A house-mate in college inherited a bunch of money (a bunch for a student, not a lot in the real world). He spent it very poorly, and at some point had added overdraft protection to his bank account for some nominal monthly fee.
The trouble is that the availability was for a nominal fee, but if he actually used it, each payee cost him what was in effect a bounced check fee.
He got over his head, and it was BRUTAL. Goes $5 over, costs him ~$20. Now he's $25 in the hole, but he had a check out for some bill, that would-have bounced, got paid, he's now a couple hundred under. At some point (his overdraft was some low amount) he started bouncing checks, many times the fees being larger than the actual checks. Yikes.
I always try to pay as I go, even now. We keep zero CC balance. We have used credit to remodel, but literally we pay it back 100% within a year or we don't do it (usually pay cash, even then and use credit as a bridge only).
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