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Comment by garciasn | Hacker News Reader

Use a credit union or bank that doesn’t charge ATM fees; that’s what I do. Any CU-related ATM withdrawal is always free and I get 10 ATM withdrawals a month with fees reversed.

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Unlimited fees reversed with Schwab checking. No monthly fee to figure out how to avoid, either.

So they just eat the fees?

Yes, even exorbitant ones like on a cruise ship or casino. Free checks, too. And mutual funds with lower fees than Vanguard. But virtually no physical branches (most locations are brokerage offices only) so not ideal for depositing cash or getting a cashier's check... use something else for that.

The Neo-Bank I use in Germany (N26) works similarly. 3 or 5 fee-eaten withdrawals per month, but the always free option is supermarket registers. There’s a large network of supermarkets that are connected to the network, and I can generate a code on my phone, scan it, and it registers the negative value (e.g. -50 €), which I then get handed. Deposits work the same way (scan code, generate positive amount that you then pay), but at least for free accounts deposits incur a fee.

They eat the fees because operating physical branches is much more costly still.

And if you're truly abusing it and costing them massively with fees, they can always close your account.

Almost all CUs use the same company to provide the ATM network. The fees between them get zeroed out in part because the transaction stays in house.

It’s probably better to say “nearly all CU withdrawals” because they don’t have a perfect monopoly.

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