When Spring Cleaning Goes Bad: Bank Style

In the manufactured spend and churning community there are plenty of us with dozens of bank accounts from churning and gaming activities. Conventional wisdom seems to tell us to close these unused accounts when they’re no longer useful. It’s decent advice because you can avoid maintaining yet another financial thing, worrying about your state’s abandoned property laws, and it helps you keep your balances more-or-less centralized.

But (there’s always a but, right?), there have been multiple times in which I’ve closed a bank account after it ceased having immediate utility, and then I later found out that a current deal works really well with that particular bank. Depending on how much I abused them in the past, they may not want to let me back in, like at all. In fact, last week I flew to Texas to try and reopen an account that I closed years ago with a bank that didn’t exactly want more of my business, because reasons both past and present.

The good news? The account was reopened after a nice conversation with a branch manager who was an advocate on my behalf, and later I got a nice TexMex meal on my day trip. The bad news? I could have prevented the need for the trip in the first place if I had kept an account open years ago instead of closing it, and I could have also avoided a few hours sitting on an unpadded United Express Regional Jet seat.

So, when you’ve got a dormant bank account, maybe see if there’s a way to keep it open with no fees and let it sit for a few years (bonus points if you run an automated $0.01 charge on the debit card with debbit or similar so that it’s always active).

Happy Monday!

What my United Express seat padding probably looked like underneath the thin layer of fabric.