What's the Best Online Financial Solution?

Financially Challenged asks "While lots of our techie contemporaries are making fistfuls of cash, I find myself stuck in a relatively impoverished academia. That will all change when I enter the real world in May. While I have little money now (hopefully some IPO magic of whatever company I work for will remedy this) I would still like to know what slashdot readers think the best online banking solutions are. Are there any hidden all-in-one total financial solutions that will let me keep track of my whole portfolio?"

Comments

One-stop?

[apsmith]

I don't know about one-stop banking, but we've been very happy with Security First - they have a 6% checking account, and pay your bills free (using CheckFree). If you're looking for stock or mutual funds though just about any of the big guys seems to have a significant web presence now.

Re:One-stop?

[G27 Radio]

I don't know about one-stop banking, but we've been very happy with Security First - they have a 6% checking account, and pay your bills free (using CheckFree). If you're looking for stock or mutual funds though just about any of the big guys seems to have a significant web presence now.

I've been using them for a couple years now after a friend recommended them. I think these guys were the first real online bank. Everything is done through the web browser (encrypted of course.) I've been very happy with them. I was concerned that their service would go downhill when they were bought by the Royal Bank of Canada, but to this day I'm still very happy with them. Even dealing with them over the phone is pleasant --can you imagine that from a bank?

What's really wierd is they don't charge for most services either. I paid nothing when I opened my first checking account with them. They sent me all the checks, plus pre-paid first class envelopes for me to mail deposits in when necessary. I think they have done away with the pre-paid envelopes since then though :(

Then, just a couple months ago, they had a special offer for their interest checking account. Free. No minimum balance ($100 initial deposit to open it though--no biggie.) It was 6% interest until 2000 when it dropped to 1% or 2% (don't remember which.)

Downside: Last time I tried they still couldn't deposit third party checks. The person I talked to said they were working on this. Don't know the current status.

numb

I have heard

[Mark Bainter]

of an online trading company that doesn't charge you for trades, but rather a percentage of the profit on your portofolio. So they only charge you if you are sucessfull. Anybody know what the name of this company is?

Re:I have heard

[LazyBoy]

Merrill Lynch is advertising that they charge you a percentage of your *portfolio* (not profit). So
they do better if you are successful, but they always get paid.

"You guys a couple of bookies!"

WingSpan

[robwicks]

I have been very satisfied with WingSpan Bank so far. Their customer service is at least as good as my local bank, and they have the best situation regarding fees I have yet seen. I have never been charged a fee of any kind by them. They even refund up to $5.00 a month in ATM fees charged by the machine. They have online investing as well as credit cards. They update the transactions online just about simultaneously with the real world, and of course, they offer online bill paying, which is a pretty good thing for me. I tried Bank of America, but I got tired of the fees. They charge you for a deposit slip if you go in a branch and don't have one and have to get one there. I had never heard of such a thing before.

One Stop Financial Management is a trap

[Quirk]

Hi having graduated from a eco/comm programme and having been a suit before I saw the light streaming from my monitor I can tell you any and all one stop financial management solutions are a bad thing. It's a given that once a client is heavily vested you've got them by the whatevers and can lead them anywhere. The key to financial wisdom has always been diversify and this advise applies to services as much as to investments. Good luck

mbanx is bad.

[winterstorm]

I'm a charter member of mbanx (available in Canada and the USA). I've been banking with them for over two years now. I have a personal and a corporate account with them. I strongly recommend that people choose another bank though.

It took me two months to get my corporate cheques after opening my account. I had been told on three occaisions that the cheques had been printed and shipped and that the fact had been verified. When the cheques arrived they were printed wrong. I asked them to ship the cheques by courier and I went to the extent of asking for the name of the courier company and a tracking number. The told me they had shipped the cheques by purolator but didn't have a tracking number. I asked them to verify the facts. Later the cheques arrived via postal mail. When I asked for the phone number of a supervisor I was told there was none!

mbanx recently changed their pricing so that you have to pay for each time you view your account history on-line.

I won't be an mbanx customer for much longer but it takes a while to shop around and find another on-line bank who can provide everything I have at mbanx (on-line trading in US and Canadian funds, linked directly to my chequeing bank accounts, etc.).

I have tried to apply on-line to "President's Choise Financial" (actually run by CIBC I believe) but they never send me the enrollment package after I fill out the on-line application. I figure if they can't make a little CGI work, I'm not going to trust their banking system!

In the long run..

[the eric conspiracy]

In the long run you want to deal with an investment firm rather than a bank. The leaders are Vanguard, Fidelity and Schwab. These companies are large enough to have a full range of services, have relatively low fees and a real investment orientation. A lot of people I know really like Vanguard because they do a good job of keeping the fees on their mutual funds at a minimum level. Schwab and Fidelity may be better known, but part of that reason is they spend a lot of money on marketing, and you pay for that in their fees.

You will probably still want a checking account at a local bank for more mundane tasks, especially for the convenience of an ATM machine without those damnable fees.

I wouldn't go near E-Trade etc. I just do not trust these outfits, and I think some day some of them are going to go belly-up leaving their users with a mess. The good thing is E-Trade and its ilk have done investors a lot of good by driving the cost of other services down.

Re:Security First Network Bank

[LMacG]

An informed consumer should be aware that Security First is owned by S1 Corp, which also markets the software (Virtual Financial Manager) that operates Security First. This is not necessarily a bad thing, in fact, some might consider it a very good thing. I have found the online banking features easy to use, I don't really have any concerns about security, and although I don't use this feature, it is apparantly very easy to download account information into Quicken. The one time I had to call their 800 nunber, it was answered quickly and my issue dealt with immediately. My only complaint is that I don't get an account statement in the mail -- and I think that was my oversight when I first signed up.

For the record, I am both a SFNB customer and a SONE stockholder.

Best "Offline" Financial Tracking I've Seen

[sjanes71]

I've been using a nifty little Palm application called Personal Money Tracker by Charles Morris. It has a companion program called Personal Stock Tracker that hooks in to the PMT program. These programs are cheap, don't require you to be "stuck" with any particular on-line banking system-- however that means you have to enter in the transcations at once.

Except for the Datek site someone mentions (which I haven't seen), PMT has a very useful "balance sheet" view and "income/expense view". Use the balance sheet view to see the wonderful/sorry state of your personal equity, and the income/expense view to see if you're spending less than you're taking in-- if you're not doing that, what the hell are you doing? ;) (You can configure the accounts to budget your spending for the year.)

Even better, you don't have to be "on-line" to see where you're at with your finances as long as you're vigilant about entering in transactions. I use it instead of Quicken on Windows because I don't even have a Windows box at home to run it on.

The only thing missing is something that'll help you do your taxes. I'm not going to link to it, you can use a search engine to find it on the usual Palm sites.

For on-line stuff, American Express seems to have acreted a large collection of financial services with a web-interface for banking, brokering, and credit management. I'd consider it only if my brick-and-mortar bank was mistreating me, but they just approved my loan for a brand new 2000 Subaru Impreza RS 2.5 Sedan! (Woohoo!)
_______
computers://use.urls. People use Networds.

Paranoid considerations

[Anonymous Coward]

Lotsa people do a full range online financial transactions online with no problems at all. But do read the service agreement: Most of the institutions that offer online banking & et cetera present lots of promises of absolute, airtight security... and in the fine print, you agree to take the full loss if someone manages to get hold of your login data and empties your accounts.

So you might want to bear this in mind when you decide which box(es) you will keep financial data on, and make connections from: This is a case where security really does matter. And BTW, you mignt want to see an independent security certification for the financial institution(s) in question.

This is probably redundant stuff to most /.ers, but someone had to mention it. So I did.

;o)

to answer the question you did not ask...

[Troll_Hunter]

You may wish to consider dealing with someone who has a physical presence, somewhere you can actually get to if you need to.

doing things online is great when everything works. If for some reason there is a bug or problem in the system, or if you want to complete a more complex transaction, or do something else esoteric, you may find that a menu to do what you want is not available online.

And if there is some sort of weird problem, life is a lot easier if you can go and show you statement to a branch manager, rather than trying to correct a problem over the phone.

For some of the best rates, and the least surly service, you might want to check out Credit Unions in your area.

For simple stuff like stock purchase, I think online is fine.

Windows, like Stalinism, is great in theory, but troublesome in practice

Wit Capital and Wells Fargo

[jabbo]

have done right by me. Wit Capital offers the usual financial products (IRAs, joint accounts, etc.) and has been prompt and helpful (and hasn't tried to shove inappropriate investment products "helpfully" down my throat). They are at http://www.witcapital.com/ and are publicly traded and SIPC licensed, etc.

Wells Fargo is a Large Evil Company, but in spite of this, their bill payment options and online services (among the first banks to offer useful web-based banking) have made them my first choice for a regular bank.

Morgan Stanley Dean Witter manages some of my accounts, but that's only because my father retained the services of a real financial planner and I am able to ask said planner's advice provided some of my holdings are with MSDW. If that were not the case, I'd have WitCap manage all my long-term investments.

I've been happy with NetB@nk

[zipwow]

I keep my checking and savings with NetBank. They have up-to-the-minute transactions, so if I go to lunch, by the time I get back to my desk, I see the memo for the checkcard purchase.

One service I particularly like is the automatic bill payment. I schedule it to pay my rent on the 1st, and it pays my rent on the 1st. It doesn't mesh completely well with my every-other-friday paycheck, because I sometimes need to 'float' a little, but it does the trick in general, and worked very, very well when I was paid on the 1st and the 15th.

There's been problems from time to time, but what's kept me there is how they handled things. Once, my rent wasn't sent. At all. I called the bank, and they asked me for the phone number to my rental office, and they took everything from there. They paid my late fees and just took care of things.

In another incident, they had some glitches when they were upgrading, and my balance wasn't updating, and I ended up overdrawing my account (by like 400 dollars). Not a single service charge, not a single check returned. Made me a pretty solid customer.

Everything's free, there's interest paid with no minimum balance on the checking account, which turns out to be about a dollar a month for me, and they provide the checks for free as well. They have no branches anywhere, so if you need a money order or something, you'll have to go elsewhere, but that hasn't been a problem for me.

Since they don't have any branches, you'll end up paying ATM fees to whoever owns the ATM you use. Netbank won't charge you to use the ATM, of course. It hasn't been a big deal for me, I usually just get however much cash I'm allowing myself for that pay period and then I'm done with ATMs.

Deposits are done either by auto-deposit (like your paycheck) or by mail (they give you self-addressed stamped envelopes). No ATM deposits for some reason.

As far as their stocks go, they're not the cheapest on the block, ($25/trade) but they seem to be in the range. The money comes out of/in to your money market or checking account with NetBank.

Drop me an email (by spelling out the dot), and let me know if you're interested in getting a referral. Its not required, but it'd get me a nifty t-shirt and maybe $1000 bux.

Zipwow

Re:What are -you- looking for?

[Anonymous Commando]

Just adding my 2 cents (Canadian) on Scotia Online: The security is great, but it's done via a small proxy program from Entrust (more details) which is only available for Win32 - if you're a Linux or Mac monogamist, you're out of luck with Scotia Online.

Having said that, I'm very pleased with their online banking - especially free bill payments. About the only thing I would add to the system is the ability to schedule recurring transactions (you can schedule one-time transactions, such as bill payments or account transfers, a month or so in advance). Haven't tried their online discount brokerage - all I have for stocks is what I got when my insurance company demutualized.
________________________

Re:Security First Network Bank

[lazlo]

I have a few friends who use SFNB, and they all seem quite happy with it. The only drawbacks are 1) the lack of brick and mortar branches (which really isn't a problem unless you want something like a safe deposit box.) and 2) the lack of SFNB ATM's. Most of the ATM's I've seen charge you some fee (usually $1.50) for their use if you're not a customer of the bank that put up the ATM. Of course, a lot of grocery stores etc. are taking atm transactions now, and will give you change on the transaction, with no transaction fee, so if you plan things reasonably well and go to the store often enough, it works out well.

Personally, I use First Union, and they've just recently gotten their heads out of their butts and become pretty decent in their online offerings. (It used to be that their online bill payment system used a netscape plugin that only worked on 95/98, not even NT, certainly not *nix).

The system they have now uses a pure web-based system (currently supplied by checkfree, but I've talked to them and they're building their own improved interface) for bill payment, bill presentment, etc. The interface they have is fairly nice. It's cool to be able to tell it "Ok, every month pull down my phone bill and if it's not over X dollars, pay it automagically." They have a nice system for statement download for checking, savings, and credit cards. They have a section for brokerage services, but I don't use it so I can't comment on it. Personally, I'm happy with them. If for no other reason than when I call their tech support, I usually get someone clueful.

They have demos set up of most of their functionality. Browse through it and see if it looks like what you want.

I also use Security First.

[SuperKendall]

They are owned by Bank Canada now - I've been using them for about two years now, and they also offer credit cards that you can see along with your bank accounts.

They also have limited online reporting tools, and you can export your accounts in a Quicken format (although for me the online site offers all the tools I need and I don't use Quicken).

They let you schedule transactions if you like, or pay a one-time bill to a set of "Payees" that you can define and update. I use them to pay all my bills, and really like the web interface they have - very clean and simple.

They said they'd be offering online brokerage services soon as well, but the company they were going to use charges $19.95 per trade - I myself use Datek, and don't care too much that I have to go to seperate sites to manage my accounts. At least it's all online!

The only downside to SFNB is that they have no local ATM's (unless you live in Atlanta) so if you'd like to avoid an ATM fee you have to find a local credit union ATM that doesn't charge fees.

Re:I also use Security First.

[mjh]

The only downside to SFNB is that they have no local ATM's (unless you live in Atlanta) so if you'd like to avoid an ATM fee you have to find a local credit union ATM that doesn't charge fees.

Or you could find a local bank that offers free checking accounts. Usually this means that you don't generate any interest, but you don't pay for any of the services. Then set up an Automated Clearing House with SFNB. They will happily transfer, for free, money from your local account to your SFNB account on a regular basis.

I do essentially this. I direct deposit all of my pay checks to the local account. Then, I set up an ACH with SFNB to transfer all but a small amount on a regular basis (that coincides with receipt of my pay checks). The money that's left over, doesn't generate any interest but I can withdraw it from the any of the local bank's ATMs without incurring fees. The bulk of my money then goes to SFNB and I can get all the neat services that they offer.

Security First & ETrade

[kwerle]

I've been with Security First for several years now. They've always treated me well. I use Etrade for the stock stuff - mostly because they were also our Stock Option solution at a previous job.

Oh, for the 'cash problem' - I just pull some cash whenever I go grocery shopping...

Re:WingSpan

[cdaveb]

I opened an account with Wingspan a few months ago. So far it seems pretty decent although their site could use some work (some of the text is too small to read on my Mac, and the balance is pretty slow to display).

The one issue I've had so far with them is that deposits by mail are on the slow side. It takes 7-10 business days, and the first one I sent them took 3 weeks to show up in my account. The second one showed up in a more reasonable time period though, so hopefully that was an abberation (they blamed it on slow holiday mail).

I do really like the idea of having my banking and investment accounts in the same place and to be able to pay bills from my investment account if I need to (rather than doing last minute shuffling of money). Their fee structure is very reasonable compared to most banks (no charge for receiving wire transfers, unlike some banks, refunding of ATM fees) and they have excellent interest for checking and their bill pay seems good. I still haven't closed my old accounts at BofA and ETrade yet, but in a few months I will assuming things continue to go smoothly with Wingspan.

One of the things I like best about an online only bank is that they're motivated to make it easy to do things without having to come down to the branch. I don't have time to go to the bank and some banks are not very good at allowing you to do some things remotely. My husband's bank, Fremont Bank, is really bad about that. Clearly online banks aren't for everyone, but I don't go to ATMs very often and I'm most interested in good bill pay/online administration of account and a nice interest rate, so for me it's a good fit.

mbanx is good

[KR]

I am also a charter member of MBANX, although I'm not sure what distinguishes a charter member from any other member. I have a personal, Canadian dollar account. Overall, I'm very happy with MBANX.

I pay $13 (Canadian) per month. This plan allows me to do pretty much anything I want, with no additional fees. (Free cheques, free bill payment, free ATM (any brand), free money orders sent wherever I want.) I receive a "reward" every month which is proportional to the amount I have saved or borrowed. Since I have my mortgage with MBANX, my monthly reward is in excess of $25. (It's pretty neat coming out ahead of the game with service fees!)

On the other hand, the interest they pay isn't fantastic, so it may not make sense for large deposits. I was lucky that they offered me the best deal on my mortgage - paying an extra 1/4% on your mortgage rate would more than offset the paltry $25 monthly reward. So MBANX probably isn't for everyone.

I don't do online banking or stock purchases...

[Jack William Bell]

Or I should say I don't yet. I have been looking for a 'one stop shopping' alternative myself and haven't seen much. It looks like one is best off to pick the best alternative for each area of financial services (bank, brokerage, etc.)

If you need to get education about the stock market along with free stock tracking and some cool Java interactive charting (which costs money anywhere else) you should check out the site my girlfriend works for: www.stockcharts.com. Build up the hits there so she can get rich and take me on a trip!

Jack William Bell

Is there an US bank that uses good crypto devices?

[jwr]

Is there any bank that uses one-time passwords for authentication? I am not ready to trust my money to a single password that can be sniffed (if not on the net, then on my workstation). I really prefer a banking solution that uses devices not connected to my computer (SecurID, Vasco Digipass, etc).

There is a bank in Poland that has just introduced this, there should be more...

Banks and Software.

[mhat]

I think its a little more complicated then just "what bank". I think choosing a bank is a lot
like choosing a network provider to host your whatever. When you choose a network provided you
probably talk to the staff, try to figure out if they have a clue, what hardware / software they use; etc. Choosing a bank isnt all that different.

Banks are all basically the same, the do about the
same thing. The things that matter to you may be
location, online banking, service, or something
else all together. Personally all of these things
matter to me. I want a bank that has a local branch, who has a clueful staff and provides olb.

There seems to be a growing trend at banks, atleast the smaller banks (ie, not boa/bone, etc) to use "off the shelf" online banking packages.
I know of atleast three companies that produce
online banking software; Digital Insight, Qup,
and FundsXpress.

Does it matter who wrote it? Well, that depends,
if you care about security / the safty of your
account - you probably should. Is your banks
software run under NT or *nix; was it done in
C/Perl/VBasic? Does the software company host
the machines, or are they physically at the bank
tied into their core? What sort of security
experince do the people desiging the software
have?

Qup and Digital Insight, for example are NT based
shops. Qup goes as far as putting a NT box in the
bank and attaching it directly to the core processor - is that really a good idea? How about
performance / scalability. As the need/desire for
online banking grows how well will the service
scale?

Security issues aside, interface and features also
matter. What do you want out of your online banking package? Do you just want to see your balance? How far back? BoA limits your history to
60 days is that enough? Do you need to pay bills
online? Should the bills be paper, or electronic (when possible) ? Do you want to be able to transfer money between accounts ? Wire Money ?
Apply for loans? Intergration of finnical services into a sigle consistant interface ?

What about 1-2 years down the road? What then? Will your bank / banking software be able to do
that?

Re:waterhouse nantional

[William Tanksley]

I'm glad to hear that -- I just noticed them as well, and suspect that they'll be my choice.

Can they handle direct deposit?

-Billy

Re:WingSpan

[cybrthng]

Wingspan bank has been a godsend. You get free use of many ATM's (They have an ATM search on there website and they work with several huge chains). They rebate up to 5.00 in other ATM fees from non-wingspan banks (another saver for those random 20.00 withdrawals for petty cash). 4-6% interest in a checking (i get an average of $5-$10.00 a month interest).

WingspanBank is the *first* bank i've ever had, where my money keeps its value. The interest is at good enough average that leaving money in the account over long periods keeps up with inflation and other costs, customer support answers and has answered within the first few rings of every time i have called. Online Bill Pay, free ACH transfers, Online Trading, Visa card, and very quick balances and payments.

Direct Deposits go in great, checks are payed in a timely matter, ATM/Visa Purchases actually show more then bank code (i hate that with other banks), So i can see where my money goes (the only leash i have for my girlfriend :).

So wingspan is my recommendation. Its an online bank, but operated by a national chain, so it has some establishment, while still showing great advances over the traditional offerings of other "pathetic online banks" :)

Household banking vs. investing

[dca]

You're asking two different questions. One is about banking
in the traditional sense of running your household finances on a
monthly basis. The other is about investing, which is what
you do with the money that isn't going "in one hand and out the
other." There are any number of places to run your checkbook from as
noted above, but I sincerely hope you don't expect that to address
your IPO-scale cash.

Once you clear about $100k you start becoming interesting to the
investment community for real. And you start really needing
professional services. Below $50k investable you'll be paying a lot
for any real customized services you get; above $250k you can get a
team of people working for you for less than you'd pay a mutual fund
in management fees.

We all see the results of people dabbling in technical fields when
they aren't really professionals in it. It would have been cheaper to
have hired a pro from the start. It's the same with money. There are
a lot of smart people in the money management business, and many of
them have a lot more experience in their field than you (or I) do in
ours. Why would you want to roll your own with something so precious?

My opinion is that "best online banking solution" is an oxymoron for
real investments by people who are not full-time financial
professionals. It may be fine for cookie-cutter household finances
like bill-paying and downloading your statement into a spreadsheet,
but investing is a customized service industry.

That said, you can check out ICFP
for independents. Merrill Lynch
offers a Cash Management Account (CMA) that rolls up the household
checking, credit card, and a team of people into one package. Their
quoted rates are a maximum; it declines the more money you have with
them.

I'm very fussy.

[winterstorm]

I looked into President's Choice Financial because they are one of very few "branchless" banks. I'm very fussy and don't want to ever have to visit a bank in person to sign forms that could otherwise be mailed to me.

I think the sign-up process is a good metric for how the bank manages its customer relationships. I think that doing business over the phone is a bad idea as there is too much opportunity for confusion and misunderstanding. Furthermore you don't get a record of what was said when you conduct business over the phone.

If they are truely an on-line web-based bank then they should be able to process my application (at least enough to email me forms to sign) on-line. While they may offer many other ways to do banking (probably a good thing!) I'm only interesting in on-line banking and if they can't support that well I'm going to keep looking until I can find someone who can. Currently I'm with a bank that doesn't satisfy me, but I'm not going to put in a lot of effort until I'm confident another bank will satisfy me.

Re:Security First Network Bank

[fifers]

For the record, Security First used to be owned by S1, but is now owned by the Royal Bank of Canada. (I used to work for secureWare, who spun off sfnb and five paces software, who brought secureware back in and created S1 out of all of them and...you know how internet companies go)

With that being said, I've used sfnb since I worked there and absolutely love it! Unlike traditional banks with an internet branch, sfnb is ready and quite capable in dealing with issues that the remote bank patron has. Envelopes to mail your checks in have the postage paid, almost everything can be done through the web site (except change of address...kinda annoying) and the support staff (email and telephone) is both informed and speedy. Another thing I really like is that sfnb has never blamed any problem I've had on the fact that I'm running linux. They are truly platform neutral and you can access their stuff on any SSL-enabled, standards compliant browser.

You can choose to get your statements mailed to you or just view them online (my preferred method). SFNB actually had to get some banking regulations changed to allow them to _NOT_ mail you a statement every month.

Take it for what you want, I am a former employee so I may be partial to them...but I really haven't found anyone else who is really taking advantage of all the things a bank on the internet can offer like sfnb is.

Now, if they only had a WAP interface...

Ryan

Review of banks/brokers at Gomez...

[SuperKendall]

One site I've seen that reviews banks/brokers (along with user comments) is Gomez Advisors.

They rated my bank (SFNB) as one of the better banks overall, and I've really been happy with them so far.

Get cash back when you buy groceries

[A nonymous Coward]

No ATM charge then.

Deposits are still a real pain. Pay is automatic deposit, but other checks have to be mailed in.

--

Online Services and Banking software.

[hakker]

I've had a LOT of experience with this lately. There are several parts to this question and several things to think about.

Normal Banking:
Where do I get my ATM card, DEBIT card, Credit Card, etc. How do I manage my Checking and Savings accounts.These are all included in Normal Banking. I highly recommend Wells Fargo. They have branches everywhere on the west coast but I never use them. Their online banking system is EXCELLENT. Their customer service department is actually useful as well. Their online service allows you to download your account history into MS Money (evil) or Quicken (also evil).

Financial Software:
On your computer, it is nice to track your finances with charts, investments, etc. which allow you to keep a close (private) eye on whats going on. It also makes taxes a lot easier. Scheduled payments are also nice. The pain in the ass is that there are really only two products to let you do this, and they both suck, and they are both for windoze. They also make use of a modem which is a pain if you have already switched to a high speed internet line.

Stock trading / tracking:
Tracking your portfolio, doing stock research, and of course, trading, are all functions of online stock brokers. I have had experience with a few.

- Datek was very nice. Good interface, but not many special offers or goodies.

- WitCapital was also very good although their services lent themselves to assistance regarding IPO's and not much else. The site design was also so/so.

- Etrade has its share of success stories and nightmares. So far my experience with them has been a bit of both. Etrade has many bells and whistles and extra services. Thier site design is not great, but it is fair. Their customer service leaves MUCH to be deisired. Slow to respond to phone calls and slow to follow through on withdrawls, deposits, and transfers of cash. They are also slow in getting checks and there were several screw-ups in the initial sign-up process. I don't feel very comfortable with them although actual stock trading has been smooth.

- Moneynet.com is who I use for tracking my portfolio. The site design is nice and there is a lot of free information and news. Note that this is NOT a stock trading service. It is only a way to track assets, investments, etc. A lot of good resources here.

Conclusion:
I want either web based or net-enabled software (for linux) that easily allows me to track portfolio's and assets, as well as get news. I also need to be able to import downloaded account histories from multiple sources (usually in money or quicken format). I also need to be able to schedule bill payment automatically and not require a modem. I need to be able to reconcile this information for tax purposes. I also need to make stock trades and manage my bank accounts. If all of this were in one place, it would make my, and probably everyone else's, life a lot easier.

Just my 2 centavos. Hope this helps.

Mutual Funds as saving account

[jburroug]

Breifly I have an account setup with janus.com that has the bulk of money spread across 3 of there funds plus a money market account. I still maintain an account with my brick and morter bank (not a problem since they now offer online banking) and since I have auto deposite of my paycheck and credit card autopay (off of my visa check card) setup for most of my bills I never actually have to go there or write checks for that matter. In fact I can safely ignore my snailmail completely now ;-> With the janus setup I've bought into there Olympus fund (pretty tech heavey returned over %100 in 99, will probably have similar returns for a few more years if the this bull market continues) their growth and income fund which did around %35 in 99, and a global life sciences fund which is very new and as you might guess is invested in biotech pretty heavy, which to me seems like the next biggest growth area after the internet. Plus a money market account I keep becuase it has check writing abilities and I like having it for emergencies (since i don't have an actual credit card) The beauty part of the system is that since janus gives you full access to your funds online 24/7 I really can use them like very high interest savings account, and when the money is needed either have it in the money market account or my real checking account in a matter of minutes (unless the market is closed, then transactions are of course delayed untill 8am EST ;-) Like I said with this system in place I never have to write checks, buy stamps or even actually check my snail mail, very smooth. I also have an account with schwab.com but with the amounts I'm dealing with their fees are just chewing me up and I'm going to switch to etrade or a similar outfit RSN.
I hope this helps!

Get a cretid union!

[bluGill]

The best banks are the tardiotnal credit union. I do my banking at the local gas station, by the phone, by snail mail, or the web. My particular credit union has never been within easy driving distance of their customers, so they are well setup for this situation. (They are for state hiway department workers, who live around the state despite the bank offices being near only near the state capitol)

It is harder to get in as you need to live/work in the right place, or be a relative of someone who is a member.

When my parents wanted to buy a car they call the credit untion, the person (I've never been on hold, the person answering the phone can hanlde my buisness, and I always get a person imeadiatly) who answered the phone said "For that model of car don't pay more then $x, we are putting $x in your checking account, when you buy the car send us the title." Now granted my parents have a good creit rating, but this service is nice, they trust members with the bank's money.

Also, savings interest rates are higher, loan rates lower. And of course the service is better.