Wednesday 28 November 2007

The Moneys in the Bank

While I was very busy at work today I did manage to check on my NAB credit card account to see if the 0% balance transfer funds had come through from BankWest yet (I'd faxed the form last Thursday after my original application was apparently lost in the mail). The funds had been received in my NAB account yesterday so my account was now in credit by around $14,400 (the transfer was for $16,150 but I had some charges on the card which I'd normally pay off in full on the due date next month). I went to the nearest NAB bank branch to withdraw $14,000 and deposited into my credit union account via the Westpac bank next door. NAB only processes cash advances on a credit card as cash withdrawals, so I was feeling a bit nervous walking from one bank to the other with two envelopes stuffed full of $50 notes in my bag. I've checked my credit union account tonight and the funds haven't been processed yet. As a cash deposit I expect the funds to appear tomorrow.

Since the NAB credit card is still in credit by $400 at the moment I won't have to make my normal monthly CC payment this month, so I'll be able to use that money to top up the credit union deposit to the full balance transfer amount of $16,150. Invested at 6.6% for six months I'll make around $500, allowing for the $10 cash advance fee charged by NAB and the slight reduction of the amount invested over the six months (due to the minimum monthly payment required on the BankWest account.

The banks were quite busy at lunchtime, so I had to queue up for around 20 minutes all together in the two banks to make the cash transactions. It was funny listening to the comments of some disgruntled customers waiting in line at the bank - they generally seemed to think the bank should employ more tellers to avoid them having to queue up. I personally thought having two tellers working when there was a queue of ten people during the lunch time rush was perfectly adequate. If the bank employed more staff just to cope with the busiest hour of the day then account fees would have to be increased substantially. Of course it would be ideal to just employ tellers who worked for a couple of hours a day during the peak time, but unfortunately even casual staff don't like going to work for just 1-2 hours a day!

Copyright Enough Wealth 2007

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