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this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2024
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Personal Finance
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About the same as a decent bank. That said, I almost never need to actually talk to a human and almost never get loans (my only loan is my mortgage), so you may have a better experience if you do need to engage with a banker more frequently.
I personally use my Fidelity brokerage account as my main bank. My cash is invested in money market funds at rest (currently nearly 5%, and the "brokerage" works as "checking"), their debit card has no foreign transaction fees, and their credit card is one of the best (2% cash back and no foreign transaction fee). However, they don't offer loans outside of margin loans, so I can't go there to get financed for a car or something. I also have an account at a local bank, mostly so I can deposit cash and withdraw specific denominations (we keep cash around for babysitters). That used to be a local credit union, but the bank had a signup bonus so I ended up switching.
I really liked my credit union when I was younger though. I had BECU (WA only I think), and they got me my first credit card and had really friendly staff. But I currently don't have a CU account anymore because I interact with banking services so infrequently.
The important things I look for in a bank/CU are:
There are good banks and bad banks, as well as good credit unions and bad credit unions. Don't just assume a given bank/credit union is good/bad just because it's a bank/credit union, look for reviews online and ideally talk to people with experience with that particular org. The best option is probably a mix of two orgs, one with a good savings rate and one with convenient services. You probably won't get a significantly different loan rate from a credit union vs a bank, and you can always shop around at banks/credit unions you don't have a relationship with.
I personally have a bunch of accounts because I like to go for signup bonuses, and the only ones I really think people should avoid are the mega banks (in order of worse to less bad: Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Key Bank, Chase; Chase is okay if you can reliably avoid fees). You should never pay for a bank account, that's just dumb.
Try getting out of the paper statement fee at a CU. That’s an important one because when the enshitification of their tech crosses your threshold of tolerance, it’s important to have agency to instantly go back to analog. Having that power also creates pressure on them to not enshitify their tech in the first place.
Gratis paper statements seem much less common at CUs than commercial banks.
Also regarding fees: very hard to find CUs that give a zero FX fee when pulling cash from a foreign ATM. IIRC, there is only one CU in the US (Penfed?) that has fee-free foreign currency.
Unless you consider ethics. Chase is one of the worst.
I used to think that. But in my boycott on free technofeudal pushers (Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc) I’ve evolved to prioritize privacy (and thus control) over non-transparent exploitation of my data. Have you thought about why your billpay service is free? It’s outsourced, so the billpay service has to make money somehow. Of course they are selling your data. Google and Amazon want to know about people’s offline purchases so they know whether it traces to an online ad.
Good point. I personally don't find any value in paper statements, but if I did, I would certainly expect those to be free. They're free from my main bank (Fidelity) and my old main CU (local to my state), but I have seen plenty of instances where it's not free.
Eh, I think they're generally better than Wells Fargo and Bank of America. I don't really see what politics has to do with where you choose to bank, just pick one that's convenient for you. Your few thousand dollars aren't going to change anything, they're more interested in business clients, and they mostly support retail clients because they might as well (if they're going to bend down anyway, might as well pick up some pennies).
That's entirely different from loan products like credit cards and auto loans, but IMO you shouldn't care what bank/credit union offers those, you should mostly be looking for the best deal. Don't get a Chase credit card just because you bank at Chase, get one because it's the best match for your spending habits. You should never be paying interest either, so it doesn't matter what the rate is. If you can't autopay the statement in full each month, don't get a credit card. With an auto-loan, you should also be ensuring you can make automated payments reliably every month; if you can't do that, buy a cheaper car. You should never be in a situation where you need to talk to a banker about getting some leeway on a loan, because you shouldn't be taking out loans that put you in that situation to begin with.
That's out the window with banking. The best you can do is find a bank that doesn't have a significant interest in selling your data.
I'm not a fan of Facebook, Google, or Amazon getting access to my transaction history, but that's probably going to happen regardless, unless I use a cryptocurrency. So I figure I might as well get some credit card rewards for that, and I rotate cards so there's not a lot of consistency in the data. I also don't use Facebook, have almost eradicated Google, and generally avoid Amazon, so I'm honestly not that impacted.
That said, the transaction data they could potentially have access to is only vendor, date, card, and amount, they don't get the receipts. So they'll see that I spent $300 at Costco, but they won't know if that was for a TV monitor or a bunch of steaks. I use a separate card at grocery stores (at a separate bank) and yet another for restaurants, so their ability to correlate information is probably limited.
If I could use Monero for everything, I would probably cut up the credit and debit cards and do that instead. But I can't, so I use the thing that gives me rewards (and cash is right out because I hate carrying change).
Idk, I've never used it. I always automate my payments through the vendor, not my bank, and I'll prefer credit cards over checking autodraft. My bills tend to change a bit each month, and I'm far too lazy to go and enter the bill amount manually. I keep a month's worth of expenses in checking, and I check the checking balance and transactions each month.