vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
"Although not required, #2 would work best if you used magnetic ink... That is an extra cost which you may or may not want to pay for. You can often get a free checking account and a free set of checks if you can meet the minimum requirements. This often means a higher average daily balance, direct deposit, or some combination of multiple requirements. The bank is taking a risk that a client meeting those minimum requirements while likely earn the bank more in fees and services than what they give out for ""free"" such as the account and checks. My wife and I opened a Wells Fargo checking account two years ago. Back then, we were able to open the account for free along with a free set of 250 checks. I think the requirement now requires $7,500 average daily balance."
No fees: Write a check. Deposit it into the other bank.
Honest question, is a $10-$15 monthly fee for a checking account normal?  I've been a customer of a Big 4 bank (Chase) forever, never needed to pay them any fees for anything. I never overdraft either, but it's not like I'm high networth or anything either.
"To add in a brief expansion to Portman's complete answer.  The payment can also be thought of as compensation for your ""switching cost"".  Obviously it is inconvenient to transfer your account from one bank to another (changing static payments, stationery, that sort of thing).  The cash is offered as payment towards that inconvenience.   Given the profits that banks make you can think of the $100 in much the same way as a store offering you a 5% discount on your next shopping trip."
"The answer is that it depends on your bank and your creditor (whomever you are paying). Most banks offer ""overdraft protection"". For a fee, they will process the payment as if you had the money, and your account will become ""overdrawn"". The next deposit you put in will be applied to the overdraft and once the account is ""zeroed"" funds will begin to become available. The fees charged, and whether a particular charge will go through, depend on the bank; a few banks will process a payment without a fee if it only happens occasionally, some will hit you with a charge per debit in excess of the amount, while others will charge you per day on which debit transactions were made while your account was overdrawn, and still others will tack on a charge for leaving your account overdrawn for an extended period. In almost all cases, the for-profit institutions (banks) will charge more than non-profit institutions (credit unions). Watch out for banks that offer ""automatic overdraft transfer""; they'll automatically transfer from another account (including, eek, a credit card) to cover a debit to an account with insufficient funds. Sounds great, but the fee they charge is often close to the overdraft fee, while without overdraft protection, if the payment were simply denied at point-of-sale, most banks have smartphone apps that allow for instantaneous transfer of funds, for free. I've never heard of a ""partial payment""; you either have sufficient funds to cover the debit or you don't. If you don't, and you don't have overdraft protection, the bank will simply decline to pay. The result of that situation depends on the exact circumstances; if a utility check bounces, they may try to run it again the next day, or they may immediately cut your utilities and come after you for the balance. At point-of-sale, they simply won't give you the merchandise. Some places are really rabid about pursuing ""hot check writers""; if the check doesn't clear you have to pay in cash, on the spot, or they call the police.
If both bank accounts are in your name, it appears that NS&I have a free International Payments Service.  The Post office international payments are apparently free if you transfer at least £250. In both cases, I have not used the services and I'm not sure if there is some catch that I have missed.  Perhaps they only appear free due to an unfavourable exchange rate — I don't know. See also: UK fee-free foreign transfer to own account
It sounds like your looking for something like an offshore bank (e.g. an anonymous Swiss bank account).  These don't really exist anymore. I think you should just open a small bank account in your home country (preferably one the reimburses your ATM fees, like Charles Schwab in the US).  If it's a small amount of money, the authorities probably won't care and they won't be able to give you large penalties anyways.
My preferred method of doing this is to get a bank draft from the US in Euros and then pay it into the French bank (my countries are Canada and UK, but the principle is the same). The cost of the bank draft is about $8, so very little more than the ATM method. If you use bigger amounts it can be less overall cost. The disadvantage is that a bank draft takes a week or so to write and a few days to clear. So you would have to plan ahead. I would keep enough money in the French account for one visit, and top it up with a new bank draft every visit or two.
Yes you can. I'm a foreigner who uses a tourist visa to enter America and Bank of America opened a checking account for me. I had to go into the branch with my passport and a driving license and it was opened with $100. You do need to give a US address so statements can be sent out but that's about it.
It can be done, but I believe it would be impractical for most people - i.e., it would likely be cheaper to fly to Europe from other side of the world to handle it in person if you can.  It also depends on where you live. You should take a look if there are any branches or subsidiaries of foreign banks in your country - the large multinational banks most likely can open you an account in their sister-bank in another country for, say, a couple hundred euro in fees.
"It costs money for a mutual fund to accept your money. It doesn't cost as much as it used to, but historically there has been, at a minimum, a modicum of record-keeping associated with it. As such, they will typically have a minimum amount of money they want you to add at a time. They don't want to process 100 transfers of a nickel each; that would be silly. So if you have a mutual fund with a ""minimum initial investment"" of $10,000 and a ""minimum subsequent investment"" of $100, then that means that you can put in $10k to open it, and then deposit dollars in lots of 100 or more whenever you feel like it."
Many banks will let you generate a temporary credit card number to use in this situation.  You can set the credit limit and the expiration date yourself so that the second transaction won't be accepted. I don't know of any that will let you set the credit limit to $0, but you can set it to a value under the monthly subscription fee. An answer to this question suggests that banks sometimes let the charge go through even if it exceeds the limit or the expiration date, so the plan might not work.
Depending on your income/savings level and who you work for (if you work for a big company check with an HSBC Premier advisor, they may waive the requirements), you may qualify for an HSBC Premier account, which can allow you to open accounts in different countries and transfer money between them without a fee. You can also get a Premier account without meeting the requirements if you are willing to pay a monthly fee, but I doubt that will be worth it in the long run for what you need (worth doing the math though if you travel frequently).  NOTE: There may be similar offerings from other banks, but this is just the only one I'm aware of.
Technically, yes, you can do this. It's a form of arbitrage: you're taking advantage of a small price difference between two markets. But is it worth the hassle of keeping on top of the overdraft and making sure you don't incur any accidental penalties or fees? Interest rates are super low, and floating £1000 or £2000, you're only going to generate £10-20 per year in a basic savings account.
To store $1 milion in a bank with full FDIC insurance currently requires 4 separate bank accounts, each at 250k.  It's not that difficult, particularly if you are married and your spouse can have 2 in his/her name.  (This is dependent on the FDIC limit; they raised it to 250k after the 2008 crash).
Yes. it is possible, I have seen many times banks permitting overdrawing and later charging a high courtesy fees. Of course in many countries this is not permitted. In one of my account, I am running negative balance as the bank has charged its commission which is not due.
Banks do of course incur costs on currency transactions. But they're not as high as the fee charged to the customer. Most banks in most places lose a lot of money on operating bank accounts for customers, and make the money back by charging more than their costs for services like currency exchange. If you don't choose to pay those fees, use an online service instead. But bear in mind that if everyone does so then banks will be forced to charge higher fees for current accounts.
Why don't people switch banks?  It's honestly not that hard.  Once I switched to a local credit union, I'll never use a big bank again.  The service is amazing and there are pretty much no fees for anything.
A typical HELOC will have about $300 in fees to open it. From there, it's up to you how much or how long to use it.  I'd shop around to find the bank that offers the right product for you.
Why do these fees exist? From a Banks point of view, they are operating in Currency A; Currency B is a commodity [similar to Oil, Grains, Goods, etc]. So they will only buy if they can sell it at a margin.  Currency Conversion have inherent risks, on small amount, the Bank generally does not hedge these risks as it is expensive; but balances the position end of day or if the exposure becomes large. The rate they may get then may be different and the margin covers it. Hence on highly traded currency pairs; the spread is less.  Are there back-end processes and requirements that require financial institutions to pass off the loss to consumers as a fee? The processes are to ensure bank does not make loss. is it just to make money on the convenience of international transactions? Banks do make money on such transactions; however they also take some risks. The Forex market is not single market, but is a collective hybrid market place. There are costs a bank incurs to carry and square off positions and some of it is reflected in fees.  If you see some of the remittance corridors, banks have optimized a remittance service; say USD to INR, there is a huge flow often in small amounts. The remittance service aggregates such amounts to make it a large amount to get a better deal for themselves and passes on the benefits to individuals. Such volume of scale is not available for other pairs / corridors.
I don't have an account with either of those CUs, but I do have membership at 2 different CUs.  If they accept credit card payments online via transfer from another institution, there's no reason to move your money, unless there are other benefits (higher interest rates). All the CUs would likely require is membership ($5 deposit minimum?).  If you were to get a card through Chase or Capital One, you wouldn't be expected to open a checking/savings account with them and transition over to those accounts.
http://www.fdic.gov/deposit/deposits/index.html  FDIC currently insures up to $250,000.  (I would have put that as a comment to Jeffery but it says it was locked.) You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket.  If you shop around, and keep shopping all the time you can keep your accounts in a single place so long as that single place provides the best deal.  Don't have any loyalty to your banking institutions because they don't have any loyalty to you. Also, having lots of accounts means you are familiar with lots of institutions, so you are likely better at shopping around. Things I consider. For fewer institutions: For more institutions:
"I think your best bet here would be HSBC.  They will provide the required currencies, credit/debit cards, and very easy to use online banking transfers.  This includes an online ""Global Account View"" which features all of your accounts on a single screen and allows you to ""drag and drop"" money between accounts. Regarding fees, I suspect you will need to be a ""Premier Account"" holder in order to avoid any fees imposed on transactions such as money transfers and exchanging money between currencies.  In my experience HSBC offers extremely good exchange rates when exchanging ""large"" amounts of money ( greater than $10,000 / GBP 5,000 ).  Exchanging small amounts will carry a larger spread but still much better than most banks offer. In my experience, exchanging GBP 5000 will have a spread of about 0.50-to-0.75 percent, while exchanging more than GBP10,000 will have a spread of as little as 0.10-to-0.20 percent. In order to qualify for a ""Premier Account"", if my memory of HSBC UK serves me correctly, you will need to have at least GBP 50,000 net across all of your HSBC managed accounts, including stockbroking and other investment accounts. In order to open a banking Swiss account, you will need to travel to Switzerland and apply in person.  You cannot open a foreign bank account remotely.  With a foreign investment account, I believe you can open accounts remotely.  For example, I opened an account with Fidelity Switzerland using my Fidelity UK account directly from the UK, however obviously Fidelity does not provide banking services so this is not of interest to you. The simplest thing to do is to visit your local HSBC branch and discuss it with them in person. Other UK banks, such as Barclays, will also provide such services, but in my experience they are not as competitive on fees."
"UPDATE: Unfortunately Citibank have removed the ""standard"" account option and you have to choose the ""plus"" account, which requires a minimum monthly deposit of 1800 sterling and two direct debits. Absolutely there is.  I would highly recommend Citibank's Plus Current Account.  It's a completely free bank account available to all UK residents. http://www.citibank.co.uk/personal/banking/bankingproducts/currentaccounts/sterling/plus/index.htm There are no monthly fees and no minimum balance requirements to maintain.  Almost nobody in the UK has heard of it and I don't know why because it's extremely useful for anyone who travels or deals in foreign currency regularly. In one online application you can open a Sterling Current Account and Deposit Accounts in 10 other foreign currencies (When I opened mine around 3 years ago you could only open up to 7 (!) accounts at any one time). Citibank provide a Visa card, which you can link to any of your multi currency accounts via a phone call to their hotline (unfortunately not online, which frequently annoys me - but I guess you can't have everything).  For USD and EUR you can use it as a Visa debit for USD/EUR purchases, for all other currencies you can't make debit card transactions but you can make ATM withdrawals without incurring an FX conversion. Best of all for your case, a free USD cheque book is also available: http://www.citibank.co.uk/personal/banking/international/eurocurrent.htm You can fund the account in sterling and exchange to USD through online banking.  The rates are not as good as you would get through an FX broker like xe.com but they're not terrible either. You can also fund the account by USD wire transfer, which is free to deposit at Citibank - but the bank you issue the payment from will likely charge a SWIFT fee so this might not be worth it unless the amount is large enough to justify the fee. If by any chance you have a Citibank account in the US, you can also make free USD transfers in/out of this account - subject to a daily limit."
From what I Understand, people put up with BofA because it's convenient in that there are branches everywhere in the country. Not sure if it's worth it, but if you're a normal banking customer, your won't face any of those fees.
"Is there a solution here that would allow me to provide him with a debit card in his name that I could fund, that wouldn't have foreign transaction fees associated with it (I'd probably be okay with a small fixed ATM fee). There are separate issues here. There is no law limiting bank accounts to U.S. citizens, but most banks will not open an account for a non-citizen outside their declared service area. There are substantial legal liabilities to the bank in allowing it, whether a citizen or non-citizen. The difficulty will be compliance with the Patriot Act. This is an extension of the older ""Know Your Customer"" doctrine. It is improbable that the bank could comply with the Act without the potential customer being physically present. You would have to check with your bank in advance as to their policies. Banks are not required to accept a customer outside their policies. As to waiving the foreign transaction fee, that is very improbable. Although a handful of institutions do this in specific cases it is uncommon because the bank isn't actually charging the fee, they are passing it along. With a credit card they collect interest and waiving the fee can be thought of as a reduction in interest income, that isn't possible on a debit card. You would want to make sure you have a scrupulously honest nephew. You could be held criminally liable for any actions he takes at both the state and the federal level. U.S. law is global. A citizen who commits a crime in any country of the world can be charged for it in the United States. By being on the account you can acquire any liabilities that are created as an accomplice. This is a bigger issue at the federal level because 4,000 federal laws do not require criminal intent. Some do not require you to even know the action happened. Unlike state law which generally requires you intended to commit a crime and had to be aware of it, federal law often does not. It is also not adequate that the action is legal in Russia if it would be illegal in the United States. If I get a card in my name, and give it to him to use to withdraw money from ATMs, is that legal?
Assuming neither one charges a fee and you are talking about automated non-cash, non-check transactions: Withdrawal is slightly better if you are 100% sure you have the money (or better yet, twice the money) to cover it.  It puts more incentive on the bank that is responsible for the act to do it correctly, because they will then be the bank holding the money.  It also creates an added check because there is no possibility of having an error in transfer information result in sending your money to the wrong account.  (This is unlikely anyway, but not impossible depending on the bank and interface). Deposit may be slightly better if you are not, or if you are concerned about technical foul-ups at the bank.  Depending on the bank, a deposit with insufficient funds may be cancelled rather than going through and then being cancelled, which could result in various banking fees (returned item fees, overdraft fees, etc...).   If there is a technical foul-up during a withdrawal, you run the risk of having banks get confused--I know of a case where it took a major bank months to fix a withdrawal transaction that was denied the second time when they activated it twice, but the account balance mistakenly showed an extra thousand dollars for the duration.
You could setup a Ally account to use solely for this. There is no minimum, no opening balance requirement, and you can do up to 6 transfers a month for free.  This would partition your money from other accounts, while giving you the flexibility to move it to other accounts with ease.
In Canada, when doing a debit transaction there can be the option to select which account the transaction is to be performed that would be where you'd have the choice to select a savings account. Some banks may offer interest on a chequing account if certain conditions are met.  I remember seeing once that there was a minimum balance of $1,000 at all times and a few other things that may make it less than worthwhile for the low rate offered. Another possibility is to see if your bank will automatically transfer funds from savings to main if needed.  I've had this happen a few times where money would be transferred in so I could have a purchase or cheque go through.
As someone who spends a lot of time in France, I learned that many French banks will issue debit cards to US citizens, as an add-on feature to a bank account.  The fees are not low.  Societe Generale charges 8 Euros per month, Credit Agricole charges 30 Euros a year, BNP Paribas charges 12 Euros a month.  I'm sure other banks will issue cards as well.  You need to show 2 items proving US residence, such as a utility bill, plus a passport.  They can open an account immediately, on that basis and it takes about 7-10 days to get your debit card.
You can open an account at Scotiabank and use a Bank of America atm (and vice versa). No ATM or bank imposed foreign transaction fee (outside the 1% network imposed fee)
What sort of amount are we talking about here, and what countries are you travelling to?  As long as it's not cash, most countries will neither know or care how much money is in your bank account or on your credit card limit, and can't even check if they wanted to. Even if they can, there are very few countries where they would check without already suspecting you of a crime. I think you're worrying over nothing. Even if it's cash, most countries have no border control anyway, and those who do (UK, Ireland) allow up to £10,000 or so cash without even having to declare it... Just open a second bank account and don't take the card (or cut the card up). Use online banking to transfer money in smaller chunks to your main account. Alternately (or additionally) take a credit card or two with a smaller limit (enough to make sure you're comfortably able to deal with one month plus emergency money). Then set up your regular bank account to pay this credit card off in full every month. If I was really concerned, I'd open a second bank account and add a sensible amount of money to it (enough to cover costs of my stay and avoid questions about whether I can afford my stay, but not so much it would raise question). Then I'd open two credit cards with a limit of perhaps $1000-2000: one covers the costs of living wherever I'm going, the other is for emergencies or if I misjudge and go over my amount per month. Set up your bank to pay these off each month, and you're sorted Honestly, I think you're worrying over nothing. People travel inside Europe every day with millions in the bank and raise no questions. You're legally allowed to have money!
Many of the Financial intermediaries in the business, have extraordinary high requirements for opening an account. For example to open an account in Credit Suisse  one will need 1 million US dollars.
I am not sure whether this hold in all countries, but at least in the Netherlands my bank allows for investment in funds without charging transaction costs. The downside is that these funds charge an annual fee of about 1%, but for the amounts you are talking about this definitely sounds more attractive than the alternative. As an alternative, you could ofcourse just take care of the transaction costs. That way your child can see their funds develop as you put it into different stocks without being distracted by the details. Of course you feel the 'pain' but I believe the main lesson stands out most this way.
The FDIC guarantee is up to $250,000 per depositor per insured bank. If your goal is primarily to protect your money, you may want to consider depositing your money in multiple insured banks. I'll leave it to someone else to accurately define money market accounts and how they function, and the (very low) risks you take with them. Don't forget that inflation will eat into your money. It's unlikely you'll make enough interest either in a savings account or in a money market account to cover the inflation. You should factor this in to your overall investment plan.