Overdraft

Continuing on in our My Money, My Choices journey - we come to overdraft.  I've thankfully never lived in it, but have in the past dipped into a few times by accident.  The cashflow exercise we went through a month or so ago really helped getting this straight so that we weren't having bills automatically debit from the account before pay day.

The great thing though, about banking with Tangerine is their Whoops! Protection...which is their version of overdraft protection.  Everyone, automatically gets 30-day protection to a maximum of $250 - FREE for 30 days.  So, if your account is accidentally withdrawn because of a miscalculation on the dates, you won't be charged for it or suffer a NSF fee.

Now, it is only free to a point.  You'll be charged $2.50 if it takes you longer to pay it back after the 30 days, and every 30 days after that if you fail to get your account balance back into the black.

Gail suggests that the easiest way to ensure you never dip into overdraft is by creating your own OD protection - something that Jordan and I have done for a long time.  Our's is about $1,000 - there's never less than that in the account.