Don't look now but...

[altivo]

The railroad detective is a stinker. He sees everything in black and white. Roth prepares to deal with him anyway.

Next installment is here

Cumulative word count: 13563

Got home in the dark, and I do mean dark. Gary forgot to leave any lights on when he went off to school. I had a hard time finding the doorknob, let alone the keyhole. And it was only 5:25 pm. Going into the darkest time of the year, obviously. Had to use the floodlights on the barns to see while I finished up outdoor chores and put the animals to bed with their suppers. First time for that since last March.

It was a productive day for writing, though. I finished one chapter early this morning, before work, and then got over a thousand words down on my 30 minute lunch break, and finished up the second chapter just a few minutes ago. Just about all the pieces are in place, so you can start to see about figuring out the mystery before the characters do. I've been dropping lots of clues around. XD

The day's mail was mostly junk ads, but included a letter from Chase Bank trying to get me to open a savings account. They've sent one of these every other week for a while now. It starts by promising you a $100 "bonus" for opening a new savings account. If you read on, you find out that the opening deposit must be at least $10K and the funds must remain on deposit for at least 90 days before they will make good on the promised $100. Also, if you withdraw any of the initial deposit before 90 days are up, they will charge you $25 instead of paying out the $100. I had to turn the letter over and hunt through the fine print on the back to find out what the interest rate being offered on the new account would come to. Get ready for this. The APR is a grandiose and generous 0.01% No, that's not one percent, it is one one-hundredth of a percent. My credit union statement came yesterday, so I pulled it out to check. Simple savings there are earning a minimum of 0.25%, and my certificates of deposit are earning between 1.25 and 1.6% APR. Even that is pretty poor in my opinion, but compared to 0.01% it is largesse. The difference? A credit union doesn't give out multi-million dollar bonuses to its executives, for one thing. For another, its 'shareholders' are the depositors themselves, so no dividends are paid out to parasitic stockholders.

Time to get your money away from the robber barons and invest it in an honest institution, folks. In case you didn't do the math up there, your $10K deposit would earn $1 in interest after a year at that rate. Inflation, despite the lies from the Federal Reserve about it, is running about 4% or more a year at the moment. So the money you deposit into a bank savings account will shrink in buying power at a much faster rate than it will grow by earning interest.

Time for pie and bed, I think.

Comments

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

I can't switch from a bank. I've been with a credit union for 26 years now. :) Wish I could take my mortgage away from the big nasty bank, but no one is refinancing underwater homes these days. Besides, the way mortgages get traded around, it would likely end up back with a big nasty bank, I suppose. Still, I think it's a fine thing to move money out of one of the big banks to an independent financial institution. The too-big-to-fail banks have showed they don't really deserve our trust.

[altivo]

We are fortunate enough to have no mortgage but that's only because we stayed in our previous house so long that the mortgage was paid off. When we sold that, we used the proceeds to pay off the new mortgage. Everyone told us at the time that we were crazy, but it turns out to have been "crazy like a fox."

I do use a credit union (Michigan State University) otherwise, and have only a checking account at Chase. It's there because many years ago when I worked for Time-Life I got free checking at First National Bank of Chicago by having my Time paychecks deposited automatically. The banking industries' "big fish eat little fish" routine since they were deregulated in the 80s has led to this impasse.

I'd check with the credit union about refinancing. There are some plans that make it possible, and many credit unions do local mortgages now.

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

I suppose I should ask the credit union. I'm just going by the "common wisdom" but there may be recent developments in mortgage lending. or things credit unions can do that regular banks can't. My concern is that I could do it if I could make a big reduction in the principle to bring the mortgage more in line with the present value of the house. A payment like that is beyond me unless I do some serious juggling. There's still the issue that eventually the mortgage will get sold to BofA, Chase, or Wells Fargo, too.

Yeah, I was gonna say "crazy like a fox"... sure it's great to have the money you spent on the house to do other things. But you didn't have to pay interest. So you didn't get the tax break -- that just means you had your money when you made it, not after you paid it to a bank and got a refund months later. More of us should try that approach.

[altivo]

There really are developments in mortgage refinancing that are supposed to help at least some people whose credit is otherwise good to refinance "underwater" mortgages at lower interest rates. Also, credit unions can indeed make home mortgage loans, at least under certain circumstances. Mine has been doing that for many years. Whether yours does it or not, I can't say. But I suspect someone there can at least give you some good, unbiased advice on the situation.

We have kept our checking accounts with Chase because the bank officers in the local branch are still the same ones who were there when it was First Chicago. They are honest, friendly, and helpful, all things that Chase itself is not. Several times they have been able to quickly resolve disputes with the big bank for us that we had been unable to get fixed on our own. If they leave, though, we'd have no reason to stay with Chase at all. I'd either move to a locally based small bank or just rely on the credit union. The main reason for not depending on the credit union alone is distance. Using a debit card from them would rack up ridiculous service fees at local ATMs, for instance. I haven't written a check at a merchant's cash register in years, but when I still did they wouldn't accept the credit union check because it was out of state. That's the original reason I acquired a Chicago account back in the 1970s.

[shadow_stallion]

Chase holds our mortgage. I get the same or a similar letter every so often and even the odd phone call now and then from my local branch. In their infinite wisdom they have decided that you can no longer have a free account just by merely having a +$100K loan with them. In the past a home loan granted you their top of the line checking account for free. Ever since they removed that qualifier for a free account I've told them that they won't be getting any more of my business. :P

[altivo]

I would never have been a Chase customer by choice. They "bought" my bank years ago. All I have there is a checking account, but it's been an active account for 30 years and I hate to drop the credit advantage of that on my record. However, I absolutely despise Chase. Soon I'm going to break and move that account. The account was once a "preferred customer" account that paid out interest on the balance and had no fees. Now it has a minimum balance of $1500 to avoid the exorbitant fees they will impose if you drop below that. They don't return the cancelled checks any more, nor do they print images of them on the statement. You have to pay to get a copy of a check. You have to pay to get anything out of them. The one disgusting thing they haven't yet tried is charging for the debit card. That would get me out of their vault instantly.