Daily Decisions: Banking

When Matthew moved up to Beaverton for his six month internship right before we got married, he got an account at Washington Mutual (now Chase).  The reason for this was that he knew he'd be coming back to Corvallis for another few years, and after that he didn't know where he'd be.  I was added onto this account after we got married, and we still have it open.

However... There are a lot of good reasons to support local banking instead of big banks, and a local credit union is a terrific way to accomplish that task.  After moving to the Hillsboro area, we started an account at a credit union in our area.  We have started switching everything over to that account so that we can close our Chase account once we're sure everything has cleared from our checking account.

Coincidentally, there is a current movement to leave big banks and to join credit unions that I didn't know about until after we made the switch.

Especially with the ability to use the ATM pretty much anywhere, I feel like we have no need for a large bank.  Switching is truly an easy way for us to take away support from the banks that operate like those that we had to bail out a few years ago.

Want to know an added benefit?  We found a checking account that offers a 2% interest rate as long as we satisfy a few requirements like using online banking, having a direct deposit occur once per period, and using our debit card for a point-of-sale transaction 12 times per period (good thing I can only carry so many groceries at a time on my bike!).  Two-percent is much better than the rates out there for savings accounts that we've seen, and even if we don't satisfy the requirements one period, the interest earned that period is the same as we were earning at Chase in our savings account.

Yay credit unions!