If you’re ready to open another checking account but don’t know which one to choose, I can’t say enough things about my Charles Schwab Checking. I opened mine in 2017 when they had a promotion, giving me $100 as long as I deposited something into the account (now you get $100 if you deposit at least $1000 with the referral code which I give later in the post), but I’ve actively used it ever since! Here are 5 reasons why I opened it and why you should too.

I stumbled across Charles Schwab in 2017 because my girlfriend, sister, and I were all planning our study abroads in France and Korea. If you didn’t know, the financial culture in these countries isn’t really like that of the United States. Credit cards are accepted in most upper end and tourist places, but if you wanted to really experience the country's culture, you’d need some cash. My first trip to Paris, my mom had ordered some Euros for me, and we just picked them up at our local Bank of America, so I figured I could just do it again. 

Thank god that the internet evolved. I tried to order some currency through our online portal and then saw all these crazy fees! There was a shipping fee, a 3% exchange fee, a holding fee...I wasn’t about to pay all that! I called my mom to ask her if she knew about it, and she was like “of course, nothing’s free!” That’s when I decided to find a way to navigate the system. I quickly found some great travel credit cards (which you can read about in a later post) that waived foreign transaction and exchange fees, but I needed a way to get cash. 

That’s when I stumbled across Charles Schwab’s website in a google search. They were advertising 0% foreign exchange fees. I figured there’d have to be a catch, so I started chatting with a customer service agent and asked them if I could use my debit card to withdraw money abroad, and if I’d get charged any fees. The agent happily told me “Nope! In fact, most people open a Schwab checking just so they could avoid these fees when they travel!” So I was hooked and had the agent help me open a checking account right on the spot from the comfort of the hard futon in my dingy apartment. 

This perk was added next to the 0% foreign exchange fees, and the customer service agent clarified that these fees would be charged up front but then reimbursed at the end of the month, so I figured “why not?” And yes, this is true for any ATM in the world. You’ll get whatever ridiculous amount charged for using a sketchy ATM. A month after I opened my account, I went to my local Chase bank to test this out, and sure enough, my ATM fees were reimbursed! 

Believe it or not, back in 2017, checking accounts typically didn’t earn interest unless you were a special “high yield money market checking” customer. This typically meant you had higher minimum account balances and the monthly fees would be higher if you didn’t meet them, and it’s typically only about 0.01% - basically non-existent peanuts. This sucks for broke college students with no cash, which is why Schwab’s 0.25% APY in 2017 was just calling my name! It’s too bad in 2020, the interest rate dropped to 0.03%, but it still beats 0.01%! Nowadays, there are a lot more internet banks out there that do something similar to this, so you really can’t go wrong. I just prefer Schwab cause they’re a big company with some physical locations. 

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like spending extra time filling out a lot of applications. Schwab luckily streamlines the process and opens a taxable brokerage account for you at the same time! And their brokerage account doesn’t have any fees either, so you can just leave the balance at $0 until you’re ready to start investing and buying stocks! And like I mentioned before, they’ve waived all their commission fees, so if you’re looking for a great account to hold all your dividend stocks or to break into day-trading, this is a great starting place. I recently introduced it to one of my co-workers, Joey A.J., and he absolutely loves the platform! All the research and tools you need are there and it looks pretty modern, so you’re getting ahead of the curve!

Now there are a few cons to Schwab like not having many physical locations across the U.S. and depositing money into the bank can be a bit difficult if you have cash, so I don’t personally use it as my only bank account. But, I’ll talk about the cons and how I navigate them in another post, so you can make an informed decision!