Getting my Sovereign Bank accounts up and running

I am making some good progress at getting my new Sovereign Bank accounts up and running. I successfully linked my Sovereign personal checking account to my PayPal account and managed to successfully transfer the majority of my PayPal balance and then transferred the money from the checking account to the money market account where it will earn 2.50% APY until I transfer more money to pass the threshold for earning 2.75% APY and maybe even 3.00% APY.

I also received the two check cards (one for personal checking, one for business checking) and activated them and changed the PINs at the local ATM and even used both to take out a little cash.

I even used the personal checking card to make a purchase, so I only need five more purchases on that card to get my bonus money after 90 days.

Now, the next major milestone is to transfer a large pile of cash from my Fidelity account. Unfortunately, Fidelity has a 7-10 day "block" on linking to new bank accounts. They still have not submitted a "probe" payment even though PayPal was able to do so very promptly. Hopefully this will be completed by the end of next week.

Meanwhile, I notice more and more banks offering yields over 3.00%.

One last little thing that I appreciate about Sovereign Bank that I have not seen in quite a few years... they even gave me those little tyvek sleeves to protect my cards. I have not seen them given out freely in well over 15 years.

-- Jack Krupansky