Who stole Rich Single Momma's money? Why isn't she mad about it?Yesterday I got a call from my financial institution (FI) USAA.

The lady on the line told me she suspected my debit card had been stolen or duplicated.

She asked if the card was in my possession. Then she began rattling off charges that had been made earlier in the day from Publix (twice), Athlete’s Foot (twice), and some beauty store.

All the charges were around $100 totaling over $500 stolen from my account.

Usually the first thing people do is panic, but the USAA lady was so confident and kind, panicking was the last thing on my mind. It helps that I’m a pretty laid back lady too :-). She told me I would not be liable for the purchases and they would reverse the charges. They would also cancel my current debit card (gotta remember not to try to use it) and express mail a new one that should be here tomorrow at no charge to me.

A fraudulent charges investigation case will be opened to track down the person (or people) who duplicated my card. I am grateful for USAA. They make it so easy to do banking and for them to detect that something was wrong and call me was awesome.

This morning I checked my account and the stolen money was returned. Yay!!! The FI was true to their word which makes it easy to stay with them a very long time.

I’m a big credit union advocate / evangelist. I absolutely love them! Ironically USAA is not a credit union but it’s not a bank either. It’s an insurance company with financial services that was originally only open to the military. It opened to us “regular” folk years later but we can’t get the great insurance that people rave about.

Despite not having access to the insurance program, I am still very happy with their financial services.

They make it easy to open an account. The best part is you can open several sub-accounts to save, earn, and spend your money. I don’t believe in having all your eggs/money in one basket. When situations happen like the one that happened to me yesterday, all your money could be wiped out in the blink of an eye.

I get nothing for telling you how fabulous USAA is, but I will tell you it’s much better than traditional banking and is a very close running with credit unions.

So the takeaways from this article are:

  • Diversify your funds with multiple accounts (USAA or INGdirect will do)
  • Consider switching to a customer-focused financial institution like a Credit Union or USAA