If you have a bank account...

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Shut it down and get your money, put it in a credit union...you will be better off that way. Why would you go to a bank that charges for everything when you can go to a credit union with no fees? Like seriously if you use a bank I say abandon it and find a credit union to put your money in. Unless you like paying fees for every service, when a credit union provides all the services of a bank with no fees. I mean sure at least for mine you have to keep 5 dollars in the savings which is counted as holding part of the stock of the company but other than that no fees for anything at all, but all the services you can get from a bank.

before I started using the credit union, I used wells fargo....and if anything I give them a bad review. Bad customer service, fees for nearly anything...and yeah really sh***y customer service.

I notice no responses so far....so does this mean you all read this and changed your ways.


Or does it mean you think you are perfectly happy with your fee charging bank account? and aren't willing to change...

Or are you so anti-socialist you think you should be paying the fees and if you don't you're cheating somehow?

not a lot of traffic at this hour sweetums. not on this side of the atlantic at least.

how does one shut down a bank?


i'm on SSI, don't know if that's compatible with any credit union. i read that you used to use wells fargo.... i use them currently, haven't had to pay any fees yet, the customer service is nothing to complain about.

I don't pay any fees for my bank account unless I go overdrawn which I never do.

I never had to pay fees at my banks except maybe for checks but I get my 1st set for free or if I get overdrawn but that never happened. I've only had local banks thou. The bigger 1s are aLOT worse with fees(at least when I was looking to switch banks). I also like the idea of supporting a local bank instead of a big one that's spending money & lobbying for things I'm against. I don't have a savings account or anything extra thou cuz I'm on Social Security Disability & don't have a lot of money to spare. I will have to pay a fee if I get overdrawn, order new checks(my 1st batch were free & I've only ever used one since I switched banks after I moved 5 years ago cuz I use my creditcards for everything I can) & if I don't have a monthly deposit(my SSDI is one) but I can miss a month here & there.

I was at my bank depositing a cheque the other day and I thought while I was there I would draw out some money.
They told me it would cost $2.50 to draw out cash over the counter.
If I had wanted my cheque cashed, it would have cost me $30

I think either a state credit union or a state bank is the way to go. Not the national/international banking giants.

We do not have credit unions where i live and fees are low at my bank.

Your experience of the world is not a universal truth.

I don't know about where you live but in Poland we have many banks to choose from and each of them has a fer account types to choose from so it isn't too difficult to find a bank account that fits your needs.

I use 3 banks:

1. An old one that was my only account when I were a kid (the only bank with an account for 13 year olds at that time) and didn't bother to close it. It's only fee was a card fee (5PLN/month if you don't pay with your card 2 times a month, 0 PLN if you do) which I removed by cancelling the card. Without the card it is 100% free.
I use this account for sending cash fast between me, mom and grandma (it gets through right away unless its a weekend) and internet payments sometimes.

2. A free account that I use everyday. 100% free, with a card you can pay at shops, in the internet, in every polish ATM and some ATMs abroad. No fees and it even has a saving option with +2,2% yearly rate.

3. A money exchange account(with free foreign currency card) that I use to buy USD for Aliexpress shopping. No fees.

There are also banks/account with fees (such as 30PLN/month) but with benefits such as cash back. For example they will return 6% of the amount to your account for every card shop transaction for over 300PLN at a time. It's not good for me because I don't spend that much (I only have 700PLN SSI/month so 300PLN spent in one shopping would be way too much) but for normal people it's a good deal (rumored average wage is 3500PLN/month so 300PLN in one shop is not that rare and you will be getting back more than the bank fee is with just 2 of such transactions per month).

I have to give my bank 11 dollars a month for using a debit card instead of cash withdrawl. I would rather not pay this fee...

You should look into a credit union in your area then, Sarah.

But don't just suddenly withdraw all the money from your bank, until you're sure the credit union is better in all things.

lol, I didn't think of that when I posted this as I didn't realize how late it had gotten. Also I meant people should shut down their bank accounts and get credit union accounts instead, not sure how you go about shutting down an entire bank.

I don't have any fee if I go overdrawn, which I'd like to say never happens but it does from time to time...usually I'll go over by like a few cents. With Wells Fargo it was a 30 dollar fee anytime it happened, but with my credit union it will just take a little out of my savings account to cover it(I try to keep a little money in there) or if I didn't have any in savings I'd just have pay back what I over-spent but no added fee. So that aspect is certainly better for me, I can't afford to pay 30 dollars every time I get overdrawn by 50 cents.

That is the sort of thing I am talking about, with my credit union there is no fee for that, also there are quite a few ATMs that have no fee for cash withdrawl basically any of them at 7-11 and there's a few other locations.

Might be worth at least looking into.

Banks tend to charge more fees for poorer people. It's true.

I've never heard of 'credit unions' and I am not sure if we have them in my country, but we do have some "non-bank financial institutions" like http://cfifinancial.com/home

People go for banks because.... it's safer? I don't know how the banking system works in your country, but usually banks are supervised and regulated by a Central Bank, like the case in my country, each bank has to keep a total percentage of 10% of reserves every year, that was even before Basel III.

So if I have a deposit, and my bank collapses, the Central Bank would take care of it and gives me back my cash. With a non-bank FI I wouldn't benefit from this safety measure, in a time of crisis what is gone is gone forever.

I live in a region which is a pot of fire that may explode anytime (ie regional wars, terrorism....etc) so I prefer to stick to what is safer, like for example, a while ago due to some concerning news, I turned half of my saving to the US Dollars even though I would benefit a much higher return interest rate and less fees on the saving in local currency.