A Different Kind of Banking
By Ed. Filed in Business, Computers & Internet, Life, Money |
My step daughter has a terrible time managing her money. I have tried working with her on this for over 5 years and she still cannot stick to a budget or responsibly manage a checking account. She is always out of money several days before her next payday and is always borrowing gas money to get her through the week.
We have tried to help her manage three different checking accounts at three different banks and she always end up overdrawn and owing a lot of money in overdraft fees. This drives me crazy. Overdraft fees are an expensive punitive measure taken by banks that should be avoided at all costs. But she always has a lame excuse about why she owes the bank money or someone “made a mistake.”
This time we are going to try a new kind of banking. I am going to give her a prepaid debit card. There is no way to rack up overdraft charges on this account. You cannot spend more than what is on the card, but you can reload it easily from a variety of convenient retail locations, including WalMarts, Walgreens, KMarts, Krogers, and 7-Elevens.
One attractive feature is that you can arrange to have your entire paycheck automatically added to your debit card for immediate access to your money. The card can be used anywhere that merchants accept MasterCard, and you can also use it for online bill pay. So this has all the features of her bank’s debit card program, but none of the banks account fees and overdraft fees that have always eaten away at her account balance.