Saturday, January 23, 2010
Your Bank
Barbara had a blog post recently about banks. She wrote about bank failures and gave some information on how to evaluate the safety of your bank. Don't be put off by the language about using this as an economics lesson for your homeschooled teenagers; this is something we should all check out. Our community bank in Darien had a 5-star rating, but our current bank is going downhill with an increasing "troubled asset ratio." Barbara has several links; the easiest one just tells how many stars your bank rates.
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Susan, I think it's worth the effort to switch to a five-star bank, for peace of mind anyhow. Did you hear they closed five more banks yesterday?
ReplyDeleteBTW talked to our son and he said you and Jane stopped by to say hi in Ft. Wayne. That was nice of you!
I spent the afternoon looking through the website of our "back-up" bank nearby. It has a 5-star rating. I wanted to scope out what they offer for savings accounts, checking accounts, fees for debit cards, etc, so that I would know what to expect and not be blindsided by surprise fees. There are bank branches in our area rated far lower than our current bank, and then also one rated highest. The one with the highest rating pays the lowest interest rates. But with how low the interest rates are, anyway, how much difference would that actually make?
ReplyDeleteInteresting. Our bank is a 3.5 star. I'm not finding a local one that is above a four. I'll have to do some checking around.
ReplyDeleteAs the saying goes, "I'm more interested in the return of my money than the return on my money."
ReplyDeleteAlso, some banks on their way down offer very high rates on CD's, hoping to raise cash. So there can be a downside to those 5% for 1 year CDs.
Seems like most banks are making money off of us with higher fees on everything they can think of, so my theory is, go where it appears to be safest.