ING DIRECT Account For Your Child
I’ve been an ING DIRECT customer for some time now. It’s a great way to bank. I pay all of our bills from their bill pay system and they even give you the ability to send paper checks to just about anyone at no cost.
Over the holidays our 8 month old son acquired some cash for his first Christmas. This is what pushed us to open an “Orange” savings account for him. Minors aren’t allowed to have their own, stand alone, savings account, so the account had to be a joint account.
ING DIRECT has a referral program that gives you money for every person that you can get to sign up and make an initial deposit of $250. After the deposit, you get $10 and the new customer gets $25. You can have up to 25 referrals, which means you could potentially make $250 for getting people to join. I wanted to use this method for enrolling my son in his first savings account. There isn’t a guide on ING’s website to walk you through the process, so I’ve put one together here.
Here’s how it works:
- Send a referral email, to yourself, for your child.
- Use the link, in the provided email, to sign up. You’re going to need your child’s social security number and birth date (in case you forgot).
- Make sure you select “joint” account from the drop down (when you get to it). Fill in the appropriate fields with your child’s information. Most people put their child as the primary person on the account. They do this for tax purposes.
- For the secondary person on the account, you’ll need to enter your ING DIRECT customer number.
- The part where you are asked to enter bank account information is where I got lost. I ended up calling them on the phone to get some clarity. In order for the referral program to work, the initial $250 must come from a bank outside of ING DIRECT’s realm. This is the reason they are asking for bank account information. I gave them the same account numbers that are on the account that I already have verified with ING DIRECT (it’s a credit union). After entering your routing and account numbers, you must specify who’s name(s) are on the account. Just select your name. You do not have the option to select your child’s name. (This doesn’t mean that your child’s name has to be on the (non-ingdirect) account with yours.) Minors aren’t allowed to have accounts in their name. This is why you don’t have the option to select them.
- Now that the account is set up, there should be $25 available in your child’s account and $10 added to your account. The initial $250 is unavailable for 10 days. You should be able to view your child’s account in your control panel, under the name you assigned it during enrollment.
Opening one of these accounts for your child provides an easy way for you to save money for their future. When they’re old enough, they can log into ING DIRECT themselves and monitor their saving’s progress.