The Web sites may not look quite as polished and the eligibility requirements may give you pause, but when it comes to low fees and generous rates, credit unions match banks head-to-head.
It's not that you'll find drastically better deals at credit unions, but their products should be among the options you consider when searching for savings and checking accounts, CDs, small-business, mortgage and auto loans, and credit cards -- particularly now, given that credit unions in large part sidestepped the subprime crisis. Consumers should "include credit unions in their comparison shopping," said Greg McBride, senior financial analyst with Bankrate.com.
Currently, credit unions pay an average about 2.97% on one-year certificates of deposits, a tad better than banks' average of 2.36%, while credit unions' one-year adjustable rate mortgages average 4.88%, besting banks' 5.86%, according to Datatrac, a market-research firm focusing on bank products.
For a standard credit card, credit unions charge an average interest rate of 11.9%, compared with banks' 13.6%. And credit unions charge lower fees, on average.
"We're not-for-profit cooperatives. We don't have to charge as much, we're not going for profit and we don't have to pay taxes on the net income we do make," said Bill Hampel, chief economist with the Credit Union National Association, in Washington.
Credit unions are also weathering the subprime crisis better than some larger banks. "Credit unions didn't play the, 'Hey, there's more profit to be had by loosening our [lending] standards,'" said Daniel Penrod, industry analyst with California Credit Union League in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. "Because we're member-owned, any dollar that's lost is a dollar of the memberships' money, not some faceless shareholder, [so] they don't take the risk."
The slide from grace is really more like gliding
And I've found the trick is not to stop the sliding
But to find a graceful way of staying slid
