So I have decided to run in the Great Canadian Run this year. It is a 100KM run from Ottawa to Montebello, QC in support to end kids cancer on October 13, 2012. This is something that I have never thought of doing before, since I find it hard enough to gather energy each day to take the dog for a walk. So not only is it a great cause, hopefully it will get me off of my ass to get back in shape and not a round shape. As a participant, my
goal is to raise $500.00 for local pediatric oncology research
initiatives at CHEO and hopefully break that small goal.
Andy
Team Smile's for Andy is running again on behalf of a brave little
boy named Andy. Andy is my neighbor and has been battling T-call ALL
(leukemia) for over a year now. He has 2.5 years left in his treatment.
Every single night Andy takes chemotherapy drugs, every 3 weeks Andy
takes mood altering steroids, every 3 months Andy has chemotherapy
injected into his spinal cord, and every single day Andy smiles. He is
beating this disease but it is not easy. There are many physical and
psychological side effects from chemotherapy/radiation treatment that
will be with Andy for the rest of his life because just having cancer is
not bad enough. And yet he is a fortunate boy because many pediatric
cancer patients don't continue smiling and many others don't continue
living. Help us end this ugly disease. Sponsor team Smiles for Andy as
we run 100km in support of all the little hero's fighting cancer
This Run will not only benefit thousands of kids that are diagnosed
with cancer every year, but kids cancer research also helps adult
cancers. Your dollars, your support, and all our efforts are making
a world of difference for so many. Please help me change the lives of children who are fighting for
theirs everyday. Your generous contribution will help me raise money for
an incredibly important cause. Every dollar counts. You can donate
right to my personal page here: Sponsor Me.
I have also made the pledge that that from now until the start of the race on October 13, anyone who opens a ING Direct bank account with my Orange Key (14477247S1), I will donate the $25 bonus that I receive to this cause. I have sent ING Direct an email to see if I can find out who signs up than I will donate the $25 in their name. Read more about ING Direct from my review.
You can follow along on this blog all summer long to track my progress, read more about Andy: http://www.smilesforandy.com and please remember to sponsor me. :-)
Its been just about a year now since I moved all of my banking needs to ING Direct. It was a easy process to complete and ING Direct was there along the way to help when there was a problem. You can read that review here: Operation Bank Switch: Complete You will notice above that I said all of my banking needs, well that all does not mean all I will explain a few of these below.
What has changed in the year:
ING Direct now offers Interac E-Mail money transfers at $1 each. This allows for faster money transfers to people who do not have an ING account. ING still does their free email money transfers though it will take a couple of days if the receiver is not an ING client.
ING Direct gives more than the 20 free cheques now. First when they launched the account you would receive 20 free cheques and would have to pay ~$10 for an additional 50. Now you will receive 50 from the get go but you will still have to pay after the initial 50.
What they still need to work on:
A Visa or MasterCard; I have said this in the previous posts and I continue to say it. Right now I use a RBC West Jet MasterCard and I have just come to learn that the interest rates will be going up in June for all account holders of this card. So here I am again having to look for a good credit card to get. I know if ING did get into this it would be a huge blessing for allot of their clients.
A RESP; ING does offer RRSP's and do have children's saving accounts (CSA) but have no RESP so parents cant take advantage of the Government of Canada's grants available when investing into RESP's. This is just recently become an issue for me since Paige was born we have been putting money aside for her in a CSA but now we would like to invest it further.
A Line of Credit; If not a Visa or MasterCard, a line of credit would be nice when need access to funds for repairs and such. Though this is not high on my wish list.
Save the Rest; This more of a wish than anything. It is something that ScotiaBank offers. When you purchase something with your debit card, you can have the amount rounded up and the rounded up amount be placed into a savings account. So if you but something for $8.62 you can have it rounded up to the nearest dollar or five dollars. That way $0.38 or $1.38 gets deposed into a savings account.
Overall I would still give IND Direct a 8.5/10 since it is free banking after all and they pay you to be a client. So here's hoping they can improve on some of the things above.
What other bank in the industry pays you to become a customer? Well the answer to that is easy, NONE. When you sign up for an account at ING Direct and use another customers ORANGE KEY you will both get $25, no strings attached. But the FREE money does not stop there, when you are ready to move your payroll into your ING Direct Thrive Chequing account, they will give you an additional $100 just to say thanks. Now I'm not saying you have to sign up with my ORANGE KEY but I would certainly love to get the bonus $25 just like you. My ORANGE KEY is: 14477247S1. http://www.ingdirect.ca/referafriend
Have you really ever noticed how much your bank charges you in fees? Because if you are like me and my wife we were spending about $50 - $60 a month on regular banking fees (See below of breakdown of fees) and even more if one of the accounts dropped into overdraft by even a $1.
About 10 years I became a client of ING Direct and opened a High Interest Savings account. ING continues to pay about 2% or more interest on any savings which is much higher than the norm for the big five Canadian banks. Over those 10 years there was not much more that you could do with a ING Bank account but transfer money into your savings and than later came the ING Mortgage, but most recently (last fall) came the ING Direct Thrive Chequing Account.
In the fall of 2010 I was one of the lucky 10,000 people who got to be in the test group for the Thrive Chequing account. I received my nice new debit card and a few weeks later received my PIN in the mail. I started to transfer money into the new chequing account and started using the debit card around the city, and paying bills online. But I was still a bit leery about moving my payroll and all of my banking to ING since this was still a new service ING was providing. I done a couple blogs (Post 1, Post 2) on my first impressions of the service and some things that ING needed to focus a bit more on.
Since that time last fall, the Thrive chequing is now open to all Canadians. Jodi was able to sign-up for an account in March and than we were able to create a joint chequing account together. Next came the fun steps to move over our pay roll, direct deposits and direct debts from our CIBC accounts to the newly created ING Thrive accounts without causing any overdraft issues with CIBC and having money in both.
So first we moved Jodi's pay over to the new joint Thrive account (JTA) (FREE money tip: ING gave her a $100 bonus for the pay roll change), and changed all direct debts to the JTA except for the mortgage payment. Next up change any direct deposit information with such places as Sun Life, Gov. of Canada and Great West Life for those times when you may get money from somewhere else. (Helpful Note: Do a search with your current bank (CIBC for me) for the past year to see what gets deposited and debited from your account. This will help you in the move) After about a month with Jodi's pay being deposited into Thrive, I brought the switch form to my HR department to have my pay roll changed to Thrive and called the bank to have the mortgage bank details changed to the new Thrive account. It now has been about three weeks since everything has been changed to Thrive and we couldn't be happier with the savings and I also got the $100 bonus for changing my payroll to Thrive.
Helpful Note: ING Direct with help you with changing your banking to them even as much not to have any debts declined. Though I did not take use of this service.
Is this your Bank? Old CIBC Fees broken down, for our normal account usage:
$12.95 per month for 3 accounts = $38.85
$1.50 per use bank machine fee (about 8 a month each) = $24.00
~$62.95 a month = $755.40 a year
That's $755.40 a year that can be going into your savings with an ING Direct Thrive chequing account.
The perks of bleeding Orange with Thrive:
Here is just a small list of what you will receive when you bank with ING Direct for your chequing needs:
No Fee Chequing Account;
50 Free Cheques;
Pays Interest: $0.00 - $49,999.99: 0.25%, take a look at what you get now with the big five;
Free email alerts for everything from, debts, deposits, overdrafts and much more;
Free ATM access at over 2500 across the country, you'll be surprised at how many there are;
Free overdraft or Whoops protection as ING calls it for up to $250, meaning you'll never be shorted changed;
Free mobile banking, not only free but the best mobile banking;
Free email money transfers offer an easy, secure and free way to send money to anyone;
Free Drafts.
Some things that I still would like ING to provide sometime in the future:
Ability to "Save the Rest". Just like what ScotiaBank does where you can have your debit purchases rounded up to a specific dollar amount and placed in a savings account;
More FREE Cheques than the first FREE 50. Yes, I use cheques quite often;
Ability to add more than one chequing account to the client card;
Ability to add a savings account to the the ING client card;
A Visa or MasterCard. I just moved from a CIBC Visa to a MBNA Mastercard since CIBC would not reduce my interest rate after being a customer for ~15 years (thats a whole new blog at some point).
Savings with a twist of easy:
I now have five opened savings accounts that I deposit money into automatically from my Thrive account every two weeks. These were all a breeze to set-up within 10 minuets and you can name them what ever you want. I have a emergency fund, vacation, pet fund, personal savings and a joint savings, but just remember you can only open five as I found out after trying to open more than five.
ING pays you to be a client:
What other bank in the industry pays you to become a customer? Well the answer to that is easy, NONE. When you sign up for an account at ING Direct and use another customers ORANGE KEY you will both get $25, no strings attached. But the FREE money does not stop there, when you are ready to move your payroll into your ING Direct Thrive Chequing account, they will give you an additional $100 just to say thanks. Now I'm not saying you have to sign up with my ORANGE KEY but I would certainly love to get the bonus $25 just like you. My ORANGE KEY is: 14477247S1. http://www.ingdirect.ca/referafriend
On the Go and Mobile:
I haven't been a mobile user for very long, if you must know its only been since December 2010. I never seen the need for people to reach me where ever I was. This changed when I bought my first "Smart Phone" a Google Nexus S powered by Android. Since getting the device I have now been using it more than my laptop and I have come accustom to wanting apps that provide me access to anything on the go. I was sadly disappointed at the offering from CIBC since it was nil, but happily excited to see ING Directs offering in this field. ING has come to the forefront with technology and had provided the best mobile app I have seen for all platforms giving you easy access to your account and money anywhere at anytime.
What else can Orange do for you?
ING Direct also provides other services outside of the Savings and Thrive Chequing accounts that I have explained, being very competitive in all of them:
Mortgages;
Mutual Funds;
US Dollar Saving Accounts;
RRSP's;
RESP's;
TFSA's;
GIC's;
Business Accounts;
and I'm sure you'll others in the future.
Go ahead view the short video about ING Direct Thrive Chequing and sign-up today:
So there you have it how we moved all of our banking to ING Direct and have been saving all those banking fees eversince. Just remember if you are new and signing up to go to: http://www.ingdirect.ca/referafriend and use the following ORANGE KEY: 14477247S1
Well time for bed and dreaming about all of the savings I'm getting from ING. :-)
If you have not read my blog post "Canadian Banking just took a turn for the best" it was about INGDirect about to release a chequing account called Thrive, but only to 10000 lucky current savings customers. Well guess what... I was one of those lucky ones to get one of the accounts for testing.
So far I have had the account for about 2 weeks and I have used it for deposits, withdraws, bill payments, money transfers and cheques. The account has been awesome so far and I am thinking I will be moving all of my banking to ING once some of the bumps are smoothed out and my wife can get an account. This week they will be offering more account trials to more people.
Here are a list of features I would like to see from the account at some point:
Ability to "Save the Rest". Just like what Scotiabank does where you can have your debit purchases rounded up to a specific dollar amount and placed in a savings account;
Free'er email money transfers. They are free if you send them from ING but if I try and send myself a money transfer from CIBC to ING I have to pay the $4 interact fee for the deposit;
Interest rate increased back to where it was on the TFSA;
More Cheques than the 20 I was given for free;
Ability to add a savings account to the the ING client card;
A visa or MasterCard
Do you have an ING chequing account? Were you one of the lucky ones? What would you like to see from the account?
If you all ready have an account, go to ingdirect.ca and read up on it and sign up to be on the trial. If you don't all ready have an account with ING Direct account, open one up now. If you use my referral code you will also receive a $25 bonus deposit. My ORANGE KEY is 14477247S1 and you can visit http://www.ingdirect.ca/referafriend to enter that number and sign up for the $25 bonus and take advantages of what ING Direct has to offer!!!
Let me know through the comments below what you would like to see in your ideal bank account? ING is taking the right approach to this account and allowing previwers create the account. By taking the feedback from the previewers ING will be able to make the account the best that it can be. Lets just see what more features they will add.
