The Price of Paying exposes one of the most outrageous yet overlooked corruptions in modern finance: the practice of forcing borrowers to pay fees simply to make their payments. Drawing from lived experience and expanded into a searing manifesto, Richard Sweeney reveals how banks and credit unions deliberately design outdated systems, block debit card transactions, and charge “convenience fees” that punish responsibility and my humiliate borrowers. From $25 phone-payment tolls to “External Account Transfers Unavailable” screens, Sweeney dismantles the excuses and shows how inconvenience itself has become a business model. This book is not just a financial critique — it is a moral call to action. Why should a borrower be forced to “pay to pay”? Why is responsibility commodified while failure is encouraged? Why do regulators, lawmakers, and lobbyists allow this legalized extortion to flourish? Through ten parts and fifty chapters, this manifesto traces the human cost of these practices — families nickel-and-dimed into default, the working poor bearing the heaviest burden, the middle class taxed invisibly, trust eroded, and dignity stripped. It compares global systems that prove payment can be free, exposes policy failures at home, and lays out a bold blueprint for reform. The Price of Paying is a declaration: no one should ever have to pay to pay. Responsibility must be honored, not punished. And the era of “convenience fees” must end.
