Planet Sillicon

Finding the best bank account

By blog on Apr. 2, 2009.

I don’t like to shop, really, and there really are few things more irritatingly complex to shop for as bank accounts. You would think if you banked with one bank for a decade, that you could rely on them to, oh I don’t know, do business the way they always have! But no, with all this financial ruin going, on banks are raising their fees all over the place. Those that are still in business, anyway.

It isn’t just bank fees, either, it is also the banks trying to keep profit margins at the same line at the sacrifice of customers and lower level staff. The last time I walked into my bank, at 11:00am in the morning mind you, I was waiting in line for 25 minutes! Why? Because there were two tellers, a manager who was also the loans officer, and that was it! The rest of their staff had either had their hours massively reduced, or been laid off. I couldn’t believe it, this was a branch that was normally very busy!

So after seeing the bank’s notice of upping fees, and in light of the branch being so under staffed, I decided it was time for a change. Now I get to the complicated task of looking at which bank charges what for which type of account, and what sort of account do I want anyway? I have to say, I also don’t want to jump ship to a sinking boat, so many banks have collapsed I want to be sure the bank I chose wouldn’t be one of them.

I went around gathering up every banking brochure I could find, and after pouring through them, with alternate highlighter colours for different types of accounts and levels of bank fees, I decided to go over to Nationwide and use their savings account. For one, I know they aren’t about to collapse, as they just bought out Dumfermline, and secondly, the fees are pretty good.

My ultimate goal is to never have to leave my house, never have to interact with people I don’t choose to, and never have to stand in line at a bank for 25 minutes at what should be the slowest time of the day.

So after all my highlighting, I suppose the choice wasn’t that difficult… I just really didn’t like all the running around I had to do to find a new bank. It is worth, though, to not be losing that much money each month in fees.