For the past few months, I’ve been putting varying degrees of effort into the task of switching my bank account to a bank that works in New York (my current bank only works in New York if I undertake an epic journey or pay a zillion fees). I have finally opened a new account and set up direct deposit for that account, but I still don’t have a debit card for that account because I don’t know. It hasn’t come yet and I called and it still hasn’t come.
Sometimes I was going to the end of the earth to use the free ATM, but mostly I was not doing that, instead using any old ATM and getting charged $2.50 or whatever upfront and then another $2 from my bank. Which is dumb! And yet seemed fine to me until I got this new fee-less account. Even though I can’t access it, knowing that I’m so close to not having to pay those fees makes me really not want to pay those fees.

Which is why I felt like a SUPER GENIUS the other day at Walgreen’s when the swipe-machine asked: “CASH BACK?”

WHY DID I NOT THINK OF THIS BEFORE?! Getting cash back from grocery stores and pharmacies is free and amazing and great and wonderful! Sometimes you can only get $20. But then you just buy another candy bar, and you can get twenty more dollars. So that’s your sweet tip of the day: Next time you’re about to pay an ATM fee, walk a block to Duane Reade. You could even buy something you actually need (toenail clippers? cotton balls) if you’re into that, though: the candy bars are right there.

$100! It is a lot of money, and yet, it is also not a lot of money at all. Where did your last hundred bucks go, Choire Sicha?

$6.99: Amazon Kindle store, “Year’s Best Science Fiction: First Edition” (1983).

$7.99: Amazon Kindle store, “Year’s Best SF 7” (2001).

$15.35: Momofuku Milk Bar, Carroll Gardens, dessert and coffee for four.

$2.22: Amazon payment for Justin Wolfe’s Letter.ly. 

$15.25: Van Horn, catfish sandwich with “homemade pickles” and lemonade, early dinner alone.

$27.40: Whole Foods, water, crackers and a megapack of Pearls probiotics because I had astounding heartburn for four days and actually this stuff fixed that entirely? It was amazing, I take back everything bad I ever said about hippies.

$5.97: Apple iTunes store, final three episodes of Firefly, which I had been watching on Netflix before I went traveling and then didn’t get to finish so I just paid for it. But at least I paid for the SD version to watch on my phone, instead of the more expensive HD version, which is kind of funny. I know “transmitting data” costs someone money, but it’s hilarious that we pay more per pixel or, if you like, more per megabyte, in consuming cultural products now. Though I guess that’s not at all unlike how longer paper books cost more to make and are therefore more expensive, am I right?

$10.00: Bank of America “external transfer fee.” I no longer pay my rent in cash but now I do pay $10 for the favor, but that’s less than the cost of my time that it takes to go to the bank and get cash. This is only the most egregious of all these examples of how the majority of my money goes to big companies.

The remainder: Let’s be honest, it all went to cigarettes or to overdraft fees and the autopaying of bills, to which I pay no attention, and so of course those two things are permanently entwined.

Choire Sicha is the co-boss of The Awl.

The companies distributing the [pre-paid] cards have drawn criticism for not clearly disclosing fees that can include a charge to activate the card, load money on it and even to call customer service. Customers with a “convenient cash” prepaid card from U.S. Bank, for example, pay a $3 fee to enroll, a $3 monthly maintenance fee, $3 to visit a bank teller and $15 dollars to replace a lost card.

Capital One charges prepaid card users $1.95 for using an A.T.M. more than once a month, while Wells Fargo charges $1 to speak to a customer service agent more than twice a month.

—Big Banks are now expanding their offerings to include products to take advantage of low-income customers! People are choosing to go to banks over those terrible payday loan places that exist in every low-income neighborhood, because you know, banks are better, you’d think. But nope! The big banks are selling them the same terrible, high-interest, high-fee products, and sometimes they are even worse, because the banks “typically are not subject to interest rate limits on payday loans and other alternative products.”

In one of the first tests of its willingness to show its muscle, the new agency created to protect consumers declined on Thursday to put up a fight.

The agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, introduced a proposal that would make it easier for credit card issuers to charge fees before borrowers’ accounts were officially open.

This, from the Times this morning, makes me feel really sad, because I have always had very high expectations for the C.F.P.B. Whenever laws are passed to help protect consumers from predatory fees issued by credit card companies (or any other sort of lender for that matter), credit card companies regroup and figure out new ways to charge consumers and make their big piles of money. The issue here stems from the bit in the Credit Card Act that was passed in 2009 that said credit card issuers could not charge fees equal to more than 25 percent of the borrower’s credit limit in the first year after the account was opened. Credit card companies got around this by charging application and processing fees before accounts were open, so the Federal Reserve stepped in and said, “Hey, stop being jerks! We’re going to apply the law to these upfront fees too.” That’s when First Premier Bank of South Dakota jumped in with a lawsuit saying the law would cause them “irreparable harm” if it couldn’t collect these fees, and rather than sticking to their guns, the C.F.P.B. said, “Hmm, maybe we’ll eliminate the rule for these upfront fees then.” First Premier Banks provides credit cards to people with terrible credit histories, and if anyone needs protection, it’s those consumers.

You know who wouldn’t stand for any of this? Elizabeth Warren. Elizabeth Warren would have fought for the little guys.