With the successful direct deposit of my paycheck this morning, the last major milestone is out of the way. In a few days, I’ll have gotten my accounts away from Wells Fargo.

Doing so is an admittedly-belated response to the Move Your Money project, a campaign to encourage people to take their financial business away from the four large banks that caused… and are still causing… financial crises, and switch to smaller local credit unions. In addition to the satisfaction of not supporting the blatant ethical issues the big organizations have caused, there are added benefits: credit unions very rarely slap unnecessary fees on members, and generally offer better returns. After the first month, my interest payout was more than twice what Wells had paid out, for instance… and I hadn’t even moved all the money over yet.

So, better interest rate, I still have normal checks and a debit card, no monthly fee for online banking, and no montly fee for using my debit card, which Wells and BofA are instituting? Fucking win.

I still have to finalize the last couple of transfers to the new bank, and afterwards I’ll still have the mortgage with Wells (a much larger undertaking of course) and a credit card with another of the big banks. But lots of progress regardless.