In line with the Shopper Monetary Safety Bureau, People paid $15 billion in overdraft charges final 12 months. That’s an terrible lot of cash that customers wasted on pointless and preventable charges. CNN Cash reported:

In 2016, U.S. customers 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 accordance with new information 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 test and overdraft charges, in accordance with CFPB. And this 12 months the business rang up at $11.41 billion. That’s up 2.2% from 2015, which was the primary 12 months banks started reporting complete overdraft and bounced test charges to the CFPB.

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

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

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