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.

Americans are saving more of their earnings than they have in years, and that's a good thing. But unfortunately, we're not being rewarded for it the way we were in flusher years.

By now, everyone has heard about the government's unprecedented actions to drop interest rates to historic lows so cash-strapped individuals, businesses and banks can borrow on more forgiving terms. The down side of this is that bank account holders are now getting rock-bottom interest returns on their money.

Currently, we're saving around 3% of our collective income. That's not really an achievement to be proud of -- not yet, anyway --- but it's still a great step up from where we were a couple of years ago when the U.S. had a negative savings rate, meaning that we as a nation were literally spending more than we made.

As with too many lessons I try to teach my daughter, now 5, I end up caving in and the lesson I set out to instill is lost.

We'll see if it turns out the same way with her savings account we recently opened together, but it couldn't have been a strong lesson in how to save money when immediately after leaving the bank, we went to a store where I bought her a promised toy.

I'll get back to the toy spending in a bit, but first I'd like to focus on the good part of that afternoon -- opening a savings account in her name in an effort to teach her about saving money.

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.

Along with cell phone plans, credit cards and gas prices, BillShrink.com is now helping consumers find deals on something many people don't shop around for -- savings accounts and certificates of deposits, or CDs.

Starting Tuesday, Sept. 29, BillShrink will find in seconds what it could take hours to do with a "painful calculation" by creating a spreadsheet to find banks offering the best rates, said Schwark Satyavolu, the company's president and co-founder.

"It is not something you can't do," Satyavolu said in a telephone interview. "It's just something ... most people don't have the time to do."

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.

Ken and Daria Dolan, America's first family of personal finance, answer your questions every Friday.

Click here to ask Ken and Daria your question.

Americans have lost trillions -- with a "T" -- of dollars in the stock and housing market collapses. The average person with a 401(k) plan has lost five years worth of their savings! No wonder people are nervous about whether they have enough money saved for retirement. Today, Ken and Daria Dolan of Dolans.com have a surprising answer to the question "How much money do I need in retirement." The conventional wisdom is dead wrong, they say -- listen to it and your retirement dream could become a nightmare.

Dear Ken and Daria,

How can i figure out if I have enough money to retire?

--Mary

Use our retirement planning worksheet to figure out how much you need for retirement. It's not too late to rebuild your retirement savings!

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.

Right about now there are a lot of college freshmen either starting classes or packing up the car with Mom and Dad to head off for school. And while it probably isn't the first thing on anyone's minds, eventually the question may arise: Where am I going to do my banking?

It's a question that probably comes about less these days because there are more national banks. Not to sound like I belong in an old folks home -- I'm pushing 40 -- but back in my day, I had a bank account at my parents' bank in our hometown, and it was a small, independent bank in Middletown, Ohio. There was no branch in Bloomington, Ind., so I wound up banking with the university's credit union.

It may not be enough to get people to drop their banks and race to U.S. Bank, but it could be a useful innovation. U.S. Bank just announced that they're the first bank in America to add, as their press release says, "Visa payWave technology to an unembossed debit card that is issued instantly to an account holder upon opening an account."

In English, this means that if you go to U.S. Bank and open an account, you won't have to do with a temporary debit card number while you wait for the real card to show up in the mail. They'll just give you a card after you sign up for an account, and you can use it immediately.

At the moment, they're just testing this at certain U.S. Bank branches in Denver and Salt Lake City, but if this goes well, obviously they'll roll out the technology to all of their branches across the country. And one can imagine that if U.S. Bank does that, someday in the future, all banks will.

The arrest last week of former NBA player Antoine Walker for allegedly writing $1 million in bad checks offers two lessons worth following. And if you don't follow them at home, then at least take care in Nevada:

1. If you mistakenly think you have enough money in your checking account to cover a check and you don't, you can go to jail. At least in Nevada.
2. Don't write checks to cover your gambling habit. Use a debit card.

Walker is accused of bouncing 10 checks totaling $1 million between July 2008 and January 2009 at Caesars Palace, Planet Hollywood and Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas. Unpaid casino markers, or loans to gamblers, are treated as bad checks in Nevada.