And clarify please…is this for your convenience…or your son’s convenience? As Pizzagirl clearly said…some large banks just aren’t near where you want them to be.
TD Bank is huge in the northeast…but the nearest one to me is about 30 minutes away.
If you are looking for convenience for you to make deposits…it really doesn’t matter the proximity to the specific bank for your son.
@thumper1, For my wife’s convenience, because, between us two, it is mostly not me who goes to the bank. When she could not find a way she likes to do things as she did in the past, she would ask me for a “new way” which is acceptable to her. She does not have much trust in online banking unfortunately. She likes to talk to a live person when dealing with the bank.
She said she would rather avoid using a “machine” if she could get away from using it.
Then pick a bank that is convenient for your wife. Honestly…your son will figure out how to get the money. He doesn’t need a brick and mortar building.
I use the bank here to send money to my kids from time to time…but I can guarantee…they don’t go to the bank themselves to get it!
Refusing to do online banking is like saying that you’d like a way to get a message to someone instantly but you don’t want to use a telephone to call, a smartphone to text, or a tablet or computer to email. At that point your only choice is Western Union telegram, which is a dinosaur and nowhere near as convenient as the other options.
Either she wants a convenient way to transfer $ or she doesn’t. We can’t counsel her on “convenient” ways to do things if she rejects those mechanisms.
It is true that she needs to learn to trust the “modern gadget” more. There is no way around this if she wants the convenience.
The tellers are using machines, too. It is literally 100 times easier to learn to use a computer to pay bills, and a smart phone to deposit checks. In 30 minutes she could learn to use both of these mechanisms, and save herself postage, time spent and handling checks, and trips to the bank to deposit.
You can link two different bank’s accts together and do transfer. I have my brokerage acct tied to my bank acct. I do transfer between those two accts. If you are not the owner of those 2 accts then additional verification is needed.
I only do online banking. I didn’t think it was a big deal not to have a physical bank near me until I had a very large check (over the online deposit limit) that I needed to deposit. I drove 30+ miles to find the close branch to make the deposit.
Depending on how important you are with a bank, there may or may not be fees for transfers. Two ways around that:
Set up the other account as a joint account with you and the recipient, so you are transferring to “your own account” at a different bank. Citi does that for free but there is a fee if it’s “someone else’s account” (unless you are Citigold).
inquire about PopMoney or ClearXChange which are digital ways to move money for free. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe Citibank and Fifth Third participate in PopMoney and Wells Fargo, Chase, and B of A participate in ClearXChange. (Of course, there are other banks who participate as well; these are just the ones I could recall off the top of my head.)
We did set up auto-pay for most bills.
It is only in a rare event that she needs to transfer a large amount of money that she does not like to use the gadget (smartphone or computer.)
Mcat2
You are inquiring about banks in the northeast. You don’t live in the northeast…your son does.
I’m betting donuts to dollars that your son SELDOM sets foot in a brick and mortar bank building.
If this is for your wife’s convenience…it doesn’t matter at all how many branches there are local to,your son. Set up and link an account of yours with an account for your son at YOUR local convenient for your wife bank.
Your son will be able to get the money, and use online services to pay all of his bills…if that is your need. And he can get money as cash back when he uses his debit card to get groceries.
Do you suggest that our son and we can share the same joint account, or that he has his own account and we have our own account (we always have joint account except for IRA/401K accounts) and somehow the bank will allow his account and our account linked together?
If you refer to the latter, I learn something new today. I do not know this is possible. Usually, I think two accounts, say, the checking account and the saving account, of the SAME person (or two joint accounts of two persons, like spouses) could be linked together.
If you and your son both have an account at Bank of America…you can transfer money into his account from yours. You can’t take money OUT of his account…but you can transfer easily from your account to his.
I only know this because every time I go to B of A they tell me I should be doing this.
But like I said upstream…you couldn’t pay me to bank with them…and I don’t really need to anyway.
I heard this is what my wife usually does.
She would transfer the money from our saving account to our checking account at BofA at home. She then drives to the local BofA branch and writes a check and deposits the check into our son’s checking account at BofA. We are not sure whether the money will be available to our son immediately after she deposits the check into his account.
We prefer not to have a joint account with our son. But having a joint account which is shared by all of us solely for occasional money transfer purpose may work for us.
Citizens and BOA are all over the place in the Boston area. My S went to Minneapolis for school and although we set up an account for him at the local bank (forget the name now) he ended up using his debit card from our local yokel bank all the time. Why? Because his account was linked with mine and I could easily transfer money to his account. When he needed cash (rarely) he used the Minn bank account. I am astounded at the stuff he uses his debit card to pay for: coffee, gun, candy, soft drinks. I think most kids now a days use their debit card for everything.
My kids and my ex accounts are all linked to my acct. They can’t see my acct, but I can see their accts.
With Chase Quickpay you can transfer 2K/day up to 16K/month (more if you do Private Client or Private Banking with them) to any person with an email address. They also do ClearXchange
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“She would transfer the money from our saving account to our checking account at BofA at home. She then drives to the local BofA branch and writes a check and deposits the check into our son’s checking account at BofA. We are not sure whether the money will be available to our son immediately after she deposits the check into his account.”
This is completely inefficient and a huge waste of time.
How is she transferring money from your savings to your checking at home? If she’s using a computer, she can use that very same computer to bypass your checking account entirely and just transfer the money to your son’s BofA account. She could set it up automatically on a recurring basis, or she could do it on an ad hoc basis. She won’t see what he has in his account, and he won’t see hers. There is no need for the accounts to be joint, at all.
I don’t know why she would trust the computer to move money from your savings to your checking but then not trust it to send out to your son. It’s all the same electronic system. It’s the backbone of our banking system.
Does your emp,over use direct deposit for your paycheck? Same concept. Your company banks at Bank A and every 2 weeks transfers to unrelated accounts at Banks B, C, D, E … With no problem at all.
Heck, how do you get tax refunds? The government automatically deposits into your account (if you so choose).
This isn’t new technology at all.
Isn’t your son about to start his residency? (Not sure if he is or not; haven’t kept track of the timing). If he is, he probably won’t need much more money transferred, so there’s no need to worry about this at all. He’ll figure out where to open a bank account and there really is no reason for you even to know where he banks!
You should enjoy your hard-earned funds and let your son experience the satisfaction of economic independence. Money may be a little tight for him for a while but trusting him to deal with that on his own is about the greatest gift you can give him. He will feel like a grown up (consistent with his chronological age and station in life).
And it will free up funds for you and your wife to enjoy your own lives. Your son will likely be out-earning you soon, after all!
We have accounts with Wells Fargo. One S has an account that is linked to ours so we can transfer $. Other s has an online savings with Capital one 360 linked to ours. Also have USAA accounts linked (no brick and mortar banks). In this day and age they/we often do electronic deposits (take a picture of the check and its deposited). This is all very easy peasy