If you’re a Citibank customer, you may be getting hit with a new $7.50 monthly checking fee.
Borrowing
Credit Card Upheaval: Time for You to Wake Up and Take Charge
Whether you’ve got one credit card in your wallet or 13, whether you carry a balance or always pay your full bill on time, big changes happening to the way banks and credit card companies do business will affect you. What can you do? At the very least, you really ought to take a few seconds to read notifications from your credit card …
Is Your DNA to Blame for Your Debt?
Researchers have found that—get this—if you’re unlucky enought to carry a certain gene in your DNA, you’re a lot more likely to have credit card debt. The study prompts the question: Is buying $300 jeans in your genes?
Black Friday Shopping Tips
Here’s one sure-fire way to save during the holiday shopping blitz—but one that a lot of folks probably don’t want to hear: Don’t buy stuff for yourself.
The Text-Message Savings Plan
Do you want to save more money? A new study shows that people were able to boost their bank-account balances when they regularly received simple reminders to save via text message.
In the Land of Opportunity, Not as Much Opportunity as You Might Think
Is a combination of hard work, intelligence, and talent a guarantee of success? Or has the American Dream become just a dream?
Gov’t Warning: FreeCreditReport.com Isn’t Free
Websites that lure consumers with the promise of free credit reports are merely trying to get you to sign up and pay for monthly subscriptions to credit-monitoring services.
Cheapskate Wisdom from … Barney Frank
“Don’t do people favors without asking them.”
40-Year-Old Deadbeat
At least partly because of the recession, more and more fully-grown people—ones you’d probably refer to as “Sir” or “Madam,” or at least as “adults”—are financially dependent on their parents.
$300 Jeans: Going the Way of Acid Wash?
When you look back on fashion trends, what you see is often not pretty. Now, in light of a bleak economy—and a rather obvious realization that denim is just, well, denim—we can all turn to someone who bought a $300 pair of “premium” jeans and say, “What the heck were you thinking?”
Are You Broke? Perpetually So?
If you answer yes, you probably avidly try to keep up with the Joneses, buy stuff you don’t need, never plan ahead, pay more than you need to all the time, and blame your problems on outside forces.
Bank Fee Horror Stories
There’s no shortage of anecdotes about banks hitting their customers with odd fees. For example, many banks offer free checking accounts for customers who use direct deposit. One teacher says that her bank gives her fee-free checking during the months her salary is direct deposited—but because she gets paid only ten months of the year …