Had to look it up, but I paid a bit under $5 in total last year. Mostly towards the beginning of the year when I didn't have my bills set up properly (i.e. the timing didn't match my direct deposits at first, had to make some calls to change that) and from some large ticket purchases that a single paycheck couldn't fully cover (with sufficient planning those could have been avoided if I sold some stocks beforehand). I haven't needed to make use of margin at all for well over 6 months now.
Schwab's margin rates are on the high side, starting from 7% and up, but even then if you're borrowing for 2 days at a time the cost ends up being negligible (about ~$1 for every ~$3000 borrowed). At the very least, it's much better than most overdraft fees/lines of credit. Though if Interactive Brokers were to offer a bank account, I'd be very tempted to switch with their amazing margin rates.
IB has a debit card but no bank account, dunno if that's enough. You can also receive and initiate ACH transfers, but that doesn't pay credit card bills without routing through a checking account with bill pay.
What's stopping me from using IB is the $10/month commission minimum. It's waived at $100k account balance, so I plan on switching over then.
Thanks! Just looked it up. It's really cool that they're moving in that direction.
Can you do bill payments directly from an IB brokerage account? I think that might be the final missing piece for me, but I'd love to be wrong about that.
