You probably are tired of banks screwing you over left and right. Well, so are we. That’s why we think it’s important that we share this information with you.
Turns out the so-called “overdraft protection” is just another scam banks are using to enrich themselves. So you can easily minimize the amount of money banks suck out of you by refusing their overdraft protection services.
For me these are no news. I always believed overdraft protection to be just another form of legalized fraud. Now my belief has been proven right. Read on for details.
Once an accountholder opts in to the ‘overdraft protection’ system, the bank will authorize overdrafts and assess a penalty after the fact. Such opt-in accountholders are nearly twice as likely to get hit with an overdraft fee in a given year than those who decline overdraft protection, the CFPB found. Opt-in accounts are more than twice as likely to pay four or more overdraft fees in a year, and three times as likely to pay 11 or more such penalties each year.
So you better stay away from their overdraft protection services. By doing this you would help reduce banks’ profits.
You may think that it would hardly reduce banks’ profits. Not so. According to Bloomberg.com, banks collect “30$ billion dollars in overdraft fees each year”.
30$ billion dollars is an especially obscene figure. “The median debit card transaction that incurs a $35 overdraft fee is just $24 dollars”. In other words, people signing up for overdraft protection let themselves be screwed in a most painful, obscene position.
This data has been a result of analysis of “roughly 2 million separate checking accounts at large banks”. But the tragic comedy did not end here. The Republicans decided to weigh in.
Republicans, feeling obliged to defend big banks, characterized “these kinds of data collection and analytic projects as spying on Americans, and even likened the agency’s work to Gestapo surveillance in Nazi Germany”.
Now you know that Republicans are helping to protect your financial freedom, by helping banks screw you in a big way. It is definitely helpful that they are protecting big banks from data collection. It is just as helpful as their overwhelming desire to see Edward Snowden in jail.
Republicans’ logic must be contained in these words of wisdom: “Banks will definitely help this country by causing another financial meltdown. So let’s give them as much freedom as possible. Then we could give them even more bailout money and they would reciprocate by giving us more political contributions.”
In a perfect world, every person would have unlimited amount of money and banks would be unnecessary.
In this world, banks are unnecessary too, but it is necessary to use them sometimes. This said, you can avoid their “overdraft attacks”.
Roman Marshanski is the founder of Humoropedia.com and former Hollywood actor. You can Google his name to see the list of his movies (or you can click on his name above this box to visit his personal website). He wrote thousands of pages of fiction. Some of that fictional writing is screenplays and a lot of it is comedic writing. So he completed two feature film screenplays and many shorter literary works, some of which are comedy. He did most of that writing during his film career as a Hollywood actor. He was the lead actor in Rebecca Cremona's Magdalena. Rebecca Cremona was Steven Spielberg's protege on Munich. So he has a deep understanding of the creative process and can be considered an authority on all things related to humor. Indeed, his screenplays contain a lot of humor. That's where his love for jokes started. Eventually, this love of jokes led Roman to the creation of Humoropedia.com, the wonderful home of funny jokes and witty puns. He thinks humor is something very good. If you also think so, please follow him on X now because he has a sense of humor.
