Enough with the fees! ATM fees are probably the most griped about fee, which the downsized should stay away from at all costs.  But whether we like it or not, right now we expect this cost and can plan accordingly, take more money out when you visit the ATM, use your debit card, flat out don’t buy the gatorade and clif bar from the bodega, etc.

What really gets me are the “hidden”  and small print fees we don’t know about until you get to the checkout or what not and find yourself stuck with paying them, a la dropping 30 extra dollars for my second bag at American a month or so back.  What was I going to do? I had to pay it. Shame on me for not planning that one out better.  If I had read Cara’s article about thrifty traveling perhaps I could have saved some money. Lesson learned.

So what fee you ask has spawned the creation of this article? It’s the end of the month which means 1 thing, actually 2.  1, my rent is due and 2, my COBRA payment is due as well. (Why did I pick COBRA? Read here and subsidy update here).  My landlord lives in the building and is a colleague of my girlfriend so that’s an easy one to pay — simply write a check and hand it to him via my gf or down the stairs.  For COBRA however, I was hoping to use a more interweb savvy approach (it’s actually not complicated at all once I realized you can only make payments using Internet Explorer [Firefox is better, but that’s a different article]) and make my latest payment online.  My last couple of payments were sent via check prior to the online avantserve site updating the amounts due to the subsidy.  So here I am praising Benefit Concepts/avantserve for making it easy to pay online when

*BAM*

$7.95 processing fee?! You’re really going to charge the unemployed almost $8 aka lunch to “process” this online payment? Get out of here with that malarkey (bonus points for using “malarkey” in an article. Yes!)! No way on earth am I cutting into my lunch money for a few clicks.  I’ve already got stamps and an envelope ready to go, so for now, consider me old school.  I’m sending my COBRA payment via snail mail. Done and done.

-By Garrett Dale, Founding Member, Music Industry Professional & Social Media Expert