Use a debit card to get cash back at a point of sale, or use a smartphone to search for nearby bank branches, rather than using an out-of-network ATM. They’re really quite shameless!
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The average fee for an out-of-network transaction in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties was $4.84 over the past year, Bankrate found. That number combines both the fee charged by the ATM operator and the fee charged by the consumer’s own financial institution.
.52 (Four Dollars and Fifty Two Cents) per transaction!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That trend has been little changed in recent years.
Out-of-network fees are also rising because consumers have more ways to get cash for free. That cost includes what the external bank charges, as well as what the depositor’s bank charges for using another bank’s ATM. Consumers who can’t get a waiver from the fee are socked with an average monthly service charge of $5.86, an increase of 11 percent since past year.
The good news is that fewer people are getting hit with ATM fees, but that also means machine owners and banks have to charge more to cover their costs.
In all likelihood these fees are going to continue to go up, Greg McBride, Bankrates chief financial analyst, told The Huffington Post. Many tiny credit unions, for example, belong to a cooperative ATM network that has 30,000 cash machines around the country. Prior to 2009, the amount of money USA banks earned from customer fees had risen every single year since 1942, when the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. began recording it. “That’s unfortunate because although the overdraft fee takes a big bite, I would argue that it’s easier than ever to avoid”.
Bankrate surveyed a total of 243 banks in 25 large USA markets in July and August, looking at ATM and overdraft fees of interest and noninterest accounts. And he advises linking your savings and checking accounts so that one can replenish the other in the event of a shortfall.
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But mostly this is the result of regulations passed after the financial crisis that make it slightly more hard for banks to levy more hidden and sneaky fees elsewhere. That’s a less costly alternative than overdraft protection.
