4 ms·
Man, no offense, but you sound like someone who has never worked paycheck to paycheck. I'm not endorsing his banking scheme, but I can sympathize with the shity
by thefreeman 13y ago
Man, no offense, but you sound like someone who has never worked paycheck to paycheck. I'm not endorsing his banking scheme, but I can sympathize with the shityt overdraft fees are.
Also "seem to come in order" is not really good enough when you are down to 5 or 10 dollars left. Also, I have seen many examples of banks processing things out of order to maximize the overdraft fees. Ie. processing larger transactions before smaller ones that occured before them chronologically, so that a number of 4 or 5 dollar purchases would end up each having a $35 overdraft fee.
For 95% of situations it would be much more in the customers interest to just reject the transactions. But the banks make a killing off of exploiting the people who can least afford it (those with almost no money in their account).
edit: downvotes? Anyone care to actually tell me what is downvote worthy in this post? The guy's recommendation to "subtract 1000" from whatever your balance is is totally infeasible for a large portion of the population.
- ajcarpy2005 13y agoShouldn't this be an illegal banking practice?
- thefreeman 13y agoI don't know if it's legal or not but I've never seen any guarantee that transactions will be processed in the order they are made. And the people who it happens to aren't the type of people who can afford an attorney anyway.
- dllthomas 13y agoHistorically it was legal; I want to say it was banned a couple years back, but I'm not confident about that.
- BigTuna 13y agoIt wasn't banned and it is still quite legal. Overdraft fees are banks' bread and butter. They continue to process withdrawals before deposits and many process them in the order that maximizes overdrafts. http://www.forbes.com/sites/halahtouryalai/2013/06/11/yes-banks-are-reordering-your-transactions-and-charging-overdraft-fees/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/halahtouryalai/2013/06/11/yes-ba...
- thefreeman 13y agoWow, thanks for that link. In 2012, banks took in $32 billion in overdraft fees up $400 million from the previous year. The record was hit in 2009 with $37 billion in overdraft fees collected by banks.
- hopefulwebdev 13y agoLuckily there are some new kids on the block that (say they) won't ever rent-seek with fees. https://www.simple.com/ https://www.simple.com/ is one I know of.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Crake 13y ago> The guy's recommendation to "subtract 1000" from whatever your balance is is totally infeasible for a large portion of the population. I liked how the example used $1000, too. As if poor people even have that much in total. A better example would have been +/- $10, but a lot of people here have absolutely no comprehension of poverty in the US.
- zyx321 13y agoSpot on right there. From the archived thread linked below: >I'm not exactly a rich [person] so interest means very little to me. At most I keep about $1000 in the bank even though I try my best to save up.
- derekp7 13y agoMy apologies -- I meant 100, hit an extra key. And for the record, yes I am currently living mostly paycheck to paycheck, although I make decent money (my own fault -- I've got a live-in significant other, she can't work any more due to disability, and I've had to take over her expenses, including car payment [her's and one of her kid's), meds, etc.) But even so, I'm able to do odd jobs for people, and that all goes into a buffer balance. Yes, I can't compare myself to someone on minimum wage, but when everything you make goes to existing obligations (again, I could have said no to a lot of things, but when it is the choice between more credit card debt for a vet bill, and putting down a pet that has been instrumental in drawing a certain family member out of deep depression...)