Millions of Americans are looking to switch banks this year - a big factor was the recent FinTech and Yotta debacle.

If you’ve recently thought about switching banks, you’re not alone. 

The good news is there are plenty of banking options out there. You’ll have to decide what the best option is for your financial situation. Although it’s easy to make the switch, it can take time. With that, it’s important to choose a bank that will satisfy your needs for the long term.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you switch or move banks.  

Explore Your Banking Options

There’s usually an impetus for a desire to change your bank. 

Maybe you moved and there aren’t a lot of branches nearby, or perhaps you don’t want to pay a monthly fee for checking. Or you might disagree with your bank’s investment choices from a value standpoint. Whatever the reason, make a list of features you’d like in a new bank.

Maybe you want to find a socially responsible bank, a checking account that earns interest and has minimal fees. Before jumping into a bank account, take the time to thoroughly explore your options. 

Fintech vs. Bank

One of the big factors driving people to new bank accounts lately has been the FinTech crisis. To catch you up, over 200,000 people have money tied up in Yotta due to their technology company going bankrupt. 

The scary part is that none of the regulatory agencies (Federal Reserve, FDIC, etc.) have stepped in to help people. As a result, it's a big warning that you may NOT want to use a FinTech as your primary bank. We agree.

We recommend that everyone has a direct, FDIC-insured bank account as their primary bank. And there are good, fee-free options (our list above are all free and at FDIC-insured banks).

Check out our list of the best free checking accounts as well to see your options.

Start Using Your New Account

After opening your account, you can start using it right away. You will need to send some funds from your old account to your new account. Although there may be some back and forth of transferring your funds to cover your bills, it shouldn’t take too long to completely transition to the new account.

Switch Your Direct Deposit

In order to start regularly using your account, you’ll need to reroute your income to this new bank account. 

If you are paid via direct deposit, talk to your employer’s human resources or payroll department about changing the information they have on file. When making the switch, remember to ask how long it will take for the change to go into effect. If you work for yourself, make the change on your invoicing systems, if you use them. Or you may need to reach out to your clients directly. 

But your employer might not be the only source of income to reroute. A few other income sources to consider include: 

• Government benefits 
• Annuity income
• Pensions
• Investment earnings

Switch The Bills Connected To Your Old Bank Account

In addition to switching over your income, you’ll need to update any automatic bill payments. Although you likely have a good idea of which bills are being paid out of your account, take a close look at the transactions for your account in the last six months. 

After you identify all of the automatic payments, switch the payment information to your new account. As you update this information, make sure that your new account has enough funds to cover the upcoming automatic payments.

In addition to automatic payments, look into what purchasing platforms are connected to your old account. For example, a random purchase on PayPal might be connected to your old account. Take the time to switch over all of this payment information.

Monitor Your Old Account

It’s tempting to close your old account immediately after opening your new account. But it’s a good idea to keep the old account open for a little while. Transitioning too quickly could mean you may accidentally leave bills unpaid. For example, you might see a subscription that you forgot about. If anything pops up, resolve it by updating the source with the new account’s information.

With that, it’s a good idea to leave your old account open for a month or two to make sure no more payments are coming out of it. 

Also, keep any account maintenance fees in mind. It might be worth it to keep a required minimum balance in this account as you wind it down, just to avoid any pesky fees.

Close Your Old Account

After a month or two of keeping both accounts open, you may feel comfortable in the knowledge that no one is expecting a payment from your old account. Double check that there are no outstanding checks or pending payments. At this point, it’s probably time to shut down the old account. 

Start by transferring any remaining funds from your old account into your new account. Then follow your bank’s instructions for closing the account. In some cases, you can do it online. But in other cases you might need to send a letter or make a phone call. 

Unfortunately, many banks make it a bit complicated to finalize the account closure. But once you make your request, it’s only a matter of time before you shut down the account for good.

The Bottom Line

Switching to a new bank may take time and effort but could be worth it if you’re now with one that makes sense for your needs and situation. That way, you can continue to work towards your financial goals.

What Is ROI App?

The ROI is a net worth tracking tool that is designed to include all of your assets. Unlike some net worth trackers, which only track traditional investments, this app tracks the value of everything from stocks to sneakers and everything in between.

As of writing, the app is only available in the Apple App Store. 

What Does It Offer?

Let’s take a closer look at what the ROI App has to offer.

Track A Wide Range Of Assets

If you are an investor who has branched beyond stocks and bonds into alternative assets, ROI makes it easy to track your net worth. You can include a big range of assets, which allows you to keep your net worth as accurate as possible. 

As of writing, ROI allows you to include the following assets in your net worth:

• Stocks
• Company equity
• Liabilities
• Bonds
• Digital assets
• Crypto
• Cash
• Sneakers
• Watches
• Artwork
• Wine
• Precious metals
• Collectibles
• NTFs
• Cars
• Real estate

ROI supports over 10,000 accounts and crypto wallets across 16 chains. 

With the ability to track such a wide range of assets, it’s likely that your net worth will be more accurate than if you used a more traditional platform. After all, not every platform allows you to include luxury items, like wine and watches, in your tracked net worth. 

If one of the accounts or assets you invest in isn’t currently supported by ROI, send the team a message. It’s possible they are already working on adding the asset to the app. If not, they will add the asset to the list of things to eventually be added into the trackable assets. 

One-Stop Trading

If you have multiple trading accounts, ROI gives you an opportunity to execute trades across multiple platforms. The unified trading experience doesn’t come with any extra fees, and can make it easier to trade in your existing accounts. 

Copy Trades From Top Investors

You can copy top portfolios from selected investors, including names such as Warren Buffett, Nancy Pelosi, Michael Burry, and Jason Calacanis. But there are dozens of portfolios to copy within the app. 

When you select a portfolio to copy trades from, you’ll need to select a brokerage platform that you have an existing account with, like Robinhood. 

Optimize Your Net Worth

As you track your net worth, ROI allows you to look for ways to improve your investment portfolio. You can tap into insights, such as how many trades you’ve made in the last year and how your portfolio is doing compared to a benchmark, like the S&P 500. It also allows you to drill down into the fees embedded into your portfolio. 

Other key insights include a breakdown of your portfolio’s asset allocation and an estimate of how long your emergency fund would last in a true emergency.

All of the information can help you make adjustments that could improve your portfolio performance. But if you aren’t interested in taking a deep dive into the numbers, the sheer amount of information might seem a bit overwhelming. 

Are There Any Fees?

Yes, you’ll pay an ongoing fee to use the ROI app. You can choose to pay $19.99 per month, $44.99 per quarter, or $119.99 per year. But you won’t face any other fees. 

How Does ROI App Compare?

ROI isn’t the only net worth tracking tool available. Here’s how it stacks up.

Kubera is a net worth tracking platform that includes alternative assets. It is available as via desktop, the Apple App Store, and the Google Play Store. The robust tracking tools earned Kuberua the spot as Editor’s Pick for Best Budgeting Apps of 2024.

Exirio is another platform that allows you to include a wide range of assets in your net worth tracking. In addition to alternative assets, such as crypto and luxury goods, you can track the cash you hold in foreign currencies. There is a free version or you can pay $10 per month for premium features.

How Do I Open An Account?

The process for opening an account with ROI starts by downloading the app in the Apple App Store. Once downloaded, you can set up an account by providing your email, a password, and credit card information to pay for the subscription fees.

Once your account is created, you can start connecting your asset accounts. While sign-up is quick, someone with a long list of assets will likely spend more time connecting their accounts. But luckily, this is a one-time step. 

Is It Safe And Secure?

The ROI app uses AES data encryption, which is bank-level security, to keep your data safe. Also, the app never saves your account credentials. Each time you want to make a transaction, you’ll need to pass biometric authentication.

Also, the company never sells your information. All in all, it’s a relatively robust security set up to keep your information protected. 

How Do I Contact ROI App?

If you want to get in touch with support from ROI, you can send a message through the chat box on its website or through the available in-app support. Or you can send an email to support@getroi.app.

Although the ROI app is relatively new, it has earned 4.7 out of 5 stars in the Apple App Store. With 141 ratings so far, it’s off to a good start on the customer experience side. 

Is It Worth It?

If you have alternative assets included in your portfolio, a traditional net worth tracking tool might not cut it. The ROI app delivers by providing a way to keep tabs on your net worth with a huge range of assets included.

The big drawback right now is that it’s only available for iOS users. With that, Android users will need to seek out another option. If ROI is not the best fit for you, consider one of the alternatives mentioned above. 

Check out ROI here >>

ROI App Features

Two Obama-appointed Federal judges in Kansas and Missouri have issued injunctions blocking key elements of the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) repayment plan, a new income-driven student loan repayment program. The rulings come at a critical time, as just as over 8 million borrowers were set to benefit from reduced payments and loan forgiveness under the plan.

The SAVE plan, introduced in August 2023 by President Biden, aims to provide relief to student loan borrowers by lowering monthly payments and offering loan forgiveness after certain periods. 

July 1 was a key date for the new lower repayment plan amount to take effect. This injunction leaves borrowers uncertain about the future.

Injunctions In Kansas And Missouri

In Kansas, a federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction that temporarily halts the U.S. Department of Education’s efforts to cut student loan payments in half for over 8 million borrowers, effective July 1.

Meanwhile, a separate ruling in Missouri blocks the Department from cancelling debts entirely for any borrowers under the SAVE plan.

These legal actions have added a significant disruption in the student loan system, which has been struggling to regain stability following a three-and-a-half-year pause on payments, interest, and collections that expired in September.

The Department of Education had already announced that borrowers on the SAVE plan would be in administrative forbearance during July in order to avoid the chaos that happened when payments resumed last fall.

The lawsuits leading to these injunctions were spearheaded by coalitions of state attorneys general. On March 28, 2024, a group of 11 states, led by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, filed a suit to stop the SAVE plan. A similar lawsuit followed on April 9, 2024, led by the Missouri Attorney General, involving seven states. These states represent about a quarter of the borrowers enrolled in the SAVE plan, with over 2.5 million residents participating, but the suits seek to invalidate the plan nationwide.

How Does The SAVE Plan Help Borrowers?

The SAVE plan was designed to ease the burden of student loan debt by adjusting monthly payments based on borrowers’ incomes to as little as 5% of discretionary income. This results in significantly reduced payments, or even $0 payments, for low-income borrowers. 

As of now, more than 8 million borrowers are enrolled in the plan, with 4.6 million benefiting from a $0 monthly payment. Additionally, the plan offers debt cancellation after 20 or 25 years, or after 10 years for those who borrowed up to $12,000.

The SAVE plan is one of multiple income driven repayment plans available to borrowers. The first of these plans was introduced in 1994, with the SAVE plan being made available to borrowers in August 2023.

Future Outlook

With the recent court rulings, the future of the SAVE plan and its benefits to borrowers hang in the balance.

It's likely the Biden Administration will appeal these rulings in the coming days, but in the meantime, millions of borrowers await clarity on their student loans.

Don't Miss These Other Stories:

Imagine being free from the weight of student loans. Inspiring, isn't it?

Across the United States, countless individuals have worked hard to pay off their student loans. In fact, 20% of all Americans have reported paying off their student loans. 

But we know that student loans can cripple your life. If you don't take action on them, you'll never get free. But how are people working towards paying off their loans?

Today we share 16 stories about others who have got rid of their student loan debt. Here's what they did, how much they paid off, and hopefully you can glean some inspiration from them.

Now, let's dive into people doing awesome things!

Retirement calculators can help you plan for the future. And over the last few years, there have been a number of them developed that all offer slight variations and tools.

Saving and investing for retirement is a long-term project best tackled over decades. If you want the tailwinds of compounding growth, you need to invest for retirement early and often.

However, generic advice doesn’t answer most people’s biggest retirement questions. You want to know how much you need to save each month, what age you can retire at, whether your investment portfolio is likely to run out, and what you can afford to do along the way.

That’s where retirement planning calculators come in. Whether you’re just starting to invest for retirement, or are planning to exit the workforce within a year or two, you can benefit from a retirement calculator. 

Best Retirement Calculators For 2024

We’ve tested close to 20 retirement calculators and chosen our favorites for 2024. You can see the full list (in ranked order) later in the article, but here are our top picks, starting with the T.Rowe Price Retirement Income Calculator (it's free). 

Best Overall Retirement Calculator: T.Rowe Price

With a near-perfect score on usability, a sophisticated approach to analysis, a deep level of customization, and a free price tag (which was the tie-breaker), the T. Rowe Price Retirement Income Calculator was our top pick for the best overall retirement planning calculator. The questions it asks are detailed enough to give you a clear idea of whether you’re on track to retire, but high-level enough to get your answer in under five minutes.

The T. Rowe Price calculator uses Monte Carlo simulations to help you understand if you’re likely to meet your retirement goals or not. It also allows you to “play” with your assumptions (increasing savings rates, retiring earlier or later, adding cash infusions, etc.). This provides a dynamic retirement calculator that isn’t overly burdensome.

The calculator focuses exclusively on retirement, so you shouldn’t use it for all your financial planning needs. But if you’re wondering whether you’re on track to retire, it will help you find the answer.

Best Free Retirement Planning Tool: Empower

While the T. Rowe Price retirement planning calculator answers whether you can retire, Empower helps you dig into your retirement planning questions. Empower allows you to do detailed scenario planning based on your actual financial situation. By using real-time data from your financial accounts (including your spending accounts), you can dig into real details instead of hypotheticals. Even better, the tools are free to use, and Empower lives on your phone or computer, so you can review the results at your leisure.

Best For Quick Analysis: Fidelity's Retirement Score 

By answering six quick questions, you can receive Fidelity’s Retirement Score. The score shows the probability that your money will outlive you (based on your responses to the questions). If you’re not planning to retire in the next few decades, Fidelity’s calculator lets you know whether you’re on track for retirement. It’s not designed for detailed retirement planning, but it will show you if you need to save more aggressively, or if you can take your foot off the gas.

Best For Total Life Planning: Maxifi 

Maxifi takes the prize for best total life planning tool. It integrates tax planning, life events, and changes to income and expenses into a comprehensive financial and retirement plan. It takes your current financial goals as seriously as your future retirement goals.

Maxifi costs $109 per year, but it's money well spent if you use the software to make better financial decisions. If not, don’t waste your money and time digging into the tool.

A few years ago, very few companies offered comprehensive financial planning for everyday people. In this analysis, we reviewed four easy-to-use tools that give you the flexibility to consider all sorts of life events in your analysis. All five received scores that allowed them to tie for second place overall. In addition to Maxifi, ProjectionLab, New Retirement, and OnTrajectory all offer sound financial planning tools that allow you to consider retirement along with the rest of your life. We happily recommend any of these tools for personal finance aficionados who want to answer life’s biggest financial questions.

Retirement Planning Calculators Details

Below is a full list of the retirement planning calculators that we tested — their usability ratings, prices, and the final score assigned to them. Some scores indicate a multi-way tie, but the descriptions above provide more detail on why certain tools were ranked above others.

A Few Caveats About Our Judgment Criteria

Each calculator presented in this article had to meet certain “table stakes” criteria to be included. These criteria include having clear and fair assumptions (especially related to investment growth and inflation).

Calculators using simple assumptions (such as not accounting for volatility) were allowed as long as assumptions surrounding growth and inflation were displayed. Such calculators are best for people with two decades or more until retirement.

It also needed to provide details about an investor’s expected net worth at retirement and their portfolio’s expected longevity following retirement. Calculators that didn’t provide both of those details were excluded. We also excluded tools that require you to have a retirement account with the brokerage in order to use the tool.

If the calculator met these criteria, it was allowed into the list of considered tools. At that point, the most important criterion for judging these calculators was usability for the average person. This accounted for two-thirds of the overall score. A typical person should be able to jump into the calculator and get understandable results using reasonably accurate estimates of their financial situation. Any calculator that required users to wade through jargon or text-heavy pages was discounted on the usability front.

The other criterion for judging the calculator was robustness. Calculators that accounted for more investment scenarios, better refinement of assumptions, or better simulations of risk were deemed better than those with fewer options. Most calculators allow you to “play with your assumptions” to see what you can get on track for retirement. But that’s only the first part of robustness. You may also want to see how your current decision (to upgrade a house, have a child, take time off of work, etc.) is likely to affect your retirement plan. Some calculators allowed you to do this, but others didn’t.

While robustness is important, it only accounted for a third of the overall score for several reasons. First, most people don’t need incredibly detailed financial retirement calculations until the decade before they retire. Unless you’re pursuing extremely early retirement, you probably don’t need a detailed financial calculator until you’re 50-60 years old. Additionally, most people won’t use the refinement features. A few curious people may use the refinement features based on their current life goals, but most people won’t. If you’re someone who rigorously tracks your net worth or religiously uses your budgeting app, you may find it hard to believe that people don’t love spending time on financial tools. However, most people who want a robust analysis will pay a financial planner for an analysis rather than research tools themselves.

Retirement Calculator Wrap-Up

No matter which retirement calculator you choose, you should always spend sometime each year on your retirement plan to help you stay on track. You may not need to build a comprehensive plan, but a high-level retirement target can help you live well today and tomorrow. If you’re more focused on your day-to-day personal finances consider using one of these budgeting apps and these investing apps to help you take daily steps to build your financial health.