Yahoo Finance 
5 reasons banks 'aren't all bad'
If you want to be a bank hater, it’s only fair you sit the following test to see if you’re a qualified candidate to be a hater without a guilty conscience!
You see, most of us know that banks can behave badly and some individuals have lost out as a consequence but banks aren’t all bad. Recently I looked at some situations where we forget about our national preoccupation with bank bashing.
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Here are some times when you might have looked past the banks’ reputation of questionable behaviour:
When they said “yes” to a loan that saw you buy your dream house
Then there were car loans that made you feel great and you didn’t feel the pain of repaying, until you smashed the car up or had to try to resell it
When they did lend money to you and your business that helped you grow a successful, income-giving business that you later sold at a big profit.
When they sneakily got into our lives with their saving plans introduced to us at school, which were marketing strategies but they turned us into savers, which helped when it came to buying important stuff in our lives; and
I reckon a lot of our super balances have been driven by the success of the banks’ share price and their great dividends that smart super funds harvest to produce the fantastic results we’ve seen since 1992.
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There are times when we need them!
So banks have some pros to reduce those cons that often get trotted out by people, who, when it’s all said and done, are only humans who have been brainwashed to be wary of banks.
You can be your own worst enemy!
In reality, most of us have been impoverished more by someone else who is the real enemy of our wealth-building and that’s someone called YOU!
Take the test
To test yourself to see if you can hate banks guilt-free, see if you can say “yes” to the following questions.
Have you done a budget to see where you spend your income and have you tried to cut your spending to build up your savings so you can start investing in income-producing assets?
If you have a home loan, have you talked to a few mortgage brokers and visited interest rate comparison websites to make sure you’re on the lowest interest rate possible for your circumstances? Use my Switzer Home Loans rate of 3.89% as a testing point and if you are paying more, then you better have a good reason for giving up your money to some lender!
Do you know what interest rate you’re paying on your credit card? Do you know there is at least one credit card with a rate under 12%? If you’re on an 18% card and your balance is $10,000, you could be forking out $600 extra a year because you haven’t bothered to lower your rate.
Do you know what super fund you are in? Do you know what they charge you and what their performance has been compared to the top 10 super funds? You could check these out on super comparison websites such as Chant West or Superratings.
Do you know the best term deposit rate at banks right now? (There are some rates better than 2.05% and I’ve found a 2.8% at Citi.)
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You can save money
To make the point more strongly, if someone had a $500,000 at 4.5% for 25 years, they’d be paying $2,789 per month and would pay back $836,749 in total at that rate. However, if this borrower switched to a 3.8% home loan, the monthly repayments would be $2,594 and the total payback would be $778,285. By doing the homework, someone could save $195 a month and, over the life of the loan, the saving would be $58,464.
That’s a lot of saving and it’s a big loss from your wealth if you didn’t get off your butt and search for the best deal.
Sure, the bank might be the beneficiary of your wealth-building slackness but I’d blame you before the banks when it comes to this subject.
Enough said!
I think I can rest my case. I hope you do get moving and start stopping all sorts of businesses taking you for a ride to the poor house!
