Filed under: Banks
Bank fees are on the rise, and sometimes it may seem like there’s not much we can do but complain. But complaining is something.
Now, I know that it’s nothing new to blast a bank on a blog, or trash it on Twitter or spread your fury about their practices on Facebook, but with bank fees climbing and climbing (overdraft fees are estimated to cost Americans $38.5 billion this year), I went on my own little Internet tour today, looking around for reactions to banking fees, just to see what I could find and get a sense of how people are feeling toward banks these days. Not too surprisingly, I found a lot of ugly out there.
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Filed under: College, Debt
For nearly every business on the planet, the 2% fee charged on credit card payments is just another cost of doing business.
Not so for colleges, which are implementing policies that pass that fee on to their students and the parents who pay tuition. The USA Today reports that “Starting Wednesday, students at the University of Southern Maine who pay tuition using plastic will face a 2.75% processing fee. Other schools that have adopted, or are adopting, similar policies include George Mason University, Northwestern University, Wichita State and the University of Virginia.”
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Filed under: Banks, Borrowing, Credit
Got a Citibank credit card, or any one of the co-branded cards, including Sears and MySpace, among many others? You may have hoped you’d be safe from unreasonable rate hikes thanks to new Federal constraints on banks’ ability to raise rates for borrowers. But those laws don’t go into effect until February 2010, and for Citibank, there’s no time like the present.
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Filed under: College, Debt
For nearly every business on the planet, the 2% fee charged on credit card payments is just another cost of doing business.
Not so for colleges, which are implementing policies that pass that fee on to their students and the parents who pay tuition. The USA Today reports that “Starting Wednesday, students at the University of Southern Maine who pay tuition using plastic will face a 2.75% processing fee. Other schools that have adopted, or are adopting, similar policies include George Mason University, Northwestern University, Wichita State and the University of Virginia.”
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Filed under: Debt, Home, Kids and Money, Relationships
Family breakdowns including divorce, unwed mothers, and absentee fathers are costing millions to society according to a new study.
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Filed under: College
There has been a fair amount of complaining about the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), the government-administered form the calculates an “expected family contribution” for college students based on their families’ financial situations.
Apparently it was just too many hours of work to qualify for financial aid for college, and come on: Why should people have to fill out a detailed form to get money for college?
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Filed under: Insurance, Technology, Transportation
Drive without insurance? Then you’d better stay out of Ohio, where the state is considering a program that uses red-light cameras and insurance company databases to check passing traffic for uninsured motorists. The system would use license plate numbers to verify driver insurance. According to the Columbus Dispatch, officials in Chicago, who are considering the same system, from InsureNet of Novi, Michigan, think that such a program could generate $200 million in additional revenue for the Windy City.
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Filed under: College, Recession
With high unemployment hitting communities across the nation, more people are returning to school to gain new skills and an upper hand on the competition. Owens Community College in Northwest Ohio is expecting an increase of close 24% for full time students this fall and has seen an increase in summer enrollment of close to 20% as well. Technical schools, like Tennessee Tech, are also seeing a boom in enrollment, thanks to job seekers looking for new skills.
Part of this increase can be attributed to the fact that many of these schools have noticed a shift in demand and have accordingly adjusted their programs to fit the needs of nontraditional students, such as unemployed Boomers. More community colleges are also offering evening and online courses, which make it easier to work on a new skill while you are still gainfully employed.
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Filed under: Home, Real Estate, Retire, The Dolans, Video
Ken and Daria Dolan, America’s first family of personal finance, answer your questions every Friday.
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Dear Mrs. Madoff: