What's a good free checking account?
The best bank with least amount of gotchas is Alliant Credit Union.  I did a lot of research and finally decided on this bank.   I did a comparative study between ING, Ally and Alliant and found Alliant to be superior than the the other two.   More about my study: http://www.moneycone.com/a-bank-thats-better-than-ally-and-ingdirect/ If you do find a better bank than this, please update this post, I'd definitely like to know! Disclaimer: I have no relationship with either of the three banks. Check with a small local bank or credit union, they might offer better terms. That said, my local credit union still charges $6/month for a checking account if you don't have a direct deposit into it. "Here's a hack for getting the ""free"" checking that requires direct deposit. Some effort to set up, but once everything is in place, it's all autopilot. (If your transfer into savings is higher than your transfer out of savings, you'll build up a nice little stash over time.) I don't know if there are deposit amounts or frequencies that you must have to qualify for the free account, if these are public or secret, or if this works everywhere. If anyone else has experience using this kind of hack, please leave a comment." "If you want to deposit checks or conduct business at a window, you should look at a local savings bank or credit union. Generally, you can find one that will offer ""free"" checking in exchange for direct deposit or a minimum balance. Some are totally free, but those banks pay zippo for interest. If you don't care about location, I would look at Charles Schwab Bank. I've been using them for a couple of years and have been really satisfied with them. They provide free checking, ATM fee reimbursement, free checks and pre-paid deposit envelopes. You also can easily move money between Schwab brokerage or savings accounts. Other brokers offer similar services as well." Capital One 360. No minimums balance, no fees. Everything's online. Make deposits using an app or an image of the check. ATMs are free almost everywhere. Online banks are the future. As long as you don't need a clerk to talk to (and why would you need?) there's nothing you can't do with an online bank that you can with a brick and mortar robbers. I use E*Trade trading account as a checking account (it allows writing paper checks, debit card transactions, ACH in/out, free ATM, etc). If you don't need paper checks that often you can use ING or something similar. You can always go to a local credit union, but those will wave the fee in exchange for direct deposit or high balance, and that you can also get from the large banks as well, so no much difference there. Oh where where did Washington Mutual go....
"There is no free lunch. ""Free"" can cost you a small fortune over time.  If you wish to sit through a free pitch you may as well go to a time share seminar. Just keep your hands in your pocket and don't sign anything.  In the end, you will be best served spending the time it will take to learn to manage your own money. Short term, spend a few hundred dollars and find a fee only planner who will give you general advice.  My disdain for the ""bank guy"" goes back to an overheard conversation. An older woman, in her 70s was asking about investing in T-bills vs the bank CD. T-bills were a bit higher yield at the time. The banker stated that the CD was FDIC insured,but T-bills were not. This was decades ago, but I remember it as if it were yesterday." "I think that your best option is to use the internet to look for sites comparing the various features of accounts, and especially forums that are more focused on discussion as you can ask about specific banks and people who have those accounts can answer. ""Requests for specific service provider recommendations"" are off-topic here, so I won't go into making any of my own bank recommendations, but there are many blogs and forums out there focusing on personal finance." Sorry, in the US (Bank of America). The kind of account we have has that high fee, but they also have free account options that have lower or zero balance requirements, you just have to setup direct deposit. The one we have has free checks, free safe deposit box, an English speaking customer service rep guaranteed to answer my call in something like 3 rings, and a bunch of other stuff I'll never use. "These good rates all tend to be ""on up to $X"" where X is some low'ish number that could require multiple accounts. They often also come with other strings, like set up automatic deposits/withdrawals, and use debit card at least 15 times per month. The two you mention have these flaws, whether or not it's worth it depends on if you are happy to meet those requirements and how big your emergency fund is.  Personally, I'd rather get rewards on a credit card than use a debit card, and I don't want to open a bunch of accounts, so I have a boring savings account with a pretty low interest rate for my emergency fund. It's liquid, earns some interest, and I don't have to think about it." I would strongly suggest you select an answer: all the above two cover everything I can possibly recommend, but perhaps my perspective as a person who was exactly in your shoes a year ago might appeal to you more. My first bank was Chase, and they usually give out a free checking account to students that come with leaves of 100 checks. Unfortunately, I was 24 at that time, and the max possible age to qualify was 23 or 21. Paying $25 for any number of checks was a big deal for me as I had no job, and transportation and rent was costing me $1k/month anyways. I came here and asked questions: lots of them. MrChrister, God bless his soul, recommended credit unions to me. I never knew they existed. A year later, I am a proud member of 3 CUs: I recommend Alliant, DCU and SchoolsFirst: I am their member and very proud of it! I've seen credit cards that provide you your credit score for free, updated once a month and even charted over the last year.  Unfortunately the bank I used to have this card with was bought and the purchasing bank discontinued the feature. Perhaps someone out there knows of some cards that still offer a feature like this? Ally Bank is a good online only account.  They reimburse any ATM Fees you may occur.  I have both checking and savings, with both Ally and ING Direct.  I don't know about having 25 total accounts - seems like overkill to me.  I do something similar though - I get direct deposit into one account, then transfer the average bill amount each pay to a different account that I never touch other than for the allotted bills.  It works well, especially for Utilities that are inflated seasonally. What do you use to mange the 25 accounts?  I use Quicken, but I don't have 25 accounts...yet. This only indirectly answer your question, but Schwab investor checking account has no fee, no minimum balance, and will reimburse all ATM fee (inside and outside the US) My wife and I have two Schwab brokerage accounts, one for retirement and one for non-retirement investments.  The latter also has a checking/savings account which we use as our main account.  Schwab is very happy with us, as we are cheapskates and save a lot of money.  The checking account, which seems to act like any ordinary checking account, gives us all the things listed above.  They pay the ATM fees, which is not a lot of money, but seems like a nice thing to me.  We can also do cash deposits and we can go to any Schwab branch to talk to someone face to face.  We've only had to do the latter once in 10 or so years, and the former maybe once or twice. Yes, and there are several ways, the safest is a high-yield savings account which will return about 1% yearly, so $35 per month. That's not extremely much, but better than nothing (you probably get almost zero interest on a regular checking account). She needs to get a bank account at literally any other bank or credit union. I have not paid for a checking account ever, any bank that tries to is ripping you off. Personally I've used ING Direct/Capital One 360 for years without any problems. And I'm mad that everyone's mad. STOP BEING MAD D:  But seriously, chill out u/3th0s. There are legitimate reasons to keep money in your checking account and it is not a moronic move. A more moronic move would be to have no money available on hand in the event of an emergency, like if your own a house and your boiler breaks or if you get in an accident and have to shell out money for medical bills or if you want to save up so you can pay your larger loans off in full so you don't accrue interest on them (e.g. college loans). Wells Fargo.  They have an account called PMA, an umbrella account for checking, savings, mortgage, and brokerage accounts.  It would cost $30/month, but I never had to pay because I have a rollover retirement account that is enough to waive the fees.  They count all accounts, including mortgage, which I used to have.  Oh, and no restrictions.  An added advantage is there are no fees for any of the accounts, nor for some other things, like bank checks, outside ATM fees, etc.    I'm in California, so I don't know if the same deal exists in other states.  But if you qualify for the free account, it's pretty good.  Actually, most of my investments are Vanguard funds.  And I have another rollover account with Vanguard, and never pay fees, but I only buy or sell from one Vanguard fund to another, and rarely since I have targeted retirement funds that are designed to be no maintenance.  For some reason, I trust Vanguard more than most other funds; maybe because I like their philosophy on low-cost funds, which they started but are now getting more popular. (Six years later...) I've used CheckFree for over 20 years, and my uncle started using it back in the early 1980s through a 300 baud modem.  It has e-bills, EDI bills that you schedule yourself, and will also mail checks to people and small businesses. You can make your payments from an unlimited number of banks, can schedule multiple recurring payments for the same bill (I find that useful for when buying large/expensive items by CC: I create a different payment schedule for each), plus ad hoc payments. "I've looked around for a while and found one at Broadway Federal Bank. I opened one up last year and will most likely be renewing it if the rates stay fairly competitive. Here are the features: I think it's a great alternative to a savings account because the ability to withdraw at any time defeats the purpose of ""saving"". By getting penalized to withdraw with this CD, you are discouraged from withdrawing and hence, actually save. The biggest downside is that they are a fairly small community bank and only have branches in Los Angeles. They also only have three branches in total and do not have ATM's that you can make deposits into aside from the ones outside of their branches.However, you can open an account online and and make electronic deposits. Hope this helps.I included their website below. www.broadwayfederalbank.com"