I'm sure others will chime in. We're Canadian so can't answer your questions directly, but we have a similar problem as we go to the USA for 6 months at a time. We take minimal cash with us and use credit cards and checks for 99% of our needs. In 3 years it has worked well for us. If need be we use a debit card at Walmart and get cash back.

We also do everything online, including bill paying and credit cards. We get cash by using debit cards and getting cash back from grocery stores.

You should talk to your banks as to how you can transfer between them electronically.

We still have our bank accounts in NJ. SS and Pension checks direct deposited. As others have said we get cash when using our debit card at WalMart, etc.

All credit card statements and other bills such as cell phone are sent online and paid online. In fact, since we get "points" we apply to various gift cards for restaurants, etc we pay almost everything with a credit card. Then at least once a week I gather all receipts and pay that amount online in order to never get an interest charge.

My supplemental health insurance is automatic debited from our account as is the house insurance on our rental property.

We pay our vehicle insurances on an annual basis so don't have to think about them for a year.

Should something come up (for instance rebates or the occasional dividend) that needs to be deposited or paid, we have my daughter on our account to that purpose.

We have a savings account with the same bank making it easy to transfer funds online. We recently met with our financial planner in NJ and set up a system where we can call him and he can have funds deposited from our investments into our bank account should that be necessary.

As we have moved along, we have found easy solutions to every challenge.

If you want to transfer money from your credit union to your other account on a regular basis, you can most likely set up an automatic transfer to do that. You would talk to someone at Wells Fargo to set that up. You may also be able to do an electronic transfer through your online banking account at your credit union, so you could check out that possibility as well. Also, for a "low-tech" option, with most banks you can mail in deposits, so you could always mail in a check from your credit union account to Wells Fargo.

I agree with everything already mentioned. 

One thing that might be helpful to you is that Wachovia Bank is now owned by Wells Fargo.  You should be able to find a Wachovia or Wells Fargo bank in just about any town now. 

So, if you need a bank or an ATM then look for Wachovia as they are the same as Wells Fargo now.  I noticed that our Wachovia bank here in Florida has recently put in a new state of the art Well Fargo ATM.  You can deposit checks into it without an envelope and it gives you back a receipt with a picture of the check you deposited.

Like many others, we use online banking as much as possible.  Sure saves on stamps!

We have recently gone back to USAA and am loving it.  They  have a program that allows you to put any and all accounts on your onsite banking with them (from ANY bank or CU) so that you can transfer between accounts at different banks.  They also have the capacity to allow you to set up your scanner/printer so that you can scan checks directly into your account.
We have kept our account at the credit union because of knowing all the people there and use this debit card for our everyday living.  We use our credit card only in emergencies.  But either bank, we do everything online.



-- Edited by DorisandDave on Wednesday 21st of July 2010 08:20:10 PM

Thanks for all the information. We contacted our credit union and they walked us through transferring money on line from them to Wells Fargo. It is easy. It is just knowing about it. We are working on getting all deposits directly deposited and paying everything on line. The learning curve on full timing is straight up.