Personal Finance Zen

PNC’s Virtual Wallet service sounds like a great idea. They’ve essentially packed up the solution I started using a few years ago into a neat bundle that’s all in one account. There are three accounts, spending, reserve and growth. Spending is your checking account where you pay bills and such. Reserve is for short term savings and covers any payments from spending (and transfers the money to cover those payments without charging you any fees). The growth account earns 3% interest. I’m not sure if the other two accounts have interest, but my guess is they don’t.

You need $25 to open the account and there aren’t any fees or minimum balances. They have online bill pay, a bill calendar and various other ways to help you manage your finances as easily as possible. I’m currently happy with my setup at Washington Mutual Chase, but if things start changing, I may open up a Virtual Wallet account with PNC.

BankSwitcher aims to make it easier for you to switch banks, for those times you decide to go with the high interest savings accounts.

The main concern I have is giving out the login credentials to your bank. Of course, I do this currently with Yodlee but I’ve made the decision that they can be trusted because of their affiliation with Bank of America, HSBC and third-party audits. I don’t have anything else to go on with BankSwitcher other than “trust us”.

The FAQ says “Safe and Secure” over and over as if they’re trying to will you into believing it’s safe and secure.

I’ve switched banks twice before and I’m in the middle of the third switch (From Zion’s Bank to Wells Fargo to HSBC and now to Wamu). It takes some attention to detail, which I have, so I’ll stick with that instead of handing my credentials over to an unknown third party.