Savings Account - WalletPop

Bank branches in high schools a good financial lesson

Vanessa Richardson Mar 9th 2010 @ 11:00AM EST Filed Under: Banks, Family Money, School, Banking - Checking Account, Banking - Savings Account

High schools with bank branches, ATMs and tellers to help students withdraw money? Can we trust teenagers with these just down the hall from chem lab? I gave it some thought last week when I went to pick up my cousin Cate, who I blogged about recently regarding her pondering the merits of public versus private colleges. She needed a ride home from her high school, but I needed to stop on the way and withdraw some cash from an ATM. "No problem," Cate told me. "You can do it here."

What? "Yeah, my school has a bank branch here," Cate said.

She led me down a hallway of classrooms to the newest branch of the Golden 1 Credit Union, opened last fall. It's a tiny room but it's stocked with computer screens, brochures on the credit union's checking and savings accounts, and student bank tellers working behind the counter.

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Sallie Mae unveils 2 ways to save for college

Geoff Williams Mar 4th 2010 @ 11:30AM EST Filed Under: Money College, School, Banking - Savings Account

Attention, beleaguered parents! If you're trying to save for your kids' college education, this little news item may be for you.

Sallie Mae, the nation's largest lender of college student loans, has just unveiled two ways to save: certificates of deposit and an FDIC-insured, online savings account. Let me quickly review the details on what Sallie Mae is offering.

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Banks use scare tactics to get you to sign up for overdraft protection

Martha C. White Feb 24th 2010 @ 11:00AM EST Filed Under: Banks, Banking - Checking Account, Banking - Savings Account

As we've told you previously, new rules about bank overdraft "protection" programs kick in this coming July. The new rules basically say you have to voluntarily sign up to let your bank keep processing debit card transactions even after your account falls into the red and also charge you around $35 each time.

It seems like a no-brainer, right? Why would you sign up for a service like this? Well, because banks have started alarming their customers with direct mail that makes not signing up sound very, very scary. The New York Times has a story that details some of the scare tactics banks are pulling out.

Maybe you've already gotten one of these letters (or more than one!). If not, and if you don't want to click on the Times link, here's the short version: They'll warn you that your debit card might not work. (Of course, it only won't work if you don't have any money in your account.) They use words like "emergency" to make you think of the worst possible scenario, and they underline words and use red ink a lot.

In other words, this is just a lot of hype. There are plenty of other ways you can protect yourself if your account runs low and you have an emergency, points out Kathleen Day, spokesperson for the Center for Responsible Lending.

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It's America Saves Week, so why aren't you saving?

Martha C. White Feb 22nd 2010 @ 3:45PM EST Filed Under: Saving Money, Banking - Savings Account, Economizer

It's officially America Saves Week, but according to the National Foundation for Credit Counseling (NFCC), far too many Americans aren't saving, and they're placing themselves at risk for a downward spiral of debt.

If you're an average American family, you only have about $10,000 in net financial assets -- and that includes the money you need to pay day-to-day bills and buy things like gas and groceries as well as pay for bigger things like the mortgage, car payments and credit card bills.

While the total savings rate has inched up a bit in the past few years, when we as a nation were literally spending more than we were saving, we still need to ramp up our savings efforts.

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A different, slightly cheaper kind of overdraft protection

Martha C. White Jan 22nd 2010 @ 9:00AM EST Filed Under: Banks, Banking - Checking Account, Banking - Savings Account

Let's get the obvious out of the way first: We don't want you to overdraw your checking account. Spending more money than you actually have is not ideal, to say the least, and always winds up costing you more -- sometimes much more -- in the long run.

But banks made more than $38 billion in overdraft fees alone in 2009, so it's apparent that a lot of Americans are spending more money than they have in their checking accounts.

New rules about overdraft fees kick in this coming July. As we've pointed out in other posts, though, this doesn't mean you're off the hook if you try to buy something when you account balance is at zero. Rather, you'll just get slapped with an "insufficient funds" fee, which can cost as much as that overdraft "protection" fee you thought you were avoiding.

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Will customers have to say goodbye to free checking?

Martha C. White Jan 21st 2010 @ 11:00AM EST Filed Under: Banks, Banking - Checking Account, Banking - Savings Account

There's a lot of good stuff going on as far as the government cracking down on the way banks and credit-card companies have been treating their customers lately. The CARD Act kicks into gear next month, and Federal Reserve rules that come into play this summer will stop the frustrating practice of being automatically enrolled in overdraft "protection" programs that zing you for $35 if you go into the red. But there's a drawback to these reforms: Banks are still going to be looking for ways to make money.

Banks were expected to make $38.5 billion from overdraft charges alone in 2009, so they're going to want to make up that shortfall -- along with the money their credit-card units earn that will be curbed thanks to the CARD Act -- somehow. One way they'll probably do it is by reducing or eliminating free checking.

This Bankrate.com article points out that offers of free checking have been dwindling, and many "free" checking programs now come with conditions or catches, such as minimum balance requirements or direct deposit. The article also suggests that customers who want to keep free checking might be limited to online- and ATM-based transactions only. Translation: If you want to speak to a real human being, you'll have to pony up.

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The "move your money" movement gets noticed

Martha C. White Dec 31st 2009 @ 9:00AM EST Filed Under: Banks, Banking - Checking Account, Banking - Savings Account

An online media maven is urging Americans to switch banks, and she wants her crusade to go viral. On the Huffington Post website, founder Arianna Huffington introduces what she calls the "move your money" campaign. The idea is to get Americans -- all Americans -- to close their accounts at big banks and transplant their personal finances to smaller banks. The budding cause has its own web site, moveyourmoney.info, including a link where you can plug in your zip code and find a list of smaller banks.

Huffington singles out the Big Four banks (that would be Bank of America, Citi, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo) for particular ire, pointing out that they've curbed business lending even since receiving TARP money. She urges Americans to park their money at community banks instead of these TARP-receiving behemoths.

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Bank deposit error in your favor? Give it back

Janean Chun Dec 9th 2009 @ 1:00PM EST Filed Under: Banks, Extracurriculars, Banking - Checking Account, Banking - Savings Account

Remember when Uncle Billy in It's a Wonderful Life loses the bank deposit, and George's troubles ensue (and a holiday classic is born)? Or when Loretta Castorini in Moonstruck forgets a bank deposit as part of a series of comedic misunderstandings? Bank deposit bloopers happen in real-life as well, but the dollar amounts are considerably higher and the bank deposit bloopers are often caused by the bank, not the customer. And, the end-results of these bank deposit bloopers are, unfortunately, not always as heartwarming as in the movies.

Take Randy and Melissa Marie Pratt, whose perceived windfall turned into jail time, when they took an erroneous bank deposit and ran. Melissa made a bank deposit to FNB Bank in the summer of 2008 of $1,772.50, but the bank read the check as $177,250. When the central Pennsylvania couple saw the difference in their bank balance, they wrote checks to another account, quit their jobs, bought a new vehicle and moved to Orlando, Fla. They were in the process of buying a house before the bank deposit mistake was traced.

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Why 30 million Americans lack banking services

Martha C. White Dec 7th 2009 @ 1:00PM EST Filed Under: Banks, Banking - Checking Account, Banking - Savings Account

More than a million Americans lost access to banks last year, bringing the total up to 30 million people in this country who can't even open a savings account or write a check. The issue of the "unbanked," as they're being called, is a serious one, and the recession is only making the problem worse.

According to the FDIC, which compiled the stats, poor, immigrant and minority members of society are most likely to have trouble finding a bank. In total, a whopping 25.6 percent of all citizens are unbanked or "underbanked," a situation which makes their day-to-day financing more expensive and makes it extremely difficult for them to attain upward mobility.

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