Fees? No Thank You

Fact: Darrell and I rarely pay attention to emails that come out about changes to our checking/credit/savings account. For the most part, the "changes" are totally worthless and unimportant--I really don't care if they change the interest rate on my credit card because we never have carry-over balances anyway. However, something made me actually look at our most recent email closely--closely enough to realize they were going to start charging us a monthly service fee on our checking account.

Umm, what?? I don't think so. No way were we about to start dropping $15 a month just to keep a checking account with our current bank. And the only ways to waive the fee were to have a mortgage through the bank (which we don't--and aren't about to deal with the hassle of changing our mortgage) or keep a balance of $7500 in the account. Also not happening--no way do we need that kind of money sitting around a low-interest checking account when we only use it to pay a few bills. We'll keep that money in a savings account with a much higher APY, thank you very much.

So now we're faced with a serious dilemma. We really don't want to switch banks (or checking accounts) because we'd have to change all of our direct deposit forms and automatic bill pays (which would be a pain in the a$$), not to mention the fact that we just purchased quite a few new check books. Plus our current bank has a plethora of nationwide ATMs, which is great when we are traveling on the East Coast and need to pull out a little extra cash. But we refuse to pay a fee--and have access to a fee-free checking account through multiple other banks (which would still give us pretty good nationwide coverage--and a $2.50 ATM fee once every few months is way more reasonable than a $15 a month service fee). So Darrell is going to meet with a broker later this week and see what kind of magic he can work--all I can say is better him than me. I really don't handle confrontation situations like that well. At all.

Life Lesson: Probably a good idea to actually start paying attention to emails about account changes on a regular basis. Just sayin'.