I don't think smart wealthy people pay a dime in service fees. I suppose it depends on definitions. I like to think I'm smart, but I'm unsure whether I'd meet

I don't think smart wealthy people pay a dime in service fees. I suppose it depends on definitions. I like to think I'm smart, but I'm unsure whether I'd meet your definition of wealthy. However, I do have experience of widely disparate income brackets. Growing up, and during my first few years on my own as an adult, I've had experience of living at or below the poverty line. Now, I'm above the 95th percentile for income in the US. And the single biggest difference is in how I view tradeoffs of time/effort versus money. For example, I pay my utility bills online with a credit card, and the company charges me a "convenience fee" to do that. When I was younger, I had to count every penny in order to be sure I could make ends meet. Now? Avoiding the fee would be a net loss. I can estimate how many minutes of time it would take me to go dig out my checkbook, write a check, put it in an envelope, find a stamp, go to a mailbox and drop it in. And I can work out, given my salary, how much those minutes are worth: they're worth more than the "convenience fee". The same is true of many of the "service fees" you're deriding here. I've been in a position where avoiding the fees was of extreme importance, but now I'm in a position where avoiding the fees is literally a money-losing proposition in many cases. The result is that I simply don't bother below a certain dollar amount (and that dollar amount would frighten my younger self). And to be honest, it's a guilty pleasure to not care about those fees. When I was younger, I didn't realize what a sense of freedom there was in being able to just not care about a few dollars here and there.