I stumbled on this from the Carnival of Personal Finance (through another of your articles).

I opened the E*Trade account for the $25 bonus, and I was just going to sit on it for a while. It was actually quite difficult for me to open the account. The problem was actually that I already had an E*Trade login for which I was completely unaware. My first employer was a publicly trade company with an ESPP. They opened the E*Trade account for me years ago. Unfortunately, there was no "found money" in there, because I didn't participate in the plan (I didn't know it existed).

Anyhow, once that was settled, I started playing around. It is VERY nice. My wife and I use HSBC for our checking, and then I have an Online Savings account with them. We have grown quite tired of it, and I am not to fond of CashEdge-based systems either.

I am think that we may just close HSBC and start using E*Trade the way we do HSBC. We still keep a local bank. With this change, however, we will likely use our local bank as our main account.

The nice thing about E*Trade is that they have so many first class offerings (brokerage, IRA, ESPP, savinigs, and checking), and they are tightly integrated.

I have an IRA with our local bank, and when I access it online, it is a completely different site, and I cannot even to trading, as they have restricted the account.

E*Trade looks nice, and has lots of good qualities, including the fast transfers.

I am probably going to give them a shot.
Dus10 | Homepage | 04.17.07 - 2:21 pm | #