This is cute. I like the tenacity of what you're doing here. Thing is, it's entirely impossible. To start a bank you need capital to leverage your deposits. Th

This is cute. I like the tenacity of what you're doing here. Thing is, it's entirely impossible. To start a bank you need capital to leverage your deposits. That's anything from 10-30%, so to have a liability of $1000 you'll need $300 in capital reserves just to keep within the rules. Then there's the insurance you'll need to buy on the risk you take, and the other ways you'll need to turn profit - otherwise, why will i invest in you (with retail deposits?) As jacques said, credit unions are a simpler step- but even simpler are lending groups where everyone pitches in money and then everyone takes a turn in being able to borrow from the pool. I can't quite recall the name of these structures, but they are on wikipedia- NPR's Planet Money podcast covered them a few months ago. (which, if you are in any way interested in this stuff, you should listen to back-to-front). But i don't think it's the banking that's the problem. If you have a bunch of money - liquidity - then it's easy to move it around to ensure you're covered. Then you don't get hit by charges. In fact, most systems (wells fargo included) do this by default now, and you don't even have to care. You can realize then that cashflow is the lifeblood of small biz, and if you have it, everything is great. If you don't, you're screwed. The bottom line might seem to be that it's hard to be financially stable when you're starting out/contracting/consulting/low paycheck, whatever. There are two ways of dealing with this: making a strict budget and keeping to it (boring) or deferring your care till you make enough money to just buy that debt off - in which you risk bankruptcy and other nasty things.