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Not as bad as a tattoo in my opinion, but I have seen some Victoria Secrets charges.
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That's only a concern if you had a son with a nice charge before Valentine's Day! </p>
<p>ATM cards and debit cards are pretty similar. I like having a debit card to withdraw from my checking account. I have it connected to one of my savings accounts, too, so I have access to see the balance. I don't really see why I'd need a credit card right now. I almost never use checks, but I do sometimes when buying my books or something similar.</p>
<p>Yep that would be why mine have their credit cards. They researched and looked around for the credit cards that had 0-very low APRs, with rewards. Also those with incentives for students. Starting in their freshman year they start building their credit which is actually easier to acquire as a student vs. a new graduate. Being able to show a positive credit history for 4 years substantially raises your FICO score. Sometimes future employers also run credit checks. </p>
<p>DS, the college freshman, has been educating me! He watches all his sibs credit reports and monitors all their utilization ratios. He is toying with being an econ major but is pretty set on being a chem major, maybe with a finance certificate?</p>
<p>There's time for that, Ryanbis. I've only been old enough to have a debit card for a few months, and I use it primarily to withdraw money from my checking account (since I've kept with my home bank and not one close to my school). The vast majority of my purchases at this point are under $20--amounts that I would prefer to use cash with, anyway. I just can't see myself using a credit card except on the rare occassion. I consider myself pretty financially healthy right now, and I'm sure my parents will suggest a credit card when they think I need one. I imagine I'll get one in the next year or two when my spending habits shift a bit.</p>
<p>Both our kids have student accounts connected to ours so we can access them at any time. They both have debit cards. S1 (college soph) also has a credit card. He uses it to charge gas on and pays it off every month. </p>
<p>S2 (h.s. jr.) was overdrawn on his account last year soon after he got his card. He has a part time job and had just started getting his paycheck direct deposited and got confused about the time of the deposit so was spending money that wasn't in the bank yet. Like dstarks D he racked up very expensive service fees for minimal purchases ( l 4.50 at McDonald's and later that day $4 at Taco Bell. It was summer and he was out with the guys all day). H went down to the bank and explained the situation. They waived the fee for him. S2 checks his account (online of course) more carefully now. </p>
<p>After that incident H had the bank connect his account up to ours so if this ever happened again, he would just owe us the cost of the expenditures and not the astronomical amt. the bank charges. Also, since he doesn't have a credit card, if he were ever in an emergency situation, he could use his debit card and the excess would just roll over to our account with no penalty.</p>
<p>I don't think banks are especially taking advantage of kids, they will charge anyone that overdraws their account be it by bouncing a check or overdrafting a debit card. I bounced a couple of checks before I learned that lesson, but it was a valuable one. </p>
<p>I understand that you are ticked off and it sounds like it won't happen again, dstark, but I don't even know how much money my kids have in their bank account and if they screw up (like I did when I was their age) then they're going to have to fix it. Shoot, they might have done so and I don't even know.</p>
<p>I was at the bank today and got info on student checking accts. There were at least 3 different ones to choose from. Just another thing to put on my to do list, it keeps getting longer and longer.</p>
<p>thanks for starting this thread. I talked to my S tonight and was able to provide your example to illustrate the consequences of taking money out of ATMs without checking if the funds are there or replenishing the account.</p>
<p>corranged, you sound like me and the financial values my mom has instilled in me. I also prefer cash over debit card transactions. Most of the time, I only use my debit card to pull out $20 every week so that I can buy sodas and snacks from Walmart and have a fe dollars left over for whatever. It's a good system that has been working fine since August. I don't like to spend more than that if I don't have a really good reason because I want to save money for the upcoming semester, and I would also like to have a little extra cash to spend this summer. </p>
<p>I am looking into possibly getting a credit card this summer, but it will be used only on rare occassions or if there's a real, honest-to-God, emergency at home that I would need the card for. </p>
<p>I am NOT, I repeat NOT "bad-mouthing" or calling myself superior to anyone's child, but I can't imagine overdrawing on my checking account. It is a joint account with my dad, but it's only so he can send $50 every month. That's the only help I get from my parents on anything that isn't essential for classes, like books. The account info is available online, and I check it at least once a week. The paper statement comes in the mail, but neither of my parents ever bother to open it, they leave it for me. But I could tell anyone who needs to know how much is in the account at this moment without pulling up the online info. I just know and I feel it's something any one in college should know and be able to keep track of. As many have said, check registers are scarce these days, since everything is online. It's not that hard to take five minutes of the many hours spent online each week and see what the balance is, and then not spend more than that. My parents wouldn't know if I was close to being out of money unless I tell them; they trust me. They know that I know that the money I have is all I'll get and that if I were to overdraw it would be my fees to pay and shame to live with. I'm not rich by any means, I'm simply good at managing my money.</p>
<p>Yeah, it sounds as if we're pretty similar. I tend to take out $100 whenever I run out of money (since I use a bank at home, I get charged a small fee for using the ATMs near my school). I also cannot imagine overdrawing my account. I have three accounts at my bank. I keep a certain amount in a CD, an equal amount in a savings account (that I can draw money from whenever I need it, though I don't), and then at the beginning of the school year I put $1,000 in a checking account. Since my debit card is attached to my savings account, I have access to more than enough money to serve me in an emergency. I deposit all checks from summer jobs into my non-CD savings account. I like having a certain, set amount in my checking account because I can see exactly how much I've spent so far this year of my own money. My mother deposits a check each term in my account to cover the cost of books. By the way, Frostburg, you don't really need a joint account for your dad to send you money. He can just deposit it into your account. There's no real rule against depositing money into someone else's account at most banks, and I can't think of any banks off the top of my head that request ID for a deposit. (...I worked as a bank teller a few summers ago.) </p>
<p>I was charged once by my bank. I set up a savings account in my own name when I was about fifteen since the account I had was a joint account with my mother. I started the new account with a check for $200. The next time I was paid, the check went into my new account. I noticed a $2 charge for dropping below the minimum balance of $300. I was working at the bank as a teller, so I talked to someone at the service desk, and she credited my account. I probably shouldn't have been charged anyway since I was an employee, and since I should have had a student account without a minimum balance, but when I showed her that the only time it dropped below the minimum was when I formed the account, she was more than happy to change it.</p>
Ooooooooooh lala! :o Well, they <em>do</em> sell lotions and body mists and such.... ;)</p>
<p>Good thread, dstark. We had a somewhat similar experience. My son was overdrawn less than a dollar, and of course ended up getting the giganto fees. Turns out that the reason he was originally overdrawn was because the bank was taking monthly fees out of his student account...something it was not supposed to be doing. He ended up getting two fees as a result of that, about $66.00....I think that there were two extra fees that they were calling his fault. I had THOUGHT we'd set up an overdraft protection plan on that account when we opened it, but apparently we hadn't.</p>
<p>The bank initially did not want to eliminate the fees. I asked to speak to a manager, and he didn't want to either--in fact, he said they COULDN'T. So, I said, "Well, O.K. I totally understand. I do. But, I'd like YOU to understand that when this kid graduates from college (and whatever professional school he attends) and has a choice of where to bank his FORTUNE, he'll most likely remember this." :D</p>
<p>About 5 seconds later, one of the people that I had been speaking with disappeared. She returned with a man who was higher up than the manager we'd spoken to. Nice guy. Couldn't WAIT to take off EVERY SINGLE fee. Seems it wasn't half the problem the other two had indicated it would be! Imagine that! ;)</p>
<p>We attached overdraft protection that day. I'm not expecting any more problems of this sort! :)</p>
<p>My dad doesn't physically go to the bank every month and put $50 in. There's an automatic transfer from his personal account to the joint account. I suppose it may be possible to to it without his name being on both accounts, but he wanted his name on it, and since I have total control over it anyway, it doesn't really matter to me. Most of the money in that account is mine from my paychecks and money I save and then pull from my personal checking account that only has my name on it.</p>
<p>Okay, now that you mentioned the minmum balance fee, I was charged $7 for going under $300 at the end of last semester. I had like $290 or something, so I wasn't close to being out of money, but I used my debit card to buy some Christmas presents online and I forgot about the minimum balance requirement.</p>
<p>I've bounced checks occassionally, but because I'd deposited checks that bounced. So aggravating! We use credit cards, but always pay our balances in full. I have a regular ATM card, not a debit card.</p>
<p>And I think our senior in college has maybe written a few checks in his lifetime, but he does not (nor do we) use a debit card. Too much chance to forget about writing something down and losing track. My H and I still do the old-fashioned check writing thing and it is one of life's great pleasures for me each month to try to balance our checking account to the penny, whilst trying to discern DH's illegible entries in the checkbook. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Additional fees may also be added to debit card purchases....</p>
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The bank charges her 50 cents every time she pays with a debit card and completes the transaction by hitting the "debit" button and punching in a personal identification number, or PIN. There's no charge when she pays with a debit card, hits the "credit" button, and signs the receipt without using a PIN.
<p>Put me in the camp of the paid-in-full-each-month-credit card, rather than debit card. S has credit card with fairly low limit (I cosigned), paid automatically each month out of checking and overdraft protection from savings. Sort of like training wheels.</p>
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<p>Lol, but it was a lot funnier before I looked back and realized that you had a S, not a D!</p>