers for loans or credit cards.

Is WalletHub Credit Score Real?

The main credit score used by virtually all lenders is a FICO credit score calculated by a company called Fair Issacs. For most people, a FICO is what they mean when they are talking about a real credit score. However, there are others. They are just less commonly used by lenders.

One of the “other credit scores” is called a VantageScore, which is a credit score product jointly created by the three credit bureaus. These scores are often derisively referred to as FAKO scores in the personal finance community because they aren’t used often by lenders. In other words, the credit score you get from WalletHub is unlikely to exactly match the score your lender would pull when deciding whether or not to give you a loan. (See here for more information on credit score differences.)

Here is my recent Digits review.

This does not make WalletHub a scam. In fact, these VantageScores are now offered by numerous financial institutions, as well as online personal finance offerings. For example, Capital One rewards cards offer a credit score screen that shows a VantageScore 3.0.

The important thing to understand is that these credit scores are great for monitoring changes in your score, even if they aren’t necessarily a good way to see what your actual score is. If you sign up for WalletHub, remember that if your score goes up or down, that is likely very real, and will happen on your FICO score as well. However, if you are banking on a 720 score to get a certain loan or rate, showing a 720 at WalletHub may, or may not, correlate with a 720 when your lender pulls a specific FICO score.

WalletHub Recommendation

If this is the first time you’ve heard of an online company offering free credit scores, this may all be new to you. Otherwise, this WalletHub review probably sounds pretty familiar. There are several companies that use this, free credit report, free VantageScore credit score, offer in exchange for getting commissions or selling mailing lists to lenders.

Most of these services offer the same things like credit monitoring (you’ll get an email if the computer notices a change to your credit report), which is very useful.

WalletHub says it offers “daily” updates, whereas other services offer weekly, or monthly updates. However, creditors don’t update daily, so I’m not completely sure how much of an advantage that is over time. I suppose if you are making a change, and want to see the effect as soon as possible, it may be useful. There are also some useful financial tools and a user community.

In the end, my recommendation is that you find one of these free credit report, free credit monitoring sites, that you like and sign up. That way, you get a way to occasionally look at your credit report beyond the one free credit report per year thing, and you get an email if someone starts opening credit cards in your name. However, I wouldn’t bother signing up for more than one service. They tend to all offer essentially the same services, and signing up for multiple sites just puts your financial information in more places to be hacked, lost, or stolen.

Whether you choose WalletHub, or another service, is mostly a matter of personal preference.

WalletHub Reviews Disclosure

While I’m ready and willing to sell out at anytime for a trip to Vegas or some cool electronic gadgets, I did not receive any compensation, nor any offers of compensation, in exchange for this review. None of the links are affiliate links, and I have no financial or other relationship of any kind with WalletHub. I do not get paid in any way if you sign up for WalletHub. Any ads displayed on this article, or anywhere else on this website were generated automatically by Google’s AdSense program, and are not endorsed or chosen by the author. All information was gathered from publicly available sources.