Your bank accounts should be tools that help you grow richer. You should be able to use your checking account to pay the bills and store your money until you send it to where it needs to go. Unfortunately, sometimes banks charge you fees while they’re supposed to be keeping your money safe.
You don’t want to lose your hard-earned money to these unnecessary costs, so it’s time to leave these three bank fees behind forever as the new year gets underway.
1. Monthly maintenance fees
Did you know banks sometimes charge you just to keep your money with them? That’s right — a bank can make you pay to be a customer and give it your cash to hold onto even if you ask basically nothing else from the bank. This cost comes in the form of a monthly maintenance fee.
Monthly maintenance fees generally range from around $3 or $4, to as much as $25 a month. There is absolutely no excuse to stick with a bank charging these fees unless you’re able to jump through whatever hoops banks put in place to avoid them. Most banks allow you to do so if you maintain a certain minimum daily balance in the account or make a set number of monthly deposits. You might also get the fee waived if you’re a student or a senior.
Still, even if you can get the fee waived, it may be better to just go with a bank — like Ally — that won’t charge you in the first place. That way, you won’t have to worry if you drop below the allowable limit or something else goes wrong and the fee waiver no longer applies to you.
2. Overdraft fees
Overdraft fees can also leave you with a lot less money to stick in your savings account. Fees could be around $30 per overdraft, which is a lot of money. This helps to explain why banks and credit unions collected $15.5 billion in consumer dollars in 2019 as a result of customers overspending their account balances.
An overdraft fee is charged if you try to take more money out of your account than you have. For example, if you have $20 in your bank account and try to use your debit card to make a $30 purchase, the bank might allow the purchase to go through but charge you a $30 fee. So, you’d have a negative balance and have to pay the bank back $40 (the fee, plus the extra amount the bank allowed you to charge).
You could also get hit with a nonsufficient funds (NSF) fee, which happens if you try to pay for something and the transaction is declined due to too little money in your account, or you could get stuck with an unpaid check fee if you write a check without the funds for it to clear.
These fees can really add up and, usually, you’re already struggling when you’re hit with them or you wouldn’t have had too little money in the first place.
If you can, try to keep a financial cushion — such as $500 or $1,000 — in your account so you won’t accidentally overdraft. And aim to live on a budget to avoid spending more than the amount in your accounts.
You can also leave the fees behind forever by finding an account that charges no overdraft fees at all. Just be careful to understand the terms. For example, SoFi says customers get no-fee overdraft coverage, but you must meet requirements such as making monthly direct deposits of $1,000 or more. Even if you do that, you’ll only be covered for up to $50 in debit purchases and you won’t be eligible if you haven’t paid your negative balances in the past.
3. ATM fees
Finally, you’ll want to say goodbye to ATM fees, which charge you for access to your funds in cash. You can do this by looking for a bank with a big ATM network, like Bank of America, so you never have to visit out-of-network ATMs that charge you. Or you can look for a bank that covers ATM fees for you (for example, TD Bank will do so if you maintain at least a $2,500 daily balance).
The good news is that leaving these three fees behind for good is possible — and you should work toward doing it in 2024 by finding a bank that actually protects your funds instead of nickel and diming you to take your cash.
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