We get asked all the time, what bank should I use? Yeah. And while we’d love to hand you over the perfect bank, it’s just not that simple. It’s not. And you have to choose a bank based on what works for you, your budget, where you live, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. So today we’re gonna give you a checklist.

You can go through and ask these questions and make sure these boxes are checked before you hire a bank, because you’re hiring that bank to be your personal assistant and it’s important. And you are the interviewer here. Yeah. Okay. So you’re in charge. You’re in the driver’s seat.

So why does all of this matter? Because listen, all banks are not recruited equal. Or credit unions, like we wanna say like bank slash credit unions, right? Yeah. But some are actually. Making your budget harder Yeah. To manage versus allowing it to be as simple and as automated as we want it for you.

Yeah, and I think it, banks it’s like how credit cards do it too. Banks change the way that they charge you to be their customer. Very sneakily. So one bank has like. We only charge you if this happens. And the other bank’s we don’t charge that. We’re so cool. But on the bottom of the, on the terms and conditions, here’s what they’re gonna charge you, right?

So there’s just every bank has their own little way to get you or mess up what we’re trying to help you do. So that’s why we have to have a checklist and we all of those things out. Yeah. So remember always they work for you. You are hiring them to do a job. That you need them to do. You’re interviewing them and you’re going to find the right one. Trust me, they’re out there. There are plenty of options.

Yeah. So personally, we use, I use USAA and she uses public credit union for our personal, and then we use Navy Federal for business and some personal Navy. But we love and we love them, but guess what? We don’t know that you can use them if you can. We recommend them because they work. Those, all three of those are specifically tied to your job or something like that.

I’ve actually had clients say look USAA isn’t working for us and here’s why. So Shana’s situation, it doesn’t. There’s no like restrictions or whatever the way that her budget flows. But I do have one client, or I think actually a couple of them, that like it doesn’t work for us ’cause we have this situation going on.

So again, it’s not as easy as telling you what bank to use. It’s different just like your budget is not cookie cutter. It’s very specific based on your lifestyle and your goals and so is your bank. And we’ve had clients that have had great luck with a lot of them do use USA and na, Navy Federal, but they also have had good luck with SoFi Ally.

And even relay for business stuff. So there’s options out there, but what we want you to do is not necessarily have to go to these big huge national banks. You can try your local credit union. ’cause usually they’ve got really good rates and really good deals, and you can go in and talk to a human and it’s nice.

So that’s why we’re gonna give you a checklist. So you can interview them. And most credit unions or even banks now, they partner with some type of. Company or community where they are, they allow you to have free ATMs all over the country. So that, usually they’re in a co-op, I think is what they call it.

So even though it’s local, like you are like, what if I move? You’re most likely 90% of your baking is online anyways. So you may not actually need a bank in person as much as you think. Okay. So let’s go through these questions. Let’s run through them. First of all, can I open, this is the most important, you guys, multiple checking and savings accounts.

Our system, we want you to separate your bills. From your spending, from your savings accounts, and all of those will be different accounts. So this has to be, this is non-negotiable. And the follow up question to that, is how many checking and savings can I open? Because we found like Ally only allows you to have three checking accounts and with our system, if you’re have a family.

Like you really need a minimum of five, including your Bills account. So you just really wanna make sure that the make your choosing is for you with that. And now we’re gonna start, what are the fees associated, right? Do you have a annual fee, a monthly fee? Do you have a fee if you do this or that?

Or the other one is fees, transaction fee, like transfer fee, like yes. All of that is. Something that we need to learn about. Yeah. The next one is, are there direct deposit requirements? This is a thing a lot of banks require. They say, oh, it’s a free checking, but you have to have $500 transferred into that bank account every single month.

And some of ’em are okay if it’s like a different, if it’s coming from a different account of theirs. But some of them require it to be like your from your payroll. Like your from your employer. So yeah. Another question is, are there account minimums? Because if we’re teaching you to use the spending or this grocery budget and it’s gonna go down, that’s a checking account.

Usually minimums are more for your savings. But either way, if you’re going to use the system we teach you, you might drain it one month. And then refill it, refill it. And so if there’s a balance minimum, and especially if it’s a high balance minimum, then we you, that’s not gonna be the bank for you.

Yeah. Not gonna work. All right, so the next question is, can I rename each account? And this is huge. Yes. Okay. You want, whether you’re using our system or not, which we hope we are, but you wanna be able to name your account and know what the heck you’re using that account for. Yeah. It’s really important.

Yeah. Number 1, 5, 2, 3, 3, 8 2, 1 is not helpful? No. Okay. It doesn’t tell you anything. We don’t want that for you. And this might seem nitpicky, but you’re hiring them. Like why not make sure they do all the things that you want to do? And most of them do. This is pretty common. But yeah, some of this stuff is pretty standard, but some of it is not.

Yeah. Just in case. And we just want you to have a list in hand so that way when you are going around finding the right bank for you, you know what to ask. Yeah. So the next one is, can I set up automatic transfers? This again we haven’t really seen a bank that doesn’t have this but they might be out there.

So we just wanna make sure, I want to be able to do transfers on a schedule ahead of time. I wanna set it up ahead of time for a certain amount and specific dates reoccurring dates. Do you have that option? I’m glad you said that reoccurring part because some people they know that they can make just quick transfers between accounts.

But there should be a completely separate screen on your app or in, the web version of it that allows you to make automatic reoccurring transfers between accounts. All right. So the next question is, are there transfer limits, like the number of transfers and the dollar amount that have to be made?

Oh, and we will tell you the Navy Federal has one we know it from ’cause we use it for our business. For example, we can’t transfer out more than $5,000 per day. Now that’s a lot. And that might, you might be like, I don’t think I need to worry. That’s a, I can deal with that limit. But for our business it doesn’t work. So you just wanna make sure, they might also have you can only have three CHI transfers. ’cause it’s a savings account. You can only do that three times. If you can avoid all of that, if you can just have no limits on your life, that’s what we’re going for.

Yeah. The least amount of yeses you get when these questions. Yeah. Yeah. All right, so the next one is. The number of debits. We wanna say here, this is actually a thing, like you sometimes, like Shannon was saying, we’re savings accounts. Sometimes you can only have and here’s another thing, some savings accounts now have debit cards.

It’s really strange, but I. What we wanna make sure is that if you’re, whenever you’re swiping or however many transactions that are happening between those accounts, that there’s not a limit on that. Yeah. Another one, this, so this is really funny. I have USAA and this has gone full circle.

I remember when they first came out, they said, we’ll either give you cash. Reward debit card or we’ll give you at TM fee reimbursement. Which one, which path do you choose? And then they took away the cash reimbursement or they did something, but they kept the reimburse. Everybody got moved to that. This is all over 20 years.

And now the, now I notice they put at M here so they don’t have to keep paying us back the ATM fee’s. Like they put them in where we are because we are military, one of the larger military populations. And so they ha so they’re like, we saved some money. Anyway, point being I never used to have an ATM close.

There was no such thing as that because USA has one location in the whole world, but actually two. But anyway. Now I do. But that’s what we want you to think about. Like how am I gonna, if I don’t live at the bank, is there ATM that I can use where I, or live near the bank, I should say don’t live at the bank.

Is there ATM nearby or that’s convenient to use? Or like Vanessa said, is there a co-op or whatever situation where I don’t have to pay a fee to use it. Or obviously if you live close enough to the bank, you don’t necessarily need to go to the ATM. And then one of the last questions that we want you to ask is, . Do transfers happen between accounts instantly or are there delays? So we have found with a couple of banks, like you can transfer money in. Quickly, but if you ever transfer money out, it takes a week. So it’s like you really just wanna make sure you know what, how the bank operates to make sure it doesn’t cause delays.

And this is why, this is one of the main reasons why we want you to have all of your accounts at one bank. Yes. That’s important. We have a lot of customer or clients, excuse me, that come to us and they’re like, I have four different banks and this bank does this and this bank does this. And I’m like, okay, but if you ever need to transfer money between those banks, it takes one day.

So that is one lifetime. It is a long time, especially when you’re dealing with your money. If you can do all of your banking, all of your savings buckets. All of your spending accounts, all of that in one bank. And then, hey, if you wanna have your, hopefully you’re at a high yield savings, if you wanna have a high yield savings for your emergency fund, that’s totally fine, but we just recommend having as many accounts as you can in one place.

Okay. So a couple bonus questions like you wanna. Maybe you check out the app or at least look at, look on the online demo of their app. Just to make sure it looks like something you wanna use. It’s user friendly. It’s like modern, they have an app. These are important things. We have a local credit union.

I will never use them because I don’t, I. Think that they’ve even come into the two thousands. I am, not doing a 1990s style website, guys. So if you can’t do that, then we’re not gonna work together. ’cause I like my digital stuff, I was just gonna say, sometimes your local banks won’t have the bougie app.

The Bougie bank app. Yeah. But, so you wanna just make sure that, like Shana says, what are you getting yourself into? And you don’t wanna sign up and spend the entire day

doing all this and then realizing, oh, I don’t wanna do this. ’cause it’s like a dinosaur, right? We’re gonna re, we’re gonna replay, do an instant replay here real quick.

You want a bank that gives you as many checking, savings as possible. No fees, no deposit requirements, no minimums. No transfer limits. You have the ability to rename the accounts and you can easily transfer money automatically. Yeah, absolutely. And listen, if you want a full checklist of all this, we have a print, a free printable for you.

If you go to budget besties.com/bank checklist, you can print it, you can have it on your phone, you can screenshot it, whatever you want to be able to take it with you when you’re interviewing a bank. Yes. And don’t forget, you’re the CEO of your budget. And your bank is the personal assistant. Yeah.

We want you to take this checklist and you want me to ask the right questions, and don’t be afraid to say next if that bank isn’t a good fit for you. You’ve got big goals and your bank should help you get there faster.