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by another-dave
1048 days ago
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> Seems like there is a cool business idea in helping people work through this. It's seems crazy to me that that's so difficult in the US. In the UK, you can open an account with a new bank and just tell them to switch over all your direct debits and give them the account number/sort code. They'll contact your old bank, get everything moved across and get your old account closed on your behalf. The old bank is also obliged to reroute any payments from your old account for 6 months afterwards too IIRC |
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There is a good chance a credit union might offer that, but they aren't available to everyone as they often have membership requirements.
What others have suggested is the better route, minimize direct debits by using credit cards (which gets you 'free' CC points).
The other thing is to just use multiple banks... I have my 'debit' bank and then I move my savings around to whichever bank I can find with the highest savings rates (either cd's or money market accounts). I link just those two accounts together and can transfer funds as needed. I find that to be pretty easy now, but it took some getting used to.
I think a lot of people are afraid of opening a bunch of accounts in various places and having to track it all. The open account friction is pretty high... you generally have to do a two small deposit dance, which can take days. I have a theory that part of the fear could also stem from the fact that we penalize people's credit scores for opening too many credit card accounts... but the reality is that we don't do that with bank accounts.
We also have a culture of being afraid of touching our money. You're supposed to just put it in an account and forget about it. I think the mental barriers override the actual barriers.