Careless consumers share the blame for forking over $24 billion to banks in overdraft fees last year, but, as the NY Times points out, bank policies encourage these penalties.

(If you have over drafted with Wachovia/Wells Fargo, call customer service and ask them to waive your fees.)

Since 45% of U.S. banks rely on these funds to stay profitable, it's little surprise that they rig their banking practices to maximize the amount of overdrafts incurred.

Here are five rip-off techniques:

1. Rearranging transactions. Let's say you have $100 in your account, and you make five debit card purchases, in this order: $1, $1, $1, $1 and $99. Instead of processing these transactions in the order in which they were made, the bank will process the largest first. In this example, that means you would be hit with three overdraft penalties instead of one.
2. Depositing slowly, charging quickly. If your account is low on funds, banks are more likely to delay processing your deposits. Further, banks willprocess purchases faster if it will result in an overdraft penalty.
3. Charging additional fees. At some banks, if you don't pay the overdraft fees within a certain time frame, they will tack on additional fees.
4. Allowing debit card purchases. Banks allow customers to make purchases on debit cards with insufficient funds, instead of denying the transaction or notifying the buyer before finalizing the order.
5. Not instituting maximums. Few banks will limit the amount of fees you can be charged in a single day. If you don't realize you've overdrawn, it can quickly snowball - especially if you make several purchases (even of a few dollars) during one day. To boot, many of the penalty ceilings don't kick in until you've already lost hundreds of dollars.