a step closer to booting Chase Bank
I’ve been edging away from Chase and toward Ally over the last year for many reasons. The main one is that they have a non-negotiable $12/mo checking fee if you don’t have $500 of direct deposit every month (interbank transfers don’t count, apparently).
The things that were holding me back:
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my last paycheck funds (from Dec 2019!) were late coming and should have been DD so I kept it open. They weren’t DD and I had to finagle a paper check which took literal months….
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By then Covid-19 was in effect and the stimulus funds were DD to the last known tax refund account, which in my case was Chase. I don’t see another round of that coming (and it looks like you can change it), so that’s no longer an issue.
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My main credit card, the Amazon Prime card, is issued by Chase and I’ve been paying it off monthly from my Chase checking. BUT! I set it up to pay from Ally the other day and it worked just fine. No longer an issue.
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the only bill still paid out of the Chase checking is my Planet Fitness membership, which is ~$23/mo. Everything else goes on the CC.
Now PF was great as a stealth camper in cities but lately I’m in cities less and less. If I do two honest-to-doG hot showers a month at PF they end up costing $11.50 each. Worth it? Maybe. I don’t know. I’m frugal but man those feel good. Endless hot water is an amazing luxury. Worth doing the work to transfer the membership over to Ally? Because if I don’t, keeping that account open means my showers are actually $17.50 each (($23 PF +$12 Chase)/2) and that is a no-go.
I’ll make a decision on this by the end of August. Ughhh.