Good Morning!

An early Saturday, but not platelets are in the offing. Instead, I'm headed down to Camp Sayre in the beautiful Blue Hills Reservation for a day of training new Scouters. It's another ticket item for Woodbadge, but I digress.


To turn a phrase..."What's in your wallet?" Like most folks, it's probably a Bank of America card. I suppose you can't argue with the convenience, as there are ATMs on nearly every block. But at what cost?

Long ago, when Mrs. TriSec and I were first married, we had our initial account at a bank by the name of US Trust. We went with them in those days because their primary selling point was 'free checking'...there were no unusual fees associated with the account, and they even gave us free checks. (Remember those days?)

But then a strange thing happened...a few years after we opened that account, US Trust changed their policies, and started jacking up the fees. The last weekend before the fees went into effect, we pulled our account and switched to a local bank, Watertown Savings. Their biggest selling points are the old-school rules of free checking for direct deposit customers, and free transactions at their admittedly limited 'branded' ATM network. (of course we can still use any ATM...at $3.50 a whack.) We weren't the only ones; even years later I can still remember the crowds at both banks that day.

In any case...our friends on Wall Street are now calling for a national bank transfer day, urging folks to pull their accounts from the Wall Street conglomerates and transferring it to local banks or credit unions.

Having been there...it's painless. Sure, it's an initial hassle to close things and do the paperwork to re-open elsewhere, but at the end of the day, everything has worked out just fine. Never mind the macro-advantages that the Wall Street folks are touting...think about this. I can call Watertown and get a live person (albeit during business hours only), or I can go down the street to a branch or just 4 miles to headquarters and talk to a real account manager. For a while, the manager of the office near the elementary school had his son in my Scout pack...how's that for service? (He almost became Pack treasurer, but he spat the hook and went deep.)

In any case....it makes sense, so shouldn't you switch? I know it's been posted before, but shouldn't this be all the proof you need? (See if you can follow what happened to the bank you were with 20 or even 10 years ago.



The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting writeup about the attempt....and it does seem to be working in some quarters.



Now, our PSA:

Don't forget to turn your clocks back at 0200 hours Sunday.

I do expect everyone to rise in the middle of the night to accomplish this on time.