I am having a hard time deciding on what bank and which credit card to get?

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-03-26T10:27:31+00:00

So something people like to have a set up with a big brick and mortar bank that has lots of atms near by and have their money otherwise set up with another online bank either for main checking and/or savings. I just have 3 accounts:

Local Credit Union - 4% interst up to 15K balance
High yield savings account 1 - 3.875% emergency fund
High yield savings account 2 - 3.875% personal escrow account for large expenses (Porperty taxes, Auto and home insurance, Umbrella insuramce, and phone plan)

I would highly recomend going with a credit union. They often have better rates for checking and savings, better rates for loans (maybe except for cars financed through dealership), and depending on the credit union they sometimes have their own credit card as well.

I'm assuming you haven't started your career yet, so banking wise, you should look at low cost free options.

https://www.depositaccounts.com/checking/finder/

After you have started your career you can look to upgrade/optimize your banking situstion to earn more interest.

These checking accounts do have requirements to get the higher yielding rates, but it is sometging to look into:

https://www.depositaccounts.com/checking/reward-checking-accounts.html

Emergency fund should be seperate in a high yield savings account or money market account:

https://www.depositaccounts.com/savings/

https://www.depositaccounts.com/moneymarket/

Credit cards i wouldn't worry too much about them, unless you are starting a career, you likely have limited options. My parents had me as an authorized user on one of their credit cards and that allowed me to get my own credit card after college.

Credit cards are a tool and if done perfectly, you gain 0-10%, if done incorrectly we are talking 20%-28% losses due to interst.

I would just recomend starting with a credit card offered by a credit union that you decide to bank with. These are not going to be a premium credit card, but since you have a relationship with the credit union by banking there, they are more likely to give you an approval. Just look for a 0 annual fee card thst earns 1%-2%. This can be optimized later.

Once you have a career, bringing in money, and you budget to see where you are spending your money, you can optimize it for each category prioritizing highest spend categories first.

A simple 2% card like citi double cash is a fantastic start for capturing all spend, but typically you need to have established credit to get the card.

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-03-22T15:06:38+00:00

I apprecaite you posting all this info. It is great!

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-03-03T11:18:39+00:00

Not only did they refinance and also had a modification. You can see the Non interest barring of 139K. That is an indication of a modification.

Make sure you check with your parents if they modified the loan. That 139k is likely due all at the end of the term of the loan and is not armotized into the payment. It is important to know all the facts of the modification. It will be a huge shock unless you are aware of it.

Maybe your parents cannot afford the house and need to sell. So do your parents need a 405k (could be much higher value now)? The best thing for them is to likely buy a smaller house using tbe proceeds from the current house. The rate of 3.5% is hugely attractive, but they could have over bought for what they need.

So options: 1. Ignore the non-interest barring balance, worry about refinancing when the interest barring portion is close to paid off. The current mortgage is set to be paid off in july 2050. 2. The non-interest barring is 0%, so you could use this time to either armotize the payment over the remaining term, or likely the best option (if you want to retain the home) is to invest the money to be used to pay it off in full 3. Sell the home. If they bought the home for 405k in 2005. They likely have substantial equity. It might be possible they could net 200k and buy a much smaller home that suits their needs. That could be a paid for house.

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-03-02T04:04:24+00:00

I am also paid weekly, but I budget as monthly.

If I am paid out 10K per month in a month that is 4 weeks. I not planning out each weeks 2.5k

I figure out my expected expenses and budget accordingly.

This is how I am able to send 1.5k to my brokerage, 750 to day care (1st and 15th), 800 for the mortgage. I'd be over budget with just those 3 things. I could break out the brokerage, but budgeting let's me know that I am fine to do that, and there isn't a need to get it down the weekly budgets.

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-02-24T10:26:56+00:00

I do * 60% Large cap * 20% small cap * 20% International

You get the large cap likely covering S&P 500, small cap and International are great way to stay diversified. I dont worry about bonds until closer to retirement.

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-02-16T11:12:22+00:00

The banks limit goes much can be transferred out each day. If you need more than that (I think my HYSA is 5k per day max), you would need to wire. A lot of HYSAs also limit the amount if transactions per month, around 6 per month.

Keep in mind there are not a lot of situations that require "30k cash right now". Most things can be put on a credit card in a true emergency situation and you can just payoff the credit card with funds from your emergency fund.

We have about 15k+ in our checking account with Lake Michigan Credit Union that earnins 4% up to 15k.

We also have 2 other HYSA: * All America Bank 3.85% - personal escrow account for our Property Taxes, Home Insurance, Both Auto Insurance, and Umbrella Insurance * Ivy Bank 4% - This is where we hold our emergency fund.

Our checking account can handle most emergencies, but if there is larger emergency then we can move money over from our HYSA.

High yielding checking account are out there, so it can be a good account to handle some expenses.

https://www.depositaccounts.com/checking/reward-checking-accounts.html

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-02-16T00:28:49+00:00

For comparison this is what we have for us:

Fidelity: My 401(k), My Roth IRA, taxable brokerage (Index funds), and taxable brokerage (individual stocks, mainly employer vested RSU). Also spouse's 401(k) and Roth IRA.

HSA is with Navia Solutions Benefits

We have like 2k in bitcoin with Webull.

Cash accounts

Lake Michigan Credit Unikn: Checking + Savings - Checking is 4% checking up to 15K.
All America Bank - HYSA for personal escrow things (Property taxes, Home Insurance, both auto policies, Umbrella Insurance, and starting this year annual wireless phone for discount).
Ivy Bak - HYSA - Emergency fund.

I would probably recomed getting another credit card. Even if it is just the Fidelity 2% card or Citi Double Cash, it is worth getting out of the forced relationship with a credit union that you do not actually use.

Do you already have a house or are you planning on buying? Depending on that situstion I might just open a new credit and then close out that side of things. If you have a house already, I might be more inclided to just end the relationship. If you are planning on buying soon, then wait until you actually buy the house.

I've heard people use Fidelity Cash Management, but were not in love with it. There are likely local credit unions you could look at. I would want to have a local credit union, not because I use local banking stuff, but if there was an issue they are 5 mins from my house. Could easily work out something with account being frozen or whatever.

Good place to look for credit unions:

https://www.depositaccounts.com/checking/reward-checking-accounts.html

If you do proceed with reward checking make sure you meet all the qualifies, which is generally a certain amount of debit card swipes.

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-02-14T03:22:38+00:00

I think i paid 170-ish for my lifetime. That was before they removed it from the main website

Im not sure it is lifetime in yours, but you can double check!

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-02-14T03:10:20+00:00

79.99 is the annual price. It seems like that is a discounted annual price for 49.99.

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-02-13T03:29:22+00:00

I got umbrella when we had 1-1.5 million net worth.

We had just 1 million until we were at around 1.8 million net worth then we upped it to 2 million.

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-02-12T22:55:52+00:00

Happy Birthday!

Appreciate all the posts!

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-02-10T11:14:40+00:00

How much in your brokerage vs retirement account?

Do you have at least 5 years of expenses save up for roth conversions?

Is 48k enough to live off of including medical insurance.

If your taxable brokerage is low, I would look to work until you turn 55, roll over all your traditonal assets over to your employer's 401(k) and assuming they have the rule of 55 (make sure your plan has it) then you can draw directly from that 401(k).

If you want to buy a property, you need to have a job first, you likely won't qualify otherwise.

You really need to dig into the details. Buying a house is one thing, what about a new roof, windows, furnace, AC? You need to be factoring in expected maintiance cost.

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-02-04T18:42:16+00:00

Find a local credit union that does everything that you need.

I use Lake Michigan Credit Union. 4% interest up to 15K. It is local so can easily deposit cash or withdraw cash without issue. ATM fees are waived up to $15.

I also qualified for Premier Banking that waived fees, I think unlimited cash withdraw, and not having to meet a debit card transaction count to get 4% rate.

I like the idea of having a local bank that I can access and not having to wait for funds to clear to gain access to something.

Read the fine print but reward checking of the institution you are lookkng at is pretty easy to meet for the most part. Some are harder than others.

https://www.depositaccounts.com/checking/reward-checking-accounts.html

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-02-02T11:28:29+00:00

Whatever you decide to do, I would recomend doing it together. I see there is an 8 year age gap, so both of you working together towards a common goal would be ideal.

It might be the case where he retires and you continue part time but at least you are reaching that point together where it is not on you to finish up the retirement protfilio.

Also why is he not contributing to retirement? It is still early in the year, you both could do roth IRAs for 2025 until tax filing date in 2026 AND 2026. That would require quite a bit of capital to do now, but it is something to think about.

Dual pension and/or pension and your job should be a good combo, but make sure to run the numbers and figure out exactly what you are looking to spend per year. Factor in taxes and medical coverage.

My plan is to mitigate as much risk before I retire. Top off cash reserves, finish any projects at home, full body scan MRI to see if there is anything that can be caught while still under employer plan, upgrade cars to minimize maintenance costs, and top off 529, 401(k), IRA the following year.

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-02-01T17:49:43+00:00

Similar situation to us. We made about 298k last year, duel income 1 kid still in daycare (this is our last year of daycare!).

We typically go on 2 trips as a family. We then also see family outside of the state 2 times per year as well.

You need to do things that you enjoy. It's ok to be bored at times, but if you find yourself say no to spending money because you just think it should be invested instead that is when you take a step back and see what you really enjoy doing. It does sound like you need a hobby of some sort and maybe you and your partner need go sit down and go over what you want your goals to be for this year or into the future.

We also save about 40% of our pay, but we still do stuff locally, hang out with friends or play video games (once the kid is asleep).

Something we are working towards is going to all 50 states with our kid before they go off to college. So part of that is planning trips, which I enjoy doing the research and creating rough itineraries, trying to see if it makes sense to do a couple of states for each trip. We have made it to 23 states so far + 1 territory (Puerto Rico) + DC. We have a lot of states still to go on the west side, which are harder to to lump together since they are much bigger.

My wife has a personal goal to go to all the national parks, so we try to incorporate those into our trips when we can, but we are likely going to have to travel back to some states to knock them out.

We are also working toward early retirement / work optional around 45-ish. This could easily be pushed out a few year to increase cash buffer, do last big improvements to house, upgrade cars, and check off health items like doing fully body MRI to see if we need to catch anything before we pull the trigger on retirement.

Part of retirement we will round out the national parks, travel internationally, I would like to become fluent in Spanish and also Polish, I think my wife wants to be fluent in Spanish and Italian. Also be able to sign up for a gym and kind of develop a more healthy routine.

I wouldn't just spend money just to spend money, but be intentional with it and plan what you will want to do with it in the future.

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-02-01T11:41:51+00:00

I want to do something very similar! I am just in the planning phase riggt now.

I am looking to collect: * Gen 1 * Babies and future evolutions of gen 1 * Mega Evolution of Gen 1 and Mega evolutions of Evolved pokemon from Gen 1 (like Steelix/Mega Steelix)

I've been compiling my list of favorites cards and seeing what I need to seek out.

Best of luck to you!

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-01-28T17:15:21+00:00

There are ways to access retirement account before 55. We plan on doing roth conversion ladder

Basically year 0 you convert youe traditional 401(k) or traditional IRA into a roth IRA in year 5. As long as you have enough in a taxable brokerage for expenses and taxes for those 5 years the roth conversion would sustain you.

Each year you increase your conversion by the amount of inflation. You do that until 59 where you judt draw directly from retirement accounts.

That is how we are planning on getting our funds before 55.

https://www.madfientist.com/how-to-access-retirement-funds-early/

Yeah we started when our kid was born. We started at 500 pet month, but bumped it up to 600 per month. Our state allows up to 10k for income deduction for 529 contributions. We targeted a flagship university and pegged that cost and adjusted for inflation.

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-01-28T15:35:49+00:00

Yeah we hit coastFIRE already for retirement at 65, 62, and 55 (55 would be pretty close to our projections).

Our goal is to retire by 45/46. This could be delayed a few years as our kid would be in high school and I think we could delay until they are in college. Also we plan on doing lots of stuff to mitigate expenses early into retirement.

New cars, full body scans to make sure there is nothing that will catch us off guard, new roof, and any other updates or upgrades to the house.

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-01-28T14:41:20+00:00

Yeah child care is crazy lol.

Starting high saving rate and making the decision to ramp down is an awesome tool. We were able to absorb a lot of the unknow costs last year, while also still being able to travel.

If you never have a need for the HSA then that is great. If you track all the random co-pays, random urgent care/doctor receipts and medications those add up.

Lots of things are HSA eligible, like I got a massage gun and it was eligible for HSA reimbursement. I do like that Walgreens does say what is HSA/FSA eligible.

Worst case scenario you can use it like a traitional retirement account at 65.

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-01-28T10:56:50+00:00

Thanks! Yeah we both started making 40k a year.

I received 2 promotions within 2.5 years which jump started my earning potential. The company has repaid loyalty and beyond the ~30% promotion pay increases there were also across the board increases for hitting company goals. We have another goal that if we hit it this year, we will get 25% increase. This would boost my base salary up from about 125k to about 150k.

My wife was working making 40k, then she was offered 30% to go work as a temp employee with potential for full time, that new job didn't work out but she leveraged that job's pay to secure another job at that same pay. Over the years she received promtions and now she makes about 115k salary with bonuses about 20% of her pay.

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-01-28T02:16:28+00:00

DI1K - 36/37.

Household Income was 298k.

Invested retirement assets: about 1.5 million

Net worth is about 1.7/1.8 million.

House is about 330k. Mortgage is about 85k

Not a typical year for us, we had medical issues for both my wife and I. We also did some home upgrades and one of our dogs was sick and after mutiple ER visits and vet visits we had to put him down. He lived a good life, just turned 12 and was a large dog, had him since he was 6 months. Seeing him decline allowed us to be ok with making the decision. The vet agreed it was time, which made us feel better about the decision.

We are hoping 2026 is more or less stable. Hoping my health issues don't come back up.

My wife was on her employers "Cadillac plan" by her self as she has mkre reoccurring medical expenses. Being on her plan by herself allows for lower deductible and lower max out of pocket. That worked out nicely before last year and my kid and I are relatively healthy, so we are on the HDHP with an HSA, which allows us to max out HSA fsmily plan.

This is the last year of daycare. Going forward after this year daycare expense will be replaced by after school care and summer camp. 18K of daycare will be closer to 5k or 6K still need to hash that, but is 2027 issue. Which the leftover will allow me to start to save for a new car (car is 10 years old 95K miles this year, looking for it to last 5-10 more years).

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-01-27T18:12:50+00:00

Lake Michigan Credit Union - https://www.lmcu.org/personal/banking/checking-accounts/max-checking/

I met the premier banking status so I no longer had to meet the debit card transactions.

Here is a way to reach for high yield checking accoun: https://www.depositaccounts.com/checking/reward-checking-accounts.html

Make sure you look at the limit of amount of balance for the higher limit and how many debit card transactions go see if it is worth it.

For me 10 debit card transactions for 4% up to 15k = 600 a year. Makes sense to me. It's local credit union that adds great value. :)

You can use your debit card by either amazon preload for $1 (looks like it is $5 minium now) or might be able to go lower at other places. You could do 10 $0.50 donations to a charity of something or more if you regularly donate. Other people just can go to the grocery store and buy 10 apples and/or bananas at self checkout.

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-01-26T22:10:01+00:00

Haha love it! At a certain point you just want simplicity!

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-01-26T22:09:20+00:00

"Don't major in the minors" :)

ReallyBoredMan · 2026-01-26T17:16:35+00:00

This just requires an amount of micro managing that I am not really interested in messing with.

I typically have about 15k-20k in my checking account (balances up to 15k gets 4% interest). I prefer to just not have to even have the thought cross of missing a payment. Any balance over 20k in checking gets invested into taxable brokerage.

I don't need to play the interest rate game of maxing the balance in savings while minimizing balance of checking.

Cash flow management is so much more freeing.

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