Most people I know have experienced at least one of the following annoyances somewhat recently with their checking account:

1. You couldn’t find your bank’s ATM, so you used another one and got slapped with huge fees.
2. You thought you’d solved #1 with the new hip internet bank you found, only to come across a lot of cash and realize there was no way to deposit it.
3. As you prepared your taxes (or gathered the necessary forms together), you realized that the amount of interest you earned last year in your checking account couldn’t even buy you one meal.

The truth of the matter is, there’s really no one checking account that solves all these problems (unless you are extremely wealthy, but I’m not going to address that here).

For many years, I had a checking account with Bank of America that I had set up when I was 18 to get free student checking. The terrible interest rate always frustrated me, but because I always lived near a Bank of America ATM, it never frustrated me enough to switch.

As I began traveling internationally more and more, ATM fees started to annoy me more and more. I finally hit my breaking point when I noticed Bank of America had assessed me a fee when I made a withdrawal at a China Construction Bank ATM in Chengdu, China, which I was told would not charge me a fee because of Bank of America’s partnership. As it turns out, what that really meant was that Bank of America would not charge me a fee for using another bank’s ATM, nor would the owner of the ATM (China Construction Bank) charge me a fee for using a foreign bank. However, I was still charged a foreign transaction fee because I was making a withdrawal at an ATM outside the US.

This is why it is important to read the fine print when looking at checking accounts; you not only want a bank who will reimburse your out-of-network ATM fees, but one that won’t charge you if you make a withdrawal abroad.

However, the reality of it is that you shouldn’t look too hard if you’re searching for a bank account designed for travelers, because the best one by far is Charles Schwab.

Why?

-Accepted at just about every ATM worldwide. So far, I’ve successfully used mine in 16 foreign countries, some of which have extremely limited financial networks (like Bhutan), and never once had it declined (other than in Cuba, for obvious reasons, though even this will likely change soon).

–Unlimited ATM fee reimbursements. Offering to refund ATM fees is getting very trendy among smaller to midsize banks, but most of the time, they will only reimburse a certain amount per month (usually up to $15 to $25). Now, this generally isn’t a problem if you’re in the US, but if you’re doing extended travel internationally, you can easily have more than $25 worth of ATM fees in a month. I came very close last year after being away for all of June.

-Excellent customer service. In addition to being available 24/7, they have a collect number which you can call internationally and they will pay your charges. On top of that, if you lose your ATM card (as I did last year on the first day of a two-month trip last year), they will send you a new one within three business days to almost anywhere in the world for a $15 fee (in my case, Thailand).

So that solves problem #1 above. However, as Charles Schwab has no true physical bank locations (although they do have service centers in major cities), there is nowhere that you can deposit cash into your account. Again, while this generally isn’t much of an issue in our society that is moving more and more away from cash, there might be a time when you have a large amount of cash with you which you don’t feel comfortable walking around with (or storing), from perhaps a dinner where you put everything on your credit card and everyone else gave you cash. This is why it’s good to have a bank that has their own ATMs which you can deposit cash into (and then later transfer to your primary checking account).

For this, I personally like Capital One, as they have locations in all major US cities, and have no monthly fees of any sort (on top of that, you can use a Capital One debit or credit card to get half of your drink order at a Capital One Cafe). However, if your particular area is not well-served by Capital One, you might want to look into other options (though you might end up having to choose between a local bank with not many locations across the country, or a national bank which will charge you monthly fees for not maintaining a certain amount). You also might be able to get a nifty signup bonus if you apply inside one of their cafes.

After a particularly successful blackjack night in Vegas a few months ago, I found myself with $500 in my pocket, all in hundred dollar bills. Thankfully, after getting off of my flight back to Boston, I was able to go straight to a Capital One location and deposit the money, after which I then transferred it to my Charles Schwab account.

However, as much as I love my bank accounts with both Charles Schwab and Capital One, neither of them are particularly great for earning any interest, as Charles Schwab offers an interest rate of 0.06%, and Capital One is only slightly better at 0.2%. In other words, for every $10,000 in your Charles Schwab account, you’ll earn $6 at the end of the year (though this still is far better than the 0.01% offered by many major banks, yielding you a nice $1 for every $10,000 in your account).

Luckily, there are many small banks that have been very aggressive at bringing on new customers by offering sky-high interest rates. One in particular that has been getting a lot of headlines lately is the new Ultimate Account from Northpointe Bank, offering 5% (yes, 5%!) APY on balances up to $5,000. Although in order to get this, it does require at least 15 ATM transactions per month of at least $500, as well as direct deposit of at least $100 per month.

However, given how often I’m trying to meet credit card minimum spend requirement in order to earn bonuses, I opted against this one, not sure if I would be able to fulfill the ATM requirement. Instead, I opted for another account from a small local bank with an APY not quite as high, but a less stringent requirement for ATM transactions.

Now, I’m not necessarily recommending this for you. Depending on your situation as well as how much effort you want to put into it, you can earn 5% on your first $60,000 and 3% on your next $35,000, as the amazing website Doctor of Credit recently laid out. Furthermore, while every bank account I’ve mentioned so far in this post is available to you regardless of where you live in the United States, there may be other banks near you offering amazing rates only available to local residents (for example, if you live in Louisiana, you can get 4.11% APY on up to $15,000).

More importantly, this post is not intended to be financial advice regarding what kind of financial accounts you should have and how you should allocate your money among them. Obviously, I am not recommending you put all of your money in checking accounts, as the stock market will almost always yield a better return in the long-term.

But if you’re going to have a checking account (or a few), you might as well get all you can out of them.

Did I miss something? Feel free to email me or post in the comments.

Since moving back to Boston from San Francisco, bus travel has become a far more regular occurrence for me. Given that it’s a 4.5-hour bus ride from Boston to Manhattan is only slightly more time than it takes to fly between the two cities (once you factor in getting to the airport early, getting off the plane, and the significant amount of time it takes to get to Manhattan from any of the three New York City-area airports), I often choose to take the bus, as it’s far cheaper, I often can spread out more, make calls, and usually have pretty reliable wifi. (And if you take the train, which you can do for free if you accrue Amtrak points well, it will take you even less time).

Knowing that I had a few New York trips coming up, I instantly hopped on this sale to purchase some tickets for myself.

Doing a random search for some weekends a few months out yields quite a lot of results, like this Friday night to Sunday night itinerary between Boston and New York (note that the booking fee is $2, so it comes out to a $4 roundtrip ticket than $2):

The deal is even on for the far less popular (and longer) LA to SF route, one I’m still hoping for the Hyperloop to address, assuming it doesn’t go the way of the Monorail. Given that it’s about a 7.5-hour ride, I’m only expecting people with a fair amount of work flexibility to snatch this up, but it’s still worth noting:

Booking is relatively straightforward, and can be done by going to the Megabus home page.

And before you jump on me, I am aware of Megabus’ questionable safety record. I’ve never had any issues with them, even finding the drivers to be better than others. It is a risk I choose to take.

While I’m sure there’s many other great $1 deals available, I chose to focus on these two particular routes, given how popular both of them are. If you found another great deal that you’d like to share, feel free to post about it in the comments or email me.

(h/t BoardingArea)

While this is technically correct, it does take some explaining. Several years ago, Bank of America launched the Better Balance Rewards credit card, a card presumably intended to reward people for managing their credit better (certainly a big issue in America). The premise is pretty simple: For every quarter (three statement periods) in which you make more than the minimum payment on your balance in every month, you get $25 (and $30 if you have a Bank of America checking account).

Well, if you’re one of those people who already manages their credit responsibly and pays their balance in full every month, you may be wondering why this is of use to you. Well, the good news is that everyone is available to earn this bonus, and all you have to do is charge $1 to your card every month and pay that dollar off by the time your statement is due (it may be possible that you can get it for charging even less than $1, but I haven’t chanced it and haven’t found reports of other people doing it either).

In other words, if you charge $1 every month for three months ($3) to this card and have a Bank of America checking account, you’ll get $30, or 1,000% cash back. Of course, this isn’t a truly 1,000% cash back card as the reward is fixed. If you charge $30 in it to three months, it becomes a 100% cash back card. If you charge $1,000 to it in three months, it becomes a 3% cash back card, and so on. In other words, I wouldn’t recommend charging any more than you have to. If you’re worried you might forget to manually make a charge every month, you might consider using this card to make automatic payments on a utility bill every month so you don’t have to think about it. Just make sure you also set up automatic payments to pay the balance in full on your credit card!

The credit will usually post a few days into the statement period following the third month:

However, as Bank of America continues to impose all sorts of fees on their checking account customers without offering competitive interest rates, it’s more likely than not that like me, you’ve switched away from your Bank of America account that you opened up your freshman year of college (if you even did open up one). If this is the case, it will yield $25 for you every three months, or $100/year. If you’re looking for ways to make $100/year with minimal effort, it’s hard to beat this (on the contrary, to earn $100 in interest from your checking account, you’d have to keep $10,000 in it for a whole year at 1% APY, or $1,000,000 at 0.01% APY, which is closer to the rates most banks are offering these days).

If you really want to get as much out of this as possible and open up a Bank of America checking account to get the extra $5, you can avoid the $12 monthly fee by either having an average daily balance of $1,500 or more, monthly direct deposits of $250 or more, or being a Preferred Rewards client (which requires 3-month combined average balances of at least $20,000 between your Bank of America checking account and Merrill Lynch/Merrill Edge investment accounts). For most people (including me), this isn’t worth the effort.

I honestly don’t know why Bank of America would offer a credit card that allows it to lose so much money from their customers who use credit responsibly (and it’s possible they may discontinue it if they’re losing more than they’re making), but in the meantime, I’m not complaining. While $100/year may not seem like much, at this rate, if I hold on to it until I die, that’s an extra $7,000 or so I’ll make (of course, whether credit cards will be around in that many years is another story for another post).

Have questions about something here? Feel free to e-mail me or post in the comments below.

With tax season approaching, I thought this might be an appropriate post.

Depending on your age, if you are lucky enough to owe the government money for your taxes, you likely either pay by writing a check, or doing an ACH debit from your checking account.

Generally, paying one’s taxes with a credit card is frowned upon, due to the fees charged.

But here’s the thing: As long as the percent cash back you earn on your card is higher than the percent that’s charged for paying your taxes with a credit card, you’ll come out ahead. You might even be able to use this strategy to meet minimum spending requirements on a card.

Right now, the cheapest rate for paying your federal taxes with a credit card is 1.87% (or $2.59, so you’ll want to make sure the payment is at least $138), charged by Pay1040.com. Therefore, you need a card that gets at least 2% back on all purchases to come out ahead.

For people just looking for something simple, the Citi Double Cash Card is a bit unique in that there is no signup bonus, but also no annual fee, and you earn 1% back when you make a purchase, and 1% back when you pay it off.

Other cards that offer 2% back when redeemed for travel purchases include the Capital One Venture and Barclays Arrival Plus World Elite.

Of course, getting 2% cash back on a payment that is charging 1.87% extra only yields a net cash back of .13%, or, $1.30 for every $1,000, which isn’t really much, though it can be useful if you’re trying to meet a minimum spending bonus, or if you’re waiting on money to transfer into your checking account.

So can we do better? Maybe a 3% card? Yes. Well, kinda.

The Discover It Miles card is another unique card, in that there is no signup bonus or annual fee, and it offers you 1.5% cash back on all your purchases, but doubles your rewards your first year, in other words, giving you 3%. Therefore, if you were to time the opening of your card and payment of your federal taxes, you could use this card to get 3% back on your federal taxes twice (e.g. open the card March 1, pay your federal taxes for the current year on March 15, and then pay your taxes for the next year on February 15). This will now boost you up to a net of 1.13% cash back, or $11.30 for every $1,000. It’s not a ton of money, but it’s a little bit more (and personally, with all the independent consulting work I did last year, I know I’ll be paying more than that in taxes).

The Discover It Miles card is also just a great all-around card to have, namely in that it not only has no annual fee, but also no foreign transaction fees, and up to $30 in in-flight WiFi credit every year, on any airline. (Of course, there is tremendous irony in Discover trying to market a card to be used abroad, given how much trouble they have with acceptance in the US*).

And while I don’t have time to go through the credit card fees for state tax rates, I know that California’s is 2.3%, so if you want to make any money from paying your California state taxes, the Discover It Miles card is your only choice.

Happy filing!

Did I miss something? Have questions? Feel free to e-mail me or post in the comments below.

*I really wanted to instead link to the Futurama clip about Discover, but could not find a video of this anywhere on the internet without paying. If you have a link to this scene, please let me know and I’ll replace the Family Guy link.