Thinking Locally Financially

With all of our focus on thinking locally, we recently came across a way to act locally with our finances. The Website Move Your Money (http://moveyourmoneyproject.org/) is a national movement to take our money our of the big banks, where it does little to help our economy, local communities, or individuals, and put it into credit unions or community banks, where it can directly help local communities and individuals. We can across it after our bank informed us that would be imposing fees in February.

The good news is that we found that many credit unions are now offering business accounts. In addition to our personal accounts, we have moved our business accounts over to the credit union.

Credit Unions are non-profit. When you open an account you become a member. When they make a profit, they return it to their members in terms of higher interest on savings and lower interest on loans. They are run by volunteer boards of directors who are elected by their members. Your accounts are guaranteed and protected, just like a bank. Since they did not participate in the Wall Street games, there are more stable financially than the big banks. And just just about every service you can get a bank, you can get at a Credit Union.

Think about taking your money and putting where it can do the most good for your community and you, a local community bank or credit union. In other words, we can complain about Wall Street and the big banks, or we can do something about it. Stop feeding the beast and feed ourselves and our communities.