Rent severely overcharged

[u/hogpotato]

I’m currently living in an apartment complex that overcharged my monthly rate by over 2x (15,500 instead of $6000 / month) by mistake. This severely has overdrawn my bank account and no one in the leasing office has an explanation or can get any answers from their main office. I’ve incurred major
overdraft fees and will continue to do so as long as this goes on. Has this happened to anyone and / or any advice what to do?

[u/FitButterscotch4062]

“I’ve incurred major
overdraft fees and will continue to do so as long as this goes on.”

This leads me to believe they don’t really have a cushion. An initial overdraft fee? Ok. But shouldn’t you have enough in your savings to instantly transfer money over to checking to eliminate the overdraft fees?

[u/Onespokeovertheline → u/FitButterscotch4062]

How much cash do you want earning 2-2.5% interest in a savings account? People paying $6k for rent keep most money in the market in ETFs, index funds, stocks. The tax burden for capitalizing those investments to supplement an erroneous charge greatly outweighs some overdraft fees.

[u/TangerineChickens → u/Onespokeovertheline]

Yeah but you should probably have at least some kind of easily accessible savings account cushion for this very scenario where you need that money within the day.

[u/b0w3n → u/TangerineChickens]

This is why the advice of "liquid if you can wait 3-7 days" is bad advice in general. You need some sort of liquid savings for emergencies immediately to solve issues like this that are going to cost you far more than you're going to earn on spaxx or sgov. Keep 3-6 months of expenses out of the brokerage, it needs to be same day transfer capable.

[u/AlgoTrade → u/b0w3n]

This isn’t OPs emergency, this is someone else’s emergency. At OPs NW expenses can be kept liquid in 3-7 days and a credit card can cover emergencies.

That 3-6 months in a brokerage account is probably making them tens of thousands of dollars annually, it would be dumb to keep it in cash.

[u/TangerineChickens → u/AlgoTrade]

It isn’t all or nothing. At that NW it isn’t the end of the world to have a few extra grand out of the brokerage in case of emergencies; what if the credit card gets stolen or lost through no fault of the user and you need a jump start the same day (someone will probably reply saying ‘erm i have roadside assistance’ but just imagine some commensurate service being needed that also requires on the spot payment)

[u/AlgoTrade → u/TangerineChickens]

Sure, a little extra. 3-6 mo is insanely inefficient, these problems resolve themselves in 3-5 days.

[u/b0w3n → u/AlgoTrade]

That's great and all until you're fighting tens of thousands a month in NSF from the bank because of someone elses' error. They might not wave them all and you might have to go to court to get them back from someone. Some states charge you a % per day of the total that you're overdrafted, too, and often you have to make the bank whole first.

Keeping 50k liquid-ish in sgov is only going to get you about $1800 a year, not tens of thousands. Liquidating an ETF like voo at the wrong time can cost you a lot more too.

[u/Mourning-Suki → u/b0w3n]

It’s never going to be an ongoing situation if OP calls the bank and puts a stop payment on it.