Through the Years: A Financial Time Capsule
A financial time capsule of 1951, 1976, 2001 and today – and the idea that has connected SF Fire members and the greater community through every era.
Start with a San Francisco firefighter in 1951. Their turnout gear is expensive, their paycheck only goes so far, and borrowing from a traditional bank is harder than it should be. ATMs do not exist yet. If a firefighter needs to move money, they have to write a check, carry cash, or go to a branch. If they need help, they ask a friend.
That was the world SF Fire Credit Union was born into. Firefighters were often responsible for buying their own turnout gear, therefore firefighters at 17 Engine decided to pool their money so they could help one another. Our Credit Union started as a solution for an immediate problem.
Seventy-five years later, that is still how we continue to operate and tell our story. Not as a parade of dates and milestones, but as glimpses of what everyday financial life actually looked like for our members, and how much of it changed around SF Fire.
1951: Money on Paper
San Francisco had plenty going on in 1951. Delegates from around the world came to the War Memorial Opera House to sign the treaty that formally ended World War II in the Pacific. I Love Lucy premiered on television.
Money moved more slowly. Average family income in the United States was about $3,700. The median value of a home was about $7,400. Most financial business happened with cash, checks, and passbooks. A teller’s handwriting might be the confirmation that your deposit had made it into your account. There was no checking a balance from the couch, no tap-to-pay, and certainly no phone buzzing seconds after a purchase.
For SF Fire’s first members, the relationship with money was personal by default. Arthur F. McIntyre, our first manager, helped set the tone. It was a small institution built around people who understood one another’s work, expenses and lives.
1976: Banking Still Had Business Hours
By 1976, San Francisco had BART, the Bicentennial, and a much bigger relationship with credit. The Embarcadero station opened that spring. Rocky was in theaters. Apple was founded in the Bay Area, long before an iPhone would make the idea of a bank branch in your pocket possible. Median U.S. household income increased to $12,690, while the median price of a new home had climbed to $44,200.
The mechanics of banking, though, were still stubbornly physical. Members balanced checkbooks, filled out deposit slips, waited for statements in the mail, and went to a branch when something needed attention. SF Fire’s first ATM would not arrive until 1985. In this era, ‘convenient banking’ still meant making it through the door before closing time. If you missed it, there was no app to open instead.
SF Fire itself was growing beyond solving the problem that started it. Members needed help with cars, homes, savings, and credit, the money decisions that still show up today.
2001: When the Screen Took Over
By 2001, nobody in the Bay Area needed convincing that technology would rearrange everyday life. Home computers and internet connections were becoming ordinary enough that people expected more businesses, including financial institutions, to meet them online.
SF Fire had been offering Visa credit cards since 1998. ATMs were no longer novel. Online banking was moving into the mainstream. And in the middle of all that, SF Fire opened its Stonestown branch.
There is something almost backward-looking about that choice now: a new physical branch in a year when more banking was moving online. But we were adamant that members were not choosing between the two. The internet was useful and so was sitting across from someone who deeply cared about your finances and could untangle a question with you.
2026: The Branch in Your Pocket
Now the branch really does fit in your pocket, which would have sounded ridiculous in 1951. The same phone members use to stream a show, book a car ride, carry a boarding pass, take family photos, or split the dinner bill can also serve as your branch. Members can deposit a check with a phone camera, move money with Zelle®, add cards to a digital wallet, and handle transfers or Bill Pay without going anywhere. SF Fire’s mobile app gathers those tools in one place under Move Money.
The scale is different, too. What started with a small group of firefighters now serves more than 73,000 firefighters and community members and has more than $1.6 billion in assets.
One detail, though, feels almost stubbornly old-fashioned: members can press zero to reach a person. Not exactly innovative, but necessary when something has gone wrong. A payment looks strange. A card disappears. A financial decision gets complicated. In those moments, the speed of the app is only part of what matters.
2051: Imagining the Next 25 Years
A paper check? A plastic card? A screenshot of a mobile banking app? It is hard to know which pieces of today’s financial life will look strange 25 years from now. Some probably will. Maybe a physical credit card will seem as retro as a flip phone does today. Maybe someone will have to explain why we ever needed to photograph a check before depositing it.
The easier bet is the part that will not need much explaining. SF Fire began because a group of firefighters saw a financial problem their colleagues were facing and worked together to solve it. The tools around that idea changed over time, from paper and branches to cards, ATMs, online banking, and now mobile apps.
That is the thread worth carrying forward. And if members in 2051 have no idea what a passbook was, we will have the archives to show them.
Read more in our latest issue of the Siren Newsletter here.
