At a recent ladies weekend in the middle of Northern Michigan, we needed food and booze. So a few of us headed down the road to the local Bait/ Liquor/ Grocery store. It’s in one of those long pole buildings that the owner has been forced to diversify just to stay a float. Behind the register were three shelving units of liquor, which he considered the liquor department. (Everyone knows that you can’t fish without a bottle of booze in your pocket, it’s how you stay warm up here.) There was a little steam table next to the register with fresh, hot lasagna for sale, that smelled so good when you walked in it instantly made you hungry. The rest of the building was filled with isles of food and house hold supplies. This defined redneck, one stop shopping. It was in the middle of “Where the hell are we?” and OMG, this looks like a “children of the corn movie!”

One of the girls just wanted cigarettes and attempted to pay with her debit card. The bait store owner said “sorry but I won’t do it, if you are not spending oh……. $15.00 or more I’m just loosing money.” Of course my young friend was upset because she hardly ever carries cash and now had to have one of the other girls add the cigarettes to their bill. The store owner commented that if he ran her card just for the cigarettes he’d be loosing money. Being the little store he is, he can’t afford to give money away. He said that last month alone he paid $480.00 in card fees!! Doesn’t sound like much but bottom line, it taps into anything that might of been profit. So I’d rather you leave mad, then leave me in a hole.

“Wow, that felt like a slap in the face. Can he really do that?” my friend asks, “well he just did!” I replied. I have no idea on the legalities of whether they, the retailers, have to take debit cards or not. It got me really thinking of how much we are literally fee’d to death!!! Not only the store owners but also us little guys! We have fees to draw our money out, fees to pay our bills online, convenience fees, late fees, checking account fees, passport fees, registration fees, copy right fees, maintenance fees, transaction fees, regulatory fees, processing fees, recreation fees, court fees, filing fees, user fees, airline fees, travel fees, baggage fees, check cashing fees, loan fees, credit card fees, parking fees, personal space fees and looking cross-eyed fees. The government is even wanting to regulate your gardening which would include some sort of big fee to feed yourself, I’m sure! (bill s510) This could go on for days! We have fees for everything!

New rules took effect Oct.1, capped the fee and banks can charge the retailers when debit cards are used for purchases at 21 cents, down from an average of 44 cents. Bank of American is trying to recover that fee by adding a $5.00 a month service fee to their bank customers using debit cards. This is on top of their checking fees and ATM fees. Defendyourdollars.org stated “Bank of America is the largest bank in the nation, and it took $45 billion in taxpayer money a few short years ago to cover it’s risky business decisions.”  So now we get to add to that bail-out $5.00 at a time, $60.00 a year?  How long before other banks will follow suit?

Why are we complacently giving our money away a fee at a time? What happened to CASH? Do we not see this is how Americans are going broke and will soon be owned by every big corporation and Government agency?

You can’t even cash a pay check without a fee! They have made it so hard to be cash only! You can not even go down the road to the utility company and pay your bill in person with cash anymore. You have to have a checking account or you pay unGodly amounts in money order fees and if you pay online you can be charged a “convenience fee’ of $5.00 to give them your money today!! How nice of them.

If I do not have enough cash on hand for purchase, I now ask small shop owners “paper or plastic?…. do you prefer check or debit card?” Some stores would rather sit on the check waiting two weeks till it clears than pay a big fee for debit card transactions every month. The little Ma & pop restaurant down the road pays in the thousands a month for fees. At what price is our convenience really costing us? Do the big Corporations need that much money? It’s probable going to their CEO’s bonuses.

I beg of you fellow Americans to WAKE THE HELL UP!!!! If we don’t start fighting back one fee at a time we will be returned back to the days of The kings & Queens and us being the peasants!! Small shop owners will be a thing of the past! Pull your heads out and look at the bigger picture, our survival depends on it!! Think of it as every time you swipe your card you are giving a corporation  .25 cents of your money. That can add up to a few bucks a day. I challenge you to try going all cash for six months!! See how hard it can be and how much you save yourself and others in fees. Just try it, I dare you, what do you have to lose?