Posts by George Barrett35

It doesn't matter where they hold their account. It’s most likely a brand-new account that hasn't even hit the bank's database yet.

Gerald Morgan said:Look—checking accounts pay zero interest—that’s how a teller at Chase explained it to me—they exist purely for incoming cash like a paycheck or Social Security that you "withdraw and spend"—hence the name CHECKING—whereas a savings account actually accrues a bit of interest because the whole point is to park money you intend to save; then you have CDs, which is an entirely different beast altogether...

Alright, I get that part..
But if you can use a "savings account" for everything—receiving your salary, hitting the ATM for cash, all that—then what is the actual point of having a checking account? Why would anyone bother opening one?🤷
You might want to double-check that specific bank's policy regarding their savings accounts, just so you don't run into any headaches trying to direct your payroll into it later on.

By the way, I love your take on that "frozen" savings idea 🤣 🙏

I’m still struggling to wrap my head around what actually sets a high-yield savings account apart from a standard checking account...

When you split a purchase into installments, it’s actually the merchants who are footing the bill for that flexibility, much like how they handle check payments.
For instance, I pay my car insurance using an American Express card over six monthly installments, where each payment shows up on my statement as its own distinct charge. It isn't really an American Express thing; the card is just the tool I'm using to settle the bill—just like a check—while the installment plan is simply a feature the insurance company chooses to offer on their own terms.

Charles Ramos7 said:I'm not sure I follow what you mean.😕 A deferred payment and a revolving credit line are two completely different animals. They have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

I could, say, pick up something worth $10. $0.00 Set them to four rates, then just add an extra one on top of that. $833 I'm looking at paying this off over 20 installments—just about 5% of the total value each time.

You're mixing up your terminology.
Let's try to make this simple. Say you buy something and the retailer offers to let you pay via credit card in, let's say, two installments. They'll charge you the first one immediately and then "pass along" the second one to the bank in a month. For the bank, when that second charge hits, it isn't viewed as an old expense from last month; it’s treated as a fresh cost incurred today. Because of that, you can absolutely pay off that second installment using your revolving credit just like any other bill. That isn't "deferred payment" tied to the card itself; it's a merchant-specific offer provided by the shop, and it depends entirely on that specific vendor—they might even give it to you for free.
When we actually talk about deferred interest or payment extensions on a card, that's when the merchant collects their money upfront and the bank gives you the grace period to pay it back by the due date.
What you can't do is simultaneously use a bank-issued deferral and your revolving credit line for that same transaction. That's my point.
Mind you, there are plenty of hybrid products out there now, so some of these overlaps are possible with certain specialized cards, but those aren't your standard charge or revolving cards anymore.

Sure you can, provided you cleared the entire balance during the grace period. But if you’re only chipping away at a portion of it, you’ve essentially opted into a revolving credit line, which means you're knowingly agreeing to eat those interest charges. What you absolutely cannot do is try to juggle both the deferred payment plan and the revolving credit at the exact same time.

And let me be clear: just because one bank calculates things differently than another doesn't mean they're being dishonest.

With a revolving card, you aren't buying on credit—you're taking out a loan. A fair way to handle things is simply charging interest from the very moment you use that credit. If you want a grace period, you go with a charge card instead. Honestly, if revolving cards offered the same deferred payment perks, nobody would even bother with charge cards anymore.
Just because Chase does things differently doesn't mean everyone else is being dishonest.

Ronald Allen said:Look, from what I gather, you can pretty much move your direct deposit to any bank you want. You can even ask them to match the overdraft limit you had at your old bank. But, you’ll probably have to wait until your first paycheck hits and show them a statement from your previous bank so they can see exactly how much credit they should extend to you. Basically, you just pay off the balance at the old bank once the money hits the new one, then you can shut that old account down immediately. It’s really just transferring your standing from one place to another. 🙄
Regarding the cards, you BETTER do your homework here. There’s a massive difference between a CHARGE card and a REVOLVING credit card. With a CHARGE card, you’re paying off the full amount you spent by the next month. With REVOLVING, you just pay back a specific percentage that you agree on when you sign up—usually somewhere around 5% or 10%. 🙂
There are other nuances with REVOLVING cards too, but that’s getting into some complicated policy stuff, so I won't go there... Don't think I'm saying you can't get it, it's just kind of a pain to explain like this... 😉
Hope that helps... 👍

Can you just walk into any random bank and get this? Honestly, probably not. From what I can gather, only a handful of specific institutions actually offer something like this.😕

Mark Sullivan62 said:When it comes to how they handle revolving credit, I honestly think Zappos is the only one playing fair,

The way I see it, you spend $333, then you pay off $200 by the due date, and they only start charging interest on the remaining $267 starting from the actual due date—basically from the moment you settled those initial $67

But if you look at Chase, Bank of America, or even American Express, they calculate interest on that leftover $267 from the very day you actually swiped the card, not from the due date.

To me, that feels like a total scam; you really have to read the fine print when you sign up for a card to understand how the interest is actually calculated.

Maybe the difference seems trivial since it’s just a month, but if we’re talking about a massive amount—say $10,000—that you haven't cleared after two or three months past the deadline, that interest starts snowballing fast... and suddenly all your hard-earned cash is just vanishing into thin air.

What kind of robbery is this? You aren't being charged interest on money you didn't spend, nor are you paying for time before you even used the credit. The payment due date has absolutely nothing to do with how interest is calculated. Honestly, how would you react if they applied that same logic to a CD at Chase—if they decided to start paying you interest only from the first of the month instead of the actual day you deposited your cash? Would you call that fair business, or would you call it a total scam?

Andrew Stewart3 As specified by Gerald Morgan:
In my opinion, revolving credit is the most expensive way to borrow money there is, whereas a classic American Express card actually gives you an interest-free window.

If you aren't looking to drown in interest and live paycheck to paycheck, but just want something reliable for an occasional installment plan here and there, you really can't beat a classic American Express. 👍

Gerald Morgan said:I have a question. I’m starting my first actual job—yay!—which means finally getting an official employment record. Does this mean I absolutely have to open a standard checking account to receive my paycheck, or can I just give my employer the details for my savings account instead? Thanks.

Savings accounts with those old-school structures have a completely different setup than standard checking accounts, which means you can't just deposit money into them the same way. Honestly, you’ll find that almost no employer is going to want to deal with an account like that for direct deposit, and even if they did, most HR departments wouldn't even know how to process it.
Not to mention the absolute headache of having to wait in line behind retirees every single payday just to get your hands on your own cash 🤣 when any sane person in the modern world would just hit up an ATM and be done with it.

Look, there's a cost involved here and someone has to foot the bill. It would be completely absurd to expect a bank to cover for someone else's negligence. Until actual fraud is PROVEN—and honestly, wasn't a receipt necessary in the first place?—this just looks like your own oversight. It would be even more ridiculous if JP Morgan Chase spent their time chasing down some random scammer somewhere in the US just to claw back your $9. And let’s be clear: if they freeze your card, that doesn't magically wipe away the charges you've already racked up.

Terry Howard said:So, what's your take on this? Ran right into it while I was grabbing some Broadway tickets online earlier.

We’re talking about protection against "interception" here, which is exactly what shadowbison was bringing up, and if I recall correctly, he totally misread my point. The flaws aren't really in that layer of security; the real issue is the entity you’re actually handing your data over to. I’ll be the first to admit you can never truly know who you're dealing with, and anyone could try to play you, but there is a massive difference between using your card at a major retailer like Walmart versus some obscure website that might vanish by next Tuesday. To circle back to the whole question of liability... the buck still stops with you. You're on the hook until you can actually prove the misuse happened, and proving that is an uphill battle when you're browsing the web, especially when your only defense is the weak argument that "it happened to someone else too."

I’m going to pass on commenting that whole "look how well we handled this for you" bit, but if you're looking for someone to blame for this mess, it's definitely you. I mean, even a toddler understands that using your credit card online is entirely on your own head. This serves as a pretty solid wake-up call for anyone else out there thinking they can just gamble away their life savings online without a second thought about which card they're plugging into some sketchy site.

darkmaker94 said:Do you happen to know if their Intel Visa has a CVV, though? I feel like everyone's saying something different.🙂

Ima

Quincy:

I’ve been watching this unfold for a while now, and honestly, it’s pretty clear where we’re headed if people don't start waking up to the reality of the situation. It isn't just about one single policy or one bad decision; it’s the cumulative weight of all these systemic failures stacking up until the whole thing feels like it's teetering on the edge. You see it happening in real-time, from the way the big corporations are squeezing every last cent out of the middle class to how the institutions that are supposed to protect us seem more interested in self-preservation than actually doing their jobs. It’s frustrating, sure, but it’s also becoming almost predictable at this point. We talk about change like it’s some looming storm on the horizon, but the truth is the weather has already turned, and most people are still sitting there wondering why it’s suddenly getting so cold. George Barrett35 says: What exactly do you mean when you say "a massive amount of money"? Give me some actual numbers. 😕 Bottom line is, you’ve got to make sure you're sitting on more than whatever the credit limit happens to be. My mom’s got that CCV, though I’ve never actually tried using it to buy anything.

I couldn't give you an exact figure off the top of my head, but it’s clearly going to be more than a few hundred bucks. Honestly, that credit limit feels pretty low to me, unless you're consistently pumping money back into the account every single month. At the end of the day, the bank doesn't care about one lucky windfall; they want to see that you actually have the coverage to back up that credit card on a regular basis.

No, that’s not how it works. You just plug the info from your bill directly into the bank's app, and then the bank processes it exactly the same way they would if you had walked into a Chase branch with a physical slip of paper in hand—handling all the transfers and clearinghouse stuff behind the scenes.
From what I gather, pretty much every major bank in the country offers full-scale online banking these days.

Charles Ramos7 said:If you have a foreign currency account at Bank of America, you can usually snag a legitimate Visa or MC card without needing a regular salary😉

Nemo. Unless, of course, you’re sitting on a massive pile of cash in that account.

Kevin Edwards35 said:They aren't changing anything over there either 😢

It’s honestly ridiculous—you can't even swap out a neighbor's currency anywhere 🙄

Now that is what I call a golden opportunity for a real business.

Sam Murphy said:But how can you say that? If I'm already deep in the red, there's no way on earth I'm getting approved for a loan...😬

It’s exactly like writing checks, really. You don't even need to have the cash sitting in your account right now, as long as the funds are there on the day the payment actually clears. It functions just like using a revolving credit card, only you aren't getting hammered by interest rates.

Chris Lopez59 said:Chase actually lets you snag an extra, special overdraft limit on your Maestro card that matches whatever credit limit they’ve already set for your checking account. The best part—and I mean this sincerely—is that your first installment doesn't even kick in until a full month after the transaction hits, which is a massive upgrade from how things used to work with checks where they’d usually just snatch that first payment right out of your account immediately. Because of that buffer, you don't even need to have a single cent sitting in your account to pull off a purchase on the installment plan. 👍

It’s hardly a drawback, really; it's just that the amount they let you split into installments is capped by whatever your overdraft limit happens to be.

The timing doesn't matter one bit

Kimberly Nguyen said:I was over at the Macy's in Times Square earlier and they wouldn't take the card... some lady tried asking one of the clerks about it... and honestly? This girl didn't have a single clue what she was talking about 🤣

It’s strange. Just two weeks ago at that shop over in Times Square, I picked up some new shoes, and when I went to pay, the cashier gave me a perfectly polite offer to buy them now pay later using my Maestro card. There was even a massive sign right there on the counter by the register advertising Chase Maestro installment plans.
It started out as just being able to shop at Whole Foods, but now it feels like pretty much everywhere—except maybe gas stations and corner convenience stores—they’re offering you the chance to buy now pay later. 😬

I’m not sure if you’ve actually factored in the fact that your biggest expense isn't going to be the hardware, but the library itself. You’re going to need at least a few titles from every single genre, and when you realize there are millions of them out there—and heaven knows what kind of niche stuff those guys in the machine shops are going to want to play—you’ll see how quickly that adds up. If you take all that and multiply it by $50 or $60 a pop, I honestly have my doubts about whether this whole thing even makes financial sense.
And don't even get me started on buying pirated copies, because the IRS will be knocking on your door before you can even finish downloading them.