Annoying First World Problem

[The White Coat Investor]

So I have a credit card bill due on Saturday, $63K, set up to auto-pay out of my USAA checking account. (No, we didn't spend that much. It includes our first quarter estimated tax payment.) But I notice I only have $37K in there. No big deal, I'll just transfer money.

So I go to my savings account at Ally and put in a transfer- won't be available until Monday.

So I go to my investing account at Vanguard, and sell some shares of a money market fund. Oops, that won't get there until Monday either.

Well, I can cover the difference from the WCI business account. So I decide to use the USAA Deposit @ Home function. I write myself a $30K check and deposit it using my scanner. Success! Except only $25K is available immediately.

Well, it has a $100,000 per day limit, so I'll just write another check. I write a $5K check and deposit it. Success! Except $0.00 is available immediately.

Apparently on Monday I'll have >$100K in the account, but on Saturday, this payment is going to bounce. At least I have overdraft protection (it goes on to a USAA credit card in $100 increments.) I guess I'll have to pay that off on Monday. The only other thing I can think of is to do a $5K mobile deposit tomorrow and see if USAA uses the same limit for deposit @ home as mobile deposit. I'm thinking the right hand doesn't talk to the left because I deposited an $83 check earlier today and that wasn't subtracted from the $25K.

I guess I could wire the money tomorrow too, but that will probably cost at least as much as 2 days of interest on $1000. Annoying first world problem. I guess I should be grateful that I can cover a $63K bill from any of three different accounts, none of which the bill is going to be presented to on Saturday.

[Hank]

Good evening Jim,

You still have Friday.  You might try calling USAA's banking department and seeing if they'll accept more than $25K from your business account.

If you do have to use the USAA credit card as temporary overdraft, will you have to pay any interest?  You might ask USAA (in advance) if they can waive that for the Saturday to Monday period.

This is what you get for living paycheck to paycheck and trying to juggle all these bills. 

[Michael George]

You don't have margin enabled on your Vanguard account?

If you did, then you could just go on margin for 1 day.

That would only cost you a few bucks in interest.

 

[hightower]

Haha, yes this is a first world problem for sure.  Although, the same has happened to me on a much smaller scale.  I would call the credit card company and ask for an extension on the due date.  I'm sure they'd be willing to work with you since it's a Saturday and you're obviously someone they want to keep around.

[blowhard]

Call USAA

I had a EFTPS payment bounce once because I had already exceeded 6 withdrawals for the month from my savings account. I called the bank the same day, and they were able to fix the issue within the hour.

 

 

[blowhard]

Or....

cancel your auto-pay, and use bill pay from your Ally account to send the money to your credit card. Most of those payments will happen same or next day.

[The White Coat Investor]

Michael George wrote:

You don’t have margin enabled on your Vanguard account?

If you did, then you could just go on margin for 1 day.

That would only cost you a few bucks in interest.

 

Click to expand...

Is this THE Michael George? At any rate, welcome to the forum.

Your comment lost me though. How does using margin get the money into my checking account faster?

[The White Coat Investor]

blowhard wrote:

Or….

cancel your auto-pay, and use bill pay from your Ally account to send the money to your credit card. Most of those payments will happen same or next day.

Click to expand...

I knew you guys would have some additional solutions. Amazing how a hivemind/mastermind works sometimes.

[Michael George]

Hi Jim,

This is Michael George. I have finally made time to check out the WCI forum.  Very impressed.  Great layout and I like the way the topics are delineated.

From your post, it sounded like you were having to wait a day for a Vanguard trade to settle.  That is why I said to use margin.

This way you don't have to wait for a trade to settle to have a positive cash balance to move.

You should be able to transfer from your brokerage account to a bank account the same day (if done before noon EST) or the very next day.

We use short term margin all the time.  When somebody is fully invested, but needs cash transferred to their bank account immediately.  We will sell an ETF or stock (which settles in 3 days) or a mutual fund (which settles in one day).  But, instead of waiting for the trade to settle, we move the money the same day.  They will get charged margin interest, but it will only be for 1 to 3 days.  Also, if the margin rate is low (like 2%), then the amount is negligible.

Regardless, you must be racking up some serious credit card points.

[The White Coat Investor]

So I tried the mobile deposit today. No dice there. Now I have another $5K deposit but none of it available. So I thought I'd try the old-fashioned way of just calling them up and begging them to make more of the deposit available. It worked.

The unfortunate side effect is that on Monday I'll have way too much in checking! Oh well, at our low interest rates that sort of thing doesn't cost much.

[StarTrekDoc]

Great you got this to work; it's these times where online chat or old fashioned phone works to loosen up the holds.  With good history of banking and reliable funds source, they'll release holds without issues.

Phone/Voice/Chat elbow grease still exists for banking loyalty.

 

[wideopenspaces]

I love USAA so much. They have the best customer service. When a large chunk of our home was damaged by a hurricane they allowed us to increase our credit limit and didn't charge interest for 6 months so we could pay our contractor to fix the house without waiting for our insurance company to give us our money. We were able to get back into our house after 2 months while many others had to wait much longer to fix their homes.

[adventure]

Last time I encountered this issue, I walked into the bank, and asked if they would make the entire deposit available ASAP, as they wait for the check to clear. National bank, they said yes, no worries.

 

Alternatively, you could take out cash from bank 1's ATMs all over town, and deposit it at bank 2's ATM. Might take a few trips, but I think the cash I deposited at an ATM is available immediately.

* could be good exercise on a bicycle.

 

I agree about cancelling autopay too.

[DMFA]

I don't have that good of a problem.  I guess I'm living in the second-world...?

[ITEngineer]

The White Coat Investor wrote:

So I have a credit card bill due on Saturday, $63K, set up to auto-pay out of my USAA checking account. (No, we didn’t spend that much. It includes our first quarter estimated tax payment.) But I notice I only have $37K in there. No big deal, I’ll just transfer money.

Click to expand...

Why do you pay your taxes by CC and pay the fee? Convenience? I seem you recall you mentioning your reason in the past but I couldn't find it.