When I was 11 years old, I opened my first bank account. I had a newspaper delivery route. In the summer, I pushed a lawnmower and carried golf bags. Some weeks, I made $8 to $10, a lot of money for a young boy in a modest family in the middle of World War II.
My mother decided that I should not keep the money I collected in my dresser drawer. I had to pay the newspaper each month for all of the copies I sold and delivered. My profit margin was small, and what was left went to maintaining my bicycle and replacing clothes I outgrew.
So mother took me to see Mr Williams, the president of the only bank in our little town. His bank had survived the Great Depression of the early 1930s. It had been and still was my father’s bank. Mr Williams took us into his office. That day, I had $24 to deposit. He said that the bank required a minimum deposit of $25. He took a dollar out of his pocket. Proportionally, that was the best bonus I ever got from a bank.
Each month, I inserted a few dollars. By the time I started college, the balance was a few hundred dollars—not enough to pay for a year in a state school. I managed to get jobs to pay my way through the three state colleges I attended. I kept the bank account and put money in from my summer jobs. I took some out for expenses.
I gave up the hometown bank account when I moved to Chicago and got out of the army. My neighbor, in my apartment building, worked at a major bank. He set me up with checking and savings accounts, which I kept until I moved to Washington. The treasurer of the American College of Radiology, a Washington radiologist, set up free accounts for the college and for me in what was then the Riggs Bank. The president of that bank was the nephew of a leading radiologist and so our accounts were free. The Riggs Bank was sold a few years ago, and things are no longer free.
I think about my hometown bank account whenever I handle my money. I recall taking my two children to our bank in our Washington suburb to start their senses of earning and saving money. They did fairly well. Our son went to college in the Washington area and kept his account. Our daughter went farther away for college and law school, and we had to open accounts in her college towns. Now that they are middle aged, they earn their livings, manage their money, and have a batch of credit cards, and we don’t even know where they bank.
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