Thursday, March 22, 2007

Overdraft Protection

I used to love my bank. I've been with them for almost 8 years - they're only the second bank I've worked with, but they've held onto my money and given it back when I've asked without charging me and with very little fuss. We only really ever had one disagreement and that was when I used the express deposit box, so really that was just piss-poor planning on my part. Until yesterday.

I'm embarrassed to even write here the extent of my mathematical mis-calculation, but I made an error in my checkbook and overdrew my account. Not by much, but I paid for it by much more. Here's some fast facts that I learned in my banking adventure yesterday:

1. When you overdraw your account, the bank may still pay for those items - Yeah!
2. The bank will charge you EVERY TIME they pay for something on your overdrawn account - Boo!
3. You will be notified when your account is overdrawn - Yeah!
4. ...by USPS - Boo!
5. The bank will reverse some overdraft fees - one reversal is automatic and the bank managers have discretion to reverse more if you sing, dance, reveal your utmost personal financial history, talk about your dog's cancer, your mom's cancer, your own cancer and your desire to cure cancer.
6. Even all of that will probably reverse only one addition fee.

The bank does provide some options to help prevent overdrawing, including drawing from other accounts which would have helped me since I have cash sitting in other accounts at that same bank, however this also incurs fees, and therefore doesn't really address my problem. So I just paid $xxx dollars to learn that I need to keep my checkbook accurately balanced every day and to set up the Internet banking options to tell me my balance anytime it gets below $100!

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