Not putting my money in PenFed

[Hermit]

After painfully executing two Share loans for my son's college expenses, I have concluded that PenFed is by far the most inept financial institution I have ever dealt with. I opened an IRA account with them the last time they had a high interest savings promotion, but missed the window. I will be closing that account and not using it. It took well over 30 days and many phone calls to get at Share loan completed. That is more time than a lot of home loans take. With money in a PenFed account that fully backs the loan, I am amazed at how difficult they can make it. The loan disbursement people obviously do not read instructions written by the people making the loan. I had to lend DS tuition and living expenses. Today, in the check he had PenFed send me to reimburse me for the cash was made out to him, not me but with my address on it. So here it is, about 2 1/2 months since we started this loan and I am still spending major amounts of time trying to get them to get their paperwork straight! The first loan was no better. Now I have to consider weather to do the third and final loan with them. My intent was to not have loans scattered across different institutions for DS's school loans.

Even if they are backed by the Federal Government, a financial institution has to display a certain level of competency to get my money.

/End of Rant/

 

[Huston55]

After painfully executing two Share loans for my son's college expenses, I have concluded that PenFed is by far the most inept financial institution I have ever dealt with. I opened an IRA account with them the last time they had a high interest savings promotion, but missed the window. I will be closing that account and not using it. It took well over 30 days and many phone calls to get at Share loan completed. That is more time than a lot of home loans take. With money in a PenFed account that fully backs the loan, I am amazed at how difficult they can make it. The loan disbursement people obviously do not read instructions written by the people making the loan. I had to lend DS tuition and living expenses. Today, in the check he had PenFed send me to reimburse me for the cash was made out to him, not me but with my address on it. So here it is, about 2 1/2 months since we started this loan and I am still spending major amounts of time trying to get them to get their paperwork straight! The first loan was no better. Now I have to consider weather to do the third and final loan with them. My intent was to not have loans scattered across different institutions for DS's school loans.

Even if they are backed by the Federal Government, a financial institution has to display a certain level of competency to get my money.

/End of Rant/

Is this why they call it a "rainy day" fund?

 

[cme4oil]

I have had several loans with PenFed, all of them very quick and relatively painless. I have heard of people having a rough go of it with them but my experience has been pretty good.

 

[travelover]

I jumped through hoops to deposit nearly $400,000 from the sale of my house with PenFed to take advantage of their CD rates. They accused me of being a scammer because my address had recently changed. Well, when you sell a house, your address does change.

They had me get my driver's license , Social Security card and my latest electric bill notarized. Not good enough - that SS card doesn't look right and your address on the driver's license does not match the electric bill. Well, the SS card looked right when I was 14 and got it in the mail and yes, I have moved, thus the different addresses. I also mentioned that a clever criminal would not try to force them to take a huge sum of cash, to no avail.

I finally got a call from their security department late at night and we seemed to settle things, but not before I was about to tell them where to stick it. Still trying to get the accounts properly set up with joint ownership and a beneficiary.

 

[Newventurer]

When I was taking my funds from the matured CD's out I found out that if you have them roll the funds into your PenFed cash account they will only let you transfer $5k out every three days, so I had to do multiple transactions. Then I discovered that by choosing a direct transfer option to a non-PenFed account I could have it all transferred at once. The gal I talked to on the phone didn't know that it was an option.

 

[RobbieB]

Good to know. I won't send em a dime either.

 

[jazz4cash]

I will continue with Penfed as I have not had any issues with them so far but Navy Federal and Andrews have been less than impressive at times so it seems to be typical of these institutions.

 

[John Galt III]

Don't feel bad. It seems to be all over the place. I had to train my credit union over several days how to do a Roth conversion. Sigh....

 

[Van-Guard23]

When I was taking my funds from the matured CD's out I found out that if you have them roll the funds into your PenFed cash account they will only let you transfer $5k out every three days, so I had to do multiple transactions. Then I discovered that by choosing a direct transfer option to a non-PenFed account I could have it all transferred at once. The gal I talked to on the phone didn't know that it was an option.

Good to know...this happened to me as well (CD matured) and I am currently in the process of moving money from my PenFed Savings to my Ally Online Savings in multiple installments, $5k at a time once a week. It didn't really faze me as I experienced the same thing dealing with some brick and mortar banks.
By the way, was the direct transfer for free?

 

[Huston55]

When I was taking my funds from the matured CD's out I found out that if you have them roll the funds into your PenFed cash account they will only let you transfer $5k out every three days, so I had to do multiple transactions. Then I discovered that by choosing a direct transfer option to a non-PenFed account I could have it all transferred at once. The gal I talked to on the phone didn't know that it was an option.

Correct. I just transferred funds (six figures) from a matured CD to my Fido account...all at once; no fees.

Good to know...this happened to me as well (CD matured) and I am currently in the process of moving money from my PenFed Savings to my Ally Online Savings in multiple installments, $5k at a time once a week. It didn't really faze me as I experienced the same thing dealing with some brick and mortar banks.
By the way, was the direct transfer for free?

Why don't you do it all at once? Just have to go on the PFCU website, establish the link to your non-PFCU account, then do the transfer.

 

[Van-Guard23]

Correct. I just transferred funds (six figures) from a matured CD to my Fido account...all at once; no fees.

Why don't you do it all at once? Just have to go on the PFCU website, establish the link to your non-PFCU account, then do the transfer.

I have done this and the PenFed website still limits me to just $5k daily ACH limit. Oh well.

 

[jim584672]

Maybe set up a checking account at Penfed and then do a ACH pull from outside by a bank like Ally as a work around?

 

[cme4oil]

When I was taking my funds from the matured CD's out I found out that if you have them roll the funds into your PenFed cash account they will only let you transfer $5k out every three days, so I had to do multiple transactions. Then I discovered that by choosing a direct transfer option to a non-PenFed account I could have it all transferred at once. The gal I talked to on the phone didn't know that it was an option.

Thanks for this, I had forgotten about the 5k xfer limit. I ran into that and didn't know about the direct transfer option. I will have to look at that. I will say that when I ran into it, I was shocked that they had such a low limit. In todays dollars, 5k is nothing. Add to this that they make you wait 3 days between transfers too.. It wasn't a huge deal to me but it was certainly inconvenient.

 

[Huston55]

I have done this and the PenFed website still limits me to just $5k daily ACH limit. Oh well.

I believe the $5k limit is for "ACH" transactions. A direct "transfer" (which I think is essentially an electronic 'wire') does not have a $5k limit.

I had to get some phone help when I initially "linked" the PFCU & Fido accounts, then did a $1 test transfer. After that, it worked fine.

Hope this helps.

 

[audreyh1]

When I was taking my funds from the matured CD's out I found out that if you have them roll the funds into your PenFed cash account they will only let you transfer $5k out every three days, so I had to do multiple transactions. Then I discovered that by choosing a direct transfer option to a non-PenFed account I could have it all transferred at once. The gal I talked to on the phone didn't know that it was an option.

If you initiate the ACH transfer from your other institution, there is no such limit. I have had no trouble transferring much larger amounts in a single transaction.

 

[audreyh1]

I have done this and the PenFed website still limits me to just $5k daily ACH limit. Oh well.

Initiate from the other financial institution, then the ACH limits at that institution will apply. I have done much larger single transfers initiated at Fidelity no problem. Fidelity allows up to $100K per day.

I suspect part of the issue with limits is that the initiating institution bears the burden if a transfer has to be rolled back, so the credit unions do typically have low limits to reduce exposure (I think Andrews FCU is $5K per day and $25K per month). However, if they are not the one's initiating the ACH, they are off the hook.

 

[Van-Guard23]

Initiate from the other financial institution, then the ACH limits at that institution will apply. I have done much larger single transfers initiated at Fidelity no problem. Fidelity allows up to $100K per day.

Thanks! I did just that and there were no issues with Ally...will take 3 business days to transfer though, but daily limits were $250k!

 

[brucethebroker]

Have a buddy building a new house and working as his own general contractor. His bank called him in and the manager wanted to know why he was moving so much money in and out of his account. He explained he was building a house. Not a good enough answer-and the bank started harassing him about the deposits/withdraws, implying he was money laundering. So, he is no longer with that bank (after about a dozen years of banking).

His new banker/manager just shook his head when told of that story.....

 

[travelover]

Thanks for this, I had forgotten about the 5k xfer limit. I ran into that and didn't know about the direct transfer option. I will have to look at that. I will say that when I ran into it, I was shocked that they had such a low limit. In todays dollars, 5k is nothing. Add to this that they make you wait 3 days between transfers too.. It wasn't a huge deal to me but it was certainly inconvenient.

I went into my PenFed account and changed my CD maturity option to send me a check when mature instead of roll into a cash account. I can just see me trying to buy a house and trying to get my $400k back $5k at a time.

 

[audreyh1]

I went into my PenFed account and changed my CD maturity option to send me a check when mature instead of roll into a cash account. I can just see me trying to buy a house and trying to get my $400k back $5k at a time.

You won't have to do that.

Initiate the transfer from the receiving institution instead. I have done this for a large amount. It works.

I wouldn't want to worry a check floating around in the mail somewhere. Then you have to deposit it. Then you have to wait for the funds to become available.

You also have the option of writing a check on your PenFed checking account. That doesn't have the limit. It will be faster than waiting for a check in the mail, but not as fast as ACH transfer.

 

[calmloki]

Just as Audrey says. Pull rather than push. We shift $100k+ amounts back and forth often and now I just have the bank I want the money in pull funds from the holding bank.

We were doing a lot of business through TIAA, an institution I cannot recommend highly enough, but they started looking sideways at us for what they viewed as business activities. They weren't wrong. Now we have cash camping in Discover - hopefully we can stay low-key enough in our 1% accounts not to disturb them.

 

[calmloki]

I'm pretty happy with PenFed - still. We've had multiple CDs with them and multiple 5/5 mortgages. It has been the case that they pay us a tiny amount MORE than they are charging on the mortgages! Wacky. We have a our last 3% CD paying off 12/2018 and our current 5/5 mortgage is due to reset its interest rate on 7/2017.

Been stewing over whether we should pull funds from a savings account earning 0.95% and pay off the mortgage or let the mortgage rate reset (expecting a 4% rate) and keep the money in the bank as security or to lend out.

Just checked out a mortgage rate reset offer PenFed sent. A mortgage at 0.0625% LESS than the current 5/5 ARM rate, $250 fee, done on the PenFed website in 2-5 minutes. The current 5/5 ARM rate is 2.75%, so that would be 5 more years at 2.6875% + $250 fee... We have till 45 days before our reset date to take advantage of the offer.

I love PenFed.

 

[braumeister]

On occasion, I've run into the PenFed employee from hell and that can be a trial, for sure.

But overall, during my 33 years with them, they have been excellent. Looking at the big picture, better than many other financial institutions I've dealt with.

 

[Hermit]

A 100% share-backed loan is obviously not their normal fare. 2-5 minutes would be great. A week would be wonderful. 1-2 months and 5 or more phone conversations per loan is somewhat extreme, don't ya think? Not to mention multiple stop payments they have had to do on checks being sent to me instead of funds being deposited in DS's account as they agreed to do. Fortunately, they do a pretty good job of documenting the conversations, so I don't have to convince them they screwed something up.

 

[Huston55]

I'm pretty happy with PenFed - still. We've had multiple CDs with them and multiple 5/5 mortgages. It has been the case that they pay us a tiny amount MORE than they are charging on the mortgages! Wacky. We have a our last 3% CD paying off 12/2018 and our current 5/5 mortgage is due to reset its interest rate on 7/2017.

Been stewing over whether we should pull funds from a savings account earning 0.95% and pay off the mortgage or let the mortgage rate reset (expecting a 4% rate) and keep the money in the bank as security or to lend out.

Just checked out a mortgage rate reset offer PenFed sent. A mortgage at 0.0625% LESS than the current 5/5 ARM rate, $250 fee, done on the PenFed website in 2-5 minutes. The current 5/5 ARM rate is 2.75%, so that would be 5 more years at 2.6875% + $250 fee... We have till 45 days before our reset date to take advantage of the offer.

I love PenFed.

For a nice 3BR house in Independence, OR, the break even would be ~1 yr. Is it worth it?