Credit union vs. bank…hmmm, well I would bet on a bank and this I am telling you from experience. While it’s nice to be a part of an exclusive club, of which I still am, It is also far to exclusive in other ways.
My husband and I went with a credit union for our first mortgage only to feel discriminated against and told that our credit sucked then moved to a bank and got told we were pretty good. So I think sometimes being a part of something so exclusive means you get told things to make you feel inadequate to major financial institutions. That way they can keep you on a short leash and make you also think that you have serious problems.
The only reason I found out better was because I started opening up about our financial position with a friend who was in a regular bank and we started to compare notes. However it did take months of her cajoling before I decided to investigate as I had low self esteem created by the credit union jockeys.
They were not very caring about us after they locked us into debt and even insensitive toward us after my husband became temporarily disabled.
After a huge blow of our number one bread earner being downed there was no support to help us get back on our feet from the credit union.
I was angered at how personal they had become as well, I mean it wasn’t their future on the line after all was it?
It seemed to me that after all was said and done they had us trapped and thought they could treat us with disrespect and keep us in a very financially demanding position, without care of what was best for our family or our future.
After careful investigation of the gains that would be made by us financially with a major bank we took a default loss and moved our largest investment over to them and have been making significant gains ever since.
We were on the brink of bankruptcy with the credit union and they did not care so off we went and we have not been this confident about ourselves and our future outlook in all the years we were with a credit union.
What really bothers me is that we were sucked in at first by the promise of caring and helping us succeed only to find out they do not have your back in a crunch.