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336 points dvrp | 7 comments | | HN request time: 0.972s | source | bottom
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mitchellh ◴[] No.45056901[source]
Funny to see this pop up again (I'm the author). The year is now 2025 and I still use Chase as a personal bank and I'm now discovering new funny banking behaviors. I'll use this as a chance to share. :)

My company had an exit, I did well financially. This is not a secret. I'm extremely privileged and thankful for it. But as a result of this, I've used a private bank (or mix) for a number of years to store the vast majority of my financial assets (over 99.99% of all assets, I just did the math). An unfortunate property of private banks is they make it hard to do retail-like banking behaviors: depositing a quick check, pulling cash from an ATM, but ironically most importantly Zelle.

As such, I've kept my Chase personal accounts and use them as my retail bank: there are Chase branches everywhere, its easy to get to an ATM, and they give me easy access to Zelle! I didn't choose Chase specifically, I've just always used Chase for personal banking since I was in high school so I just kept using them for this.

Anyways, I tend to use my Chase account to pay a bunch of bills, just because it's more convenient (Zelle!). I have 3 active home construction projects, plus pay my CC, plus pretty much all other typical expenses (utilities, car payments, insurance, etc.). But I float the money in/out of the account as necessary to cover these. We do accounting of all these expenses at the private bank side, so its all tracked, but it settles within the last 24-48 hours via Chase.

Otherwise, I keep my Chase balance no more than a few thousand dollars.

This really wigs out automated systems at Chase. I get phone calls all the time (like, literally multiple times per week) saying "we noticed a large transfer into your account, we can help!" And I cheekily respond "refresh, it's back to zero!" And they're just confused. To be fair, I've explained the situation in detail to multiple people multiple times but it isn't clicking, so they keep calling me.

I now ignore the phone calls. Hope I don't regret that later lol.

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dpkirchner ◴[] No.45057683[source]
At what point does it make sense to sign up for private banking? I've been happy with our credit union for day to day stuff but we don't keep a ton of cash around (most of our money is in a brokerage account (ETFs)). Is private banking just for folks that want to have a lot of cash around but not have it in an easy to use account?
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1. sneak ◴[] No.45058304[source]
When you are managing a $500k-1M+ liquid net worth.

I think Chase starts “Private Client” at $250 or $300k. (Don’t use Chase, however.)

It might in some cases be more trouble than it is worth, if you are right around the threshold. A “normal” retail checking account and a brokerage account at another institution with the ability to transfer between them is probably sufficient for most. If you need loans or mortgages or other stuff, it might be worth the hassle (and phone calls).

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2. mitchellh ◴[] No.45058478[source]
Private client isn’t private bank. They name is like that so you think it is though. :) private banking services start around $10 to $15M with higher tiers as you go.

(Not trying to diminish private client services. But they’re night and day different services.)

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3. ◴[] No.45059164[source]
4. sho ◴[] No.45060106[source]
> start around $10 to $15M

That sounds high to me. Maybe American banks? The smaller Swiss banks will start taking your calls at about $2m.

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5. mitchellh ◴[] No.45060329{3}[source]
Maybe. All the retail banks I know don’t start true private banking until there. For example, here is an article about JPM requiring 10 back in 2016 (it’s higher now): https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-j-p-morgan-9-million-in-asse...

The non retail banks that have a good reputation are even higher.

They don’t outwardly advertise their minimums because “it depends.” For example if you’re an up and comer in your field where it seems like you’re LIKELY to one day hit the mins, they’ll start the relationship early.

6. sneak ◴[] No.45062174[source]
What’s the difference?
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7. zie ◴[] No.45071117{3}[source]
Private banking is basically the bank providing family office services. They generally give you one contact person, that makes your money annoyances non-annoyances. You need a loan for something, they just go sweet talk everyone involved to make the loan happen for you.

They also invite you to all the bank's private events, so you can schmooze with other high net worth people. Banks are always sponsoring fancy events everywhere, and private banking clients generally get free invites.