Comments on: Using a firewall account with ING Direct

By: Weekly Round Up: Goodwill Edition — Green Panda Treehouse

Weekly Round Up: Goodwill Edition — Green Panda Treehouse — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 23:05:41 +0000

[...] Using a firewall account with ING Direct [...]

By: ldub

ldub — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:10:34 +0000

the number of allowed transfers out of any savings account by law per month is 6 – if you go over more than three times in a year, your account will be closed. ING helpfully only let me know about this after they’d let me make more than 6 transfers out of my accounts (because I keep several subaccounts and transfers among them count as transfers out) for two months. now i’m insanely careful, but also bummed because it made my money management tougher than i’d hoped for it to be when i set up the extra accounts. alas.

By: ChristianPF

ChristianPF — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:09:53 +0000

I used to do something similar to this for different reasons. I used it as more of a float account, but I like the idea of using as a protector of the other accounts. Good idea, I will have to consider changing my current setup

By: glblguy

glblguy — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:35:31 +0000

@FVT – Thanks, I was aware of the limitation on savings withdrawals, just not sure how ING treats it since it’s ING to ING.

Transfering from one ING account to another is immediate. It only takes a few days if you transfer from ING to an outside bank.

By: Frugal Vet Tech

Frugal Vet Tech — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 03:51:59 +0000

Savings accounts can only have a certain number of withdrawals in a month – something like four or six (the exact number escapes me).

Interesting idea… Is the transfer from ING account to ING account immediate or does it take a few days for the funds to transfer? If I needed the money out of ING within a few days, this could potentially cause problems if I have to wait for the money to get from one ING account to another before I can transfer to my non-ING account.

By: glblguy

glblguy — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:56:15 +0000

@Ben C – It protects on the outside, not on the inside. It keeps another bank or institution from pulling funds out of your firewall account. Yes, ING allows you to transfer from any of your accounts out, but only specifically linked ING accounts from outside ING.

@No Debt Plan – Mine is not a checking and I’ve never ran into a limitation. Now maybe I just haven’t done enough transfers. I transfer money around from my savings to savings account all the time.

I know there is a limit on withdrawals out of ING to another banks account, but wasn’t aware of a limitation on savings to savings inside ING.

By: No Debt Plan

No Debt Plan — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:23:41 +0000

Didn’t see it 100% clarified in your post, but that would need to be a checking account. You are limited on the number of transfers with savings accounts.

By: Ben C

Ben C — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:30:00 +0000

I don’t understand how this protects you? All of my INGDirect accounts are able to transfer money to the outside world. For instance, I have an Checking and two Savings accounts with ING. I also have a checking account with a local bank. From within ING I can transfer money to and from any three of my ING accounts to the local bank. I don’t believe I did anything to specify all the accounts could do a transfer, they all can automagically.

By: Mrs. Micah

Mrs. Micah — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:27:55 +0000

Very interesting idea. I suppose that if I were going to transfer money anyway, it would be done via computer, so I could also transfer the money to ING’s firewall account before I moved it elsewhere.

What concerns me is the possibility of forgetting about it when using something like PayPal to pay for an item.