We're overdrawn :(

[Guinea Goonie]

There is one thing that may save many people. Use TWO checking accounts. Keep one in reserve. NO checks allowed, no automatic withdrawals, ever and if you pay a bill use the bill payment you set up, NO automatic bill payments, just one you authorize and for certain amounts on certain days. Automatic deposites can be set up in this one too.

Keep your cushion here if you can afford it and are willing to part with money and treat it as if you did not have it. This is hard to do.

Transferres are USUALLY instant. HOWEVER, most banks have a CUT OFF time period sometime in the evening. BE SURE you know that cut off time period as your transfer will not be reconized until the next business day. I have been bit this way too. It is really unfair and unjustified and just another way for the bank to make money.

You can transfer online and many times you can save your butt from overdraft fees.
Just reconize that this is not "just another place to get money", it is your reserve, your savior and should be treated as your gold reserve. Replenish monies spent quickly.

 

[australorpchick]

Depending on who you bank with, if you made your purchase before your direct deposit was made, even if the purchase did not clear until after deposit was cleared, the bank will look at it as NSF.

For instance, if you had $10 in the bank, went to the store and made an $11 purchase, then immediately went to the bank and deposited $100 cash, you would still be charged an NSF. The bank will look at when the purchase was made, not when they receive the receipt and they actually had to transfer the payment to the vendor.

My advice, go with a credit union.

I forgot -

it's an awful feeling.

 

[GrayDragon]

Quote:
Can't agree enough.

Every overdraft we've ever had has been the result of an automatic withdrawal.

Phone bill scheduled to be paid the 20th of every month? And the electric company will take theirs on the 19th of every month? And the cable is on the 21st. Okay, I've planned for that, it's not a problem, I make a deposit the 15th of every month. Except this time the phone company decided to take their money on the 14th. Wait a minute, the phone company is billing me for services I'm not even getting, increasing my bill by $30 a month? Why is the electric company now billing my on the 16th and why has my bill suddenly gone from $60 to $125 a month? And why is the cable company claiming they never got a payment last month and double billing me this month?

No thanks. Everyone sends me an itemized invoice now and I pay them by check. That way I can correct any 'errors' they try to slip in, I know exactly how much they are charging and when the payment got sent, and I have a 'receipt' for each payment with it clearly written in the memo which month/bill # the check is for.

 

[hen-thusiast]

Quote:
Can't agree enough.

Every overdraft we've ever had has been the result of an automatic withdrawal.

Phone bill scheduled to be paid the 20th of every month? And the electric company will take theirs on the 19th of every month? And the cable is on the 21st. Okay, I've planned for that, it's not a problem, I make a deposit the 15th of every month. Except this time the phone company decided to take their money on the 14th. Wait a minute, the phone company is billing me for services I'm not even getting, increasing my bill by $30 a month? Why is the electric company now billing my on the 16th and why has my bill suddenly gone from $60 to $125 a month? And why is the cable company claiming they never got a payment last month and double billing me this month?

Seriously?!? I have never used automatic withdrawals and I definitely won't start now after reading what happened to you.

 

[cmjust0]

Remember back in the good ol' days (no more than 10 years ago) when you actually had a little bit of FLOAT TIME when you wrote a check?!? Man, I miss that.

You could write a bad check at Wal-Mart today and cover it tomorrow afternoon with a deposit, and everything would be perfectly fine.. These days, though, you can MAIL somebody a check and run the risk of it clearing in like 48 hours now that so many companies have gone to electronic withdrawals.. They grab the account and routing numbers off your check and run it as a debit. POOF! Your money's gone just as soon as they open your payment envelope..

My bank sent me a letter the other day saying they'd enhanced their level of service by covering overdrafts up to like $1000 instead of returning checks.. Of course, they charge you like $40 for each NSF coverage, and they noted that they reserved the right to process things in whatever order they chose..

Which means that if you have, say $500 in checking and you write 6 checks that total $505, they'll process them in whatever order they can to maximize the number of NSF fees they can charge.. Like, you write a $500 check and five $1 checks, they process the $500 check first and hit you for five NSFs on each of the $1 checks, instead of processing the $1 checks first and hitting you for one NSF on the $500.

Cool, huh?!? So great of them to "enhance" things like that...

Oh, and I totally agree -- NO AUTOMATIC WITHDRAWALS. You'll get paid when I pay you, if I pay you.

 

[honeydoll]

I am sooooo against automatic withdrawals. Once a company, especially utility companies (which in my book are just as EVIL as BANKS) get that info they can really screw you. They have changed withdrawal dates on mine before too and we overdrafted us. No notice no explanation no apology. I want to get off the grid just to not deal with utility companies anymore. They are ANNOYING!!!

 

[GrayDragon]

Quote:
Can't agree enough.

Every overdraft we've ever had has been the result of an automatic withdrawal.

Phone bill scheduled to be paid the 20th of every month? And the electric company will take theirs on the 19th of every month? And the cable is on the 21st. Okay, I've planned for that, it's not a problem, I make a deposit the 15th of every month. Except this time the phone company decided to take their money on the 14th. Wait a minute, the phone company is billing me for services I'm not even getting, increasing my bill by $30 a month? Why is the electric company now billing my on the 16th and why has my bill suddenly gone from $60 to $125 a month? And why is the cable company claiming they never got a payment last month and double billing me this month?

Seriously?!? I have never used automatic withdrawals and I definitely won't start now after reading what happened to you.

The worst part is stuff like this happened at least every other month. It's like they just assumed people with auto pay wouldn't pay attention and they could sneak stuff by.

Other than the tendency to forget to credit my account for payments made, the cable company was the most honest of them all, and the most likely to do something other than shrug and say 'oops' when called on it. Last time they double billed, they gave my husband NFL Sunday ticket.

 

[mom'sfolly]

Paying exclusively with debit cards is not a good idea either. Like credit cards, companies can put a "hold" on monies over the actual charge. So if you have paid for a hotel room, they can hold more than your payment for a period of days. This is completely unregulated, and allows companies to use your money and makes it unavailable to you.

I like my credit union. The other thing I hate is fees for ATMs. ATMs were supposed to make banking cheaper because no one had to pay tellers. However, banks saw that they could be milking that cash cow....if I use one ATM near home, they charge me three dollars, and my bank charges me $2. Extortion, plain and simple. If I was to withdraw $100 of my own money they would charge me 5% just for convience; the percentage would be even higher if I withdrew less money.

Off to pay the water bill. Thank god it has been raining.

 

[wegotchickens]

Quote:
I use the same system. You can create an awesome cushion in a year!
And you can do it even faster if you round up to whole dollars.

 

[babymakes6]

We got hit hard not too long ago also. My husband is supposed to get paid every Friday. We had our house payment due and not quite enough to cover it, we NEEDED his paycheck. His paycheck didn't come until MONDAY. The bank charged us an NSF for 3 items-2 should have been paid several days before! Then, they charged us an $8 fee for each day that the account was overdrawn-FRIDAY, SATURDAY!, SUNDAY! MONDAY (because it was a holiday!), and TUESDAY, because the deposit wouldn't post until MIDNIGHT, even though it was made in the morning! I said "that isn't right! You charged us for each day, even though they weren't business days and there was NO WAY I could even deposit the money those days!" They replied, "that is our policy." They take a check you deposit, and only $100 is available for a couple of days, until the check clears, and Friday deposits go in on MONDAY, yet they can charge you a fee for every day of the weekend AND a holiday, and get away with it! I HATE our bank, but we have our mortgage through them and can't afford to refinance right now, so we are stuck for now. It is not BOA, but it is a large midwestern bank.