As much as possible, even when you are already in deficit on your monthly expenses, put away some amount into an emergency fund. With hard times worsening from week to week, you have to prepare for a future when your finances drop to near zero. Or, worse –if you or a member of your family gets sick or meets an accident or some disaster strikes, immediate funds will be required.
Don’t just keep your emergency fund in a piggy bank, in a cookie jar, or under your mattress. Place it in an earning certificate of deposit, a …read more

Banks provide necessary services, but they are there for the money –your money. They are always cooking up new ways to charge you fees: miscellaneous fees, maintenance fees, online banking fees, excessive transaction fees, teller fees, etc.
Do not be taken in by offers of “no monthly fees” checking accounts. You can bet your bottom dollar the bank will make up for this freebie through some other fee.
Take time to shop around for a bank. Scrutinize their fees. Read the fine print. Keep records and study the entries. Avoid the charges that you …read more

No such thing as a free lunch, specially in bank services. You do a bank a favor by opening a checking account and letting them earn on your money through loans & mortgages, and it charges you a monthly fee (which, in some banks, can go over $10 per month).
On opening an account, you get a free checkbook. Subsequent checkbooks are charged a fee for which some banks collect as much as $15, and this is for the plain checkbooks. The personalized versions (with background scenery, etc) cost much more –an extravagance and a needless expense. …read more

You don’t always have your checkbook with you and you don’t want to carry cash around. So, you use a debit card.
Remember, however, that every time you use your debit card you are charged a fee. The fees vary from institution to institution. Some charge less than a dollar, other charges much more. So, the more often you use your debit card, the more costly this bank service becomes.
How about ATM cards? If you withdraw from the ATM machine at the bank’s premises, you don’t get charged a transaction fee. Outside the bank premises, …read more

No such thing as a free lunch, specially in bank services. You do a bank a favor by opening a checking account and it charges a monthly fee (which, in some banks, can go over $10 per month).
If you maintain a small balance, the bank will try to seduce you to put in more money by waiving the monthly fees. But –you have to look out for the fee that it will charge if you go below the minimum balance. Those extra charges can add up to a tidy sum.
I think this is an unfair exchange. …read more