It's my pleasure to welcome you to the Clark Howard Show, where our mission is to serve

you and empower you to make better financial decisions in your life.

Today I'm going to talk about a new service that more and more people are using when they're

short of cash.

And later, have you noticed the number of junk phone calls actually really seems like

it's going down?

I hope it is for you.

I'm going to talk right now about when you're down on your cash.

Historically, the nation's banks have been abysmal at how they've treated people who were

short of money.

The banks have had these massive fees when you're about to check.

And it's a punitive fee that if you calculated the imputed interest rate, it would even be

worse than payday loans.

And so more and more banks are under extreme public pressure are getting rid of overdraft fees.

They're holding on.

They're announcing it.

In many cases, months and months and months before they get rid of them so they can at least

grab those billions in between.

But the truth is a bounce check costs to bank pennies that they might charge you 36 bucks

for.

And so it's just a money maker for the banks.

They love them.

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