Beware of Excessive Bank Fees

If you have ever, at one time or another, become overdrawn at the bank than you are aware of the change in many banks policies. Banks charges for overdrafts can be as high as $36 per transaction depending upon your banks fee structure. In this article I intend to make you aware of the banks aggressive policies.

Banks now honor all checks

It used to be if you wrote a check that you did not have the money to cover it the bank would send it back to the place you wrote it. Now banks will honor all checks and you can no longer pass a bad check to a merchant. This is a good thing for the merchant and teaches the consumer that he has to take responsibility for any charges and checks he writes. This could be a good thing if you needed groceries and had no money but be prepared to pay for the check and the charges.

Debit cards work like cash

Now banks have your debit card setup to access your account for purchases whether you have the money in it to cover or not. This can be a good thing or a bad thing depending if you want to have bank charges applied to your hard earned dollars. Lets face it some people cannot add or do not balance their checking account. They operate on the assumption they have enough to cover it or not. If the transaction goes through they thing they are good only to find out later they did not have the money in their account.

Transaction postings

The bank owns the farm on this one. Nobody can really explain to the consumer how postings work at the bank. The bank does not always post checks and debit transactions the way you write them. This can cause you grief if your robbing Peter to pay Paul. So many of us live pay check to pay check that we count on money being in our account to cover things we wrote in advance. It does not always work out the way we planned. Some banks have been accused of inventive posting to get the most charges out of customer they can. Free checking isn't really free checking is it? Just be prepared to have the roof fall in on you at times if you try to write checks before your next pay day.

Banks are not your friend

Last year in 40% of all banks income was do too fees. If this doesn't tell you what a banks motivation is than you need to reconsider. Banks are there to make money off of your money. Its sad but they will generate income one way or another. Banks could have lowered their fees and charge everyone a monthly fee to use their bank. They chose to offer free checking and raise the fee structure. Everyone one time or another will make a mistake and have bank charges applied to their account. Banks count on this happening. Very few people who manage their accounts to the penny have ever not had any bank charges. Banks just know that most people will add or subtract wrong. Online banking helps us to keep our accounts in order but they don't write the checks we do.