30 Reasons Why We Should Not Keep Our Money With The Banks

1. Banks aren't on your side

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At the end of the day, banks are a business which means that their main objective is to make as much money as possible. So who are they making money from? US! We bank with them and they aren't holding our money from the goodness of their hearts, they're profiting from us.

2. If banks fail... you lose your money!

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One of the biggest reasons why you may not want to have all your money in a bank is because if it fails, you're at risk of losing ALL of your money! Although banks have certain protections, not all of your money is protected. So you could lose a significant chink of it!

3. You could be making a lot more money elsewhere

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Why would we put all our money in banks when we could be making money elsewhere? Banks offer super low interest rates, so while our money could be generating more money in other avenues. When you put your money in bonds and stocks it has the potential to make you so much more!

4. With online cards it's TOO easy to spend our money

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When we used to use cash, we could see what we were spending and we could see the money leaving our hand, and our wallet getting lighter! It helps us to watch our spending. When it's online, we can't see our funds dwindling away so we spend, spend, spend with no real idea!

5. You're at risk of identity theft

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Identity theft is becoming more and more of a concern in today's digital world as it's becoming much easier for thieves to steal identities! Banks hold so much of our personal and financial data which means that if somebody gains access to our accounts, they have all our money available!

6. Your bank can freeze your money when it wants

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Have you ever been in a situation where you've been out and trying to use your card and it's been frozen by the bank for whatever reason? You can't buy anything and you can end up stuck! And, to get it unfrozen it can take a long time to contact the bank!

7. Banks are profiting from your money - way more than you!

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Banks make huge amounts of money from our deposits and investments. You've probably noticed that even when you're having a hard time financially...the banks are not! The differences between the profits they earn and the returns we get are HUGE. Which isn't fair considering it's OUR money.

8. They give you low interest rates

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One of the worst things about banks is the low-interest rates they give us! Yes, they allow us to store our money in a somewhat safe place, but they give us the minimum return on our deposits! They fall way behind the rate of inflation, so we get very little for our money.

9. They make money off people's misfortune

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One of the worst things about keeping their money in a bank is the fact that they actually profit from people's financial woes. When someone is in a really hard place and has to live in their overdraft, their debt and the extra charges are all for the bank's gain - at the expense of people who are struggling!

10. Banks are at risk of cyber attacks

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Banks are a prime target for cybercriminals! And that's super worrying if we have all our money or a lot of our money stored in a bank! The way that cybercriminals are constantly evolving means that banks are increasingly more at risk as time goes on!

11. When you're in another country you have to pay to get your own money out

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One of THE most frustrating things about banks is the fact that when we want to withdraw our money we sometimes have to pay. And when you really think about paying for your own money, it's quite appalling! It's worse when you get to another country and have to pay even more.

12. Your finances aren't private

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There are some people who place cameras above ATMS to steal your information! And even within the bank itself, they know all of your personal details. They know your information, your finances and so much more! So your personal information isn't at all private.

13. There are so many long and boring processes

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Being involved with banking inevitably means you'll have to do a lot of long, and let's be honest, boring processes. There are so many things we have to sign and agree to (we probably don't even know what) and to switch bank accounts is a whole ordeal in itself!

14. You'll be charged for accidentally going over your overdraft

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Sometimes you accidentally slip into an overdraft. You might not even realize that you have spent your last few dollars and you've got a transaction coming out of your bank which means that you've unknowingly slipped into the red. And then, the bank charges you for it!

15. There's limited access to your OWN funds

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Another reason that you shouldn't put your money in a bank is because you have limited access to your own funds! They can impose restrictions on how and when you can access it. This is really frustrating when we're storing our hard-earned money and we can't even get to it when we want.

16. There are sneaky hidden charges at all corners!

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Banks are out to get you at any point they can. They want to make money from you wherever possible. To do so, they put sneaky and hidden charges where they can so that you have to pay fees you never even realized! It's one thing having our money stored and making no money, but taking our money is another thing entirely!

17. You don't even have much protection

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Banks are often portrayed as the safest place where we can store our money. But is that actually true? Aside from all of the dangers we've already discussed, there's also the fact that if you transfer money to a fraudulent site by accident, or someone takes your money - you may not even get it back!

18. When you've got a problem, you have to travel and wait in line

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The majority of banking is now online, so you'd think there would be no queues but that's not the case at all you have to either stay on hold for an hour or join a virtual queue. And if you want to go and see a real-life human you have to queue out of the door!

19. They use so much jargon we don't even understand what is going on with our own money

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Does anybody ACTUALLY know what their bank terms are or what saving pot or credit card interest rates are and really mean in broken down terms? Honestly, it makes us wonder if they use a lot of complicated jargon to confuse us so much that we click 'accept' on their terrible terms!

20. Insurance only covers so much

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So if you have been a victim of fraud, or the bank loses all of your money you may not be entitled to your money back. The insurance for the bank only covers up to so much money so you may only get a fraction of what you had back! That doesn't sound safe to us.

21. ATMs malfunction all the time

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We're actually more accustomed to seeing ATMs that say 'out of order' than we are seeing a fully functioning ATM. They malfunction so often that you end up having to travel from one to another just to try and get yourself some money out. Who knew getting money out should be so hard?

22. Banks can change their policies without you even knowing

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Banks aren't going to announce to you that they're putting interest rates down and your fees up. Oh no, they'll keep it as hidden as possible. They probably won't even tell you at all, they'll hope we don't notice so that they can make even more money from you.

23. They don't encourage you to save

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Unless you've got so much money in the bank that you're making them millions, the banks would actually rate us spending all our money and end up in debt. Yep, it's true. They profit off our suffering and when we are in debt the banks rub their hands together knowing they can charge us for our misfortune!

24. Banks are NOT transparent

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Banks are one of the most non-transparent companies. Nobody knows what they are doing, you don't even have any idea what's happening to your own money. They keep everything hidden so that if they are making a profit immorally or at our expense, we don't know about it!

25. Banks are vulnerable to economic fluctuation

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Banks are huge corporations but that doesn't mean that they are not vulnerable to economic fluctuations. They are the money business after all, so as soon as the worth of the dollar goes down, so does the worth of the bank itself. This can put us all at risk, as well as the bank.

26. Resolving an issue with the bank can be fruitless

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When you make the effort to stay on the call or go to the bank and queue, you may often find that your problem wasn't actually fixed. And worse of all is when they tell us that the problem is out of their control...it makes us wonder why we ever chose to put our money in a bank!

27. They hide the information that will cost you money, and make them money

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We've all been told to read the small print. But when the small print isn't even visible, it's a very difficult task. There's often very important information that we should know before we actually choose to put our money in a bank...yet most of us never actually do know everything!

28. Banks are controlled by a few, large institutions

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Banks are very centralized, meaning that they are controlled by a few, huge institutions. Some people are anxious about this because all of the power is in the hands of very few people. It would be better to decentralize banking in some people's opinions so that a small amount of people did not have so much control.

29. They offer inflexible loans

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The bank often uses language to suggest that they're trying to help us. They give us offers as though they're doing it for us, not themselves. The kinds of loans that the banks offer us are never actually in our favor. They are usually extremely inflexible and they come with terms that work against us!

30. Customer service can be terrible

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When was the last time that you had great customer service at the bank... or the majority of places for that matter? Now we're always expected to talk to a robot who repeats the same question over and over without any ability to resolve our real issue.