We’ve been using an online bank for the majority of our banking for several years. We started with ING Direct until they were purchased by Capital One. We don’t really care for the large banks and figured they’d screw up a good thing, so we decided to switch to Ally Bank. We’ve been with them for a few years now and have no real complaints. Below are some of the reasons that we use Ally and online banks in general.

• ATM Fee Refunds – With ING Direct, we had to use certain ATMs to not be charged a fee. With Ally, we can use whatever ATM we want, and they will issue us a refund for the fees we pay at the end of the month.
• Paper Checks – We didn’t have a need for them that often, but they are handy to use occasionally. At the time ING Direct didn’t offer paper checks, but Ally did. Whenever you need more, you just let them know and they’ll send them to you at no charge.
• Interest Rates – Face it, no one is paying great interest rates, but Ally is usually at or near the top. I’m not the type of person to go around and switch all my banking because someone else offers a .01% better rate. As long as we’re near the top, I’m okay with that.
• Multiple Checking Accounts – At the time, we could only open one checking account with ING, but we wanted multiple. We like to put money from each paycheck into a “bills” account so that it can be pulled out automatically each month when it’s needed. In order to not go over the 6 withdrawal limit of a savings account, you have to use  a checking account. Plus, we got a debit card for the account and could use that with a lot of the places we pay each month. We also decided later to set up an account for myself and my wife. We keep our finances together for just about everything, but we also have our own little account that we use for our own personal spending. It’s our “no judgement” zone.
• Tons of Savings Accounts – As far as I know, you can create as many as you want. You can create them for any savings goal you might have and then set up transfers so when you get paid, money is automatically transferred to your savings.
• Instant Transfers – Did an emergency pop up that you need to take care of and need the money transferred fast? You can do it instantly from one account to another, even on the weekend.
• Overdraft Protection Using Your Savings Account – You would never do this of course because you keep really good track of your checkbook. Let’s just say you were out and your car breaks down. You can’t transfer money from your savings to checking right then. If you tie a savings account to your checking account. When you pay the bill, Ally will transfer the necessary funds from the savings account to your checking account to cover the transfer. This saved us once when my wife lost her debit card for our shared account, and needed to purchase something. She simply used the one for her personal account and we took care of cleaning things up later.
• Online Chat – If you’ve ever got a question, you can load up chat on Ally’s site and they can help you right away.
• Online Bill Pay – Who doesn’t offer this? The nice thing about Ally’s is that they don’t take the money out of your account until the day the check is supposed to be delivered. That means you get a little extra time to earn some interest.

I will admit, they were little late to the mobile game. When their original mobile app came out, it wasn’t that impressive. It has improved over time and now allows for eDeposits where you can take a picture of a check and it deposits it into your account. This keeps us from having to run to a brick and mortar bank, deposit the check, and then transfer it up to the account we want it in.

I know there are some other online banks that have created fancy sites that show you a bunch of graphs and do automatic savings of one sort or another. Honestly though, I like to keep things simple and know exactly where our money is and where it’s headed. Ally has worked well for us and if you’re looking to dip your toes in the water of an online bank, give it a try. It might be a great place to put that emergency fund you’ve been working on.

(For what it’s worth, we have one account at a brick and mortar bank. We keep $5 in the account to keep it open. The only reason we have it is for those times we want to deposit cash or a check made out to one of our daughters. Once we make our deposit, we transfer the money almost immediately to Ally.)