I understand liking modern-feeling apps, but am more than happy to put up with the slightly old-feeling credit union app because they are just such a better institution - no bullshit fees, actually happy employees, far better rates on credit cards/loans... There's just no comparison.

I do have a commercial bank account, too, but that's just for access to quicker interchange with other commercial banks, when that's handy.

My worry with most credit unions is that most of the ones commonly recommended have requirements for who can be a member, or are geographically tied. I'm unlikely to live in the same city for as long as I'd want to keep a bank account, and I'm not military or otherwise. Do you have a good recommendation for a CU that's more generally an option?

FYI: "Credit unions generally follow the principle of "once a member, always a member", which allows a member with a current credit union membership to remain a member even if they would otherwise no longer qualify to be such, such as leaving the company with whom they initially gained membership or moving outside the credit union's defined geographic area."

This is certainly true for the credit union I am a member of.

Moreover, credit unions seem to have good relationships with each other. I've never actually even seen a branch of the credit union I've been using for ten years in real life. But, if I need a notarization or to deposit a cheque, I can easily visit a branch of any credit union and they are usually happy to do it for me.

I've been hit with fines for my mistakes (transferring money out of the wrong account) but I've never paid them since they are always willing to remove them via a simple text chat. (I find text chats much easier than phone calls, too.)

The majority of credit unions share a vendor that handles a lot of their logistics for them. That's one of the reasons why they're so accommodating about certain inter-credit-union transactions. It's a value added service of a shared vendor, who just pushes some numbers around in a database.

Yeah I think they use Fiserv and other major fintech players.

Can add more anecdata. Joined a regional credit union, moved across the country.

I can use the ATMs of the regional credit union in the new area for free if I need an ATM, and my original credit union has been more than happy to facilitate everything else I need via phone and email. And the "phone" agents are literally just the same staff I'd be talking to at the branch I opened the account at, not some call centre, so there's no real need to go in to actually get customer service.

On top of that, the accounts are completely free. I pay $0/mo for a handful of accounts (one for general monthly bills, one linked to my debit card, another for savings, etc) with unlimited transactions/transfers/etc.

The _only_ thing I'm missing is the ability to deposit cash. Which has yet to be any sort of issue for me.

That's good to know. Obviously, with Simple, I was fine with not having a local branch, but I'd worry that signing up at a local CU and then moving, they'd just expect that I could come in to the local branch for things. I've had issues around that with my family even with larger banks, where they just assume that I can show up at a local branch to sign papers or such, and it's a big pain to get them to mail things, let alone let me transact online.

It's one thing to be online-only, it's another thing to have online, but expect everyone to live near a military base, or in a particular city.

I suppose I'll just bring it up when I apply!

Yeah, I've only got experience with one Credit Union so I could just have a particularly good one or something, but I imagine given that they _don't_ have branches everywhere probably requires them to invest a little more heavily in figuring out how to do things without people being there in person.

My wife's still with one of the "big banks" and more than a few times has been required to go in for basic signatures and stuff (not even for new services, just like "we updated this thing you need to come sign it"). Last time I did something major with my Credit Union was to get a loan from them, and it was shooting them an email, they called me up and we hashed out the details, then they sent me over an approval and a docusign link and I signed it and the money showed up in my account.

I wouldn't necessarily say that I can "transact online" as such (like, it's not like there's a "loan" flow on their website) but they're certainly capable of figuring out how to get things done without me being there in person. I can only imagine with so many staff going remote and people being more hesitant to go places this past year they've only gotten better at it.

Only downside over the years has been that there's never been (and never will be) any sort of integration with any of the budgeting/etc services like Mint. No company is really gonna invest the effort to pick up the 100,000 members my CU has.

I joined a CU in Utah in 2009 and have lived in California for a number of years. I've been able to get 2 car loans through them, a personal loan, and a credit card after being a non-resident of Utah. They've treated me well. The only thing I think people may have trouble with is home loans. I think those are pretty geographically tied.

I joined Navy Federal through a friend and am a member for life. Credit union employees are friendly people and put the humanity back into banking compared to Big Bank call center script readers in my experience.

That's a legally required quirk of credit unions; in order to get a federal charter/license to operate, they have to define a field of membership[1].

That said, I've never had a credit union bring up membership requirements post-joining, and have been able to both use existing accounts and open additional accounts at credit unions long after no longer qualifying for their field of membership.

A lot of credit unions even participate in shared branching[2], which lets you use the physical branches of one credit union to manage the account you have with another. Which comes in handy for the few things you can't use ATMs or online banking for, such as large transactions beyond ATM limits or depositing cash.

[1] https://www.ncua.gov/support-services/credit-union-resources...

[2] https://www.thebalance.com/co-op-shared-branches-how-custome...

I joined the NASA Federal Credit Union. I joined the National Space Society, which cost about $20 and then I was able to join the FCU. Then I cancelled my NSS membership. Not a bad signup cost, plus space is cool so I didn't mind paying $20 to the NSS. I think the NSS also sent me a couple magazines, so it wasn't just like a donation.

Alliant

Plus 1 to Alliant. Their savings rate is top-notch and their apps are pretty good.

-1 to alliant. Had pretty bad experience signing up, they opened the account then closed them, had multiple errors in their website, support wasn't helpful at all.

That was a couple years ago, maybe i should try again

Maybe I've just had bad luck but it seems like the credit unions I've tried are coasting on a reputation that is no longer deserved. Every one I have tried has behaved pretty much the same as any bank, except with worse apps, worse online banking, and worse ATM and branch availability. I can believe that there are great credit unions in the world, but I can tell you first hand that you can't just pick any random credit union and feel assured that they will be better than a major bank. Some of them are just as bad.

Former C1 employee: I would give Capital One another shot. Their tech and apps are best in class and and built in-house. They also contribute to the open source community (or did).

I beg to differ. Notifications for transactions stopped working. As I always do when things like this happen, I went to twitter and tweeted at them. They claim it works, yet replies on twitter beg to differ. They support people point me to a document that shows UI elements which have been removed.

Still broken. Still no word from them.

And there's the issue about financial software. A couple of years ago they stopped supporting what Moneydance uses. Basically, Cap One only supports Quicken. I would rather cut off my nose than use Quicken. I moved all my accounts to other banks after Moneydance stopped working. Problem is, my SO still has accounts there and the notification issue is a real problem, as she was not notified of fraudulent transactions due to their new bug.

I have been really frustrated with C1 not integrating with youneedabudget and Plaid-backed tools for quite a while now and intend to close my C1 credit account as a result. i know it's "as simple" as logging in to C1 and finding the transaction download tool but golly what a waste of effort.

https://support.youneedabudget.com/t/p8h6814/a-real-capitalo...

> Notifications for transactions stopped working.

I get an email for every debit transaction on my account. I've had to update my inbox filters a couple time because they change the email they send it from, but it's been pretty reliable ever since I set it up maybe three or four years ago.

That's seems like a customer support issue and not software related but it's definitely frustrating. I use YNAB and their integration with C1 has been great so maybe push on Moneydance as to why that integration is no longer an option.

The website has a page changing the notification settings. It used to be there. It's not anymore. Their own documentation says it should be there. I've looked in the not very many places it could be. It's no where to be found.

I second this. I was an ING Direct customer who was rolled into a C1 360 account and it's honestly been great. It's just a consistently hassle-free experience. TBH, I mostly use a combination of Fidelity + Merrill Edge these days due to my particular cashflow management setup, but I keep my C1 360 account open for use every now and then. It's night and day between C1 360 and Chase, BofA, etc.

I've been really pleased with Capital One overall. The only thing that I wish could be resolved is that it can't be synced with You Need a Budget automatically.

If that syncing is done through Plaid (or maybe even if not), it might be fixed now. I use a similar product, Lunch Money, and syncing didn't work for a long time but within the past month it became possible.

It was indeed plaid, Capital One was doing some kind of BS blocking that was preventing any app that uses Plaid from being able to sync data from there.

On the off chance you or someone else knows:

How do I close old savings accounts in Capital One 360?

I used to have my savings split between several buckets, and now I just keep it all in one savings account, but I have four savings accounts with $0 in them because near as I can tell you aren't allowed to close them.

You have to call them. It's the only way to close an old savings account in Capital One 360. It was relatively painless when I had to close my 4 buckets.

I want to be okay with Capital One, but the day I tried signing up for an account (a few years back), their entire application for applying (their application application) had a meltdown and their app crashed, etc, etc.

And then I thought, hmm, glad this happened before I had opened an account.

Capital One customer here! This is interesting to hear. Capital One's website is easily one of, if not the most annoying bank website I've engaged with in memory, inclusive of behemoths like BofA, regional banks, and a local credit union.

I was worried when ING Direct was bought by Capital One, but they never introduced any bullshit fees and seriously improved the app and website. So I've remained happy with them.

Their website for credit cards is my favorite of any I've tried. My least favorite by far was Chase when I had the Amazon-linked card.

May I present you with "US Bank"? Whose web interface looks like it was designed by an angry intern in 1997.

Then again, we're all sitting here reading on the minimal UI of Hacker News, so...

I find the Chase credit card interface to be pretty reasonable, but then again, I'm not logging into it every day.

I use Ally, it's an online-only bank with a good website & app, and great customer service:

https://ally.com/

FYI Ally is just a marketing rebrand of GMAC, one of the financial giants involved in the 2008 housing crash. That alone makes me steer clear of them.

Well, there are some nuances you're skating over here.

Remember that GMAC Bank (the direct banking company) and GMAC ResCap (the mortgage/real-estate company) were two different entities owned by the industrial loan company GMAC. GMAC Bank was spun off as Ally Bank. Ally Bank (until 2014) was not even in the mortgage business.

I can tell you that as an actual customer of (the now former) GMAC Bank, I didn't feel like I got short changed in any way. They had good interest rates, and I'm glad they survived through hook, crook, and some TARP money (which was ultimately paid back with interest).

Just my perspective, it doesn't affect me in any way who you bank with.

I switched from Simple to Ally a few years ago and had 0 problems. I recommend them all the time.

Just curious: which financial giants were NOT involved in the 2008 housing crash? Serious question.

Was the GMAC that became Ally involved in mortgages? I thought it wasn't.

Their app can also be used for no-fee stock trades.

I'm a happy Schwab customer. Their app isn't what you would call simple, but you can do almost all your investing and banking there (I say almost because I own some physical assets) and they refund ATM withdrawal fees.

> they refund ATM withdrawal fees

Most importantly, they do this (as well as priority mailing replacement cards) globally. I have yet to find another bank besides possibly Fidelity's checking account (?) that does this with no stated limit. It's invaluable for those who travel abroad to have access to local currencies with no hassles and a refund of all fees.

I managed to get my Schwab debit card eaten by ATMs twice in one trip once, and Schwab was able to quickly Fedex replacement cards to addresses I provided in Thailand and Hong Kong. It stopped my trip from turning into a big headache - I was really impressed.

This is the huge advantage of Schwab over other options I've explored, especially if you are a US citizen but work abroad as a digital nomad. I like CapitalOne, too, but they could not FedEx a replacement card to me when my card got eaten because of what they claimed was a security issue. Schwab could! Also, Schwab's customer service is top notch.

In my case I lost my ATM card in mid sized city in Romania and they UPS or FedExed it over really quickly.

Plus the foreign ATM fee refunds and no foreign transaction fees. It's amazing.

I'm also moving to Schwab mostly because my previous and current employer have stocks linked to that platform. TBH seems good enough for my use case (long term investing, mostly ETF)

You’re lucky! Schwab is fantastic, and I use it for all my personal banking and brokerage, but most employer 401ks have been through fidelity and others.

They even refund international ATM fees which is awesome. If you're an investor, their margin rates are usurious, though.

I think if you want favorable margin rates I'd still use Schwab for banking and M1 finance or IB for the stocks. M1 lets you use borrowed funds for whatever, at like 2% interest.

Yeah, I use IB so I'm sub-1% now. IB also lets you simply withdraw more cash than you have in your account so you can use it for whatever.

most bank do that, specially after you are over an amount in account.

The banks that do that, usually also have the worse investing options (e.g. Schwab, HSBC...)

> most bank do that

No, actually that is pretty rare. Getting unlimited domestic and international ATM fees reimbursed is not the norm.

> specially after you are over an amount in account

But that's just the point you're missing. Schwab does it at $0, not $1,000,000.

> Usually also have the worse investing options

Eh? Are we talking about the same company here? Schwab has an enormous array of investing options, given that their main business is that of a brokerage.

> HSBC

Also eh? When did HSBC become remotely competitive in the brokerage space? (And isn't HSBC winding down their US operations?)

I started out on ING Direct as well, but I stuck with it through the Capital One transition. Overall I'm still happy with the checking/savings account features, no maintenance fees etc. The mobile app/website is pretty good. However the "desktop" website is annoying as it's just a scaled up version of the mobile one, but it still gets the jobs done. Unfortunately they've removed the ability to easily add multiple savings accounts for budgeting, or at least I can't find a way to do it. Luckily I still have the ones I created back in the ING days.

You can open multiple high performance savings account by going to the normal account application online. It has you login partway through the process and then adds it to your account

I started out on ING Direct and also liked the savings account feature. I created several saving accounts for when some website wants ACH routing information but I don't trust very much: I can put just enough in that account to cover the transaction I want covered.

I didn't realize that they god rid of the ability to add new ones. I guess I'll have to make do with the eight I have lol.

It still works, it just isn't as seamless as before. Now you have to go through the "open account" flow, and half-way through you'll get an option to login and join an existing account, after that it is a couple of clicks.

Consider Fidelity’s cash management account. Great mobile UX, great financial product.

Can you speak a bit more about this? I actually have a Fidelity cash account open but I have no idea how to access it. I’m open to it though if I’m just missing something.

I use the Fidelity iOS app and fidelity.com, and also have a checkbook and ATM debit card for it. They reimburse all ATM fees, checks are free, and it’s trivial to move money between it and your brokerage, investment, and retirement accounts. They don’t support Zelle, so if you need that P2P instant payment functionally, you’re better off with Ally (I keep a high yield savings account at Discover Bank as a Zelle slush account).

I cannot blame the founders. They worked hard and risked a lot and were successful so they want to cash out. Here's a radical idea. Maybe if countries care so much about keeping markets competitive, they could buy out late-stage startups to allow them to keep operating independently.

In our case, Simple was at the end of its runway and desperately needed a buyer after our primary angel backed out. BBVA was there at literally the last second (as in, we may not have been able to make the next payroll). So yeah, it wasn't really about the founders wanting to cash out; they desperately wanted to keep the idea going.

Have the founders tried to find a buyer for Simple to pull it out of BBVA and save it from being shut down?

That was floated as an option, but it would complicate/delay BBVA's merger with PNC. Their entire whitelabel tech stack (Open Platform) is being shut down.

Backed out.. as in, Bancorp dumped you? I had the completely wrong idea about that, then.

Not Bancorp, a Silicon Valley VC.

What tricks should I, as a founder of a company, maximize the valuation of my startup at government acqusition time, which revolving-door ex-regulator consultant should I hire to make sure my i's are dotted and t's crossed on all of my applications (and how expensive are they), who in the bureaucracy should I make friends with to ensure the smoothest possible acquisition.

The obvious retort would be to mention the problems with state ownership/control of companies.

However maybe you have a model in mind that doesn’t result in control ending up in the hands of the government.

If so, I’m curious!

Government could buy it out and sell shares back to the public, sort of like an IPO, but with some conditions attached, so that it ensures the company remains independent for a specified number of years post IPO.

How would the price be determined?

Maybe that model doesn't work, but I wish there was some government oversight preventing huge companies from buying out small competitors just to shut them down entirely. Like Apple did with Dark Sky, Microsoft did with Wunderlist, and Twitter did with Vine. It's really unfortunate that we can't have much small tech.

It seems like that wouldn’t solve the problem, because it would take away some of the incentive to create small tech in the first place!

Dark Sky got shut down? It works for me, or do you mean something different?

Android app was pulled. API service stopped accepting new applicants. API is scheduled to shut down. (iOS app continues to be updated, but API/functionality maybe rolled into iOS in a future version.)

Or you could reduce the barriers required for companies to go public/IPO.

What has changed over the last 20 years in the US is how much more expensive / difficult it has been for a company to go public. A lot of that is a result in 'consumer protections' that came into place after the .com bust and the financial crisis, but as with every short sighted government regulation, it has unintended consequences.

This isn't necessary. All the government has to do is block these acquisitions or shutdowns on simple antitrust grounds.

That would reduce the expected net present value of startups to investors, making it harder for them to get investment money in the first place and probably reducing the number of successful startups, acquired or otherwise. It's not obvious that this would be a net improvement.

Great, now there's even less reason to do a startup and it's even better to just take a FAANG job.

The GreenDot competitor to Simple, GoBank, launched around the same time as "the first digital / app based bank." It was corporate from the outset, but their partnership with WalMart seemed to reorient it into an internet based check cashing shop complete with cringeworthy "sweepstakes" offers for connecting your direct deposit. The product went downhill abruptly around that time, I still keep it around as an extra debit account so I get some ongoing visibility to the spiral. I have to call a special support number printed on my card, newer customers called the one on the website. The oft-promised chip supporting GoBank card still has not arrived for me, today, in 2020, despite their support promising me literally years ago it would be available in a month. It doesn't work with Apple Pay.

The app, which when they launched was one of the first decent bank apps, simply has disabled its most compelling features. You used to be able to peek your balance without signing in, the slider is still there but it doesn't do anything. Fortunately most other mainstream banks have great apps these days.

The app still lacks FaceID support. You can use FaceID only through the Apple autofill keyring.

And as I just Googled them to make this post, I see there will never be a chip card at all because GoBank doesn't offer a debit card anymore. Apparently GreenDot is powering payments at Uber and Apple Pay P2P now though, so good for them.

If you're a veteran or the child of a veteran, highly recommend USAA. Tech is fairly good (they had online deposit years before anyone else I was aware of) and the service is unbeatable.

My roommate is a USAA account holder. They are a bank that is willing to tell PayPal to pound sand when necessary, and they gain a ton of respect for that.

Unfortunately though, they have some kind of inane limitation on debit cards that don't let you have more than a certain number of pending transactions. And given that you generally won't know and never can control when a place that runs your card actually captures, it's led to some nasty surprises.

Any US citizen can get a USAA checking account, and it's quite usable with a decent Android app and the ability to easily transfer money around from different banks. Some of their other services, like car loans, are only available to members of the military, though.

Unfortunately they stopped letting non-veterans get USAA checking accounts several years ago. I only found this out when I recommended it on HN last year.

USAA is almost unbeatable for insurance, but I think Navy Federal has a much better banking experience.

There really needs to be consumer protections against software-EOL due to mergers/acquisitions, or google just killing things for no reason.

Any commercial software based service like this needs to be a contract with consumer society.

I also used simple and saw the writing on the wall a few years ago.

I’ve since moved everything to Fidelity and it’s probably the best option.

Their software could be better, but it’s good enough and the other options are worse.

I also used ING Direct, and switched to Simple when it turned into Capital One. About three years ago, I switched from simple.com to ally.com, and it's been pretty great.

I'd suggest Bank of America if you have more than $100k in stocks or index funds that you can move to Merrill. That qualifies you for free ATM refunds, and gives you access to unlimited 2.6% cash back on all credit card purchases.

https://frugalprofessor.com/best-credit-card-rewards-strateg...

Oh that's a good one. Thanks for the tip.

For what it's worth, Chase really stepped their design game up for mobile and responsive web. The weekly money insights report is a great summary of my overall banking activity. Check it out in the app store.

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