You know what they say: Being poor is expensive.
Not only do the costs of buying “value” meals at the local grease slinger (instead of buying fresh ingredients in bulk) and hauling your skivvies to the laundromat (instead of buying a washer and dryer) add up, so, too, do fees from companies that directly profit from your misery:
-The power company that shuts off your electricity if you can’t afford your bill and charges you to put it back on.
-The payday lender that so graciously fronts you your wages so you can cover your expenses before payday only to charge enough interest to make you want to sell your kidney.
-And perhaps the worst offender of all, big banks that charge you upwards of $35 if you overdraw your account by mere pennies — sometimes more because they order the transactions in a manner that allows them to collect multiple “overdraft protection” fees.
A new study out from the left-leaning, pro-consumer Florida Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) recently crunched the numbers on nearly two years’ worth of available data on big banks’ overdraft fees, data that banks reporting over $1 billion in assets have only been obligated to hand over since the beginning of 2015. Thanks, Obama.
The grand total for just the first three quarters of 2016?
Why, $8.4 billion, of course.
In other words, if you’re a zillionaire, enough to buy you and 849 of your closest friends and hangers-on a little face time with the future Commander-in-Chief on Inauguration Day.
Ten banks accounted for two thirds of the overdraft fees: Chase Bank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, TD Bank, U.S. Bank, PNC Bank, Suntrust Bank, Regions Bank, Branch Banking and Trust and Woodforest National Bank.
Consumer advocates are worried what President Trump and his cabinet, who combined have more money than the bottom third of Americans, will try to roll back consumer protections and make cuts to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency created at the behest of Dodd-Frank, a bill Republicans hate hate hate. And they have every right to be worried.
After all, the PIRG study found that the banks that the bureau supervises — namely those holding more than $10 billion in assets — collected less on overdraft fees per account than banks that aren’t as closely scrutinized but are still subject to providing their overdraft numbers to regulators.
“It’s clear from these findings that the CFPB works, and it works for consumers,” added Susan McGrath, Executive Director of Florida Consumer Action Network, said of Florida PIRG’s study in a written statement. “Congress should reject efforts from banks, payday lenders and debt collectors to weaken the CFPB.”
Now, I know what you’re thinking:
Y’all did this to yourselves by having no money! Boot straps, m’boy!
But, no.
That is not how this is supposed to work.
Banks and other companies ripping people off by default with euphemistic marketing campaigns disguising their attempts to grift unlucky consumers as “protection” is the opposite of okay.
This article appears in Dec 15-22, 2016.
