Free Debit Cards

Bloodsucking vampire bats. Alone, a single bat won't kill you. It'll just slip into your bedroom as you sleep and fill its tiny belly with your warm hemoglobin. Probably won't feel a thing. But what happens when there's more than one bat? What happens when the whole freakin' colony decides to treat your veins like it's open bar at Charlie Sheen's wedding?

I thought of vampire bats this week when Bank of America announced, fangs bared, that it will begin bitch slapping debit card users with a $5 monthly fee. This comes on the heels of Netflix's wildly unpopular price hike, a move that sent its stock tumbling. Who's it going to be next? Perhaps my faithful Labrador will begin charging me a fee every time it drags it's ass across the carpet. That's right, I'm comparing Bank of America to my dog's ass. Which, when I think about it, isn't fair to my dog's ass.

Despite receiving a $45 billion dollar taxpayer funded bailout, Bank of America still finds itself in need of raising revenues. Fine, except us customers just so happen to find ourselves in need of raising some revenue, too. It's one thing to get nickel and dimed but quite another to get five and ten dollared.

Several other major banks are also considering debit card fees; it won't be long until they follow in Bank of America's careless footsteps.

My advice is to shop around. Don't pay for something you can get for free. Do your due dilligence as a consumer and find a bank that isn't trying to bleed you dry. Both ING and Ally Bank, for example, offer free debit cards and both say they will continue to offer free debit cards for the foreseeable future. And both banks will continue to refund ATM fees should you use another bank's ATM.

You may also want to look into local banks and credit unions, as any bank with assets less than $10 billion dollars are exempt from the federal legislation that propelled the larger banks enact these ridiculous fees in the first place.

Damn vampires. Time to stop the bleeding.