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There are no fees at America’s smallest bank
- AdamJacobMuller 3y agohttps://archive.is/jfRGB https://archive.is/jfRGB
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- blakesterz 3y agoSammons, the fourth generation of his family to run the 100-plus-year-old S&L and its only full-time employee, confides that he’s a bit tech-averse. “Computers are great when they work,” says the 55-year-old, laughing. “I don’t have the patience for them.” Most days I bet most of us would agree with that statement!
- latchkey 3y agoHalf the time when my computer doesn’t “work” it is because I am using it to deal with outdated banks and credit cards. Today, I was trying to pay 2 parking tickets. First one went through just fine. Second one failed with invalid zip code, even though I was using the same one. Turns out that since I have different mailing and billing addresses, it was randomly picking the one to use.
- SoftTalker 3y agoYep. I was just trying to fill out a PDF form for my taxes. A complete nightmare. Tried three different PDF viewers that had different bugs or incompatibilities with the form. Finally had to start a Windows VM to run Acrobat, that was the only way to get it done, other than print the blank form and fill it out by hand which in retrospect would have saved me about 40 minutes. I have been in software and IT for my whole career and I absolutely hate computers now. I want nothing to do with them when I retire, and I'm going to deliberately structure my life accordingly.
- dangerlibrary 3y agoI've had decent luck with Xournal's "Annotate PDF" feature. It's not really interacting with the PDF form at all, so if the form is at all complicated it'd be a waste of your time. But, if you just need to "sign" something by dropping a transparent PNG on a line at the bottom and typing in a date, it's perfect.
- silisili 3y agoSame. Sometimes my wife asks why I don't play on the computer or social media, and I tell her it's because I hate computers. She expectedly says...but you're a programmer. I think doing anything all day every day sucks the joy out of it.
- freshocean 3y ago> I think doing anything all day every day sucks the joy out of it. totally relatable. same might hold true with driving, cooking, gardening, etc also. :)
- nebula8804 3y agoSounds like you are purposely making your life worse by using something like Linux. Don't blame the machine when it is running poorly tested software that likely did not consider UX. Have you tried using a Mac full time? It lacks the ad-bloatware of Windows 11 while still retaining some POSIX compatibility.
- andrepd 3y agoI've used Mac, Windows 10, and Linux (KDE and Cinnamon). Linux has been an infinitely more pleasant experience.
- BirAdam 3y agoI’ve used em all. I hate Windows. MacOS is “fine”, and Linux can be great. The issues with Linux are on edge cases, just like macOS. They’re just in different places, imho.
- Arrath 3y agoChange that to "Computers/Printers" and you'll probably have universal appeal
- BirAdam 3y agoPrinters are directly descended from Satan himself. Edit: and printing is the one part of the tech world that really is worse than it used to be. Most of the time, it’s just rose colored glasses that make us think things are worse. Computers used to be awful. Constant crashing and rebooting, and stuff randomly failing to work. Slow, bad UX, etc. printers, however, worked fairly reliably. Then… inkjet, laser jet and fuck this jet. Printers haven’t worked since inkjet became a thing. Dye sublimation printers, thermal printers, and impact printers seem to work forever without issue. The common inkjet printer is just a pile of plastic and bullshit.
- grogenaut 3y agoWhat's hilarious is how much better my 3d printer is for usability than a paper printer.. That said get a B&W laser from brother or other and shit generally jsut works
- euroderf 3y agoThat being said, the advent of USB made "Life with Printers" a lot more survivable. Parallel and (especially!) serial ports were straight from hell.
- tadfisher 3y agoI think the regulatory pressure to consolidate is well known by the Fed leadership, and they've at least announced a desire to protect small institutions and do more to encourage de novo institutions[0]. But I disagree with the idea that Dodd-Frank in particular has much to do with encouraging smaller banks to consolidate, considering its provisions kick in at defined levels of capitalization. The practice of "charter stripping", which is when fintech/crypto startups purchase a small community bank for their Federal banking charter and discard the rest, probably has a bit more impact, and that's exactly what relaxing the rules against de novo charters would alleviate. [0]: https://www.bankingdive.com/news/federal-reserve-governor-Michelle-bowman-de-novo-banks/647832/ https://www.bankingdive.com/news/federal-reserve-governor-Mi...
- eltondegeneres 3y agoThere's a nice documentary from 2002 about Germany's smallest bank, which also doesn't use computers: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schotter_wie_Heu https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schotter_wie_Heu
- iLoveOncall 3y agoI have bank accounts in 3 different countries and none of them have any fees either. What they have thought is redundant documentation of my funds that guarantee I won't be SoL when the building burns down with the paper ledger in it like this bank here. I really don't understand this fascination or even admiration for outdated ways.
- linksnapzz 3y agoI'm sure Mr. Sammon's typist keeps the pink copy of the carbon with your account data on it offsite. Many of this bank's customers would be baffled at the necessity of having bank accounts in three different countries. They haven't left Newton County, Indiana since high school.
- michaelhoffman 3y agoThe old-school way to document savings accounts is with a passbook: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passbook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passbook If this bank offers that, then you have the redundant documentation yourself.
- iLoveOncall 3y agoThat doesn't seem like the kind of redundancy that the bank would trust. It's nice for you to see what is in your account but you cannot reconstruct a trusted bank ledger from those. (but I may be wrong, the wikipedia page is short in details)
- LoganDark 3y ago> I have bank accounts in 3 different countries How is this even possible? Do you have citizenship in all three countries?
- em-bee 3y agotemporary residence or work permit is enough. and you can have that in multiple countries at once.
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- adrr 3y agoWith an aversion to technology, i really wonder how this bank supports electronic transfers like ATM, ACH, wires etc. Is there a core banking system running?
- Kerrick 3y agoIt seems not to support ATMs, as mentioned in the large sub-heading (the "deck" as it's known in news parlance). > There’s no ATM, no website and constant worries about being “too small to survive.”
- deathanatos 3y agoThere are multiple ways to read that: as a bank, you can have no ATMs, but still allow your customers to withdraw money via other banks' ATMs, though there is almost always a fee for this. (But I can even see one still claiming "no fees at this bank", as the fee could be assessed by the ATM-owning bank.)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- xeromal 3y agoThe article states they do none of that. Just savings that you can drop off or pick up at the branch.
- piperswe 3y agoThis may be America's smallest bank, but there are smaller credit unions! From what I can tell, Holy Trinity Baptist Federal Credit Union is the smallest, operating since 1966 with about $16k in deposits according to their EOY 2022 financial report: https://ncuso.org/credit-union/17269/financials/ https://ncuso.org/credit-union/17269/financials/
- smelendez 3y agoHere’s an interesting article about church-based credit unions. It looks like they exist to offer better options to underbanked populations and are often limited to church members: https://religionnews.com/2018/10/30/church-run-credit-unions-keep-the-faith-despite-challenges/ https://religionnews.com/2018/10/30/church-run-credit-unions...
- inferiorhuman 3y agoCredit unions, by law, must have restrictions on who can join. Often times they're gated by where you live, what city you worship in, where you work. I'm a member of a large California based credit union and while the low/no fees are nice, their general incompetence is awful.
- yencabulator 3y agoIncluding donating $5 to a charity, where the credit union pays the $5 on your behalf: https://www.alliantcreditunion.org/membership#faqs https://www.alliantcreditunion.org/membership#faqs
- sharkweek 3y agoI'm at a credit union for a chunk of my banking. Their tech is bad, but you know what I love? When I call the number on the back of the debit card a human answers the call after a few minutes and 9/10 times can fix whatever I need fixed themselves.
- inferiorhuman 3y ago
- tmountain 3y agoHow many mortgages can they service with 3M in assets? Seems like they'd be very limited in that regard.
- adamredwoods 3y agoIn the US, originator mortgages get sold to other banks, who then can wait 30 years for repayment. For example, Fannie Mae. https://www.fanniemae.com/about-us https://www.fanniemae.com/about-us
- goodcanadian 3y agoFrom the article: There are currently only 40 or so mortgages outstanding, and as customers pass away, the stock is not being replenished with loans to younger generations, who have no particular affinity for in-person banking.
- tmountain 3y agoThe realest form of attrition...
- abdullahkhalids 3y agoHow viable is a bank, which offers exactly: * No physical bank branch. Only online banking * a current account with a monthly fee * a debit card that can be used at other banks' ATM - monthly fee. * Debit card can't be directly used online. But you can generate merchant specific card numbers on the website. Say, your monthly fee is $20. Then 4000 customers brings in a million dollars an year. How much is spent on fraud by a bank every year? Could a single person with a few part-time contractors run a bank of this nature?
- jermaustin1 3y agoThis is kind of how I'm set up. I use Ally for their checking and savings and privacy for their merchant specific card numbers. It works reasonably well for me. It would be cool to have a real FDIC insured, licensed bank with this built in some how. I'd be willing to pay $25/mo for something that is first-party.
- popcalc 3y agoRelay (Thread Bank) offers generating virtual cards.
- boring_twenties 3y agoCiti has had "virtual account numbers" since at least 2005. (Back then, you needed the Flash player to use them, or was it Java...)
- V__ 3y agoThese sound like direct banks. In Germany, there are a few of those, ING being the largest, and represent about 50% of the private market. Pretty viable therefore.
- abdullahkhalids 3y agoING [1] is offering a variety of financial services, including financing and savings accounts. Such banks necessarily have to operate at scale, in order to offset fraud/investment loss. I am specifically asking for the viability of a small "dumb" bank, which engages in only the lowest risk activity. Surely, technology has reached the point where a small team can create a bank of the sort I am suggesting. But do financial regulations and economic realities allow for it? [1] https://www-ing-de.translate.goog/?_x_tr_sl=en&_x_tr_tl=ur&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-ing-de.translate.goog/?_x_tr_sl=en&_x_tr_tl=ur&_...
- kibwen 3y ago> According to Roger Lowenstein, a financial journalist and author of America’s Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve, bank regulations used to protect small lenders in particular—in the 1930s you couldn’t have more than one branch or operate across state lines. I say we bring this back. Split up the "too big to fail" ultrabanks.
- youainti 3y agoThere's a good reason we got rid of that regulation. With limited geographical dispersion, local bank runs could be really damaging. But yes, too big to fail is an issue, but small and easy to fail is another.
- hackernewds 3y ago> Split up the "too big to fail" ultrabanks. why?
- lannisterstark 3y agoOr just use Fidelity, which has 0 fee as well. Free wire transfers, free ATM reimbursements etc. On another side, it actually has branches scattered throughout too.
- boring_twenties 3y agoSchwab is a little bit better for this: 1) Like Fidelity, it requires you to open a brokerage account, but the minimum deposit is $0, unlike Fidelity which last I checked was $2,500 2) $1k/day ATM max instead of $500 3) ATM fee reimbursement is worldwide and no forex fees, can't remember anymore if Fidelity had both of these
- astura 3y agoYou're wrong about the first point - the cash management account IS the brokerage account, and there's no minimum. No no forex fees either.
- lannisterstark 3y ago1. Fidelity has $0 minimum deposit. 2. Sure, Fidelity has $500 ATM withdrawal limit. 3. Fidelity reimburses ATM worldwide. As for transactions, If you're using your DEBIT CARD in a foreign country (or even within USA) for transactions and not a credit card, you're doing something wrong. Enjoy having to deal with a bank investigation in case of a scam when you're out of your own money than the bank's money. IIRC some accounts have a 1% transaction fee in foreign nations but not for ATM. 999. No wire transfer fee. This will always trump anything else for me as a major primary account.
- pxx 3y agoI think the value is actually towards the Fidelity CMA right now and I'm saying this as a long-time Schwab enthusiast. To your points: 1. No minimum opening or ongoing balance required on the CMA. Note. You don't have to open a separate brokerage account. The CMA is a brokerage account. 2. If push comes to shove you can always do a manual cash disbursement (aka "cash advance", but there's no line of credit involved here) from any bank displaying the Visa logo. The range ($500, $1000] is a little too specific to be useful, and you'd probably have to hit up multiple ATMs anyway. It is also much easier to have multiple Fidelity CMA accounts than multiple Schwab Bank accounts if for some reason you really need specifically ATM network transactions. 3. This is partially correct but not as big as the deficit you're stating. Fidelity charges 1% if the card is used for a foreign Visa debit purchase. ATM fees are reimbursed globally (supposedly a little less reliable than Schwab) and forex is zero on ATM. The only time I've seen a need for this is back when Chip-and-PIN was first being introduced and my credit cards weren't working with offline PIN in Europe. Since then, I don't think I've ever needed to use the Visa debit network. In comparison: A. Schwab free wires are limited to three per quarter and only if you have $100k of assets. Fidelity wires are always free. The web interface is worse on Fidelity though: you have to call them if over $100k, if you have a memo, or if you have further credit instructions, so take this with a slight grain of salt. If you have consistent memo/further credit instructions you can send a form in to be able to do these online. The "not having to worry about quota" is super nice. B. The ability to auto-liquidate money market funds, as the Fidelity CMA is actually just a brokerage account, for incoming ACH/ATM/Visa/check debits at any time of day or week makes the Fidelity product far more useful than Schwab's ridiculous 0.2x% interest product. It means I no longer have to worry about my account balance, which can safely be at $0 (as long as there are sufficient appropriate money market fund investments).
- Finnucane 3y agoHi I’m Fred! I have a bank!
- softsound 3y agoI like my credit union, no fees, good support (in person though...), easy to setup accounts. It's a little dated it feels like but the app is reasonable, with so many type of banking options I'm surprised people would use a bank with fees. I've been using Chime for years with no issues, online banks work for me just fine. I can understand a little more though when it comes to international travel because there tends to be more restrictions, I have a small chase account for international travel as the card just seems to work better but I rarely use that account and would probably close it if I found a better international debt card.