# $5000 + TD Select Service Chequing + TD Gold Elite = Nice savings



## plen (Nov 18, 2010)

I've been recently rebuilding my credit over the past year and the first step I took was getting a secured TD Green Visa. I also had TDs Infinity Chequing account which requires a minimum balance of $3000 to waive the $12.95 monthly fee. I adhered to that minimum balance and was happy to hear that the $1000 credit limit secured for my TD Green Visa via my chequings account still counts toward my minimum monthly balance.

I soon realized that by maintaining a minimum balance of $5000 would allow me to get TDs Select Service chequing account and be fee free. This account includes a lot of perks such as a Small Deposit Box, Unlimited Interac ABM and Plus system withdrawals, Borderless Plan with a US Chequings Account and plus they waive the annual fee on the TD Gold Elite Visa for both you and one additional cardholder.

To that end I realized I could switch my secured card to the $5000 limit TD Gold Elite card. This card offers 1% cash back and Emergency Roadside (which I already pay for with CAA) assistance plus some other perks.

So basically here is what I did.

Got my chequings account up to $5500 or so
Changed my account type from Infinity to Select Service
Changed my secured TD Green Visa with $1000 limit to TD Gold Elite Visa with $5000 limit (still secured on my chequings account)

Now I can never drop below $5000 on my Select Service account due to the security deposit and incur the $24.95 monthly fee (this helps me beat the temptation to dip below for unimportant expenses) plus the annual fee for my TD Gold Elite Visa is waived.

Highlights:

All the perks of Select Service account = $300 yearly savings
Annual fee waived on TD Gold Elite Visa = $99 yearly savings
Free Deluxe TD Auto Club Membership = $79 yearly savings
Unlimited Interac ABM and PLUS system withdrawals = $40 yearly savings
1% Annual Cash Rebate on purchases = $80 dollar earned
More perks with TD Gold Elite Card
Trip Interruption Insurance
No-Fee Travellers Cheques
Common Carrier Travel Accident Insurance
Emergency Travel Assistance Services
Delayed and Lost Baggage Insurance
CardAssist Card Registry Service
Purchase security and extended warranty protection

More perks with TD Select Service Chequings Account
Free drafts and certified cheques
Free small safety deposit box (subject to availability)
No commission fee for Canadian and U.S. dollar travellers cheques
1/4% interest bonus on 1 - 5 Year GICs
Free Borderless Plan with U.S. Dollar Daily Interest Chequing Account


I'm not sure if I could currently find a better investment for this $5000. I'm certainly not going to lose any of its value. It's tied up and unavailable but that can always be cancelled in case of an extreme emergency but I have an account with Ally for that. I don't maintain a balance at all. I monitor and pay my credit card weekly.

The fact that my credit card is secured shouldn't be essential. It just enforces my minimum monthly balance helping me beat some temptations at the expense of dipping below and being charged $25. I'm not trying to sell TD here or anything, just thought I'd recommend this option to people who could value from all of the perks, especially existing TD customers.

Thanks for listening


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## CanadianCapitalist (Mar 31, 2009)

That's exactly what I have myself. If you have a habit of having high cash balances in chequing accounts TD Select is excellent value.


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## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

Was that a sales pitch? A subtle form of spam? It sure reads that way.


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

It's a good deal if you have a use/need for the perks. Personally I can't see anything on the list that I either need, want, or don't already have elsewhere.

Here's the deal I set up:

My main chequing and savings accounts are with ING, no fees, no minimum balance required, unlimited transactions.

I have a no-fee rewards Visa card from TD that gives me a cash rebate at the beginning of each year.

For convenience, I have another bank account at the credit union that has a branch at the top of my street -- they have a wider ATM network than the one ING uses. I set up an account that gives me 12 transactions per month for no fee, as long as I keep a minimum balance of $1,500 in my account. I only use that account when I need cash and there isn't an ING-compatible ATM nearby, and that's usually 6 or 7 times per month so I have a comfortable cushion.

That works well enough for me and it's a pretty stress-free arrangement that leaves more of my cash available for other things. I realize that with today's low interest rates you're not losing much by tying up $5K in a chequing account. But I'm not particularly swayed by the long list of perks.


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## NorthernRaven (Aug 4, 2010)

I signed up with TD Waterhouse this summer, and for convenience moved my bank accounts from BMO as well. I wound up with the Select package as well. It waives the $99 fee on the Gold Elite VISA (1% cashback) which replaced my old Aerogold from CIBC (you can also choose the $120 First Class Travel Infinite card). That will provide the roadside package once my 3 years from Mazda is done next year. You can also get a fee-waived $US Visa and their Borderless $US chequing account if you need it.



brad said:


> It's a good deal if you have a use/need for the perks. Personally I can't see anything on the list that I either need, want, or don't already have elsewhere. Here's the deal I set up:
> 
> My main chequing and savings accounts are with ING, no fees, no minimum balance required, unlimited transactions.
> 
> ...


It isn't as bad a hit as you might think, even without the perks. Assuming all money at 1.5% by default, I'd lose about $90/year with an average $6000 balance in the TD chequing. Keeping a $1000 balance in an ING chequing would cost $12.50, and there's likely a few dollars lost in lower interest on $1500+ in the credit union. TD's no-fee cashback VISA only pays 0.5% on the first $3000, so that's another $15/year.

What is really irking (and this is most banks in general) is that the accounts seem designed to either require keeping a big safe bulge over the minimums, or tedious manual monitoring. The TD savings account I keep for topping-up and other purposes allows free manual transfers (web/phone/ABM), but debits and other transactions are $2 after one freebie per month, and not even the mighty Select plan waives this. So you don't want to be doing Interac purchases from savings, and there's no way of saying "please make transfers from my savings to chequing to keep the balance above $5000". You could set up an preauthorized transfer, but these are debits so anything more than monthly would hit that $2 fee. Even transferring to my brokerage account has a bit of extra hassle - if I transfer from savings it is one of those $2 debits, but if I transfer from savings to chequing, then immediately from chequing to brokerage, it is free.

What I'd really like is for a "OneAccount" system. For the first, say, $6000 no interest is paid. For the portion from $6000 to perhaps $25000, it would pay the savings account rate (0.75% at TD right now). On the portion above $25,000, it would pay their high interest savings rate (1.25%). It would be fascinating to know where the breakpoints would have to be set to come out revenue neutral for their existing customer base. I suspect it would be quite a bit higher than one might guess.


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## DavidJD (Sep 27, 2009)

the-royal-mail said:


> Was that a sales pitch? A subtle form of spam? It sure reads that way.


I am sure it is just a coincidence that he joined and is offering such a glowing recomendation for a bank service.


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## plen (Nov 18, 2010)

DavidJD said:


> I am sure it is just a coincidence that he joined and is offering such a glowing recomendation for a bank service.


It really is, I'm not into spamming at all, far from it. I'm just trying to point out how I was able to get a lot of perks and save money  - Honestly. I suppose I should have saved the post until I was a bit more of a community member, but just trying to share my experience with others.

If the admins want to pull the thread, feel free.


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## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

Maybe the mods could post a reminder of what our rules are regarding spam. Just because the post was written in the first person, doesn't mean it isn't spam. Check out all the links that were posted. It really begs the question, why the OP would take the time to do all that writing and message composition. What's in it for him?


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## DavidJD (Sep 27, 2009)

plen said:


> It really is, I'm not into spamming at all, far from it. I'm just trying to point out how I was able to get a lot of perks and save money  - Honestly. I suppose I should have saved the post until I was a bit more of a community member, but just trying to share my experience with others.
> 
> If the admins want to pull the thread, feel free.


Sorry dude - the post was very flattering and well put together. More thought went into it than we are used to (or than I do). 

Skills are too sharp for a newbie perhaps!

Apologies.


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## plen (Nov 18, 2010)

the-royal-mail said:


> Maybe the mods could post a reminder of what our rules are regarding spam. Just because the post was written in the first person, doesn't mean it isn't spam. Check out all the links that were posted. It really begs the question, why the OP would take the time to do all that writing and message composition. What's in it for him?


What's in it for every one here who provides free advice, whether formatted nicely or not? To help others and learn themselves? Maybe the discussion would prove that I could have been putting the $5000 to better use through various means. As for my message composition and formatting, I just like to be very clear and concise, plus I'm a vBulletin user for a decade, so I use the codes often.

Not the start I wanted to get off to here, especially tripping your spam concerns the-royal-mail. I've really liked your posts throughout the forum as I lurked. 

Anyway a moderator did have to approve my thread, so I'd like to think they did see it was just a well composed personal experience report.


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## CanadianCapitalist (Mar 31, 2009)

I had to manually approve this thread and the first post. I did so because this isn't spam IMO. Yes, there are a couple of links in here to TD Bank's website. But there is also a lot of useful information in there that will be useful for someone looking to open a new account.


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## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

my money says plen isn't spamming at all, was 100% sincere in a desire to share info.

and my money says here's some info that tdw would rather you didn't know ... but i'll share it so clients of the big green can begin to request these same banking services. Did i say request. Perhaps pressure would be a better word ...

a few clients of waterhouse-the-discount-broker can write checques directly on, and bank directly on, their waterhouse accounts. Not registered accounts, of course, but cash or margin accounts work fine.

plus they work in US dollars. There are US dollar cheques. Plus, no bank charges. No checquing charges. The big green, gawdblessem, even pays to have cheques printed. Plus a free td visa gold card. Has those auto services, towing, insurance, whatever. Plus account can be installed on standard bank debit card, so brokerage account can be DD'd in any ATM or store. Plus pre-authorized payments to utilities, stores, gas stations, credit cards, property taxes can all be charged directly to the waterhouse account. Every transaction beautifully itemized on monthly statements. Better than you could write yourself in your own ledger. Plus if it's a margin account there's totally amazing no-charge overdraft protection.

all this is fast, free & ultra-efficient. The handful of clients who have these golden bank links to their waterhouse accounts EITHER date back to the days when the big green accidentally opened the sluice gates by crazy mistake & let a few of these accounts escape OR these accounts are now granted - silently & sub rosa - to tdw's platinum clients on a one-by-one basis & only after considerable negotiation.

probably a priority to request from tdw is USD in rrsp.

but next up should be dirt-cheap banking services grafted onto tdw brokerage accounts. Drat. Was i saying request again. Oh no we should demand ...

if one of the green gnomes tells you the foregoing is not true, please don't even think of coming back here to post the denial. Like i said, it's a secret underground. They don't want you to know. Because if word got out the floodgates would open ...


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

^^ Now that's a deal

You could also just open a LOC and use it as a free chequing acct and do most of that

I have Select service and to me I am tieing up ~$6000 for the luxury of a deposit box that isn't available anywhere I've tried. I can get free banking, free US chequing, 2-3% cash back with no annual fee, discount brokerage with less fees, GICs with better rates etc etc elsewhere. I use my rewards CC to shop in the US so I haven't found any use for the US chequing acct yet. I don't spend $80 a year on tow trucks so I value that as a nice bonus

It is a good account if you require all the services and have nothing better to do with ~$6000. For me I am missing out on $90 and that is pretty close to what the account is worth to me. If rates ever go up it would be hard to justify parking that much money

The $250 signing bonus was the tipping point for me. Had to see what everyone is raving about. Now that ING has free banking I will probably switch eventually. I prefer to avoid the branch as much as possible and ING can do more online


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## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

would a LOC offer a full range of free banking services ? including items like gold or privileged credit cards ? i didn't know.

my point was that it's somewhat unfair of the banks to require a constant cash deposit of $5000 in order to neutralize or prevent many standard but expensive bank service fees, when a brokerage account in itself should be all the deposit that's necessary.

for years tdw has been offering elaborate banking services with no charge to certain accounts, so the technology is established & proven. There's no reason why tdw cannot offer these services to all.

i for one would be happy to have these services grafted onto a tdw brokerage account. I'd even be happy to pay modest fees, something like a fraction of what regular bank service charges are at present.

and i believe that a step like this would develop more business & create even more accounts for the brokerage that would pioneer it. Many people are looking for one-stop financial services.


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

Another thought on this is that if keeping $5,000 as a constant minimum balance in your TD Select account is going to prevent you from being able to contribute $5,000 to your TFSA, I would think twice. 

From a pure bottom-line perspective you could do very well with $5,000 in a TFSA: I've heard tales of people who turned that $5K into $30K in one year with some lucky speculative investments, and of course I've also heard stories of people who turned that $5K into $0 in short order.

But if you're young and have lots of years ahead of you for that $5K to grow in even a relatively conservative investment, it might be wiser to put it into a TFSA than trying to avoid bank fees and win a few perks. Of course if you have enough cash on hand to do both (Select account and TFSA), you've got the best of both worlds.


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## Sampson (Apr 3, 2009)

mode3sour said:


> The $250 signing bonus was the tipping point for me.


Me too!
I had been planning on opening a TD account, and after one of CC's reviews, the select service account specifically.
The $250 signing bonus that just came into my account a few weeks ago made that one hour of sitting at the branch worth my time


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## Ben (Apr 3, 2009)

NorthernRaven said:


> The TD savings account I keep for topping-up and other purposes allows free manual transfers (web/phone/ABM), but debits and other transactions are $2 after one freebie per month, and not even the mighty Select plan waives this. You could set up an preauthorized transfer, but these are debits so anything more than monthly would hit that $2 fee. Even transferring to my brokerage account has a bit of extra hassle - if I transfer from savings it is one of those $2 debits, but if I transfer from savings to chequing, then immediately from chequing to brokerage, it is free.


I don't bank with TD, but have been thinking about it.

Do I read this correctly that any transfer from savings account to chequing account is going to cost $2, after the one free transaction monthly?

What transactions in the savings account get hit the $2? 

Perhaps I've been living too long in the no-fee banking world, but this seems like a steep hit, if it's true.

I suppose in practice I would use only the chequing account at TD, and then siphon excess funds off directly to TDW.


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## CanadianCapitalist (Mar 31, 2009)

humble_pie said:


> and my money says here's some info that tdw would rather you didn't know ... but i'll share it so clients of the big green can begin to request these same banking services. Did i say request. Perhaps pressure would be a better word ...
> 
> a few clients of waterhouse-the-discount-broker can write checques directly on, and bank directly on, their waterhouse accounts. Not registered accounts, of course, but cash or margin accounts work fine.
> 
> ...


Excellent tip. Of course, the big green is going to hem and haw. I'm just curious who would be considered a "platinum" client. Someone with a PA account would qualify? Or are we talking at least a million in balances here?


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## CanadianCapitalist (Mar 31, 2009)

Ben said:


> I don't bank with TD, but have been thinking about it.
> 
> Do I read this correctly that any transfer from savings account to chequing account is going to cost $2, after the one free transaction monthly?
> 
> ...


That's what I do. I sweep excess dollars into TDW and stick it in ATL5000 that currently pays 1.2%. Yeah, I can get 2% at Ally but I like the convenience.


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## NorthernRaven (Aug 4, 2010)

@Ben, you can manually transfer freely from savings to chequing or vice versa. But if you set up a pre-authorized transfer from savings to chequing, it is considered a transaction, and you only get one of those free per month. Similarly, the actual wording is "_Transfers to TD Canada Trust personal Canadian dollar chequing or savings accounts registered in same customer name using the transfer function are free._", and I'm pretty sure I explicitly confirmed that this excludes TD Waterhouse accounts, which is why I do that annoying two-step via the chequing account when moving from savings to TDW. The online transfer feature lets you do any of these, and as far as I know provides no warning for fee-incurring transfers.

This is the Every Day savings account (currently paying around 0.75%). The High Interest account has no free transfers to other accounts, no free transactions at all, and charges $5 per. This is waived on $25,000+ balances, but people keeping that kind of cash probably have a high interest account at someplace like ING or Ally for better rates, or prefer convenience to a few fees and lower interest. TD's seems generally the worst of the big bank high-interest accounts, BMO is similar but gives you one freebie a month, while Scotia/RBC/CIBC all let you transfer freely from high-interest to your other accounts with them.


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