Looking for new ways to save money? Perhaps you should consider asking for new bills the next time you withdraw money at the bank. While it’s well-accepted that currency denomination influences spending, there’s now evidence that the appearance of your money may be even more important. Interestingly, the social context [...]
Banking News, Views, Tips & Tricks
“A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.” – Robert Frost
Love them or hate them, banks are a central (and necessary) part of our financial system.
This page is home to articles about all aspects of banks and banking. Topics of interest include checking accounts, savings accounts, money market accounts, online banking, interest rates, certificates of deposit, and more.
Rumor has it that Discover Bank will soon be rolling out a cashback checking account to complement their other online banking and credit card offerings. This account, which will apparently be limited to Discover cardholders, will offer cash back (a dime at a time) when you make a payment.
While looking around inside the newly re-designed Capital One 360 (formerly ING Direct) interface, I ran across their refer-a-friend program. Depending on which type of account you open you can get a $25 or $50 bonus. All you need is a referral from a friend (like me!) with a Capital [...]
With the final stages of the Capital One 360 transition drawing ever closer, you may be looking for an alternative to ING Direct. As I’ve noted previously, I’ve had accounts with the lion’s share of major online banks — ten accounts with nine different institutions, though I’ve since closed most [...]
For those of you that have an online banking relationship with ING Direct… As I noted back in November, Capital One is in the process of taking over ING Direct and turning it into Capital One 360. At that time, few details were available. They basically said that there will [...]
At long last, the Federal Reserve has finally given us a better indication of when we might expect interest rates to start to rise. As long as inflation remains low, we can expect the Fed to work to keep interest rates near zero at least until unemployment drops below 6.5%, [...]
About six weeks ago, I noted that the CD rate loyalty bonus at Ally Bank was set to expire at the end of this month. If you’re not familiar with this bonus… When one of your Ally Bank CDs has matured, they’ve typically given you a 0.25% bonus on top [...]
About a year and a half ago, Capital One made a deal to acquire ING Direct. That deal was cleared to move forward earlier this year. Now… Fast forward to yesterday when I received an e-mail from ING Direct saying that they’ll be changing their name (and color scheme) in [...]