My boyfriend and I pay our shared household expenses from a joint checking account that we both contribute a standard monthly sum to. The thing is we over-budgeted for it to start with and the monthly total was made with our outrageously expensive winter heating bills in mind. This means that lately this account has a few hundred left over in it at the end every month. In fact the very first month we started it there was enough remaining to pay the hotel bill for our trip to New York. So we decided that in the future we will use the extra funds to save for everyone's favorite joint expense- vacations!
Step one is logging into emigrant to create a new savings account- I funded it with $5 from my existing savings. Simple enough. Then I go to make a transfer from our bank of america shared account to the new vacations savings. I enter the account numbers and everything is going well until I get to a screen that tells me to send in a check so that my request can be processed. We don't have checks from this account! We pay all of our bills electronically and BOA won't give us free checks for it. Even if I did have a check I would have to go buy a stamp and send it in which I consider to be a huge pain in the ass.
So I thought OK I will just transfer our joint money into my checking then transfer the money into our emigrant shared savings- foiled again!! I got a message that these accounts are not linked even though it's how I fund my other emigrant savings account. If I wanted to use the SAME ACCOUNT that emigrant already transfers money from all the time I'd have to send in another check! Frustrating!
So what I have to is make 4 online transfers in order to save this money. Shared checking > my checking > my savings > shared savings. I still live it for the high interest but the process is seriously ridiculous.