The Initial Checking Account | General comparisons | Discussion forum

Greetings,

I've recently moved to Canada (and Ontario) and I'm looking to open my initial checking account with one of the products offered by the standard banks in my town.

This account is going to be my primary account so it's going to have a high level of financial traffic and I have a good idea of what kind of services I'm looking for in this account. But what I'm having trouble figuring out is the various rules for waiving the account fees; I understand the concept of large levels of minimum balances ($3000~$5000) but it seems to be only applicable in the checking account itself. I'm having trouble finding a bank that links its fee-waiving deposit to another account, i.e. a savings & checking account linked together in a package that has the interest accumulating savings act as the fee waiving balance.

In the end, I want to set up a checking account that will grow on interest if left alone and not wither away on monthly fees. I have no problem maintaining a large balance to get this but after looking at the top tier products it seems that what ever I'm saving in fees by maintaining this balance is canceled out by the lack of interest being earned on that balance.

So, after this long preamble, my questions are:

Thanks for the help,
Rondo