Sick of Overdraft Fees Read This
I have written a lot about bank overdraft costs recently, and so I thought I’d mention to the WalletPop world : Probity Money Services. Probity Fiscal Services is a web bank that offers a checking account with no overdraft charges.
As it asserts on its internet site : “None, nada, never.”. If you employ a cash card a lot, or write a large amount of checks, and you are consistently off by some greenbacks and being slammed with bank costs, this can work out well for you.
So if one day you wake up and realize you spent too much, and you are $43.22 in the negative in your deposit account, you simply put cash back in your account when you can and push on. You will not suddenly end up with 6 bank costs each worth $37.50 and realizing that you have just given your monthly grocery bill to the bank.
It all sounds smashing, and I am sure it is, but there are many things to be conscious of. First, there’s a monthly charge ( which Probity makes clear about on the internet site ). You’ll need to pay $19.95 a month for the prerogative of not having an overdraft fee. The overdraft protection that you receive is $250 from the instant you sign up, and then $500 after being a good and “active” purchaser for 90 days, because, no, the bank isn’t going to let your account go $567,890 in the negative. So if a $600 payment attempts to go thru on your cash card, it will not be ready to go thru. Ditto with a check, that will be returned, if you are past their $500 overdraft protection.
And it’s good to grasp that if you use an ATM, while Probity will not charge you, the other bank likely will. But Probity reveals that there is a way around that — ask for money back when you are using your cash card on a purchase. Put simply, it is a regular bank, where your money is guarded by the governing body, just like every other out there. Having said that, I believe this would be a hard bank for anyone that doesn’t have direct deposit from an employer.
In that case, you have got to mail in your check, or get a monetary establishment to send your cash into Probity Money Services. For self-employed people who receive checks in the post, using Probity will mean more time and money just trying to replenish your account.
Clearly , the massive drawback is the $19.95 a month fee. Over 12 months, that is $239.40, which is a pretty pricey price to pay for employing a bank, which is earning money in interest off your cash ( while it’s a bargain if you are customarily spending many hundred bucks a year or more in banking costs ).
That $239 each year is the explanation I have held off writing about Probity for WalletPop. She added, “When Smash hit was reaping giant profits on late charges, Netflix came in and offered a solution for one flat monthly fee.
And all of a sudden I saw Probity Monetary Services in a new light. And one thing banks could potentially use is a touch more competition. Perhaps if Probity manages to Netflix the banking industry, flat charges will go down. Or up, naturally, which is a frightening offer.
Sure, in an ideal world, everybody would manage their cash to the decimal point, and never make a boo boo, regardless of how hard banking becomes. But it is an imperfect world, and it is an imperfect bank system we have got here. Probity just might be the answer to a lot of banking problems for some folk.
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