In a PIX11 Morning News segment titled “Financial Fix,” host SPEAKER A interviews Ash Exantus, a financial‑empowerment coach at BankMobile, about the myriad hidden fees banks charge and practical ways consumers can avoid them. Ash highlights the $34 billion annual cost of overdraft fees and walks through specific fee categories: balance‑transfer fees (often hidden in 0 % offers), overdraft‑sweep fees (charging to move money from savings to checking), cash‑advance fees (double the regular credit‑card rate), foreign‑transaction fees on overseas or online purchases, minimum‑balance and activity fees, rewards‑redemption fees, and ATM fees. For each, he advises checking fine print, using fee‑free accounts, maintaining activity, and being vigilant when redeeming points. The segment ends with a broader message that consumers should not pay for their own money and should seek banks like BankMobile that offer fee‑free services.
Chapters
All right, it's the PIX11 Financial Fix. We're talking about your money and actually keeping it in your wallet and in your bank account because there are people out there, I should say banks out there, trying to just take whatever, just siphon a little nickel here, a little dime there, just siphon every little bit out of there. So we're going to try and help you with all the fees to look out for and help you work around them. So this morning we have an expert with us. We have Ash Exantus, the financial empowerment coach at BankMobile to kind of help us kind of get around all these fees. Good morning to you.
Good morning. Thank you for having me.
Appreciate it. And some people might think, look, fees are a part of banking. I'm gonna have to end up paying this and that. But the reality is you can actually avoid them.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. When you, when you think about the $34 billion that are charged in overdraft fees and people are being charged for their own money, it's ridiculous. So you have to find ways to avoid those fees.
Yeah, you should not have to pay for your own money. So the first fee you saw up there, balance transfer fees. I know those are with credit cards, right?
Absolutely.
What's the fee? How do we avoid it? Absolutely.
So a lot of times people get these offers in the mail let's say 0% balance transfer, but don't realize there's a fee attached to it. So it's really about checking the fine print, making sure that if there was a 0% balance transfer that they're not charging you for it.
Because it seems like a good deal. I've got interest over here, I got a debt over here, I want to put it over here. You're getting charged 2%, 2-3% sometimes in those fees?
Yeah, absolutely.
Okay, avoid that. Overdraft swap fees, right? So, or sweep fees. Overdraft, I don't even know what this is. What are they sweeping? Why are they charging me? Tell me about this.
And here's the funny thing, an overdraft sweep is if you have money in your savings account and you don't want to get charged the real $34 overdraft fee, they allow you to sweep money from your savings account to the checking account to cover those fees. But there's actually a charge for it. So you're being charged to sweep your own money into the checking account to avoid the $34 overdraft fee.
That's dirty. That's dirty because they tell you that you're good and then you're out money. That's not right. Cash advances.
So cash advances, same thing, right? So when you do a cash advance, your normal credit card rate is probably a lower rate. When you do a cash advance, they tack on a higher percentage on that cash advance, and that's how they charge you a fee for that.
And you're talking what, 10%? More than that?
Yeah, I'm talking sometimes double what your regular interest rate is.
Wow, all right, so avoid cash advances. Avoid, avoid, avoid. All right, foreign transaction fees.
And see, foreign transaction fees, a lot of times people are ordering online and think that they're safe, but if you order online and you're ordering from a place that's out of the country, banks are— some banks are actually tacking on Foreign transaction fees to your account.
You think you're not traveling, why are they charging me? But that's why, there you go. Watch where you buy from online. Minimum balance requirements.
Right, so minimum balance requirements. Some banks still have minimum balance requirements and they charge you if you're not maintaining that balance. It may be free for a period of time, but eventually they start charging you those fees.
And that's even with direct deposit? Because I know sometimes the banks will say if you have direct deposit, you won't get these fees.
Right, and that's the next fee, right? So the next fee is activity. So sometimes they'll So say if you are doing 5 transactions or if you have direct deposits, you won't get charged these fees. But let's say a month you forget or you're not as active on your account as you should be, then they tack on that fee.
Okay, redeeming rewards points fee. Now, come on, hold up. Now hold up, you gotta stop this, right? Because we get these reward points on all of our cards and whatnot. They promise us, they say, look, you're gonna get a point for this, point for that, da da da da. And then you tell me that they're charging a fee fee when we redeem the points that they let us get and they promised us?
Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.
It's a dirty game.
So you have to just be careful when you're redeeming those points. Just take a look and make sure that there aren't any additional fees.
Yeah. All right. And of course, the classic, we all know about the ATM fee. And I feel like it's always, you know, you need that money right now. You look around, your bank's not around. That's a bad one.
Yeah, I think the good thing now is that when you think about banks that are out there like BankMobile that don't charge any fees whatsoever, make sure that you find those banks that are giving you back an incentive, not a lot, not charging you those fees to make sure that you're not paying for your own money. Why should you pay for your own money?
Exactly. All right, man, you, you have educated me, and I'm sure a lot of folks out there. All these fees— overdraft sweep fee, I never heard that in my life, right? And you people sweeping our money away. Thank you so much for coming in. We want to thank Ash Exantus from BankMobile for joining us. Uh, tune in tomorrow, same time, same place, same channel. You know the deal. We're gonna tell you which colleges will help to get you the best bang for your buck.
