What a Difference . . .

At the risk of sounding totally cheesy - I'm going to share a really cool experience.  Over the last 15 years, I have done banking, mostly, with a "giant, monster mega-bank".  Keybank, to be specific.  I signed up with them in my early twenties and just kept all my accounts there.  When Adam and I married, I encouraged him to do the same so that we could merge accounts easier.  He did.  One thing that I learned to get used to was fees from the bank.  Fees for this, fees for that and so on.  It seemed they were just waiting for me to slip up a little, so that they could apply more fees.  However, the longer we had a relationship with this bank, the more trouble it was to just go to a different financial institution.  So, it seemed, we were stuck.  We referred to our bank as "the money pimps" and made jokes about it.  We were careful not to incur fees - but sometimes they got us anyway.

It was in listening to The Clark Howard Show one day that I heard how different things are when a person banks with a local bank or credit union.  In fact, the report was on how those "giant monster mega-banks" actually use computer software to increase the likelyhood of fees assessed on checking accounts.  It was eye-opening for me.  Adam and I were about to move and we were sold on finding a local credit union when we got settled.

Fast forward one year.  We've been banking with a small, local credit union since we moved.  We hadn't had any problems - and no strange fees.  But yesterday, we needed to withdraw a large amount of cash - knowing we'd be left with only about $50 in the checking account afterward.  Adam was in a rush and accidentally withdrew $100 more than we needed.  When he came out I checked the amount and was nervous that we'd incurred fees for overdrawing our account.  Quickly, I used Adam's iPhone to check our account status.  And to my delight, instead of charging us with fees - which they could've rightly done, our credit union had just transferred $100 from our savings account to our checking account when the withdrawal request was made.  I checked later - and there were no fees associated with this service. 
I was really impressed.  I'm still really impressed.  I was never impressed with the mega-bank. 
This is an unusual post - but I just wanted to share a positive experience.