Unbanking vs. Underbanking: How To Break Up With the Financial System

[ Financial Safety Services and Freedom Network commentary: the recent events in Cyprus "should" remind us all of the inherent lack of safety in the idea of leaving all, or most of our money within the banking system. What happened in Cyprus is possible elsewhere despite politicians and bureaucrats "assurances" otherwise ; total confiscation of U.S. bank account assets, possibly under different economic circumstances from those applying in Cyprus, but regardless, don't kid yourself, account confiscation in the US is a distinct possibility given the realities of "the system" itself. 

And in any case, total confiscation of your U.S. bank account is already possible without any sort of financial or economic  crisis as the excuse, and has already happened to 100's of 1000s of individuals in the U.S. who have been accused of a crime by the U.S government, for example: accused of  tax evasion. 

 In these cases and others, [typically involving those "charming" R.I.C.O. statutes],all bank accounts of the accused are "frozen"pre-trial , thereby preventing the supposedly "presumed innocent until proven guilty", accused person of having the financial resources  to properly defend themselves against the charges. Typically , the accused is magically found guilty as charged in the court system of "the land of the free", and all frozen assets become the property of the U.S government. 

Offshore Banking Anyone? 

Of course, the real solution to all this is for the concerned  US citizen to open an offshore bank account in a suitable jurisdiction where confiscation is extremely unlikely. It is still legal for U.S citizens  to have foreign bank accounts [but that might change!] . If you would like to discuss offshore banking with me, either by email or via Skype, let me know. Regards, onebornfree & Freedom Network   ]

Unbanking vs. Underbanking: How To Break Up With the Financial System

by Daisy Luther
 The Organic Prepper

"Breaking up is hard to do, especially when it is with a tracking service like a financial institution.

Sometimes you can make a clean break and other times you have to remain “just friends”.

The US government actually has a name for people who have no bank accounts – they call these folks “the unbanked”. The FDIC defines the unbanked as “those without an account at a bank or other financial institution and are considered to be outside the mainstream for one reason or another.” Another term is “the underbanked” – “people or businesses that have poor access to mainstream financial services normally offered by retail banks. The underbanked can be characterized by a strong reliance on non-traditional forms of finance and micro-finance often associated with disadvantaged and the poor, such as check cashers, loan sharks and pawnbrokers.”

According to the government, the above scenarios are crisis situations which must be rectified for “your own good”. There is legislation on the table in many states to set up banking facilities for the unbanked and underbanked. The assumption is that most folks who do not deal with a bank are too poor to do so. This could be true in many cases: high minimum balances, bad credit history, NSFs, and account fees can all preclude having a bank account for those in difficult financial straits.

However, the government has a couple more reasons to insist that everyone should have a bank account:

1.) Ease of confiscation

We need only to look at the horrible situation in Cyprus to see how bank accounts are like all-you-can-steal-buffets for the powers that be. A suggested theft TAX of up to 20% of the money in Cypriot bank accounts may be levied in order for the country to meet it’s staggering debts in the terms of the proposed EU bailout. The banks of Cyprus are loaded with the money of residents and businesses of other countries that have used them as a tax haven. The banks have been closed for several days and frantic customers are left to withdraw the maximum daily balances from ATM machines in an attempt to salvage what they can. Many people fear the banks will never reopen their doors.

Think it can’t happen here? I wonder if the people of Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Hungary, Argentina, Spain, and Portugal thought that too.

2.)  Privacy Information

The second reason that “everyone should have access to banking services” is the digital trail that it leaves. Every dime you receive and spend out of these accounts is part of an intricate system of surveillance. When your money goes into a bank – any bank – Big Brother knows about it. It’s a simple matter of compiling information via your social security number (or other federally- assigned number) to find out how much you make, how much you have, and where it comes from. This can be used to prosecute you for tax purposes, to locate you through where your pay comes from, and to follow your personal money trail for a variety of different reasons.

It can also be used to track your spending – Big Brother can find out that you spent $2000 at a gun store, that you purchased online from a prepper supply website or that you bought some books with “questionable” content in order to paint you as a threat.

Unbanking

So, in this day and age, is it possible to get by completely without a bank account?

It’s tough. Most work places prefer to pay through direct deposit. Many landlords, mortgage companies and finance companies do business through direct debit. You’re going to pay some steep fees if this is the route that you choose to go. For some, it might be worth it, particularly if you only have a few transactions in a month.

Here are some places you can cash checks for a fee:

• Check cashing depots

 • Some retailers like Walmart, 7-11, and some grocery stores (the number of these is dropping rapidly)

• Pawn shops

• The issuing bank will sometimes cash a check drawn from one of their accounts for a non-account holder

• Some prepaid credit card accounts will accept a direct deposit (in my opinion, this is nearly as unsafe as having your money in a bank account)

• Through a friend or family member’s account (also risky – for both you and the account holder)

Privacy Information

Here are some ways you can pay bills without a bank account:

• In person, with cash, cashier’s checks, or money orders

• Through the mail, with cashier’s checks or money orders

• Online, with prepaid credit cards

• Through a kiosk using a prepaid credit card

• At a check-cashing depot or retailer

Underbanking

Your next option is underbanking. For some people this may be the most realistic way to break up with their bank – it’s the “just friends” version. If you have a lot of transactions that go through your account every month, it isn’t necessarily practical to get rid of your account. Keep in mind that all of the above methods of unbanking still have a component of financial tracking. The checks and bills still have your personal information tied to them in most cases.

When you underbank, you still have an account. Set this up with the lowest possible fee and the lowest possible required balance. Shop around to find the best deal. Consider a credit union or community bank instead of one of the big mega-banks. They are slightly safer, emphasis on slightly.

Your paychecks from work can be directly deposited, which will make your employer happy. Employers rarely want to do something outside the norm, and if everyone else gets their pay directly deposited, writing a check for you will make you stand out – the opposite of what you want to do. As well, any other checks you receive, like refunds, tax returns, etc., can be processed through this account.

The goal here is to keep as little money as possible in this account. Banks are no longer the safest place to keep your money, and the .00001% of interest you will accrue is just not worthwhile.

Immediately upon payday:

 • Pay all your bills online or through a kiosk out of this account – rent, utilities, credit card payments (hopefully you don’t have those)

• Buy necessities like groceries if you need to reduce the amount in the account for withdrawal purposes

• Calculate the amount of payments that will be coming out of your account between now and your next pay (rent/mortgage, car payment, insurance)

• Remove all money except that required for impending debits and your minimum balance. Get it in cash.

Avoid Financial Surveillance

The government wants everyone to have a bank account for another reason besides quick accessibility for the purpose of thievery. Big Brother wants to know what you earn, what you spend, and where you spend it. Every penny you spend could one day be used against you, as more and more things become illegal in the police state that is taking over the western world.

Use your bank account as little as possible if you’ve chosen to underbank:

• Buy stuff with cash

• Skip registering your belongings by serial number for warranty purposes

• For heaven’s sakes, don’t get one of those “customer loyalty” cards that track every purchase you make and provide you with “rewards” or “points”

• Buy from places that don’t track you, like yard sales, Craigslist, farmer’s markets, roadside stands, your brother’s friend’s sister’s boyfriend

• Work for cash: this is another suggestion that won’t work for everybody, but if you can do some odd jobs for cash, even if you make slightly less money doing so, this is money that can’t be tracked.

Think about how your purchases tell a story about you that you might rather keep to yourself. Are you buying lots of farm equipment, soil amendments and seeds? Are you buying ammo every week? Are you stocking away large quantities of food or medical supplies? Have you recently purchased 2,347 books on different guerrilla warfare tactics? OPSEC is more than just keeping your mouth shut about your prepperly ways.

Ditch the Dollar

Although you require some fiat currency to function in today’s society, as well as some in an emergency fund, consider using other forms of currency whenever possible. The following suggestions won’t work for everyone, but some folks may be able to ditch the dollar in the following ways:

 • Engage in the barter system: trade goods and services with like-minded people.

• Keep precious metals like gold and silver in a fireproof safe for your “savings account”

• Immediately convert fiat currency into tangible goods: food, ammo, home defense items, tools, etc.

• Work towards self-sufficiency – if you buy less, you can earn less: grow your food, repair your own home or vehicle, do things manually instead of using expensive equipment, lessen your dependency on the grid

• Simplify – this goes hand in hand with self sufficiency: find your entertainment from library books and online resources, skip eating out, take a walk instead of joining a gym – the less you feel you need, the less money you will have to earn.

The decision to unbank or underbank is unique to every individual. The further away you can get from “the system” the more privacy and security you will have. The suggestions above are not meant to be comprehensive – they’re meant to get you thinking about how you can disengage. As always, your suggestions in the comments can greatly benefit others!"

Reprinted with permission from The Organic Prepper.

March 25, 2013

Daisy Luther writes daily tips, strategies and prepping ideas at The Organic Prepper and Girls Gone North.

Copyright © 2013 The Organic Prepper

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FINANCIAL SAFETY SERVICES DISCLAIMER:

Financial Safety Services is NOT an investment advisory service. Financial Safety Services is an educational service that teaches the interested individual non-original [i.e. invented by others far more intelligent than myself], time-tested safe methods/principles that might be successfully used by the individual for relatively low risk speculations in various financial markets.

ACCURACY OF INFORMATION : Financial Safety Services MAKES NO CLAIMS AS TO THE ACCURACY OF ANY INFORMATION EITHER GIVEN AT THIS BLOG SITE, OR IN PERSON TO PAYING CLIENTS. All information given/sold, must be understood to have been acted on AT THE INDIVIDUALS OWN RISK .

********************************************************************

More About Financial Safety Services

[Free phone consultations via "Skype". To set a time/date email: onebornfreeatyahoodotcom ]

Financial Safety Services is a private , mostly off-line, international, person to person consulting service that attempts to show its real-time [i.e. non-internet derived] clients how to speculate safely with money that they can afford to lose. Money that the client cannot afford to lose should never be risked in these speculations

For more than 20 years, nearly all of Financial Safety Services clients to date have been found via direct [i.e off-line, in-person] referral from previously satisfied clients only.

No attempts are made to procure clientele via the selling of the sporadic, deliberately incomplete online information posted at this site. All valuable information is sold to clients, via e-mail, or preferably in person, on a "need to know" customized basis, depending on their specific speculative wants/needs.

Therefor any/all posts at this site are for the reference and possible benefit of pre-existing , real-world, paying clients only as part of my services [and to perhaps help emphasize a particular point I make to them in private], and never for the benefit of the general reading public and casual internet reader at large.

Internet posts arer not made on a regular schedule in order to build an on-line audience; only when I feel that so doing is beneficial to my actual existing clientele.

I have no interest in gaining clients first hand from any posts made either here or elsewhere [if it happens, it happens!] - as I previously stated, to date [20 years+], nearly all of my previous clients have come to me via direct, in-person referral from other satisfied clients- that is, [1]an existing client personally recommends my services to a close friend, [2] the friend contacts me, [3]we discuss their wants/needs, [4] I make a decision as to whether or not I can really help them, [5] We come to a financial agreement- or not :-) .

None- Client Questions?

Should a casual reader/none client have a serious question about an assertion I make on this site, they must write to me at: onebornfreeatyahoodotcom and I will do my best to answer their question. Their first question will usually be answered for free. After that, fees may apply.

Current Client Questions.

All existing, paying client questions are of course, answered for free [usually via private e-mail]- it is part of the service!

onebornfreeatyahoodotcom

Regards, onebornfree 

Swiss Banking- Worth Another Look?

[Onebornfree commentary: some 10 years ago I wrote a special report on Swiss banks, the importance of bank liquidity, how to calculate a Swiss bank's liquidity , etc etc. I suspect I need to up date it and put it out there as an e-book at some point in time.  More recently, here I have written/reviewed the hugely overblown U.B.S. affair briefly touched on in this article as well. So reprinted below for your reading pleasure is another interesting take on those much maligned Swiss Banks, which I'm happy to say are still in very good working order, as the author ,Peter McFarlane, attempts to show . The report below is from Mr Mcfarlane's free emailed newsletter, "The Q Wealth Report" which you can sign up for by clicking on the link.  His article points out some of the dangers U.S. citizens will face in trying to open a Swiss Bank account, but my own take is that for many it may well be quite easy to get around those legal requirements with a little forethought, planning, and an ability to read between the lines of the various laws {This is what I do :-) } The article also mentions information on how to set up a Swiss Bank account for as little as $5000. I have no experience with using Mr McFarlane's Swiss Bank contacts, so you are on your own there, if interested. Regards, onebornfree]  Q-Wealth Report- Swiss Banking- Worth Another Look?: Last week I visited our contacts in Switzerland again. The Alpine nation is a country that hasn't had much good said about it recently, at least not in the world of international financial services. Nonetheless, contrarian as ever, we at Q Wealth still believe Switzerland has a lot to offer the international investor. Old style numbered Swiss bank accounts, with obligatory cloak and dagger secrecy, are definitely out. (At least in Switzerland. Not everywhere. But that's another story.) But Switzerland still has a lot to offer. The level of sophistication of its financial services, in my view, surpasses every other banking centre – yes, I believe Switzerland is a much better place for private wealth management than competitors like London, Singapore or Luxembourg. That in itself is good reason to do business in Switzerland. The Swiss themselves have been forced by circumstances to tone down their marketing effort and maintain a low profile. As I've said before, the scandal involving the supposed release of names of account holders at UBS is more hype than anything. It was a publicity victory for the US Treasury Department. Today, I am convinced that almost no undeclared American accounts remain in the Swiss banks, and all FATCA is doing is making it nigh-on impossible for legitimate American citizens to do their banking in peace. Since we last wrote about our main recommended Geneva banking connection, more nationalities have unfortunately been 'blackballed' by the bank's compliance department. US citizens and residents have been a no-go area for this bank for a while (but US citizens can still manage their money in Switzerland – see below). Now, banking services are no longer available to residents of Canada, UK, Germany and Japan. Citizens of those countries who are resident elsewhere are still fine – for the moment. A lot of Q Wealth readers from those countries who opened accounts last year have been grandfathered in – but new accounts from those countries are no longer being accepted. To remind you, we are talking about a small, Geneva based private bank, that offers everything you would expect in terms of highly personalized service, without the crazy minimum balances demanded elsewhere. If you specify you are a Q Wealth reader, and you qualify based on your citizenship and residence, you can open an account with as little as $5,000. All accounts at this bank are multi-currency by default. Numbered accounts are available for a nominal extra fee, as are safety deposit boxes, and a free anonymous cash card is offered on all new accounts, as is free internet banking. Online trading is also available. The best thing is that accounts can still be opened by mail, so there is no obligation to visit the bank in person if you don't want to. Paperwork on simple personal accounts is relatively simple. Paid-up Q Wealth members who would like a referral to this bank, at no charge, are welcome to contactinfo@qwealthreport.com What about the next level up? We do still have a few Swiss banking connections who will open accounts for US citizens, and British, German and Canadian residents. Of course, everything must be above board and you must be willing to prove that you are declaring your offshore holdings. And the process is not exactly simple. Nonetheless this represents an excellent opportunity to diversify out of the euro, the dollar and the pound sterling – all of which we believe are ultimately doomed -  and to get a foothold in the offshore banking world before you find yourself locked out altogether. Again, contact the Q Wealth office for initial referrals, although in this case you will probably need to act through my consulting firm, or one like it that has good connections with private banks, to get things done. Of course, you may not want to be in fiat money at all any more – and Switzerland is still the world centre of the trade in gold and silver bullion. Physical precious metals are another option where a Swiss connection can be helpful. We are also able to refer members, again at no extra fee, in the right direction. The point of this brief article, I guess, is to remind you that despite all the attacks, Switzerland is still a great flag for managing part or all of your international asset protection and diversification strategy. And to remind you that paid-up Q Wealth members are entitled to free informal advice and referrals to our rolodex of relevant experts at any time. Frederick and Aubrey in our Member Services Department are at your service. This is just another good reason to sign up for the full membership level at just $87 per year. DISCLAIMER: Financial Safety Services is NOT an investment advisory service. Financial Safety Services is an educational service that teaches the interested individual non-original [i.e. invented by others far more intelligent than myself], time-tested safe methods/principles that might be successfully used by the individual for relatively low risk speculations in various financial markets. ACCURACY OF INFORMATION : Financial Safety Services MAKES NO CLAIMS AS TO THE ACCURACY OF ANY INFORMATION EITHER GIVEN AT THIS BLOG SITE, OR IN PERSON TO PAYING CLIENTS. All information given/sold, must be understood to have been acted on AT THE INDIVIDUALS OWN RISK . ******************************************************************** More About Financial Safety Services [Free phone consultations via "Skype". To set a time/date email: onebornfreeatyahoodotcom ] Financial Safety Services is a private , mostly off-line, international, person to person consulting service that attempts to show its real-time [i.e. non-internet derived] clients how to speculate safely with money that they can afford to lose. Money that the client cannot afford to lose should never be risked in these speculations For more than 20 years, nearly all of Financial Safety Services clients to date have been found via direct [i.e off-line, in-person] referral from previously satisfied clients only. No attempts are made to procure clientele via the selling of the sporadic, deliberately incomplete online information posted at this site. All valuable information is sold to clients, via e-mail, or preferably in person, on a "need to know" customized basis, depending on their specific speculative wants/needs. Therefor any/all posts at this site are for the reference and possible benefit of pre-existing , real-world, paying clients only as part of my services [and to perhaps help emphasize a particular point I make to them in private], and never for the benefit of the general reading public and casual internet reader at large. Internet posts arer not made on a regular schedule in order to build an on-line audience; only when I feel that so doing is beneficial to my actual existing clientele. I have no interest in gaining clients first hand from any posts made either here or elsewhere [if it happens, it happens!] - as i previously stated, to date [20 years+], nearly all of my previous clients have come to me via direct, in-person referral from other satisfied clients- that is, [1]an existing client personally recommends my services to a close friend, [2] the friend contacts me, [3]we discuss their wants/needs, [4] I make a decision as to whether or not I can really help them, [5] We come to a financial agreement- or not :-) . None- Client Questions? Should a casual reader/none client have a serious question about an assertion I make on this site, they must write to me at: onebornfreeatyahoodotcom and I will do my best to answer their question. Their first question will usually be answered for free. After that, fees may apply. Current Client Questions. All existing, paying client questions are of course, answered for free [usually via private e-mail]- it is part of the service! onebornfreeatyahoodotcom