March 2nd, 2010
Ally Bank has been making several customer-friendly tweaks to their product line which are worthy of note. First up are two that give you a way to lock in a higher rate, but with a handy exit plan in case rates start rising due to inflation or other governmental intervention.
60-day Early Withdrawal Penalties
The usual deal for a certificate of ...
March 2nd, 2010
This is part 2 of a 4 part series on getting out of debt quickly. Make sure that you read all four parts in order to get the most out of this sequence of hints on getting yourself or your family out of the debt trap.
Next you are going to want to try to consolidate all of your debt onto ...
February 5th, 2010
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I’m going to assume that we’ve all been slapped with an overdraft fee at some point in our lives. We’re not perfect, and banks are extremely sneaky at finding ways to help us overdraft our bank accounts. Here’s some information about overdraft fees and why you shouldn’t use overdraft protection services.
Overdraft Fees
Overdraft protection was designed to be a customer friendly ...
February 4th, 2010
Right now, the student loan industry is going through one of its worst periods in decades. New Federal regulations have forced many banks to stop offering student loans, and students are being forced to either find a direct loan or start paying back what they owe. Enrollment figures are being affected dramatically and right now, many students simply cannot afford ...
January 23rd, 2010
This week Liz Weston wrote about how to shop for a new bank and it made me think about how we chose the banks we work with now. For us, the criteria for judging a checking account differed from the criteria for judging a savings account. We use the two different types of accounts for different purposes, so the criteria ...
January 22nd, 2010
Although the premise of balancing a checkbook sounds easy enough, the fact is that the vast majority of Americans really don’t take the time to do it, or they do not know how to do it properly. There is a lot more than simple addition and subtraction when it comes to balancing a checkbook and if you are not careful, ...
January 22nd, 2010
If you’re a savvy investor, you most certainly have a fair bit of cash tucked away for general spending and emergencies. The stock market is a long term investment and if 2009 taught us anything, it was to not have money you need to spend in the stock market. So where do you put the money you don’t want in ...
January 14th, 2010
Leveraged finance relates to funding a business, a company or another investment using more debt than would be considered normal. More than normal debt is going to imply by nature that the funding is a riskier prospect, and therefore more costly than normal borrowing in general. As a result, leveraged finance options are most commonly employed in order to achieve ...
January 5th, 2010
With the Credit Card Act of 2009 looming, its rules will go into effect in February, credit card companies are starting to institute more fees ahead of the rules changes. A new Wall Street Journal article cites several of these new fees including $1 processing fees for printed statements, reduction in rewards programs, and fees for inactive accounts. We first ...
December 30th, 2009

Many Americans find themselves in quite the situation financially these days. Their situation is nothing short of bondage. They are completely trapped because of years of borrowing money to finance a lifestyle that was unattainable without debt. They aren’t the only guilty party. The government has encouraged it and the banking system was more than willing to loan the money.
The ...