I remember a few years ago when credit card companies would send out $5 checks to customers. The catch with the $5 check was that it enrolled you in some sort of service, usually identity theft or employment related, that was free for a month. After a month, there was a monthly fee that was either flat, in the case of the identity theft service, or a percentage of your balance, in the case of the employment related service.

Last week, I received two letters from two banks reminding me of their complimentary offer of Accidental Death & Dismemberment AD&D insurance. It’s clear in both cases they’re marketing promotions trying to get you to buy AD&D insurance from their partners. However, the two offers are very different in how they approach the customer.

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Liz Pulliam Weston recently published an article summarizing and analyzing J.D. Power and Associates 2008 survey of credit card user happiness. They surveyed 8,000 users on five factors: interaction with the company, billing and payment processes, fees and rates, reward programs, and benefits and services.

I was a little surprised to see that the highest score was 783 out of 1,000 for American Express, with Discover taking second with 751. Everyone else surveyed scored less than the industry average of 724!

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We have twelve bank accounts.

You read that correctly, we have twelve accounts.

Ally Bank, FNBO Direct, ING Direct, HSBC Direct, Bank of America, M&T Bank, … the list goes on.

We also have a dozen credit cards. Citi, Discover, Capital One, … again, the list goes on.

We have so many accounts because we’ve slowly acquired them over the course of the last ten years. Our financial network map is an intricated mess despite our best efforts to simplify our personal finances.

That’s why we need to hit the reset button on our financial life.

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In a couple months, my wife and I will be taking an extended vacation to Europe. It’ll be a fantastic trip, one we’ve been looking forward to for months, and with the dollar strengthening and the economy across the world weak, we figured we could take advantage of lower prices to get some traveling done.

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Many thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts on the best places to buy checks online (62 comments as of this writing!), sounds like I was right to think that $20 for 50 checks was absurd! It appears that there are plenty of affordable options for buying checks and none of them come close to the 40 cents per check that Bank of America’s printers were asking for.

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My initial supply of personal checks, a checkbook worth, is coming to an end soon and I’ll be needing a fresh new supply. I don’t use checks very often anymore, I think they are antiquated and very insecure, but every few months I have to deal with a company that requires personal checks. It usually comes down to the company not wanting to deal with the headaches of credit cards and me not wanting to deal with the headaches of their 0% same-as-cash-but-not-quite financing offer! Anyway, the end result is that I write them a personal check and my initial stock is dwindling rapidly.

I looked into reordering checks directly from Bank of America, who gets them through Clarke American, now named Harland Clarke; but they want $20 for 50 checks! That’s outrageous! (and doesn’t include shipping) To prove how both absurd and true it is, here’s the screenshot from the order page (to be honest, if I were you, I wouldn’t believe me unless I saw this screenshot):

OK, order checks from the bank is out. It looks like I’ll have to order checks online. I looked at a couple places but it appears that Costco will probably be my best bet. Costco sells checks for pretty reasonable prices, though that option is only available for Costco members. You can get two boxes of standard single checks (400) for $10.59, $8.47 if you’re an executive member. Four boxes doubles the price, so there’s no discount for quantity. Shipping is a reasonable $4.95. That’s 400 checks for less than 4 cents a check – a song compared to the 40 cents BoA wanted!

Have you ever ordered checks online? If so, what has your experience been and who have you used?

My wife and I still use Bank of America as our primary checking account and I called them the other day to let them know we’d be traveling and how we might be using our debit card abroad. I don’t plan on using it (we have a Capital One card for purchases) but I wanted to ask them about using ATMs abroad.

The past few days I’ve been researching the best way to exchange money, trying to keep the fees low and the accessibility high. I’ve discussed things with my friends over there and the consensus was that ATM was probably the best way. Between ATM access and us simply paying with our 0% transaction fee Capital One card, we should be paying as little in fees as possible.

Global ATM Alliance

It turns out that Bank of America has partnered with a few international banks to form their “Global ATM Alliance.” When we use a Global ATM Alliance ATM, we avoid a $5 access fee. If we use any old ATM, we would be assessed a $5 access fee. Otherwise, ATM transactions incur a 1% transaction fee to cover the exchange of currency.

Here are the partners in the Global ATM Alliance:

• Barclays (United Kingdom)
• BNP Paribas (France)
• China Construction Bank (China)
• Deutsche Bank: (Germany)
• Satander Serfin (Mexico)
• Scotiabank (Canada)
• Westpac (Australia and New Zealand)

Call Your Bank

If you’re traveling abroad, call your bank to see what your international options are. I should have done this from the start, rather than poke around and waste time researching the best option. One simple phone call would’ve yielded the simple advice of “Try to find a Barclays, you can use their ATMs.” The 1% transaction fee, which covers the currency exchange, is probably the leanest you’ll ever find. You will always have to pay a fee to exchange money and it’s either listed as a fee or integrated into an exchange rate that doesn’t match the prevailing rate (this is how credit cards used to “hide” the currency transaction fee and the reasoning behind the foreign transaction fee lawsuit).

Time to pack for London!

(Photo: funkypancake)

When I used to play the balance transfer arbitrage game a few years ago, no fee 0% balance transfers were plentiful. I had my pick of the litter and it usually was a Citi card because they would send the check directly to you. Nowadays, 0% balance transfers are still available but they have 3% balance transfer fees (sometimes capped, oftentimes not) making them good options for people with credit card debt but effectively killing the balance transfer arbitrage games (well, sagging interest rates on high yield savings accounts probably did that more than anything).

However, one place you might look to for a no fee 0% balance transfers is at your community bank. Reader Robert shared an experience he had with a local bank in Connecticut that was still offering 0% balance transfers on their credit cards.

Just thought I would let you know that I received and took advantage of a fifteen month, 0% balance transfer offer with NO fees. This was through a local bank here in Connecticut (Liberty Bank), underwritten by Elan Financial Services. I have not these types of offers for a long time and thought they were dead, but apparently not.

Oftentimes we always think to look for the best offers from national companies like Citi, Discover, Chase, and Bank of America; but the best offers may be in your own neighborhood.

(Photo: smiteme)

0% credit cards are all the rage these days and this list will help you identify the best deals out there. Consumer spending is down, fears of a recession are up, and retailers are scrambling to entice regular people like you and me to enter their stores and buy more stuff. One group of companies you’ll also find lining up to offer you special offers is the credit card industry.

Credit card companies don’t necessarily want you to go into debt to them, though that doesn’t hurt their bottom line. They want you to keep on spending because they earn money on processing transactions. If you review the annual statements of any credit card issuer, most of the income they derive from credit cards comes in the form of data processing and service fees. So, in order to keep spending up as long as possible, more and more are offering great offers such as 0% APY for 12 months on purchases and balance transfers.

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The whole story revolves around how these two call center account managers for MBNA, now a subsidiary of Bank of America, would hard sell credit card customers on expensive cash advances. The piece goes into how they would use all sorts of hard sell tactics, preying on the financial weaknesses of callers, finding any angle to try to wedge a nice fat cash advance in there. There was also the obligatory swing at credit card companies and their terms & conditions, which include the 0% cash advance or balance transfer jumping to the default rate of 28% if they missed a payment, “even by a day.” (Late is late, a minute, a day, a year… it’s still late)

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