The Wednesday Morning Weekly — September 18, 2024
Disclaimer: I am not an estate planner. These are my personal opinions/ideas in this article, and was just wanting to share them with the community. Please consult with an estate planner for your personal needs.
In the bank account bonus hunting hobby, we open up many accounts. Sometimes we have large amounts of money in a few of these accounts to meet the requirements of the bonus. Or we have utility accounts, such as hubs, which we never plan to close; these accounts can have significant amounts in at any given time. Or we might have retirement accounts, both tax-sheltered and non-tax sheltered with large amounts in them as well.
I personally feel it is important to setup designated beneficiary/beneficiaries for every account possible if the accounts hold a significant amount of money. If you don’t set it up or the bank doesn’t offer it, when you die, it then goes to probate and the courts can decide when your beneficiary/beneficiaries get the money — which could take months or years, instead of a couple weeks.
When you setup a beneficiary/beneficiaries for an account this is often called TOD / POD: Transfer on Death and Payable on Death respectively. When you die, often it is as simple as your beneficiary/beneficiaries giving them a call and presenting them with your death certificate, and then they are given the money often within a few weeks.
I am going to keep a running list of banks here in this article which have beneficiary designations and which are just probate only. For those that do offer beneficiary designations, I’ll share any notes I can on the process of enabling it.
Starting with a few now. Will update over time.
Helping me out. If you would like to help me along, please comment below with the bank name, whether or not is allows one to add beneficiary designations, and the process for doing it. And any other comments you like about your bank. Ideally I’d have all the national banks here along with at least the major regional banks as well.
The Running List
Bank of America. They allow beneficiary designations — first paragraph — but you need to talk to someone.
BluPeak. They offer beneficiary designations. When you sign up for a new checking account, savings account or CD, they ask you if you have any beneficiaries. I fill this out every time and put my beneficiary’s info in it. This I feel is important since the CD’s are held for extended periods of time and I want to make sure my beneficiary gets immediate access to all that money in those accounts in case I pass.
Capital One. They also allow beneficiary designations.
Chime. I don’t see where in the app. I read after doing a Google search on this that Chime does offer a way to designate a beneficiary, but you probably have to call them to find out the procedure. I personally didn’t bother with this since I don’t keep large sums of money in Chime; I basically keep it open with a small balance so I can refer people — probate is fine for me. Also another reason I won’t keep much money in Chime is that it is a Fintech.
Discover. Discover allows beneficiary designations as well — lower right corner of screen.
Fidelity. They allow you to assign beneficiaries. To get to the appropriate page, login to Fidelity then do a search: “beneficiaries”. Direct link.
Robinhood. They used to be probate only, but recently I have seen they allow beneficiary designations. This really pleases me. It’s very easy to setup. Click on the person icon at the bottom right of the app home screen. Then click on the hamburger — three horizontal parallel lines — at the upper left. Scroll down and click on Settings. Then you will see Beneficiaries, click on that.
Upgrade. Probate only unfortunately — I really love their currently 5% savings account. Also since Upgrade is a Fintech, there is perhaps an increased risk of leaving money in there compared to an actual bank — they use Cross River Bank. For these reasons I personally will not be storing too much money at any given time in Upgrade.
Wells Fargo. I logged into their portal via web browser on my Mac. I saw no way to add beneficiary in the user interface. I then searched for beneficiary/beneficiaries and got nothing. So I started a chat session with an online agent and he replied: “That can only be done from within a branch location at this time.” If you keep a large amount of cash in this bank at any given time, I’d personally make a visit to the local branch and set this up; they are however out of state for me, but no worries since I only keep minimal amounts in there when the account is actually open — so probate is fine for me.
Thanks to my friends for helping me out here.
Thank you for sharing this invaluable resource on banks that allow beneficiary designations! It’s such a helpful guide, especially for those looking to streamline estate planning and avoid probate. I appreciate the time you’re putting into compiling and updating this list—it’s going to save people a lot of research and effort. I’ll be sure to keep an eye on this and contribute if I come across any banks with noteworthy processes for adding beneficiaries. Thanks again for sharing such practical and detailed information!