I'm thinking of moving my savings to a national or regional bank that has a branch in my usual retreat. Anyone have any thoughts on this issue?
That's good info from Eugene and Kuvonne. I would add one other suggestion, in the interest of creating redundancy (and you know how we all pride ourselves on that <img src="/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />).
If you have credit card(s), it would be wise to memorize, or encode in some fashion and carry in your wallet, the PIN number required to get a cash advance/withdrawal through an ATM.
Doing so gives you one more layer of access to cash in an emergency, and provides back-up in case your bank does go off the grid.
I learned this lesson the hard way (and should've known better). Was far south in Mexico; needed cash; went to a small bank to get cash using debit card/ATM. For some reason, it wasn't working (and I'm not sure I completely understood the explanation, given my mediocre Spanish). What the manager did convey was that I could get cash from the ATM, using one of my credit cards. All well and good, but since I'd never used them for that purpose up 'til then, I didn't know my PIN numbers. And the bank wouldn't/couldn't do it manually. Fortunately, got by until made it to major city.
Suffice to say, lesson learned.
Dan