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Comment by Androider | Hacker News Reader

Louis CK has a fantastic bit about this:

"When you're broke, the bank starts charging you money... for not having enough money. If you have a lot of money, they give you money. Because you have a lot of money! You have so much money that we should give you some! Because you have a lot, you should have more! Here, take more money! Take this guy’s $15, fuck him, you should have it!"

Like the article says, class boundaries are also knowledge boundaries. Because you don't know of any alternatives, you bank at the local BoA and get taken advantage of to the tune of $15/month in perpetuity with a low balance, or even pay a percentage at the corner check cashing place. Or you can get free banking and around 3% APY today if you have savings, know how and where to bank and how to structure a 12-month CD ladder. It's expensive to be poor!

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I have never paid for banking in my life. I lived for thirty years in England and then moved to Norway where I have been for 32 years and have had accounts with several different banks. The only charges I have ever had to pay are in Norway where I have to pay an annual fee for a credit card from my bank (I have several other credit cards that cost me nothing).

As far as I know this is normal in the UK and Scandinavia, not sure about the rest of Europe though.

So how do US banks justify USD 15 a month?

Note that since banks have to make a profit, if they're not doing it via an annual current account fee then they're doing it via setting interest rates and one-off charges for things like going overdrawn. What consumers will put up with can vary between markets (eg UK personal banking is generally fee-free, but a current account for a small business usually has monthly and/or per-transaction fees). It's as much about what the bulk of users are used to and thus what the bank can get away with as anything else.

And of course overdraft fees only apply to people who can't afford to keep a decent balance in the account- specifically the people who can't afford to pay overdraft fees.

It's usually advertised as "free" but they charge penalties for various things, and the parent comment is specifically talking about a fee for having a balance under some certain minimum.

As a Norwegian with no affiliation, a huge shout-out to Sbanken (earlier Skandiabanken) for providing anyone with no setup fee (at least when I got mine almost 20 years ago), free unlimited accounts, no credit or debit card fees (even abroad!) other than a standard yearly renewal fee, and all-round fantastic service. Their "secret" is so simple it's ridiculous: they are online only - all services are through their web site. They also enforce multi-factor authentication using any one of several services, most of which can also be used with other banks and government websites. I've many a time longed for something like it while living in various other Western countries, but for some reason (regulation, inertia?) there seems to be nothing like it elsewhere.

Yes, that's my bank, they're brilliant. So much better than the account I have with Santander in the UK. But even DNB (former Postbanken) is better than banks in other countries and has been for a very long time. I had online banking with the Postbank even before I had Internet.

Then you have the good fortune to be financially secure. I'm also from the UK and have held a decent job for a few years now, but I've lapsed into my overdraft on several occasions. Admittedly this was some times due to poor planning, but some times it was unavoidable.

weird view of banks.

for a bank it is as simple as how can they make money from a person. If the person doesn't have much, add a simple fee. If the person has a lot, stroke their ego and convince them to park their cash in the bank so they can use that to make money.

it's the same as $.99 app software going for bulk consumers versus bespoke enterprise software trying to get $$$ from a few customers

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