$15 monthly service charge, waived with $10,000 average daily balance OR with a Flagstar personal checking account. And after five months the current tiered interest rate maxes out at 2% APY for $100,000 and above. If your account is closed within six months of opening, you are subject to a $30 early closing fee and possible forfeiture of any interest you’ve earned on the account.need to bring new $
I was thinking of opening a second account and called MBD as I was interested in doing another app online and getting hit with another Chex. They transferred me to the Flagstar virtual branch. Basically, you get personalized service and dont have to fill up applications online. This guy said he cant offer me the MBD account but can offer me the Flagstar one. He highlighted the rate guarantee and all that but didnt tell me about the fees etc. Anyways, I opened the Flagstar account and later when I figured out the fees, I was a bit upset and was going to close it but then ended opening a flagstar checking to avoid the fees.
I am still keeping my money in MBD though. According to FDIC, you can distribute your money as you like amongst different accounts with a bank. As long as you have n beneficiaries, you can have n x $250k insurance
by the way-P - D is correct-max coverage is 1.25 mil
Nice while it lasted, but not anymore.. Looks like Poopy Bank wins.
https://www.mybankingdirect.com/
I actually have both accounts, MBD as well as Flagstar and moving money between them is just an internal transfer. I preferred MBD so far because of the no drama with the fees, etc.
I guess they were getting so many applications that they didnt care of about a few falling through the cracks.
Most probably it will update on the accounts tonight.
I am going to move my money to my Flagstar account before Eod today. Waiting on them to confirm that they are still not enforcing the "new money" clause for Flagstar accounts before I do that. If they dont confirm, then I will pull my money back to Marcus which is at 5.50 (with referrals). That way I will get at least 2 days of free interest as well.
I dont know about Flagstar bank overall but Flagstar also has a virtual branch with folks based in MI and they are super helpful/motivated too. I called the person who had helped me open the account (all on phone without doing any online applications) and he confirmed that they are not enforcing "new money" clause at all. He also offered to open a new account so that the rate guarantee applies from today instead of like from 3 weeks ago and said he will take care of adding the same beneficiaries too.
RE: New Money;
Just came from my local branch, so rest easy.....they're NOT requiring that.
(I also believe today is the last day to get the 5.55% 5-month guarantee)
So rate can go down after 5 months and if you close before 6 months you have to pay the early closing fee.
I have an account at Poppy which had a 6 month guarantee that expired for me but they are still paying 5.5%. They currently have a 3 month guarantee @5.5%
I just thought I will mention the workaround for someone who still wants Flagstar as it is very easy to move money from MBD to Flagstar.
Btw, I tried Poppy too but it didnt work out, I posted my experience above :)
Poppy reminded me of CFG when they first became the bank with the highest rate. They got inundated with so many applications that they had no way to handle it. Some like me got hold of a good agent and sailed through but I heard lot of crappy complaints from quite a few other folks.
I prefer banks that I can do business easily online. I find NASB's CD opening process to be very easy on line and they communicate the process via email. I started the process at noon to open an NASB and the CD was open and funded via ACH at 5:00 today.
Still ongoing...but I am concerned. Opened one of those yesterday and the
5.55% rate still isn't showing. Maybe it takes a day or two.
RE: The fee after 5 months; at this point the new rate on that MBD account is 5.45 APY. Technically, if you open the current $25K promo account in the middle of the period you'll have a few extra weeks of promo time, because I don't think they change your rate 'til the end of the month. My impression is its easy to get around things @ Flagstar, so I'm sure if you had to, you could get out with minimal damage. Question becomes: how bad could their new rate really be once the promo ends compared to others?
As far as Poopy bank goes, yeah, try getting out of there when the rate drops. They don't give you many options; save their own ACH service. Unless you go into a branch office in CA., you'd better have a fairly efficient 3rd party ready to pull funds.
As with any bank, I always make sure I can move my funds quickly.
Remember, if you close your account before 6 months you have to pay a $30 fee except the exception FDIC noted. And after 5 months what will the rate be? Elements CU had a guarantee that was 2.3% years ago. The date the guarantee ended went to.3%.
Call and ask them to connect you to the virtual bank. Or I can try to find the direct number for you later today. Those guys are very nice, he did everything for me over the phone, including beneficiaries, etc. All I had to do was do a docusign, thats it. He even followed up to make sure that the right interest was credited as I had the same concern as you about "new money". He confirmed they are not enforcing it. I pray this bank doesnt go under as so far I am happy with their CS. I have his email and whenever I have something, I just email him and he calls me back the same day. When the MBD rate changed, he even opened a new additional account for me so that I get a few more weeks of the rate guarantee.
THANKS for your info, would appreciate the phone number and email address of the employee. I've been researching Flagstar this morning and everything I see is BAD. Points towards a failing bank so will NEVER go over the FDIC limit. Poppy is my main bank now and I can't find anything bad about them, but no one seems to know much about their status today.