How to piece together the perfect bank
People go聽onto social media to complain about a whole host of things: their partner, their sports team, their lunch. Add to that their banks.
Twitter and Reddit brim with colorful, and often unprintable, complaints about high聽fees, lousy rates and terrible聽customer service. While some of these people go on to聽, most resign themselves to believing this is just how it is.
But what if this weren鈥檛 just how it is? What would it take for customers to instead praise聽the places聽that hold their money?
Meet the perfect bank
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Some institutions bombard you with options in what can seem like one big ploy to distract you from the fact that none are especially good. Not so at the perfect bank, which is, above all else, efficient.
It offers聽a聽checking account, a savings account and a range of聽. The checking account bears聽interest, and the savings account comes聽with an annual percentage yield of 1%, on par with what a few of the聽听辞蹿蹿别谤.
NO OR LOW FEES
What the perfect bank doesn鈥檛聽have is as important as what it does have. It doesn鈥檛 hit you with a monthly maintenance fee, and it keeps other fees minimal. If you pay聽out-of-network fees at other banks鈥� ATMs, the perfect bank covers聽these up to聽$20 per month.
If you overdraw your account, instead of a flat 鈥� and hair-raisingly high 鈥� fee of聽, the perfect bank charges聽you 10% interest on the overdrawn amount. So if you go over聽your balance by $100, and it takes you a week to bring your account out of the red, you鈥檒l owe less than 25 cents in fees.
EXCELLENT TOOLS
The perfect bank listens to its customers. It keeps an eye on industry trends. It knows, for instance, that聽聽with a bank account used mobile banking in 2015, up from 33% two years before. And it acts on that intel 鈥� its聽tech tools are top-of-the-line. It offers聽an app with聽mobile check deposit and a daily cap upward of $20,000, and its bill pay and money transfer features are聽free and easy to use.
The bank鈥檚 website doesn鈥檛 leave you with聽more questions 鈥� it actually answers them. It clearly describes its accounts and their accompanying fees in聽language that is clear and conversational. It still won鈥檛 make for the most enthralling reading, but at least it won鈥檛 leave you banging your head on your desk. You鈥檒l find an informative FAQ page, as well as a live-chat service with wait times that rarely exceed a minute or two.
FAMILIAR TRAPPINGS
The perfect bank also offers a variety of loans and mortgages, and customers who have multiple accounts qualify for premium rates. When faced with聽thorny issues, you can聽visit one of its many branches.
Doesn鈥檛 that all sound grand? Alas 鈥�
Why one聽perfect bank doesn鈥檛 exist 鈥�
The perfect bank may be many things, but what it is not is realistic. Keeping the lights on at branches is expensive, and that can take a serious bite out of a bank鈥檚 margins. That鈥檚 partly why savings rates at most national banks are so low.
If a bank does offer exceptional rates, chances are it won鈥檛 have branches, a deal breaker for certain consumers. Or it may not have especially helpful online tools, which will send tech-savvy customers looking elsewhere. The list goes on. No matter how well聽a bank performs聽in one area, chances are it drops the ball somewhere else.
鈥� but how you can build your own
The aforementioned accounts, services, rates and fees weren鈥檛 dreamed up and concocted in a laboratory by some financial Frankenstein; they exist at a few聽of the聽听补苍诲听聽in聽the country.聽Piecing together聽your own version of the perfect bank is totally doable.
You could, for instance, sign up for a high-yield online savings account while keeping a checking account at a brick-and-mortar institution that provides in-person assistance. Or, if you鈥檝e repeatedly overdrawn your account, you could seek out a bank with low fees and pair it with one that has聽great tools to help you monitor your spending.
It鈥檚 up to you to determine which of these features is most appealing, but聽knowing that they鈥檙e available聽is a good start, and taking advantage of them will almost definitely聽make you a happier customer. Who knows, you might even get the urge to tweet about it.
Tony Armstrong is a staff writer at NerdWallet, a personal finance website. Email:聽tony@nerdwallet.com. Twitter:聽.
This story originally appeared on .
