My name is Mike Bongiorno, and I’m 24 years old, I have a B.A. in cinema studies (whatever the fuck that’s worth) and I haven’t had a steady job since graduation one year ago. I’m living on a 20s wasteland. It’s a weird time of life, I am a man completely unbound to anything. Except my parents house that is. Everyday I wake up when I please and go out to do whatever I want, I see friends, I drink coffee, and I talk. A lot. We all do though, all of my friends stuck here in 20s wasteland with me, it is a time of pontification. And pontificate is what I’m here to do; this column is dedicated to people like me who graduated college into a terrible economy that doesn’t have a place for us. The unwanted, the confused, the people having a hard time figuring out this world and their place in it, this column is for you.

Today I want to talk about my least favorite word in the English language: “Overdraft”, or is that really two words? Hhhmm. Either way it sucks! Going overdraft is simply when you spend more money on your debit card than you have in your bank account. The bank tends to not like this. They will charge you with an overdraft fee, which is their way of saying, since you have no money; you owe us more of it. It’s the banks way of kicking you while your down. Despite the fact, we work hard for little pay, it seems this country hates it’s middleclass. Overdraft fees are just one in a long line of fuck-yous the establishment has given us. That’s right I used the word establishment, call me a hippie if you want, but if you’ve ever even been inside a bank, you understand the word establishment is the perfect designation.

Now you might say, it’s easy to not go overdraft, just make sure you’ve got a good amount of money in your bank account. Well no! I don’t have a job, where am I supposed to get this money? And I need a bank account I have to use checks to pay off my bills and college loans. By the way there’s no funnier irony than the fact I need a job mainly to pay off my college loans, which I acquired whilst going to college, and I went to college BECAUSE…..say it with me kids….I needed to get a job! It’s the post college catch-22. But back to what I was saying about going overdraft, there really is no way to protecting yourself, having a lot of money in the bank as a failsafe is out (because I’m poor), and tracking everyday won’t help either, because it’s not merely about knowing what to spend. Your bank account has it’s “balance”, and its “available balance”, and it’s “sort of balance”, and it’s “maybe balance”, and ten other balances I don’t fucking understand. Just tell me how much money I have!

Also banks take out money for various things. Just yesterday I went overdraft by ten dollars, I knew I hadn’t spend it so I looked through my bank account records to find the source of this overdraft. Get this, the reason I went overdraft is that the bank took out money from my account for a monthly service, money I didn’t have. Here’s the kicker though, the service they took money out for? “Overdraft protection”…I shit you not. The reason I went overdraft is because the bank took out its monthly fee for the “overdraft protection” service. How great is that? God bless America!