Finance Roundtable

ING Direct’s recent survey results about retirement are scary. I don’t know what the world is going to be like in thirty years, the time I’ll be approaching “retirement age.” I do know that if my pattern of increasing expenses doesn’t change until then, and if I’m still earning primary ...

Last year, Smithee reported that Bank of America was the first major bank to allow customers to opt out of overdraft protection and the associated fees. Those customers who opted out of overdraft protection would have their card rejected when attempting to make a purchase without the funds available.

Thanks to ...

When I post my financial reports each month, they reflect only a small piece of who I am as a person. My bank account balances are only a small part of my life although they are center stage on Consumerism Commentary. I try to avoid labels for this reason; when ...

At the beginning of March, the banking arm of Sallie Mae, a publicly-traded corporation whose main business is student loans, began offering high-yield savings accounts. As I’ve mentioned before, “high-yield” is currently a joke; just a few years ago, you could deposit cash in high-yield savings accounts and count on ...

I never thought I’d put an exclamation mark on a sentence about credit card statements, much less be sincerely excited about it, but here we are. You have to pick your battles in life, and clearly-displayed information is one of mine. Educating people about credit card danger is another. Today, ...

Thanks to the team at Intuit, Consumerism Commentary has “extreme finance” packages to give to our readers. This is a complete package that covers personal finance management, tax filing, and even business accounting. Five of these packages are available. Although the company balked at my initial idea of giving away ...

Last year was the first year I abandoned my own tax return preparation, deferring to a professional to do the dirty work. I’m glad I did; he suggested I restructure my business retroactively, resulting in a savings of about $15,000. I still haven’t seen most of this; the IRS is ...

Today’s guest on the Consumerism Commentary Podcast is J.D. Roth, founder of the website Get Rich Slowly.

J.D. has made the transition from blogger to published author. In this episode, Flexo, Tom Dziubek, and J.D. discuss the financial advice in his new book, Your Money: The Missing Manual. We also discuss ...

I wrote last November about a rollout in my city to upgrade everybody’s power meters to the “smart” kind which should allow the power companies to operate and communicate remotely with our electricity. They should also enable us consumers to have more data about which devices in the house waste ...

I can’t completely fault companies like Amway, Mary Kay, and Lia Sophia. They know that friendship results in two important qualities: trust and guilt. These two qualities are important to companies because they make the process of selling products much easier. I find it relatively easy to politely decline — ...