I hate banks...

I hate banks... Not the simple piggy banks, or the mattress banks, I mean the buildings with tellers, a safe, and security guards. Yeah, I know they are necessary. Yeah, my brother works for one of those evil places, and he is even a bank officer. I just can't stand it when they take my money, and tell me it's my fault! (ok... it was a little bit my fault... ) I overdrafted my account, and since I check my account online all the time, I noticed my mistake right away, before the overdraft was "officially" posted to my account and they charged me for it. I transfered enough money from one account at the same bank to the one that I had overdrafted, so it wouldn't be negative any longer. So even though I did the transfer on Tuesday, the bank didn't post the transfer until Wednesday... Any other time they post transfers on the same day, almost instantanously... I mean the money is still in their "safe", just being moved from one account to another, so it's not like they have to wait for the check to clear right? Well because they posted the transfer the following day, I got charged 2 over draft fees which were $35 each!... When I transfered the money I didn't transfer enough to cover the unexpected $70 withdrawal from my account, so my account overdrafted again. Today, I looked at my account again, and saw it was overdrafted again and flipped! I have three more expected transactions posted to come out of my account today, and if I didn't do something, they were going to charge me three more $35 dollar fees! For those without a calculator handy, that's $105 dollars, or a two day total of $175 in fees! So in an effort to prevent the additional $105 dollars in fees, I broke my piggy bank and wrapped up $58 worth of coins. I then went to my credit union and withdrew all the money I had in my savings there (which was only $80), and ran to the bank to cover the overdraft. The teller confirmed that if I made the cash deposit today I would avoid all $105 fees. The account balance won't be updated until tomorrow, so I won't know if I was successful at avoiding the fees until then. Even so, I am preparing myself to see some overdraft fees posted on my account tomorrow, because I just know banks are evil and take your money. It always seems they withdraw their money BEFORE they deposit yours, and then tell you "Sorry, you overdafted, and we had to charge those fees to cover our costs." To be fair, since my brother does work at a bank, I know banks aren't really evil, and they don't intentionally adjust their accounting rules so they always win (at least I hope so), but it sure seems like it some times. I mean this whole problem wouldn't have occured if they would have processed the transfer of funds before they processed the witdrawals from my account. I wouldn't have had a single overdraft, and I would be very happy... Instead due to an accounting policy, the bank is $70 richer, and I am very UNhappy! I suppose there are a couple of solutions to prevent this from ever happening again... 1) I could keep more money in the account and never let the balance get that low... 2) I could apply for overdraft protection... or 3) I could just use my piggy bank and pay all of my bills with coins and not use the bank... Yeah, I like that one! Later Lou