September, 2009

Wells Fargo Joins Bank of America and Chase With New Overdraft Policies

Yesterday, Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase Bank announced they were changing their policies to allow customers to opt out of overdraft protection. Wells Fargo decided to follow in their footsteps late yesterday, announcing a number of changes at this bank. The following changes also apply to Wachovia, the bank that was acquired by ...

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Vanishing Overdraft Fees Pave Way For New Charges

Almost everyone has an story about the annoyance of overdraft fees. We all had cause to rejoice after reading Smithee’s recent post about banks backing off of overdraft fees. However, banks, being the business that they are, are already scheming for new ways to wring money out of us. An AP article on a local news site ...

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FDIC Needs a Bailout from Banks This Time

Because propping up failing banks is tough FDIC borrowing back from banks – coming soon! (Photo: Ryan McFarland) It would appear that the FDIC is in need of payday loan lenders these days. Maybe they’ll need something even stronger. But here’s a possible scenario that could be in store for the federal organization that has helped insure ...

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Outlet Malls – Great Buy or Money Drain?

When I was younger, my family and I would make the annual back-to-school pilgrimage to the outlet malls located in a city about 20 minutes from where we lived. As kids, we were always excited to go, because we knew the deals would make it much easier to persuade our parents to let us get ...

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The Little Things and the Big Things: Which are More Important?

It’s easy to adopt one concept and use that concept to define your world. You commonly see this in religion, but I’m referring to personal finance concepts, as you might expect from Consumerism Commentary. One popular financial guru talks about The ECRD Factor. His followers — a guru can’t be a guru without a throng ...

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