You Need a Backup Bank
lifehacker.com
lifehacker.com
YNAB lets me not care where my money lives or where I spend it from. I can easily store money in a HYSA and lose none of my tracking/budgeting tools. As long as there is enough money in my auto-pay source account then I’m good to go.
Late last year one of my banks closed down (HMBradley), I was using it primarily for its HYSA. YNAB made the whole process stupid easy and even after I lose access to the historical records for that bank (neo-bank/fintech org/whatever you want to call it) I will still have the full history in YNAB.
I used to rely on budgeting and tracking tools built into a single bank (Simple) but YNAB lets me not care about the UI/UX of my bank and use it as a big dumb envelope while I use YNAB to budget and plan.
Again, it doesn’t have to be YNAB, that’s just what I like and what worked for me.
I mostly use cash everywhere I go, but I have one credit card for autopay items, and another credit card for random purchases. I have a third card for temporary use should either of the first two cards be hit with fraud and I need to wait for a replacement card in the mail.
If you don't want to have multiple credit card accounts, you can often get a second card on the same account with a different name and use that one.
If you write checks, you should do that from a seperate account because everything someone needs to steal your money is written on the front of the check.
I've had the main card "stolen" a few times. Even with free overnight shipping it takes 2 days to get the card and activate the account. Having a backup card makes that less painless.
A person could theoretically go through their whole life (in the U.S.) and not need any form of credit, but that usually requires having money or capital upfront.
If you end up wanting to do something that requires a card (and cash, check etc isn't accepted as with most online payments), then it's better to use a credit card than a debit card as you have better protections in case something goes wrong or your card is skimmed.
I have a mortgage. My lender wanted a year's worth of utility bill payments in lieu of me not having a credit score.
Most hotels require one too.
This is for any situation where your liability may exceed your cash on hand.
> Most hotels require one too.
These are always the first things people say when I tell them I don't have a credit card. Far as I can tell they're both completely false, at least as of recent history. I rent cars and book hotel rooms on my plain old debit card all the time.
Doesn't seem like a can't, although it might be in some locations.
This is the first heading 3 paragraphs into the article (note the typo in "you"). Do people ... not even read their own writing before publishing an article these days? I understand people don't want to "waste" money on editors but most random dev blogs have fewer typos than sites like this where content is _monetized_ through ads.
I bank with one of the main US companies and probably should look into using a second, but setting up credit cards etc. at each one seems like a bad idea...
IMO, this is why we should have basic banking through USPS or some other federal organization. I don't care what it costs or why private organizations with [clear histories of fraud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wells_Fargo_cross-selling_scan...) are supposedly better. We should just have better nationalized banking offerings (airlines and healthcare too for that matter) and remove this problem altogether.
The semantics of "how you <do thing> can screw you over" is still a bit odd, as "screw over" is typically done by people in the English language ("the mailman screwed me over" reads better than "the mailbox screwed me over" or "how I closed the mailbox screwed me over"), but that's less egregious than the obvious typo I took it for (assuming noun form of "bank"). I digress...
You can't even trust someone has written their own writing anymore.
I have two bank accounts, each with a card and Apple pay. My "backup bank" costs about 3 euros / month for a simple payments account, savings and a creditcard.
My main creditcard is a separate Amex, but having a backup Visa card is useful also because Amex acceptance is still not great in Europe.
For less than 50 euros per year that's a lot of redundancy.
That 3 euros includes free ATM usage in nearly all of Europe and no fees on transactions within Europe. It's a lot less than what I paid in banking costs when I was living outside the EU.
For ATMs, different banks do different things. Large banks have an extensive branch and ATM network, and often you pay a fee to use an unaffiliated ATM. Smaller banks often do rebates on ATM fees up to a certain number of transactions in a month. Some banks and more often credit unions (which are more or less banks) participate in ATM networks that provide a large number of ATMs worldwide. Some banks are in both the last categories.
US Credit cards will only have fees if you get some super premium ones (and even then, there are often promos for that to zero out the fee temporarily or long-term).
While waiting for the new card, having some cash at home and/or backup account with with a backup card at home can be useful.
https://support.apple.com/en-qa/118627
e.g.:
> France
> You might not be able to use Apple Pay for purchases over 50 EUR.
> Canada
> You might not be able to use Apple Pay for purchases over 250 CAD
The credit rating is mainly a way to check how much credit you already have available and whether you’re up to date or not. Oh, and verify your identity (probably the primary purpose of them).
Failed state immigrants will kindly remind you that what you really need is a Backup Country, you just don't know it yet.