My love of credit unions

If you haven’t figured it out already from my latest posts, I love credit unions.  And you should too.  I’ll give you a couple of reasons why:

1. Support your local economy…well sort of.
2. They still offer FREE checking accounts without catches (looking at you Wells Fargo)
3. They seem to be more tolerant of frequent ongoing deposits
4. They are usually on payment providers like Evolve, Plastiq, etc
5. Because if they do shut you down, it’s not that big of a deal.  If Chase shuts you down, good luck getting a Chase credit card.
6. Because they are localized, it’s harder for the hogs to come and eat up all your food
7. Some may offer signup bonuses (not as big as Chase though)
8. Some may even offer free checks (no way the big banks give you that)
9. Some may give you a way to create new account numbers online
10. And best of all, since they don’t offer great credit cards, some may give rewards on debit card purchases

The last point is important and it’ll vary between credit unions.  The one I have in Seattle gives me 1 point per $3 spent.  I know.  That’s a horrible rate.  However, it’s better than the rate of 0 I get with a regular bank’s debit card.  So how do I use this debit card?

• Well since #3 is important, I usually have a large balance in it at any given time.  Instead of paying my Citi credit card directly on Citi’s web site using the account and routing number, if I call Citi and make a debit payment over phone, I’ll make a little money on the payment side as well.  This will vary with each CU since some may only pay out for ‘signature transactions only’ and sometimes a payee make code the transaction as a ‘pin debit transaction’ which would earn no rewards.  So you’ll have to play with this.
• I also carry it around as my emergency debit card.  What does that mean?  Let’s say you’re at Target and loading $1,000 using $200’s.  On the 5th card, it’s failing on you.  Well, you don’t want to abort the transaction.  Use your points earning debit card to finish the transaction and not embarrass yourself and hold up the line.
• Last night, I used it at my Kroger to ‘top up’ a transaction.  My Krogers here want names on debit cards.  So let’s say you have a couple of cards with your name on it, but you want to maximize your trip, so you ‘top up’ and buy a little more.  This is also a good way to move money from one CU to another and make a little on the transaction.  This is by no means a scalable MS play, but every little bit helps

Conclusion

So what now?  Google the credit unions in your city and even state.  Then go down the list one-by-one and see what kind of rewards they offer.  Then:

By the way, if you thought my gift card run was crazy, I was actually planning on doing a CU run.  Fly down somewhere.  Go worship at some place in town.  Then open a CU account and fly home.  Serious.