How To Open A US Bank Account As A Tourist/Non Resident

Opening a bank account in the US as a tourist/non-resident was not as difficult as we'd thought. Sure, we spent a lot of time looking around, searching for the bank that we could open an account with; not all banks in US are able or willing to open an account for tourists or someone without a social security number. 

There are thousands of banks in the US. We searched for a bank that required the least amount of minimum daily balance. Larger banks like Citibank and HSBC were happy to open an account for us, that is.. if we maintain a minimum daily balance of $25,000 and above! 

Needless to say, we did not go with them. We opened an account with Capital One bank (in New York), and then later with TD bank (in Florida). The process to open the accounts were similar.

What You Need: 

• Be physically present at the bank
• A passport  
• An additional photo ID (e.g. driver's license)
• A US address (we used a friends address)
• A US phone number (we have a virtual US number with iPlum app) 
• A recent copy of a bank/credit card statement or utility bill in your home country
• Some cash to make an initial deposit

What You'll Get:

• A welcome pack (i.e. paper work -- fee schedule, account maintenance information, etc)
• A debit card
• 3 cheques (if you need to pay anyone)
• Access to online banking

One difference we noted was that we received the permanent debit card on the spot for TD bank, while Capital One gave us a temporary card and took about a week or two to send us the permanent one (to the US address -- which was not convenient for us).  

We had no issues using these cards at the stores or for online shopping.

Other Things to Note:

• If you intend to use the card overseas, you'll need to inform the bank so that your card is activated for overseas usage.
• Get your bank's Routing Number/SWIFT code (you'll need this for online bank transfers).
• Remember to change your bank statements from paper to online. This saves you $1 per statement cycle (charges may differ for different banks), nothing gets sent to your US address and you'll help save the environment.
• With a US bank account, you can open a US Paypal account as an option for online payment and fund transfers.

Why We Switched from Capital One to TD bank:

• Capital One bank has less branches in US than TD bank. 
• Capital One does not have branches in Florida (which we needed).
• Read our post '6 Day Break in Florida'. 
• The minimum balance for Capital One bank is $300 while TD bank is $100.
• TD Bank has a pretty good online customer service support.
• TD Bank has a refer-a-friend promotion (having said that, Capital One has it as well but with more T&C).

Last month, I opened a TD convenience checking account {mainly for my Amazon Associates which requires a US bank account}. The next day, Alex who already has an account with Capital One decided to be bank buddies with me; he figured it'd be easier to transfer funds to each other and also because TD has a lower minimum daily balance than Capital One. So he opened the same checking account (referred by me), complied with the requirements for the refer-a-friend promo (see below) and within a month, we both got $25! :)

To get this, you'll need to know someone with a TD bank account. If you're interested we'll be happy to share more on this with you. Just drop us a note!

Then, you simply need to either receive a direct debit or make 15 transactions on your debit card within 60 days of opening the account (which is easy to do). That's it!


Hope this helps. If you have any experience with opening a US bank account as a tourist/non-resident, we'd love to hear about it.

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6 Day Break in Florida

Been back in Trinidad for a couple of weeks now with a six months visa. Just 6 days in Florida, what were we thinking?! It was a mad, mad rush driving from one place to another. Picking up boat parts, shopping for boat stuff, sorting out banking issues and sadly no time for sightseeing; not even the beach, but.. most importantly we made time to stock up on chocolate! {priorities!}

Just for fun, I'm going to describe our Day 0 in numbers. 
- 10.06.2017 was the day we flew out from Port of Spain (POS) to Miami (MIA).
- 3½ hours was how long our flight from POS, Trinidad was delayed.
- 22:30 was when we arrived in Miami.
- 1 hour was how long it took us to pick up our rental car.
- 370 km was the distance we drove from Miami to Sarasota.
- 03:57 was when we arrived at our accommodation in Sarasota.
There you have it. A day in numbers ;)

Our rental car in Florida (from Budget)

Day 1: Still exhausted from the day the before. We decided to take it easy and had a relaxing day. We checked out the supermarkets in the area such as Whole Foods, Publix and Trader Joes {we really enjoy checking out supermarkets}. Look at the lovely selection of fruits! We indulged ourselves with nectarines, apricots and cherries! 😋

Fruits galore @ Whole Foods

Just a photo of all the beers available and possible bottle caps!
p/s: I love taking photos of bottle caps I find on the streets (but none this time)

{Like kids in a candy store} We also bought a slab of Alaskan wild caught sockeye salmon, asparagus, corn, crackers, brie with mushroom, hard salami & liverwurst for dinner!

Salami, Brie with Mushroom, Crackers and Liverwurst

Home cooked Wild Caught Sockeye Salmon - Yum!

Day 2: We drove up to Clearwater Bay (near Tampa) which is approximately 94 km north of Sarasota in search of a fabric store that Alex found online. We were looking for a very specific material called Serge Ferrari Precontraint to make a new sail drive leg cover. 

As luck would have it, they did not have the colour we wanted in store but we found an offcut piece for just $10/yard albeit in an awful light green! Oh well, we were happy we saved $20/yard and even got some free remnants of Sunbrella material to make cushion covers! 👍

Somewhere in Tampa

That evening, we drove back to Sarasota for dinner with our friend Jim, whom we met in Sabah, Malaysia several years ago and met his lovely wife Tamara. It was a delightful evening and we also had a deliciously home made pasta meal in their beautiful home. Thank you both so very much for accommodating us. Our time in Sarasota was wonderful.

Day 3: We made a quick stop at West Marine, a chandlery in Sarasota before heading back to Miami but didn't find anything we really needed as we had already bought most of what we wanted online and shipped to ourselves here in Sarasota and Miami.

Our airbnb accommodation in North Miami

We got to Miami at 7pm, picked up the keys to our accommodation and went for dinner at Capri Japanese & Italian restaurant. About a week before our trip, I was hoping we could find some good deals like we did last year. Read our 'Groupon Our Travel Buddy' post.

We were very excited when we found a deal for a Japanese restaurant although it's really a Japanese & Italian restaurant. The reviews for the sushi were good so we went ahead with the purchase anyway.  

Unfortunately, the sushi was like mush! Maybe they had a bad night, maybe we were unlucky, maybe we should've known when we were the only customers there, maybe it was their first time serving customers food with broken porcelain, who knows.. but we were definitely disappointed with the food and service.. 💔

Coral Gables - Nice Neighbourhood

Day 4 & 5: The mad rush begins, when 24 hours a day is just not enough. The days we spent trying (in vain) to sort out our banking issues. Last year, Alex opened an account with Capital One bank in New York. Little did we know that there are no Capital One branches in Florida. So having transferred some funds from Australia to his Capital One account, we wanted to get some cash out for our travels in the Caribbean. You'd think it would be an easy task! But our experience proved otherwise..

We spent two days running around from bank to bank, talking to Bank Tellers, calling Customer Service & the bank's Fraud Team.  

Here's what we learnt: 

- You cannot easily transfer funds from one bank to another (within the US).
- You cannot easily transfer funds from one person to another.
- You cannot rely on what Customer Service tells you.
- You cannot withdraw cash over the counter via "cash advance" with your debit card (despite what Customer Service suggests). 
- The withdrawal limit at the ATM per day is only $610 for Capital One bank, and of course they have no ATMs in Florida, so you will be charged lots of fees to use another Bank's ATM.
- The bank can put your money transfer on hold for up to 10 days.
- If you try to transfer your money out of the bank to someone other than yourself the Fraud Team freezes your account ... in fact if you do almost anything, the Fraud Team freezes your account. Ours was frozen 3 times in just 2 days - each time necessitating a call to the bank, and a lengthy wait to speak to someone.

You can, however, get cashback at stores e.g. Home Depot (max $50), Walmart (max $100), Aldi (max $200) per transaction. And it seems this is considered a "purchase", so does not count towards your max daily withdrawal amount.

What's a cashback? "It's a service offered by stores to its customers whereby an amount is added to the total purchase price of a transaction paid by debit card and the customer receives that amount in cash along with the purchase." {but I'm sure you already know this}

What we think of 'em banks

Perhaps if we had more time in US, we could have found a better solution. But since our time was limited..

Here's what we did:

- Used cashback option at the stores.
- Bought money orders at the US Post Office (USPS) and had a friend cash it for us.

A lot of time, effort, research, merry-go-round, trial and error to get our cash but very glad we managed to sort it out in time.

In between all that, we bought a mixing elbow for our Yanmar engine, a pulley for our alternator (near Fort Lauderdale), and chocolates (from Aldi) lots of it! :)

So busy running around, we missed a couple of meals but we were able to grab a late lunch at DA Burger Shack on Day 4. :)

Groupon Deal - $7.50 for $20 value at DA Burger Shack
9753 Southwest 72nd Street, Miami, FL 33173

For $20, we ordered two DA Bomb burgers with fries and drinks! DA Bomb is topped with sauteed onions, pepper jack cheese, apple smoked bacon, lettuce, avocado, tomato, chipotle mayo, and jalapenos. The patty was nice and thick, slightly overdone and avocados were crunchy.

Didn't have time for lunch on Day 5, but we managed to have dinner at Spris Artisan Pizza, located at South Beach. A nice place to people watch.

Lincold Rd, South Beach

Groupon Deal - $13 for $25 value

731 Lincoln Rd, Miami Beach, FL 33139

Day 6: 16th June, our last day in Miami. We met up with Mike (a long time family friend) at the US Post Office to sort out the money orders/cash and went to Sushi Express by Yakko San for lunch. I wish we had asked Mike on places to eat in Miami earlier! Would've eaten here everyday! A lovely catch up and meal to end our trip. Thank you!

Thanks Mike for all your help!
Sushi Express by Yakko San, 17040-46 W Dixie Hwy, North Miami Beach

Us at the airport. Goodbye Miami!

Our flight departed Miami on time at 17:40, we arrived in Port of Spain at 22:30. Thankful we went through Immigration and Customs with no issues. Crazy as it may sound, but I was kinda glad to be back from our 6 day "break" cum visa run. 😅

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Groupon Our Travel Buddy

If you are budget travelers like us, you might want to have Groupon as your "travel buddy" too. With the US dollar at an all time high ($1 USD ~ $1.40 AUD/SGD), we knew it would be too expensive for us to have meals in restaurants on our 3½ weeks trip in the US. So what did we do? We started searching for deals online!

Groupon immediately popped into mind as we often use it back home. This was our first time using it overseas though. It's a little tricky but not impossible. We bought some of the deals weeks in advance and planned it into our itinerary, but we also bought a couple more just hours before redeeming them. They worked out well and we were able to have several nice meals at half the price.

In case you're wondering.. no, Groupon is not paying us to post this, we just thought we'd share our experience. 

If you're not yet a member, sign up here @ Groupon USA! By signing up through this link and if you make your first purchase within 72 hours, you will give us a referral credit of $10 groupon bucks. You will also get a welcome $10 off your first deal for orders over $25. You can also go to Groupon website directly, we don't mind.

Do note that even though you are a member of Groupon in another country, you would need to sign up a new account for the US version. They seem to be separate entities. If you want to sign up for Groupon Australia or Groupon Singapore. You can do that through these links too!

Here are the deals that we purchased for/during the trip..

San Francisco

$30 value for two people for $15
Sakesan Sushi & Bistro
626 Clement St, SF 94118

Japanese food! Our favourite! This place has a nice ambience and was pretty busy. We waited for slightly over half an hour before we got our seats by the bar.

It doesn't look like much for the value of $30, but hey, we only paid $15 (not including tax & tips of course). The portion of the salmon on the Salmon Don was decent and the rest were fresh and tasty too. We enjoyed our Japanese treat so much we decided to try another the next night at Hanami Brasserie.

$30 value for two people for $15

Hanami Brasserie

1220 9th Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94122

Here we ordered a Chirashi Don and a Salmon Don. It wasn't bad but we preferred the food at Sakesan. To be fair, their specialty is ramen noodles so perhaps we should've ordered that instead. Nevertheless, we're always happy after Japanese food.

Las Vegas

We really enjoyed our Fat Burgers in Los Angeles. So we were super physced they had a deal in Vegas. Sadly, the burgers at this joint was not as good as what we had in LA.
 

$16 value for $9
Fat Burger Green Valley
Henderson, 2300 Paseo Verde Parkway, 89052

$20 value for $10

Café Mayakovsky

1775 East Tropicana Ave, Suite 30, 89119

We were surprised the Russian food here was authentic (authenticated by Alex of course) and we really enjoyed it! We ordered (from top left clockwise) Red Caviar served with butter & crepes (10.95), Herring garnished with dill and served with boiled potatoes (6.95), Blinchiki - Crepes stuffed with ground beef (6.95) and Pelmeni - Homemade meat ravioli served with sour cream (7.95). Wouldn't mind coming back if we're in Vegas again.

$48 value for two for $ 30

Gene Woods Racing (Go Kart)
121 E Sunset Rd, 8911

Yes! We bought a deal for Go-Karting! It was fun, the go-karts are well maintained and fast! We had 2 races of 15 laps on the circuit. As usual, Alex was the speedster and I was trailing at the back of the pack. 

We also purchased another deal at Café 6 at Palms Place a $20 value for $13 but we were unable to redeem it due to the time constraints of our visit. So we contacted Groupon to explain our situation and requested for a refund. We are glad to report that Groupon was very understanding and refunded us the $13 in groupon bucks. We hope we'll be back to use it.

Chicago

Pinkys unfortunately was a letdown even though they had decent reviews. Just glad it was a $5 deal.

$10 value for $5
Pinkys

100 W. Randolph Ave. Suite C03
Chicago, IL 60601

$30 value for two people for $15 
Polk Street Pub
548 W Polk St.
Chicago, IL 60607

Polk Street Pub is located at the city fringe, felt like it was in the middle of nowhere in a really quiet neighborhood. We were pleasantly surprised that it served really good burger, spinach salad and Philly cheese steak sandwich! Even the mashed potatoes were on point. I wish we had discovered it sooner so that we could've gone back again.

New York 

Beast of Bourbon was a little out of the way. We had to take a couple of buses to get here. It was a nice sports bar/restaurant but the food was nothing to shout about.

$40 value for $20
Beast of Bourbon
Bedford-Stuyvesant, 710 Myrtle Ave, Brooklyn 11205

All you can eat sushi lunch for two at $25
Mika Japanese Cuisine & Bar
150 Centre Street, NY 10013

We read some mixed reviews about Mika especially about its service. But $25 all you can eat sushi for two? Who could resist!? We couldn't!

One of the many plates we ordered

We also bought a deal to replace our iPhone 5 battery.  

$39 discounted $31.20
KB Network (iPhone Battery Replacement)
38 West 32nd St, Ste 1605, between Broadway & 5th Ave, 10001

Well, that's all the deals we got for this trip. Can't say that we will do this for all our travels, but if we could, we definitely would because it saved us some and we found some nice places to eat because of it. :)

If you liked this post, do check out Groupon and purchase through the links on our site so that we can earn a little something to keep us going. Most importantly, it doesn't cost you anything extra. We thank you for your support.

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Chicago - The Windy City

We flew into Chicago on 19th September 2016 from San Francisco and spent 3 nights in the windy city. The 3rd most populous city in the US (after New York and Los Angeles). It was our first time in Chicago.

Our airbnb accommodation was very conveniently located in between the airport and the city on the blue line, near Logan Square station. 

The public transportation system in Chicago is much like New York. We bought a 3-day CTA pass for $20 USD which allows us unlimited rides on all CTA trains and buses. The pass activates the first time you use it and is good for the full length of time from that moment.

Even though we had the CTA pass, we thoroughly enjoyed walking in and around the city. Specifically The Loop, Millennium Park, Buckingham Fountain, Navy Pier, Lincoln Park and Old Town. 

What's The Loop? The loop is sometimes used to refer to downtown Chicago. It's bounded by the Chicago River to the north and west, Harrison Street to the south, and Lake Michigan to the east. It's called 'L' because of the elevated railway which surrounds the downtown area, especially two lines that share the loop constructed in 1882.

The Loop - Source: Wikipedia

Art Institute of Chicago

Next to Art Institute of Chicago. Love the trees - a lovely place to read a book!

Art on the Farm - Urban Agriculture "Potager" Kitchen Garden

Alex & I at Buckingham Fountain which is located in the center of Grant Park

It's also one of the largest fountains in the world

Lake Michigan - it's so huge when I saw it I thought it was the ocean, only to remember that Chicago is landlocked

Next, we walked to Millennium Park which is located in the Loop. Did you know that the park was originally intended to celebrate the second millennium, however it only opened 4 years later due to construction delays and it costs a whopping $475 million! It is also considered the world's largest rooftop garden because it sits atop of a parking garage and the commuter rail Millennium Station. A really nice place to chill and hang-out.

The Great Lawn @ Millennium Park

Cloud Gate is a public sculpture made in stainless steel by Indian-born British artist Anish Kapoor in Millennium Park.

Hello reflection!

Also known as The Bean because of its shape, made up of 168 stainless steel plates welded together, the exterior is so highly polished that it has no visible seams

Us & The Bean

Artistic Ceiling @ 100 W Randolph St

We hopped on a bus to Navy Pier which is a 1,010 m long pier on the shoreline of Lake Michigan.

Navy Pier

Navy Pier Park

Swing Ride

Merry-go-round

Panoramic view of Chicago's skyline & Navy Pier

A trip to Chicago would not be complete without trying the Chicago-style pizza also more famously known as the deep dish pizza. It's as the name suggests deep dish, almost like a pie with buttery crust filled with a thick layer of cheese and topped with slightly sweet tomato paste. 

We went to Lou Minalti's based on a recommendation by a dear friend {Eeps}. Do note that it takes a while to bake this dish so don't order it when you're hungry. We waited for an hour! It's likely they misplaced our order because even the waiter was surprised why our order took that long. When it finally arrived, we gobbled it up like two hungry dogs (kidding.. well, not really).
 

Famous Classic Deep Dish Pizza

At Lou Minalti's

We also found this hole in the wall pub (called Polk Street Pub) at the city fringe kinda in the middle of nowhere, really quiet neighborhood via Groupon. Check out our post Groupon our "Travel Buddy". We were pleasantly surprised that it served really good burger, spinach salad and Philly cheese steak sandwich! (with our groupon voucher of $30 value for $15)

Wish we had discovered this place on our first night.

Goodbye Chicago

A short stay but it was good enough. Loved all the architectural buildings in downtown Chicago. Will definitely try to get up on one of the high rise towers next time. 

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