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Buying Money Orders In NYC With Debit Cards




For 2013, I owe money to the tax authorities because I rolled over my old pretax retirement account into my Roth IRA account. I made the decision to roll it over because the funds were growing, my previous employer were invested in many closed mutual funds that I did not have access to,  and I did not want it to be too unwieldy for the tax purposes.

Once I learned that once invested into the closed funds, I could rollover “in kind” and continue to invest additional money. I researched a few mutual funds and invested in them with my yearly limit to the Roth.

That being said, I weighed the options of paying the taxes: check, credit, or debit. Originally, I was going to pay with a OneVanilla card, but I asked my bill pay location, about money orders. They stated it was $.99 for a money order paid with cash and a $1 fee if purchasing with a debit card. In total, $1.99 for the money order up to $1000 was my experience. A reader and I have been talking about the money order and bill pay and his experience was up to $2k. So YMMV.

What you now need to consider if the fees as a percent is worth it as paying online with a credit card and among other economic factors. I chose the money order route to test, and am definitely over paying as a fee percentage, but I wanted to report back what is available.

  • OV works for MO and would likely work for the bill pay
  • Anything over $500 transaction includes extra scrutiny
  • MO’s cost $1.99 for debit card
  • BP’s cost $3.95

If you put some creative juices into this, you can make money, make low cost points, or make free points.

 

 

 

Photo by Robby Virus

4 comments… add one
  • Anybody ever played around with the rewards debit card offered by popular bank? It’s 1 point per $2 in spend, so you’d get 500/1000 points per money order. The problem is you can see what points are redeemable for with the bank, but not how many points they cost. $25 annual fee as well and only available in select areas.

    Reply
    • That’s an interesting card that I’ll need to dive into researching some more

      Reply
  • Too lazy to buy debit cards. 3% back on fee-free Amex GC plus 1 Starwood point minus 1.79% fees for federal taxes and 2.49% fees for state taxes.

    Lazy, so less profitable. Still: profitable.

    Reply

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