Short and Simple Advice for Dealing with Banks
1. Banks want to make money off of you. Don’t be fooled. Always verify you are getting the lowest cost bank account. Normally you should be able to get a bank account without a monthly charge. If you don’t have this ask for it. By default, many banks in the area will try to set you up with account that have a monthly charge even though they have free ones too.
2. A lot of banks in Nacogdoches charge for sending out statements. This can be four or five dollars a months wasted. Ask to have this charge waived or to have the bank NOT send you monthly statements. All of this information is available on-line.
3. DO NOT “OPT-IN” TO OVERDRAFT! Overdraft is how banks make huge amounts of money from students. They try to sell you on the idea that you want charges to go through even if you don’t have the money to back the charge. they might give you a sales pitch asking what you would do if you needed gas and you account was out of money. The problem is how much they charge you for the overdrafts. The truth is that if you were out of money they likely wouldn’t allow you to buy gas anyway. The government recently created new laws to prevent them from over drafting your account if you run below your available money. They problem is that you can sign away your rights here and bank and working hard to get you to do so.
4. CBTX, the bank that is on-campus, generally receives money faster from SFA when electronic transfer are made. They also seem to make the money available to you sooner. If you receive an electronic transfer for your difference check each semester, you could have access to it sooner by setting CBTX up as your bank. You can still use another bank by simply withdrawing the money once it comes in and depositing into the other bank. If you don’t mind waiting an extra day or two, this may not be relevant to you.
