The Bank Vs. The Coop

As with any other possible things a young married couple would want. My husband and I already agreed that we’d have a joint savings bank account.

But now I’m urging him to join our local Cooperative too. This Coop is now more than 25 years old. I’ve been a coop member since I was 18 years old and I could really say that if you want to grow your savings ,put it in a reliable Cooperative instead of relying on Banks alone.

There are a number of reasons for this:

1. Cooperatives give a higher return of investment to your money than what the average banks does. Our Coop gave as much as 50% of our money as a dividend and if a coop is already established the lowest could be anywhere to 5-7% return per annum. Compare that to the banks investment return of 1% per annum.

2. Access to loan to Cooperative is much easier because you borrow against your money. Example, if you have a fix deposit of 5,000, you could borrow that amount in your first year as a member. As you grow old with the coop, the amount you can borrow could be doubled or even tripled with or without collateral.

3. Loan interest is also 1% per month or 12% per annum only. Tell me if there’s a bank which offers that!

4. Cooperatives now a days offer a wide variety of loan products like educational loan, appliance loan, business loan and even construction loans.

Of course, the decision on whether to put your savings in a bank or cooperative depends on your financial objectives. hmmm

Just don’t be like the lola who put all the savings she had including the dollars given to her by her children in a box under her bed. Know what happened?

She died. And when they cleaned up her room they found her boxes of dollars!

Only…it was eaten by termites.