Any time you try to spend more than the balance in your account, your transaction is declined. This is a service Bank of America rolled out this year with its SafeBalance account, a product that promises account holders won’t have to pay overdraft charges - just a $4.95 monthly fee. You can appeal to the regulator of the bank or the CFPB to intercede on your behalf if you feel the fees are abusive.” “If you don’t have a lot of money, you are in trouble. “If one carries high balances, some banks will negotiate the fees with you - but most banks require their branches to keep 92 to 98 percent of fees charged,” he said. If you overdraw your account because of posting order, your best bet is probably to appeal the charge to the bank - although appealing any kind of bank fees can be tough, said Warren Taylor, president of BankMobile. The actual result is that consumers overdraw their accounts sooner and more often, with each subsequent overdraft racking up another 30-something dollars. For bank customers who are susceptible to overdrawing their accounts, this switch could cause one overdraft charge to balloon into three or four.īanks that employ this practice (almost all of the major ones except for Citibank) say they do this so that larger and more important expenses like mortgage payments clear first.
Here are some of the sneakier fees that come attached to your standard bank account - and how you can make sure they don’t deplete your savings.Īccording to a 2014 survey from Pew Charitable Trusts, almost half of all major banks “reorder” checking account transactions so that they post by size, not the order in which they were made. The average checking account comes with about 30 fees, according to WalletHub, and not all of them are as easy to predict as overdraft or monthly service charges. Overdrafts are just the tip of the iceberg, too. A sixth say they overdraw because their banks’ overdraft policies are too confusing. Of the 30 percent of Americans who frequently overdraw, half do it because they don’t know their account balances. That could be because customers don’t realize how much they’re giving up in fees. Yet in 2013, banks earned $31.8 billion in overdraft fees alone. 1 factor that sway consumers’ banking decisions, with 45 percent of respondents saying they decide where to bank based on fee structures - more than rates, customer service and accessibility combined. A February 2014 GOBankingRates poll found fees are the No. The median overdraft fee, for example, has crept to $34 per transaction, or roughly a 17,000% APR for taking out 20 bucks at the ATM, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.Īmericans really care about fees, but are hapless at skirting them. Less than a third of all bank accounts come attached with no fees at all, while expenses are rising on accounts that do.
Americans have to be pretty balletic to avoid bank fees these days.
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