Just found out my old broker charged me a fee for 11 years and I never caught it

I was digging through my old statements trying to figure out tax stuff and stumbled on a recurring $12 monthly "account maintenance" fee that went back to 2013. Had no idea that was even a thing with my old firm, thought it was swept into trading costs. Found it by cross-referencing my year-end summaries from Fidelity against the actual monthly PDFs, took me a solid afternoon with a spreadsheet. Once I added it all up it was around $1,584 just for doing nothing, which stings worse than any bad trade I ever made. My current broker does have a similar fee on paper but they wave it once you hit 25k, and I never bothered to check the fine print before. Anyone else ever find hidden charges they missed for years, or is it just me being careless with the small print?

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jordanr8924d ago

Damn, that's brutal! Once you start looking for one hidden fee you realize companies hide this stuff everywhere, like my gym did the same thing with a "facility upgrade" charge for years and I never noticed until I actually read the bill one day. It's wild how we just trust the system to be fair and it's always nickel and diming us like that.