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Well, I guess I'm an actual bonafide blogger now. USAA invited me to attend their 2016 USAA Digital Military Experience (DigitalMilEx) conference in San Antonio, where USAA is headquartered. The military friendly bank hosts the conference annually. It presents an opportunity for bloggers to interact with USAA executives and other team members and ask questions about their products and services.
I have been a USAA member since Air Force ROTC in 2008. I opened my first checking account with them and took out the $25,000 Career Starter Loan soon after. Today, I have over a dozen checking and savings accounts with them, a few credit cards, renters insurance, and auto insurance. I also had home owners insurance with them back when I was a home owner.
USAA is one of the best if not the best military friendly bank. Every servicemember should bank with a bank that does not charge BS fees. USAA refunds ATM fees, has no account maintenance fees, and offers extra SCRA benefits to servicemembers. Their mobile app is a joy to use. Their mobile check cashing and instant money sending feature means I have not needed to walk into a physical bank for the last 8 years and I can quickly settle bar tabs with friends.
My 2016 USAA DigitalMilEx Experience
I took a week of leave to visit some old friends in the local area before the conference kicks off. I started my Air Force career in Texas in 2010-2012. I spent quite a few weekends on the San Antonio River Walk, Austin, and other locales in Texas, so it's good to be back.
I'm excited to finally meet Doug Nordman and Ryan Guina in person, two other military financial bloggers who I have been in contact with for years. I'm also excited to learn about new products and services USAA has to offer. It's going to be great connecting with the hundreds of other bloggers, media, podcasters, entrepreneurs, and military community members who will be at the conference.
If you have any questions, ideas to pass on, or gripes to raise with USAA, please email me, use the contact me form, or leave a comment. I'll share my experience in a future post here on the blog.
Ask them to address the performance of their investment platform. The USAA investment and trading platform operates slowly, taking several seconds to load a page when accessing it from a computer. (I do not access it from a mobile device, so I don’t know if it is speedier from those types of platforms.) This can cost a day trader money and cause general consternation to the regular user. For a company whose primary selling point is being user / customer friendly, their platform should be better built.