[fideloper]

Sounds like victim blaming. To an extent you're right, but the situation is not at all this black and white (like anything in reality).

Take for example just the fact that it's easy to lose track of your current savings especially without ready access to the internet, a common situation for the low income.

[bedhead]

Yes, it's is 100% victim blaming, because for god's sake, at what point do we expect grown adults to take some friggin responsibility for themselves?? Puh-lease, spare me the "easy to lose track" garbage. It's never been easier to keep track of one's finances, and that's before even considering an internet connection. If your budget is that tight, maybe, just maybe, actually closely tracking your bank account should be a priority, no??? One would think. God knows that's how I was when I had almost nothing to my name.

I don't like the banks playing games with this stuff and I'm glad most (but not all) of their bs got stopped. But my god, when are we going to hold adults accountable for just basic life skills instead of insulting and coddling them? Ever??

[thaumaturgy]

You're obnoxious, but you're right. I've suffered more than my fair share of overdraft fees, and every one of them was my own fault. It didn't help that my bank's online banking system was a filthy liar with a long-standing bug that caused it to display an incorrect balance (for up to a day or more) when there was an incoming transaction that wasn't pre-auth or posted -- but ultimately that just meant that I had to start writing down all of my charges and deposits, so that's what I did.

Overdraft fees are onerous, banks absolutely do exploit their poorer customers for extra revenue, several of the larger banks are next in line for most-hated organizations in America behind AT&T and Comcast, and the structure of fees across a wide array of services are all biased against the poor. But, none of that changes the truth that most overdraft fees could be avoided if the poor were more diligent about their finances.

[magicalist]

Oh please. Everyone should be more diligent about their finances. The difference is that someone with money says "oh damn it, I spent too much. I should buy less stuff next week" and someone without much money gets an overdraft fee.

Maybe the problem with the current system isn't poor people, the problem is just people. It's just that some people don't have any sort of margin of error, so we shouldn't tilt the scales against them too. No need to add to the shit situation they're already in.

[thaumaturgy]

Fantastic, I agree with everything you said and you didn't disagree with anything I said.