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Last year, my husband and I moved our savings account to a local credit union and our checking  to USAA, a fantastic banking/investment/insurance group in San Antonio for military members. Neither of these institutions charges ATM fees.  In fact, I now use the ATM @ the regional bank we fled, Citizen's Bank, and USAA reimburses the fee for usage. That's $2.75 per use! The credit union has great loan rates and they still call if there's a problem. The bank is now charging $39 for ISF and an annual credit card fee and their interest rate on the ATM (which we've cut up) went to 20%.  My son had an overdraft for a $5 purchase last month and his ongoing, steadily rising ISF fees are now @ $221!  I kid you not. 

Meanwhile, we sold our home of 12 yrs last month, paid off the Countrywide/BofA mortgage which the bank refused to re-negotiate the mortgage. My husband had lost his job but I work and we'd never missed a pymt. We couldn't continue with an interest only mortgage and knew we could handle a standard 30 yr fixed but they wouldn't consider it. We sold it, paid them off and may not buy again for a long time.

Over the past 18 mos, my husband, an experienced businessman with a solid retail background and successful history of owning his own businesses, made & was accepted on two solid ongoing businesses.  But, even with credit ratings in the low 800s, no bank would lend to us without a 30% down.  Now, these are the same banks that received bail out money from the taxpayers.

Enough is enough.  Stand up, move your money into a local institution and repeat that great line from the movie, "Network":

"I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!"

Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Banking's Brave New World

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I just received this email from my husband. It's about our bank, Citizen's Bank.

"They sent notices that they are going to start charging $30 annual fee for an overdraft line of credit and an additional $5 fee for each use of the overdraft line. Then, they closed my personal checking account without telling me because it had a $0 balance. Do you have a preference for a new bank?"

Now, I've left out the expletives. He is so @#!!*#! mad right now. The banks just can't seem to squeeze us enough can they? My husband took over our bills about a year ago. He decided to do online banking which I'd always refused to do because I didn't trust doing anything monetary online. He made me get a debit card, etc. The upshot of all this was, even though the bank advises you to set the timing of the bill pay 7 days prior to due date, they STILL miss the deadlines from time to time,
incurring late fees which we then have to call the bank and ask them to pay, etc. etc. They now assess $29 or more for ISF. They sock it to you for every damn item they pushed on you in the first place, such as credit card annual fees. Even Wells Fargo Bank, whom I once considered to be one of the best banks in the West (before they went national) charges a higher interest rate on their credit card and wants an annual fee. They got rid of their reward points plans or made them so crappy it isn't worth the effort. I used to love the free RT airline ticket with every 25,000 pts accrued. Banks now charge a 3% fee for a balance transfer. Used to be zero, 3% or a maximum of $75, whichever was higher. I mean, they're getting our money and charging us interest. I played that transfer game pretty well; going from zero transfer fee to zero transfer fee. It took them longer than I ever imagined to demolish that.

Now, if I had crap credit, I wouldn't complain. But my husband and I have credit ratings in the high 700s and have even been in the low 800s. Doesn't matter. Nothing matters to these greedy SOBs who used our savings to invest in high risk mortgages, junk bonds, etc., continued to award bonus money for bad investments and golden parachutes to CEOs who could manage a pay toilet until the feds wised up and put a stop to it, albeit too late to attach strings to the original TARP money.

So, I'm going to find a new bank, probably our credit union. I'm going where the fees are non-existent and the service is what I vaguely recall from the old days. When I find one, I'll let you know.