Welcome to this week’s edition of our Tuesday Top 5, Econ4U’s weekly tips post to help you manage your money in five easy steps. If you’re unemployed at the moment, we don’t have to tell you that the situation out there is pretty grim. But you’re not alone: The Senate passed a bill last week extending [...]
Welcome to this week’s edition of our Tuesday Top 5, Econ4U’s weekly tips post to help you manage your money in five easy steps. As we’ve blogged before, this is a tough summer to be a teenager. There are very few job opportunities for unskilled workers this year, as evidenced by the 26.4 percent national unemployment [...]
A new set of Federal Reserve rules went into effect yesterday that now require banks to get your permission before you’re enrolled in overdraft protection. Before, your bank could enroll you without notice in an overdraft plan that would process the transaction but hit you with a fee for every ATM, check, and debit card [...]
The Wall Street Journal took a fascinating look this week at how new banking regulations that were designed to protect consumers may instead lead to more fees: Bank of America Corp. and other banks are preparing new fees on basic banking services as they try to replace revenue lost to regulatory rules, in a push that [...]
March 26, 2010 – 12:34 pm
Housing lottery winners have been announced in the past week from New Orleans to New York, meaning a small number of lucky people are snagging sweet apartments at below-market rates. What’s a housing lottery? In major cities that have large income disparities and limited desirable neighborhoods, the government has set aside a small number of affordable [...]
January 14, 2010 – 10:10 am
If you’re working on Capitol Hill, you may have joined us Tuesday for our webinar on credit markets and personal credit history. In line with that topic, there’s good news on the horizon for consumers concerned about the effect credit scores have on the terms they’re offered from a lender. Starting in January of 2011, [...]
January 4, 2010 – 12:19 pm
Every night, around the time the sun sets, my local television station runs an evening news broadcast. It’s been this way my entire life – a setting sun means that the evening news will be coming on shortly. But what if we said this: Since the sun always sets at about the same time as [...]
December 21, 2009 – 4:38 pm
Just in time for Christmas, First Premier Bank is out with a new credit card that offers rates as low as – 80 percent! It’s no mistake. This credit card’s interest rate is 79.9 percent. […] So for a $300 balance, a cardholder would pay about $20 a month in interest. The rate is the [...]
December 11, 2009 – 5:55 pm
If you’ve been judiciously saving up for your first home but didn’t make it in time for the $8,000 tax credit deadline on November 30, here’s an early Christmas present for you: The incentive has been extended through April 30, 2010. The terms of the tax credit have been expanded to include current homeowners who [...]
November 16, 2009 – 5:04 pm
With the holidays approaching, many Americans will find themselves on airplanes en route to family and friends. And with air travel come the constant frustrations of long lines and baggage fines. Some of our elected representatives have decided to take a closer look at the now-ubiquitous baggage fines (or fees, depending on how you see [...]