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Move Your Money day
Nov. 5th, 2011 09:01 amToday is Move Your Money Day.
Today![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
preraphaelite and I are going to Cambridge Savings Bank, where I'm going to open a personal account, we're going to open a shared account for housing expenses, and I'm then going to move my money from BofA to CSB.
And yet I want to be clear about something: I don't have a solid enough understanding of the financial crisis to say how culpable BofA is in it, and frankly I think a lot of the people who boil everything down to "the banks" (what does that even mean?) being to blame for such a complex problem don't either. I've also had no problem with BofA in terms of fees, customer service, etc. In fact, they've been great and I'm bracing for the switch to CSB because I doubt that their web banking is going to be anywhere near as good, and I'm really going to miss having an Android app for moving money between accounts.
So, why am I doing this? Two reasons:
1) Something that Move Your Money Day made me think about is how I always try to patronize local, independent businesses before big chains, and wonder why I don't apply the same principle to banking. I always go to the Porter Books cafe instead of Panera in Porter Square, so why do I bank at BofA when CSB is literally around the corner from preraph's place?
2) Even if I'm not 100% behind the reasons, with over 100,000 people pledging so far to move their money, it's my hope that if all of those and more follow through, it will serve as a potent reminder that people can organize, and they can and will vote with their feet and their dollars when businesses behave badly (and while I think "the banks did it" is a gross oversimplification, I'm under no illusion that BofA is above reproach). I figure anything that reminds big businesses that customers can, collectively, be big too can only have a positive effect.
Today
preraphaelite and I are going to Cambridge Savings Bank, where I'm going to open a personal account, we're going to open a shared account for housing expenses, and I'm then going to move my money from BofA to CSB. And yet I want to be clear about something: I don't have a solid enough understanding of the financial crisis to say how culpable BofA is in it, and frankly I think a lot of the people who boil everything down to "the banks" (what does that even mean?) being to blame for such a complex problem don't either. I've also had no problem with BofA in terms of fees, customer service, etc. In fact, they've been great and I'm bracing for the switch to CSB because I doubt that their web banking is going to be anywhere near as good, and I'm really going to miss having an Android app for moving money between accounts.
So, why am I doing this? Two reasons:
1) Something that Move Your Money Day made me think about is how I always try to patronize local, independent businesses before big chains, and wonder why I don't apply the same principle to banking. I always go to the Porter Books cafe instead of Panera in Porter Square, so why do I bank at BofA when CSB is literally around the corner from preraph's place?
2) Even if I'm not 100% behind the reasons, with over 100,000 people pledging so far to move their money, it's my hope that if all of those and more follow through, it will serve as a potent reminder that people can organize, and they can and will vote with their feet and their dollars when businesses behave badly (and while I think "the banks did it" is a gross oversimplification, I'm under no illusion that BofA is above reproach). I figure anything that reminds big businesses that customers can, collectively, be big too can only have a positive effect.
