The Convenience of a Check Card and a Loan Shark All Rolled Into One

Perhaps this has happened to you. You go to buy something at the store. It's been a busy week, so you haven't been watching your bank balance as closely as you should. The cashier rings you up. You swipe your check card and the cashier says, “It didn't go through. Do you have another card?” What happened? A check card draws money from your checking account, so your balance must have dipped too low to pay for your purchases. It happens.

Well... not anymore, it doesn't.

I switched my checking account to Bank of America a few years ago when I refinanced my adjustable rate mortgage into a home equity line. Back then, my credit was solid and it seemed like it would be easier to have my checking account within easy reach of my second mortgage and my Bank of America credit card. And like my other bank, Bank of America sent me a check card so I could make purchases with the ease of a credit card, minus all those pesky finance charges.

The first time I received an overdraft fee, I didn't think much about it. When you buy gas, the charge doesn't always show up right away and if you forget to keep track of your pending charges, sooner or later you're going to overdraw the account, especially if you're living paycheck to paycheck. The fee was hefty, but it was a small price to pay to make sure my charges were covered. Bank of America would have commended me for my attitude.

Then things started getting tight between paychecks, with more and more checks and charges floating around, and I started getting negative balance numbers that looked strangely plump. I thought maybe someone over the internet had stolen my account number, but the charges were all mine. In fact, I'd made several of them that same day. Twenty dollars here, six dollars there, twelve dollars somewhere else... and even though the balance must have been precariously low when I made the first of the three transactions, I was sure that the other transactions should have been declined. Furthermore, the fact that those two had gone through after the account dipped below zero meant that Bank of America had assessed another $70 in overdraft fees.

If I went to an ATM and tried to withdraw the same amount of money, Bank of America would have checked the balance and said, No dice. If I used my check card, on the other hand, it would authorize the charge regardless of whether or not I had money in my checking account. What mad, tortured logic was this? I could understand having to pay a fee when one too many floating charges collided because I hadn't been keeping a balanced checkbook. What I couldn't understand was how transactions kept getting approved after my account dipped below zero. It didn't make any sense.

My first credit card was a Capital One gold card, offered to me when I was still in high school. It had a $2000 dollar limit back then, and I can remember the exact moment that I reached that limit because the cashier handed it back to me and said, “It was declined, sir.” I'd gone over the limit and couldn't use the card any more. There was an over-the-limit fee and everything. I don't recall how far I'd gone over the limit, but it didn't take more than a single payment to get me back to $2000. One thing I remember very clearly was calling to ask Capital One whether I would be assessed another fee if the finance charges pushed the balance back over the limit. The customer service rep told me, “No, as long as you don't make any charges while you're over the limit, there won't be any more over-the-limit fees.”

It seemed logical to me. If I was to be penalized for using the card when my available balance was too low, that was fair, but if the credit card company could stack fees on top of each other until I got another over-the-limit fee, that was ridiculous. What Bank of America was doing with my check card charges seemed equally ridiculous.

In a single month, Bank of America charged me $350 in overdraft fees, spread out over ten separate charges. Many of these charges should have been declined in the first place, but I was noticing something else. Bank of America had an ugly habit of clearing charges in order from largest to smallest, often draining the account with the first charge and causing multiple overdrafts when clearing them in order would have overdrawn on only the largest transaction. This policy was the source of class action lawsuit against Nationsbank, which became Bank of America, that was settled in 1999. Since then, they've been informing new account-holders of the policy per the settlement agreement, but I don't recall being told about the policy by the manager who set up my account. I'm sure it's in the stack of papers he gave me to sign, or in the folder full of pamphlets I didn't have time to read after the account was processed.

The check clearing policy, however underhanded, is now an industry standard. Most banks will clear your largest checks first, claiming that this is “for your own good.” You want your mortgage payment to go through, don't you? What they don't say is that the three or four smaller transactions after the mortgage payment will go through as well, to the tune of $140.

From the Bank of America website:

Though the Bank of America Visa Check Card is accepted nearly anywhere VISA Cards are accepted, it's not a Credit Card and it's not tied to a line of credit.

Fair enough, but if it's not really a credit card, why do so many transactions go through after you overdraw your account, sometimes days after your account has fallen to a negative balance?

Bank of America explains their methodology:

We charge an overdraft fee when we pay a check or other withdrawal even though you don't have enough available funds in your account to cover these transactions.

In some circumstances, Bank of America may choose not to pay the check or other withdrawal. In this case, we will return it to the payee as unpaid, and may charge an Insufficient Funds Fee.

So, if they decide to pay the charge that should have been declined, they assess a fee. If they decide not to pay the charge, they also assess a fee. That's a pretty profitable arrangement. How exactly do they decide whether or not to pay a fee? Is it even possible to drop so far into negative numbers that your check card will be declined?

A few months ago, I found out the limits of Bank of America's largess when a series of overdrafts and the accompanying fees brought my account balance hundreds of dollars into the negatives. Knowing that the paycheck that would be direct deposited would be eaten up by the negative balance, I had no choice but to keep using the card to buy food and gas, each time watching yet another $35 fee join the transaction. $50 in gas? Let's just call it gas and a short term loan. A $35 fee for every purchase would be criminal if it was actually a finance charge, something akin to what a loan shark might charge, but I didn't have any choice if I wanted to gas up my car to go to work.

It seemed like they were willing to pay on anything as long as they could attach another overdraft fee, so I took one final look at my balance, $-643 and change, and I paid my electric bill. To my astonishment, the transaction was actually approved. I really hadn't expected it to work. A few days later, Bank of America changed its mind about this act of extreme generosity and canceled payment, charging me both the original overdraft charge, as well as the returned item fee.

Remember that thing I mentioned about their “biggest items first” policy, and how it was for my own good? I didn't use the card any more after that, but I forgot about a monthly membership charge that automatically debits the checking account in the amount of $9.96. That charge went through AFTER they declined to pay the debit to the electric company, and it was approved and paid, with the standard $35 overdraft fee tacked on, of course.

The policy of letting transactions go through even after an account's available balance reads $0.00 has become standard in the industry, and it's not even limited to check cards any more. My wife used a SunTrust debit card to buy about $50 worth of groceries last night, entered the PIN number at the Publix register, received approval and went home thinking that the charge was covered by money in the account, only to find a negative balance in the morning and a returned check fee.

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The Student Loan Dilemma

When I decided to go to college I knew that no matter where I went I was going to take out student loans. My parents didn’t have much money to pay for college and I had little to no savings for the occasion. Instead of thinking about money and how much the bill would add up, however, the school advisor was limited to helping me choose a school. After all, I was going to have a college degree in four years so what’s the difference how much my student loans added up to? While there are some kids that have a strong and dedicated desire to be something great like a doctor, lawyer, or dentist, most kids planning for college simply go to get a degree in whatever interests them by their junior year. If you plan on going to graduate school at a hard-to-get-into college then the undergraduate school may matter. If you are going to graduate with your bachelor’s and get a job, I’ve learned the institution really means nothing.

I chose to go away to school in upstate New York where most of my friends were going. I had no clue what I wanted to do but knew that I qualified to have just about everything paid for by my student loan. The majority of the loan was through a private bank while just a minute amount was funded through the government. An even smaller amount was given as a grant that I wouldn’t have to pay back. At 18 years old, I didn’t think twice. I packed up my belongings and headed off to what would become the best four years of my life.

After I graduated college, my loans totaled over $20,000. I slowly paid off the government loan which was around $3,000 and deferred payments on my private loan. Although the rate was pretty good at 4.41% I found it impossible to pay the $390.00 monthly payment with my newly acquired job. I applied for consolidations and was denied multiple times. Since the rate was good everyone I spoke to acted as though the $17,000 should be easy to get rid of. But I didn’t go to school to be a lawyer or doctor, I graduated with a degree in Psychology that I settled on after 3 years of trying to figure out what it was I wanted to do. In fact it seemed as though my college degree was more of a high school diploma and all the places I applied to could care less what I studied, only that I had the degree. Completing 4 years of college showed dedication and an aptitude for learning and that was all anyone seemed to worry about. My job was in sales and I had no idea how I was going to pay back the money I owed.

That was 8 years ago. Today my loan now totals over $19,000. The interest keeps building up and the payment remains at $390 a month, a nearly impossible amount for a person that makes $30,000 a year to afford. Now that I own a home I’m going to try the consolidation process again to see if that will help. After all, isn’t better for me to pay something rather than nothing? It would seem from the $2,000 in interest they’ve made that the answer to that is no.

While going away to college was a great experience, was it really worth the price of a new car? I could have easily got the same degree at a local community college for less than half the price and to be honest most employers could care less where the degree came from.

My answer to this dilemma is a big fat resounding yes.

While many kids may seem like they are just going to college for the sake of it, who are we to make that choice for them? I am happy I was given the chance to decide for myself and will do the same for my children someday. Limiting a child to a local community college when they have aspirations is like telling someone who wants to be a police office they can only be a security guard. Yes, many of them will fail and end up protecting the local mall anyway, but isn’t it worth it to give them a chance?

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Alternative Lending Sources

What is the proper measure for creditworthiness in this day and age?

Apparently, it is no longer simply the credit report or the verdict of one's local banking institution. There are so many individuals who fall short of traditional standards of creditworthiness that the marketplace has naturally made room for non-traditional lenders. Besides the controversial subprime mortgage lending industry that most people are by now familiar with, there is a increasung trend in person-to-person lending organizations. Websites like Prosper.com facilitate lending transactions between individuals and other single or small group benefactors. Using such a service empowers people who may not otherwise receive loan funding to finance their dreams and goals.

I am still not sure how I feel about the rise in alternative lending resources. At first glance it looks great; power to the people, right? There is no reason why deserving people should have to remain at the mercy of the big bad traditional financial institutions, right? I'm not so sure that pumping more loans into the pipeline is the answer. Then again, I am one of the few who believes that people should begin to move away from financing instead of toward it. If enough people renounced the borrowing lifestyle and stopped applying for loans, the market would respond with more competetive rates and terms. Then we wouldn't need many of these alternative lending options.

Wouldn't that be something?

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