It's a bad time to be a bank. With jobs failing, homeowners struggling, and inflation putting even basic necessities out of the reach of many consumers, some banks are scrambling just to stay afloat. The government is helping, but even with Treasury Secretary Paulson's massive influx of money, America's financial institutions are having to find ways to ensure a steady income when the economy is rising and falling like a rowboat in the North Atlantic.

One major revenue stream that they've been tapping is fees. According to USA Today, most bank fees hit all-time highs in 2008; for example, consumers using an out-of-network ATM can now expect to pay an average surcharge of $3.43, 13% more than a year ago. By comparison, bounced check fees hit $28.95, 2.5% more than last year, and minimum balance requirements for free or online checking have also gone up considerably.

Luckily, there are a few things that you can do to reduce the subsidy that you, personally, pay to the bank:

Another week, another bank failure. Columbia Bank of Topeka, Kansas became the 9th bank to fail so far this year. You can read all the gory details here, but we want to focus your attention on just one number: $46 million.

$46 million was held in accounts at Columbia Bank that will NOT be covered by FDIC insurance. Most likely because those accounts were over the $100,000 FDIC limit. That's a lot of people losing a lot of money-money that, like you, they probably thought was safe in their bank. That's a lot of hard work, retirement dreams and college tuition payments that just went up in smoke!

Look, the banking industry is facing some serious trouble right now and we expect more failures ahead. (There are 90 banks sitting on the FDIC "trouble" list right now.) Don't let this happen to you and your loved ones.

Understanding how FDIC insurance works and taking a few simple steps to making sure you are playing by those rules can save you tremendous heartache should your bank fail. So, please take a few minutes now to be absolutely sure your money is safe.

Just watch our video below for a simple explanation of the rules and the steps you should take to protect the maximum amount of money possible.

Is your bank safe? Let personal finance experts Ken and Daria Dolan show you how to get the answer at Dolans.com. Plus learn 5 things you need to know if your bank fails.

My first indication of trouble was a flurry of overdraft fee notices from Chase. I knew the balance was low, but nowhere near zero, so I checked my recent transactions. I found that they had cashed a check that I had postdated three days early. To avoid any troubles, I send in my rent check early, but postdate the check with the date my rent is actually due.

I called them with a smug but calm demeanor of someone who knows they have proof of an injustice. But I was in for a shock. Postdating a check is meaningless, the Chase rep explained. Chase looks at it as an informal agreement between the person who writes the check and the person who cashes it. I've found similar stories online. More people are running into trouble because of Check 21, which clears checks much faster.

Over the years, I've made more than my fair share of mistakes in banking. I once put a large check in a backup account instead of the main one and the next day, I had a bank fee bloodbath. At various times, I've been derelict at balancing my checkbook, and there have been times I've lost track of what check was still out there, only to fully understand when it came through, and I didn't have enough money in the bank to cover it. I've also -- well, look, I'm not here to talk about my dumb mistakes. I wanted to bring up my bank's dumb mistake, and ask the question:

When my bank screws up, why can't I charge them a fee?

Friday, I rushed over to my bank and made a deposit of $646.



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So I'm depositing some money in a bank. It's not my bank. It's my brother's. I've borrowed a little money the day before, and now I'm paying him back. And the teller asks if I'd like to play the bank's scratch-off contest and possibly win a ton of money.

I tell her that I'm not a customer, that I'm depositing money in my--

She interrupts, tells me that's not a problem. So do I want to play or not?

"Sure," I say, shrugging, figuring I'll kill ten seconds while I learn that I'm not a winner of a quarter of a million dollars or whatever the pay-off was.

Relative to the operations of my own household, rising oil prices have had little negative impact, although we have had to change the way we do some things here. We now group our motor trips better to make better use of our miles per gallon. We also think a little harder about our power usage, but that's what we Americans do, we adjust.

Basically, up to this point, rising fuel costs have increased the expense of our household operations here by perhaps ten to fifteen percent. We've absorbed that increase quite nicely by planning our driving more carefully, by making sure lights are turned off in unused rooms and by cutting out a few foodstuffs which we probably shouldn't be eating anyway. I'd like to think that rising energy costs are leading us to give greater consideration to our spending and energy usage. In some ways perhaps increased energy costs have done us a favor, yes? Personally, I estimate that my household could withstand an increase in the price of gasoline up to $6 a gallon before going into serious stress. I hope it doesn't come to that, but it could.

It's a collection of little things which make up the body of our readjustment. I pick up items or do errands on my way to work, whereas in times past we would probably have made an extra trip into town. We more closely estimate usage of certain grocery items such as bread, toilet paper and milk so purchases will last through until the next weekly grocery shopping trip. We think about what things we're going into the refrigerator for before going in there to get them and we try to keep things in there somewhat organized so we can find what we need and get out. My wife is the light switch police and she reminds my daughter and me to turn off the light as we're leaving rooms. She does it almost intuitively even before we exit. Doors get closed tightly the first time. Telephone calls have been shortened. We spend more time together in the same room. Leftovers get fed to the dog less often.

Online banking saves us trips to the bank. Paying our auto insurance quarterly rather than monthly saves us about $125 every six months. Coffee is made at home and carried out in thermal cups. We use our debit cards religiously, saving us money on the reordering of checks. It's a matter of giving logistical scrutiny to the things we had previously been taking for granted. The real upside is that fiscal, social and consumer responsibility come with their own silently compounding benefits and we're building the savings accounts to prove it.

This morning Bloomberg.com released a report regarding the state of the construction industry. That report provides a fairly gray view of the state of our nation's home builders. Home construction is in the process of posting a third straight year of declines and has surpassed even the direst of economic analyst predictions. For a good quick analysis of the report, read the synopsis by BloggingStocks writer Joseph Lazzaro.

However, in the midst of the weeping, I submit for your approval the assertion that this situation is not all gloom and doom. It's not to be taken for granted that the country is speckled with an endless array of hale and hearty carpenters just sitting on their hammers. We need to remind ourselves that our construction industry represents some of the best of our independent capitalist spirit. In most cases these folks aren't just giving up. They are weighing their options and changing gears.

If you're facing foreclosure in California, New York, Kansas Massachusetts, or Ohio and your lender can't find your original loan closing paperwork, there's a good chance the judge will dismiss the case.

Lenders who want to foreclose regularly file what's called a "lost-note affidavit" when they can't find the original documents you signed at closing. That's happening a lot lately because many times a loan is sold over and over again after the original loan closing. In a rush to package and sell mortgages, shortcuts were taken, and sometimes the lender who currently collects your payments does not actually hold the original note.

In fact, according to a report at Bloomberg today, 19% of outstanding mortgages have been bundled into private securities for a total of $2.1 trillion in loans. Alan White, an assistant professor at Valparaiso University School of Law in Indiana told Bloomberg that in a rush to package these loans from 2003 to 2006 assignment of ownership was not always properly completed. If you hold one of these loans it is possible that the paperwork is lost forever because many of the originating loan companies have since gone bankrupt or were gobbled up by a larger lender.

Judges in at least five states -- named above -- have decided not to allow a foreclosure without the original note signed at the time the loan was closed. They believe that without that original paperwork the lenders can't prove they actually hold the note. One of the first judges to take this strong stance was Judge Christopher Boyko in Ohio.

If you are facing foreclosure in a state not mentioned here and your lender is using a "lost-note affidavit," contact an attorney for help. You may be able to save your home.

Lita Epstein has written more than 20 books including "The 250 Questions You Should Ask to Avoid Foreclosure."

I know this is a tough concept. And I've mentioned it before. And it goes something like this: If money that doesn't really belong to you ends up in your bank account, don't plan on keeping it and don't spend it. You have a moral and legal obligation to return that money to the rightful owner.

Today's rocket scientist is Benjamin Lovell. It turns out that Benjamin Lovell #1 received $5 million in his bank account, which was really meant for Benjamin Lovell #2. Number One claims he tried to tell the bank the money wasn't his and they told him it was. Okay, I can see how this conversation went (if it even happened). "Hello bank... this is Benjamin Lovell. You gave me $5 million that's not really mine." Bank: "Benjamin Lovell? Oh yes, that's your money." And it was a different Benjamin Lovell's money.

But the guy knew it was a mistake and ran out and promptly spent $2 million. He was wrong, and he knows it. I think with $5 million on the line, there are several things he could have tried to give back the money. And by all means, he knew he should not spend the money. It wasn't his. He knew it. And now he's being charged as a criminal. Good.

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.

This weekend's Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required) on the rise of "rewards checking accounts" offering interest rates as high as 6% for customers who use their debit cards frequently and/or meet other requirements.

These rates compare favorable to what even the highest-yielding online savings accounts are paying right now and, if you meet all the terms, it might be a good deal.

But here's the catch: For many of us, keeping our savings in our regular checking account will induce overspending. And earning an extra 1 or 2% APY isn't such a great deal if it increases your spending on frivolous items. Taking a chunk of each check and putting it in an online savings account automatically where you can't write checks against it is a good method of "forced savings" if you don't have phenomenal will power.

This might be one of those cases where the savviest move -- going with the highest yield available -- could actually slow your wealth accumulation.

I'm not saying these high-yield checking accounts are a bad idea. I think they're great. But you just have to ask yourself whether you'll really save responsibly when they money is so easy to access.

A few days ago, I was valiantly trying to convince a teller at my bank to put a check into my account as instant cash instead of having to wait until the next morning. I knew a rogue check I had written to my daughter's preschool was somewhere -- out there -- and if it went through that night, the consequences would be ugly. The bank would process the check, pummel me with $35 charges for not having funds to cover it -- and then they would deposit the money. Money, of course, that they had been holding onto for hours.

And so goes another typical day in the not-so glamorous life of a freelance writer.

I realize when it comes to complaining about the bank's tactics, I'm on shaky ground. As sinister as I think it is, I get it. Banks have rules; I didn't follow them. But I am wondering how we got to this point. Maybe I have a naive view of banks, shaped from how I've seen George Bailey run his savings and loan in about 467 airings of the classic 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life. But it does seem like bank policies have positioned these institutions to act more as a foe than friend. In fact, when bemoaning the city's foreclosures, the mayor of Cleveland recently likened banks to "organized crime."