Update: According to this comment as long as you have a balance of at least $1,000 your account will be in good standing and won’t be closed.
Morgan Stanley is closing the Cash Plus accounts of some customers. It seems to be affecting customers that were paying the $55 monthly fee, rather than having $25,000 parked in the account. This was worth it to avoid paying the annual fee on the American Express Platinum Morgan Stanley card (discussed here).
There is some further discussion of this in this FT thread and also our thread here.
Happy my card color is black and I do not have to deal with this nonsense 🙂
I don’t think they’re doing this to people with too credit ratings. I don’t have this experience with Morgan Stanley as I’m standing at an excellent 797 credit score thanks to creditsavy the famous instagram credit guru .
How so avoid the $55 fee , just have $5k direct deposit every month ???
To avoid the fee you need *both* a $5k direct deposit in the month as well as a $25,000 average daily balance for the month.
With rate dropping, it could make sense to do this again to park money there and get free annual fee for the Amex Platinum Morgan Stanley
Not even close. Rates would need to be closer to 2% to even begin a discussion.
not really. Rates at 4% means you’re collecting $1000 in annual interest on the $25k pre-tax. Post-tax, that’s pretty close to the $660 in fees you’re avoiding so anything less than 4% rate means you’re better off parking it here.
why even allow people to fall below the threshold and keep their accounts in the first place, if you’re going to be a ‘rich people bank’ just prevent the poors entirely
Because U.S. Bank would sue them for trademark issues…… over Cash+/CashPlus
I thought about previously parking my cash elsewhere like some people, but I decided not to since I use this as my primary checking. Glad I didn’t. Yes, you can get yield elsewhere, but I’m not going to nickel and dime like that. Honestly, this is a ‘rich person’s’ bank and it is hard to get an account with them, so I value having the account and the platinum card bonus over the extra interest.
So are you saying that you’re rich?
Pretty sure he’s Ronald.
No, am not, lol
Just moved me 25k out to a savings acct with sofi. They have been holding my 25k for 4 years with no interest. It’s not nickel and diming it’s just not smart
For a rich person’s bank they offer surprisingly little. So much easier to get better service, rates, and options in a CMA elsewhere (ie Fidelity).
I was one of them a few months ago and amex sentme a letter about a month after saying they are closing my ms platinum card because i dont have a relationship with ms. they did give 60 day notice of closing the account.
also fyi. my annual fee was about 2 months after the close date is scheduked for so i did a chat with the cs rep and demanded a prorated refund of the annual fee and recieved it
You probably could have demanded a full refund and received it.
i tried initally they even said no to the partial but fianllt gor them to agree. the engagement bonus is an morgna not amex. maybe i could have pushed morgan to partially pay engagment bonus but doubt that would work
If you consider the fee is after-tax but the credit is before-tax (i.e. subject to federal and state income taxes), then it might not be worth it to begin with.
That is true.. Partially. you will get a 1099 if you dont pay enough “fees” like the access management fees to bring the total rebate below 600. So have to pay at least 96$ fees to MS to avoid paying taxes on the fee refund.
But in the case where you are getting charged 55$ per month due to not have min bal. You will not get a 1099.
This is actually a genius move- get billed for 2 months out of the year, drop under the 1099 threshold.
Does that actually work?
It is bit more complicated. i have seen 1 or odd months they waived the fee and you have to move the money on the edge etc. But yes, it does work. If you have a corp green card getting the 150$ corp discount on plat is far better is what i realized (i was not using the 1c conversion anyway)
Does it mean these customers will lose their MS platinum card which will be closed too?
Probably, unless they have some other type of account with MS that qualifies them to have it. For most people, this card wouldn’t be worthwhile without the engagement bonus provided through the account.
MS Plat offer free AU card. Thats a $195 saving every single year