Money Market Accounts

My checking account and money market account at our bank are linked so both accounts appear on the same statements that we receive from our bank. At one time I made frequent deposits to my money market account, which I consider to be an emergency fund, because it had a much higher interest rate than my checking account did. However, since interest rates have been so low during the past few years there would have been no advantage to transferring money from my checking to money market account.

The other day I noticed an alert on the online version of my bank accounts so I clicked it. To my surprise it said my money market account has been deactivated so I contacted the bank immediately since that had account has a significant amount of money in it. When I did, I was told that happened because there had not been any activity on it in a while but if I came in to the branch and made a deposit to it they would reactivate it. So to protect my money market account I did that.

If that was my only account at this bank I could understand why that was done but since there is constant activity on my checking account that is linked to it I was quite surprised.

Has anyone else had a similar experience at their bank?

They should have given you some warning.

I stopped dealing with what CH called “giant monster mega banks.” Much happier with a credit union.

In the old days, they should have notified you by mail, but I guess email suffices today. Can you not do an online transfer to reactivate it? I know my bank wouldn’t allow me to draw down an old savings account to zero, and I would have had to go into the bank to close it out. I might be able to understand requiring me to come in to close an account…they might want to make sure it’s really me who wants to close the account. But it seems that they should allow you to do an online transfer either in or out of the account and let it reactivate instead of requiring you to go to the bank and reactivate it. I mean…maybe they want the opportunity to sell you a CD that pays 1%. On a positive note, at least they weren’t service charging the account until they drained it.

Yep, with my credit union. I used to direct deposit $100 a check into my account. My company only allows 2 direct deposits for my pay check and I stopped the credit union direct deposit because I was depositing into my kids account. I received a letter from the credit union saying since the account hasn’t had any activity for 2 years (or whatever) the state of Illinois was going to confiscate the money unless I let them know I still use it. I filled out the form and sent it back. Luckily my wife’s friend told her to look up our names in the state database, the credit union account was listed for me. Long story short I had to jump through hoops to get MY money back from the state if Illinois.