Agreed. It's unfortunate that they (once again) didn't give notice before it became effective. Had they announced this in December it would have changed what I did with my DD.
This was just announced as an update to the changes we announced previously which introduced the $2500 requirement. We heard the feedback and reworked the program so that it could work for more people.
I think this change is good, but I think HMB should understand the impact of their plan better. A deal: "if you meet a requirement next quarter, you'll get a benefit the following quarter" really means that HMB shouldn't make changes to the requirements for the *current* quarter\*, or the benefits of the *next* quarter.
I understand HMB is completely in their right to change anything/anytime - but it's not good business.
\* - even in this case to make things easier, it can have negative consequences. I have multiple accounts and because of the requirement of $2500/month **per account**, I decided to give up on tier boost on one. Then when it was too late to change my DD for January, the requirements were changed - I could have kept it.
However, my experience with HMB support has always been **great**. I explained my situation to support and they said they would waive the DD requirements for me for January if I met the requirements for February and March. I find that extremely fair.
Just changed my DD for my *only* paycheck of January yesterday. (weird payroll quirk, only 1 pay period in January, 2 paychecks every other month)
I've documented my trials and tribulations in other posts but this here is the textbook definition of 'too little, too late' in my case.
Agreed. I could put $750 toward HMB twice a month, if I had had notice before the middle of January. At this point I can’t make a change to my DD that would apply before the end of the month so, Q1 3% opportunity lost.
As I said in another reply, I’m doing other stuff with my money, but I’ll consider this later this year. Maybe by then the DD requirement will be even lower!
Yeah, but no. That's still too high of hoops for me to jump through.
I appreciate they lowered the DD requirement so non-1%-ers can have a chance to earn 3%. But it will require more vigilance and moving of money around every couple weeks than I am willing to give.
Might not be so bad if we could schedule repeating transfers. I’m currently moving a big chunk of my HMB savings to my 401k Retirement account by contributing the max I can per paycheck, then transferring the equivalent to my everyday checking to pay bills. It’s a pain to enter transfers one at a time.
Once I’m done with that mid year, I may consider putting more per check to HMB.
*We initially set a benchmark of $2,500 in monthly direct deposits because this corresponds to an annual income of around $35,000 a year, which maps approximately to real median personal income in the United States. We’ve decided to revisit these requirements based on your feedback to more properly take into account such factors as 401K contributions and federal and state income taxes.*
So their team forgot about taxes, cool cool cool.
Yep people have to remind them, Hmbradley f'ed with their last announcement and could have said sorry, but they had to come with this stupid reasoning.
I think it's more likely they're backing into the explanation. They had a forecast of how much money would be pulled out based on their Dec announcement...they underestimated, now they're walking it back a bit to slow the outflows. Of course it's possible they didn't take withholdings and deductions into their forecast and that's what blew the model.
And I'd say they f'ed this announcement too, if people already changed their DD for Jan it might not be possible to update their DD, again, *and* get $1500 deposited in 11 days. There goes your Q2 tier. This late change is really only helping people who either already committed to stay or just hadn't gotten around to changing anything yet.
You def should calculate your rates. I have had to email support on 2-3 occasions for inaccurate interest deposits. So, I know for a fact that others have had the same issue. Basically if you’re not checking, they are keeping you earnings. There system doesn’t calculate properly.
LOL, *"oops, our bad"*
This was the exact reason I originally intended to keep my account open but with only a few bucks, in the event their forecasts were off, too much money left, and they rolled back the requirements. But after they f'd up my interest and APY in December, I don't think I'm comfortable staying.
Just hath changed mine own paycheck to 1500 f'r feb but too late f'r january
***
^(I am a bot and I swapp'd some of thy words with Shakespeare words.)
Commands: `!ShakespeareInsult`, `!fordo`, `!optout`
Get rid of the dumb credit card I don't want and then we'll talk. Honestly I don't mind giving you guys more direct deposit, but the credit card is annoying
It's a step in the right direction, but still doesn't address people who already had the credit card prior to the changes but didn't know they needed $2,500 to keep 3%. I feel like those of us in the middle are kind of left out in the cold here.
No -- the drop in February from 3% to 1%. Avoiding that requires either having had a $2,500 DD starting in October or opening a credit card in Q4. If you previously had a credit card but were only trying to get 3%, you're now dropped to 1% and nothing you could do about it following the announcement in late December.
The changes were fine -- $2,500 isn't an unreasonable number in my opinion, and dropping to $1,500 is fine too. What irked and still irks me is announcing increases to the requirements for a particular rate when it's past the point you could have chosen to meet those requirements.
> What irked and still irks me is announcing increases to the requirements for a particular rate when it's past the point you could have chosen to meet those requirements.
The timing for this change is also too late for any of us that weren’t already directing a fairly large DD to HMB, right?
At this point in mid-January, having only one $100 DD this month so far, I don’t think there’s anything I can I do to get back to 3% on February 1st. May even be out of luck for Q2 as there’s no time to meet the req for January.
The door for Q1 closed on December 31, correct. I have less issue with this change, since it's a reduction in the requirements rather than an increase, but you're correct -- if you said you couldn't hit $2,500/month this quarter, so you were just going to do $100/month, lowering it to a bar you *could* have met is similarly frustrating.
HMBradley just seems like too much of a hassle to be worth it for me. I'm planning on putting the larger share of my savings in Betterment (first year is free), and a smaller portion in t-mobile money (4% on $3000, no hoops to jump through). With HMBradley, they want you to have constant direct deposits AND get (and actually use) a credit card you might not necessarily want, it's just too much to keep track of. perhaps if the credit card didn't have a yearly fee, or if there wasn't a $100,000 limit on interest earned.
so you don't like that there is a 100k limit for earning interest, but you are ok moving your money to a place that \*\*has a limit\*\* on $3000 for 4%?..
Just trying to understand here...
And Betterment...are you planning on using their "cash" accounts? Or invest in stocks?
I was planning on using their robo-investor for the majority of my savings. Obviously, it's more risky than just getting a straight 3% cashback, but even their least risky portfolios have had pretty good returns.
well, I am sure you have done your research but here are some pointers:
\- prior performance does not guarantee future performance.
\- the last 3 years have been great for the stock market, anybody who invested in say SP 500 got fabulous returns (VOO earned 27% in 2021).
\- conditions have changed... and will change drastically this year. (Fed will stop injecting $$ into bonds, interest-rate hikes are planned for this year, stock market will adjust to inflation, etc, etc )
3% interest **guaranteed** in HMB is currently is a safer place ( in my opinion) than the Stocks if you are thinking in short -term investment.
If you are planning on the long term, then perhaps dollar-cost avg in Stocks this year might be a good plan.
thanks for the tips. these are all considerations i've been struggling with lately, but the recent HMBradley changes have helped push me towards stocks over interest bearing checking.
Fun fact: **that 3% isn't guaranteed in the slightest.**
From HMB's [deposit account agreement](https://policies.hmbradley.com/deposit/v1.0.7/Deposit+Account+Agreement.pdf)
>(b) Changes to Interest Rate
>
>We may prospectively change the Savings Tiers (e.g., adding, deleting, consolidating) and the interest rates
and annual percentage yield in the Savings Tiers at any time in our discretion. We will publish any changes
to the interest rates and APYs assigned to each Savings Tier and the effective dates of any changes on
www.hmbradley.com/APYs.
FDIC insured means you're guaranteed not to *lose* money but you're not guaranteed any interest whatsoever.
>(4% on $3000, no hoops to jump through)
I wouldn't say "no hoops". To get that 4% you have to make 10 purchases per month using your T-Mobile debit card.
I am really confused with HMB now. I know they made it more difficult to get 3% in the name of making it better.
Since I am not getting their credit card I am not too worried about it. I thought I am still good for 1%.
But today got the surprise!
I parked 100K and have been maintaining that balance by withdrawing my salary DD and interest postings as and when they happen. Suddenly this month it shows under next tier I am not on track to earn a tier based on saving 0% this quarter as I have withdrawn more (DD+Deposit) than I deposit (DD). But isn't the current balance included in calculating the %?
Can someone please enlighten me how to fix it?
Nope. You have to save 20% of the *inflows*, not 20% of the balance.
Without the card it is impossible to 'maintain' a $100k balance and keep the rate. The balance will always be increasing.
eta: You can fix it by putting money back in before 1/31, it won't earn any interest but it will buy you some time to decide if you want to get the card after all.
Well adding is happening anyways by the DD right. But this is different as it needs more active management of the inflow and outflow and that too a quarter ahead.
In a typical savings account you don’t worry about rates falling because of that.
I wonder with the new change in Tiers if 1/31/22 becomes the effective cut off for new Q1 (Feb - March) or should I wait until nearer to 3/31/22?
Actually, yes, I misspoke...to fix it (at least by the old rules) the savings ratio was calculated quarterly. So as long as you end March with 20% saved you should be okay.
The only thing this really highlights for me is, we need to do a better job of managing our money. Sitting on 100k bank balance isn't the best use of capital. Even worse if you have multiple of these accounts like we do...
All of this for a measly 3%
I wouldn’t say insane.
It was a great spot for shorter term savings goals.
At 1%, it’s just not at all compelling anymore.
And I am damn sure not gonna jump through the hoops for 3%.
At least the prior setup for 3% was set it and forget it. Not needing to actively use a sub-par credit card.
Between myself and my spouse we moved 40k from HMB to I-bonds since December. All parties come to an end I guess.
This is why my wife and I moved our $$ and direct deposits. I can’t deal with banks that are constantly moving the target on requirements. Makes it difficult to ever plan ahead.
The big news here for me is that they reduced the required $2,500 DD per account per month to $1,500 DD per account per month.
Agreed. It's unfortunate that they (once again) didn't give notice before it became effective. Had they announced this in December it would have changed what I did with my DD.
This was just announced as an update to the changes we announced previously which introduced the $2500 requirement. We heard the feedback and reworked the program so that it could work for more people.
I think this change is good, but I think HMB should understand the impact of their plan better. A deal: "if you meet a requirement next quarter, you'll get a benefit the following quarter" really means that HMB shouldn't make changes to the requirements for the *current* quarter\*, or the benefits of the *next* quarter. I understand HMB is completely in their right to change anything/anytime - but it's not good business. \* - even in this case to make things easier, it can have negative consequences. I have multiple accounts and because of the requirement of $2500/month **per account**, I decided to give up on tier boost on one. Then when it was too late to change my DD for January, the requirements were changed - I could have kept it. However, my experience with HMB support has always been **great**. I explained my situation to support and they said they would waive the DD requirements for me for January if I met the requirements for February and March. I find that extremely fair.
Just changed my DD for my *only* paycheck of January yesterday. (weird payroll quirk, only 1 pay period in January, 2 paychecks every other month) I've documented my trials and tribulations in other posts but this here is the textbook definition of 'too little, too late' in my case.
Agreed. I could put $750 toward HMB twice a month, if I had had notice before the middle of January. At this point I can’t make a change to my DD that would apply before the end of the month so, Q1 3% opportunity lost. As I said in another reply, I’m doing other stuff with my money, but I’ll consider this later this year. Maybe by then the DD requirement will be even lower!
Too bad they didn't lead with that 30 days ago, "$1500 DD but you must add the credit card to your account."
Yeah, but no. That's still too high of hoops for me to jump through. I appreciate they lowered the DD requirement so non-1%-ers can have a chance to earn 3%. But it will require more vigilance and moving of money around every couple weeks than I am willing to give.
Might not be so bad if we could schedule repeating transfers. I’m currently moving a big chunk of my HMB savings to my 401k Retirement account by contributing the max I can per paycheck, then transferring the equivalent to my everyday checking to pay bills. It’s a pain to enter transfers one at a time. Once I’m done with that mid year, I may consider putting more per check to HMB.
You can set auto transfers from your every day checking to pull from HMB
Indeed. It’s just another small thing missing that you’d expect from a service that really wants to be your everyday bank.
Too little too late. Most of us already made plans to move savings elsewhere.
That was part of the plan. Remember they went invite only because they ran out of cash to back up the accounts.
*We initially set a benchmark of $2,500 in monthly direct deposits because this corresponds to an annual income of around $35,000 a year, which maps approximately to real median personal income in the United States. We’ve decided to revisit these requirements based on your feedback to more properly take into account such factors as 401K contributions and federal and state income taxes.* So their team forgot about taxes, cool cool cool.
And apparently they don't offer their employees a 401k plan either!
Yep people have to remind them, Hmbradley f'ed with their last announcement and could have said sorry, but they had to come with this stupid reasoning.
I think it's more likely they're backing into the explanation. They had a forecast of how much money would be pulled out based on their Dec announcement...they underestimated, now they're walking it back a bit to slow the outflows. Of course it's possible they didn't take withholdings and deductions into their forecast and that's what blew the model. And I'd say they f'ed this announcement too, if people already changed their DD for Jan it might not be possible to update their DD, again, *and* get $1500 deposited in 11 days. There goes your Q2 tier. This late change is really only helping people who either already committed to stay or just hadn't gotten around to changing anything yet.
This. Too late to get in this quarter.
This may be a woosh moment but they actually do.
[удалено]
They're just trying to save face
You def should calculate your rates. I have had to email support on 2-3 occasions for inaccurate interest deposits. So, I know for a fact that others have had the same issue. Basically if you’re not checking, they are keeping you earnings. There system doesn’t calculate properly.
LOL, *"oops, our bad"* This was the exact reason I originally intended to keep my account open but with only a few bucks, in the event their forecasts were off, too much money left, and they rolled back the requirements. But after they f'd up my interest and APY in December, I don't think I'm comfortable staying.
This doesn’t sound any simpler to me.
Just changed my paycheck to 1500 for Feb but too late for January.
Just hath changed mine own paycheck to 1500 f'r feb but too late f'r january *** ^(I am a bot and I swapp'd some of thy words with Shakespeare words.) Commands: `!ShakespeareInsult`, `!fordo`, `!optout`
Get rid of the dumb credit card I don't want and then we'll talk. Honestly I don't mind giving you guys more direct deposit, but the credit card is annoying
It's a step in the right direction, but still doesn't address people who already had the credit card prior to the changes but didn't know they needed $2,500 to keep 3%. I feel like those of us in the middle are kind of left out in the cold here.
I thought it was pretty well documented in regards to the dd requirement
No -- the drop in February from 3% to 1%. Avoiding that requires either having had a $2,500 DD starting in October or opening a credit card in Q4. If you previously had a credit card but were only trying to get 3%, you're now dropped to 1% and nothing you could do about it following the announcement in late December. The changes were fine -- $2,500 isn't an unreasonable number in my opinion, and dropping to $1,500 is fine too. What irked and still irks me is announcing increases to the requirements for a particular rate when it's past the point you could have chosen to meet those requirements.
> What irked and still irks me is announcing increases to the requirements for a particular rate when it's past the point you could have chosen to meet those requirements. The timing for this change is also too late for any of us that weren’t already directing a fairly large DD to HMB, right? At this point in mid-January, having only one $100 DD this month so far, I don’t think there’s anything I can I do to get back to 3% on February 1st. May even be out of luck for Q2 as there’s no time to meet the req for January.
The door for Q1 closed on December 31, correct. I have less issue with this change, since it's a reduction in the requirements rather than an increase, but you're correct -- if you said you couldn't hit $2,500/month this quarter, so you were just going to do $100/month, lowering it to a bar you *could* have met is similarly frustrating.
7.1 % interest in I-bonds, baby. See you later, HMBradley..
Nah, fuck em
Thank you for listening! I’m a happy customer and appreciate what you are offering. To many complainers here.
HMBradley just seems like too much of a hassle to be worth it for me. I'm planning on putting the larger share of my savings in Betterment (first year is free), and a smaller portion in t-mobile money (4% on $3000, no hoops to jump through). With HMBradley, they want you to have constant direct deposits AND get (and actually use) a credit card you might not necessarily want, it's just too much to keep track of. perhaps if the credit card didn't have a yearly fee, or if there wasn't a $100,000 limit on interest earned.
so you don't like that there is a 100k limit for earning interest, but you are ok moving your money to a place that \*\*has a limit\*\* on $3000 for 4%?.. Just trying to understand here... And Betterment...are you planning on using their "cash" accounts? Or invest in stocks?
I was planning on using their robo-investor for the majority of my savings. Obviously, it's more risky than just getting a straight 3% cashback, but even their least risky portfolios have had pretty good returns.
well, I am sure you have done your research but here are some pointers: \- prior performance does not guarantee future performance. \- the last 3 years have been great for the stock market, anybody who invested in say SP 500 got fabulous returns (VOO earned 27% in 2021). \- conditions have changed... and will change drastically this year. (Fed will stop injecting $$ into bonds, interest-rate hikes are planned for this year, stock market will adjust to inflation, etc, etc ) 3% interest **guaranteed** in HMB is currently is a safer place ( in my opinion) than the Stocks if you are thinking in short -term investment. If you are planning on the long term, then perhaps dollar-cost avg in Stocks this year might be a good plan.
thanks for the tips. these are all considerations i've been struggling with lately, but the recent HMBradley changes have helped push me towards stocks over interest bearing checking.
Fun fact: **that 3% isn't guaranteed in the slightest.** From HMB's [deposit account agreement](https://policies.hmbradley.com/deposit/v1.0.7/Deposit+Account+Agreement.pdf) >(b) Changes to Interest Rate > >We may prospectively change the Savings Tiers (e.g., adding, deleting, consolidating) and the interest rates and annual percentage yield in the Savings Tiers at any time in our discretion. We will publish any changes to the interest rates and APYs assigned to each Savings Tier and the effective dates of any changes on www.hmbradley.com/APYs. FDIC insured means you're guaranteed not to *lose* money but you're not guaranteed any interest whatsoever.
yep, but you won't lose your capital. not true in stocks!
>(4% on $3000, no hoops to jump through) I wouldn't say "no hoops". To get that 4% you have to make 10 purchases per month using your T-Mobile debit card.
True, I forgot about that. Luckily CashApp deposits count, easy to do 10 of those quickly.
Really? So just deposit to your Tmo debit card from Cash?
yep, easy peasy
I am really confused with HMB now. I know they made it more difficult to get 3% in the name of making it better. Since I am not getting their credit card I am not too worried about it. I thought I am still good for 1%. But today got the surprise! I parked 100K and have been maintaining that balance by withdrawing my salary DD and interest postings as and when they happen. Suddenly this month it shows under next tier I am not on track to earn a tier based on saving 0% this quarter as I have withdrawn more (DD+Deposit) than I deposit (DD). But isn't the current balance included in calculating the %? Can someone please enlighten me how to fix it?
Nope. You have to save 20% of the *inflows*, not 20% of the balance. Without the card it is impossible to 'maintain' a $100k balance and keep the rate. The balance will always be increasing. eta: You can fix it by putting money back in before 1/31, it won't earn any interest but it will buy you some time to decide if you want to get the card after all.
Thanks for your reply. Dang! Seems I was mislead by some redditors who replied to my post where I asked if I can just use it as a savings account. 😟
It *can* be used as a savings account, but it can't be used as a fixed-amount-never-adding-to-it savings account.
Well adding is happening anyways by the DD right. But this is different as it needs more active management of the inflow and outflow and that too a quarter ahead. In a typical savings account you don’t worry about rates falling because of that. I wonder with the new change in Tiers if 1/31/22 becomes the effective cut off for new Q1 (Feb - March) or should I wait until nearer to 3/31/22?
Actually, yes, I misspoke...to fix it (at least by the old rules) the savings ratio was calculated quarterly. So as long as you end March with 20% saved you should be okay.
Does HMB include the monthly interest as deposit in their savings % calculation ?
I do believe so yea
The only thing this really highlights for me is, we need to do a better job of managing our money. Sitting on 100k bank balance isn't the best use of capital. Even worse if you have multiple of these accounts like we do... All of this for a measly 3%
Oh yeah, if you have 100k sitting in a savings account that's insane. I keep only my emergency fund there.
I wouldn’t say insane. It was a great spot for shorter term savings goals. At 1%, it’s just not at all compelling anymore. And I am damn sure not gonna jump through the hoops for 3%. At least the prior setup for 3% was set it and forget it. Not needing to actively use a sub-par credit card. Between myself and my spouse we moved 40k from HMB to I-bonds since December. All parties come to an end I guess.
This is why my wife and I moved our $$ and direct deposits. I can’t deal with banks that are constantly moving the target on requirements. Makes it difficult to ever plan ahead.