As Cash Goes Out Of Fashion, ATM Fees Soar

Greg McBride, a senior financial analyst at Bankrate, said withdrawing money from an ATM that doesn’t belong to your bank is “a sloppy financial habit that can put you in the poorhouse”.

Fees are up 21 percent over the last five years alone.

Overdraft fees also are on the rise, Bankrate said. Fees for bouncing a check have surged 9 percent since 2010 and now average a record $33.07. That can be on top of the surcharge, which is applied by the ATM operator.

You can get around ATM fees by using apps that list the machines that are in your bank’s network.

ATM fees began rising in 2007 and have climbed steadily every year since, while overdraft fees have have been rising since Bankrate.com began conducting annual surveys in 1998.

A May report from SNL Financial showed the country’s largest banks took in $1.14 billion collectively from overdraft fees in the first three months of 2015.

Use a debit card to get cash back at a point of sale, or use a smartphone to search for nearby bank branches, rather than using an out-of-network ATM.

“I can see no reason to pay a fee unless there’s a few emergency”, he said. For example, a 2009 law requires that bank customers opt-in if they want the bank to lend them money when they overdraw their accounts.

Another 58 percent of noninterest checking accounts can become free if consumers meet certain requirements such as having direct deposits.

“ATMs are available to the bank’s own customers for free, so the cost of maintaining that network is borne by non-customers making out-of-network transactions, ” he says.

The five cities with the highest combine ATM fees are Atlanta ($5.15), New York ($5.03), Phoenix ($4.88), Miami ($4.84), and Milwaukee ($4.78). “Shop around for a bank or credit union that fits your lifestyle so that you can keep more of your hard-earned cash”.

The lowest ATM fees were in San Francisco, Cincinnati at $3.86, Kansas City at $4.01, Dallas at $4.11 and Seattle at $4.21.