You are paying bank charges. But do you know why you are paying them? These bank charges are levied for those services offered by our banks which are separate from the regular services. This might come as a surprise to many. After all, most of us take it for granted that since we have an account with Bank X, we are eligible for a number of miscellaneous services.

So it is always better to find out in advance what the free services offered are and what extra services can be availed at a cost. Hopefully what you are paying for is what you intended to pay for. These include, using of the ATM card beyond a certain limit, issuing more than the allocated number of check books, or availing of bank statements in between quarters.

All these are activities that may invite additional bank charges. People often feel that they should be getting some of these services free of charge.

There are many situations that can lead to you overdrawing your funds from the bank account. In a case of overdrawing, a fee is levied by the bank on the extra amount that has been withdrawn. This is merely because the bank has done you a favor by providing you with funds when you did not have enough. Another example that we can look at is that of issuing a check to a third party while being unaware of insufficient funds.

In such a case, the check will not be cleared. Instead, it will have to be presented once again after we have made arrangements for the necessary funds to be deposited. A charge will be levied on the cheque that has bounced and additional fees will be levied for representing the same. Prudent financial management dictates that we do bother about these little sums too.

Similarly, if we have secured a loan and issued a post-dated check, it may be bad news if we are unable to fund it. In a case like this, we will have to pay the bank a certain amount to hold the cheque till we deposit sufficient funds into it. Any service carried out by the bank for our benefit will be outside of what we are eligible for. It should not surprise anyone, then, that a bank charges for these services.

While traveling or otherwise we may be unable to locate our bank's ATM, so we might use the teller machine of another bank. However, a certain amount will also be debited from our account for the same purpose. Even if not free, the ATM card serves a valuable function.

The point that we must note is that every bank has a number of paid and unpaid services. Make sure that you do not take any service for granted.