That is a reasonable argument. (You'd make a great banker!) However, realize that in today's world the message coming from banks is spend-spend-spend.<p>Furthermore, a huge amount of overdraft fees comes from the practice of auto-enrollment in overdraft protection. If consumers need education, having transactions go through at the point-of-sale despite having an empty bank account is a recipe for trouble.<p>Last, is the issue of check ordering.  (Considered a "courtesy" by most banks!)  Today, most banks clear all debit card purchases (and checks) at the end of the day, after sorting them from largest to smallest.  The idea is to run your account into the red as quickly as possible, saving the small $1-5 charges for the end.  This simple greedy algorithm (no pun intended) maximizes the number of overdrafts.  The typical rationale is "big checks tend to be rent and other important payments, which you would prefer to clear under any circumstance" -- laughable when the majority of overdrafts are on small, card-based debits.<p>So while I agree with you that consumer behavior needs to change, the people that need to save and not spend are exactly the ones that banks are (intentionally) targeting, and they have gotten exceedingly good at doing so.  Check order policies and automatic enrollment in OD protection only complicate the issue.