Michael: The Transfer

The drips off the trees
Fall with a staccato beat
While the rain keeps time.

Saturday, April 30, 2016

We’ve had a bank account here at Banistmo since December. My plan was to transfer money from my Bank of America account in the states as soon as I had a Safe Pass from B. of A. That allows me to transfer more than $1,000 at a time. My mom has the Safe Pass and will mail it to us shortly.

Right now I’m being charged $10.25 every time I use the ATM. Bansitmo charges me $5.25 and B. of A. charges me $5. Over time, I figure that could add up to a hefty bit of cash.

So to test the transfer waters, I decided to transfer $500 then make a $400 withdrawal. Surprisingly, this seemed to have gone pretty smoothly even though the Banistmo ATM doesn’t list my options in English when I use their ATM card. With the eight choices in front of me, I was able to hit the jackpot on the second try.

The hitch was our account balance. We put $325 into our account in December knowing that we needed to keep a $300 balance in order to avoid a monthly penalty. We knew that we were going to be charged $25 for the ATM card. Hence the need to initially deposit $325. Using my elementary math skills; 500+300=800-400=400. So why did we only have $282 in our account. Into the bank we went to find out.

First off, Banistmo charged us $35 for the transfer. On top of the $45 B. of A. charge, I’m not so sure the transfer idea is a big money saver. On top of that though, Banistmo charged us $7 for our checks in December. That’s what put us under $300 and for the past four months $21.40 has been deducted from our account for every month we were under the $300 limit. That adds up.

But I wish when we made the deposit they would’ve said something about the $7 charge. I mean they told us about the $25 fee. Putting in another 7 bucks to avoid a late fee wouldn’t of killed us and if I were a bank clerk in the good old U.S. of A. I believe I would’ve mentioned it. But what are you going to do? They didn’t offer to make an adjustment and I didn’t feel like making a stink about it.

Chalk it up to another little live and learn moment. But these lessons in living in a foreign country are beginning to slowly nickel and dime me into serious Life University tuition.