Need to find a good bank

[mAss Backwards]

So, we're now less than 24 hours from closing on the new house and officially becoming Free Staters. Quick couple of questions...

We need to find a good bank to open a checking account and savings accounts. large mega-banks that are going to charge me for the privilege of accessing my money are out of the question, of course.

Also, are there banks up here, which are part of the SUM network of banks that don't charge ATM fees at each other's machines?

That's all for now.

More questions to follow, I'm sure.

- Bruce

[Fluff and Stuff]

I find Bank of America useful.  It is all over the place in NH and expanding.  Even though it is a mega bank, it still has some of the lowest fees in the nation as long as you keep several grand with it.  In fact, I am never charged any fees.

[Rocketman]

I prefer Credit Unions.  In NH I joined St. Mary's Bank, which is the oldest credit union in the country.

[cathleeninnh]

I have talked to several people happy with St Mary's but I don't know their policies. We bank with TDBanknorth and have mixed feelings. They have given us some outstanding customer service and no fees, but we keep a bit of money on balance. But their systems have also been a nuisance for us since the switch from Bank of NH.

Cathleen

[Dreepa]

I prefer Credit Unions 100%

I did get an account at 'Bow Mills' because it is in my town and is free... (Real free meaning no fees at all).

If you are in Concord or Bow,  Bow Mills is pretty good. But I am pretty sure you are in the seacoast.

[KBCraig]

I can't comment on any NH banks, but I can say this about Bank of America: for a non-member, they're a nightmare to work with.

We bought our van from a couple who had their car loan through BoA. I spent a full day trying every possible phone number that I could find on the BoA website (not to mention Google). Not a single number would let me connect to a human being, so that I could ask one simple question: What is the exact payoff amount and address, so that my credit union can send a check?

Because of conflicting schedules and phone tag, it took almost a week for the seller and I and BoA to be able to give this very basic information to my lender.

Kevin

[aries]

where are you located? I know a few small banks located closer to me... I'm a member of the Woodsville Guaranty Savings Bank

[error]

I've had nothing but bad experiences with Bank of America, and so I wouldn't recommend them to anyone.

The last straw was about a year ago, when BofA closed my account, without notice, with no reason given. I could never find anybody to answer the simple question of why was my account closed?

Worse, they charged me fees upon fees upon fees.

My current bank, which has no branches in New Hampshire that I know of, not only doesn't charge me any fees, they refund me any ATM fees that I incur using other banks' ATMs. And I just have a plain old no minimum balance account!

[Dreepa]

I've had nothing but bad experiences with Bank of America, and so I wouldn't recommend them to anyone.

The last straw was about a year ago, when BofA closed my account, without notice, with no reason given. I could never find anybody to answer the simple question of why was my account closed?

Worse, they charged me fees upon fees upon fees.

My current bank, which has no branches in New Hampshire that I know of, not only doesn't charge me any fees, they refund me any ATM fees that I incur using other banks' ATMs. And I just have a plain old no minimum balance account!

Computer banking baby I love it.  My main CU acct is still in CA.

Also I saw ads for Laconia Bank... .where you can make deposits over email.  You scan the check in and then email it to them to deposit.  Pretty cool.  (I have never tried it just saw the ad.

[FrankChodorov]

I prefer Credit Unions 100%

I did get an account at 'Bow Mills' because it is in my town and is free... (Real free meaning no fees at all).

If you are in Concord or Bow,  Bow Mills is pretty good. But I am pretty sure you are in the seacoast.

Bow Mills just got bought by Merrimack Savings Bank yesterday...

St. Mary's credit union was started by the Desjardins family out of Quebec who were catholic distributists.

http://www.desjardins.com/en/a_propos/profil/histoire/caisse/fondation.jsp

excerpt:
Historical context

Living conditions

At the end of the 19th century, Qu?bec's population was 1.6 million. Most people at that time were French speaking and living in rural areas.

Farmers were in a difficult position. The past decades had been marked by a series of poor harvests; the cost of supplies was high and income was low. Many farmers were forced to take on heavy debts.

Due to the high birth rate, the rural parishes of the Saint Lawrence valley were overpopulated and though new zones were opened up, they could not accommodate the surplus labour, causing many people to migrate to the cities and to New England.

Conditions were no better in the factories: salaries were low with unstable demand for labour. For the most part, workers lived in filthy tenements. At the time, Montreal was one of the most unhealthy cities in the world with a very high infant mortality rate.

Difficult access to savings and loans

Since banks would only do business with merchants, industries and wealthy families, working class people had little access to savings and loans. Many were victims of usurious lenders who, free of all constraint, often ended up as owners of their unfortunate clients' property.

As a French language stenographer at the House of Commons, Alphonse Desjardins became aware of this phenomenon during a House debate: a member of parliament described a case where the interest charged was up to 3,000%! Shocked by the injustice, in April, 1897, Alphonse Desjardins decided to find out how such practices were avoided elsewhere in the world.

The Cooperative Project

His research lead him to a book entitled People's Banks, by Henry W. Wolff, that described the people's banks and rural caisses in Europe. He wrote to the author, who referred him to the officers of those institutions.

Through correspondence with them, he came up with a project for a new kind of savings and loan cooperative that would enable the working class to become its own banker! Ultimately, Desjardins planned to fight usury and provide his community with an instrument for economic organization.

At his home in L?vis, he met with a small group of fellow citizens to whom he presented his idea and with whom he defined the statutes of the future caisse populaire. That caisse was founded on December 6, 1900.

The founder had several closely-related objectives:
To generalize savings and provide for such unplanned events as unemployment and illness
To use those savings to constitute a system of popular credit, accessible to the workers, to farmers and to any honest, hard-working person
To promote the consolidation of family and rural businesses
To eradicate the ravages of usury
To initiate community leaders to economic organization and business
To improve the material conditions of the working class and contribute to the progress of French Canada

One hundred years later, the same ideal still motivates the vast network of caisses: to offer people's financial services on the basis of people's savings!

[cathleeninnh]

BoA is the one that told my daughter to open her account with a cashiers check from her previous bank, then proceeded to put a two week hold on it so she couldn't make rent and utility deposits. There were more problems that it took months to straighten out.

Cathleen

[error]

Oh yes, I forgot about that. BofA likes to put holds on checks for no apparent reason.

Then there was the time their ATM machine completely failed to give me any cash, but the account said that I'd made the withdrawal. It took almost a month to sort that out, and I probably would never have, except I actually was there when the ATM tech came to service the machine.