For as long as this Occupy Wall Street has been going on (can you believe it’s only been a month and a half), Seattle has shown their spirit too. It’s definitely no NYC and let’s face it – we will never be NYC (thank goodness), but we can Occupy in our own way and make some noise too.
Photo courtesy of borman818.
You can join the march today (at the Sheraton @5:45pm while one of the richest guys on Wall Street talks about how awesome he is). You can make the Occupy peeps some soup, send them a pizza or give them coats for those chilly night. Or you can do what a lot of people are talking about: Bank Transfer Day!
On Saturday,November 5th, you can head to Westlake Center and officially take yo’ money out of the big bad bank. Now, don’t go being dumb and hiding all that tip money in your mattress. This isn’t 1929. Instead, I’ve made a list of some alternatives around Seattle that I’m considering and I thought I’d share them with you. Some I’ve heard good things, some I’ve heard not so good things – but I can happily say that none of them took a bail out. And even if it takes me months to transfer everything over and deal with the hassles of switching every single automatic payment, in the end it’ll be worth it (I think).
-Charles Schwab. Whaaaaa? These guys are huge. They must’ve taken a bailout. They have to be evil. Well, they aren’t. They are actually the only bank I have that is a good guy. Which makes sense, because they have always been amazing to me. Customer Service so friendly, I actually like talking to them instead of taking deep breathes spelling out my name very, very carefully to a robot. They aren’t a credit union and they don’t have ATM machines, but if you’re looking for a secondary account that is more about holding money and funneling it into other accounts (which a lot of financial books advise you to do) then this is a good place to start.
-BECU. The Credit Union that’s high on my list. They have lots of ATMs and don’t charge fees at other credit union ATMs. Free checking. Win trips to Maui. From what I hear, great customer care. And best of all, no bail outs.
-Seattle Metropolitan Credit Union. Granted, I haven’t heard much about these guys other than they did some awesome promotion wherein you wrote a comment and you got a shirt with said comment on it. The promo was a huge success and the CU is already out of stock of free shirts. I can’t vouch for anything beyond that. But I’m a sucker for free shirts and I have an overflowing gym drawer to prove it.
-Washington State Employees Credit Union. Someone I know has this as their bank and they’re happy. I’m pretty sure you need to be working for the State in order to take advantage of this CU, BUT I can’t be certain. It never hurts to ask.
-Verity. So, this is the only Credit Union that I’ve heard both good and bad comments. When I asked one woman, she couldn’t hold in her excitement for her love of Verity. You apparently get $25 when you sign up for direct deposit and a dollar for every debit swipe you make your first month. On the bad side, another lady shared a story about Verity filing faulty paperwork that ruined chances of buying a new home. Everyone makes mistakes, of course, so it’s up to you if you want to take that risk.
And there you have it. My apologies if this Yay-Today post got all political and weird on you. Over here, our only intent for this here blog is to give you the most awesome stuff around Seattle. Sometimes it’s shiny things, yummy things and entertaining things. And other times, like today, it’s about worldly things that could benefit your dollar in the long run. To me, that’s one big YAY!
