You’re not imagining things. You are paying more whenever you take cash out of an ATM machine these days.
A new survey from Bankrate.com finds that the average total cost for an ATM withdrawal stands at $4.72, a 3.3% increase from three years ago and a stunning 33% jump in the past decade. And in 1998, they were less than $2.
Blame the Federal Reserve for the increases. As rates fall, bank profits shrink. To make up for that deficit, they tend to increase their service and convenience fees—and consumers feel that most at the cash machine.
Rates are likely to continue falling, meaning those fees will likely spike higher in the year to come.
On average, banks charge non-customers $3.09 to take money from their ATMs. (Your own bank often tacks a charge onto that as well.) And no one is feeling the pinch more than Houston, where the average ATM fees are the highest in the country, coming in at $5.58 per transaction.
ATM fees aren’t the only service charge on the rise. Bankrate reports the average overdraft fee is now $33.36, a slight increase over 2018. That’s the 19th increase in 21 years. Twenty years ago, it stood at $22.62.
Overdraft fees have been an area of concentration in recent years. In 2016, banks reported $11.4 billion in collected overdraft fees. Last year, the number soared to $34.3 billion.
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