[washadjeffmad]

If you invested $1 each day of your life into a savings account, you'd have $0 for perpetually owing the bank maintenance fees.

My mother took us to the local bank one Christmas when we were children and put $100 each (interest rates were at a peak) into our accounts "so that we could learn about money". Five years later, we went back and found the bank had emptied the accounts steadily each month until nothing remained. The kind man who'd once helped us open the accounts was very apologetic about it, but explained there was nothing he could do to get it back.

That experience did teach me something about money, that you can't always count on it to be there and to be careful to whom you entrust it, but it also taught me about the banking system and saved me from simple mistakes I saw my peers making as I got older. I wouldn't have started investing so young if banks had never put a sour taste in my mouth.