elovestea:

Brandy, I agree with you totally about the availability of funds.  I think that it wouldn't matter where the money was, but it does seem like more peace of mind when you have an institute to go to instead of one in cyberspace. On the other hand from my working experience when at times I had to go to the credit union and withdraw a large amount of cash for change for the annual sale, they really squawked the first time I did it without calling ahead because they didn't have enough cash on hand.  A $1000.00 and they didn't have enough cash on hand?  I thought that was odd.  So I learned after that to call ahead and tell them how much change I needed. It made the whole transaction go smoother.  I couldn't have done that with a cyberspace bank. You made some good points.  E  

Actually, you do exactly that with a cyberspace bank because you transfer the $ to your brick and mortar account to access the cash.  

My local brick and mortar thinks it is so odd that I withdraw a lump sum of $1000 monthly and have a specific list of the number of bills in each denomination that I want.  They were quite flustered the first time but now they have learned to count back large sums of cash, apparently. 

I explained it was for our cash envelopes and the Dave Ramsey Total Money Makeover connection.  A few of the tellers seem VERY interested on how we can get by on JUST CASH--duh...but they sure are interested In selling me on a cc program they are offering right now! 

I'm curious what bank teller thinks $1,000 is a large withdrawl. When I was a teller more than 15 years ago, I didn't think twice until it got over $10,000 because that was when we had to report suspicion of money laundering. That amount must have gone up for that by now too. It seems to me like $1,000 would be peanuts to the average bank teller, who probably has several hundreds of thousands of dollars passing through his/her hands on a daily basis.

The tellers here seem to think $1,000 in cash is a lot for an individual to withdraw. A sign of the electronic transaction times?

When I worked in 2002, when I process credit card payments for invoices over $1000, the telephone authorization would kick me over to a live person to make sure it is ok. Now at my new job, I have processed payments for up to $3500 and not a blink from the phone authorization system.

Re the banking info, here we don't have all those options. We all mostly use a bricks and mortar bank that has online banking, credit cards,checking etc. Here it is atm or credit cards. We have our mortgage, loan, credit cards etc at the same bank.  I only use paypal for ebay etc. most don't. scared of it. Except for a credit card at a different bank and a couple of rrsps held at different banks that is it. We don't have telecheck etc.

Brandy:

The tellers here seem to think $1,000 in cash is a lot for an individual to withdraw. A sign of the electronic transaction times?

 

Yes, Brandy, that is it exactly, imho.   

Banks, utility companies, the credit reporting agencies, physicians, hospitals, stores, schools, ect are all connected to the internet and have your information accessible there whether you personally access it or not. If you use a debit card or credit card then that transaction is sent electronically through the net to complete. Today even paper checks are sometimes handled electronically. A hacker can access this information at any point from your computer, the store/company/business' files or even from your own bank. Banks attempt to be more careful with security...but what about that small local store you deal with who puts all their files for customers on an internet connected computer?

I have shopped, banked and bill paid online for years (11  for the shopping, 8 for the banking and bill paying). We have three charges added to our bank account over this time period and that has been our only issue as far as our info being snagged and misused. Two of the incidents were from my husband using his debit card at the ATM and gas station. He never used his card online, these were the only places it was used. And the first time, still no idea since the card was used to register us for an internet membership and we had no internet accessible computer at the time and only had an ATM card.

WhosWho:

The money I DON'T spend on internet access, more than makes up for any postage I may spend.

Your bank charges for internet access and bill paying or you don't have home internet and log into this site from somewhere else?    

Totally off topic, but I've been wanting to say I really like your patriotic butterfly avatar-- 

WhosWho:

True, they do, but when I stopped PERSONALLY using credit cards on the internet, then I stopped having trouble.

I understand that. We had the opposite experience. I used my card on the net for transactions, I use my bank to do internet things and I have never had an issue. My husband whose account was not used for online banking, his cards which were never used online were the ones that had charges he didn't make added on.

I actually feel as confident using my own computer to access accounts as I do using my cards, having a bank account at all, having companies filing my info, ect. And just for the record, I don't feel any of it is really secure.

Boy I had an un real, un frugal experience with a bank recommended on bankrate.com.  The bank was Bank United in Florida.  I had a large amount of money and they advertised that they would give you 5.3% interest.  So I signed up on line and had my money sent there. Well, the first thing that happens is that they transfer your money from your account and they have it in their bank for almost two weeks before they even give you credit for it being there, so there goes two weeks worth of interest.   Well it comes to the end of the month, and I assume I should get somewhere around $429.00 (minus the two weeks that they held it interest free) and so I checked on line and no interest.  So I contacted them and asked them.  They said they only post interest once per quarter.  So I went in to their "you're supposed to read them documents" and sure enough it says it right in their 25 pages of disclaimers that you are supposed to read.  But, in addition it gets worse.  If you take your money out of their bank before your interest is posted at the end of the quarter you get nothing.  Well, I guess that's not too bad, considering the fact that they make it almost impossible to get your money back.  I wanted to have some of the interest transferred to me.  Most online banks have provisions for transferring money from their savings accounts to your checking accounts, but not Bank United, no way.  If you want any of your money from Bank United you have to mail them a notarized letter telling them that you want them to mail you a check for however much you want.  Well, I got real tired of that and so I decided that I was going to take my money back, after all they had just posted the quarterly interest and I figured I could mail them a letter asking them to wire me the money in my account.  No way Jose, you have to mail them a notarized letter, they won't wire the money, the won't send it over night.  They will only mail it regular mail and get this, it takes ten working days for you to get the certified check, which you must sign for, at least it won't get lost in the mail.  But in the meantime, you have lost another two weeks worth of interest while you are waiting for them to send you the money.  I am just stunned that in a day that has so many techno conveniences that this bank can advertise that they pay some huge amount of interest and then they really trick you.  So yeah, you may get 5.3% interest, but only after the month of non interest, and only if you take it out right after the day they post the interest.  In my case I really received 4.85% because they kept it interest free for a month.