I had $50 in venmo, which I used to purchase groceries, because my bank account is currently negative.
Instead of using the $50 in my bank account, instead, a week later the $50 came out of my bank account, not touching the Venmo balance at all.
So now I have an overdraft fee, effectively meaning I paid 1.5 times for those groceries.
I don’t have “overdraft protection,” I’ve told my bank I don’t want overdrafts to go through, but fuck me for being poor I guess.
I FEEL THIS. My bank tells me its not possible to turn it off on my checking account. Blows my fucking mind they can’t just deny a tranaction if I don’t have the money even if I ask 😭
Blows my fucking mind they can’t just deny a tranaction
They can, they just won’t because of those juicy overdraft fees.
This is “not” professional financial advice for the united states. Banks are a last resort. Use credit unions. Unless there are specific services you need from a bank that your credit union does not provide, your credit union will provide the services you need with fewer fees. I have never seen a bank be better for a client unless they needed some kind of specialized reporting.
Chime is significantly better than my credit union in every way, in my experience
Find a bank that doesn’t charge overdraft fees. If you so happen to live in Colorado or Arizona, FirstBank is a good choice.
Not only are there no fees for anything, they even give you the option to block your card from charging more than your available balance. Card machines will literally only do a partial payment, using whatever is left in your account, allowing you to pay the remaining balance with another form of payment. It works everywhere and is really neat. Find a bank that offers this.
I don’t have “overdraft protection,” I’ve told my bank I don’t want overdrafts to go through
Typically overdraft protection means it takes money from your savings, or other linked account, and transfers to your checking. When I had Bank of America they charged me $5 every time this happened.
I have an account at a credit union now, no overdraft charges, no cost when it pulls money from my savings account.
Wells Fargo used to do that to me.
We charged you to transfer money from your savings account to your checking account.
Yeah because that robot needed to be reimbursed for their time lost moving MY money from one account to another.
I had money transferred into savings because that was the requirement to have a “free” checking account despite me not wanting to use their bullshit savings account. It finally led to me canceling it because “you transfer too often from your savings account” and they cited this stupid law that says I can only transfer from savings so many times before triggering yet another fee that goes to the bank.
Fuck all these big banks and the banking system that enables this shitty behavior.
Why would you want it to automatically grab money from your savings? Wouldn’t you just want to transfer that yourself?
I feel like it’s an extra guardrail that if somebody tries to pull 3000$ from your bank account and you only have 500 there that it can only pull the 500 and not the additional 2500 from your savings account?
Credit unions are the way to go. Seriously if your reading this and have an account with a mega corp, go to a credit union. Start with a checking account, in time you can migrate all your other stuff over. Better deals on loans, and they’re not predators. And you have a better chance of not enriching the billionaire class while you’re at it.
A neighbor pointed out to me that Venmo, Paypal, and other such services lack the consumer protections of a credit card. So, I don’t use them. If I have a problem with a purchase, I know my credit card vendor will contact the merchant and deal with it. Even if the vendor says “All sales are final”, I’ll get a refund when I challenge the sale.
Yep, they are explicitly not banks or traditional financial institutions and therefore have none of the standard protections. They don’t only lack the protections of credit cards, but also of banks in general.
There are countless stories of people losing access to over $10k in their PayPal account with no option to appeal because PayPal decided their Twitch revenue looked too much like money laundering. Or because a single transaction involved a card later reported stolen. Or… just because. Some people aren’t even given a reason.
Yeah, I prefer not using venmo, but I had negative money in my bank and some Venmo money my boss had sent me. I wanted groceries and that was the only money I had “access” to.
I was going to recommend never keeping a balance in Venmo or the like, but understand sometimes waiting a few days for it to transfer to your bank can make things difficult.
Honestly, I never understood why these apps can’t just use the balance in their own system first. It’s literally sitting there. Super frustrating when banks and apps make things unnecessarily complicated.
I’ve always been able to decline overdraft when opening a bank account in person. Banks argue the fee is preferable to the embarassment of having the transaction declined, but with how often credit cards flag fraud the embarrassment when it happens is practically zero.
Also, absolutely no one cares if your card is declined. They just wait for you to use a different card. If that cars doesn’t work… Oh well. If it does work… Ok.
The “embarrassment” is completely made up.
I feel you. It’s very expensive to be poor.
Goddamn is it expensive to be poor
Usually you can ask to reverse an overdraft fee as long as it’s not often. It’s humiliating but has worked for me in the past. Good luck.
Not trying to lay blame, but doesn’t Venmo ask where you want the money to come from every time you send money? They don’t know your bank balance…
Overdraft fees are evil. Some banks will even clear transactions to result in the most overdrafts without regard to which order the transactions took place. For example if there are two transactions, one for $100 and one for $5, and account balance of $50, they’ll purposely clear the $100 transaction first so both transactions trigger overdraft fees. They could clear the $5 first so only the $100 transaction triggers a fee, but nope.
Also, if this is your first overdraft you might have luck calling the bank and asking for forgiveness. I did that once in college and they refunded the overdraft fees.
overdraft fee
Banks & brokers without those are common, especially online ones. I’ve switched to online ones & never had to think about them.
- They block overdrafts without charging a fee.
- Deposited cash often earns high interest rates.
- Large ATM networks or ATM fee refunds.
- Well documented policies.
They beat the credit union I had in every way, especially in the documentation (an unusual pain point with my credit union). Some guides
Financial planning/advising services (perhaps through work) may offer good guidance, too.
Online banks have one major drawback, and that is the difficulty they typically have with getting cash into them.
Checks/Transfers/Etc? no problem.
But getting cash into it is a big PITA.
Is that not the purpose of their ATM networks? Though I never use them, I read some offer deposits that way.
I’ve always direct deposited or scanned checks. If someone needs to send me cash, it’s always through some service like Zelle, ACH, or online bill pay.
I don’t like to carry cash. Cards, digital wallets, & ACH meet all my needs. I can see how that’s a PITA for those who do, though.
On capitol one 360 and first thing I did was turn off overdraft. Now if I purchase an item with my debit card for $100 but only have $99 in my account, it just rejects the transaction
