It is always easy to pay with credit cards. Salespeople are taken aback when you offer cash or god-forbid want to write a check. All this keeps the banks happy, they know you’ll lose track of your charges and spend more than you normally would.
Banks are businesses, big businesses at that, and they count on you losing track of your balances and spending during the month. They actually love you to go (slightly) over your change limits so they can tack on that over-limit fee. This little slight-of-hand can be controlled with a little effort on your part.
How Banks Make Money
As your credit card balance goes up and up the interest you pay each month also goes up and up. Many times the minimum payment does not even cover the interest payment for that month so next month you pay interest, on the interest they already charged you. If you err and go over your assigned limit most times they will approve the charge, raise your limit, and just charge you an additional “overlimit” fee for the month.
The banks have a whole menu of other fees for their loans. Mortgages most times have application fees, points, late fees, early payment fees – yes, they charge you if you want to give them their money back faster then originally agreed – besides the “regular” interest that you normally pay for the loan. It is no wonder banks make so much money. Remember the recent crisis had nothing to do with the banks normal operations, it was caused by the banks going into very risky areas of loans and financial instruments they should never have dealt with in the normal course of business. Many of these instruments made money only for the employees, by getting inflated an bonus, who push them, not the bank, and therefore not the owners (stockholders) of the bank.
These methods still continue today even months after the crisis.
The banks really want to offer you all kinds of different ways to spend the money that is in the account that you may have. This is because they want you to lose track of how much money is in the accounts that you have and to help you to spend more than what you may have in the account. Then they will be able to charge you for the amount that you went over.
The banks want you to use their cards – debit and credit – for all your purchases. This business plan encourages you to be very loose with your finances. A check at the restaurant becomes to easy to just put on the card and worry about it later. Gone are the days that we check our wallet to see if we had enough money to actually go to the restaurant. Enjoy now, pay later. We are all digging ourselves a whole that we may never get out from.
Banks are in business and looking for money just like everyone else that is in business. They may just not tell you everything that you want to and need to know. If you are not sure about what the fees are going to be, take a look at the paperwork that you get when your account. This will lay out all of the fees that you may be charged and the other things that you may need to know when opening your accounts. That way you will know what is going on and not be out of the loop.
You must log in to post a comment.