Your first bank account and how not to lose money on it

Bring your Social Security card and a photo ID. Bring a parent, too, because under 18 you'll need one as a joint owner on the account. That's not a leash. That's the law, and honestly it's useful, because if something goes sideways at the bank there's an adult on the account who can actually get it fixed by phone.

Go to a branch in person the first time, even if the bank has a slick app. Ten minutes with a human being who works there will teach you more than an hour of tapping through screens. And you get to ask questions, which is where the money is.

Ask these before you sign anything

Banks make money on people who don't ask. Don't be that guy. Write the answers in your phone notes while the person is talking.

• What's the monthly maintenance fee, and how do I get it waived? Plenty of teen and student accounts have none. Some waive it if you keep a minimum balance or set up direct deposit. Get the exact condition.
• What happens if I spend more than I have? This is the big one. Ask for the overdraft fee in dollars, and ask whether it can hit you more than once in a day.
• Which ATMs are free for me? Using the wrong machine on a Friday night can cost you twice, once from the ATM and once from your own bank.
• Is there a fee for paper statements? Sometimes. Go paperless and read them anyway.

A credit union is worth a look next to the big national bank. Smaller branch network, sometimes a clunkier app, usually lower fees and a person who remembers your name. The trade-off is real. If you travel a lot or you're headed out of state for school in two years, the big bank's ATM coverage might be worth more to you than the fee difference.

Turn off overdraft coverage. Seriously.

Overdraft "protection" sounds like a seatbelt. It isn't. It's permission for the bank to let your card go through when you don't have the money, and then charge you a fee for the privilege.

Tell them you want to opt out of overdraft coverage on debit card purchases. Then when your balance is $4 and the sandwich is $9, the card just declines. That's a mildly awkward five seconds at the register. The alternative is a fee that can cost more than the whole meal.

The classic way guys get burned: a free trial you forgot about renews, your balance is thin, the charge goes through and drops you below zero, and then the next three small purchases each get their own fee. You wake up owing real money over a subscription you stopped using in October. Opt out and none of that happens.

Open two accounts, not one

Checking is the account with the debit card. It's for money that's leaving. Savings is the one you don't carry in your pocket.

Every time money comes in, split it before you spend a dollar of it. A simple version that actually survives contact with real life: if you give at church, that comes off the top first. Then a fixed percentage to savings. The rest is yours to spend without guilt, which is the part people skip when they teach this.

Pick a percentage you can hold in a bad month, not your best month. Twenty percent is strong. Ten percent that you never break beats thirty percent that you abandon in March.

Then automate it. Most apps let you schedule a transfer from checking to savings for a set day. Set it for the day after you usually get paid. Money you never see is money you don't argue with yourself about.

Set up the alerts the first day

This is the ten minutes that separates guys who have a handle on their money from guys who get surprised. In the app, find notifications and switch on:

• An alert for every transaction, or at least every one over a few dollars.
• A low-balance alert at a number that makes you pay attention. Twenty-five dollars, maybe.
• An alert for any deposit.

The transaction alert is also your fraud alarm. If your card number gets lifted off some website, you'll know within a minute instead of a month. Call the bank the same day, and they'll usually kill the card and start a dispute.

If you get a paycheck, ask your employer for the direct deposit form and hand it in. Your money lands faster, you're not carrying a paper check around in a hoodie pocket, and at some banks it kills the monthly fee.

Rules for the debit card

Your PIN isn't your birthday, your jersey number, or 1234. Don't text it to anyone, including your best friend, including in a joke.

Never let someone else hold your card, not even for the twenty seconds it takes them to run into the gas station. If it goes missing, you'll spend a week proving which charges weren't yours.

A debit card isn't a credit card. Spending on it doesn't build your credit score, because there's no borrowing happening. At 18 you can look at a starter credit card or getting added as an authorized user on a parent's account, and that's when credit history starts. Until then, your job is to build the habit of never spending money you don't have. That habit is worth more than the score.

The scam that targets guys your age

Someone messages you, maybe through a game or a DM, with an offer. They'll send money to your account, you keep a cut, you move the rest along. Easy.

That's called being a money mule, and it's a federal crime even if you didn't know whose money it was. Kids get charged for this. Their accounts get closed and flagged, which follows them for years.

The line is simple. Your account is for your money. Nobody else routes cash through it, ever, for any reason, no matter how good the story is.

And no legitimate bank will ever call you and ask for the code they just texted you. If you get that call, hang up and call the number printed on the back of your card. If you've already given someone a code or your login, tell your parent today. Not tomorrow. Banks can often reverse things fast if you catch them early, and you're not going to be in trouble for reporting it. The person who gets in trouble is the one who ran the scam.

Check it every Sunday

Three minutes. Open the app, scroll the week's transactions, and ask one question about each line: do I recognize this?

You'll catch the subscription you meant to cancel. You'll catch the double charge from the pizza place. You'll notice that eleven dollars here and six dollars there has quietly become seventy, which is the single most useful thing a bank statement has ever taught anybody.

Keep a small cushion in checking that you pretend isn't there. Fifty dollars works. It's the difference between a tight week and a fee.

One last thing. The day your balance first crosses a number that feels serious to you, you're going to want to spend it. That urge is the whole test, and it doesn't get easier at 25 with a bigger number. Beat it now, while the stakes are a pair of sneakers.