What is the difference between A credit union and a normal bank?

Credit unions are financial institutions, like banks. They offer many of the same products and services -- savings accounts, checking accounts, ATM/debit cards, credit cards, auto loans, mortgages, home equity loans, etc. The main difference from your viewpoint as a consumer is that you can become a customer of any bank, while credit unions can only serve people who fit in their "Field of Membership." Some credit unions are sponsored by a company and only the employees can join. There are numerous credit unions that have "community charters" which allow them to serve people who live within a defined geographic region (i.e. city, county, zip codes, etc.).

Most of the time credit unions offer better rates and have fewer fees than other financial institutions.

The best place to find a credit union that you can join is using the following website: http://creditunion.coop/cu_locator/i...

Hope this helps. Good luck!

A credit union is a cooperative - it is owned by its members. It can only build capital from retained earnings (the difference between income and costs). By comparison, a bank builds capital by selling stock to investors, and some of the profits of the bank must be directed to those investors in the form of dividends.

Since the credit union does not issue stock, it does not have to pay dividends to stock holders, so its cost of capital is lower, and for that reason, it's typical for credit unions to have lower fees and lower loan rates and pay higher dividends on savings.

Credit unions are prohibited from making the types of risky investments that banks have engaged in. So, in my opinion, your money is safer in a credit union.

Nearly all credit unions have federal deposit insurance, though their federal agency is NCUA and not FDIC. The terms are comparable, though credit unions capitalize their own insurance fund, which means they have a vested interest in safeguarding their assets.

Finally, credit unions are democratically controlled, and each member has one vote, regardless of how much money any one person has on deposit.

credit unions are most of time non-profit, and usually more personalized and they also offers much better rates than normal bank like WaMu, plus they are very conservative on lending compare to normal bank. one of the major setback is limited locations, unlike bank of america or wamu which are virtually at every corner of America.

Normal Bank-more locations, usually don't belly up usually, some setback may include aggressive lending practice in their portfolio that they should have securitized or sold off to company like freddie or fannie or ambac. Lastly, both are FDIC, so even if either one gets taken over by fed or state,. you can count on FDIC for your money. Normal Bank, that have branches in multiple states are federally chartered, which are more regulated and more strict reserve margin, while credit unions are state charted bank, they have much more flexibility in their lending practices.

I'll have probably gotten an account at my local credit union if i wasn't traveling so much.

mobilized-national bank
localized-credit union

deppending on how much you save you get an interest check at the end of the year..credit union very much worth it.