Credit Unions And Your Neighborhood – Find out What They’re Hiding from You
We’ve all heard about the friendly neighborhood credit unions from time to time. It just gets to us, the way those credit unions tout out their advertisement panels, their benefits and the minimal risk factors, as opposed to any other regular or commercial bank out there.
From a general perspective, yes, credit unions are safer to deal with. But there’s always a risk probability when you’re knee deep in such organizations. The fact is that wherever money is involved, there’re risks and unforeseen consequences to certain actions. Now, I’ve been friends with a guy, who used to work at a local credit union in his city.
It was 2008, and during one of our chitter chatters; he kind of opened up about a lot of things that people don’t know about credit unions. These are the things that sometimes become the sole cause of you ending up losing money, rather than saving it up in form of profits or anything that’s financially helpful to you.
Our discussion led us to believe that most of the times, it’s the lack of information that incurs financial injury. People just come to credit unions with a notion that credit unions are much better than commercial banks, which is very true. But other than that, they don’t care to go beyond the offers and fine prints at all.
The thing is that your friendly neighborhood credit union might not be as bad as it looks, if only you’d have taken care of the following things. Remember, it’s not too late to go back and straighten out the kinks:
• It really helps a lot to remember you credit union account number. Sometimes when you’re talking to a sales representative or a person who’s in the department that appeals to your interest, the account number is one main thing, which will eventually spring up sooner or later. It saves a lot of time on both ends if you know the account number.
• Always know something about your credit union account. Same goes for the credit score and different terms and conditions that appeal to your neighborhood credit union. In any case, it is not a credit union’s job to call up each and every client regarding their latest ongoing offers, or the recent changes that were made in the fee module. You have to be responsible for your actions, by getting in contact with the organization and staying on top of any piece of information available.
• Lying to a credit union or a commercial banking official is not a good thing. Seriously, they can always tell whenever you’re lying or being straight up front about certain dos and don’ts.
• Since 2008, credit unions and all regular banks are required to charge you overdraft fee. There’re other fee modules as well, which are totally unavoidable. The thing that makes your credit union worth doing business with is the degree of variation in their fee structure. Though you can’t ask them for refunds, it is your job to know if your neighborhood credit union is charging higher than the one your colleagues signed up with.
• Every personal financial institution has a set of guidelines. At the time of signing up with your local credit union, look for those guidelines, besides greedily looking at those flashy brochures and pamphlets. Why is it important? Whenever you run into trouble, you’ll be angry most of the time, and frustrated because of the fact that the credit union representative is not, or unable, to help you.
• The best way to deal with this dilemma is to have a civil conversation that’s void of threats, aloof of ‘Okay, I’ll take my money elsewhere’ and certainly free of ‘this wasn’t supposed to happen to me.’ Mistakes happen at times, and the best way to rectify them is through a proper channel.
The Hidden Cost Factor:
Most of the time when people prefer dealing with credit unions, over commercial banks, is because of the low fee and interest rates. Your State or city will have multiple credit union centers and banks that have different enticing offers and different fees.
The best approach is to visit, or call each one of the financial institutes, and get to know their percentage against yearly mortgage, car loans, health insurance percentage, car insurance and stuff like that. Now after you’ve got the data, do the math and calculate the amount of money you’ll be saving against each category.
Finally, go for the credit union that has the best rates and huge opportunities for saving money.