One of my favorite movies is “The Hustler” (the original with Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason). Mr. Newman played “Fast Eddie” Felson a hustler who wants to be a success, and his goal was to beat Minnesota Fats (played by Mr. Gleason). The movie is an intricate set of stories, one of which is the thematic premise about how to deal with your victims (patsies, marks, etc.,):
“Always leave a mark with some money in their pocket, that way they keep coming back”
The Hustler
That is how banks have done it for years. They are finding new and more exciting ways to bleed some money out of you, but not so much that you decide to bank somewhere else (also, they are all doing it, your only other option is to put it in your mattress).
The scary part is that Insurance, Telecomm Companies and most service providers have gone to this model. Bleed out as many fees as they can, until you threaten to leave.
My opinion of the banks’ thinking in this area? Let me quote Fast Eddie from the Colour of Money:
“Money won is twice as sweet as money earned.”
They aren’t earning all this extra money, they are winning it off you.
Whining?
These days, it is hard to find a service not attempting to extract extra service fees. Airlines, have gone berserk with fees, we shall see if COVID somehow reforms their fee lust.
Learn how the game is played, or you will get hustled.
This was originally written many years back, I have added a bit more to it.
AHH! The good old days. When the bank was actually glad to see you walk in and deposit $10 in to your savings account. All those ten dollars could be used to lend to someone else and you got interest on you monies no matter how insignificant (to the bank). Not now. If you are evryday Joe Blo looking to scrape together a few dollars to get ahead of the game the bank will make sure you do not do that. Where is it that the banks have now gone over to negative interest rates (Sweden?) as they want to eliminate physical money from the system. The reason is obvious as then ALL transactions are documented and the banks and governments are sure to get their cut.
But what is really obscene is the money we scrim and save to put in to a bank account at probably 0% interest. The bank will then lend it to the various governments, at say 5% to be conservative, who are just about always running a deficit. The governemnt will then tax us to pay back the deficit plus 5% interest bank loan which is in reality our own money.
Now please explain to me why the governemnt can not offer CSB’s at even 4%. That way we would not have to pay a middle man, read bank, to administer our money and at least we could, in theory, make a slight (taxable) profit from borrowing our own money to pay oursleves back with taxes.
RICARDO