I saw a post on My Two Dollars about where he currently keeps his money, so I thought it would be a good idea to share where I keep mine. Bear in mind that this article will be very short as I do not have a lot of money.

  • Fifth Third Bank
    My wife and I have our joint accounts at Fifth Third bank, but this will soon change. I initially chose this bank because there was one in Michigan, where my parents lived, and one in Indiana, where I went to school. It was nice to be able to come home from the summer and still be able to use the same bank. My wife (by sheer coincidence had her own Fifth Third account before I even met her). We have a checking and savings here, but we use it for our month to month expenses.We will be switching banks soon however. There is a Chase bank down the street which is looking better and better all the time. Fifth Third charged my wife’s debit card because someone at Vermont Teddy Bear put in a credit number that had too many digits. Well, she filed a police report and got the money back. After this, she closed the account because she did not want this happening again, but now Fifth Third is saying we owe this money back to them. It has been going on since April 2006, and it is a real hassle.

    Another problem is that we just got charged $2 last month for having 5 withdraws in our savings account (withdraws being I paid off bills). Every withdraw over 3 costs $1 they say. I have made at least 6 withdraws every statement period, so I am going to fight this (and find a new bank).

  • Citibank
    My wife and I have our Emergency savings account at Citibank, where we are getting a nice 5% return on our money. This account is not very big at the moment, but it is growing. We will also be using this for our “Big Ticket” savings. Things like a new LCD TV for the living room and a vacation will come out of this account. It was very easy to sign up for this account, and they gave us a checking and savings account. Only problem with this bank is that there are no bank or ATM locations around us. They do offer free transfers to other bank accounts which is very nice.
  • ING Retirement
    The company I work for has their 401K through ING. Not much to say here. My money gets put in automatically, and I make a decent return off of it. I have to watch and move my money around about once every 3 months or so to make sure I am getting the best return, but it keeps me involved on what’s going on in my 401K. The company match is decent, but nothing to be too excited about.
  • ShareBuilder
    My daughter and I each have some stock from Sharebuilder since it was basically free because of the $50 promos. I have Frontline, which you can see on Current Stocks page, and my daughter will have $50 worth of Disney on Tuesday. The only thing I do not like about ShareBuilder is for $4 you can only trade on Tuesday. But since it was basically free, I cannot complain.

Other than these places, most of my “money” is in my mortgage and my student loan debt. If anyone has any suggestions for a new day to day bank for my wife and I, let me know.

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