For those having trouble doing so, if a bank gives you trouble about buying a cashier’s check without an account, you can ask them to do a Cash Advance in the amount of the check + the fee (usually $8.00), and then use that cash to purchase the cashier’s check. The problem is that they’re afraid they won’t be able to ensure the Cash Advance, but Simple will do so. Once they are successful with the Cash Advance they can sell you a Cashier’s Check.

e.g., I got a Cash Advance for $1,558.00 using my Simple debit card to pay for rent (which was $1,550.00; Amount + $8.00 = $1,558.00). Immediately after processing the Cash Advance, I handed the cash back and requested a Cashier’s Check. Many tellers are just unaware that they can do it this way, or they’re not initially inclined to go through the steps to do so. In my experience, it doesn’t take any longer than it normally would when purchasing a Cashier’s Check.

I’m dropping my Chase Bank account because I do not want muck around with their monthly fees just because I don’t keep my money in their account. I’m growing to trust Simple more and more and would much rather use it exclusively. The only downside, of course, is Cash Deposits. Worst case scenario, if it’s an excusable amount of cash, you can simply purchase a Cashier’s Check and deposit it. But if you need the cash immediately, it helps to retain a bank account.

Be aware, however, of the monthly fee. For instance, if you’re only averaging a single cash deposit or less per a month, it’s still cheaper to simply go the Cashier’s Check route. This is true because Cashier’s Checks typically cost around $8.00, while a bank account that does not meet the requirements will be charged a Monthly Fee (In the case of Chase Bank, the monthly fee is $12/mo unless you have direct deposits totaling $500 or more, or a minimum daily balance of $1,500).

Lastly, remember that Cashier’s Checks are not immediately deposited, versus an ACH transfer between banks that could end up in your account by the following morning. However, Simple is really good about this. It usually only takes a day (two max) for them to fully process your check deposit, which is faster than the average check processing duration I experienced at Chase (depending on the originating bank, of course).

All good things to keep in mind!

Thanks a lot Mike Roberts for this awesome article!

http://fi.is/en/hiking-trails/laugavegurinn/

First of all, even ignoring society, the question of ‘first order goal’ can get murky even within one organization. The ‘business’ that the developer is creating a product for may be offering a service to another group within the firm, and that service may have very little to do with the actual ‘end goal’ business of the firm. E.g. a software group may be developing an application for the accounting group of a toy company. How much a software developer really needs to know about toys in this instance is questionable (but they do need to know something about accounting needs.)

Even in the context of working for a trading desk there’s a difference between understanding / appreciating the mechanics of trading (which is necessary for a good developer to know working on such a team), and the strategy behind the particular trade being made (which may be less necessary.)

There’s a ‘turtles all the way down’ (or up) aspect to this, which leads into your point about the value trading has on society. Making this far more general for a moment I think this is more a question of ethics / morality on the part of an individual, rather than whether they are a good developer or not (and my entry was a discussion on the latter.) Say the accounting team above was actually working for a cigarette manufacturing firm. If I was writing software at such a firm I wouldn’t need to know much about cigarette manufacturing to do an excellent job for the accounting team, but I would have a personal choice as to whether I wanted to contribute to the business overall.

DRW would argue it provides value to the market (world) through ‘liquidity provision’. I’d be happy to discuss my opinion over a beer since it’s somewhat complicated but ethics about the company’s general objectives were not a primary reason for my leaving.