Personal Finance

Gratis paper statements

Good point. I personally don't find any value in paper statements, but if I did, I would certainly expect those to be free. They're free from my main bank (Fidelity) and my old main CU (local to my state), but I have seen plenty of instances where it's not free.

Unless you consider ethics. Chase is one of the worst.

Eh, I think they're generally better than Wells Fargo and Bank of America. I don't really see what politics has to do with where you choose to bank, just pick one that's convenient for you. Your few thousand dollars aren't going to change anything, they're more interested in business clients, and they mostly support retail clients because they might as well (if they're going to bend down anyway, might as well pick up some pennies).

That's entirely different from loan products like credit cards and auto loans, but IMO you shouldn't care what bank/credit union offers those, you should mostly be looking for the best deal. Don't get a Chase credit card just because you bank at Chase, get one because it's the best match for your spending habits. You should never be paying interest either, so it doesn't matter what the rate is. If you can't autopay the statement in full each month, don't get a credit card. With an auto-loan, you should also be ensuring you can make automated payments reliably every month; if you can't do that, buy a cheaper car. You should never be in a situation where you need to talk to a banker about getting some leeway on a loan, because you shouldn't be taking out loans that put you in that situation to begin with.

prioritize privacy

That's out the window with banking. The best you can do is find a bank that doesn't have a significant interest in selling your data.

I'm not a fan of Facebook, Google, or Amazon getting access to my transaction history, but that's probably going to happen regardless, unless I use a cryptocurrency. So I figure I might as well get some credit card rewards for that, and I rotate cards so there's not a lot of consistency in the data. I also don't use Facebook, have almost eradicated Google, and generally avoid Amazon, so I'm honestly not that impacted.

That said, the transaction data they could potentially have access to is only vendor, date, card, and amount, they don't get the receipts. So they'll see that I spent $300 at Costco, but they won't know if that was for a TV monitor or a bunch of steaks. I use a separate card at grocery stores (at a separate bank) and yet another for restaurants, so their ability to correlate information is probably limited.

If I could use Monero for everything, I would probably cut up the credit and debit cards and do that instead. But I can't, so I use the thing that gives me rewards (and cash is right out because I hate carrying change).

why your billpay service is free?

Idk, I've never used it. I always automate my payments through the vendor, not my bank, and I'll prefer credit cards over checking autodraft. My bills tend to change a bit each month, and I'm far too lazy to go and enter the bill amount manually. I keep a month's worth of expenses in checking, and I check the checking balance and transactions each month.