Pimp my bankaccount

Last week we transferred nearly all our money from Belgium to Canada. For 5 years we have been putting money aside (OK to be honest, Tinneke has way move savings than I do. Most of my money went into music, guitars, CD's, LP's, etc.) for some big project: buying a house, a new car, moving abroad, etc. And since we have no real income yet, we're gonna need this money now. But not all of it of course ...

Coz money in a normal savings account gets you zilch. So why not invest the money?? I never kinda thought of investing money, but hey if I can get rich sleeping, why not!! "Just come and see me" said Kenny, my man at the bank. (By the way, he is about the same size as Kenny in Southpark. It was hard for T. not to laugh during our appointment.) So after discussing our options, rates, interests and how much money we were really gonna need this year, I went to the bank today and invested in a US account. It basically means you open up an account in the US, you change Canadian Dollars to US Dollars, put it in the account and a year later you have a nice sum of US money that you transfer back to Canadian dollars. Other money was invested in another account with a less profitable interest rate, but at least we have access to the money when we really need it.

Then I wanted to know if the rest of the money should be kept in the chequing account (zichtrekening) or savings account (spaarrekening)? It doesn't really matter coz they both have a neglectable interest rate, so that's why Kenny proposed a Guaranteed Investment Account. Basically it's a savings account but with a higher interest rate.

I got a savings, chequing, US, investment and a GI account now. My bankaccount just got pimped!!

But somehow it's a bit akward. Banking is so much different here:
When you open up an account, you know they will charge you like 4 dollars every month. And you are restricted to 10 transactions a month. If you keep a balance of minimum 1000 dollars, they won't charge you the 4 bucks, except when you do more than 10 transactions a month. You do more than 10 transactions, they charge you extra. You want like 25 transactions a month? OK, that's possible but they're gonna charge you more and you have to keep a balance of 2000 dollars a month. Well at least they are very open about it.
Even VISA cards. They only have VISA cards with revolving credit. That basically means you can use your card, you get an VISA invoice by the end of the month and if you don't pay in time you pay like 20% more. It's like PINTO in Belgium. That means of course that you can spend money that you don't actually have. That can be good, but without a job that just feels a little bit uncomfortable. So we'll wait a bit with VISA. In the meantime we still have our Belgian VISA , but with little money on the Belgian account left, there's no use of keeping that card.
Oh and tranferring money to another account? Well you can't really do it by Internet or Selfbanking coz they have to do it for you if the destination account isn't a client of our their bank. In Belgium you can transfer money to whoever you want and you can do it al by yourself, no magic or tricks involved.

Oh well, it's something we'll need to get used to.