banking fees

You might assume that free checking is one of those banking benefits on the way out, but that's not the case: More than a third of checking accounts charge no monthly service fee. But that doesn't mean that banks don't expect to profit from your checking business. Here are the fees that make "free" a highly inappropriate designation -- and how you can avoid them.

It's been well-documented that banks are hiking fees for users -- and blaming government regulations for "making" them do it -- for the past several months. But the news that Chase launched a pilot program that charges non-Chase customers a $5 ATM fee to use Chase machines in Illinois has even...

Everyone knows that if you want to save money, banks are a great place to sock it away. But if you're not saving enough these days, you might want to look at how you're using your bank and what your banking habits are costing you. After all, you can save money simply by reducing your banking...

Avoiding overdraft and over limit fees by refusing to opt-in to the new "protection" plans banks are hawking is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to sparing yourself from dubious fees for financial products and services. Recently, these fees have proliferated, many of them marketed by the...

Bank of America (BAC) may introduce a tiered fee structure modeled on mobile phone service contracts. Under the proposed scheme, the bank would reward customers who maintain minimum current account balances, use their credit card a certain number of times each month, or do all their banking...

Proposed banking reforms will create a consumer financial protection bureau that sets rules for all financial transactions, such as lower costs for debit card use to merchants. But less revenue for banks may mean higher fees for consumers.

Banks? insatiable appetite for fee income may be swaying many consumers to use prepaid debit cards to avoid high, unfair fees, to gain control of debt and to gain access to banking services more cheaply.

Everyone's hating on the banks these days for their debit cards with outrageous overdraft fees, but the alternative is no great shakes. Prepaid debit cards have stepped into the market for consumers who can't get a credit card, don't have a bank account and want the convenience (or the status) of...