At Least The Money's Safe

Sorry it's been totally quiet here. There's just been so much going on. But I wanted to get on today to tell a little story.

So Scott had an account at Barnes Bank when we got married, and I added myself onto the account and then we opened a savings account. When we needed a new car we got a car loan through Barnes as well.

So starting on Monday, Scott's debit card started acting funny. He was out of town on business and he only had the debit card (no cash or checks) and he needed to rent a car, but the card was declined. We had lots of money in the account, so he was really confused. It was late at night, so he couldn't go to the bank to withdraw the money, and the ATM wasn't taking the card either, so he had to call his boss and have his boss charge the car on his credit card. At least he wasn't stranded, but it was weird and annoying.

When he tried to use the card elsewhere, it worked, so he wasn't too concerned about it. I hadn't tried to buy anything for a week anyway, so I didn't notice anything weird.

So last night I got a Knitpicks catalog in the mail, and they were having a book sale, and there was a FABULOUS deal on a book about knitting socks, so I got online to buy it and when I entered my card information, it said the card number was invalid. I was confused, and I thought I had typed it in wrong, so I tried again. And again. Five times. I was mad so I went on Amazon and bought it (for more money, but I had decided I really want this book...) and Amazon had my card information stored in there and it went through just fine, so I assumed there was something wrong with Knitpicks and thought nothing of it.

Now, I have had this sinus thing since the beginning of November, and I just kept hoping it would go away, but this morning I woke up and felt TERRIBLE so I decided to go to InstaCare. My lovely Scott took me so I wouldn't have to be alone (awwwww). When we got there Scott's card was declined. I tried mine, and it was also declined. So I sat in the waiting room for Scott to go to an ATM, and once again, that didn't work, so he had to drive to the bank and withdraw some money. They gave him hundred dollar bills, and when he got back the front desk informed us that they couldn't break a hundred. Sweet. So they're going to bill us (thankfully, because I really needed to see the doctor).

So I got in and sure enough I have a sinus infection, and they gave me steroids and antibiotics and massive doses of Mucinex (Mucinex is magic, just in case you were wondering).

ANYWAY. While I was in the doctor's office Scott called the bank to find out what was going on. After like 20 minutes of hemming and hawing they finally confessed that FDIC was SEIZING THEM and we had 30 days to close our accounts and take out our money. Nice.

So we went back to the bank and asked to close our accounts. Apparently, if FDIC is taking over the bank, they don't have to let you close your account at any time. They only let us withdraw $500 today and we have to wait until Tuesday to take out the rest and close the accounts. Either way, we needed to find a new bank, so we looked around and decided that we wanted to go with a national bank chain this time, for more security, and we decided on Chase. We went in there and they were totally awesome and we got our accounts set up and everything, and when we can close out our accounts at Barnes we can bring the rest of our money over to Chase and that will be that.

The only problem is that we still have a car loan over there. We have two options: pay it off (which would be doable at this point but would put our balance a little lower than we would like) or take out a new loan at Chase. We'll see what happens.

Either way, we both have to change our bank account and card information EVERYWHERE online and at all the companies we have it filed with and WOW will that be fun. We also have to change our direct deposit information with both our companies.

It's really just inconvenient. The money's totally safe since the bank was FDIC insured. But STILL.

My main question was...when were they planning on telling us? Because we only found out after we called ourselves.

Yes.