Reward Checking - 6.25% On Balances Up To $10,000

samiam | Apr 11, 2025 | 56 posts since 2018

I don't like reward checking, but perhaps some do. Direct deposit and 20 debit purchases are required to earn the 6.25% rate. The rate for any amount over 10k or failure to reach the requirements for the month is 0.02%. It looks like they plan on people not jumping through all of the hoops every month. More information can be found here:

https://www.firstsouth.com/checking-accounts/high-yield-checking

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cjdtech | Apr 11, 2025 | 48 posts since 2010

The field of membership is too small to be of interest to anyone not local, does anyone have experience joining through the Financial Fitness Association?

samiam | Apr 11, 2025 | 56 posts since 2018

Yes, I noticed that the field of membership is small. However, they state: “There are many ways to join First South Financial. If you do not qualify by one of the methods above, please contact us at 901-380-7400 or email us at [email protected].” I didn’t call to see what the “many ways” to join them are, since I’m not interested in this.

Ally6770 | Apr 11, 2025 | 4,305 posts since 2010

samiam,
I only have to do 10 debits in my checking account. I keep a rotated stock pile in the basement and have a big freezer so I don't have to purchase much and when I go to the grocery store or any store all have a self check-out I put one item through at a time. All 4 grocery stores in my circle have self checkouts. Every store and many banks and credit unions are in that circle. If something is on sale that I need it or my stock pile is getting low I stop there. You learn what time of the year items you purchase are on sale and you watch the experation date and purchase enough to last through the expiration date. Most items are on sale the same time of year though COVID and the supply line changed during that time. Rarely are my debits over $1, though it is getting harder to do that now. The higher priced items are all put on my cash back credit card. Even the checking account I have lets you choose each month if you want to use a debit card or their cash back credit card.
Not all reward checking accounts will allow you to do that and there are not a lot of people will bother to do it. But I make every penny work for us and now me.
But I used to ladder my CD's to every 3 months and add to them when they matured after our home was paid of and our children put through college. I had let all interest compound since 1999 and this year had 6 figures in interest. But thank goodness about 1/2 was not taxable. When my husband and I worked, except for interest, never made over $65,000 together. Even when he built our 2nd home when working many weeks overtime, we lived in the basement for 2 years.
We also were married at 18 and 20 and had saved almost 40% down payment for our first house. I had my worked delivering newspapers at 8 years old that I did for some brothers of my friend who played in sports. That was in the winters also. And walked downtown 1 1/2 miles to pay the bill after collecting on Sat mornings.
I also babysat summers at 8 for 2 girls down the street during the summer for $1 a day. Their mother worked nights and slept upstairs. and the father worked days. We just played or I took them to the park 2 blocks away and we played in our yard, we down the street with all the neigborhood children.   Same with my husband to be that I didn't know. He worked at the root beer stand and used roller skates so he could take care of more cars and get more tips.
I also worked later trimming Christmas trees with hedge clippers and that started at 6 am until noon when it got too hot.
Then at 13 I was able to get a working permit and started at a dime store downtown and then at a union grocery store, that paid double time for Sundays and we had 8 paid holidays even for our birthday and if we worked it was triple time. We even had dental insurance. I became union steward and actually made out the schedule for all the part time boys because they would not show up when they went to dances or a football or basketball game.
I even counted down the registers and bailed the money in the floor safe while in high school.
Even my children born in the 60's worked trimming christmas trees for a professor from our local college in the summers.  One even worked cleaning pens for dogs after school at a kennel. And had to wear my husband's rubber things that fit up to
his waste to clean out the drains and pipes to the septic tank because who did it before him didn't shovel the kennels before washing down the cement.
They are now both professionals. They helped pay for their college by working in the summer. One worked 96 hours a week and one worked 107 hours.
My husband was put on disability in 1995 and I was was working 2 jobs and my husband was working a lot of overtime so the kids would not graduate in debt and afterwards we started to gift them every year and I still since he passed.

We live and die by the decisions we make.

What we did is not for everyone. But my father was put in an orphanage and ran away at 12 becasue of abuse and had a 3rd grade education. My mom had a 8th grade education.

What they did and what we  did and and what our children did is not for everyone but it is what we chose to do. So glad that our children were able to go to college and one is a doctor. Both are professionals. The younger one after traveling the world in band and having a small recording company in Nashville for 30 years.
Now has senior anylitical in every job he has had in the company he works for the last 10 years.

Ken has helped us a lot with interest rates and no more did I have to go to the library to read the last page of the 2nd section of the Wall Street to get the highest rate for CD's in the nation before USA Today came out and did the credit unions and then I was able to get dial-up internet that took 3 hours to download my grocery ad if the paper buy did'nt deliver our paper. Ken's site that I read about in the Wall Street Journal was the first site I went to. It was called bankdeals back then.
I hope that Lending Tree will pay more attention to what they are doing and eventually make it as good as he had it. In the meantime there will be others that will do this and some are trying if Lending Tree doesn't do what we all hope.

They lie us are always on a learning curve now matter how old we are.

If making 6.25% on $10,000 is not on someones cup of tea that is their decision. There are other choices they have if they want to bother.

I just got a notice that one of my local credit unions just dropped from 5.25% to 4% for a 10 month CD this morning. Some people would not even take advantage of that. They are just under a billion dollars in assets but has 4 A+'s and one C+ for the Texas ratio trend on this site.

But anyone in this state could have had a CD with them and even their board of directors are unpaid volunteers.
I live near 3 college and talk the people working in these stores.
I tell them about this site and others to save money. Even one was getting a business degree and actually gave a talk in one of his classes about the sites I gave him after talking to his professor. I even talk to door people at my stores and to the people (not all seniors now) serving at Costco.

Sorry again about the long post. But hope it helps to show that people born on the wrong side of the tracks and had uneduced parents but they were self taught made sure we did well in school
and had a good work ethic even if we chose not to go to college.

I just hope that people subscibe to this and other sites and learn from free classes in the local colleges other other on line places to make a good life for themselves and children. Even one of my grandchildren learned to speak one dialect of Chinese in 8th grade on an online college class because she thought she wanted to go to Hong Kong after college.

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