Quote from: rjk on June 26, 2012, 03:29:14 PM

Quote from: 2112 on June 26, 2012, 03:24:45 PM

Quote from: rjk on June 26, 2012, 02:58:00 PM

What about the sudden implementation of withdrawal limits on savings accounts? Apparently, more than 6 withdrawals from savings per month is some kind of federal reporting trigger, and the bank can and will close your account for exceeding that. I don't recall any such limitation until recently, although I am not sure what law was passed to make that effective. They insist that you use a checking account for frequent transfers instead.

This limitation was there since forever. The root of it is in the costs of insuring and maintaining the account. I'm kinda thinking that "sudden" probably means "first time in my life that I read the account disclosure booklet. I used to simply throw it away."

One thing that US banking system has figured out exceedingly well is the default and fraud risk on personal accounts. There are so many flags that signal imminent personal bankruptcy, one of them is lack of normal monthly or biweekly budget planning. It manifests itself by too frequent too small withdrawals. The limits are on the quantity of individual withdrawals, not on the total amount withdrawn.

Railing against those limits is akin to railing against higher car insurance rates for unmarried men less than 25 years old. It leads nowhere because it has no wider social support.

Well in that case, I've decided to set off all the alarms by never using a savings account again. Mainly because my checking account pays more interest than the savings.

Indeed. I have a savings account with $5 in it because it is required to be a member of my credit union. Everything else (USD-wise) goes in checking. Actually, I have a small savings account that I share with my fiance that gets $10/week for each of us, but we may convert it to a checking at some point. We have never had to make more than 2 withdrawals a month, and even checking account interest is crap so it's just not worth the hassle.