I recently made the move to a credit union.  It was one of the best financial moves I have ever made, and its made me think a lot about the banking industry in general.

Some time ago I figured out that banks make most of their money on “commercial” clients.  That explains why a “business” account has about a million extra fees associated with it.  If you’ve never looked at the cost of having a commercial bank account, don’t.  It’s depressing.

And that’s probably the first reason I like credit unions.  They focus on consumer “retail” banking, and they do a darned good job of it.  It’s an odd feeling to walk into a branch and be greeted by smiling tellers who know me by name; it’s an even stranger feeling to actually understand the fee structure of my bank account because it’s so darned simple.

But it goes a bit beyond that.  When I closed my Bank of America account, they had assessed any number of
“inactivity” fees since I really hadn’t used it for a few months.  After a rather long game of staring at the banking officer helping me close the account, he agreed to refund them.  The account was promptly closed.

But was it?  Oh, no - turns out that the refund took some time to process, and then the account stayed in a “pending” state until they figured out what to do with the small balance left in the account.  I called them a month later (when I received another statement for a supposedly closed account) and asked what we needed to do to close this account for good.  They said that they had to send me the money.  OK then - send me a check.  Easy enough.  It arrived two days later.

So why didn’t they just send me a check in the mail in the first place?  Better yet, why don’t they NOT charge me for inactivity on an account?  Imagine - they charge me when I want to do something with my money, and they charge me when I don’t do anything with it.  They might as well use this slogan: “whether you do anything with your money or not, we’re still going to get a lot of it”.

And it’s not just Bank of America.  It’s all of them.

Thankfully, my credit union seems to have a grasp of common logic, and it’s becoming a very good relationship indeed.

Canadians are often branded as whiners, but Americans take the cake when it comes to complaining about taxes.  And seriously, I’m tired of hearing it.

This country is a bounty of cheap, low-taxed junk.  It’s also full of creditors who are all too willing to finance that junk for low monthly installments (and no payments until June of 2086).  In fact, it’s entirely possible to live like royalty in America, finance this lifestyle over the next four-hundred years, and pay a pittance of taxes for all of it.

Please understand that I have tremendous respect for the mantra “no taxation without representation”, and I agree that taxes need to be managed carefully and spent appropriately (something the United States and Canada are not particularly good at) … but I also think that people whine about it way too much in this country.

Take, for instance, a car purchase.  Let’s suppose this new car costs $20,000.  For the privilege of that purchase I’ll donate an additional $600 (which technically isn’t even sales tax - it’s a “highway use tax”) to the coffers of North Carolina.  That same purchase in Ontario would have resulted in a $2600 windfall for the government.  And we can make this comparison relatively easily, since the US dollar and the Canadian dollar are virtually at par right now.  In the UK, the same vehicle (based on the VAT percentage rate) would net Her Majesty about $4200 - give or take a bit, since nobody really understands how taxation works in the EEC (and there’s a good chance that they don’t, either).

We also enjoy a deluge of tax deductions.  The interest from my mortgage, for instance, is a healthy tax deduction that puts a good bit of money back in my pockets at the end of the year.  No such luck in Canada.

But going back to cars (which is much more interesting than houses).  Now that we’ve bought that $20,000 car and made some government richer, we need to fill the tank.

In the United States, 15 gallons of regular fuel will run me about $47, based on the prices I saw this morning.

That same tank in Canada will cost me $59.53 (converting back to USD, based on today’s exchange rate).

That same tank in London, England will cost an agonizing $120.  And in the Netherlands?  You’re better off just walking.

In fact, the United States has some of the cheapest gas in the world, outside of the oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

I could go on and on, but I won’t, because I don’t want to give the impression that Canadian are whiners. 

• Getting your car washed on the way into work.  And the jalopy needed it; I’m usually a fastidious monster about vehicle cleanliness, but it hadn’t been touched in over 3 months, and it was showing.  Badly.
• Having your house painted.  A friend of mine is changing all the colours in my house, and it’s a real breath of fresh air to come home to squeaky-clean paint.  Today, my home office is being transformed from its very dark royal blue into a light-yellow-with-a-hint-of-burnt-orange oasis.  I can’t wait to see it!
• Eating a banana, like I’m doing right now.
• Pay day.  Who doesn’t like pay day?
• A department meeting where my promotion will be announced to the rest of the team.  But ssssshhhhhhh - it’s still a secret!
• Tonight I’m going to a writers meetup.  I’m excited; I haven’t been to any sort of writer’s circle in years.  Maybe I’ll bring a few of my blogging pieces in case I’m asked to read?