When we emigrated we had a good look around for a bank that would suit our needs. We realised that Australian banks charge like wounded bulls, but what can you do - you need to put your money debt somewhere. All the banks seemed pretty similar to us, similar charges in each of ‘em so in the end we went with NAB because they’d just won Bank of the Year in Money magazine and because they had a village branch in nearby Berry.

Pretty much from the outset we started realising that NAB probably weren’t much cop but once you’ve got your direct debits and incoming payments all sorted it’s a real pain to change, so we stuck with ‘em. Over here pretty much all bank accounts come with a cheque and a savings account and usually a third separate credit card account. So when you go into a shop and use your card they always say, “Cheque, Savings or Credit” and press the appropriate button. Obviously most people keep any spare cash they have in their savings account in the hope that it’ll attract a buck or two of interest while it’s in there, so it’s the most common account used in a shop with EFTPOS. That’s all fine and dandy, but with our NAB accounts, we couldn’t use the savings account in shops - only the cheque. So when we went shopping we had to get online and transfer funds from the savings account to the cheque account. And you know what it’s like - you often forget to do things and so we were always finding ourselves in shops with baskets of food and no way of paying for them.

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