Banks and Bankers

After we sold the property in Kalifornistan, we were relieved at last from the jumbo mortgage and the ludicrous L. A. County property taxes, not to mention the cost of insurance, utilities and upkeep. All of a sudden, there was a place in the budget for putting some money away, rather than allocating funds to the aforementioned money sinks. That was the good news.

The bad news is that when the mortgage balance went to zero and our combined checking and savings account were less than a specific (and large) minimum, the bank where we held the mortgage began charging us about a dollar a day in “fees.” It seems that when we did some refinancing a few years ago to provide the funds for building the Arizona home, “they” required us to sign up for this fancy bank product which provided brokerage services, bonus interest rates, bigger discounts, and fee waivers for many common banking services, none of which we needed.

Damsel and I are 15 and 33 year members of two credit unions whose memberships were available as benefits from previous employers. Both have competitive interest rates for the savings accounts and the checking accounts are free of charge. Plus, our only credit card is issued from one of the CUs (we don’t use it much, but it’s good to have).

So, I fired the bank today. It was the obvious thing for us to do. I electronically transferred the funds out of the bank to our joint savings where we have our retirement accounts. I went to the bank branch office here in town and asked them to close the accounts, which they grudgingly did.

While having a branch here in town was convenient for us to deposit checks, etc., we now can electronically deposit our checks to either credit union via scanner or smartphone. That is even more convenient than visiting the local branch. I think we did the right thing in firing the commercial bank.