Do I even need a brick and mortar bank anymore?

[Rogar]

I think Vangard is a decent place to store a person's investments because of their low fees, and when I was using them they really never pushed anything. I've looked into their 'Digital Adviser", where you answer some questions about risk, needed income, and other objectives and then basically a computer program or AI manages your investments, possibly in low fee index funds. It costs a little, but is cheaper than a in person adviser, plus their customer service is reasonable.

I suspect now or in the near future AI analysis will outperform personal financial managers, although it doesn't account for the dartboard randomness of the markets.

[SiouzQ.]

Iris Lillies, I think my brother said he was going to check and see if there is an exit fee for the annuity account. I've had that one for quite awhile and he said it may not have one but we'll see. As far as the IRA, I don't *think* there is but we will check on it - thanks for a good question to ask!

My goal in the next few weeks is at least get started with a Vanguard cash account with some of that extra money. We also found out last night we are going to be getting quite a large tax refund for 2025, which was a helluva year financially with the K's layoff, unemployment, my SSDI coming through, the remnants of our Solar Tax Credit, K. being over 65 and getting the extra $6,000 deduction. When I got the windfall of the backpay from SSDI, I ended up making a $2000 estimated tax payment because we had NO IDEA how anything was going to work out. I'll be getting that back plus we are going to get quite a bit more!

[iris lilies]

When I first moved here, I established an account with "Islanders Bank", a very small local-created bank with 3 branches, one on each of our major islands. My initial thinking was similar to Iris' - to get connected to the community. This bank was a very nice one, it understood local needs quite well, and reinvested local capital into the community with great impact to the economy.

It was purchased by Banner Bank a few years ago, and is no longer *quite* the same, but it's still mostly the same people working there, and still retains a lot of the local touch. I think it is a loss to the community in some fundamental way that our "local" bank is no longer quite so local.

My usual method of operating is to transfer $$$ from my Schwab accounts into the bank, and use the bank for my normal living/household expenses. In truth, I don't really need the local bank, I could just use the Schwab accounts directly. It still serves the social purposes somewhat, and it *does* provide a cutout from the banking information I give people for transactions, and my real assets.

This is something to think about. It is true, we do the same thing, we transfer money from brokerage accounts to our local banks. and while we keep a large amount in a couple of those banks, it’s not where the big stash is so there’s one step of safety there.

this has always been my concern about having a debit card which theoretically I guess I have because I’ve used it in Europe many years ago, but I do not use a debit card on a daily basis. I don’t even know where my debit card is and don’t have any idea what my password is. We keep a large amount of money in our bank accounts and so that would be subject to some serious theft from debit card abuse .