Racing the bank

One of my banks decided to a complete shutdown of their on-line banking on the last day of the month. That's when a lot of people get paid. I know I do. There was a narrow window between when my money was deposited and when they were shutting down the service. I quickly logged on and transferred my funds to where they needed to go.

Now I could have driven into town and walked into the bank and gotten a wad of bills. Then I'd drive all over town doing my business, just like in the days of the pioneers. Okay, that's doable, but a royal pain.

I happened to be local, so at least I could have done it. The problem is that I just as easily could have been two thousand miles away from the nearest branch of my bank. Having my funds locked up while away is no fun at all. It's happened before when my debit card was deemed to be fraudulent, for no known reason whatsoever. No matter how had I tried and how often the bank assured me the problem was fixed, it wasn't fixed.. Fortunately, my lovely wife's debit card, on the very same account, worked fine.

The obvious solution is to travel with a significant amount of cash. The problem with that is you stand a good chance of getting robbed, by the police. In many jurisdictions they confiscate cash as evidence of illegal activity. Good luck on ever getting it back.

Okay, these may seem like minor inconveniences to some people. For me they are red flags. When a country's financial system is falling apart, one of the things they do is currency controls. They make it much harder to move money around. They make it especially hard to move money out of the country.

Do I think this is the start of currency collapse? Probably not. However, it's one of those things you look for. On a practical level, I've the annoying problem of how I'm going to keep my bills paid when traveling.

-Sixbears