Silly me, I just realized my bank is a storage facility and the service charges are rent on the “space” my money takes up. Funny thing is, the people running a more conventional storage company don’t turn around and “rent” out my stuff to somebody else and make a profit on it.
Yes, it’s convenient to have someplace to keep my money. It’s safe as long as the government doesn’t tank. It’s easier to write checks or use a check card than it is to carry around a wad of cash. But it’s almost impossible to function in our society without a bank account. But even cd’s don’t pay much in the way of interest anymore.
If mom and I were to decide to live someplace else and let someone else live here, we’d charge rent. A bank (or in this case a credit union) stores my money, charges me a service fee if I don’t store enough at one time and barely pays me rent for the use of it.
Yes, I know this makes the money available to other people to build businesses, houses, ect. But I work pretty darn hard to earn it. Seems like they ought to pay me and folks like me a little more for the privilege of using it to make their profits. Opinions anyone?
5 hours ago
3 comments:
When I opened my first savings account back in the sixties, the interest was 5 1/4%. That was plain a old, passbook, you-could-have-$5-in-the-account-and-it would-still-earn-interest savings account. Now, you have to tie up your money for YEARS if you want to earn that much. Why IS it that interest rates on all the loans I take out or my credit cards are SO high, but I can't get a bank to pay me a decent amount to use MY money? You are right. It sucks. Lisa :-]
And why do the big banks charge a huge interest on loans? -- and the credit cards they issue? That interest doesn't get applied to our savings!! SIGH
Jackie,
Our nation's banking system should be viewed as a criminal enterprise. If any other "storage facility" tried to get away with what the banking industry does it would be viewed as criminal. What most people don't realize is that the Federal Reserve system isn't even ran by the government: it's a private enterprise ran by the banking industry. Fractional reserve banking has alwasy been a criminal enterprise and it should be no surprise that is the backbone of capitalism. In a sane system, our money would naturally appreciate rathern than depreciate. Great post.
dave
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