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.

More than 100 banks have failed this year, and even the government acknowledges that many more will probably fold before 2009 draws to a close. In most cases, ordinary citizens who have accounts are protected by FDIC insurance. Yes, there's certainly a hassle involved, especially if you have bills set up on auto-payment with the failed bank, but the FDIC guarantees that they'll make good on your money up to $250,000.

Unfortunately, this guarantee doesn't extend to the interest rates on long-term savings vehicles like certificates of deposit. As this article reports, a growing number of people are losing the high interest rates on their CDs when a bank with which they have money invested folds.

"Well-funded marketing campaigns and perverse incentives to brokers are targeting seniors' home equity and using reverse mortgages as their tools," attorney Tara Twomey said in the NCLC news release.

In an interview with KMBC's Donna Pitman, First Lady of Personal Finance Suze Orman trashed the big banks for inexplicable fee and interest rate hikes on consumers -- and offered a ringing endorsement of credit unions.

"Don't get me started with these credit card companies, these banks -- it's like, 'What are they thinking?'" Orman said.

"Here's the answer: Credit unions," she said. "They are different than banks. Most banks are owned by their shareholders. They're responsible to these shareholders and it happens to be on the stock exchange, so anything to increase earnings and profits. Credit unions have members. They're responsible to the members. So, many credit unions -- not all -- are giving you no balance-transfer fees, low interest rates. They're being ethical and honest."

Another key advantage to working with a credit union instead of Chase, Bank of America, or Citi, is that most credit unions are not staffed by the dumbest people you will ever meet in your entire life -- which matters when your financial well-being is on the line.

To find a credit union in your area, visit the National Credit Union Administration's credit union locator.

Premature withdrawal could prove painful -- to your pocket.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is apparently set to stop the central bank's purchase of mortgage-backed securities in a few months, which could contribute to a full percentage point increase in the rates of 30-year mortgages.

Talk about shooting the alleged economic recovery in the foot before it has a chance to really get going.

Seems that Bernanke feels strongly, says a Bloomberg report, that by March it will be time for private investors to step in and start making the purchases in place of Uncle Sam -- or, in this case, Uncle Ben.

Goldman Sachs spent years buying hundreds of thousands of subprime mortgages during the real estate boom, packaging them into high-yield bonds. Now that the bottom has fallen out of the property market, the Wall Street behemoth finds itself in a different role: taking homes away from Americans defaulting on their loans.

That's according to a lengthy investigation by McClatchy Newspapers . The report says there are hundreds of cases in which subsidiaries of Goldman have sought to contain bondholder losses by foreclosing on properties and evicting delinquent borrowers.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently talked about "green shoots" of economic recovery and declared the recession probably over, but some economists fear the worst is yet to come.

As bad as the residential real estate crisis was for banks, the impact of failed residential mortgages could be dwarfed by the problems now facing the banks regarding commercial real estate.

A loan for a commercial building like a shopping mall is very different from the mortgage you have on your home. Commercial mortgages have a much shorter term, usually only five to seven years. The bank doesn't expect the owner to pay the debt off in that amount of time, but when that time comes, they need to refinance the remaining balance into a new loan.

Almost every Friday this year, usually in the evening, a grim announcement is released to the public: Another bank has failed.

Sure enough, Friday came and went, and with it, came the announcement that another bank had failed. Actually, not just one bank had failed -- but nine. That's the most that's occurred on any one day this year.

So far this year, that brings the total number of bank failures to 115. The nine new banks are in California, Illinois, Texas and Arizona, all subsidiaries of FBOP Corp, a holding company based in Oak Park, Ill. And while nine bank failures at once is a lot, because they're all part of the same company, it doesn't seem as chilling a day as it might otherwise would have been.

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.

Can you please help me understand how my bank calculates my mortgage interest and principal? Even when I pre-pay my mortgage, they seem to put most of it toward interest.

--Penny

For more answers to your debt management questions, visit Dolans.com

Over on our listserv, WalletPOP bloggers and editors occasionally -- and by occasionally I mean daily -- get into heated debates about personal finance topics that are way too boring to think about let alone discuss for the vast majority of people with healthy social lives.

Last week, we ended up debating credit cards -- and whether people really need a credit card. Here's my argument against credit cards:

The more I read about it, think about it, and live it, the more convinced I am that people should not have credit cards.

Fact: People who pay with credit cards spend more money. This has been demonstrated by at least half a dozen studies.

My mother-in-law is divorced, newly retired and wants to enjoy her Golden Years. Because she just turned 62 and owns her house, she considered a reverse mortgage to turn her home equity into a steady income stream every month.

But after I gave her the highlights of a new report from the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) that said, in short, reverse mortgages have the potential to start another subprime-style financial crisis, she decided to look elsewhere.

Walletpop's Mitch Lipka posted in July how the FBI issued a warning about reverse mortgages and the number of scam artists eyeing them greedily.

Score: Little guy, 1; bank, 0. It's a nice change.

Two weeks ago, a bankruptcy court in suburban New York did the formerly unthinkable: It waived a homeowner's mortgage debt after the bank trying to foreclose on the home couldn't submit any proof that it actually had a claim on the property.

According to the New York Times, when lender PHH Mortgage was asked to provide proof that it actually held the deed for the $461,263 mortgage, it couldn't give the judge any records.

This week Intuit released Quicken 2010, the latest update to the popular Quicken line of personal finance software.

Included in the release are several features and enhancements to provide a better user experience in Quicken 2010 as well as an easy-to-use conversion tool to help Microsoft Money users convert to Quicken 2010.

Of the enhancements and upgrades to Quicken, customers will appreciate the following five features that will make using and sticking with Quicken 2010 easier.

• Faster setup -- New three-step guide gets you up and running faster than before.
• Simplified navigation -- Easier access to the tools you want to use.
• At a glance homepage -- All of your important info on one page; saving spending and bills.
• Automatic categorization -- Transactions are now automatically added to the right category -- saving you time.
• Easier to use -- More welcoming to new users and provides customization.

The Service Employees International Union reports that the American Bankers Association is having a conference this weekend. The ABA is a trade group and powerful lobbying organization representing the banking industry. Because so many of its members received bailout money, it's fair to say that U.S. taxpayers are paying for this party.

Here's what the bankers will have to look forward to:

• a luxurious riverboat cruise
• a historical mansion tour
• a roaring 1920s big band gala
• celebrity appearances by Newt Gingrich & George Will

The first three sound like fun, but to be fair, having to sit through a Newt Gingrich speech is probably an excessive punishment for destroying the economy.

Gingrich is a strange choice to speak at the ABA party because he was, to his credit, a vocal opponent of the bailouts. Back in September of 2008, he was asked about the TARP plan on NPR and provided a surprisingly candid answer: "Well, I think you have a Goldman Sachs chief of staff to the president and the Goldman Sachs secretary of the Treasury. And they convinced the president that the American people ought to send $700 billion to Wall Street, which I think is a very, very bad idea, and I would argue is a very un-Republican idea. I don't understand what they think they're doing."

And yet now he's speaking at a conference for an organization that lobbied for the bailout -- and against regulation to prevent future financial disasters.

Worse? The money that he'll be paid for speaking will come -- in a distant sort of way -- out of the very bailout package that he so vocally-opposed. Everyone has his price, apparently.

Here's a story that will make you want to storm your local Bank of America branch with a water gun: A soldier stationed in Afghanistan got a mortgage for his home through a now-defunct lender and the loan has since been acquired by Bank of America.

Bank of America isn't keeping track of the payments, and they won't talk to the solider's family -- even though they have a power of attorney.

She calls Dave Ramsey who proceeds to throw down the gauntlet. After urging her to call JAG for help, he says "Wow. Gosh folks. . . If you continue to do business with these mega banks. . . Citi and Bank of America and Chase when they continue to act this way to the consumer on a daily basis, why would you do that?. . . Why would you continue to do business with a bank that is that idiotic?. . . It comes down to just gross incompetence. . . It's like you're dealing with the federal government. It's ridiculous. . . As consumers, you have a vote in this. You can vote with your wallet."

So here's what I have to say: If the notion of Bank of America messing around with a soldier stationed in Afghanistan and his family doesn't make you mad as hell, there's something wrong with you. If it does make you mad as hell and you continue to do business with these banks, there's something wrong with you.