Mobile banking in 2012
In late 2010, I switched banks from CitiBank to Ally.com. The decision was easy: no fees, ATM reimbursements, great customer service, and a good online platform. It was a fantastic decision, one which I am still happy I made. Fast forward to 2012, Ally still has essentially the same interface, feature set (although they have added the ability to deposit checks using a desktop scanner), and customer service. They are still a good bank. At the time the large main street banks had horrible online or mobile products which made the decison easy. However, I find myself wondering if its time to make another move.
Today, all the large banks have advanced mobile (iPhone and iPad) applcaitions and online platforms that are as good or better than Ally’s (take for instance American Express’s iPad app). One primarly reason for my switch was the lack of Citi ATM’s in my area. Howerver, now that I am in San Francisco there are pelntly of locations for the large banks here (BofA, Wells, Chase, etc) and with the rise in electronic payments over the last year, I find myself visitng ATMs less frequently, and most of the time its to deposit funds into an account to later transfer to Ally (as that is the easiest way i have fond to deposts funds to Ally).
Its true, you can access Ally’s online site via the browser on the iPad, but its painful and the billpay is even more painful (should only be attempted if absolutly necessary). Ally has stated they are on track to release a basic mobile app in 2012 with later versions (hopefully in 2012) to potentially include billpay and check depsoit via camera image, but truefully its a little late for that. Online only banks are great so long as their technology and ease of use stays ahead, but now the major banks have advanced technology (mobile and online) and have the physical presence to enahnce the equation. In 2012, most things I do are via a mobile platform. If I cant do something on my iPhone or iPad, I likley will not do it. This trend will only continue for more and more of the population.
The one cavate is fees. Ally is a great fee free bank and while the BofA account I used to deposit funds for transfer to Ally also has no fees who knows how long that will continue. It’s time for Ally to catch up with its competition.
Budgeting with Mint.com
Over the holidays this year I sat down to work on my 2012 budget in Mint.com, my favorite online financial service. Unlike previous years where I had budgets in Mint, I tried to make this one reasonable and obtainable. Historically, I have used mint.com for hindsight review rather than proactive budgeting (some of that was due to living in three apartments in the last year, including a move from Washington, DC to San Francisco, CA without updating the budgets).
This whole processing has lead to reaffirm my biggest grip with Mint’s budgeting and to ask a very basic budgeting question.
First, I still cannot believe that in 2012 Mint does not have the ability to set annual budgets. For example, I want an annual budget for things like clothing, travel, and gifts. For the life of me I cannot figure out a workaround to create one. As a result, I am left with keeping these outside of Mint in a spreadsheet. Thats a manual effort that shouldn’t be required. Anyone have any suggestions?
Second, while I have outlined my day-to-day spending in a detailed manner I have also included budgets for my “fixed costs” (those that do not fluctuate from month to month - rent & car payment). In my mind it makes sense to include these, however since these payments tend to be front-loaded in the month it skews the progress bar as soon as these payments are recorded in Mint to make it look like I’m off budget until the very end of the month. While I understand the visual result is due to these payments, it still requires me to look into the various budgets set to see if my variable costs are still on target. So my question to you: do you include your fixed cost structure in your mint budgets, or leave them out?
Wi-Fi roaming will make mobile operators connectivity providers
I think this is where we need to go in terms of future wireless deployment. I think AT&T had the right idea when it started allowing WiFi roaming to iPhone wireless data users (iPhone), but the technology has not fully been there, and it will be some time until it is. however, if we carriers can offload bandwidth to WiFi at higher speeds in dense areas with the ease of cell towers then its a win-win for carriers and users (as they should get higher speed connections). I think the real winner in this will be the bongo’s of the world since they already have the AP’s out there, all the carriers need to do is create an automatic authentication/ hand-off protocol to them. The thing that really annoys me with the “free” access points at airports/ starbucks etc is that they all require you to click a button (agree to terms) to login which defeats the purpose. The logon to these networks should be seamless every time (except maybe the first time that device connects to that network).
Netflix split to set up Amazon streaming merger? | ZDNet
Interesting take, seems like a very complex process for a potential sale down the river. I see the spilt the other way, Netflix is spinning off the DVD business to later sell the DVD part and build out the streaming part. I don’t see Netfix wanting to sell the streaming business, but rather to ditch the brick and mortar DVD business.
‘Bond 23′ Screenwriter John Logan Hints at Blofeld Appearance
So happy to see progress on another Bond film (my favorite film franchise), and Blofeld was one of the quintessential archnemesis of Bond. It’s going to be a long year of waiting for the new film….
New Pandora
I love the new HTML 5 based Pandora interface. For the longest time I have been unable to use Pandora on my primary machine do to flash security settings, in fact most of the streaming music sites have been unavailable for this reason. Playing with the new HTML5 version today has been music to my ears. It works, its slick, its fast, its everything I wanted Pandora to be. Now I just need to find a way to have it scrobbing to last.fm.
I’m very excited to see more and more services adopting HTML5.
Office cell phone coverage
About 14 months ago my firm moved offices, literally right across the parking lot, and the office went from having mobile coverage from all the major carriers to none. There was absolutely no coverage for AT&T, Verizon, TMo, and a little coverage from Sprint. 300 feet in almost any direction from our new offices and mobile phones worked fine, but not in our building (they must have built the building out of lead or something).
After 14 months of management telling us they were working on the problem I returned from vacation last week to find the problem had been fixed (or rather the firm finally installed antennas throughout the building),either way it is a very welcomed fixed. Now I can ditch the virgin mobile MiFi I’ve been using to provide my iPhone internet access (we also do not have wifi in our offices (I know, really)).
It’s funny how the little things like mobile phone service matter. Streaming music, I’m back. Speed test from the other day.
Came home from vacation to find this new little toy waiting for me. It’s an awesome iPad stand and it was really cool seeing the product progress from idea to production on KickStarter.
2 things I want in iOS 5 (WWDC)
Now that the WWDC keynote is hours away and we are expecting the introduction of iOS 5, these are the two things I feel Apple MUST add to iOS 5:
- A better notification system, yes this has been widely discussed and is essentially a foregone conclusion at this point, but iOS needs a much better notification system, something that rivals Android (they have one of the best notification systems I’ve seen).
- Full offline Exchange support. I am really tired of not being able to manage my exchange email (move/ delete) offline (not to mention the annoying alerts that popup telling me I’m not connected). iOS 5 needs to enable full email management capabilities while not connected. I’ve had it with current implementation. The BlackBerry was great at this. Apple needs to step it up.
- And one more thing…. It would be great to have voice recognition text input much like android.
Just made my first Ally eCheck deposit!
A few weeks ago I heard Ally, which has become my primary bank, released a new eCheck deposit feature allowing customers to scan checks rather than mail them in. I started using Ally late last year as an alternative to my then current bank in order to avoid ATM fees. At the time I was a bit shocked they didn’t have this feature or a mobile app. However, over the last few months Ally has won my business with great customer service, no fees (for some reason no matter where I was, there was never an ATM for my national bank) and an excellent bill pay system.
When I heard about the new eCheck deposit system I asked to be added to the list for an upcoming roll-out, and about two weeks ago Ally made the feature available to me. Today was the first time I had a check that needed to be deposited. The process was fairly simple and straightforward (although I had to play with the settings on our office scanner a bit): input the check amount, scan the front side and align, scan the back after endorsing and align, and submit. In all it took about 10 minutes. Too long if I was depositing a lot of checks regularly, but I’m not, for the occasional check it is an easy process.
Now there is absolutely no need for my brick and mortar national bank, at least none that I can see. Sure I would love to see Ally add this feature to an iPhone app like USAA or Chase (or for them to even have an iPhone app), but hopefully in due time they will get there. For now, Ally just enabled me to close my other account as its sole purpose was to deposit checks. Thanks Ally!
… now hopefully the check clears and there isn’t a problem.
