All the Right Financial Moves (I hope)

A little over a decade ago, I made an effort to become more financially literate, which 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 life changes 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 recently began managing the finances of an elderly family member. In reviewing her existing brokerage account at Fidelity, I noticed that the dividends that had been paid out of her investments sat in a cash sweep account that collected no interest, so I opened a high-yield online savings account at an online bank where we could hold that money until we needed it, moving most of her regular low-yield savings there. However, after some research, I subsequently learned that Fidelity already has a reputable Cash Management Account (CMA) that earns interest even slightly higher than the high yield online banks!! All it required was a simple flip of the switch to change the Fidelity cash sweep account into a CMA (technically changing the “core” position of the account).

In fact, it led me to open my own cash management account in my own existing Fidelity account. But I had an ulterior motive—it turns out that the account comes with a debit card that carries 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 CMA 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 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 from me 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, the bank did away with their safe deposit boxes and then closed the branch nearest to me. With that personal connection gone, I’ve decided that if the Fidelity CMA works out, I will close that second checking account and migrate to Fidelity for everyday expenses. (The only other advantage of my current old account is that transfers from my Chase account to the bank 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 required a linked savings account with a minimum $100 balance, so basically I’ve always had $100 sitting there that I couldn’t access. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that my Amazon seller's account wouldn't connect to it because of its nature as an online bank. This turned out to be 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.

08/30/26 UPDATE: Because of the above-mentioned connectivity issue between Found and Amazon, I ended up going with another bank for my business checking, called Relay Bank, which connected with Amazon seamlessly. Though Relay also is an online bank, apparently, it is partnered with a true brick and mortar bank, which made it compatible with Amazon. I should add that Fidelity's CMA account similarly partners with other certified banking institutions in order to provide the same services, including FDIC coverage.