Hacker News Reader

Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

A good friend of mine would regularly burst into tears in the bank on payday because she knew her rent and car payment would be taken out first thing in the morning, but her pay wouldn't be in until end of business.

Other weeks she would get a panic attack and cry herself to sleep because she'd had to get a flat tire fixed for $20, and she knew it would all come crashing down at the end of the pay period and she'd be $20 short.

I'm not saying her poor choices didn't get her there, I'm just saying that for lots of people, $20 can run their life.

View on HN

I never allow any company, for any reason, to use ACH on my bank accounts. When you do that, you lose control over your finances.

Do you mean auto-drafting of bills? In my experience, you can usually set it up to take the money it at the last possible moment. In that case, I don't see how you could get any benefit from doing it manually. Is there something I'm missing?

For folks right at the edge the decision may come down to "which is higher, the late fee or the overdraft fee?"

A few years back there was a case against one of the big banks over structuring transactions on the same day - the bank was doing them largest to smallest, with the end result that people were being hit with multiple overdraft fees in one day. If you had enough for 3 of 4 bills but would be $100 short on the largest, the bank would pay the big one, then the second largest, then either cover or bounce the last two while charging an overdraft fee for each. At the end of the day instead of being $100 short you were $200 sorry with extra fees.

^ exactly. I believe it's now illegal to do transactions in that manner, but there was a time when it was SOP.

Yes, auto-drafting of bills.

There are two major benefits.

- more control. You can choose to delay paying a specific bill to make sure more important bills get paid on time.

- safety. You'll never find yourself trying to get money back from a company that you're having a dispute with.

I used to allow it, and I ran into the second issue. It's the reason why I made that decision years ago, and I don't regret it one bit. It takes all of 1-2 hours/month to get all my bills paid.

The first point (control) is more for the post I was responding to, however.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com