The Most Interest

The following is a review for Charter Bank of New Mexico which is the serving bank for www.turbochecking.com.

Link(s): http://www.charterco.com/ | http://www.turbochecking.com

Signing Up:Relatively easy setup.  Straight forward, fill out the form online and information gets emailed to you.  The signature form gets mailed to you.  I was primarily attracted to this bank for its checking account which pays 6.01% 5.01% APY.  There are certain criteria you have to meet in order to earn that yield, they are listed at the bottom of this review.

Account Verification:Shortly after sending back the signature form (2-3 business days)  I got an email confirming out account.  This was nice for several reasons:

1. Although I didn’t have the debit card to use yet (in order to get the 6.01% 5.01% APY) I was able to log in to their online banking.  From here I could easily turn on e-statements and just familiarize myself with the user interface.
2. I now had my account number, I could go to the other institutions I use and set up ACH transfers to/from this account.
3. I had a way to directly contact support (if needed) about my account.

Support:I must say, I’ve had terrible support, ok support and great support from several institutions.  I have – to date – emailed Charter Bank twice and both times it took no more than two hours to get an answer.  This is impressive.  Yes, I could have picked up the phone, been on hold for a while and then received an answer sooner, however I felt my questions weren’t of such importance they couldn’t wait.  Afterall, my account was only initially funded (small $100 depost) and I still had not received my debit card.2 hours to answer an email… I am satisfied.

Website:Could be better, but it gets the job done.  Takes probably 10 minutes to find where EVERYTHING is once you are logged in.

Interest Payments:6.01% 5.01% APY – Can’t beat that with a stick.  It translates to about 4.84% APR.  Here are the stipulations:

• 6.01% 5.01% Applies only up to $25,000 – Limit 2 accounts per household.
• You must use online banking, and log in once a month online (Easy)
• You must receive e-statements as opposed to paper statements (Easy and earth friendly)
• You must have one Direct Deposit or ACH Debit once per month (Easy, you can automate this)
• You must use your TurboChecking Debit card – 10 (updated 9/30/08) 13 times a month! (This is the catch)

So, what happens after the 25K? You get a measly 1.01% APY, not worth bothering to keep more than $25,000 in this account.  I don’t know about you but I make more than 10 transactions per month, so this was no problem for me to simply use their debit card instead of my credit card.  I’ll give up some rewards points in order to make 6% on a completely liquid, FDIC insured asset.

Monthly interest has been paid to my account on a regular basis.  They send me emails letting me know exactly what criteria I filled in order to get the higher percentage rate.

This post was last updated 1/16/2009.