"Charles Scaglione -> TOM WALKER"  wrote ..

 CS> My bank (Wells Fargo) offers on line banking with either MS Money or
 CS> Quicken.  They even include bill paying.  It all sounds so simple and
 CS> automatic....  Of course there is a monthly charge for that service which
 CS> is well hidden in their promotional. :(

Take another look.. and see if the fees are waived if you maintain a minimum
monthly balance.

For a number of years, I had no problem maintaining the minimum; all cheques
and bill payments were free.  Then at some point a number of years ago I
fell short of the minimum.  I never bothered using that account for cheques
because of that except for mortage payments (which were auto-debited
anyway).

Now, several years later - I learn that online banking is "free"
for my type
of account!   I was never informed of this change.  And I don't even need to
maintain a minimum balance to login and use it.  Even the Download Account
Details are free and offers Quicken, QuickBooks, SimplyAccounting,
MicrosoftMoney, and Spreadsheet(CVS) formats.   However, unless I have a
minimum monthly balance, bills and cheques are charged a per-use fee.  But
now, I *do* maintain a minimum balance inorder to take advantage of
cheque-less bill payments.  It turned out to be much cheaper to
"borrow" the
money to achieve the minimum and take advantage of the bank fee waiver,
instead of paying the monthly per-use fees.  How many people would realize
that?

Only one small dilema remained to make online banking the cheapest and most
convenient solution: how to get funds INTO the account from my
"source" bank
(a different institution).  Up until now, I had travelled the 90km
round-trip to the nearest branch from my home to make the required deposits.
I considered mailing my cheques to the bank for deposit, but the bank said
they could only arrange such a thing if I gave them a set of post-dated
cheques AND that it would cost me $3/cheque to do that! (add to that the
75cents fee for each cheque from the source bank account!)  Well.. that
would have been cheaper than the cost of fuel for each trip.  But ALSO
recently, I discovered an almost-free way of doing it, and no one at EITHER
bank (and these are the professionals who are IN the business of banking)
could figure it out!

To avoid the wrath of AZ, ..for many years I never bothered revisiting the
online banking option because it seemed to be limited to IE at the outset.
Firefox didn't seem be supported.  Now it is.


..

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