Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by xp84 1137 days ago
> to that degree

An important qualifier! I get the impression that probably 95% of consumer deposits in the US either earn zero interest or some comically low rate like 0.00121% that all of the big banks offer on their savings, Interest Checking, and even "money market" accounts. And they also exploit people with monthly fees that can only be waived with minimum balances or by jumping through hoops like debit card usage. And "using other ATM" fees from 2 banks at once usually.

But apparently it could be worse with transaction fees and negative interest!

I feel like the few in the US who are savvy about personal finance have found the banks/CUs (i won't list them to avoid sounding promotional) that don't do any of the above. It doesn't say in the article where they are seeing these outflows actually go. I wonder if Europe also has good banking options that not everyone is aware of.

1 comments

Only the absolute worst bank accounts in the US have monthly fees. And effectively no credit unions do. I certainly wouldn't sign up for an account that charges me anything, but I've never had to bail on making an account because they would have.
> Only the absolute worst bank accounts in the US have monthly fees

Sure, and those worst banks have massive market share[1]. I'm sure maybe 50-60% of the people with these accounts actually manage to correctly avoid the fees by minimum balances or direct deposits or the "use your debit card 10 times a month" policies. But like, Chase, BofA, Wells Fargo, Citibank... combined, their market share is massive. Chase, BofA and Citi are $12, Wells is $10. All require you to do certain things each month to waive the fee -- which seems easy to me with a steady job and savings, but a lot of people don't have that.

[1] https://wallethub.com/edu/sa/bank-market-share-by-deposits/2...