[Consultant32452]

In my local area the credit unions have fees equal to or worse than the big banks. If you're in the same boat I highly recommend an internet-only bank. I've personally chosen Fidelity and it's been wonderful, but I'm sure others like Schwab, etc. are just as good. There's no minimum balance and reimbursed ATM fees just like some credit unions. There are upsides and down-sides to this approach vs a local credit union.

Upsides are traditional banks usually have insane fees for investment accounts, but with Fidelity (and probably Schwab) you can have it all under one roof. You generally get more options, too. For example, when I opened a 529 I could choose to "open it" in one of several states. My previous big chain bank only allowed me to open an account with the investment options in my state.

There are only two downsides I've seen so far. The first is that Fidelity does not offer personal Health Savings Accounts. This may not be a problem if you have one through your employer, or don't use one. The second is for rare instances when you might need large amounts of cash, larger than you could reasonably withdraw from an ATM. For example, purchasing a car from a private owner. Doing this might require some finagling. In my case, my employer has my 401k at a national chain bank, so I am confident I could cut a check there if I needed to, but it is a concern.

[rconti]

Yeah, I use USAA and hence have no local branches. For 4 or 5 years I kept a local credit union account, but to withdraw cash there I'd likely have to xfer it, wait 3-5 days, THEN withdraw it it wasn't a great solution either. Eventually I closed it because it was not useful to me.

When I had a BofA account, I once asked a teller if I'd need to notify them in advance if I wanted to take out a large amount of cash; when she asked how large she was thankfully able to stifle a laugh and instead say "that should be fine" when I told her "About $5k"