All the Right Financial Moves (I hope)

A little over a decade ago, I made an effort to become more financially literate, which actually became an off-and-on passion. I mean this in the sense that, with finances, while it’s good to stay on top of things and occasionally fine tune, your best bet is to simply set things up correctly and then leave it alone and let it grow.

Recent changes in life have led me to a new flurry of financial moves that I thought I’d share, both on the personal and business fronts. (One of these included moving to a new phone carrier, Voiply, that I covered in a previous post.)

First off is the fact that my wife and I have needed to assume management finances of an elderly family member. In reviewing her brokerage account at Fidelity, I noticed that the dividends that paid out of her account sat in a cash sweep account at Fidelity that collected no interest, so I opened a high-yield online savings account where we could move that money until they needed it and moved most of her Fidelity and savings there. However, after some research, I then discovered that Fidelity has a reputable cash management account already that collects interest that is even slightly better than the high yield online banks!! And all it required was a simple flip of the switch (technically changing the “core” position of the account).

In fact, it led me to open an account of my own in my own Fidelity account. But I had an ulterior motive—it turns out that the account comes with a debit card that has NO foreign transaction fees and refunds all ATM charges! Since my wife and I may be traveling overseas soon, I thought it would be prudent to open an account in anticipation of that trip!

Fidelity’s Cash Management Account is not a checking or savings account—in fact, technically, it’s a brokerage account. But it has no connection to the markets, so doesn’t rise or fall in value, and always stays at one share equaling one dollar. In practice, it acts as a sort of hybrid checking and savings account. (It’s also not FDIC protected, but rather protected by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC)). But it earns interest at a high rate.

It’s a long story, but I actually have maintained two checking accounts for years—one for everyday expenses and the other mostly to pay bills, such as my mortgage, credit cards, utilities, phone and internet, streaming services, etc. The second everyday account I’ve kept mostly out of sentiment since it was a bank with a branch across the street that felt like a neighborhood bank because I had a safe deposit box there and the staff knew me. Over the past few years, however, they did away with their safe deposit boxes and then closed the branch. With that personal connection gone, I’ve decided that if the Fidelity CMA works out, I may close that second checking account and migrate to Fidelity for everyday expenses. (The only other advantage of that account is that transfers from my Chase account to Fidelity were instantaneous, not a wait of a day or so.)

On the business front, I also opened a new business banking account at a bank called Found. I’ve had a business checking account for years at a local community credit union, but it always low-key rankled me that it required a linked savings account with a minimum $100 balance, so basically I’ve always had $100 sitting there that I couldn’t access. The only drawback I found, however, is that my Amazon seller's account won't connect to it because of its nature as an online bank. This is almost a bit of a dealbreaker, but since neither account costs money, for now I'll hold on to both accounts to see if this issue gets worked out, and as a failsafe for now as I connect the new account to my existing other vendors that pay me like Square, PayPal, etc., to ensure nothing gets lost in the tracks.