How many of you are still banking with a bank? 

(GASP)

*THAT* Many?!?!?!?

Look folks, you need to RUN, don’t walk, and join a local credit union.  I’m amazed at how often I hear of friends, family members, and friendly neighborhood superheroes I know who still put their money in a bank.

EWWWWWWW! 

If you need just ONE good reason, it’s this: a bank is for-profit.  A Credit Union is non-profit.  Unless you’re an owner or an investor at the bank, there’s absolutely no reason for you to give them your money.  You’re just making someone else money.  Conversely, when you’re a member of a Credit Union, *you* are part owner of the bank.  *You* get the profits.

There are many other benefits:

• You probably will get much better loan rates for cars, houses, consolidation loans, boats, etc.
• There’s a good chance  you’ll get a better rate on investment, like CD’s, checking accounts, etc.
• You’ll probably be able to avoid a ton of fees commonly associated with banking.
• If the credit union makes a lot of money, you get it back, either in the form of lower rates or an actual refund.  I remember one time back before 2000 that for  three years in a row, our credit union gave back $5 million to it’s members.  I personally got about a thousand dollars in the form of cash back, refunds on interest paid on loans, etc.
• The employees are fantastic.  They’re nice, courteous, professional, funny, and really good folk to do business with. 

I’ve been a Credit Union member since 1994 when I started work at Motorola in Austin, and have always been pleased with my decision to move from a regular bank to a credit union.  They’ve always been there for me for car loans, investments, and an extreme lack of fees that would normally eat up into my cash.

I also wanted to give shout-out to Malinda and Monica at the Parmer branch of TruWest credit union - your smiling faces always make my day better; thank you!

You’re trying to get us to tell you where we bank so you can steal our money, aren’t you.

Won’t work, Mr. Hall.

Credit unions are good in many situations. Small, local banks also offer a lot of the same benefits, too.

I use BOFA because of the online banking and bill pay, which is decades more advanced than most small banks and credit unions.

I switched from a CU to a bank because the bank offered 5% interest on checking for one year (current non-promotional rate is 3%, which is still way better than my CU offered) and reimburses other bank’s ATM fees (and doesn’t charge me any of their own). I am still a member of the CU in case I need to take advantage of other services.

Poppy, no, I create internet memes for people to fill out so I can figure out where they bank, what their first pet’s name was, who their first grade teacher was, who they gave their first kiss to, etc so when I “reset their password” online, I can have a decent chance at guessing the answers to the secret questions, then I intercept their mail by forging their MX record and then sending myself a couple thou via EFT.

Avi, I have to admit the online presence was always lagging, but it’s sufficient for my purposes. Quicken can interface with it online and do the updates well enough, and before I really got into that integration, the online bill pay was still good through the CU. It could have used an interface upgrade, because the GUI had NO aesthetics but it still worked fine and I never had a problem.

Ren, yeah I can understand that - my credit union will go to 4% if you have $100,000 but why wouldn’t one just get one of those 5 year 5% CD’s if you had that kind of money?

Exactly.

Wayne, you are such a dork.

This is 12th grade finance. Everyone knows the difference and pros and cons of a CU over a bank.

And if you are still at a CU and not with Merrill Lynch, something is wrong…

CUs are for people under thirty. Go to a bank. You should have at least six months’ living expenses in the bank anyway, and you get a much better interest rate.

So, keep at least 30k in the bank. Open an MMA with Merrill Lynch, and throw it in there. Where HAVE you been? didn’t your parents teach you this stuff before you left the house after high school?

Someone just got sk00l3ed.

Yeah, this is the kind of post where I actually DO bop him on the head for being a total ‘tard.

I will be in town next week, and, rest assured, I will be really giving him a hard time on this one. I think I will make him pay for lunch for making me endure this blog.

Sometimes he says things that just make me go, “Uh, Wayne, DUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.” Other times, I just sigh and don’t say anything.

I don’t know what his ego would be like if I weren’t around. And since I am so much smarter than him, my life is but to make him feel stupid at least once a week.

I feel stupid daily without help from others! But, not constantly. I just do individual stupid things.

I am the queen of stupid stuff. I am book smart, but I have no common sense. Wayne has to slap me around a lot, because I seriously have no common sense. Stuff that comes naturally to others just completely eludes me…

Absurdist, so although I couldn’t tell at first, essentially you’re saying I’m really smart because I’ve been at a credit union since 1994.

Do not deduce from the statement “I am smarter than Wayne” that I am at all indicating that you are smart. It’s all relative.

And yes, I am dissing myself.