I hate when that happens



I got an “overdraft protection advance” notice in my email the other day. I hate when that happens, and yes, it’s completely preventable. (Although I guess it’s also better than just getting a plain old overdraft notice.)

When I got the notice, I immediately went through the checking account and compared it to all the entries in Quicken. The thing was, they all matched up, at least at first glance.

All of the charges shown in the checking account were entered into Quicken, and vice versa.

The only differences were the ending balances: Quicken showed that we should have had about $5 in our account, but the bank showed that we were about $5 short.

Obviously there is about a $10 difference somewhere that I have yet to find. I’ll keep looking, but I may need to wait until the paper statement arrives to really figure it out.

Some of you are probably wondering why I would be ok with only having $5 in the account. Obviously, the possibility of overdrafting if I make a mistake or something gets messed up is a major downside to doing so.

But the thing is, I’m not one who can fool themselves into keeping a “cushion” in the account. Believe me, I know that money is there, and I act accordingly. It’s better for me to just be as accurate as possible. And since this is our account that we pay the bills from, in theory it should be pretty easy to do so.

In reality, the overdraft protection advance is a reminder to continue to do my best and to be careful with our money. On the plus side, it’s been years and years since anything like this has happened.

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Posted in Spending money on May 13, 2009

5 Responses to “ I hate when that happens ”

  1. # 1 bouncing back betty Says:
    May 13th, 2009 at 7:28 am

    I got two of those notices last month as well. The overdraft protection lettter came in the mail and I went shreiking to the computer to see how I let it happen. Silly me had accidently mailed off a stack of bills a few days early and a couple hit the account a few days early. My bills got paid, but I got hit with a total of $120 in bank charges that could have been prevented.

  2. # 2 mbhunter Says:
    May 13th, 2009 at 10:01 pm

    Yeah, those little fees are annoying. I had some a few years ago. They notified me with really slow mail, so four of them happened before we got the first notice. Oh well … chalk it up to experience. ;)

  3. # 3 bluntmoney Says:
    May 14th, 2009 at 5:46 am

    At least I didn’t actually get a fee…just a notice of a transfer to my checking to cover what would have been an overdraft. But still! Yuck. And it looks like I am going to have to wait for my statement to figure out what went on.

  4. # 4 Ladam8518 Says:
    May 14th, 2009 at 7:38 am

    I am in the process of closing several bank accounts with a local credit union over this. The accounts are moving to my alma maters credit union which provides overdraft protection from linked accounts for free so the only change is access to a physical branch.

    Turns out with electronic billing the bank is notified several days in advance of the withdrawal and considers the money withdrawn at that time (using a hold) even if it remains in the account till a later date. I found this out when I had a $1500 bill set to clear on April 14 and transferred in the balance on the 13th. My statement showed no negative balance, but because the request cam in on April 10th for the transfer the credit union assessed the overdraft at that time when the account had a $600 balance.

    This particular credit union is the only banking service where I have noticed this discrepancy. They reversed the fees but the accounts are limited to one fee reversal only in the accounts lifetime, so my wife and I are looking to move our primary accounts.

    Check with your bank and make sure this is not the case. I was pissed because even my paper statement did not show an overdraft. It only looked like this:

    Balance:$600.00
    April 10: Overdraft Fee for Transaction on April 14 -$25.00
    April 13: Internet Transfer From Account #### $1500.00
    April 14: #### Payment -$1500
    Balance: $575.00

  5. # 5 bluntmoney Says:
    May 14th, 2009 at 11:50 am

    Thanks, I will check.

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