MyCardBlog

National City Bank is running another huge checking account bonus promotion which will give you $200 bonus for opening a checking account online with qualified direct deposit. One week ago, I reported that National City Bank was offering $150 bonus for opening a checking account online with direct deposit. That promotion was scheduled to end on October 22, 2008. But now National City Bank extends this checking account promotion to October 31, 2008 and increases the bonus to $200.

The promotion page can be found at www.nationalcity.com/cash. This is a web-only promotion and not available in the local branches. If you want to open a new checking account at National City Bank, you have to apply for a National City checking account online.

Details about this promotion:

• Open a new personal checking account online by 10/31/2008 with a minimum initial deposit of $50
• Establish a direct deposit to your checking account of at least $250 or more and a Visa® CheckCard* issued to you within 60 days of account opening
• Limit of one bonus per household and available only to households without an existing National City checking account
• $200 bonus will be credited to your account within 60 days after all conditions have been met
• Your account must be open to receive the bonus

National City checking accounts feature:

• Unlimited transactions
• Free Visa® CheckCard
• Free Online Banking
• Free Online Bill Payment
• Personal savings account (with no monthly maintenance
• fee and no minimum balance)
• Free online statements
• Free banking rewards program – points from National City®

National City Bank is one of the largest regional banks, so this promotion is limited to the residents of states where National City has business. National City branches located in IL, MI, IN, FL, KY, MO, OH, WI and PA.

This is no hard inquiry during the account opening process. But National City will check the ChexSystems.

National City Bank is seeking more capital from US government and other sources. Running checking account bonus with direct deposit is a way to attract more new customers and thus increase the deposits. I doubt whether there will be a $250 checking account bonus in the near future.

Update: National City Bank was acquired by PNC Bank today.

I reported that the Quicken Online now goes free for everyone. Actually, there are many free online personal financial tools. Those finance tools are thought to be very useful for customers to check their daily spending, pay bills, and set budget. The difficult part is finding the right tool to fit your needs. Hereby I introduce 6 popular web based personal finance tools that might be of help to you.

Mint

Website: www.mint.com

Mint is a free web-based financial management service. The primary service provided by Mint is to track bank, credit card, investment, and loan transactions and balances through a simplified user interface. Mint is very popular because of its simple setup and easy to use budgeting tools. After you give Mint your online account information, Mint can automatically retrieves your latest financial data from your online financial institutions. And you can set how often you want it to report to you. Mint can do a lot of hard work to help you track your spending, make budgets and set alerts. If you want to use a online service to track your spending, Mint is the top choice.

Yodlee

Website: www.yodlee.com

Yodlee provides account aggregation and other online financial services. Yodlee allows users to see their credit card, bank, investment, email, travel reward accounts on one screen. Perhaps, Yodlee is the most popular free online financial service. Yodless is also famous for offering mobile banking feature. The Yodlee MoneyCenter is a popular web application that allows consumers to manages their finances online. It is a free web application that provides much of the popular personal finance functions of Intuit’s Quicken with features such as bill payment, expenses tracking, and investment management. As a matter of fact, Bank of America’s My Portfolio service is powered by Yodlee. If you want to get all of your personal finance in a single place, Yodless is a good choice.

Buxfer

Website: www.buxfer.com

Buxfer is also a free online personal finance software for budgeting and expense management. You can even transfer your money online using Buxfer. Most interesting part is buxfer can track the transactions for a group. The group can then split bills based on the summary from Buxfer. Buxfer also has lot of fantastic web applications which can be used on iPhone, facebook, Google and other mobile devices. But, to be honest, I don’t trust buxfer very much. It’s more like a study-group based product.

Geezeo

Website: www.geezeo.com

Geezeo is a free online personal fiance management software. It provides free budgeting tools, financial advice, and even a forum for members to discuss about. Geezeo also provide some finance products like credit cards, checking accounts, savings accounts, CDs, loans and even mortgages. The Geezeo is not merely a personal finance tool. But the service is not so great as Mint and Yodlee.

Wesabe

Website: www.wesabe.com

Wesabe helps users track spending and set financial goals. The coolest part of Wesabe is it can provide your personal date and then compare to others”. In this way, you can find out how to save a penny! You can even share your idea on how to spend smarter at the community of Wesabe. Wesabe also has a team of personal finance adviser to answer question and propose ideas in the community. My only worry is as they indicate”We do this by aggregating and analyzing our community members’ personal financial data, and showing tips — recommendations to get the most from our money.” So your personal financial information seems not safe there.

Quicken Online

This is the last one I want to introduce here because I just covered the Quicken Online two days ago at here.

I heard a lot about the worry that many banks may follow WaMu and Wachoiva’s step. It’s understandable that they don’t know that their money is covered by FDIC (current limit is lifted to $250K). I have seen a lot of friends transferred their money from other banks to Chase Bank. Hereby I want to state that your money is covered by FDIC. Even your bank collapses in an unexpected way, your account at your bank is safe. Your money is covered by FDIC. You can cash your deposit at the collapsed bank immediately after FDIC takes over it.

Today I came across the article at New York Times which indicated that five regional banks reported another round (third quarter) of painful results on Tuesday. Furthermore, analysts say their business will worsen as the economy deteriorates.The results are expected as a result of the financial crisis.

Following is a brief summary of the report:

US Bank—quarterly profit but not up to investors’ expect, bank stocks are down about 42 percent in the last year.

National City Bank—fifth quarterly loss, would cut 4,000 jobs.

Fifth Third Bank—second quarterly loss, lost $56 million.

Key Bank—second quarterly loss, lost $36 million.

Regions Financial of Alabama—$79.5 million profit.

To address the problems, banks are in great need of money. That’s why National City Bank promote their checking account products with $150 bonus with qualified direct deposit. At the same time, all of the banks are running great long-term CD deals in the past months. If their customers lose the confidence and transfer all of the money to other banks, I think it’s really the time for them to collapse.

Of course, there is also good news. The above mentioned banks are seeking the involvement of US government. They might join the government’s $250 billion plan to recapitalize banks.

All I want to say is let give them some time and confidence.

Intuit, the American software company that develops financial and tax preparation tools for small businesses, individuals, and accountants, finally lowered their subscription fee on Quicken Online. The Quicken Online is a web based financial service that competes with Mint, Yodlee, Buxfer, Wesabe and Geezeo. Intuit is still selling their DVD/CD version products—Quicken Series and TurboTax Series.

It used to cost $3 per month ($36/year) for a customer to use Quicken Online. I personally used this service for a while but realized that it didn’t worth $3 for me to use Quicken Online. Because I can easily find out other free online financial services.

I think this is a smart move fot Intuit. They can build their solid name online and then sell you TurboTax or Quicken Books later on. They just want to start a relationship with their customers.

What can Quicken Online do to help you?

You can put all your accounts together at Quicken Online with a single password. You don’t have to visit your online account at banks and credit card companies frequently to check your account activities. You can put all your checking, savings, PayPal and credit card accounts together all in one place at Quicken Online. You can check your account information with iPhone or BlackBerry since the account information is scheduled to be updated every night.

The most fantastic function of the Quicken Online is you can set bill reminders via text messages or e-mail to help you remember to make your payments. Thus you won’t miss a coming due payment!

Quicken Online automatically categorizes your expenses, so you can start seeing where your money is going. (Believe me, this function is not so good and no other online financial services are good.)

Use a financial can help you understand where your money goes and how you spend your money. You can plan your budget better later on. It’s a great way to learn how to manage your personal finance.

US Bank, the Minneapolis based commercial bank, is again offering $75 free gas bonus for opening a new checking account and make gas purchases with visa check card. This promotion is pretty nice if you want to open a checking account at US Bank because this promotion doesn’t require direct deposit.

I reported the same promotion in September. At that time, US Bank was also offering $75 gas credit for using their check card at gas stations. This promotion is listed at here. But it is not listed at US Bank website.

Some requirements for this promotion:

• Visit your local branch by 10/31/2008 (bring your printed ad to your local branch)
• Open a new Free Checking Account (depend on what kind of service you want)
• Spend up to $75 at pumps with your new check card (Non-PIN purchase is required and you must use the card up to $75 within 30 days of account opening. Gas receipts must be brought into the branch where the account was opened by 12/05/2008.)
• Minimum $50 initial deposit required
• No direct deposit required

For example, the free checking account doesn’t require any direct deposit, no minimum balance required, and no monthly fees. It’s a great checking product!

U.S. Bank has locations in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. It’s said that Warren Buffet owns stake in US Bank.

US Bank also has credit card business. Its REI Visa Credit Card offers $40 REI gift card for applying for a new REI Visa Credit Card and get approved. This credit card also offers 5% cash back for shopping at REI. Probably the most famous credit card from US Bank is the WorldPerks Visa Rewards Card which offers frequent flyer miles from Northwest Airlines. The WorldPerks Visa Signature Card offers 20,000 one-time Enrollment Bonus miles and the WorldPerks Visa Platinum Card offers 10,000 one-time Enrollment Bonus miles. US Bank also offers SkyBlue SKYPASS Visa Credit Card which is co-branded with Korean Air.

Bank of America used to be the largest bank by assets and second largest commercial bank by deposits before the acquisition of WaMu by JP Morgan chase & Co. Bank of America’s most popular banking products may be the MyAccess Checking Account and the Keep the Change program. However, there are a lot of complaints about the terrible overdraft fees. Here I will tell you the most useful method to get the overdraft fees back from Bank of America.

Why the overdraft fees are so terrible?

First, what’s “an overdraft fee”? An overdraft item fee occurs whenever funds must be provided to cover a transaction that overdraws the account. Believe it or not, overdraft fees have increasingly become a source of profits. Banks and credit unions collect about $17.5 billion in overdraft fees per year. As reported by USA Today:

In 2007, Wachovia put in place a tool that tells employees how much they can refund to customers hit by overdraft fees. The bank, in memos, also tells employees to “sell” a debit card with every account because it makes money when consumers use it.

Bank of America raised the fee charged on the first day a customer overdraws to $25 from $20. BOA also raised the number of times a customer can be hit with this fee per day to seven from five. It’s really terrible. Furthermore, the next following days after the first day, the fee is $35.00 for each item. A customer can easily get up to $500 fees just for the overdraft. And it’s vry common to pay $100 over draft fees for just 2 or 3 cups of coffee!

It’s common to go to your local BOA branches to complain the over draft fees if it really happens to you. Or you may call BOA up to appeal. However, most of the employees are trained to give you a samll portion or even nothing to you. So there must be other ways to get the money back.

After a little search on the web, I realized that the most effective way to get the over draft fees back is to write to their CEO!

This has been confirmed to be successful for many victims of BOA’s over draft fees. The CEO of Bank of America’s address is:

Mr. Kenneth D. Lewis
100 N. Tryon Street.
Mail Code NC-1-007-18-01
Charlotte, NC 28255

In the letter to the CEO, all you have to do is to state the reason why you have so many over draft fees and tell him that as a loyal BOA’s customer, you hope he can help you!

And there are other methods to reach BOA’s executive customer relations.

Executive Customer Relations general line: 704-386-5687

Nancy M. Condos
VP/ Customer Advocate
Executive Customer Relations
Office of the Chairman
nancy.m.condos@bankofamerica.com

Martha Dominguez, Executive Customer Relations Specialist: 714-792-4264

Corporate Headquarters (Bank of America):
Bank of America Corporate Center
100 North Tryon Street
Charlotte, North Carolina 28255

National City Bank is still in trouble and the stock price is bouncing around $3 per share recently. Wachovia Bank is acquired by Wells Fargo some days ago following WaMu’s step. Some expect that National City Bank is the next one. But, the good news is, National City Bank is trying to offer checking account bonus to attract more new customers.

I previously reported that National City was offering $163 for opening a new Work Perks Checking Account in local National City Bank branch. And this promotion was said to be “the best promotion I have seen in my 4 years here at National City” by a National City Bank branch manager. At local National City Branch I could still see the banner about this promotion with $163 bonus. If you haven’t had a checking account with National City Bank, it’s a great time to open one with direct deposit.

Some may worry that National City Bank will fail or be acquired by other banks. Actually, the bank failure will only affect the account owners with deposit higher than $100K. Because the amount higher than $100K is not covered by FDIC. Otherwise, for account owners will less than $100K at a bank, the bank failure essentially has nothing to do with you. After take over by FDIC, the bank is still under operation as usual until the bank find a new owner. So I personally think for account owners with less than $100K money at a bank, you are worry-free.

This new promotion is an online special offer. The promotion page can be found at www.nationalcity.com/cash. When you open a new checking account with direct deposit before October 22, 2008, you will be awarded with $150 bonus. The minimum initial deposit is required to be $50.

Some additional requirements:

• Have a direct deposit to your checking account of $250 or more and a Visa® CheckCard* issued to you within 60 days of account opening.
• Your account must be open to receive the bonus.
• Limit of one bonus per household and available only to households without an existing National City checking account.
• $150 bonus will be credited to your account within 60 days after all conditions have been met. ($150 credit is subject to 1099 reporting.)
• Offer cannot be combined with any other offer and may be withdrawn at any time.

National City checking accounts feature:

• Unlimited transactions
• Free Visa® CheckCard*
• Free Online Banking
• Free Online Bill Payment
• Personal savings account (with no monthly maintenance
• fee and no minimum balance)
• Free online statements
• Free banking rewards program – points from National City®

Because National City Bank only has business available in the Midwest, this offer is only available to residents at Midwest states.

Hurry up and take the chance to get $150!

The subprime crisis has decimated large financial institutions and has ultimately transformed the current financial services market. WaMu was acquired by Chase, Wachoiva was taken by Wells Fargo, AIG is taken over by US government, and Lehman Brothers & Co filed bankruptcy.  National City is also in trouble now. However, one company that has withstood this market turbulence has been PNC Financial Services. (PNC is America’s 11th largest bank by deposits.)

I think you would be surprised to hear that only 2% of PNC’s $143 billion in assets is tied to subprime mortgages. So I think it’s OK to jump PNC’s checking account bonus right now. At least, we don’t have to worry whether this bank will be taken over by FDIC or not.

I reported that PNC offered $100 bonus in July 2008. The $100 bonus sign up page has been changed to the $75 sign up bonus page (link). This $75 bonus is given to new customers to PNC Bank with qualified direct deposit and open a personal checking account between Oct 6 and 18.

The fine print has specific requirement for the direct deposit (PayPal and ING will not work.):

The payout of $75 will be credited to the eligible account within 7 days of the first Direct Deposit, which must occur before 12/31/08. The payout will be identified as “Direct Deposit Reward” on your monthly statement. A qualifying Direct Deposit is defined as a Direct Deposit of a paycheck, pension, Social Security or other regular monthly income electronically deposited into a Free, Performance or Performance Select Checking account. The minimum amount of any single Direct Deposit must be at least $500. The Direct Deposits must be made by an employer or an outside agency. Transfers from one account to another or deposits made at a branch or ATM do not qualify as Direct Deposits. Offer available to new PNC Bank Checking account customers only. Offer may be extended, modified or discontinued at any time and may vary by market.

There are 3 kinds of checking accounts to choose from: Free Checking, Performance Checking, and Performance Select Checking Account. I strongly suggest you open a Free Checking Account to get the $100 bonus offer. The free checking account features:

• No minimum balance and no monthly service charge
• Non-PNC ATM fees reimbursed with a $2,000 average monthly balance
• Free transactions at any PNC Bank ATM
• Free PNC Bank Visa^® Check Card
• Free Visa Extras Rewards Program when you enroll your check card
• Free Online Banking and Bill Pay

There is no hard pull during the account opening process.

PNC is also running a visa card promotion. Any time you use your PNC Bank Visa Card for qualifying purchases between October 1 and December 31, 2008, you’re automatically entered to win a weekly prize of $500 or the grand prize of $20,000.

Please be advised that a “Qualifying Purchase” is any signature-based purchase, Internet purchase, phone or mail-order purchase, bill payment, or small dollar purchase for which you are not required to sign, made with a PNC Bank Visa Card, which is processed through the Visa U.S.A. Inc. payment system.

Any PNC visa check card, visa credit card, business visa credit card is qualified to enter the promotion.