Things you don't know that could hurt your bank account

When I was 17 I got my first steady job at a fast food joint. It wasn't much but it was more money than I'd ever had in my young life so boy did I think I was hot shit. If you think back to when you got your first job you probably felt the same. It's that moment when you have your whole life ahead of you with a pocket full of money that YOU alone get to decide how to spend. It was like you owned the world instead of just the few hundred bucks that you actually had. For the first time you had more than just pocket change so you had to open a bank account to keep your money safe.
  Now I don't know about y'all but when I opened my first bank account and saw that I had fraud protection I took that to mean that my bank was going to watch my money for me. Until one day my bank account seemed lower than it should have been. So I called my bank to find that I'd been charged by a company I'd never heard of. What was shocking was that I hadn't lost my card! I couldn't believe it. Why hadn't they called me or blocked this since it wasn't me I asked my mom. It'd taken me almost a month to notice. So now I had to fill out some form and fax it to my bank before I could get my money back.
  Of course my mother, the original diva, laughed at my ignorance and told me, "How is the bank supposed to know which charges you made and which ones you didn't. They're not following you around everywhere. You're supposed to be watching your account. Hello the the bank has a website," my mother chastised me.
  "But they're supposed to be using fraud detection for charges that seem suspicious," my 17 year old self countered. Mom shut me down again by stating, "Yeah but they couldn't possibly catch everything. What chu want them to do call you every single time a charge goes through. You sound crazy. You better look at your account everyday." I was still mad though and I had blame someone so I said. "But I have my card so how can someone have gotten the number unless the bank messed up or maybe it was someone at the bank who stole my card. My mom wasn't having that either. She let me know by saying, "Girl please you could have gone to a restaurant, gave your card to a waiter and they could have written it down. Bottom line, you need to watch your own account every day. The bank can only do so much. Welcome to adulthood"

  Of course she was right and luckily after I filled out and sent in the proper forms I was able to get my money back. Now that I work for a bank I'm able to see how very right my mother was about checking my account frequently. While banks offer fraud protection you are not guaranteed all your money back if you don't report the fraud in a timely manner. Everyday I hear horror stories of people loosing their rent money and food money due to fraud and their own negligence. So here's how you can avoid loosing you money due to fraud or merchant errors in three quick steps. If your don't believe ask your mother, father and especially your grandparents and they'll voice for me.
  Step one: Know what you bought and know what you didn't . Now I know lots of us feel we're being diligent if  we check our bank account daily for the balance but we also need to be monitoring and verifying the charges. If you see even a small charge that you know you didn't make is on your account you need to report it. If not you could loose money. For example if you're charged one dollar in January and then 100.00 in may you will only get the 1.00 back because you didn't report the fraud. Or if a company is charging you 50.00 a month and you let if go one for a year you will only get the a couple months of those charges. So out of 600.00 you may on get up to 200.00 back or less.
  All banks have these rules with only certain exceptions. So you better be watching your money. At the same time you don't want to accidentally report your valid purchases as fraud. Remember companies you know may bill you under a name you don't know. So if you accidentally dispute your light bill because you didn't recognize the name your light company will charge you penalty fees of 25.00 or more for each returned charge because the bank is going to take the money back from them.   
  Or if you dispute a purchase you actually made at a store that is considered stealing from that store. So know what you bought and know what you didn't. Doing this will also help you more effectively budget. Still I know with everything you have going on it can be hard to keep track. The good news is most banks offer balance alerts where you can get a text or email for every charge. This is usually something you have to sign up for so ask your bank about it. This way instead of trying to recall everything you bought in a day you get a blow by blow of purchases. Still be vigilant because if you're charged for something and aren't at that store that doesn't necessarily mean it's fraud. A store you bought something at could have waited until later to charge you. So again know what you bought and know what you didn't. For more tips tune in to the second addition of What you don't know that can hurt you. We'll discuss why you need to be actively counting your own money and how with banks it's not as simple as you think.