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Two of my favorite writers, Liz Pulliam Weston and Bill Maher, suggested in recent columns that now may be the time to leave your bank and join a credit union. Ms. Weston’s advice was more along the lines of informing her readers that “you can get better interest rates and better treatment at a member-owned credit union than a bank”. If you know Bill Maher’s reputation, you can imagine how different the tone of his blog post was.

And you’d be right. Maher did not even attempt to be tongue in cheek, but blasted the banks with his typical caustic but amusing bits of persuasion such as:

They took our money… and made record profits — and paid themselves record bonuses.

They took our money… then returned to the risky behavior that led to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, with record unemployment, bankruptcies, and foreclosures.

It’s a pretty simple idea: If enough people who have money in one of the Big Six banks — that is, JP Morgan/Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs — move it into a local community bank or credit union, then collectively we, the people, will have taken a big step toward fixing our broken financial system.

Ok, fine, you might say – I’ll be sticking it to the Big Banks if I move my money away from them and towards a credit union. What’s so great about a c

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