9 Things To Take Care 👀 While Banking!
First of all, apologies for not posting out the content piece for over more than a month now – I have been traveling to Pakistan juggling between vacation and working from home so was unable to keep up with the pace here, although – those who are following me on the YouTube channel have not missed any bit. With that said, please do subscribe the channel if you have not done yet.
While I was in Pakistan 🇵🇰, I went through a lot of experiences due to the length of stay this time so I thought to compile some of my experiences from the visit as well as some compilation from the past specifically for banking related practices which can benefit a lot of people. Here is the list of those 9 observations.
1- Understanding your profile 🤷♂️
Keep realistic expectation from the banks based on your profile. Even people in the same office working on the same desk & on the same salary might not be eligible for same banking offers / benefits based on many factors like their hiring agency, their long term banking history, so much so in some cases banks might do racial profiling too. So it is important to understand your own profile in order to fetch the best deal out of the banks & work out to improve in multiple ways like climbing up the income band, moving to a better company, improving your credit score etc.
2 – Bank account for each family member 👨👩👧👧
Experienced this one incident first hand where a lady with a kid walked into the bank and was denied her captured 🏧 card in the machine because it was not under her name and belonged to her husband who has handed over the card when he left abroad. The situation for her was grim as bank was unable to handover the ATM card and she was out of cash unless her husband physically comes to collect. This is an important lesson for everyone to go ahead and create bank accounts for everyone in the household (of legal age) and empower them rather handing over the ATM cards like this.
Mentioned this in one of the tweets recently as well
3 – Pay credit cards to full or even extra while traveling 🛂
This is a long story – but let me try to summarize. A friend before traveling had a huge bill on credit card (near the due date) to pay and thought of paying it though the regular banking channel once his salary arrives online. However, the turn of events were such that the channel he was thinking about got restricted on the credit card’s app and he had no alternate way to pay – although he was saved by a friend but one has to be careful while depending too much on the future payments and have multiple options in mind. Best case scenario is to be debt free before commencing the travel.
4 – Keeping a check on your bank statement 📝
Banks can be cheeky some times and can impose fees that you don’t understand unless you keep a track of the statement. It will take hardly 5-10 mins of your time to reconcile your bank statements every month so that you are aware of any recurring expense bank is imposing in the form of fees or something you might consider dropping as a service if not required.
5 – Borrowing is not basic human right! 💳
People think borrowing is part of their human right – please don’t! Be responsible and think about your family who is worst affected in case you are unable to pay back. Besides, the banks and credit card companies are only thriving because of such irresponsible behavior of consumers. Moreover, don’t fall for low level loan shark apps which were discussed in this video here.
6 – Understand the power of long term relationship with financial institutes 🤝
Just to give you an idea – If you have a credit card which has an annual fee (which you don’t want to pay) while you have been using the card for a few years with good spend and repayment history. You can try negotiating this before next annual fee is due – it is most likely they will drop those annual charges and let you use the card for free. Similarly, I have seen people negotiating free ATM card usage with their banks over other networks for long term loyal customers.
Wrote something earlier about not taking your bank for granted here
7 – Don’t ever keep more than required cash in bank account 💸
The best way to save money is to hide it if you don’t have the control over yourself. Always plan to distribute your monthly income before it hit your bank account and don’t keep more than you actually will require during the course of the month. Keep emergency fund in a sperate place and investments / savings into their respective places.
MORE MONEY WILL CREATE MORE DEMAND
ECONOMICS 101
8 – Don’t miss out on the rewards 🎁
Credit cards are famous for providing amazing rewards based on the consumer spending. From airport lounges to free lunch to even free iPhones – if you are on a lookout for deals, you will surely get them with credit cards. However, due diligence and basic precautions are required while using credit cards
Lesser known fact is that not only credit cards, but banks also offer great deals. This bank offer can benefit you in case you are living in the UAE from Bank FAB. Open a salary account with them, and get the max benefit of 2,500/- AED if you are an expat. I opened a bank account with Mashreq bank a couple of years back because of similar offer. Now thinking of moving to FAB. 😁
So while having a long term relationship is good, there is no reason not to move if a good opportunity arise.
9 – Keep more than 1 bank account 🏦
This is specifically important in case you don’t have the savings and investment strategy in place – your day to day expense account should be different than the savings account. Besides this point, if you are in Pakistan – having 2 or more bank accounts give you a lot of options, one i can vouch for is the opportunity to use banking apps without disruption atleast until there is a mechanism by the regulator to heavily penalize the downtime of banking apps.
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