-Mandie- / photo on flickrThe federal government maintains
thousands of bank accounts with no money in them. Do you know what
happens if you have no money in a bank account? Pointless fees! To
be precise:

$65 active account fee times 13,712 empty accounts equals ARE
YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?

According to The Washington Post, the federal
government is currently paying at least $890,000 a year in fees on
bank accounts have have no money in them. All the government would
have to do to save almost a million bucks a year is close the
accounts. 

The Office of Management and Budget has actually been warning
agencies about this problem for a couple of years now. And their
hollering has borne some fruit. Last year, the number of zero
balance accounts was 28,000. So good work, I guess.

How did the feds end up with all these sad, empty accounts? The
Washington Post breaks it down:

First, a federal agency gives out a grant. It doesn’t just write
a check; it creates an account within a large, government-run
depository. The grantee can draw money out from there.

Then, at some point, it’s over. The money runs out. Or the
grant’s time limit expires. The agency is given notice: It’s time
to close the account down.

But that takes work. An agency is first required to audit the
account, to make sure the money was spent properly. (In rare cases,
some money is returned to the grantee, and the dead account comes
alive again.) That’s generally supposed to happen within 180
days.

If it doesn’t happen, however, there is no formal consequence.
And so, sometimes, it doesn’t happen.

Right now, about 7 percent of the 202,000 total government
grant accounts are devoid of money. These sit on the books, costing
about $5.42 per month. The service fees are the same, whether an
account is full or empty.

Which means the wasted $890,000 is really just a nagging
reminder that there was probably lots of other misspent money in
those grants, but no one has bothered to follow up on where the
money in those zero balance accounts went.