Bank Accounts - How Many Do You Have?

[calmloki]

15 banks; several B&M, the rest online for us. 27 accounts, 4 soon to be canceled. We have accounts with banks we expect to offer good CD rates, accounts with several "hub" banks linked to a number of the other banks and which have high daily/monthly ACH limits, accounts with banks with cheap, fast and easy wire transfer capability, and accounts with banks that offered rate or bonus specials or that were needed for a credit card bonus.. I clear out the deadwood every year after the taxes are done and hide the dead accounts in Quicken so we don't have to look at them.

Having rentals, making property loans, having summer and winter homes in different states, and maximizing bonus and interest return makes for a bunch of connections - I enjoy it though.

[Drake3287]

Sounds like I'm not alone. And for me this doesn't include various investment/pension accounts. I just seem to "collect" these different accounts which I guess is good because my cash investments tend to be laddered.

[audreyh1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JustCurious Not according to Fidelity... What is the Fidelity® Cash Management Account? The Fidelity® Cash Management Account is a brokerage account,1 for your everyday spending and short-term investing needs with all the benefits of a traditional checking account including: https://www.fidelity.com/cash-manage...gement-account

It’s a brokerage account wrapper around a bank account. The core cash position is kept in one or more FDIC insured bank accounts.

[Another Reader]

Seven on-line banks. Savings, money market and checking scattered among them
Three big banks with local offices. Multiple accounts with one.
Schwab checking from the old days when they paid decent interest
Fidelity cash management, not really used much

Over 15 accounts. What can I say, I'm a rate chaser...

[Cobra9777]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JustCurious Not according to Fidelity... What is the Fidelity® Cash Management Account? The Fidelity® Cash Management Account is a brokerage account,1 for your everyday spending and short-term investing needs with all the benefits of a traditional checking account including: https://www.fidelity.com/cash-manage...gement-account

Quote:

Originally Posted by audreyh1 It’s a brokerage account wrapper around a bank account. The core cash position is kept in one or more FDIC insured bank accounts.

I agree with audrey. The routing number for my Fidelity CMA points to UMB. Their name is printed on the checks, albeit a lot smaller than the giant Fidelity branding.

[Splash]

B & M Bank - 1 checking, 1 savings. Low balances. Used for on-line bill pay, emergency access to funds, and various bank services.

Recently closed savings account at credit union and moved safe deposit box to B & M bank. CU was convenient when working. Not so much any more.

[Jerry1]

One bank, one credit union, three brokerages. Will be consolidating down to just the credit union but want to keep the brokerage accounts due to the terms of a 401K and because I want to keep the Fidelity credit card. May be silly, but I don’t think I’d ever be comfortable with all my money in one institution.

[Bamaman]

We too use Wells Fargo for our day to day checking account. Cannot stand the bank but really like their computer system and excellent Bill Pay service.

Use Fidelity for IRA rollovers kept in about 5 diverse mutual funds. Also have a 529 plan for the granddaughter we've got in a private elementary school. And a Roth IRA and a regular IRA for my wife is there--all linked together on one statement. The rest of her 403B is at TIAA/CREF.

Have 1 small and 1 big CD at Ally Bank. 1 medium size CD is at Capital One.

[Lewis Clark]

We do our primary banking with a credit union that does not have a local branch. At the credit union we have one checking account, one regular savings account, and a separate savings account that we maintain to fund our traveling.

At a local bank, we have one savings account that we use for cashing checks and withdrawing cash as needed.

We set up the vacation savings account shortly after we got married and have made regular deposits over the years. It works for us to have a separate account for these funds.

The original question was just about bank accounts, so I'm not including any of our investment accounts.

[erkevin]

Bank; checking, savings, mortgage
Online Bank; savings and 8 CDs

[scrabbler1]

One bank account.

[JustCurious]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cobra9777 I agree with audrey. The routing number for my Fidelity CMA points to UMB. Their name is printed on the checks, albeit a lot smaller than the giant Fidelity branding.

Fidelity says on its website that the CMA account is a brokerage account. But you say no, it's a bank account? Is Fidelity wrong? I did not think the nature of the account as defined by Fidelity was subject to opinion or debate, surely words have to have some commonly accepted meaning? Also, Fidelity is a brokerage, not a bank.

[akck]

Have accounts at 2 CUs (2 checking, 3 savings), only because we carried a car loan at the second. One national bank with checking & savings, and one brokerage with multiple accounts.

[Cobra9777]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JustCurious Fidelity says on its website that the CMA account is a brokerage account. But you say no, it's a bank account? Is Fidelity wrong? I did not think the nature of the account as defined by Fidelity was subject to opinion or debate, surely words have to have some commonly accepted meaning? Also, Fidelity is a brokerage, not a bank.

Fidelity® Cash Management Account FDIC-Insured Deposit Sweep Program Disclosure document (PDF)

List of Program Banks

[athena53]

One bank with a checking account. Three credit cards (soon to be two)- with Chase, Citibank and Fidelity. Three brokerages- UBS, Fidelity and Edward Jones. At least I moved my HSA from HealthSavings to Fidelity last year, and now EJ contains nothing but the granddaughters' 529s.

[audreyh1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JustCurious Fidelity says on its website that the CMA account is a brokerage account. But you say no, it's a bank account? Is Fidelity wrong? I did not think the nature of the account as defined by Fidelity was subject to opinion or debate, surely words have to have some commonly accepted meaning? Also, Fidelity is a brokerage, not a bank.

Fidelity is using a group of banks to provide this FDIC core function even though it puts a brokerage wrapper around it and you have options to hold other assets in the account. Like Cobra, my checks and ATM card are using routing and numbers from a UMB account, not a Fidelity account.

[savory]

Quote:

Originally Posted by audreyh1 We have a lot these days - 2 standard banks, 4 credit unions, 3 online savings accounts. So that’s 9. Multiple accounts at those institutions. Plus we have 2 brokerages that also provide us checking/cash management and associated ATM cards. Multiple accounts at each brokerage too. We ended up with several credit unions for different CDs and/or credit card offers. We also have funds/CDs across multiple online banks to stay under FDIC limits. We’ll simplify one day, maybe one standard bank, one brokerage, one high yield savings (depending on limits) and drop the credit unions.

Mind are kind of like this vs the earlier posts. I started wondering if I should consolidate. Thanks audreyh1, you saved me a lot of work

[sengsational]

Forgetting about the brokerage banks and stuff like that (which I think was the OP's original question), I had just 2 institutions for a very long time. The CU (generally mine), and the monster mega bank (hers). We still have his and hers checking accounts and the monster mega bank. And I have 3 at the CU (member account with the obligatory $10 in it, plus my checking/billpay, plus a money market). But neither the bank nor the CU has competitive rates any more. The CU has rates IF you play the 30 transactions a month game, which I can't easily do.


The bottom line is I went from those 2 institutions to now 4: added Discover Bank to get 2% + $200 bonus, and now Capital One Bank to get 2% + $500 bonus. I'm a bit ashamed to admit chasing these deals, but it hasn't been hard to do.


In my defense, I am getting rid of an HSA institution and the brokerage outfit that manages the investment portion of the HSA (going Fidelity). That only reduced accounts by 1, but reduced institutions by 2.


Really, though, I'm not sure minimizing accounts is worth anything at all. Minimizing institutions is kind of helpful, so you don't have too many logons.

[audreyh1]

We went for more than a couple of decades with just one bank checking account, one brokerage account, and two or three credit cards. And only added a relationship with Treasury Direct in 2003 for iBonds.

The explosion in financial institutions over the past ~8 years for us occurred for several reasons:

• Extreme low interest rates. A lot of our cash was traditionally parked in brokerage MM funds which used to pay better than bank rates. By 2010 or so after the financial crisis, these MM rates slipped to sub 0.1% for MANY years! But FDIC insured online savings rates were much higher, so we ended up opening one and then eventually another two and using them heavily.
• Similar with CDs, paying better than Treasuries and bond funds. Started setting up accounts at various credit unions and online banks as the occasional “special” CD rate popped up. More accounts opened.
• Lots of credit card offers with perks, cash rewards, rebates, etc. Ended up collecting a few over a small number of years. Some of these were also for credit cards oriented to foreign travel.
• For travel, having a no foreign transaction fee ATM card became desirable. Opened up a second brokerage account for this reason.
• Later banks started offering some serious cash bonuses for opening new accounts/new customers. Took advantage of one of these with a bank I had a CC relationship with.

I’m really trying to stop now. Actually it’s been over two years since we opened a new credit card or account at a new institution so we really have stopped. And our credit score has recovered any slight dip. Our now frozen credit makes it more of an effort to open anything at an institution we don’t already have a relationship with. We seem to have enough established accounts/relationships that we are able to quickly jump on several of the hot offers that occasionally show up, so we seem to be in a reasonably good place.

Still, plenty of room for consolidation once we aren’t traveling so much and stop chasing CD deals. In a more stable interest rate environment it’s probably easy enough to find plenty of decent first issue CD deals through a brokerage. And Treasuries have finally returned to compete with bank offers.

[easysurfer]

I only have 2 checking accounts. One lower balanced at a bank in grocery store. Another is my main checking that's an online bank with free checks.

I don't have a bank savings but use Vanguard Prime for tbat purpose.