600 Dollar Man – or Woman
Do you want to feel special about yourself? Send yourself flowers.
But do you want to feel really special? Then just think about how much money the biggest banks in the country are making off of you every year.
To them, you are the 600 Dollar Man – or Woman.
That’s about how much they make off the average American. Year after year after year.
How can that be? It starts out with a little word trick. Banks tell you they’re “offering” you a checking account or a savings account – as if they’re doing you a favor.
But they’re not taking your money and keeping it in a vault. They’re loaning it back out. They make money on the difference between the interest rate they’re paying you and the interest rate they’re charging someone for a loan. That difference is called “the spread.”
So let’s say you have $9,000 in an account at your friendly neighborhood Big Bank. That’s about what most Americans have in their checking and savings accounts at any one time.*
They’re kindly offering you an interest rate of 0.01%** – one-hundredth of one percent. That means they’re paying you $0.90 a year. Don’t go spend it all at once.
But what are they making off of your $9,000? The average interest on a 30 year fixed mortgage is currently around 4%.*** So basically 400 times the interest rate you’re getting.
Then there’s the fees. At many banks, $9,000 in an account puts it below the minimum level necessary to avoid monthly fees. The average fee is about $15 each and every month.****
Did you actually want access to your money? The average person takes money out of an ATM every seven to ten days.***** And about a third of those times are at “out of network” ATMs where you pay a total of $4.35 ($1.58 goes to your bank and $2.77 goes to the bank whose ATM you’re using).******
Add it all together, multiply, carry the one, and what do you get? Your Big Bank making $600 off your deposit every year.
These numbers are all just a snapshot and can change at any time. And, yes, this math is pretty simplified. In fact, it doesn’t count many of the other ways in which banks make money of your account including debit card fees and transactions.
But all in all, you are the banks’ 600 Dollar Man – or Woman.
We can rebuild your bank account. We have the technology. We can make your account better than it was. Better…stronger…faster. And with a cool Aspiration debit card.
That’s the Aspiration Spend & Save Account.