| Overdraft fees are maddening. I can't even imagine how bad they would be if I were strapped for cash. I admittedly am not great at managing my accounts, but, it blew my mind that the following situation could (and did happen): I got paid monthly, let's say it was $5k USD. At the end of the month, I may or may not have enough money in my account, for, say, a day or two. So, I go to buy a coke at the university shop. No problem, costs me $1.25, but I used my debit card. Now I get a $35 fee because my account was at $.75 That makes sense right? Given that the bank has significant historical information that I will get paid in less than 48 hours, how am I a risk? OK, so I bought another soda, later in the day, another $35. Whoa! $70 for two sodas. Kill me now. What's worse... I couldn't set my account to reject these transactions. Either I had to always monitor my account, AND make sure that none of the services I subscribe to ever charge me in this specific time period. It wasn't until specific laws were passed that I could make my account follow these rules, and this was about 2009, or 2010. I paid at least $1000 to the bank in overdraft fees over the course of a few years. In fairness, these are the only fees I paid to the bank, and probably, if this were the cost of banking (less than Spotify!) I probably would have paid them happily. The problem with these charges is that they were volatile, a surprise, and scraped the bottom of the barrel when I was least capable of handling the charges. It's maddening, and I feel strongly for those who weren't as well off as me who got fucked over by banks under the scheme, and likely continue to get fucked over because the banks still don't make it easy to set your account up in such a way that you reject overdraft charges. |