Make Sure You Leave Some Money in Savings
Consider this a public service announcement from yours truly. If you have an online savings account, but you still use your regular checking account, it is very important to leave at least a little money in your brick and mortar savings account. You know, the one that is attached to your checking account, and may provide some sort of overdraft protection? I bet you can see where this is going. Because someday you may forget to write something down, and eventually you will get hit with $93 in overdraft fees because your checking account was short 19 cents needed to process a check. Yeah…
This happened on Monday. I logged into my bank account and noticed that my account balances and available balances didn’t look right. I realized right away what happened, but because I didn’t have any extra money in the same bank, there was nothing I could do to stop the ball that had started rolling. I did call my dad and ask him to transfer some money into my account, which he did, but not before they pushed through pending payments and charged me two more overdraft fees. (I’m still mad about that, by the way. I’ve NEVER seen a debit card payment run as credit post the very next day. It’s ALWAYS 2-3 days before it posts. No, I didn’t make those payments counting on the 2-3 days– I didn’t realize I had a math problem until the check was 19 cents short. But I was counting on the usual 2-3 days to avoid the rest of the overdraft fees. I’m not convinced that the bank didn’t see my account was overdrafted and pushed things through early, but I digress.)
In the end, I went to the bank and talked to them about the 3 overdraft fees. I understood exactly how it happened, but I wasn’t going to pay $93 in overdraft fees for one 19 cent mistake. He eventually agreed to refund two of the fees, but because I had no money in my savings account, I still had to eat $31 in overdraft fees over 19 cents. That hurts. So when I got paid today, the first thing I did was transfer a little bit of money into my savings that is attached to my checking account. Consider it one very expensive (and stressful!) lesson learned.
January 1st, 2009 at 4:04 pm
[...] added progress bars to my sidebar to track my debts. I had a little snafu with my bank account and some overdraft fees. I learned it was important to leave some money in my brick and mortar bank [...]