[Jimmy Stang]

I used to work for CIBC (many moons ago), and when my staff benefit of no-fee banking ran out, I was shocked at the amount of fees my wife and I were now paying. We're pretty low maintenance customers: we do everything online or at an ATM, we haven't stood in a queue in a branch in years, we probably write about one cheque every five years and only when there is no other option, etc. We have our investments elsewhere, and our mortgage is also elsewhere.

PC Financial is the ideal solution for daily banking for me. We have a few different accounts for various things, never pay any fees, never need a branch for anything, and we have access to all of CIBC's machines (which is pressy essential - they're everywhere). Essentially, I have changed nothing about how I bank (when compared with being with CIBC), and the only difference is that I don't have to pay fees, which were getting towards $30/month between my wife and myself, for the exact same level of service.

I suppose that I could keep a high enough balance to have my fees waived at one of the big banks, but I'd rather keep any extra "cash" elsewhere (like ING, for example) where it can gain slightly higher interest rates yet still be relatively accessible.

Edit: And to answer your question more specifically - we use debit for virtually every purchase. Likely to the order of 50 transactions a month. All of our bills (15?) are paid online. We transfer money a couple of times a month between our PC accounts, and we also have some automatic EFT transfers going to some accounts at ING. An emergency fund for the dogs, for example, in lieu of what we were paying for pet insurance previously. I prefer these EFTs to be weekly (as with my mortgage) as there is a slight benefit with interest, but it also psychologically easier to have these little weekly monthly "micro payments" as opposed to a big chunk coming out monthly.