We need banks to take care and protect our money. In fact, savings account is a form of investment, despite the small amount of gain that we can get from it. However, there are a few fees here and there that can actually erode our savings. They can be more than just minor irritation for us in the long run. A tiny fee may not be something that’s to fight about, but added together; we could lose a serious amount of money in our lifetime. In fact, in the United States alone, the banking industry is able to collect more than $30 billion of overdraft fees each year. The consumers often already have cozy and symbiotic relationships with the banking industry and these fees are often ignored by them.
Hidden charges are things that we should be aware of when dealing with banks. We should make sure that we know every penny that is taken out from our account. Some banks can be bad enough that they create bogus fees without any strong reason. By being vigilant and working with more reliable banks, we will be able to keep more of our money. Among the fees that are often charged is when we pay online. Online transactions are quite common these days and this is an opportunity for banks to apply additional charges. The “online convenience fees” can be somewhere between $ 0.5 to $5, depending on the bank and the amount of online transaction. We should make sure that our banks don’t apply a silly amount of fees for online transactions.
Balance checking fee is also quite insignificant, but we often check our latest saving accounts balance. There are ways to avoid having this pesky fee. We could go paperless and check our balance through mobile apps or online account management pages. However, it is even better to work with a bank that doesn’t apply this kind of fee. Another regular fee is the monthly maintenance fee and in some banks, the fee can be ridiculously high at $5 or higher. If the maintenance fee is quite troublesome, we should consider to switch to a different bank, Deposit returned fee can happen when rubber checks are deposited in our account and we could be charged for it. This is a nice way of taking away a bit of money from us, despite that it isn’t really our fault.
Annual membership fee can also be quite expensive and this is often related to the credit card we get from the bank. They say that it is necessary to make sure that banks are able to maintain a proper level of service. The fee can be quite expensive and in some cases, around $30. If the annual fee is really huge, we should drop the card fast and choose another alternative. Another maintenance fee may kick in if we don’t have a specific amount of money inside the savings account. ATM usages fees are also quite expensive in the long run.