One of the most contentious parts of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation enacted in the wake of the credit crisis was the Durbin Amendment. You may not know it by name, but you know its primary effect: higher bank fees. …
Nadya Suleman has made no secret of her financial troubles, which came to a head this week when the “Octomom” filed for bankruptcy. The mother of 14 owes creditors nearly $1 million, court papers showed, roughly 20 times as much …
Today, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley is signing into law the first piece of legislation designed to prevent employees or prospective employees from being forced to turn over their login credentials for social networking sites.
Prepaid debit cards are becoming the de facto debit cards for a growing number of people these days. This is partially because issuers are promoting the heck out of them and partially because people, especially younger people, view them as preferable to a traditional bank account. As a result, a small number of colleges are experimenting …
Conventional wisdom has been that low-income people are better served by mainstream financial institutions than by check cashing storefronts, payday lenders and other providers of fringe financial products. But now, that wisdom …
Sure, warehouse clubs are great for picking up pallets of bottled water and giant tubs of ranch dressing. But would you turn to one for your health insurance? Costco just announced a partnership with insurer Aetna that will let …
Having a medical crisis that lands you in the hospital is stressful enough, but there’s a disturbing new trend that’s so bad, it makes the indignity of wearing a hospital gown pale in comparison. Debt collectors are masquerading …
While you’ve been pretending to read the fine print on everything from your cell phone contract to your Starbucks card, companies have been slipping in legalese that robs you of your rights. A little-understood but rapidly expanding practice called “mandatory arbitration” is replacing your right to sue a company in court — a right many …
Being a victim of identity theft is always a frustrating ordeal, but millions of Americans have to face an even more troubling scenario: Finding out that a criminal has applied for credit in the name of a deceased family member. …
Federal Reserve rules implemented in 2010 were supposed to protect customers from getting hit with overdraft fees if they unwittingly made a purchase that put their account in the red. Now, two years later, banks are still raking …
A Seattle blogger who goes by the handle Rex won a small-claims lawsuit he filed against Apple after it reneged on a promise to fix his defective computer. This kind of man-bites-dog moment is rare, but in the wake of legislation …
Credit requirements for home loans have remained very restrictive even as banks are offering credit cards and car loans to riskier borrowers. This has been pretty well-documented, but until now, nobody had actually crunched the …
