The Move your Money Project was started three years ago as a campaign to encourage Americans to get their money OUT of institutions that are too big to fail and into smaller, local institutions – and for lots of good reasons. started that aims to empower individuals and institutions to divest from the nation’s largest Wall Street banks and move to local financial institutions.
It in a nutshell, “Moving your money out of the big Wall Street banks to small community banks and credit unions is a great idea for a number of reasons: you will get better rates and fewer fees, your community banker will learn your name and provide you with more personal service, and you will be keeping money in your local community which increases economic development and eventually, creates more jobs. Yet the most important reason to move your money is to make your voice heard, to stand strong and no longer help a banking system that has run amok.” For more, read “Why You Should Move Your Money.”
- The federal ratings aren’t made public (to avoid runs on banks, etc), so what ratings are they relying on?
- That the best publicly available bank ratings are from Bauer Financial, which lists all Maryland credit unions here, and they give Greenbelt 5 stars – the top rating.
- And anyhow, all deposits in Greenbelt Federal are insured by the U.S. government up to $250,00 and if you happen to have more money than that, there are ways to restructure it so that even more is insured than a quarter million.
So, so much for Move Your Money’s sources, whatever they are. I’m moving MY modest fortune (ha!) to the localest option I have.  But jeez, the process is a little daunting, considering how many automatic payment and deposit thingies I have set up and running smoothly.  This may take another month or two before I can take my last buck out of SunTrust.
Oh, I’m now remembering the extra reason SunTrust gave me to happily leave them. During my recent real estate dealings I had to have some money wired, and it took FIVE WHOLE TRIPS to the Greenbelt Branch to accomplish that simple task. Nuf said.
Leave a Reply