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.
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.
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 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.
My banks can turn it off, but what annoys me about that is the overdraft fee just becomes an insufficient funds fee (in many cases, I’ve obviously not tested most kinds of charges to see) at that point for me, fuck might as well pay what the charge was.
Which bank do you have? Is switching to a credit union an option?
I switched to a credit union and can use all the same ATMs/send money/etc and there’s no fees/no anti-consumer nonsense
It’s not designed against humans, its designed for bankers.
I had a long discussion with my bank’s branch manager about this. They assured me that I don’t have overdraft protection. I’ve yet to have any fees since I keep a reasonable balance. I want my debit card to fail and my check to bounce. He assured me that’s what would happen.
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.
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.
Small banks are good too. I used to use a fantastic local one called First Republic where every customer had a banker they could call or email if needed. First Republic were acquired by Chase, who wanted some huge amount of money in the account (something like $200k) to get a similar level of service through Chase Private Client. I closed the account.
Why would you want it to automatically grab money from your savings? Wouldn’t you just want to transfer that yourself?
I feel like it’s an extra guardrail that if somebody tries to pull 3000$ 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?
Because it keeps them rent payment from bouncing.
Some people aren’t good with money management and may forget to transfer money across, especially for scheduled things (bill payments, rent, etc)
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.
Yeah, get a better bank. Or better yet, a credit union
Already use a credit union 🙃
I feel you. It’s very expensive to be poor.
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.
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.
Transfers are usually pretty quick these days. Sometimes I transfer money from Schwab to Fidelity at night, and it’s already available the next morning.
In the USA, a lot of the larger banks and brokerages (and maybe credit unions?) internally use systems like FedNow or RTP, which allow for instant transfers to other banks. It can take a little while if they do extra security checks though.
I had a credit card company say a payment in the wrong amount was not something they would help with so its limited.
Goddamn is it expensive to be poor
Fees that target the destitute are peak evil.
You might be able to contact your bank and talk to them about the overdraft fee, I got slapped by them as a teenager and someone at a booth (was the good old days. you see) simply undid the fees.
Asking nicely one your first offense, they’ll definitely remove the fee. Being nice will get you far.
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.
My bank offers 3 overdraft fee reversals per 12 month period, they just don’t advertise it. OP, you should def call and ask
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.
Not trying to lay blame, but doesn’t Venmo ask where you want the money to come from every time you send money?
No, unless that shows up if you are transferring in the app. It did not ask me where the money would come from. I was using a grocery delivery service and selected Venmo as my payment option. I assumed that selecting Venmo over my bank would take it from my Venmo.
I already got my credit union to forgive a charge on an accidental 1.99 purchase. I don’t think they’ll do it again.
I have even less hours this month. I’ll probably just end up driving off a bridge. There’s no way I’m ever going to be financially solvent again.
Grocery delivery service sounds expensive… but I don’t know where you live.
It is, but it took Venmo and I don’t think Walmart does. I needed groceries and that seemed to be the best option with my only money being the $50 in the Venmo account. I thought about asking someone if I could send them the money and get cash instead, but didn’t have anyone I could do that with.
