New Year, New Bank

For the first time in, like, a year, we’ve enjoyed adequate rain. It’s cool but well above freezing (except maybe tonight), and small effort has been required on the gardening front other than to sprinkle a little supplemental water on the newest rows of beets and spinach, while coaxing yet another salad from the various lettuces.

Thus time has allowed me to turn my attention elsewhere.

In many respects, small-scale homesteading such as we practice is a defensive pursuit, in that one does not go on the attack to produce additional family income but rather undertakes activities designed to reduce the need for income. Usually this is associated with producing one’s own food, or using solar energy to heat one’s water, or capturing rainwater to avoid paying for as much city water.

But expense reduction takes many forms. I encountered yet another recently upon reviewing the effect of the new fee structure my (now almost former) bank imposed upon us three months ago or so. The effect was good for the bank, but not us; money was slowly draining out of our accounts in return for no discernible services.

I supposed the new and harsher fee structure might be deemed necessary by the bank’s parent company – a very large bank headquartered in one of those unfortunate southern European countries now saddled with the prospect of mounting national debt, an inability to borrow large amounts of money at an attractive rate, and a regional monetary system that’s probably going to unravel in a couple of months.

Upon conducting some quick research I concluded healthy banks with much more reasonable fee-to-service ratios existed nearby, and were in fact headquartered right here in Texas instead of Spain. So I opened up new personal and business accounts, and then moved the rest of our money over to the “new” institution. (Here’s a little step-by-step bank-shopping guide I wrote up a few months ago that conceivably could prove handy if you’re in the market to do the same.)

I’d like to be able to say I closed out the old accounts and couldn’t be happier with the outcome. However, thanks to a series of incredible mistakes on the part of our old bank, my accounts there still aren’t officially closed despite zero balances all around, as they apparently are required to attempt to milk us for more fees to send off to Madrid.

I shall not bore you with the myriad details of the shortcomings of this bank, made the more apparent in these past few weeks as we attempt to extricate ourselves from the relationship. Lets just say that if your bank handed you cashiers checks for $20,000 more than what actually existed in your accounts, and you discovered the mistake and returned the extra money before they realized their incompetence, you’d expect perhaps some modest expression of thanks. But in this case, you’d be severely disappointed.

Nonetheless, I remain optimistic that (for us personally if not for Spain) this new year may prove better than the last, due in some small part to our having replaced an inadequate bank with an improvement.

If there’s a point to today’s ramblings, it may be that you can help yourself and your family by periodically comparing your current service providers with their competitors, and making a switch if the people you’re doing business with come up short.