Still Figuring out the Basics

We have been here a month to the day. It's still pretty exciting being here. We have our one bedroom apartment, a new bed, the animals are well adjusted to their new home, and Alan has his residency. We have a bank account... to our surprise it was a bit more complicated then we thought.

Although it doesn't apply to us right now/yet, all your bills here in Spain are deducted from your bank account which also means many things like electricity, rent, cell phones (not pre-pay) are all things that you need a bank account in order to get. And with a bank account comes fees. Fees for depositing money, for withdrawing money, for having a debit card, for having a current account which is like a checking account, fees for new cards, extra cards, you guess it there is probably a fee. The only thing i didn't find a fee for was going into the bank.... i think the want to incourage visiters. :)

The fees with currency changes are just insane. One bank took a minimum of 18 euro every time you added money into the account. There may have been translation problems but I asked about getting a job here, in euro and depositing the money into the account... again it was a .035% fee to deposit into the account with a 18 euro minimum. We said we didn't like that and what she said in responce was loud for the whole bank to hear and something like that's how its done here. We decided to bank somewhere else. We went to a bank that was reccomended to us and when we tell them that the way they add fees to everything sucks for us, they smiled and responded 'I know it's strange but you can go other places and have the same problem. Part of it is international banking law and other fees are Spainish. Here is an acount that would serve you best..."

My problems with American banks will be saved for another day.
The view sometimes makes all the fees worth it.