sock money

I have a Chinese bank account and I have no idea why. When I came here, I opened one as an alternative to the old man "I keep my money in a sock under my mattress" strategy just assuming that bank accounts worked the same was as in the States. Not so much.

I can't really use my bank card anywhere, especially not in Songyuan because it is such a small city; most businesses only accept cash. Also, bank cards here are Union Pay, which means you can take cash out of most ATMs here with no fee, but they are not Visa, Mastercard, Am Ex or anything like that so you can't use them to buy things online. Not even plane tickets from Chinese travel sites.

So really, all my bank account is here is an alternative place to store my cash. And not accumulate an interest. What I really need to get is a Chinese credit card. I could open an account with an international bank, HSBC is the only one with branches in China and the US, but I've heard they have ridiculous fees and baselines for how much money you need to keep in an account. Also, they don't have a branch in Songyuan or Tianjin.

I still have my American bank accounts and credit cards. My don't really keep any money there though. My plan is to go to my Chinese bank every two months or so, transfer some money into my US accounts and then pay my credit cards from there. I can't pay my American credit card bills from my Chinese account either.

My American credit cards were almost paid off, but I've had to charge things on them while being here since I can't buy things like plane tickets with my Chinese bank account. Also, my international health insurance automatically gets charged to one of them. Unfortunately, these cards aren't for international use, so I get charged a three percent service fee on everything I use them for.

I signed up for a travelers credit card (that's my "almost three" from above) before I left the States, but it was maybe two days before I left and I didn't know my address here, so the card has been sitting at my parent's house. I still haven't successfully gotten mail from them, so my mom was waiting to send it to me. She put it in the mail early this week, so hopefully I get it soon and can avoid the service charges.