Bank Suspicious Activity Form

[MomIcantFindmy]

About 3 weeks ago my husband and I started using cash only for everything. We drew our money out of the bank, went in person to pay local bills, got money orders for out of town bills, and paid cash for groceries and gas etc. We did this in an effort to live within our means. Prior to this we had been robbing Peter to pay Paul, charging groceries and gas....you get the idea.....(it was ugly).

This has been a very good system for the last 3 weeks because it has stopped all of our impulse purchases. The day before payday we had less than $1.00 to spend but we had food in the house to eat, gas in the cars and the essential bills were paid.

Here is the problem. We have banked with our credit union for 19 years. My husband gets a retirement check on the first deposited plus I brought his new job paycheck into the bank to cash. The tellers, who have known me for over 2 years, keep acting very strange when I tell them I want all the money in the account in cash. I ask for a range of bills so I can divide the money up for my payments. Yesterday she didn't say anything to me and as I was putting my cash in my purse she put a form on the side of her desk. I glanced at it and it was a Suspicious Activity Form. I didn't say anything and I left.

I worked in a different bank up till 6 months ago and I know when she fills that form out it gets sent to the federal government and it flags our account.

It bothers me because I have been very honest with my bank telling them we switched to paying everything in cash to help us budget better. Plus that form is intended to help the federal government track terrorist activity and funds. Just ticks me off.

I worry if I switch banks then this will just keep happening. Plus we will have a new account and that will look even more suspicious.

Now I wonder when we file this month if the trustee is going to look at us paying cash for everything and find that suspicious.............

[magyar123]

Unless your monthly cash withdrawal is $10,000 or more (at one time) the bank has no business completing/filing a "suspicous activity" form.
If your pay is let's say $5000, and your husband's retirement, also $5000, go in on the same day, and the next day you go in and withdraw that $10,000 in cash - yes the bank will file that "tattletale" form.
BUT - when you file - you will be required to submit several months worth of bank statements, and there is a good chance that the trustee might question you GITMO style, if all of a sudden a bank statement only reveals deposits and an immediate cash withdrawal.

[Keebler]

We made a similar change in ######. The difference is that we opened a new account at a new ###### all the way across the ###### -- we almost can't get cash!

Now, I use ###### to track everything and I use the ###### free Bill Pay to schedule every payment in advance and pay everybody that way. I've even mailed myself a check using the Bill Pay setup.

It's as good as the "all cash" system with the added benefit of having a record of where we've spent our money and the ability to look ahead. Bills have the bill-pay records and purchases have the debit card records. Almost nothing gets purchased with cash. I'm hoping that this will help us document our expenses when we file BK better than all-cash transactions would have.

The cool part with this system has been the times when we've had more than $1,000 in the bank but we were "broke" because it was all assigned to upcoming expenses we expected before payday. We ignore the CU account balance and use QuickBooks to see if we have money to spend or not. We check it daily and always use QuickBooks before we go to the store to see how much we can spend on gas or groceries.

Maybe you should consider something like that?

[MomIcantFindmy]

I did track online for a while and used bill pay but we always seemed to say...oh well...we have $1000 in the bank lets borrow it until we have a payday and we will put it back.....we never did.

Not looking forward to GITMO anything...... That really scares me. I wonder if I traced my expenses on quicken or something. Now I am kinda worried about our new way. I thought I was helping us through this mess.

No where close to 10,000 a month. But I think that form is the CTR (currency transaction report). The SAR (suspicious activity report) can be filed on anyone, including being filed with a CTR.

[Keebler]

I did track online for a while and used bill pay but we always seemed to say...oh well...we have $1000 in the bank lets borrow it until we have a payday and we will put it back.....we never did.

The secret for us is IGNORING what's in the bank and entering transactions in ###### to know what's available. ###### lets me enter transactions and pre-spend our paycheck so we know the money at the bank is already spent even though it's still there.