FinanciallYou

I walked past an ATM machine the other day and noticed that someone did not take their receipt out.  Out of habit, I took it out to threw it away.  Of course, I looked at the information on it.  The person had just used this non-bank ATM to take out $20.00. His (assuming it is a he) balance at that moment was $1.10.  He got charged a non-bank ATM fee of $1.50 and of course his bank will charge him another $1.50 so now he is in overdraft, which will charge him a fee of $5.00. So for $20.00 he will pay $8.00 in fees.  That’s a negative 40% return.  If he works minimum wage, he will have to work an entire hour for the pleasure and convenience of using this ATM machine at the grocery store.  I wonder if he thinks it is worth it.

So why do people do this?  Why do people sabotage themselves like this financially?  At some point you can’t use the argument that you didn’t know since there have been more than sufficient amounts of education that’s been in the public about not using non-bank ATMs.  Yet there are more and more of them.  So why did he take the money out?  Could he not waited until he was in his neighborhood to take the money from his bank account?  Can’t he just use debit to pay for the item?

One of the keys ways of avoiding getting into debt is to not get into debt in the first place.  This means that the mind has to be engaged and not on auto pilot.