Hey, I am days away from turning 17 and looking to get a bank account and debit card. I am planning to enter freelance writing/video production online. I need a way to receive and spend cash online. I do a lot of online shopping and try my best to manage various subscriptions through my parents (for example, my MMO account) but it’s just not working since they make me pay it manually in increments every month rather than let me just enable the freaking recurring payment on their card. I also tend to do a lot of consumer research on my products and look for the best deals possible on internet sites. Most computer programs I use are specialty programs that tend to be on the expensive prosumer side of the spectrum and these are almost exclusively sold online.
I am looking to do professional internet work, opening sites and the like and generally being involved in the online world, so you understand why it is excruciating to tap a parent on the shoulder every time I need to spend a buck on site maintenance or my EVE subscription. Plus, I personally hate doing it, I shouldn’t have to explain why, I think you’d understand just how childish it makes one feel to tug a pantleg and ask mom and dad for things, even if they are video editing suites that cost hundreds of dollars.
Ideally I’d be able to buy something off Amazon, subscribe to an online service and be able to get paid directly to my account for something I just published… all without having to go through my parents. Since it’s my debit and not credit, I’d never be spending money I don’t have, just moving funds in and out fluidly.
Again, this is critical to doing anything of use online. Without the ability to buy/sell online you can’t start a website, pay for virus protection, have meaningful product selection and buy specialty parts sold nowhere else. Plus it would be extremely hard to fluidly submit my writing to several organizations and get the cash wired through to a tangible form and not dollars handed down to me from my parent’s pocket… Ugh. Suggestions on banks to use, what online banking really is, how I should go about doing this, if it is even possible… etc.
Thanks for reading, help would mean a lot to me, I’m really lost as to what I need, despite my best researching efforts on the topic.