I am not one hundred percent sold on the idea yet, but I am still leaning really heavily towards cutting ties with my current bank. I've mentioned this before, but what used to be a relatively small regional bank has since been gobbled up by not one, but two larger banks.
The idea of being part of a global banking conglomerate is not entirely lost on me. I can definitely see some benefits and that is part of the reason I haven't quite convinced myself to pull the trigger and cut ties just yet.
I think it is coming though. Both my parents and one of my friends have already started the move from what will soon be Huntington Bank to a local credit union. My wife and I are already members of a couple credit unions, so finding a home at one of them shouldn't be too hard.
The problem is, finding the right one that offers all of the services we would miss if we weren't at our old bank. Being a larger institution, it is fairly easy to connect accounts to a number of apps. Namely Venmo, Coinbase, Crypto.com, etc. Pretty much all banks and credit unions offer mobile banking, online bill pay, electronic deposit, but not all of them are part of the "plaid" or other network that allows them to easily connect to services like Coinbase.
That is a huge issue for me should I ever need to convert any of my crypto to fiat.
Until cryptocurrency is widely accepted across the globe, I need that assurance that I can access my funds should the need arise.
Another service that is really important to me right now is my HSA (Health Savings Account). My preferred credit union(s) don't offer HSA options. The credit union down the road that I could easily apply for offers HSA's, but they don't show up in the list of banks I can easily add to my Coinbase account.
Who would have guessed five years ago that this "fake Internet money" would have a such a huge impact on my future financial decisions.
I had to take a step away from writing this post for a couple of hours. In that time away I made the call to my new HSA provider and it appears that they will run independently of any bank. This means I should be able to move forward with switching my accounts to one of our existing credit unions.
It is very likely that is the route we are going to end up taking. We have zero debt or lines of credit through the big national bank, so really it is just a matter of moving our money and then setting our auto deposits and withdraws up.
I am not looking forward to the process of moving our stuff over, but I know I will feel a bit more at ease having our stuff in a smaller institution. As many people have pointed out here, the Internet has pretty much made it so even small businesses and institutions have global reach and availability.
