The end is near . . .

The end of the Allen and Joe era. The end of late night conversations extending well beyond normal bedtimes. The end of cheese, crackers and the occasional glass of wine in front of the TV with Nipple - the nostril-ed stuffed horse we bought at WalMart when we were supposed to be buying BBQ supplies. The end of borrowing Allen's knock-off Gucci cuff links while he's still passed out and leaving him an IM even though I know he won't notice their absence before I bring them back.

No more running out, re-shuffling cars and running back inside to escape the rain/cold/skunks. No more sharing Allen's weird oatmeal/breakfast shake mostly to see if it really tastes as nasty as it looks. No more peeing in the back yard because Allen's taking his sweet time in the pooper but not minding because you just don't get to pee outside as much when you're grown up.

Thanks for the links, AWo.

Citibank is kind of Evil

Lured by the 5.00% APY and promise of widespread ATM access through 7-11 convenience stores, I opened both Citibank e-Savings and EZ-Checking accounts online - drawing my initial account funding from my INGDirect savings account. Long story short, they tried to pull money from my ING account, ING refused the transfer since I hadn't linked the account. Linking the account, however, required sending a >$1.00 check to INGDirect from the account I wanted to link. Since I had attempted to put money in both my checking and e-savings accounts, they used two separate transfer attempts, both of which were rejected and I was charged a $10 processing fee for each attempt. Since I didn't have any money in the account (my initial funding failed) my balance was negative, so I was assessed an overdraft fee of $30 to my checking account (only one of these, so far, but I suspect they'll do the same to my e-savings account as well). The $30 fee was waived after I talked to a "Personal Banker," but he failed to mention that my e-savings account had been "orphaned" and that I'd need to stop by again with two forms of ID to re-link my e-savings account to my checking account and my ATM card. Not exactly an auspicious beginning . . .

So, things I learned from this endeavor:
INGDirect phone support people are far superior to Citibank phone support peeps
In order to fund an account with INGDirect accounts, you need to first LINK the account and then the INGDirect phone support folks say the transfer should be kosher.
You can't link your account before you have funds in it to send your >$1.00 check with Linking instructions to ING.
Citibank is reasonable and will waive fees if there was nothing you could do about them (my overdraft fee)
There is a period of time in which you need to fund your Citi account to receive the $100 rebate (the money in the combined accounts need to be greater than the amount listed).

Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes . . .