Almost everyone has noticed that bank charges show up on our statements from time to time. But not many of us know what that means. When you got this bank account, didn't it have a lot of great features that you liked? Well, you have to pay for them now. This might surprise a lot of people. After all, most of us just assume that because we have an account at Bank X, we can use a variety of other services.
So, it's always a good idea to find out ahead of time what services are free and what extra services cost money. You should hope that what you're paying for is what you wanted to pay for. These include using the ATM card more than a certain number of times, giving out more checks than are allowed, or getting a bank statement between quarters.
All of these are things that could lead to extra bank fees. People often think that they should not have to pay for some of these services.
Sometimes, you might overdraw because you didn't have enough money or because there was a limit on how much you could take out. If you take out more money than you have in your account, the bank will charge you a fee. This is because the bank helped you out by giving you money when you didn't have enough. Another example is giving a check to a third party when you don't know there are enough funds to cover it.
If this happens, the check won't be paid. Instead, it will have to be shown again after we have set up a way for the money to be deposited. There will be a charge on the bounced check, and there will be more fees for representing it. Prudent money management tells us that we should also worry about these small amounts.
We are responsible for making sure checks get cleared, whether we wrote them today or a long time ago. In this case, we will have to pay the bank a certain amount to hold the check until we can put enough money into it. Any service the bank does for us that isn't on the list of things we can get isn't for us. So, I think it makes sense for a bank to charge for them.
We might not be able to find our bank's ATM while we're travelling or for some other reason. In that case, we might use the teller machine of another bank. But for the same reason, a certain amount will also be taken out of our account. Even though the ATM card isn't free, it does something useful.
Some of the services banks offer are free, but some of them cost money. Be careful not to take any service for granted. There is no problem with paying for something you want to buy. At the same time, make sure you don't pay for something you don't need by accident.
