Banks and Money

I almost hesitate to post about this.  It involves moving money around and, if you don't have it, reading about it is probably awkward and and annoying.

I have an account at a Credit Union from my career days.  And I have an account at a regular commercial bank.  I recently discovered that my Credit Union pays somewhat better interest on savings accounts than my commercial bank does.  So it made sense to transfer money from my commercial bank savings account to my Credit Union savings account.

My point of writing about this is how HARD it is to transfer the savings and it doesn't mter how much is involved. 

These days, you can do almost any financial transfer online.  But apparently not between a commercial bank and a credit union!  There is some barrier between them.

I called the credit union first.  I assumed there was some information about them I needed to enter into the commercial bank website.  They disabused me of that notion real fast.  "Can't be done online", even though I'm online with both the credit union and the commercial bank. 

"Can only be done by 'wire transfer' ".  And by the 10th piece of information, with more to come, I called a halt!  I asked, what if I just gave you a check from my commercial bank?  Couldn't you just deposit it in my credit union account? 

"Sure", they said, "just mail it to us, but we need to look up how to receive a check and we'll call you back".

ARGGGGHHHH!   "Dumber than a bag of sand" comes to mind.

It never occurred to my credit union "helper" to mention that to begin with?

Its not like I'm Donald Trump trying to send them a billion dollar check.  I just would prefer to get .35% on my savings at the credit union as opposed to .01% at the commercial bank.  Its not like the difference is going to get me a world cruise or anything, but why deliberately get less, right?

I'm only going through this because my credit union is an hour away now, and I'm beginning to wish I HAD just driven there and handed them a check.

No wonder that rich people have accountants to tell to do things like this.  If I was Donald Trump, I'd have an specialist bank accountant too.  Its maddening!  You would think I was trying to convert Russian Rubles into Swiss Francs through some fly-by-night African bank. 

And here I sit, waiting for some "expert" at the credit union to call me back with details on how to send them a simple check safely.  Feeling like an idiot for causing a fuss... 

I'm sure glad I didn't spend my working years involved in finances...