 | Hi y’all —
Sen Çal Kapimi has taken over my life.
What is Sen Çal Kapimi, you ask? Well, it’s this irresistible Turkish drama I’ve been plowing through with my roommate for the past few weeks. The episodes are two hours long, and we have to watch them on Facebook because that’s the only place with English subtitles, but I’m obsessed.
The show follows Serkan, a big-shot businessman, and Eda, a free-spirited college student, who pretend to get engaged in order to make Serkan’s ex jealous. Hijinks ensue, and they end up — gasp — developing legit feelings for each other. It’s enemies to friends to fake lovers to real lovers, plus it’s in Istanbul. Also, all the characters are extremely attractive.
The whole plot revolves around lying, which I personally am not very good at. I would fail immediately at being pretend-engaged to an arrogant CEO. I can’t even bluff — like, I read online once that I may be able to negotiate better rates at my bank, but I’m not sure I’d have the stomach for it. Or if that’s even a thing.
Actually, I’m on a commercial break, so let’s find out. Can I get my bank to increase my savings rate by threatening to leave? If not, what can I do?
Ken Tumin, founder of DepositAccounts.com, said I’m asking the right questions. Rates are super low right now. According to the FDIC, the national savings rate is 0.04% for deposits both below and above $100,000. For comparison, two years ago, it was 0.10%.
The pandemic is partially to blame. Tumin pointed out that it’s been about a year since the Federal Reserve cut its rates to zero to help the economy. At the same time, the personal savings rate has skyrocketed. As of January 2021, Americans had some $3.93 trillion stashed away — a marked increase from the $1.33 trillion they did in January 2020.
“A lot of people have seen stimulus checks, and they’re fortunate enough to remain employed. Combine that with not having opportunities to spend with the shutdowns,” Tumin says. “Banks, more or less, are flush with deposits.”
This matters because banks make money by taking consumers’ deposits and lending them out. If they’ve got a lot of deposits, as they do right now, they don’t need to fight to attract customers by advertising high rates. Even those famous online high-yield savings accounts aren’t so high-yield any more.
“If you’re looking to save with APY, this is one of the most difficult times in our history,” Tumin adds. | My bank’s APY is even lower than the national average. I get an embarrassing 0.01%. So what can I do about it?
Tumin said it’s hard to predict whether I can get a higher savings rate by calling my bank and threatening to take my business elsewhere because it varies by chain. It also depends who I speak to — whereas a branch manager or supervisor may have wiggle room on rates, a front-line customer service representative probably doesn’t.
To increase my chances of success, I should come prepared with evidence. If a competitor is offering a higher rate on a similar product, I may be able to get my bank to match it. But Tumin recommended I make sure the institutions are actually in the same league. My local brick-and-mortar community bank probably won’t care about a startuppy online bank.
I should also check that the rate I’m pointing to isn’t a promotional, limited-time-only one.
“You have to look at their ongoing, standard rates,” he says. “Make sure you’re comparing apples to apples, not apples to oranges.”
Even so, I shouldn’t expect a lot of improvement. Tumin said that usually, roughly a quarter of a percentage point is the most leeway a bank can give.
One area where I might be able to make some headway is with fees. A DepositAccounts study found that banks generated about $34.6 billion in fees in 2016. Another survey found that the average fee for a basic checking account is $9.60.
“When somebody opens a checking account or savings account or credit card, they come with a really long terms of service [agreement] that nobody reads,” says Paul Kesserwani, CEO of the fintech firm Cushion. “More often than not, the consumer doesn't know fully what they're signing up for.”
Kesserwani encouraged me to speak up if I’m not happy with how much my bank charges. He said there’s about 15,000 financial institutions in the United States competing for the same pool of customers, and expansion can be expensive. Because of this, they’re likely to take my request for a waived account or overdraft fee pretty seriously.
“They’d rather give the consumer some money back than risk losing them and having to pay a lot more money to acquire a new one,” he adds.
As I can attest, though, some people are intimidated by the very idea of negotiation. That’s where Cushion comes in. I pay Cushion something like $36, and its high-tech bots write emails, chats and actual letters on my behalf to reduce penalties on credit cards and bank accounts. Think: ATM charges, late fees, transfer fees, etc. Then I keep the refund.
Paying fees to get rid of fees may seem counterintuitive, but the value of using a service like Cushion is that it’s convenient and knows how to decode bank statements. It’s similar to those bill-cutting companies I wrote about a while ago. Kesserwani said Cushion scored $1.2 million in refunds for its conflict-avoidant customers in February alone.
“We end up getting people a ton of money back — money that they thought they'd never see again,” he adds. |  | (but please don't tell me you scrolled past all of my hard work)
If I talk to the right person and bring compelling evidence, it is possible my bank will give me a slightly higher savings rate. But it probably won’t be a huge increase. Getting fees waived is probably easier.
In any case, I do have to toughen up. Even if I hire a service to do it for me, I need to suggest I’m so dissatisfied that I’m going to take my money elsewhere. (And intend to follow through.)
“Banks often want to keep you as a customer,” Tumin says. “If you have a relationship and you're a long-term customer, they'll be more likely to waive a fee now and then or give you a higher rate on your deposit account.”
|  | Imagine Dragons singer Dan Reynolds bought and then donated the Las Vegas house he grew up in to an LGBT+ organization. Valued at $1 million, his home will become a resource center for youth seeking support, which is not altogether unexpected, given how we know he’s fired up and tired of the way that things have been. Reynolds is committed to doing whatever it takes. | five things I'm loving online right now | | 1 | This story of how an 8-year-old girl figured out how to play hooky from Zoom school — and con a half-dozen adults in the process — is honestly impressive. Scroll through the thread to get a glimpse of her (evil) genius. | | 2 | I’m never not thinking about the “poison for Kuzco” line from The Emperor’s New Groove, so I love this Mountain Dew-inspired graphic. And maybe I need it on a T-shirt? | | 3 | Allow me to introduce you to paw painting with Cricket, Snip and Widget, a webpage that chronicles the artistic exploits of three rats. In one piece, critics praise the “skills in monochrome shading, from the faintest sky blue claw mark to the fully saturated deep blue paw press.” In another, “a broad range of color gives [the] painting the joyous ebullience of a young rat in early summer.” Deep. | | 4 | Can someone go check on this TikTok dude who spent eight hours putting 1,000 slices of cheese on his wall and then promptly took them all down? “Concerned” doesn’t even begin to cover it. | | 5 | r/SquirrelsEatingPizza. That is all. | | send me cute pictures of your pets, please | Meet Romeo, who is constantly saving milk bones to depawsit in the bark — I mean, bank. | Show’s back on.
See you next week.
Julia
P.S. Have you ever negotiated with a bank? What’s your favorite Emperor’s New Groove line? How many pieces of cheese is too many pieces of cheese to put on a wall? Give me your thoughts at julia.glum@money.com or @SuperJulia on Twitter. I’d love to hear from you. | | | This newsletter is free because Money earns a commission when you click or make purchases from the links in this email and on our site. We also receive compensation for some of the products and services featured in this message. Offers may be subject to change without notice. Learn more about how we make money.
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