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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

With experts predicting that unemployment figures haven't bottomed out, it's no surprise that Americans continue to hold tight to their wallets. To help, WalletPop wants to answer your questions about security, investing and other financial matters. Here's this month's sample:

Question: What is the best savings interest rates right now? The INGdirect account is a good deal, everyone knows that. But if you have a MMA(money market account) linked to your checking it's easier to get your money in and out fast as you need it -- the downside is that the interest rate is lower and banks also have weird minimums sometimes for the better rates. Which banks are doing comparable rates to ingdirect and which ones have better deals as far as no minimum/low minimum?

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."