Bank charges are those little black box charges that few people understand. Most banks attract customers with add-on services. Then they charge for those services. This might come as a surprise to many. After all, most of us take it for granted that since we have an account with Bank X, we are eligible for a number of miscellaneous services.

So it is always better to find out in advance what the free services offered are and what extra services can be availed at a cost. Several services might be of great interest to you. These include, using of the ATM card beyond a certain limit, issuing more than the allocated number of check books, or availing of bank statements in between quarters.

All these are activities that may invite additional bank charges. These little little amounts of monies could all add up.

Overdrawing is the situation where you borrow more than you were supposed to. In a case of overdrawing, a fee is levied by the bank on the extra amount that has been withdrawn. This is merely because the bank has done you a favor by providing you with funds when you did not have enough. Another example that we can look at is that of issuing a check to a third party while being unaware of insufficient funds.

In such a case, the check will not be cleared. Instead, it will have to be presented once again after we have made arrangements for the necessary funds to be deposited. A charge will be levied on the cheque that has bounced and additional fees will be levied for representing the same. Little drops make the ocean, they say, likewise these little bank charges can all add up.

Lenders will often collect post-dated checks from you. It is your duty to make sure that these checks do not turn bad. In a case like this, we will have to pay the bank a certain amount to hold the cheque till we deposit sufficient funds into it. Any service carried out by the bank for our benefit will be outside of what we are eligible for. After all there is no such thing as a free lunch.

In an emergency we might often be prompted to use the teller machine of another bank. However, a certain amount will also be debited from our account for the same purpose. The ATM card sure is a blessing in disguise, but it did not come free of charge.

The primary point that I am trying to communicate is that the informed customer must know which services are paid and which ones are free. .