Banks VS. Credit Unions

I am first going to tell you that growing up, my Mother and Father always told me this but I just never really listened. Well, I did, but when my husbands job told us we had to join a certain bank to get direct deposit or they would have to mail his check, taking it longer to get to us, we were living paycheck to paycheck and needed each and everyone as quickly as we could get them. So we followed, like little sheep, and got ourselves an account at Wells Fargo. At the time, I had a personal account at America First Credit Union and my Husband had an account at Weber Credit Union. But, because the majority of our money was going into Wells Fargo, we used Wells Fargo. And we used them a lot! All our bills, our play money everything came out of our Wells Fargo Checking account.

At one time I decided to start looking into Savings Rates and noticed that both the Credit Unions had better rates than Wells Fargo. Then it happened. I made a mistake and I bounced a check. Then because of that check another bounced and another and another until it sky rocketed out of control! Before I knew it I had non-sufficient fund charges to the tune of more than $500! Well, I got that taken care of but living paycheck to paycheck is hard and in time it happened again to the tune of another $500 and then again! That's more than $1500 in fees! Why? Because they charged me $33 each time a charge hit and then, if the store put it through again.... another $33 charge.

Now don't get me wrong, Weber Credit Union charged us anytime we had non-sufficient funds but they would call us to let us know there was a problem on the first instance so we could get it cleared up before any more hit. And second, they only charged $15 per charge, less than half of Wells Fargo!

So, to combat the problem, I got myself an overdraft account at Wells Fargo. I needed a co-signer to do it but my Dad kindly stepped in and, voila! I had an overdraft protection account to protect me from outrageous fees. Then I also had my father on board to help me stay in line! Well after the first instance of using my overdraft, I realized this was not much better. They were hitting me for $12.50 plus interest, every time I dipped into my overdraft! So I needed a new plan of action. I checked into an overdraft at Weber Credit Union and found out I could qualify on my own. I got us an overdraft at Weber Credit Union and just to try it out, I dipped into it to the tune of $144.

Now, in perspective, I dipped into my overdraft at Wells Fargo for $46, pay it the same day and get charged $12.50. I dipped into my overdraft at Weber Credit Union for $144, pay it the same day and get charged a whopping $0.06!!! Six Cents!!! That's all! That day, I went over to Wells Fargo, closed all mine and my children's accounts and moved them over to Weber Credit Union.

It amazes me to think that I spent that much time at a Bank with such low interest rates and high fees when I could have been saving myself a lot of money, more than $1500, and a lot of stress by just putting my money in a credit union!