PC Financial Mastercard has a similar offer. The applicant would need to have a good clean credit history to qualify (among other things like gainful employment and not much other debts)

At least this way they avoid the noxious 21% interest rates.

I have a foolproof way to stay out of overdraft: call your bank and tell them you don’t want overdraft on your account!!

It took a looooong time for us to get to the “one month ahead” state in our bank account – we saved nickles and dimes, sold stuff, got a tax refund, worked some overtime – and then all of a sudden we were there. I love it! The banks get NOTHING from me anymore! In Canada we have what are called NSF fees – non-sufficeint funds – which you are charged for every item that you do not have enough money in your account for. Our banks charge about $30-$40 per item as well. I too had some $180 or more bank fees lurking in my past. Overdraft here is kind of like stupidity insurance – you pay a set monthyly fee to your bank and they will cover all your cheques up to a certain amount ($1000) over what you have in your chequing account – but of course they charge you daily interest.

Learn something new every day, even those things you think you have mastered!

I think the float/buffer plan is good but I have never been able to do that — if I have funds in a daily use account they get spent. I have always had to keep my money in a harder to get at place (ING now), it seems to make me stop and think about spending it – all psychological, but it works.

1. somewhere on your spreadsheet (out of the way at the top or way to the right is usually good) enter the amount that you want as the trigger. For example I want a balance under $1000 to trigger red highlighting. In an adjacent cell I enter $1200, since I want that value to trigger yellow highlighting which warns me I’m getting close to dropping under the threshold for exemption of bank fees. You may have a different purpose for highlighting in mind so pick whatever values work for you.
2. Select the column/row where you want to apply the instruction to do the highlighting.
3. Under the Format menu select Conditional formatting. For my process I set the drop menus of Condition 1 to “Cell value is” “between” and then in the first box clicked the cell with $1200, then in the second box click the cell with $1000. This tells it to look for any amount between 1000 and 1200. Next click the format button and the patterns tab. Select the colour you want for this range.
To add the next condition you may need to click the Add button to get another set of fields. Repeat these steps for the second condition except select “Cell Value Is” “less than” and to complete the third box go click on the cell with $1000. This tells it to look for balances less than $1000. Click on Format and select a different colour to highlight these balances. If you don’t want colour highlighting you can select bolding or italics (on the font tab) or a cell border from the border tab.
4. Click OK to save everything.

Hope that’s clear.

[*] The thought that I’m paying for the privilege of being stupid motivates me far more into changing my behaviour than the thought that I’m living on the bank’s money.

As a bank employee, isn’t one of your benefits free employee banking?

I put everything I possibly can on my CC – there’s no way I want to miss out on the rewards. In another few weeks we’ll have the last few miles we need for our 4 tickets to Europe. LOVE free travel for doing what I would have done anyway. I’ve even got my Tim Horton’s card automatically reloading from my CC when it drops below $5. You can’t use a visa in the store (and I might feel stupid for $1.52) so this way I get the rewards and don’t have to dig for change. I’ve cut back my coffee habit to a couple a week so it’s not a big budget item any more, but every little bit helps. If you’re collecting Aeroplan points as we are don’t forget to swipe the actual card everywhere they take it. Those points are in addition to the ones earned on the VISA. If you go to the aeroplan website to book a rental car for your holiday you get points for booking it there, points for swiping your card when you pick up the rental and points for using your visa. The points trifecta!

I’d be happy to share my spreadsheet with anyone who wants it. Is there a way to post things on this site for others to download? If not I can try posting a little sample or giving you the formulas to put in the various cells.