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Today, during my lunch hour, I went to FNB Tokai to close my money market account. My reasoning being that it seems silly to have a money market account when you have an a access bond or mortgage from which you can withdraw any excess funds that you might have paid into the bond over and above your monthly repayments. You are better off settling current debt unless your investments are likely to outperform whatever interest rate you are currently being charged for that debt.

So I ran this logic past the "consultant" just to check if there was any good reason for me to keep the money market account which costs me R20 per month. In a nutshell, she proceeded to explain how money invested at 5.5% p.a. in the money market account would be better than having it in my mortgage account where I am charged 8.5% p.a. in interest on the outstanding balance of my bond.

I then had to explain to her the flaw in her logic, but kept it short as possible as I realised there was no hope for her... So I asked what do I need to do to close the account, at which point I found out I could not close the account there since apparently one can only close an account at the branch where the account was opened. Funny, the telephone banking consultant I spoke to the other day neglected to mention that fact.

Thanks for wasting my lunch hour, FNB!

UPDATE: After phoning the branch where my account is held, I found out that it is possible to close an account from any branch.