In case you haven't heard, November 5th is "Bank Transfer Day". This day (which you can read more about here) was determined--by whom I don't know--as the day that everyone who is a customer of big, offending banks is encouraged to transfer their money out of these banks and into credit unions or local banks. I would join in but I already did this long ago.
At first I had accounts at a credit union and at Washington Mutual. Then Washington Mutual was taken over by Chase. Then my free savings and checking accounts were going to be assessed a monthly fee at which time I calmly went into the bank, spoke to the manager, and told her I wanted to close my accounts after more than two decades at her bank. I told her that if the bank ever decided to rescind the fee, she should give me a call and I would reconsider opening another account at her bank. Needless to say, she never called and I have never had another account at a big bank. Now my money happily resides in two local credit unions where I get great customer service and completely free banking services.
FYI, the reason I keep checking and savings accounts in two separate credit unions is because I travel a lot and since I don't use credit cards (only ATM cards/debit cards linked to my bank accounts which can be used just like credit cards) this is a redundancy in case one bank decides to put a fraud hold on my account and I can't use their bank card (it happened once years ago because I had forgot to alert the banks that I would be using my bank card outside of the US).
In case you need another reason to do this, check out this article.
My situation was nearly identical to yours. I was with WaMu for 16 years, tolerated Chase until they announced fees (plus their customer service sucked), and opened accounts at a local credit union -- where they treat me like a princess, without fees of any kind! My husband opened his own accounts there, as did my 2 adult daughters and 2 of their friends. So Chase lost out on at least 6 people's business to the credit union. Serves them right!
ReplyDeleteGood looking out CN, here is a link to a web site that helps people find a local credit union, and what the requirements are: http://creditunionaccess.com/
ReplyDeleteYou can also find help from others from sites like MetaFilter.
A word of advise though; Keep cash in your home or apartment. Anywhere from $1-5k. If the banks get scared they will limit your daily withdrawls to a certain amount a day, and credit cards could possibly become useless for a bit. Since the country does not have that much actual "printed cash" on hand, you will have much more leeway if forced to barter. Cash would remain king for a few months.