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Eliminate ATM Fees
I travel a lot. In fact, I am working on incorporating the word “itinerant” into my personal character profile. As such, this means that my banking situation is sort of convoluted. I get paid twice a month, once into a direct deposit account from Google, and another from Text Link Ads, which drops into a PayPal account, and which I then transfer to my bank account.
My bank is nationally-known, but it does not have convenient branches located in all of the places to which I travel. This means I end up getting sacked with fairly substantial ATM fees whenever I withdraw cash: first from the “foreign” ATM itself, and then from my bank on top of that. Without having to necessarily switch banks, I would like to find a way somehow to eliminate these fees. I’m not necessarily sure how feasible of a project that would be to execute, but it seems like something worth looking into.
If I remember correctly, in the early nineties there were several phone services which arose which would connect you automatically with the lowest long distance rates, by somehow comparing and selecting from amongst various carriers. I’m not sure of any company names for reference though (if you know, drop them into the comments.
I bring that up because I’m wondering if there would be some way to apply this principle to personal banking as well: like would it be feasible to create an ATM card of some kind of which - through some kind of technological wizardry which is beyond my current understanding - would be able to circumvent ATM fees on one or both sides of a transaction? I don’t know how it would do that: maybe it would convince the ATM it was actually a member of that bank. Or maybe it would be a layer of software or business process which would rest in between my ATM card and my actual bank account. Maybe it could be like an ATM service fee switchboard service or something which would tap into various bank accounts to find one to use for that cash withdrawal which would not require a fee for processing, or else could find the lowest fee possible for each transaction.
This sort of sounds like science-fiction right now, I realize, but I could see something like this becoming possible in the not-too-distant future. If anyone has ideas or would be interested in developing this concept further, please comment or drop me an email.
{This is one of those “free business ideas” of mine, so feel free to copy it, steal it, build it and make money on it in whatever way possible. The only thing I ask in return is that you let me use the system once you build it… Maybe you could even give me a free account?}
October 11th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
I’ve heard WaMu is good for this, but I haven’t checked them out myself.
October 12th, 2007 at 12:40 am
Good in what way? Where did you hear that? Are you being paid to sponsor them?
October 12th, 2007 at 8:22 am
Several German banks offer free-free ATM withdrawel worldwide.
E.g. www.dkb.de - VISA card is used for withdrawing
(You can only open an account if you are a resident in germany)
October 12th, 2007 at 8:32 am
You could get a Charles Schwab High Yield Investor Checking Account. No service charges or minimum balance, plus 4% interest. The really cool part, though, is they not only don’t charge an ATM fee of their own, they’ll reimburse the fee that the actual ATM operator (or whatever) charges you. So if you went to a Bank of America ATM and it charged you $2, Charles Schwab would give you that $2 back, apparently.
I heard about it from the comments attached to some banking horror story on reddit a few months ago. The checking account comes with a brokerage account, so I assume the idea is to entice you with the former in the hopes that you’ll eventually put some of your money in the stock market and they can start nickel-and-diming you with transaction fees.
Personally, I barely leave the house, much less leave my bank’s ATM saturation zone.
October 12th, 2007 at 11:13 am
I’ve heard there are no ATM feeds. They may give it back to you too, from other folks’ ATMs.
October 12th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
What? Could you be more clear on what you mean?
October 12th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
I see where you are going with this, but to me I don’t pay attention to ATM fees. If you were a millionaire and traveling all over the country would you care about them?
This ATM thing seems to have inspired in you a very productive train of thought. But just the ATM thing itself, does stressing over them (maybe stress is too strong a word) reinforce a scarcity mindset? I mean, I don’t know.
I have this thing where I don’t give a crap about stuff like this. When I was married my wife was a penny pincher yet we were always broke.
Now I am single again and have pretty much the same spending habits I had in the Army. I blow $ 1000.00 a month, every month. I’d like to have more and I would spend most of that too.
I mean in a frame of mind where money doesn’t matter does every couple bucks count?
October 12th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Yes, and it’s not about penny-pinching or saving money whatsoever. It is about perfecting your workflow so that there is no wasted value - so that everything hums harmoniously in the best possible way. I don’t stress out every time I spend two dollars on an ATM fee, but it’s fucking stupid. It’s my money - I shouldn’t get charged when I want to access it.
October 12th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
Yeah. Its the principle. Plus, these banks don’t need to charge it. They make their money from making money. They create money through loans. They charge it because they can.
One thing I hope you do after you are done with this train of thought is condense it down.
because it seems exciting but I can’t really keep up with it.
October 12th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Yeah it definitely needs to be condensed down into easy-to-read, easy to understand bits and pieces.