The person behind the field tests
Who Is D.B. Nomad?
D.B. Nomad is the pen name of a retired information-technology professional who approaches banking from both sides of the screen: as a customer and as a back-end IT guy.
I open real accounts, move real money, connect real institutions, make real payments, and contact support when something breaks. Then I document what happened in plain English.
Experience behind the opinion
Why Should You Care What I Think?
Fair question. I am not some kid fresh out of diapers with a keyboard and internet access.
I spent 38 years in information technology, including 10 years working in the IT department of a credit union.
That does not mean I know everything. It means I know where systems break, where policies collide with reality, which questions to ask, and when an explanation does not pass the smell test.
The origin of Digital Banking Nomad
Never Again
My first real step into digital banking was Alliant Credit Union.
Before Alliant, I had never opened a bank or credit union account completely remotely. It was new territory for me, and Alliant showed me that a financial institution did not need a branch down the street to become an important part of my financial life.
For a long time, I loved it. I recommended it to other people. Alliant still has a special place in my heart because it was the institution that opened that door.
One thing eventually changed for me: access to 24/7 support.
That probably means nothing to some people. It matters to me. Sometimes I work late. Sometimes I am halfway around the world. Sometimes I simply want to pick up the phone, ask a question, make sure I understand something, and move on with my life.
When Alliant reduced that access, it did not suddenly become a bad credit union. It simply stopped meeting one of my needs.
That led me to another large financial institution, whose name shall remain unspoken. Over time, I concentrated far too much of my financial life there.
Then the relationship changed.
New requirements were placed on how I could manage my accounts, and I was given 90 days to comply or live with severely reduced functionality. I was left with a choice: bend over and take it—or take my money and do it my way.
In the South, we would say it was time to fish or cut bait.
I had about two weeks in the United States before spending the next 45 days in Honduras. Rebuilding my U.S. banking setup—including opening new accounts, moving money, establishing new connections, and obtaining different credit cards—was not an easy feat.
Timing and location mattered. When you apply for an account, automated systems examine far more than the information typed into the application. They may evaluate your location, Internet provider, IP address, device, and other signals intended to confirm that you are who and where you claim to be.
A VPN from overseas is not always enough.
Fortunately, I spent 38 years in information technology. I could securely remote into my computer at home and work through a familiar U.S. device and network. Most people do not have that option, but it was how I managed to rebuild my financial life while living abroad.
And while I was rebuilding, something unexpected happened: I started looking around. Really looking.
I went back to Alliant. I tried Live Oak, Vio, SoFi, Axos, credit unions I had never seriously considered, and banks I had never heard of. Some worked well. Some did not fit me at all. Some turned out to be useful for one very specific job.
I learned that an institution can be excellent and still be wrong for you. A great rate does not automatically make a great account. One institution may be useful for savings, another for moving money, another for ATM access, another for cash deposits, and another simply as a backup.
At one point, I thought Axos might be the answer. It had a good savings rate, strong money-movement capabilities, and the kind of access I wanted. Then I discovered other institutions paying higher rates, and Axos stopped looking like the place where I wanted to keep most of my savings.
But Axos did not become a bad bank. It simply changed jobs.
Today, I see it more as a bridge—an institution that is useful for moving money between other parts of my banking system. And while looking more closely, I found another reason to keep it: easy access to cash through its ATM options.
That is BankCraft in practice. An institution does not have to be number one at everything. It only has to perform a job that matters to you.
That is when an old rule I have lived by became part of the way I bank:
One is none. Two is one.
If something matters, I like a Plan B. If it matters a lot, I probably have a Plan C as well.
Today, I maintain relationships with multiple institutions. Some hold money. Some move money. Some provide access. Some serve as backups. An institution does not have to do everything to earn a place in the system.
No single institution will ever control my entire financial life again. I will not be caught flat-footed financially.
It is not about finding my perfect bank. It is about building a banking ecosystem around my life and keeping options open when circumstances change.
Never again.
That experience became Digital Banking Nomad. Eventually, it became BankCraft. And now I can say I "Bank On My Terms."
That’s how D.B. Nomad rolls
Plain English—On Purpose
Banking is complicated enough. I explain it simply because useful information should not require a finance degree.
The Gump of IT
For two years, I served as Director of User Services in the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary. During that time, I was honored to help roll out a new PHP-based web platform that worked much like WordPress. I traveled to different cities teaching Auxiliarists how to use it.
Many of the people I taught were older volunteers who were serving their communities, not technical professionals who wanted to learn another complicated computer system. They needed instructions they could understand and use. I took the existing manuals, stripped away the unnecessary complexity, and rewrote them in plain English.
Not everybody appreciated that approach. One person above me hated the simplified manuals and coined a name for what I was doing: I was the Gump of IT.
My position was simple: there is no reason to make difficult material harder merely to prove that you know the vocabulary. A reader should not need a dictionary beside the manual just to understand the principle being taught.
Then the people in my classes began coming to me and saying, “You took the words in the manual and made them come alive.”
They loved how I taught because they could finally see what the instructions meant and how to use them. Hearing that was one of the greatest honors of my life.
BankCraft uses the same method. My job is to make the mechanics understandable without draining the life out of them.
Sometimes that requires a story. Sometimes it requires comic relief. Sometimes it even requires the word buttload. The language may not satisfy everybody’s idea of formal financial writing, but if it helps somebody understand the lesson and avoid a costly mistake, it did its job.
If this seems too simple, pull up your big-boy pants and do the field testing yourself. If you would rather learn from the accounts I opened, the money I moved, and the walls I hit, stick around.
The information is free. So is the plain English.
Oh, and by the way, a buttload is a real thing! It is a historical English cask unit of liquid volume used for wine. It equals 126 U.S. gallons.[1] Now you know. So use it when appropriate.
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