Title: sysk: Can You Live Without a Bank Account?
Title: sysk_with_transcripts_Can you live without a bank account.json; And if you had a life, you didn't necessarily rectify your bank checkbook every day. Oh, wait, what is balancing a checkbook mean? Seriously? Yeah. Thank God for my wife. So another reason you might avoid a bank is philosophically. There may be a longstanding distrust of banks in your family that you don't want to put your money in, or you may just want to be like, you know what? I don't want to take part in this modern society. I want to kind of drop out a bit. And a really good first move is to shut your bank account down. That's a big statement. Oh, yeah, it is. But a lot of people that are underbanked and don't have accounts aren't there on purpose. It's not some philosophical statement. A lot of times it's simply because they are poor and they don't have a lot of alternatives. Yeah. And the other thing about not having a bank account, not only do you not have a bank account, you also are, like, basically just avoiding banks altogether. There's plenty of other things that banks offer, like loans and mortgage, lollipops, stuff like that. Yeah. Maybe some free nasty coffee. So when you don't have a banking account, that's like the most basic unit of the banking world. Right. If you don't have that, you obviously aren't going to be exposed to all these other things that can help. Things like build your credit history through like a revolving loan or a mortgage or a car loan or something like that that you can build up your credit for and ultimately save money. So when you don't have a bank account, for whatever reason, you are effectively out of the banking system. The problem is you can live parallel to the banking system outside of it, but it can be really dangerous, especially if you're just dealing with cash, because that cash has to stay somewhere, whether it's on you or in your mattress or in a coffee can in your backyard. You're exposed for having that readily available to anybody who finds it or comes into your house with a gun to get it. Yes.
Title: sysk: Can You Live Without a Bank Account?
Title: sysk_with_transcripts_Can you live without a bank account.json; And it doesn't have to be an everyday thing. You can host when you want. Like, let's say you're taking a week's vacation. Why not host your home? Because that money could go toward paying for your current vacation or towards your retirement fund or even towards your kids college fund. Yeah. For anything. And listen, if you're worried about your stuff, don't be. Air cover for hosts. Let hosts welcome guests into their home without having to worry. You get $1 million in damage protection anytime you're hosting. Plus pet damage protection and income loss protection, too. And are you ready for this? Air cover for host is completely free every time you host on airbnb. Free with a capital F, with air cover for Host. It makes hosting a no brainer, and the benefits really start adding up. So learn more and host with peace of mind at Airbnb comaircoverforhosts. Capital One offers commercial solutions you can bank on. Now more than ever, your business faces specific challenges and unique opportunities. That's why Capital One offers a comprehensive suite of financial services custom tailored to your short and long term goals, backed by the expertise, strategy and resources of a top ten commercial bank, a dedicated team works with you to support your success and help you achieve your goals. Explore the possibilities at CapitalOne. comCOMMERCIAL all right, so if you live in modern society today, it is pretty tough to get by without a bank. Most cases these days you have well, I don't know about most cases, but in many cases you have automatic deposits of your work checks. Sure. A lot of people pay their bills wirelessly, online, directly from their bank. You might have a student loan, you might have a car loan, you might have your house mortgage, you might pay your credit card bills. All this stuff is running through a bank, most likely. And you would think it's probably impossible to not have a bank account these days. And I would say pretty much all Americans have them. Not true. Well, pretty much all Americans do. Like 93% do. Yeah, but that's not all. No, it's true.
Title: sysk: Can You Live Without a Bank Account?
Title: sysk_with_transcripts_Can you live without a bank account.json; Yeah. 7% of Americans do not have bank accounts. About 9 million people last year in 2015 did not have bank accounts. 9 million people is a lot of people. No, it really is. And apparently that's household sorry, not people. Yeah, right. You're that is a big distinction, too. And the FDIC said, man, that's the lowest since we've been tracking this by far. And someone said, well, how long have you been tracking this? They said, well, the last six years. Really? Yeah, which I'm like. Really? That's when they started tracking it, but apparently so 2009. So if you want another number, the 9 million American households don't have bank accounts at all, then there are 25 million households in addition to that. So that makes almost like 34 million households, which that's a substantial number at this point. Sure. The 25 million are what's called underbanked, meaning they may have a bank account, but they don't use the bank account. Yeah. They don't use it because they are probably afraid of overdraft fees. Or they have maybe a bank account that got grandfathered in so that they don't have to pay minimum amount fees. And who knows? There's all sorts of reasons for people to not use a bank account that they have, but probably cheap among them is overdressed, which you'll talk more about. Yeah. And the majority of these underbank people in the United States are poor, usually. A lot of times they're minorities, a lot of times they're less educated. And these communities, there's a few reasons why they may not want to use a bank one. Maybe they don't trust banks. And if you look in the history of the United States or certainly even we're just talking about the Wells Fargo scandal, when you see stuff like that on the news, it should be upsetting to everyone. But obviously if you're poor and you don't have a lot of money, that may scare you into not wanting to use a bank at all. Right? Yeah.
Title: sysk: Can You Live Without a Bank Account?
Title: sysk_with_transcripts_Can you live without a bank account.json; Maybe at the time, I might be making it up. I seem to remember them saying that, and I was like, I don't want that. Just let the check bounce and I'll take it up with them. Yes. The way it was marketed, though, was like, hey, we value you. We want to make sure that you can pay all your bills. So if something happens and you're overdrafted we'll cover it. We're just going to charge you a fee. And it sounds good, but again, when you go from high to low and all of a sudden your overdraft fees go from one to four or five or however many, that's a huge problem. Well, and the people that are overdrafting and the people that are at least able to afford those fees. Exactly. So it's a disproportionate burden on the poor, which makes it, as a scam, one of the more evil scams around. Yes. It's just wrong, then the idea that if you open an account, you should not opt in for overdraft protection. And it's easy to say when you're talking about checks for, like you're writing a check for a Mountain Dew and some cheetos. Yeah, who cares if you're short for that? You can go without that. But when you're talking about your rent check or like an actual grocery bill or something like that, it sucks that you can't get that stuff. But it's better to have to put a couple of things back than to pay $35 for one $2 item that you went over by, right? Yeah, that's a good point. And this was in my case, too. This is also back in the day when you I mean, a lot of times it was a mystery how much you had in your account. Right. Like, you couldn't just get on your phone before you write the check and be like, oh, well, no, I don't have enough money to cover this. Yeah, because even if you balanced your checkbook, sometimes you forgot to carry the one, it wasn't always 100% accurate.