I admit it. I pick up discarded ATM receipts. Kinda creepy, I know, but I can't stop.
It started as an attempt to keep down the random blowing trash. As trash goes, these little slips of white paper are relatively clean and there always is a trash can nearby... But then I started actually looking at them.
Big mistake.
Here is what I have learned.
1) Nobody discards an ATM receipt if they have more than $500.00 in their account. Nobody. I have never found one with more than $500. Either folks who have cash keep their receipts or NO ONE that uses an ATM has more than $500 in their bank account. I seriously doubt the latter.
2) People that only have a little money, waste it.
Case in point, this receipt:
This person had $334.73 in their account. They withdrew $200. They paid $3 to BB&T to get the cash. They probably also paid a fee to their own bank.
So they wasted nearly 1% of their wealth to withdraw $200. Probably more.
There may be good reason for this. I certainly don't know their situation from just a discard ATM receipt.
- Maybe their bank doesn't have a local ATM.
- Maybe they really needed to get $200 at 4:55pm.
- Maybe they have a larger bank account and don't care about wasting a measly $3.
- Or maybe, just maybe, they aren't paying attention to how much money they are wasting...
Does anybody else pick these up?
I once found a receipt with a balance of over $50,000. But that's obviously a bit of an outlier. :)
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