Banking - checks are needed on borrowing charges
Keep an eye on those bank charges but make sure that you don't pay 'over the odds' in attempting to reclaim them.
How much would you expect to pay a friend for lending you £50 for just 24 hours? Hopefully, if your friend is genuine your answer would be 'nothing'. And how much would you expect to pay your bank if you went overdrawn by £50 for just 24 hours? No doubt the answers to this particular question would be very varied, but it is fairly certain that the word 'nothing' would not be heard.
Despite this do you still regard your bank as a 'friend' who is there to help you through these small difficulties? If so, shouldn't you consider a change of mind, because it is reasonably certain that the banks will not look upon you as a friend? Their whole purpose would appear to be to make money, and when they have made some they want to make some more.
Currently, the news regarding banking affairs seems to be concerned with two scenarios. The first is the level of profits which they are now expected to report in the near future, whilst the second relates to the size of the 'costs' which they have seen fit to charge against accounts held by individual customers.
The level of profits which the banks are accumulating is nowadays given in figures which are well established in the billions of pounds. Despite this 'cash rich' situation they have for some time taken a keen interest in the affairs of their smaller account holders, and the result has been the ever increasing tide of overdraft charges. But now the unfortunate (or no doubt in some cases - careless) recipients of the bills for servicing their overdrafts are fighting back.
If you intend to join the protest, you will need to look at your statements over the last six years to enable you to list what you have been charged and the reasons for those charges. If you don't keep your statements for that length of time you may have a problem. You could go to your bank and ask for copies, which they may well be prepared to provide you with - at a price. This price could be anything up to £5 per copy and you could need an awful lot of copies; the bill could easily run into hundreds of pounds, especially if your account has been fairly active and generated a lot of transactions. If however you bank with Natwest or Barclays you can obtain six years of statements in one request for just £5, which is remarkably good value.