FLASH: Corporate Banks are Robbing You Blind!!
According to NBC News U.S. corporate banks take in $32 billion per year in overdraft fees. That amount accounts for 60 percent of their profits. These banks are gouging their customers an average of $225 per year each. It’s unnecessary. It’s outrageous. And it can be stopped.
In several other essays I have alerted you to the fact that corporate banks fuel the largest flow of cash in human history from your pockets to those of corporate CEOs. As a result they are getting richer and richer with each passing second while you are getting poorer and poorer.
The solution is simple and it eliminates a multitude of sins: Close out all your corporate bank accounts and move your cash to a credit union account. Open a checking account accessible with a debit card, and a savings account, and link the two accounts for overdraft protection. Credit unions charge less for their services, they are more efficient, their profits stay in their communities, and they do not pay their administrators’ big salaries, with big bonuses, and big perks, and big retirement packages.
See also:
America in Crisis
Community Capitalism: The Start of Something Big
The Chinese are Coming!
What Then Must We Do?
The economy is the money in circulation in a country but it's hijacked and purloined for the benefit of the few and not the many.The world would be a better place with the eradication of extreme wealth and extreme poverty.We can see the discontent around the globe with revolutions every day.Big changes will come one way or another. Good to see sensible actions being proposed by people like you Edward who has studied the situation and put your ideas out there.Keep them coming .
Mary Cecil,Northern Ireland
Chip Bergeron
That is an unbelievable figure! But it is a result of slovenly behavior, distractions like the Internet and cell phones, automatic withdrawals and people who just don't seem to have a handle on their money and pay these fees because they think that that's the way it is.
I've done online banking for years. In order to pay off debt, I don't carry much in my checking account. I've never liked to have the bank benefit from the “float” of money in the pipeline or maintain a “minimum balance” that the bank can draw interest on. I have automatic overdraft protection, but it is very expensive and I don't use it. Since I have automatic bill paying, I have requested that the bank give me a running balance with each scheduled payment, so that I can see when I need to add funds in the future. It's been about ten years now and they've updated the website several times, but have not added the feature suggested that would help people quickly determine when they would have insufficient funds because of automatic payments.
I also have a number of companies out there that automatically bill my checking account when there is a charge. Because I don't keep detailed records to try to keep track of all of them, they come as a surprise and sometimes overdraw my account. I try to avoid this by having them charge my credit card, but not all companies will do that. And, if my credit card changes, like it did recently because of attempted fraudulent charging, I have to go back and inform all the companies charging my card that it has changed.
To sum it up, I check my online banking almost daily and see red quite often. Fortunately, my partner and I can quickly transfer funds at no cost to cover any overdraft on the day it occurs. Using this strategy, I can't remember the last time I had to pay for an overdraft.
Ron
Ingeborg