A few months ago, I wrote about how you can try to talk your way out of an overdraft fee. On Thursday, I was again reminded of how it seems like people still are having problems managing their money. Every morning I check the overdraft report. This report tells me who has gone overdrawn, and if necessary, I shut down their debit card. A typical day will show about 25-30 people on the report. In the past few weeks, we’ve been averaging 50-60! That’s double the amount! It amazes me that people pay $30-$36 for an overdraft charge, yet continue to use the account. The number one cause of people going overdrawn is due to the lack of a check register. How can you know how much money you have available to spend if you don’t have a record of what you have spent? Online banking, telephone banking, and asking the tellers for a balance are not reliable methods of tracking money. They don’t know what checks are outstanding or what check card transactions haven’t posted yet. The “posting” process [...]
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