I was based in the US and I’ve been using two bank accounts over the last ~6 months of traveling:
- Alliant Credit Union -
- 2% interest on savings accounts, and… you don’t need to keep money in the checking account! Set up overdraft protection and if for some reason you need money from the checking account, it will kick in for free up to 6 times a month. I have under $100 in the checking account - all are reimbursed ATM fees.
- ATM fee reimbursement for up to $15/mo (or thereabouts; enough that I always got reimbursed),
- mobile app with mobile check deposit even of pictures from your laptop screen (!; yep. No need to mail checks to yourself, just get someone or your virtual mailbox to take a photo of them)
- no-nonsense fast website
- TIAA bank
- ATM fee reimbursement up
- checking interest
- Alliant is still better, but it’s good to have a backup bank
As for credit cards,
- Chase Sapphire Reserve (of course; if you can pay it every month in full)
- American Express Blue Cash - APR only 15%, vs. 22% for the Sapphire Reserve. You can pile on expenses on the AMEX and you’ll be far better off in terms of monthly interests savings, than with the Chase Sapphire
- Alliant Credit Union’s VISA card with 3% cashback in the first year, and 2.5% cash back in subsequent years. I haven’t used this one yet.
- Capital One 1.5% cashback - no messing around with points; just straight cash back. Warning: they did detect that I was using a Traveling Mailbox address and threatened to close my account unless I gave them my real physical residential address.
Hope this helps!