Well it’s that happy time of the year where people do their taxes. They sit down and get their bank statements out and review their interest charged and earned, and will probably see how much per month they pay on their bank fees and curse the banks.

The reason I bring it up is even I get frustrated by bank fees. I go to refinance someone’s mortgage or consolidate a personal loan, and I review their main transactional account.

I see bank fees on these accounts sometimes exceeding $20 a month. Now what I am about to say is not revolutionary as it has been spouted from every consumer group known to man, but treat it as a call to action.

• If you earn more than $2000 per month after tax and are paying any fees on your day to day banking account talk to your bank or someone else’s.
• If you earn less than $2000 per month after tax and are paying more than $4 per month talk to your bank or someone else’s.
• If you pay to make deposits to your account talk to your bank or someone else’s.
• If you are paying ATM fees because your bank doesn’t have an ATM in town talk to your bank or someone else’s.
• If you get charged a fee for making too many withdrawals per month talk to your bank or someone else’s.
• If you get charged overdrawing fees on your account because you cannot instantly track you’re spending online or over the phone talk to your bank or someone else’s.

If you are a Commonwealth Bank customer and fall under any of the dot points above, come into the branch and have a chat with one of my staff we will do what we can to either save you money or make your banking simpler and easier.

If you are not a Commonwealth Bank customer come in and use our self service coin machine free of charge to count your savings and let’s see if we can make other savings for you too.

One more tip before I go, if you use Netbank with the Commonwealth Bank and you need interest details for tax time, go to “View -> Account Information” and it summarises your interest paid for last year. Saves you messing around with paper statements.

David Rootsey is the Branch Manager for Commonwealth Bank in Port Douglas.