The down side of saving a big chunk of change on Black Friday is that you usually have to spend a lot of money to realize those savings. That's why we at Walletpop were happy to see a Black Friday deal that is literally just about the savings.

On Black Friday, online bank ING Direct will announce special interest rates for opening a CD or the brand's signature Electric Orange checking account (they're keeping mum on the details of those rates until Friday but have added a teaser page to their Web site).

This blog has details of two other promotions, though: a $683 discount off an ING mortgage (the amount is the average dollar cost Americans spend on holiday gifts annually, according to the National Retail Federation) as well as a Cyber Monday 20% discount on trades through ShareBuilder, its trading subsidiary.

Is the personal check on its way out?

The Dallas Morning News recently suggested that -- and, no, they aren't the first to suggest it, nor will they be the last -- but they point out that several stores lately have made it their policy to refuse personal paper checks: Diesel, True Religion, Ed Hardy and Lululemon Athletica, which are all clothing stores. And maybe there's something in the water, since the clothing giant Gap is also exploring the concept of no longer accepting personal checks.

My WalletPop colleague Martha C. White has also written about Whole Foods no longer accepting checks in some stores, as part of a get-rid-of-checks experiment.

There's a lot of public anger at banks these days. Pick a bank topic, any topic -- bailouts, executive pay, interest rates, ATM, NSF, overdraft fees -- and it's hard to imagine anyone nodding happily. But all this anger begs the question: When we're frustrated and being thwarted by our bank, what can we do to make ourselves... well, happy?

If you've heard any of the following from your bank lately, here's what you ought to say in return.

"You have six overdraft charges." One or two overdraft charges certainly aren't fun, but five or more, and you can suddenly feel your monthly budget going to ruin. If your bank isn't one of those that's curtailing its overdraft fees (Bank of America), or it is but hasn't stopped yet (yeah, you heard us, U.S. Bank), you may, unfortunately, know that feeling.

Millions - possibly billions - of dollars are homeless, lacking a warm, dry bank account providing a roof over their heads. Although it might seem hard to imagine a day where we're stuffing mattresses with money instead of depositing paychecks in the bank, analysts say that scenario isn't too far fetched.

According to Directo, a company providing paycards to unbanked workers, the recession has sent the number of unbanked Americans soaring to about 50 million. That's up from the estimated 28 million unbanked consumers in 2007.

While you might assume those who are unbanked are jobless, low income or even homeless Americans, that's not the case. A majority of them are employed, middle-income earners, many of whom are parents.

It might be the ultimate early-morning eye-opener: imagine stopping in Dunkin' Donuts for a morning coffee and opening a checking account at the same time.

It's not a far-fetched scenario, as Citizens Bank this month opened the first full-service bank branch in a Dunkin' Donuts shop. And if the venture succeeds, the bank says it may roll out more partnerships with the breakfast-treat chain.

Citizens, which is owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS), opened the branch this month in Bellingham, Mass., a suburb southwest of Boston. Part of the bank's strategy is to provide banking beyond traditional hours, with the Dunkin' Donuts branch open seven days a week and from 6:30 a.m. until 6 p.m. on weekdays.

Dear banks:

I have a suggestion. I'm hoping you'll toss my idea around, and hopefully not toss it out . Let me help you help us.

In the last two weeks, as you know, a lot of you have been announcing strategies to minimize overdraft fees in the event that your customers accidentally spend more than they have. Bank of America, U.S. Bank, Chase and many more -- you've all been so nice about saying you'll cut us some slack if we go into overdraft by $5 or even $10, and limiting the damage to four overdraft fees.

It's something that should never happen, of course, but it's something that happens quite a bit to Americans these days -- as debit cards are used more frequently than ever, and surely, people not having access to credit and losing their jobs have had some affect as well. As the oft-quoted number goes, Americans will spend at least $38.5 billion in overdraft fees this year.

Everybody's worst online banking fears have come true -- for some German banking customers. The rest of us can hold our collective breath and hope that we don't have to deal with this, although it seems inevitable that some of us will.

A cyber-criminal gang in the Ukraine has developed a very elaborate system for not just stealing the money from bank accounts, but tricking the computer into displaying a fake online account -- so that in August, several hundred German customers were looking at their online bank account and seeing money that wasn't actually there.

Apparently, these fake online accounts aren't static either -- so if you transfer money from one account to another, it'll play along. The only way you won't realize you have no money is if you do banking from an uninfected computer or, say, go to your ATM. I can imagine the screams of horror emitting from some of these poor (literally) customers. I'm pretty sure if it had happened to me, I'd have had a stroke.

If you're a customer of BB&T Corp, a bank in 13 states and Washington, D.C., and haven't heard, you're less likely to get an overdraft come Jan. 1, Not much less likely, however, but at least if you make a mistake by a few bucks, you won't get creamed for it.

They're going to limit the number of times you can be charged to four, and if you go into the negative by less than $5, you won't get a fee. So if you're a BB&T customer and $5.01 in the hole, I can imagine you're going to have some fun conversations with the manager.

As you may know by now, several banks have finally gotten the message that America is more than a little weary of overdraft charges. And so Bank of America, Chase Bank, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo have all made changes, or have announced that they plan to, when it comes to doling out fees to customers whose checking accounts have gone into negative territory.

So what are people saying? Here's a random round-up of thoughts and opinions from around the country...

Consider this case: a man miscalculates how much money is in his checking account, uses it seven times in a day with no single charge more than $12 and ends up charged with $234 in overdraft fees. Welcome to the dangers of debit cards.

The plight of Peter Means, 59, of Colorado and how he came to be facing all these fees -- which in one instance cost him more than $38 for a cup of coffee at Starbucks ($4.14 for the coffee, $34 for the overdraft) -- was chronicled in the New York Times. Means' situation is just an example of how big a profit center these fees have become for banks, how important they are for banks and how consumer outrage over them have pushed lawmakers to try to rein them in.

Soon after WalMart announced it will pay employees without direct-deposit banking via debit cards, Consumers Union, the organization that publishes Consumers Reports, came out with this in-depth review of "prepaid cards" and why they suck...I mean, why they're "second-tier banking account substitutes." I

n a nutshell, here's why:

• The fees you're charged to use them are multiple, high and confusing.
• They don't provide great protection when someone steals your card or uses the card account numbers.
• Their promises to give you a credit line or build a credit record can be expensive and overblown.
• Unlike bank accounts, prepaid cards aren't FDIC-guaranteed, meaning you may not recover all your money if the issuing bank goes under.

It was a Sunday morning, in Hyattsville, Md., right about 10:30 a.m., and not exactly the time you would expect your purse to be stolen from your car while you're paying for gas. But that's what happened to Harrine Freeman, igniting a nightmarish plunge into the murky waters of identity theft.

Of course, if it can happen to Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, I suppose it's not surprising this happened to Freeman. But still, this case seems more interesting given that Freeman is a personal finance expert who knows something about identity theft. Her firm, H.E. Freeman, offers credit repair, and Freeman often conducts personal finance workshops at schools, churches and other organizations.

Freeman, who I interviewed about a year ago in an article that appeared on CreditCards.com, dropped me a line, thinking that WalletPop readers might be interested in her story, and I think she's right.

The rough economy has instilled a new fear of consumer debt in some Americans and, for the first time in a long time, there are some signs that people are pulling back on credit card use.

Hoping to augment the natural shift toward debt cards, some banks are offering rewards to people who buy stuff with debit cards -- a perk that was once only available to credit card users. USA Today reports that "Integra, a Midwestern bank, introduced its first debit card reward program in July. Sovereign launched a debit rewards program late last year. And credit unions such as Addison Avenue Federal - whose customers are employees of high-tech companies - are offering new perks if consumers use debit cards a certain number of times a month."

Just when you thought you had heard it all.

Tampa Bay Florida's Channel 10 is reporting that one Steve Valdez tried to cash a check that was written on his wife's Bank of America check. The policy at Bank of America is that if you're going to cash a check and you don't have an account there, which is apparently the case with Valdez, the bank will request your thumbprint for identification purposes. The bank wanted Valdez to put his thumbprint on the back of his wife's check, which is a standard policy at Bank of America.

Valdez would have been happy to comply, but he has no thumbs. Valdez was born without arms and wears prosthetic devices.

From what Valdez told Channel 10, the teller said, "Obviously, you can't give a thumbprint." But even though Valdez had two forms of photo ID with him, the bank manager refused to cash the check.

Instead, the manager suggested that Valdez bring his wife back to the bank, or he could open an account.

Valdez asked the bank manager if he had ever heard of the American with Disabilities Act, and the manager apparently countered that the bank was being hospitable by offering those choices.

Anyway, the long and short of this is, a spokesperson from Bank of America later admitted that in this case, the manager should have made an exception to the rule. Meanwhile, I'm betting that in future training, or whoever formulates the policy at Bank of America, this will be addressed.

The free checking account as we know it is likely at the start of its death throes.

This is according to Hank Israel, a director at Novantas, a consulting firm for the banking and credit card industry and which, last week, was featured in a WalletPop post about credit card rewards. Israel was interviewed on "The CEO Show," a syndicated radio program, predicting the demise of the free checking account, and when I heard about that, I figured I had to talk to him.

I've been griping for some time now on WalletPop that free checking is hardly free. After all, the average household pays more than 12 overdraft charges a year. At, say, $35 a pop, that's $420 a year -- hardly a free checking account. So I was interested to get Israel's take on the evolution of the free checking account, and sure enough, he didn't disappoint. Israel is a font of knowledge on banking.

So here's the main gist of what we talked about.