I’m suprised people can go without bank accounts. I’ve had one since I was a child! And have now have several accounts.
The company I rent from, the company I buy my contact lenses from, the mobile phone… they all insist I pay by direct debit.
I think for some people, it’s a credit thing. If a bank closes an account for you, you’re reported to credit agencies and you can’t open another account for (IIRC) seven years. So some just don’t bother to open another account.
Robin
Same here. I can only imagine the looks I’d get if I cancelled my bank account and asked Personnel to give me my salary in cash. They’d have me committed.
I know PG&E and SoConEd make allowances for this sort of behavior. They have payment centers in a lot of areas, usually open late, and you just bring in your bill and pay cash. The California state government does something similar.
I do all of my financial transactions through credit unions. Since they’re member-owned they generally have a greater incentive to keep fees low to non-existent and give you decent service. I’m not thrilled by the one I’m a member of here (it’s somehow not as professional as the one back home), so I only keep my day-to-day money in that account. I have some CDs, my rainy day savings, my car loan and my VISA card through the credit union back home. My parents joined it when the cash was kept in someone’s desk drawer (in the 1950’s). They now have multiple branches in several cities, who knows how much in assets, and can generally give me a better deal on any financial service I need. And they’re not committed to making money for anyone but their members.
I’m always amazed at the number of people who will handle all transactions in cash. It makes me nervous to have more than a few dollars with me at any time.
GT
Couldn’t you still use direct deposit through a credit union?
Yes…that’s where my check goes now and where it went when I lived in Michigan. I highly recommend it.
GT
Some places you can go in person. For example, I get electricity through El Paso Electric, which has an office in downtown Las Cruces, and water from the city of Las Cruces and I could go to City Hall and pay there. In both cases, I write checks each month (though I can pay the city online if I want.) Another possibility, which I might have to do if my checks don’t get here before my rent comes due, is to go to a post office (or other place, but I prefer the post office) and get a money order.
As it is, I bank through a credit union and the school wants to use direct deposit as much as possible. When I was going to my last school, they would only pay by direct deposit. As I understand it, it’s cheaper and easier for employers.
What do they ask? I’ve had my account with Royal Bank of Canada since I was 6 years old, so the whole setting up of bank accounts is already foreign to me in my own country… what sort of info do I need to give to an American bank if I want an account there?
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It’s expensive to be poor in a lot of cases. I won’t go into details, but some people can’t afford to save up the minimum deposit required by a lot of banks to open accounts.
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Some people simply don’t trust banks.
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My ex is a car dealer & does buy-here, pay-here. His customers can make a weekly payment on a car, but don’t have the wherewithall to save up for a downpayment. Ditto on rent - a lot of them live in pay-by-the-week places, which are of course more expensive, which leads us back to #1.
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Some people can’t get bank accounts because of past bad check issues with other banks. That stuff follows you like your credit report.
Just some stuff for thought.
VCNJ~
Just so’s we can fight some ign’nce, you’re thinking of wherewithal and the down payment.
Thank you so much. Heh.
VCNJ~
I have to disagree with this. I think if anything, a lot of people who grew up poor tend to be VERY tight with money-think of people who grew up during the Depression.
I think you have asked me before! laughs I’m in the same county, closer to DC. IOW, I know where Bowie is and sort of how to get there, but don’t really know because I don’t drive. I’m in Hyattsville, which is on Route 1 coming out of DC; Bowie is (I think) to the northeast.
The state figured out it could save a huge amount of money by eliminating paper checks and going over to direct deposit, and in a time of budget cuts, they have to try to save every bit they can.
Nope, as **Guin ** said, he works for the state prison system. You gotta go through background checks and the like, as well as providing proof of citizenship.
Well, as I said, the minimum salary at his workplace is 30K, and only brand-new employees make the minumum. 30K is considered “damn good money” around here.
Secondly, living here is pretty cheap. The prison owns houses and the employees can live in them for $200 a month, and real estate values in the area are not really high. (You can buy one of those big old Victorian houses for about 90K.) Rent around here ranges from about $300-500 for an average apartment.
One of the ironies of the system is that the lower you are in rank, the more money you can make because of overtime. Hubby has quite a few corrections officers who pull in more than he does per year, and he’s second in command.
If any of them can’t come up with the minimum balance (at my bank, I believe it’s fifty dollars) it would be through sheer fiscal irresponsibility, and I can’t have too much sympathy for that.
Your credit affects your job in the prison system. Every year, Hubby and I have to disclose all of our debts and income. You won’t be promoted if your credit report shows a lot of Bad Stuff. (The worry is that people desperately in need of money might be willing to be bribed.)
Many people don’t trust banks. Banks do fail- maybe not in the US in our lifetime, but certainly in plenty of other places.
Additionally, having that kind of paper trail can be harmful. For example, if someone in your house is convicted of a drug offence, the police can confinscate and sell just about any assets they want to. There are populations that have no reason to believe they will be treated fairly should something unusual happen.
Just think- if there was a war and we all had to walk to Canada, who would be better off? You or the guy with a tousand dollar under his mattress?
It was probably very late and about to be subject to unpleasant actions.
Neither-- cash would be worthless if there was any kind of breakdown in the US government. You would be better off if you had a case of Jack Daniels and a dozen cartons of cigarettes stashed under your mattress. (That’s what I’m stockipng up on in case of Apocolypse. Trade goods.)
Oh! That’s why the military checks your credit, so that they know you don’t have to sell secrets. Makes sense, but I wouldn’tve thought of it (or I knew it and forgot it).
Huh? What does this statement have to do with the line quoted?
There are people without Bank Accounts??? :eek:
What are they, afraid that Butch Cassidy or the James Gang might ride into town and hold up the bank?
Nearly EVERY employer in this country that’s properly run pays their employees by Direct Debit each week/fortnight… and to do that, you need a bank account.
The banks here aren’t especially popular, but there’s no minimum amount needed to open bank accounts in most cases, and there are ways of getting no fee bank accounts (Either by being a student, a rich bastard, or opening an account with a bank/credit union that doesn’t charge account-keeping fees, like HSBC).
Also, all of the cheques I’ve seen here I’ve seen here have been crossed (“Not Negotiable”), which means they can’t be used for anything except payment from the payer to the person named on the cheque… which means you need a bank account to deposit it in whilst the cheque clears.
I’ve had a bank account since I was 6 or so, and an ATM card since I was 12 (and a credit card since I was 21, but that was a conscious decision to avoid getting one until I really, needed it).
With EFTPOS and Credit Cards, there’s increasingly less use for cash (especially because many people, myself included, don’t like having more than a small amount of walking around money in their wallet at any given time) and it’s a bit hard to accomplish this without a bank account- especially since most retail establishments don’t take personal cheques, and most individual people here (certainly those under, say, 25-30) don’t have chequebooks anyway…
The minimum deposit for banks varies wildly…some will allow a minimum deposit of five bucks, others want considerably more than that. When my husband and I moved to Fort Worth, all the banks around us wanted a minimum deposit to open an account. For free checking, our balance had to be even higher than the minimum. We were able to get into my husband’s father’s credit union, fortunately, which had a very low minimum opening deposit and low minimum balance. For a while there, we were doing the “cash the paycheck, get money orders” thing. I was able to pay utility bills at some department stores, or I could go downtown and pay the bills, in both instances with cash. Yeah, it was a pain, but it was better than having to plonk down several thousand dollars that we couldn’t touch, and that wouldn’t draw interest.
This was almost 20 years ago…I haven’t tried opening a bank account around here lately, so I have no idea as to what the fees and deposits are like now. I do see a lot of “money centers” around here that cash paychecks, sell money orders, and wire money. We have a lot of illegal aliens around here (Fort Worth Texas) so they use these places a lot.