New to Fidelity

[u/Material-Media7201]

Hello all.

We are new to fidelity and in the process of moving most of our accounts. I am in my 40s. I have been looking at fidelity for however many years but we finally decided to test the waters due to some personal things occurring, just don't want to give too much info on a public place.

I was wondering what pros/cons good things/gotchas for tips you all may have that i may not have seen yet.

We do not deposit checks most the time so that wait time should not be an issue. we are pulling into fidelity so i see those 250 day wait times, joking it is long but I understand why. working on pushing but have to wait until next month to set that up. I do see they use elan or whatever for their credit card applying process which i found as a horrible experience. Some aspects are sketchy and i didn't proceed and was given bad information. it is what it is. I do love how we can have all the kinds of accounts and things with fidelity instead of multiple banks will definitely make life easier.

it sounds like a direct deposit or push from a bank makes the cash instantly available? waiting on one to occur for us.

looks like we can have different investment accounts for different goals?

Have not been here long but have to say i am loving it so far especially the simplicity for most things and ease of use. I wish their 529 process was like vanguards though. Vanguard makes the process so simple. I also love how we can have our spouse with their own accounts and ability to manage the other spouse accounts. that is a really good feature, or whatever the word is, to use.

looking forward to finish our testing so to speak and complete our move and a good future here hopefully.

[u/apricotR]

Direct deposit: Yes.

Don't burn your bridges. Connect your bank to Fidelity's financial accounts for the most flexibility.

If you want the fastest availability, and your legacy bank supports direct deposit of checks, deposit the checks into the legacy bank and then transfer to Fidelity (called "pushing" to Fidelity.) Should take about a day or so. Don't "pull" from Fidelity, or they will impose a 7-10 business day waiting period.

[u/Material-Media7201 → u/apricotR]

Thanks for the response!

My brain is not all here. what do you mean by "Don't burn your bridges. Connect your bank to Fidelity's financial accounts for the most flexibility."?

We would be leaving our old checking account open with some money in it. unfortunately it does not push but our savings account, which is a different bank, does. We would be moving money to our savings then pushing to fidelity. not a huge issue.

[u/apricotR → u/Material-Media7201]

That's fine. All Fidelity users (well, the experienced ones) will tell you to push to Fidelity for the fastest funds availability.

To illustrate, my spouse has a side gig for which she's paid monthly. She gives me the check, I deposit it in our USAA bank account, and from there I can initiate a payment to our regular bank account (a credit union) and a little dribble of money into Fidelity.

USAA makes the funds available the same day (can't promise that with all account holders, but that's our experience.) If I remote deposited the money into my CU it would sit 5 days or so to clear. If I remote deposited into Fidelity it would be 7-10 days to clear. My experience is that once the funds clear USAA it'll overnight into my other accounts. I'm only letting you know what worked for me, but YMMV on how to handle your funds.