Came here to post something on the order of this. One time I was nailed for > $250 and the correct ordering would have been only one overdraft for about 30cents and a penalty of $35. I was working at a min-wage job at the time and taking home less than $200/week. I lost over a week and a half of pay to the bank, couldn't afford to pay rent and had to leave my place. I got slammed less than two weeks later and that pretty much finished me. Situations like this happened to me a few times and happened quite often to a few friends I had. I walked into the bank and told them I wanted overdraft protection or they can close my account. They refused and I haven't had an account since then. I'm still on chex systems over that snafu, but why would I pay them for money I never had or used?

Banks are just awful things for people who are poor. There really isn't much point when you live payday to payday and you have zero dollars by the time payday comes.

You have to pay $3 for ATM fees and you may forget exactly what you have in the account, overdraft by $1, and then get hit by $150 overdraft fees. It would be helpful if the ATM showed the real amount of money left on the cards, but no, they showed one number then another number the next day.

I still don't know what banks can do for me, but I thought the idea was a safe haven to keep and save your money. All I've experienced are predators who take my money and then refuse me basic services.

As for the reason for reordering, since I didn't use it for anything high priority, they couldn't use that story on me. The bank blamed the merchants and the way that the system ordered the money. I cried foul, saying that I can't believe that a bank, who's singular expertise is managing money, can't figure out how to add and subtract a few numbers.

As an experiment, try this for three months: Open up a bank account, put $150 in it and use it for paying for the bus, your food, clothes, soap, shavers or whatever expense you may need. Of course, if you get hit by the overdraft, you can't pay it. The next month, put $150 in the account and live off that minus the overdraft fees. See if you can manage it and then come back and tell me poor people are making a stupid choice by keeping the money in their wallet.