Compare and Switch

The account that charges you for not having enough money in it

The monthly fee disappears above a balance of 10,705 dollars. Which means it is charged, by design, only to the people who do not have 10,705 dollars.

by The editors · August 24, 2026 · 8 min read

The average monthly service fee on an interest-bearing checking account in the United States is 15.65 dollars, and nearly nine in ten of those accounts charge one^[1]. That is $188 a year to hold your own money in a place where you can spend it.

There is a way out, and it is the part worth reading twice. The fee is waived if you keep an average minimum balance of 10,705 dollars in the account^[2]. That money earns an average of 0.07 percent^[3] – so the price of avoiding a 188-dollar annual fee is parking eleven thousand dollars somewhere that pays about seven dollars a year on it.

Who actually pays this fee

Nobody with 10,705 dollars. That is not a criticism of the banks' arithmetic, it is a description of it: a fee with a waiver threshold is, mechanically, a charge levied on the people below the threshold and on nobody else. The further below you are, the more certainly you pay it.

The FDIC's household survey makes the same point from the other end. 4.2 percent of US households – about 5.6 million – had no bank account at all in 2023, and another 14.2 percent, about 19.0 million, were underbanked^[8]. The single most cited reason for having no account was not having enough money to meet minimum balance requirements, named by 42.3 percent of unbanked households. And one third of them – 33.4 percent – gave fees or a minimum balance as the *main* reason they have no account at all^[9].

The good news is bigger than the fee

Among non-interest checking accounts, 47 percent charge no monthly fee at all, and another 48 percent drop the fee the moment you set up direct deposit^[5]. Between the two, almost every non-interest account in the survey is free or trivially made free. The fee you are paying is, in most cases, a fee on an account type you did not need.

Where non-interest accounts do charge, the average is 5.47 dollars a month with an average waiver balance of 496 dollars^[4] – an order of magnitude below the interest-bearing threshold, and a threshold most people could actually hold.

The other toll: cash

One withdrawal at an out-of-network ATM now costs 4.86 dollars on average: a 3.22-dollar surcharge from the machine's owner plus 1.64 dollars from your own bank^[6]. Two of those a month is another 117 dollars a year, charged in three-dollar slices that never look like a bill. Nothing about this is hidden; it is simply spread thin enough that nobody adds it up.

What switching is worth per hour

Loaded with the average interest-bearing fee against zero, and half an hour of effort. The number that comes out is the one no comparison site prints: what your hour is worth doing this. Change the effort to what it would really take you – if moving three direct debits and a paycheck takes you two hours, put in 120 and see whether it still holds. It usually does, by a distance.

The reason it holds is the last statistic in this article, and it explains why the fee survives at all: Americans keep the same checking account for an average of 19 years^[7]. Nineteen years is long enough for a fee schedule to change several times without anyone opening the notice.

What you can do about it

1. Read the fee schedule of the account you already have

   Not the marketing page, the fee schedule – a PDF with a name like “Truth in Savings disclosure”. Three lines matter: monthly service fee, what waives it, and the out-of-network ATM charge. It takes four minutes and it is the only way to know whether this article is about you.

2. Ask whether direct deposit waives it, before you switch anything

   Roughly half of non-interest accounts drop the fee once a paycheck lands directly. If yours does and your deposit is already going there, you are paying for a condition you meet – which happens more often than it should, usually because the deposit was set up under an old employer. One call resolves it, and it costs nothing at all.

3. Move the balance requirement, not just the account

   If the fee is waived by a minimum balance you cannot hold, the account type is wrong, not the bank. Interest-bearing checking with an eleven-thousand-dollar threshold pays 0.07 percent – there is no version of that maths where holding the balance is the reason to keep it. A free non-interest account plus a separate savings account does the same job without the threshold.

4. Fix the cash habit, it is a second fee

   Nearly five dollars per out-of-network withdrawal, twice, is the cost of not planning cash. Withdrawing once instead of twice halves it; using your own bank's network or getting cash back at a till removes it. This is the smallest number in the article and the easiest one to take to zero this week.

Frequently asked

Sources

1. Checking Account and ATM Fee Survey: average monthly service fee on interest-bearing checking accounts 15.65 dollars, charged by nearly nine in ten such accounts, Bankrate, retrieved August 24, 2026.
2. Checking Account and ATM Fee Survey: average minimum balance required to waive the fee on an interest-bearing account, 10,705 dollars, Bankrate, retrieved August 24, 2026.
3. Checking Account and ATM Fee Survey: average yield on interest-bearing checking accounts, 0.07 percent APY, Bankrate, retrieved August 24, 2026.
4. Checking Account and ATM Fee Survey: among non-interest checking accounts that charge a monthly fee, the average is 5.47 dollars with an average waiver balance of 496 dollars, Bankrate, retrieved August 24, 2026.
5. Checking Account and ATM Fee Survey: 47 percent of non-interest checking accounts charge no monthly fee, and 48 percent waive it with direct deposit; figures from 245 institutions in 25 large US markets, surveyed 2 June to 3 July 2025, Bankrate, retrieved August 24, 2026.
6. Checking Account and ATM Fee Survey: average total cost of an out-of-network ATM withdrawal 4.86 dollars, a 3.22-dollar surcharge plus 1.64 dollars from the account holder's own bank, Bankrate, retrieved August 24, 2026.
7. Checking Fees Survey: Americans keep the same checking account for an average of 19 years, Bankrate, retrieved August 24, 2026.
8. 2023 National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households: 4.2 percent of US households (about 5.6 million) unbanked, 14.2 percent (about 19.0 million) underbanked, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, retrieved August 24, 2026.
9. 2023 FDIC National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households, report: not having enough money to meet minimum balance requirements was the most cited reason (42.3 percent); one-third of unbanked households (33.4 percent) cited a reason related to fees or a minimum balance as the main reason, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, retrieved August 24, 2026.

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