How I untangled myself from my Bank

It all began early in 2009 just as the financial crisis was reaching its full potential. Banks were failing and Wall Street began to show its true colors. I started to hear from other people about how they were losing their savings and retirements and there was an abundance of greed around the banking system.

NOTE: For legal reasons, I cannot publish the name of my previous bank, so I can only call it by its pet name: “Bank”

My Bank at the time was one of the largest 5 banks in the United States and the CEO had been required to go in front of Congress to ask for bailout money. (Or maybe to answer questions in regards to the bailout money it had received from taxpayers.) For the first time ever, my Bank was at risk of collapsing and some people thought that was a bad thing. At the time I also thought that would be very bad. Thinking about it current day, I have very different thoughts.

Banks have always been stable businesses and people trust them to hold on to their money. Clearly it wouldn’t make sense for these trusted institutions to be closed so they wouldn’t be used again. I mean even speaking this way is almost a sin. For most people, there is only 1 way a country’s financial system should work and to them, it should just continue to work that same way.

As 2009 ended and 2010 arrived, my feelings began to erode. Greece was in a free fall and they were the rock tied to the feet of the Eurozone. I read financial news articles daily hoping to gain more knowledge about the global financial crisis that was on-going.

Besides the entire world going into financial sickness, I had my own situation to control. I bought a house in August 2007. Before that I had been renting places my entire adult life. Everytime I would visit my Dad he would always say to me “when are you going to buy a house?” and “you are just throwing your money away.” He was right after all. You really should be growing equity through living in a house and making payments on it. So the first weekend after I moved into my house, I drove to see my Dad and proudly announced to him “Dad guess what?!! I bought a house.” He had such a big smile on his face. I still see it to this day.

It made me feel good to listen to the advice of my Dad. He was a smart guy and he was always looking out for the best for me. The thing was that my Dad could not have seen 2008 coming on the horizon. Most people didn’t. I sure didn’t and I had ran full speed into the perfect storm of financial ruin. Anyone who did the same as me and bought a house prior to 2008 know exactly what I am saying.

Fast forward to 2014. I met a great girl and knew that at some point we would be getting married. We wanted a new house and no longer wanted to live in the same house I had been in for 8 years. I began the process of trying to sell my house. (Another story for a different day.)

It didn’t sell. I even tried to do a short sell. I ended up only getting one offer in a year on the market. The offer was for less than half of what I bought the property for. The next day I told my agent to take the listing down. I was going to foreclosure.

At that point, my feelings towards my Bank were really bad. My Bank also just happened to be my mortgage lender. The entire backstory is entirely too long for this post so I will skip all the details on that for now. Basically I no longer wanted anything to do with them anymore.

I knew that I needed to find a different institution for doing my finances, but I didn’t want anything to do with a bank. I ended up finding a credit union which was close to where I lived at. I opened a checking account and they were very helpful. My next step was to start transitioning everything over. The complexity of doing this is grossly understated. Not only did I have my paycheck going to my account, but I paid bills from that account and I had a large amount of automatic withdrawls. I had to go one by one to move each one over. That means I had to call each merchant and tell them to stop taking out payments and then tell them to start taking payments out of the new account. It is a very tricky situation because I had to continue paying bills while moving over my paycheck. (I also switched jobs in that time, which added another layer of complexity.)

The time that elapsed probably totaled about 4 months from start to finish. Technically I still have a mortgage and a loan at that old Bank, but mentally I consider myself detached. It feels good.

I would love to know why so many people continue to ignore the facts about big banks and the greed that is their business model. To continue this discussion, feel free to leave a comment or send me a message.