[tyree732]

So, that seems like a reasonable answer, but historically that wasn't sufficient for me. When I was an HSBC customer in college a few years back, I had disabled overdrafting because I did not want to receive overdraft fees and, in a pinch, I could use a credit card if my charge was declined.

One day I checked my account and discovered that I had accrued a number of overdraft fees. Apparently sometimes merchants (namely gas stations) will put a temporary charge of a dollar against your credit card, then later correct the charge to the correct price. This caused my account to overdraft as HSBC didn't deny the correction, then with my account overdrafted as of the date in question, all subsequent valid charges I had done against the account assuming a one dollar gas charge were made as overdraft charges. Contacting customer service and reminding them that I had in fact disabled overdraft was not enough to convince them of anything other than giving me a one-time partial credit of fees, so I switched banks.

I don't know if that is still how things are done over at HSBC, but ultimately the point is that disabling overdrafting is not some panacea for the problem, as ultimately there are situations that can still get you in trouble.

[jeffasinger]

Also, sometimes ACH debits will cause unpreventable overdrafts for you.

What I do now (I realize this isn't really an option for a lot of people) is basically mentally subtract $500 off of my checking account balance, and would never spend any money if there's less than that in there.