I will be attending IU next year and was wondering what good options are for checking accounts. There are no banks near me at home on the east coast that also have a presence in Bloomington, and wanted to see if anyone else has had that issue/what they did. Thank you.
Here’s what I suggest: open a checking account at your local bank and get a debit card.
Here’s my reasoning: Your generation doesn’t use cash the way mine does. I wouldn’t dream of leaving the house for more than a short errand without some cash, but my kids can go for days as long as they have a debit card with them.
When you do need to use the campus ATM, take out $100— spend the $20 you thought you needed and put the rest away to use $20 at a time. That way, you pay only one $3 fee for those five $20 bills.
BUT-- let’s say you run low on money. You call home and ask mom for help.
If you’re using the local, school affiliated bank here’s what happens: Mom writes out a check. She gets it into the mail the very next day. Three days later it arrives at school. The next day you find it in your mailbox. You run to the school-affiliated bank and deposit it… where, as an out of state check, it takes a week to clear.
On the other hand, if you use the hometown bank, mom goes to the bank, deposits the money, and that night you have access to the funds.
There are a few choices as I see it:
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You can set up an account at a bank near you and pay the ATM fee when you need cash. If you do this you can take out enough each time to minimize the number of transactions. If anyone sends you a check (my kids grandmother would once in a while) you can deposit it remotely.
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Look for a bank that will waive the ATM fee (I think TD does if you keep a certain balance, others may as well). My D uses a TD account when in grad school. I’m told Charles Schwab has something similar but I don’t know details. And like above, if anyone sends you a check you can deposit it remotely.
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Set up an account at a bank near campus which has an ATM on/near campus and close it when you graduate. We did this with my D – a bit of a pain but it made her life on campus easier for four years. We were able to open and close the account by mail (had to send in some signature forms) and I was able to mail in deposits directly to the bank (in a pre-venmo world). But to make things faster you mom could venmo you money and you could move it into your account by campus and have it available in a day or two.
My kids mostly use debit cards, credit cards, venmo (to repay each other) etc. when going out but IMO it is important to have some access to cash.
It’s easier than that. We just go online and transfer funds to the kids account. Takes about 5 minutes.
Back in the day the school used to cash checks. Don’t know if they do that anymore?
My D is just finishing her first year. She has a debit card and then I put some money on her Crimson Card and she seems to have been getting by just fine. I haven’t given her any actual cash all year. I know she had some but she has pretty much gotten by with her debit card.
I have an app on my phone and I have an alert set up to when her debit card drops below $100 and I just go to the app and transfer money. Takes me less than 5 minutes and the money is immediately available to her. If needed, she could go to Kroger buy something small and then get cash back that way you avoid the ATM fees.
We have a CapitalOne 360 account which is a virtual bank so no brick and mortar branches. I’ve had it for over 10 years now and works just fine. I think she uses the venmo as well as I’ve seen some charges for venmo on her statement. I have her set up on my Uber account if she needs to use it but she hasn’t all year.
I agree that students don’t use cash very much. Debit cards and venmo payments are very common. JP Morgan Chase has most of the ATMs on or near campus if that helps with estimating ATM fees.
DS uses Venmo whenever he goes out with friends. I think most students do these days.
If you decide you want to open an account with a Bloomington presence I strongly recommend IU Credit Union. They have about 20 ATM locations on and around campus and a couple of branches on campus. Online banking is easy. Living in Bloomington for almost 20 years now, we’ve tried most of the banks. The Credit Union is the best. I’m guessing they will have a booth or people available during your summer orientation to set up an account. If not, they will be around in August to make things easy.