Also, the woman behind him and to the left seems as mystified as Burton and myself.

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This, strictly speaking, isn't how it happens, allowing for things like deposit availability (when a check clears), but understand that if you deposit cash at 4PM Monday that covers a series of transactions from the weekend that would make you overdrawn does not guarantee you won't get hit with a bundle of overdraft fees. Rationally speaking, it should (after all, if the bank is zeroing out all your daily transactions at once, no money has been lost if you end up with a positive balance), but, you know, banks. If you imagine that an overdrawn amount as a bell that rings every time you are mathematically in the red, you can see how the bell rings five times before you cash deposit hits, and voila, 5 overdraft fees, even though by 7PM Monday your account is adequately funded.

Until federal bank regs are overhauled so that settlement occurs immediately (something that is, generally speaking, technically viable), you can fume at banks all you want, but you can't really stop them, so keep the above in mind, since it mirrors the way accounts were processed before ATMs (this is the 'batch processing' that Gladwell was referring to in his latest opus of idiocy) and various settlement advances happened. It should generally protect you from fee problems, but also will constrain your spending. Just because online banking looks immediate and feels like it is the last word, it may well not be the case.

Generally, avoid combo ATM/Debit cards, and use a monthly intermediary like AMEX to fund card purchasing, or online payments (like PayPal), unless you check on or manage your frequently. AMEX requires more discipline, but the liability issues about a Debit card are not worth the headache, and AMEX has excellent fraud management. When you use AMEX, you are basically withholding final settlement of your liability, which is not a bad personal policy, provided you manage your cash. It will be the only leverage you get, so take what you can, since everyone else is. Your employer makes you wait two weeks for pay, the government holds your estimated takes up to a year before issuing the refund you are due, so why shouldn't you delay final settlement as long as possible?

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