The Ultimate USAA Bank Thread, version 2.0, updated 4/18/07

Just noticed this on my Performance First statement:

"BEGINNING 7/15/07, THE BANK WILL PAY A .15% MARGIN ABOVE THE INDEX FOR BALANCES OF 25,000.00 TO 49,999.99, AND A MARGIN OF .25% FOR BALANCES OF 50,000.00 OR MORE"

If I'm reading this correctly - it means that starting 7/15 the rates would be?

$25,000 - $49,999 5.21%
>$50,000 5.42%

falala said: Did anyone order the free keychain and not get theirs? It took mine from the end of February to mid-May to get here.Yup took a long time. Do you all feel OK about using it?

Having your account number engraved may not be the best idea. (point 1)

In the civilian world (unlike the military), I can't imagine good samaritans mailing back the keys at their expense to the address engraved on the keychain. Too humbug. (point 2)

For me at least, I get paranoid when I lose keys and have to rekey every door lock including car doors. We do most of the installation but taking the locks to the locksmith still costs a couple hundred dollars. I lost the keys twice that I can recall and the last time it was in my own house (my fear is losing them in the garage or close to home). So I ask what good is hoping to have a set of keys mailed back to me months after I *think* I lost them?? (point 3)

So despite it being a beautiful and nicely engraved keychain, I won't be using it. Wish I didn't order it in fact.

edits haha just having some fun

tooshy said:
In the civilian world (unlike the military), I can't imagine good samaritans mailing back the keys at their expense to the address engraved on the keychain. Too humbug. (point 2)

Return postage is paid by USAA.

Got my keychain a few months after I ordered it.

GoodDeals said: lhendricks92 said: jairocon said: Just noticed this on my Performance First statement:

"BEGINNING 7/15/07, THE BANK WILL PAY A .15% MARGIN ABOVE THE INDEX FOR BALANCES OF 25,000.00 TO 49,999.99, AND A MARGIN OF .25% FOR BALANCES OF 50,000.00 OR MORE"

If I'm reading this correctly - it means that starting 7/15 the rates would be?

$25,000 - $49,999 5.21%
>$50,000 5.42%

isn't the index here?

current 7-day simple yield is 4.70%. by my calculation, we're looking at an APY of 5.06% for 50K+ balances. i hope i'm wrong...i REALLY don't want to rate chase.Oh - so it's actually going in the opposite direction? Wow - that's a bummer.


lhendricks92 is correct. I have been considering adding cash to my USAA savings account to get it changed to a Performance First account. After seeing this I called USAA and the CSR confirmed that the rate is going down to about 5.06% on the top tier.

ccstar said: Does anyone know any "creative" ways to get in to this company as a memeber. I spoke with the rep today and she said you have to be in the military to get in. I contracted for the military for a few years but was not actually in the military myself. Feel free to post or pm me.

I know your post is kind of old, but it doesn't seem like anyone really gave you a solution...if you know anyone who has a USAA account, they can open a new account jointly with you and say that you're their spouse (this only takes about five minutes, and they in no way try to verify that the person is, in fact, your spouse). As soon as they open this account for you, you will be assigned a USAA membership number, which makes you a member for life. Once you are a member, you can open all the accounts you like. Your friend can then go ahead and close the joint account at their leisure.

Not only does this work fine, but once you are a member, you can go ahead and help someone else become a member, if you like. And then they can help someone else, and so on...

So will anyone be my spouse? I was military for 5 years but hadn't heard of USAA until a year or two ago. I really wish I joined while I was in, but i've been out for awhile now. I really need a temporary spouse!

MisterBeefhead said: ccstar said: Does anyone know any "creative" ways to get in to this company as a memeber. I spoke with the rep today and she said you have to be in the military to get in. I contracted for the military for a few years but was not actually in the military myself. Feel free to post or pm me.

I know your post is kind of old, but it doesn't seem like anyone really gave you a solution...if you know anyone who has a USAA account, they can open a new account jointly with you and say that you're their spouse (this only takes about five minutes, and they in no way try to verify that the person is, in fact, your spouse). As soon as they open this account for you, you will be assigned a USAA membership number, which makes you a member for life. Once you are a member, you can open all the accounts you like. Your friend can then go ahead and close the joint account at their leisure.

Not only does this work fine, but once you are a member, you can go ahead and help someone else become a member, if you like. And then they can help someone else, and so on...

Why am I not surprised? I was expecting for them to do this since last July.

Don't let the door hit you in the rump on the way out.

Hmm, I've been with USAA for 29 years and I beg to differ. But then I am P&C eligible.

Update to Fund Transfer Screens: Before if you made a mistake when you were initiating an ACH transfer, you would have to press the previous button. Now you can clink the edit link on the screen right before you submit for final processing. Small, but minor improvement.

MisterBeefhead said: ccstar said: Does anyone know any "creative" ways to get in to this company as a memeber. I spoke with the rep today and she said you have to be in the military to get in. I contracted for the military for a few years but was not actually in the military myself. Feel free to post or pm me.

[...] if you know anyone who has a USAA account, they can open a new account jointly with you and say that you're their spouse (this only takes about five minutes, and they in no way try to verify that the person is, in fact, your spouse). As soon as they open this account for you, you will be assigned a USAA membership number, which makes you a member for life. Once you are a member, you can open all the accounts you like.
Not only does this work fine, but once you are a member, you can go ahead and help someone else become a member, if you like. And then they can help someone else, and so on...

Hi folks, one question about this. My girlfriend added me as a joint account holder on her checking account a week ago. Today I finally got access to the account but the other options - insurance, home equity (they appear to have a great HELOC) are still unavailable to me. Is this something that takes time or do we have to add eachother as family/household members?

Thanks,
./Chudel.

Yes, she already has her auto insurance through USAA. (Her Father is retired military with a USAA account).

Does anyone know how cash advance interest is calculated? Does interest begin to accrue at the time the cash advance is drawn from the credit card, or do you have the normal statement window before interest accrues? I can't seem to find any information specific to USAA so I assume it accrues immediately.

(for USAA Mastercard)

Thanks.

Voila.

Thank you.

Has anyone used their USAA Debit Mastercard for balance transfers (i.e. transferred from Chase/AMEX/etc directly to the debit mastercard)? If so, did the payment post immediately to your checking account? How much did you transfer? And was their a hold on the funds?

I've been using the USAA mastercard (not debit) and am currently waiting on a 7-day hold for ~$40k. It would be nice to streamline the process by circumventing the holds.

Thanks again.

bobfather said: ...To beat the vicious cycle and get your grace period for purchases back, you're going to have to zero balance the card until after your next statement is published. The moral of the story is, never do credit card cash advances.

A horrid moral. USAA CAs come in very handy, there are no CA fees, my APR is 12.15% and my wife's is 11.15%. Further I can CA into my USAA checking, and then have a lovely target for BTs, along with immediately available funds. Perhaps a better moral to the story would be to not commingle other types of transactions with a CA? I've also never had a problem getting my grace period back simply by paying the card, no need to wait for the cycle to close. Also untrue that purchases lose their grace period the minute you take the CA. While the CA will accrue interest from day one, purchases only start to accrue interest if I haven't paid the previous bill in full by the due date.

edit: if you have a credit balance that is suffering the hold you can still draw the CA against your credit line. There won't be any interest since your balance will be 0.

Sorry, I disagree with extreme positions. As I said in the post above, USAA CA's have served me well. I'm not sure why I'd be in the wrong forum, seeing as how I've made a bunch more than I paid USAA in interest, and it's made my life easier. Your extremism is costing you money and time...I'd say that makes it you in the wrong forum, not I.

WalStMonky said: edit: if you have a credit balance that is suffering the hold you can still draw the CA against your credit line. There won't be any interest since your balance will be 0.

let me make sure i understand this with a concrete example. let's say i have a 40K CL on my USAA card, zero balance. BT for 30K, now i have a 30K negative balance. call usaa, don't say, "hey, can i move that 30K into checking?" because then you run into the hold problem. instead, say "can i take a cash advance of 30K against my credit line?" no hold problem.

correct?

Why in the world would there be a hold placed on you available credit if you send in a payment creating a credit balance? Are you guys saying that USAA is taking away available credit when you send in a payment? EG 10k credit line, 0 balance, send in 10k now I have 0 available credit? Because that means that they're putting a hold on 20k, not 10k and I find that unlikely. So yes, you should be able to request a CA against your available credit. But I decided it wasn't worth it to risk getting tagged with some internal label by regularly sending money and having it transferred subsequently to avoid a minimal amount of interest. It's really not that hard to time so that the BT hits the same day as the CA, resulting in no interest. (let us prey: never ever under any circumstances take advantage of a CA even if it's in your better interest and costs no money, amen.)

I'm reminding myself about the concept of confirmation bias, but I find it interesting that USAA has started to put a hold on payments made from external sources. Because I just made a payment to wifey's USAA AMEX and the credit line was immediately restored. But I know lots of issuers get hinky when people make large credit balances. I just didn't want to screw up a good thing with USAA by being too cheap to pay them a few dollars of interest. At 12% it's less than $4 if I miss and pay a day's interest on $10000. If this enables me to get my transfer funds earlier it's a very valuable service. It is being a pathological miser to demand that valuable services be provided free, or you won't use them, despite the fact that you're going to make money because of the service. The inevitable end result of saving that few dollars is that the service goes away if enough people do it. So is the hold on incoming payments evidence of too many people screwing USAA over by having money transferred in and transferring it into cash? Sheesh, just pay the $4 and move along.

edit: I wasn't clear above. the payment to wifey's AMEX was made by Checkfree using web bill pay. I thought about it and I'm not sure why that would count as an internal transfer, but the money did come from a USAA checking account.

WalStMonky said: I'm reminding myself about the concept of confirmation bias, but I find it interesting that USAA has started to put a hold on payments made from external sources. Because I just made a payment to wifey's USAA AMEX and the credit line was immediately restored. But I know lots of issuers get hinky when people make large credit balances. I just didn't want to screw up a good thing with USAA by being too cheap to pay them a few dollars of interest. At 12% it's less than $4 if I miss and pay a day's interest on $10000. If this enables me to get my transfer funds earlier it's a very valuable service. It is being a pathological miser to demand that valuable services be provided free, or you won't use them, despite the fact that you're going to make money because of the service. The inevitable end result of saving that few dollars is that the service goes away if enough people do it. So is the hold on incoming payments evidence of too many people screwing USAA over by having money transferred in and transferring it into cash? Sheesh, just pay the $4 and move along.

edit: I wasn't clear above. the payment to wifey's AMEX was made by Checkfree using web bill pay. I thought about it and I'm not sure why that would count as an internal transfer, but the money did come from a USAA checking account.
Although your reasoning appears to be sound, I don't know if it's entirely correct. According to the CSR and supervisor that helped me yesterday, it wasn't policy that stopped them from providing the second cash advance, but rather, merely the design of the computer software. So, although they were willing to the cash advance, the system would not allow it. Also, it has been my experience that USAA is happy to adjust the funds with interest once cleared.

I will likely try to time future cash advances so that they are taken just before the negative balance appears.