the Price of Overdraft Fees

Not much to say about overdraft protection. For a fee a bank will temporarily cover withdrawing more money than is in the account. This affords the bank's customers the ability to avoid the hassle of having a check returned to a creditor or retailer for insufficient funds. Of course, multiple instances result in multiple fees.

At the beginning of the year, an electronically deposited paycheck I expected to receive didn't clear by the usual date and about a dozen payments I had to make: credit card, lease, car loan, student loan, etc., plus groceries and other niceties and necessities, and I got tagged with some $300 in overdraft fees.

I called the bank to straighten it out, noted I'd been a customer for over a decade and hadn't had an overdraft in over 7 years, and that the paycheck has been there on the expected date for years before. The extremely polite young woman I spoke to waved the fees.

Yeah, this isn't a service anyone wants to have to use, and while keeping a reasonably large positive bank balance is a good buffer against it, it isn't always possible. When looking for a bank, ask whether multiple instances in a short time period will raise the cost of each overdraft fee, and ask about the process of contesting the fees.