In accordance with the Shopper Monetary Safety Bureau, People paid $15 billion in overdraft charges final yr. That’s an terrible lot of cash that customers wasted on pointless and preventable charges. CNN Cash reported:

In 2016, U.S. shoppers paid a complete of $15 billion in charges for bouncing checks or overdrafting — which is when a buyer tries to make a purchase order with out sufficient cash of their account to cowl the transaction — in response to new knowledge launched by the Shopper Monetary Safety Bureau.

All banks with property over $1 billion should report how a lot cash it introduced in through bounced verify and overdraft charges, in response to CFPB. And this yr the business rang up at $11.41 billion. That’s up 2.2% from 2015, which was the primary yr banks started reporting whole overdraft and bounced verify charges to the CFPB.

Including in its finest guess for what smaller banks and credit score unions charged, and CFPB says $15 billion is roughly the grand whole.

These charges are notably troublesome for cash-strapped People, CFPB Director Richard Cordray stated on a press name Thursday.

“Customers residing on the sting can discover themselves racking up quite a few overdraft prices,” Cordray stated. “Regardless of current regulatory and business adjustments, shoppers with low account balances and little margin for error proceed to pay vital overdraft charges.”