It’s perhaps by design that your bank tries to make the services it affords you as convenient as possible, simply because there’s a whole lot more in it for them than there is for you. The truth of the matter is you need your bank as somewhat of an essential service provider providing you with that essential service, but what the financial sector as a whole would have you believing is that you probably need them more than they need you.

It may not appear to be that way because right now the banks hold all the power, but if just for a single day all the clients of a certain bank were to effect some kind of revolt, the bank would go under in an instant.

We’re not here to entertain radical financial sector reforms driven by mass civil action though, although that isn’t such a bad idea if you think about it. Today’s topic is merely about how to save on your banking fees and it’s important to discuss this because bank charges are indeed one of many means through which consumers of the financial services sector spend way too much of their money unknowingly. Okay, so perhaps were are indeed aware that we spend on banking fees and associated financial sector service fees, but the extent to which you spend that money is what should come under scrutiny.

You’ll find that just by working out how much you spend on unnecessary bank fees over longer periods of time of a single year to ten years it might just sicken you as to what you could have rather done with that money.

For one, you could have put all that money away in one of those savings accounts pockets with compounding interest, the magic of which is perhaps a discussion for another post.

So in saving on your banking fees you need to apply a couple to a few basic principles of strategic money management, one of which is making use of the obvious fee-saving channels pushed by the banks themselves. Yes there’s a lot more in it for your bank if you use the banking app they provide for download and which incurs lower transaction fees (in some instances none at all), but if you’re also benefiting then that’s okay.

So use their tech which offers lower fees, but you should additionally resolve to make fewer transactions where possible. In other words, if you have to pay one person or company many times over a period of a month or so, then it’s better to make the payment in total only once as this cuts the number of times you’d otherwise be charged service fees to just that singular payment.

Finally, less cash and more electronic payments, which perhaps goes back to making use of the banking institution’s technology being pushed. Something like making a payment with your debit card at a Point of Sale (POS) incurs no fees at all as opposed to first having to go to an ATM and draw money and this generally applies wherever it is you go in the world.