I don’t want to pimp my bank (ie. my fabulous day job) too much on my blog, but some inside scoop:

Starting this fall (mid Sept) Citizens Bank of Canada will be dropping its monthly fees for the chequing account,

plus,

when you travel, you can withdraw at any ATM with no charge from us (can’t control what the other bank does – but any EXCHANGE network will be free on their end too).

So if you want a no-fee chequing account,

unlimited point-of-sale

unlimited atm (Canada: all EXCHANGE = most credit union machines, all HSBC machines, all Nat’l Bank of Canada; Int’l per above)

cheques themselves are free,

email me at nancy underscore zimmerman at citizens bank (all one word) dot canada (abbreviated) and I’ll see if I can get you set up even before we formally roll it out in Sept.

And no, it isn’t my Canada’s-best-kept-secret day-job bank.

This is: DREAM BANK.

It’s the kind of bank any money coach would love. Here’s how it works.

Let’s say you want to … take a trip to Europe. Reno your kitchen. Buy a vespa (did I say that?). Or it can be more noble things like feeding hungry people in Haiti, or funding a peace march.

And rather than receive less-than-desired gifts for birthdays and christmas, what you really want is cash to help your dream come true. Enter Dreambank.

You post your dream,

then tell friends and family about it. They can then go contribute to your dream.

One of the aspects I really like is that you can only withdraw once from your pool, then the dream is deactivated. I know from personal experience as well as from clients that its always tempting to plunder your savings when something more immediate comes up. This will help keep the savings intact until the dream is realized.

Another aspect I like is that each dreamer is required to choose a charity and donate something, and also the business itself will donate to charities. There are a lot of wins here!

Last: is it a bona fide business? Yes. It’s created in Yaletown (part of Vancouver), and promoted by Darren Barefoot.

So, over to you: What’s your dream? Go make it happen.

Truth be told, I’m a Jeffersonian. Maybe it was my high-schooling in Alberta, but I have a pretty fierce indie-entrepreneur streak in me. But of course we ended up in a bizarre political/economical state in which The Corporation hit a little too close to home. Bizarre, in that corporations can, and do, operate in a way that often is not in the best interests even of its customers, much less the public good.

That’s why I am almost gleeful over the recent Rogers debacle, and now this weekend, the dilemma in which NBC found itself. U.S. residents did you-tube end-runs around NBCs embargo of the opening ceremonies until primetime (better advertising revenue), while NBC staff spent the day frantically issuing “take that down!” requests to various sites showing their own videos. Sort of a corporate whack-a-mole.

In short, these demonstrate instances in which people have reclaimed their role in the relationship between themselves and a corporation, ie., put themselves front and centre. As Suze Orman says, People first, then money, then things.

Right wing politics, I had thought in my youth, was all about people first – freedom, respecting individuality, meritocracy. I don’t see a lot of that in our society, but rather a right-wing engendered ethos in which we’ve disengaged from politics in favour of consumption (see WALL-E, the ultimate storyline of corporation-as-state),  and so incrementally I’ve edged over to the left which still says: People first. And hooray for web 2.0 which gives us a little boost.  I’m kinda happy these days.

ARE YOU IN NEED OF A FINANCIAL SHAKE UP? OMNI LIFESTYLE is looking for fun females to be guests on our exciting new TV series, SMART COOKIES.

The Smart Cookies series is being made for the W Network and is all about how to be financially successful as a woman. Each one of our 13 half hour episodes focuses on a different area of life.
We’re looking for fun and outgoing females between the age of 30 – 45 to feature in our episodes. They must be in need of a financial overhaul, want to learn how to be smarter with their money, and not be timid to talk about money on camera!

___________________________

I have the contact info for the director (but I have no more information than the above), so if  you’re interested send me an e-mail.  nancy at your money by design (all one word) dot commercial