Anyway, my savings account has been working out pretty well. In Brazil, savings accounts come with debit cards, so in a lot of ways, it has the benefits of a checking account. Also, my translation clients can go directly to any branch of my bank and make a deposit into my account to pay me, which is much more convenient for them.
One problem with this piddly savings account is that I'm not allowed to use the bank's online banking system, and.... I don't receive statements, and.... I can't print out a statement that has data from more than the last 5 days, and... the guys at the desk can only print out a statement from my last 3 weeks.
This isn't so bad. I mean, I just keep a written record of what I do with my account (how 1990s) and check it with the short bank statement printouts every few days (there's a branch of the bank right by our apartment, so I walk by it at least 3 times a week).
However -- and this is a good thing and a bad thing -- my savings account gives me a relatively large amount of money in interest. It's more of a good thing than a bad thing, this free money. And it's totally random. It kind of feels like the tooth fairy. Some days it's only 47 cents, and some days it's as much as 11 reais!
So every day they deposit a little bit of "thanks for leaving your money with us" money. If you want to know why, it's because Brazilian savings accounts offer much higher interest rates than American savings accounts (considering my American savings account gives me, well, nothing).
It's just a little confusing because, with these little "presents", it's very hard to keep track of exactly how much money I have. Also, sometimes, when I make deposits or withdraws or I transfer money into Alexandre's account for something, the amount inexplicably gets divided up into 2 or 3 separate items on the bank printout list. (For example, if I make a deposit of 100 reais, sometimes it shows up as DEPOSIT: $45.36 and then another DEPOSIT: $54.64.) AND, the bank printout list doesn't say where or who is involved in the amount of money. It just says "Debit card purchase" and "deposit". So it's kind of trial and error until I can figure out which amounts add up to things I bought or the money I moved around.
Does anyone else experience things like this with their Brazilian savings accounts? Alexandre has the much sought-after (at least by me) checking account, and his deposits/withdraws show up normally, and he can access online banking, which shows exactly where the purchases were. He also gets monthly statements in the mail. Lucky!
If I don't have time to go to the bank every 5 days, it's very easy to lose track. But I guess it's worth it for a free account with such high interest payments. So far this month, I've earned over 40 reais!! That's a free sushi dinner, just for banking with them.
So if any of you long-term foreign residents have been putting off opening an account, maybe the free money can motivate you, even with the confusing statement situation.
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Re: the difference in interest you receive: in a common "poupança multidata" savings account, which is probably the one you have, you receive interest every month on the deposits you made on each day. So, if deposited R$ 100 on Aug 20th and R$ 200 on Aug 21st, and the interest rate is 0.6% and didn't ever change, you would receive R$ 0.06 on Sep 20th and R$ 0.12 on Sep 21st. If you make a deposit of R$ 50 on Sep 20th, on Oct 20th you'll receive 0.6% over R$ 150.06 (and not over R$ 250.18, your account total).
So, you received R$ 11 on a day which had a lot of deposits, and R$ 0.47 on a day you had just a few deposits.
It's a bit complicated because the interest rates for poupança change every day, something very important on the bad old days of hyperinflation: you needed to receive the interest as soon as possible, so your money didn't devaluate.
Thank you, Júlio!!!! I'm so happy there are other people that study math and economics, so I don't have to. :)
Julio said it all.
I was gonna explain to you that my savings account does the same as yours and that thing about how much you deposit on a specific date changes how much you get, but I guess he knows way more than me. :-P
Anyway, the only thing better than sushi is free sushi, eh? :-P
How's the rain around there? Here I can't hear the TV because of the water falling outside. :-D
Thanks to some quick immigration work by our lawyer I had the necessary paperwork to open any type of account within a year of arrival. What blew me away was the robust interest earned on banking products here.
There is no reason for US expats to keep their money in the Stock Market -- put it into a safe money market account here (liquid too) and earn WAY MORE on your money.
The acium that money makes money is truer here than anywhere else I know.
Nice! I gotta get me one of those! Can you open one with a CPF only or do you need more documents? If more, I can't do it currently.
Cheers
Hi Adam,
It might depend on the bank, but to open the poupança, I only needed the CPF and a bill in my name.
I still don't have an RG or a "carteira de trabalho", which are apparently necessary for the checking account.
We recently changed the electricity bill to my name in order to open my account. They gave us a hard time at the electric company because I didn't have an RG, but we just complained until we got to a manager, who just clicked on one little thing in the computer so that it asked for a passport number instead of an RG. (It was soooo difficult, thank god he was able to figure it out! ;P )
But good luck!
Hey,
Someone just sent me a link to a very cool NPR podcast, Planet Money. This week's episode is about the crazy hyperinflation days in Brazil. There's a short related article about it, "How Fake Money Saved Brazil", at http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake-money-saved-brazil
Don't worry, it's funny :) The part about people in supermarkets running ahead of employees that put new price stickers on groceries, so we could buy stuff with the last day's price, is true!
I think the whole thing with your not being able to see your bank activities on your savings account depends on the bank you're with. Ok, I'm living in the US but I keep my Brazilian checking and savings accounts just because. The savings is a good idea because you get money, the checking is the worst idea ever because you have to pay something around R$3 monthly to maintain it (hate bank fees) , so you have to always keep money there. Of course. because I'm in the US there's no way I can't cancel my checking account. They won't do it over the phone and internet is a no no no. My two vacation trips to Brazil were so short I had no time to deal with Brazilian banks' bureaucracy. Anyway, my point is, my bank is Banco do Brasil (it's everywhere in Brazil so it's the easiest for me) and I can see all of my savings account's statements, even on the internet over here. Although I can't do anything else with it because I'd have to go to Brazil and unblock my own internet access to my own bank account at one of their ATMs (duh?) I still see what is in there and what has been done to it.
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