Typical minimum balance for a traditional savings account

Typical savings accounts come with a monthly maintenance fee and an excessive withdrawal fee; both can be avoided if you meet certain conditions in using your account. Incidental fees, which are charged for specific services, often hide in the fine print of fee schedules, which not all banks make readily available. Bank fees may vary from monthly service fees of around $5 to stop payment and insufficient fund fees of as high as $35. Avoiding fees on your savings account is important if you wish to maximize the interest your money earns, especially with today's low interest rates. Even a small deduction from your principal can become a significant loss over time.

The fees in this article are accurate as of March 2022. It’s also a good idea to check the fine print of an account before signing up so you fully understand any possible charges.

Average monthly fees for standard savings accounts

The most common type of savings account is the standard, no-frills version offered by each major bank, and the most common fee on a standard savings account is the $5 monthly maintenance fee, which covers the cost of maintaining branch locations and in-person services. Fortunately, you have multiple ways of avoiding that fee.

The easiest waiver option is to maintain a checking account at the same bank as your savings account, although if you plan to open a new checking account just to waive your savings fee, you should remember that checking accounts come with their own fees. Banks also waive the fee if you set up repeating automatic deposits of a certain amount from your checking to your savings, which most people opt to do anyway. Finally, the minimum daily balance requirement, which starts at $300 for standard accounts at the largest banks, creates an incentive for you to maintain some amount of money in the savings account.

Because these requirements align with the way most people expect to use savings accounts, waiving the monthly fee isn't usually a big challenge. However, you should still be careful to avoid monthly fees. The low APY of standard savings accounts means that even an expense of $4 to $5 cuts deeply into the interest earned on your balance. Assuming no deposits or withdrawals, a savings balance of $10,000 held at an APY of 0.01% and compounded daily would take 10 years to earn $5, enough to cover just one month of maintenance fees.

Monthly fees for high-yield savings accounts

We also took a look at some of the higher-yield savings account options provided by major banks. These have variable APY rates that go up according to how much money you keep in your account and whether or not you own a qualifying checking account at the same bank. Most also have higher monthly fees than standard savings accounts, as well as much higher minimum balance requirements for their waiver options.

Unlike standard savings accounts, not all high-yield savings accounts allow you to avoid their monthly fee just by maintaining a corresponding checking account; instead, they may offer no other waiver option other than to meet the minimum balance.

Online savings account fees

With few or no physical branch locations to pay for, online-only options for savings accounts generally require no maintenance fees or minimum balance, though they do charge excessive transaction fees similar to traditional banks. Many banks allow no more than six withdrawals each month from savings accounts, excluding withdrawals made in person, at ATMs or by mail. Withdrawals beyond those six may result in excess transaction fees.

with a balance under $25,000

However, the lack of physical branch locations, combined with a reliance on third-party ATM networks, means that some online bank accounts do not allow cash deposits. Your deposit options in such cases are limited to direct deposit, wire transfer, linked account transfer and mobile or mailed check deposit, while withdrawal will require an ATM or online transfer to another account. Most online banks do not charge for any of these processes, but when comparing fees for online and traditional banks, you should be aware that you will be more dependent on such deposit services with an online account, and so any increases in their fees will have greater impact.

Withdrawing money has its own set of fees. While you are legally allowed up to six outgoing transfers per month, some banks may allow you to make more withdrawals for a fee. For those online savings accounts that permit wire transfers, incoming wires are generally free while outgoing wires can cost anywhere from $20 to $30 at certain banks.

Other incidental fees

The fee schedules published by most banks list dozens of other incidental fees, which are mostly consistent for all types of accounts. Many of the fees are intended to discourage certain customer behaviors, and you can avoid paying them with conscious management of your banking habits.

In general, online-only banks charge smaller amounts for each of these fees than traditional banks, and in some categories they charge no fee at all. We looked at some of the fees most common among banks and most likely to show up on your savings account statement.

Overdraft and non-sufficient fund (NSF) fees

Most major banks charge you around $35 per overdrawn or NSF item. Overdraft fees are incurred when a bank accepts a charge on your account that is larger than your remaining available balance; if the bank chooses to refuse the charge instead, you will be billed an NSF fee.

Such situations are more common with checking accounts, but savings accounts can also be overdrawn. Avoiding this fee will depend on how carefully and frequently you keep track of your account balance as your expenses roll in. In general, you will want to use a checking account for all your expenses, so that your savings account balance can grow and accumulate interest without interruption.

Stop payment fees

A stop payment is a request you can make to prevent a specific transaction or personal check you have issued from being paid out. Most banks charge $30 for this service. While such situations may sometimes be unavoidable and unpredictable, you should do your best to make sure that you intend to back every transaction you authorize.

Returned item fees

Any check or deposit that is returned or "bounced" will usually result in a fee of around $12 to $15 for you, the recipient, as well as an overdraft or NSF fee for the person who wrote the check. This is the fee you will have the least control over, since it depends on the person sending the money to make sure that his or her account balance is sufficient to cover the transaction.

Paper statement fees

Some brick-and-mortar banks charge you $1 to $5 for mailing printed statements every month, though most of these banks let you opt out and receive free email statements instead. Online banks, of course, offer more sophisticated online banking options, and rarely mail statements to begin with. You can dodge statement fees by requesting paperless statements and accessing them online if you need to print hard copies.

Annual and inactivity fees

Annual fees are maintenance fees assessed every 12 months, and inactivity or "dormancy" fees are charged after a certain amount of time goes by with no deposit or withdrawal activity from the account. As these fees are increasingly rare, you should not expect to run into them as a typical consumer, but you should always read the terms of your savings account closely to see if your bank is one of the few institutions that retains these fees.

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