A few years ago, a roomate of ours who often wrote small checks bounced a big check – and the bank went ahead and ran 9 small ones after it, that all bounced. $300 in fees.

She could have gotten a payday loan that would have covered all of them for about $40 at the local pawnshop. On the other hand, if she were the kind of person to think “gee, I don’t have enough cash to pay my cell phone bill, what’s the best way to do that?” she would not have had a bunch of little checks floating around she wasn’t sure would go through, either.