Don't Bank On It

Back in the day when I resided in New York and was living hand to mouth, I would very often cash my paychecks, just so I would have enough cash to eat for the week, and the rest I could deposit immediately into my bank account (to pay off those lovely bills). I know it is quite gauche to talk about these things, but facts are facts, and I'm not ashamed of doing so (even though I think I was a little ashamed back then), and I know that many people do exactly the same thing, so I'm not alone. I worked in the upper end of Spanish Harlem and lived in Alphabet City, so there was no shortage of check cashing places in my area.

Back then, I didn't know there was any other way of cashing a check. I knew if I tried to withdraw the cash from my bank when I deposited the check, I would have to wait until the funds cleared (usually 1-2 days, or even a week, depending upon where the check came from, the planetary alignment, and the mood of the bank teller) before the cash would be available to me. And since there were all these check cashing places, I figured this was how one did it.

Yes, those places have pretty steep fees. There's a processing fee that's some sliding scale percentage of whatever your check is, but I worked it out and figured it was cheaper than the overdraft fees my bank would charge me if I didn't have enough funds to pay my bills, so I was good with that. And believe you me, the reason I know I wasn't the only one doing this is that around lunchtime on payday the line was out the door. These places have other services, too: loans (at almost-loan-shark interest rates), money wiring, bill paying, postal services, etc. It's almost like banking, and frankly, I'm sure a lot of people who do this on a regular basis don't even have a bank. Why should they when there's an easy place around the corner where nobody looks down at you because you don't have any money?

Then I found out that there is another way of cashing checks. All you have to do is go to the bank that the check was cut from, and they'll just give you the money right there, no fees, no nothing. Boy, if I had known that when I moved to New York, I probably would have saved at least $100, if not more. Oh, well, c'est la vie.

These days I'm not living such a hand-to-mouth existence anymore, thank goodness. But every once in a while, when I've either spent a little too much, or there aren't enough checks coming in, and my bank account has reached a point at which I start getting nervous, I take my paycheck to the bank from whence it came, cash it, and walk it down the street to my bank, where I deposit it. That way I avoid the 2-3 day lag time that the money takes to walk itself down the street. No harm, no foul, and I've been doing that every so often for several years now.

But the other day, I took my check to PNC Bank to get cashed, got the whole rigmarole of "why don't you bank with us? We're better than anyone." No, thank you. Give me my cash and let me get out of here. The woman took her sweet time and finally said, "You know, the fee for cashing your check is changing from $3 to $5." Well, this was news to me. So far I had never gotten dinged for taking out my very own money from the bank of my employer.

So I got a little upset. Not terribly upset, but just upset enough for the teller to get defensive. "I wish you would have told me when I handed you the check. $3? $5? That's absolutely ridiculous."

"Well," she said snidely, "you could go to your bank and get it cashed as long as there's money in your account to cover it." Well, that kind of defeats the point of cashing the check, doesn't it? If there was money in my account, I wouldn't NEED to cash the check. Obviously this woman has never lived a hand-to-mouth existence, otherwise she would have realized how stupid that sounded.

"This is ridiculous," I said again. "If you're going to charge me to take my very own money out, I might as well go to one of those check cashing places."

Her eyes went wide. "Oh, I think they charge a little more than $5 for their services."

"Not much more," I snapped. "Look," I told her, "I just wish you would have told me before I started that you charged a fee. Otherwise I would have just gone to my bank." She informed me that apparently some companies pay the administrative fee themselves, and some of them leave it to their employees and contractors to eat the cost, and she didn't know that this company was one of the latter until she got to that screen on her computer.

Whatever, lady. Just give me my money. Jeez, I don't even bank there, and they're charging me fees. Yeah, that's a really good incentive to get me to open an account.

So my endorsement to you all is not to bank at PNC. I've cashed checks at Wachovia, Farmers & Mechanics Savings, Commerce, Chase, and Bank of America with no problems and no fees. Only PNC has given me trouble, and I thoroughly dislike them for it.