Never Pay An Unnecessary Fee Again

Life Kit

NPR

Self-improvement, Kids & Family, Education, Health & Fitness, Business

4.5 • 4.9K Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2019

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Don't get caught in a cycle of unnecessary overdraft fees, credit card interest and high-cost loans. A few simple tools can help you hold onto those hard-earned dollars.

Here's what to remember:
- Automation is your friend. Set your bills on autopay.
- Overdraft protection is deceptive. Link your checking account to a savings account to avoid overdraft fees.
- Set up a buffer savings account with automatic deposits.
- Don't use credit cards for emergency spending.
- If you do have an emergency, try asking your employer for your already-earned wages.
- Balance transfer checks can help with high-interest debt, but read the fine print.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You know that feeling when you look at the windshield of your car and you see a parking ticket and it's just like,
0:04.5	oh, parking tickets. I should have just paid the meter and I'm stuck paying this 30 bucks.
0:10.3	It's kind of the same thing with bank and credit card fees.
0:13.7	With parking tickets though, maybe you get one or two a year. It's not the end of the world.
0:18.4	But with bank fees and credit cards, it's just way easier for those to snowball and
0:23.8	Pretty soon it can be like the whole windshield of your car. It's just like plastered with tickets.
0:28.4	Over six months, I was charged about a thousand dollars for the bank overdraft fees and the credit card fees.
0:34.8	If this sounds familiar, what's happening to you? You are not alone. I mean millions of Americans are paying huge piles of money and bank fees and high cost debt.
0:44.3	It makes me feel like life is unfair. Don't worry. We are here to help.
0:51.8	Welcome to NPR's LifeCamp. In this episode, we're gonna talk about overdraft fees, credit card interest,
0:57.8	the things that drain away your hard earned money.
1:00.9	So whether you're mired in debt or you just hate paying any of these fees, we're gonna learn how to never get hit with them again right after this.
1:16.7	Support for NPR and the following message come from LinkedIn Learning, which offers more than
1:21.2	13,000 online courses to help you achieve your goals. You can take a course like managing your personal finances and learn from
1:29.3	experts about saving money, managing investments, negotiating a job offer, preparing for retirement and much more.
1:36.2	LinkedIn Learning videos are short, so you can fit a lesson in over lunch and apply it that afternoon.
1:42.2	And life kit listeners get a month of learning free. Start your free trial at LinkedIn Learning.com slash NPR.
1:52.1	I'm Chris Arnold and I cover personal finance and consumer protection for NPR.
1:56.9	And in this episode, we're gonna give you six tips for setting up your bank and credit card accounts in a smart way so you just don't get hammered with fees and interest.
2:07.5	And there's an economist at the University of Chicago, his name is Neil Mahoney, and he studies credit cards and fees and financial markets.
2:15.1	And he says you have to understand that banks make money from you in a way that's different from almost all other businesses.
2:22.6	If I go to the grocery store and you go to the grocery store, none of us is gonna be completely ripped off.
	...

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