Does Charles Schwab charge you to withdraw money from your investment account?

I am a long time Schwab (and TD) Customer and I am not an employee of any brokerage firm.

Transfer out assets means you do an institution to institution transfer of your assets (stock, bonds, Cash, money market, or other securties) from your schwab account to other brokerage accounts (e.g. from your schwab account to your TD Ameritrade account). To qualified to be charged by schwab, you need to fill out a "transfer of account" form ( people in the industry call it "TOA" form) to authorize the brokergae firm to request a direct transfer of asset from schwab to your account with their firm.

This transfer will take about 2 to 4 weeks depending on the type of asset in the account. Such charge will also be incurred if you ask the counter broker to start a non-ACAT transfer which does not require a TOA form to be filled out. This type of transfer is usually referred as an express transfer service and will be completed in a few days.

You can always make electronic money transfer (in or out) between your schwab account and your bank accounts (up to 6 different bank accounts, I think) without paying a penny thru schwab’s "Money Link" service. Basically, the service links up your checking/savings bank accounts with your schwab brokerage account. You can use the transfer service page on schwab.com to do the transfer whenever you need to. The setup is free and it will take less than a week. You can just fillout the Money link form in your local schwab branch.

In addition, you can always ask schwab to cut you a check from your account if you need. They can send it to you by mail or you can pick it up in any of their branches as long as you tell them which branch you are going to pick it up from when you make the check request. Usually it will take 24 hours for them to get the check ready and the service is free. If you need to rush it and need the check immediately, they will do it for a fee.

When you set up account, You will be asked if you want to have the checking writing feature, which is called "schwab One check" . Basically, your cash is either receiving interest thru schwab bank interest or schwab money market rate depends on now much of cash you have. Either way, you can write check from the cash amount in your account. So, you can always write yourself a check from the schwab account
and deposit that check to your bank. But since schwab’s brokerage account checking feature is using the PNC bank in PA, your bank may treat your deposit as out of state deposit and will hold the check for 10 days before clearing (if you are not in PA)…

So, you are recommended to do money link electronic transfer if you need the money in urgent. Money link cash transfer completes the same day if you make the transfer early in the day. If it’s after the cutting time ( check with schwab, but I think it’s 2:00pm ET), it will be done the next day.

The charge you mentioned will only happen if you transfer your asset, cash, securities from schwab account to an acocunt with another brokerage firm.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Sal

I’ve used Charles Schwab for over 15 years. I have never been charged for transferring money out of any of my accounts. In fact, you can get check writing priveledges in which you can write checks from your brokerage account.