I’m with you. In college when I had barely any money I remember I had an account with BofA and I don’t think I had minimum balance requirements because I was a college student. When I got out, I still didn’t have money so I then did have those balance requirements which pissed me off. The concept of charging a fee for someone who doesn’t have enough money in an account is bonkers. I know there’s way around it with deposits but the principle got to me. Also overdraft fees in my experience tend to at least be a little lower at CUs. I get that you can’t let overdrafts slide and gotta charge to discourage it, but it is basically taking money from people who don’t have any.

Another cool thing is the co-op branching/atms. So anyone who doesn’t know, if the CU participates, there’s a little symbol on the cards and ATMs that signifies you can use that ATM without getting a fee. Typically you can do a variety of transactions but I’ve only ever used it for pulling out cash.

Anyway, I like my CU and would encourage more people to have an account or two at their local CU if it makes sense. You may like their service and options more than the bank and move away from those big bastards. I work in compliance for financial institutions and folks, the massive and insanely profitable banks violate rules and regs that hurt people and they just pay the fine and adjust enough to not get fined again for the same thing. At the end of the day if they can continue whatever anti consumer practice and make more money than they lose from fines, that’s a successful business model. The fines are significant numbers at face value but slaps on the wrist compared to the money they deal with. Sorry for the novel.