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For the past few months we have been having multiple people come in telling us how worried they are about their deposits at Washington Mutual. It seems like these days people are starting to act on these worries. Yesterday we took in about $500,000 in new money that was deposited straight from Washington Mutual. $500,000 doesn’t sound like a ton of money for a financial institution, but if you consider the fact that our size is only $500 million, it puts it in more perspective. This comes out to .1% of our total deposits.

One should also take into consideration that this data is for only one of the 8 branches. If this coincidentally happened at each of our branches, this would have totaled $4 million in new money just from WAMU for the day.

WAMU is insured by the FDIC up to $100,000. If they fail though, you won’t have instant access to your money. It can take the feds up to 3 months to get your money back to you. If you were without your money for three whole months, what would you do? This explains why people are starting to panic more and more about WAMU.

If you find yourself worried about your account at WAMU or another institution, consider moving your funds over to a credit union. Credit unions are typically more conservative in nature than banks, and therefore are a safer bet for your money. Credit Unions are insured by the NCUA, which is similar to the FDIC. The NCUA insures your accounts up to $100,000 as well. If a credit union fails though, the NCUA will have your funds back to you within three days, not three months. Something to consider when looking for a new institution.

School Employees Credit Union of Washington is having a rate promotion as well. According to the website, this one does not have a particular promotion name, but it is a promotion nonetheless.

Here are the details:
SECUWA will give you 7.71% APY on any amount up to $750 in both your checking and savings accounts. In order to get this great rate, you must meet two requirements. First you must have direct deposit, and secondly you must have eStatements. If you meet these two requirements then you will get the rate. All balances above $750 will earn the standard savings rate. Currently, savings earns 2.27% and checking earns .50% on balances above $750.

So far this promotions seems to have the best bang for your buck. You earn a high rate over a decent range, and you only have to have two requirements. In actuality, these two requirements are actually quite simple. The only problem with this institution is that they only have two branches. One is in Seattle, and the other is in Spokane. They do have access through the co-op network of ATMs.

In a way to raise deposits, credit unions and banks have started coming up with clever ways to get people to bring more deposits to them. The majority of these plans come in by way of offering higher rates in turn for some sort of favor on your part.

This is how the typical deal looks.

The institution will advertise an abnormally high rate given our current market conditions. This typically runs somewhere between 5% - 8%. There are typically a few catches though.

• The high rate is usually paid on only a set amount, like the first $1000 for example
• Many require you to have direct deposit through them
• Most require that you are signed up for some sort of online banking feature (usually eStatements, or logging on a certain number of times each month).
• Some require that you do a certain number of debit transactions each month.
• Other interesting rules exist as well.

If you are willing to follow the rules that they set forth, you can find yourself earning a decent interest rate, especially given current market rates. Over the next few weeks I am going to review some of the major promotions that are occurring in Washington State.  I might branch out to other states as well if I find something interesting. I am planning on disclosing the exact details of the promotion, like what you need to do to qualify. I will also state what type of person might be interested in these programs. Another thing that I will disclose is the amount of additional income that you will earn by signing up for this program. This way you can see how much extra you are really earning for all that extra work!

When going into make a deposit or a withdrawal at your financial institution, there is one thing that I ask that you do not do. Please do not come in with a hat pulled down with large sunglasses. There are a few rational reasons that I make this small request.

First of all, I know the large stunner shades are the cool thing to wear, but seriously. I sometimes have a hard time recognizing my own friends who are wearing these oversized sunglasses. If I find this difficult, how easy do you think it will be for me to properly identify a stranger? Probably not very easy. So please, help me make my job a bit easier so that I don’t have to try and imagine what is behind those bug-eyed shades. As an added bonus, it will probably make the line move a bit faster as well. At least most of the girls don’t wear hats along with their stunner shades.

This is a bit of an extreme example, but if you don’t know this person, can you really tell? This picture was taken from the following website.

Guys are actually even worse offenders of these banking no-no’s. Like I said before, when anyone wears sunglasses into a financial institution, it makes it that much harder for us to identify you. It makes it even harder when you come in wearing a baseball hat pulled all the way down to the tops of your glasses. This makes it extremely difficult to identify you. This whole identification complaint is just peanuts compared to the real reason why I don’t like it when guys wear sunglasses and a low hat into the bank.

The bank teller is at the front of the bank and is the only one in the bank with a drawer full of cash. This naturally makes them a prime target for robberies. When someone comes in wearing a low hat and sunglasses into a bank, we automatically assume that you are either a bank robber, or trying to pull some fraudulent transaction past us. Many fraudulent transactions are not caught until days or weeks after the fact and often rely on video evidence to verify the criminal. Hats, glasses and other disguises are often used to hide from the many cameras located inside of a bank. So by you wearing a hat and sunglasses into a bank makes the teller ten times more suspicious of you. This will cause them to examine your transaction much more closely than usual, and will often make them this much more picky and stingy over what you plan on doing.

Ignore the FBI logo on this guy’s coat, and he looks pretty suspicious to me. Heck, even with the FBI logo he looks pretty suspicious. Imagine how you would feel if you had someone dressed like this (criminal or not) standing in front of you while you have tons of cash sitting right in front of you. Not a very good feeling now is it? This picture was taken from the following site.

So please, for the sake of my sanity, take off at least your sunglasses when you come into your financial institution. It will make us feel a lot safer and will make your transaction run a whole lot smoother.