when the bank says OVERDRAFT FEE what does that mean?

Answer 1

It is a fee for over-drafting your bank account. You draft against your account when you write a check to someone and they present it to the bank for payment (normally by depositing it into their account). You over-draft when you issue checks for more than the available balance in your account.

Depending on what the notice said, they may have paid the check or they may have returned the check to the person you wrote the check to. Make sure you deduct the fees from your check book. If the check was returned to the person you wrote it to, contact them and make arrangements to pay the check.

Carefully write down the checks you write and the deposits you receive in your check register and keep the balance current. To make this process a little easier, a lot of people write in the check register the next higher full dollar amount for a check and the next lower full dollar amount for deposits. For example, if you deposited $395.64 and then wrote a check for $39.75 you would enter a +$395 for the deposit and -$40 for the check. If that was all the transactions in your account, your register would show a balance of $355. Your actual bank balance would be $355.89. Over time this helps build a buffer in your account.

Answer 2

It means that a check was presented to your bank for payment but there was not enough money in the account to pay the check. The bank may have returned the check without payment or may have paid it anyway and allowed your account to go into a negative balance. The overdraft fee is the fee that the bank charges in this situation.

Answer 3

It means that you either bounced a check and they are charging you a fee for that or it means that your bank account comes with 'overdraft protection' which would prevent you from bouncing a check by covering any checks you write even if you don't have enough money in your account and they are charging you a fee for that service.

If its the former - fee for overdraft protection - call your bank and tell them that you want that service for free or you'll move your account.

Answer 4

You overdrafted your account (more money out than in the account) and the bank charged you a fee because of it. Get overdraft protection from the bank and it won't happen again.

Answer 5

An overdraft fee is what the bank charges you when you write checks for more than the balance available in your account. The bank has the option of either paying the amount overdrawn and debiting your next deposit to cover the shortage or returning the unpaid check to the entities to whom they were written. Either way they may charge you.

Answer 6

That means they charged you an overdraft fee because your account went negative but they let the transaction go through your account anyways instead of bouncing the check or the card or whatever it was. You did not have enough money in your account.

Answer 7

It means that you spent more money than what was in your account, creating a negative balance (also known as an overdraft.) When you do that, the bank penalizes you by charging you a fee.

Answer 8

I can certainly answer this one. "Overdraft" means that there was something paid by the bank that you did not have enough money for, you literally over-drafted money from your account. The fee for it is obvious.

Answer 9

overdraft fees are charges for checks that are returned to the bank, usually for insufficient funds. a typical bank charge for asuch is $25-30 dollars.

Answer 10

It is the fee paid to a bank for them to handle the situation when an account is over drawn.

Over drawn is spending more money than you have in your account.