The Cu Experience

My ex-wife works for a large banking firm here in Pittsburgh. She has told me in the past if someone comes in with a large out of state check to cash, they can give them about 1/4 of the amount. They have to come back the next day and once the bank has verified the check is legit and the funds can be taken from that account then then release the remaining funds to the person cashing the check.

I know the bank I had for 20 years has quite a large amount of cash on hand. the mac machines hold up to 40,000 usd in cash and I think the banks have at least 100K in them. I could be wrong.

I agree it is one's money and if one wants it back they should be able to get it when they want it.

"There is reporting on large currency transactions as well"

BS protocol....

Yes, it is. I told my wife that this was a test to see what they would do. I feel better about having some money in the CU now. At least, I now know that I can get it if I need it, unless there are government restrictions put in place at some time in the future. If that happens, the CUs will also have to follow the law and do what they have to do. Hopefully, there will be some warning signs that this is coming before it happens and more money can be moved outside the system.



I haven't been to a coin show either but would love to go sometime. Unlike the gun shows that have ads on radio, TV, and in the newspapers, coin shows are MUCH more quiet about the when and where of their shows. They also seem to have them in out of the way places that I'm not real sure I want to go. Not sure why this is so but having some ads out there would sure make finding them a lot easier. It would probably improve their business quite a bit too.



Yeah, that's pretty typical. I had a similar experience when I closed out an account at a major on-line brokerage house a few months ago. I had a check for $50k to deposit in my personal CU checking account. Even though this check was drawn on a national brokerage company with hundreds of billions of dollars under management AND a local office in the same town as where I live, the CU did the same thing as your bank. I had to wait 3 days before I could write any checks against it. I didn't need to do that but if I had it would not have worked too well.



Our local CU has about 6 or so local branches but they also have a main branch that holds the bulk of their cash. Yes, they have a lot of it there but not in the smaller branch offices. The main office also feeds and empties the cash machines. This is why it takes them a couple of days to arrange for delivery to the branch when a request for money comes in. I could probably just go to the main branch for immediate service, I suppose, but that's about a 15 mile round trip that's not really necessary with a bit of planning on my part.



Yes, it does seem intrusive at times. The police are trying to combat drug crime and other criminals who deal in cash, so I can understand why they would be watching for cash movements. Still, $10,000 seems pretty small for those people. Maybe they could raise that to $100,000 and still keep track of illegal activity without snagging the small fish too.



Yes, that could happen but it is not something that most people favor. A cashless society would certainly make criminal activities more difficult but it would be open to abuse too. Just think MF Global sometime and what happened to their clients supposedly segregated accounts. Those accounts are not so very different from a typical bank account. If you have all of your money stored in electronic format and it all disappears from accident or theft, how would we ever prove our losses or get reimbursed? We could keep our account statements but they would not necessarily show any additions or reductions just before the electronic money was all lost. This whole thing sounds to me like an answer to a question that most of us are not asking. :-/

I knew about the $10k reporting limit but did not know over what time period this applies. Is that less than $10k per month or what? I am curious about this. Not up to anything, of course, but would prefer to maintain a low profile and not get tripped up over some bureaucratic baloney if I can avoid it.

Yes, it is a weird situation for sure. Get more than $10k at once and they fill out a report on you. Take less than that and they fill out a different report about how you are avoiding. Man, does that ever sound like a "heads I win, tails you lose" situation?!

A rational person would say, "OK, the limit is $10k per X period of time. If you do less than this, no problem. If you do this or more than this, we fill out the report". But, noooo, that's too simple. Now we have their guesses involved as to what is legal and who is breaking the law. It is ridiculous.

I can't say for sure but I believe the only tracking is done on cash deposits, not withdrawals. I worked for a lending institution that made everything from $500 personal loans to $250K mortgages. Had a few mortgage customers who paid by cash monthly in the branch. Feds required when we applied the payments to the acct we had to indicate if it was cash, check or money order. Once they passed the $10K threshold in "any running 12 month period" the computer churned out a report that had to be forwarded to our HQ with Soc Sec #'s & copies of photo ID obtained at the time of loan closing. Big Brother is Watching!

I've kind of been on the outskirts of this discussion but I am curious. From what I can gather it seems like there might be an issue with cash withdrawals. I've never had a problem walking into my bank & getting any amount of cash I wanted as long as I had the funds on deposit. Granted I rarely get more than a few thousand at any one time to take to auctions/estate sales where I can't cut a check. Are we talking about getting funds in the 5 to 6 figure range?

While I don't agree with the $10k reporting rules I don't worry about it. The bank maintains a record of any transaction which is readily available if the government decides to check into it.....irregardless of amounts. The only way to maintain a "low profile" is to deal strictly in cash.