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Canadian Money Forum Thread of the Week: Costco seems to engender rabid brand loyalty even among a cohort as thrifty as personal finance bloggers and readers. But Costco also has its share of detractors who think the long lines, crowds, supersized goods and impulse buying are just not worth the trouble. The two sides are [...]

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Today will be the last day that I regularly write on here. I will be visiting time to time and you’ll probably see my name in the comments. I will be posting at least once a month, on the last Friday of the month. If something big happens and I’d like to [...]

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More changes… On May 22, 2009, all WaMu bank accounts will officially be converted into Chase accounts, and customers will have to log in at Chase.com with new usernames. The popular WaMu Free Checking account becomes the Chase Free Extra Checking account, and keeps a lot of the useful perks. I received another pamphlet from Chase outlining all the details, but I couldn’t find a link online, so I typed out the highlights below.

Benefits

• No monthly service fee, no minimum balance requirement.
• No fee for money orders, cashier’s checks and travelers checks.
• No Chase fee for non-Chase ATM withdrawals.
• No fee for Domestic Outgoing for Foreign Outgoing Wire Transfers.
• You will continue to receive your discounted or free check orders when ordered from us.
• One insufficient funds/Returned Item Fee will be refunded annually. However, the refund will no longer be automatic, you must call in and specifically request it. Also, it will no longer carry over if unused.

Changes

• The 0.03 Cash Back debit rewards program is discontinued.
• We may change your account to a Chase Better Banking Checking account when you do not have at least one customer-initiated transaction over the past six monthly statement cycles (which has a $12 monthly fee if minimum balance is not met).

The WaMu Online Savings account will be converted to a Chase Premier Savings account, with the monthly fee “waived at this time”. I could not find any information on the interest rate, but I have a feeling this account will not return to its former high yields.

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I recently received a pamphlet about the “improvements” that Bank of America is making on several of their checking accounts. But after reading through it, all I see are a bunch of small fee increases.

For example, many people have the MyAccess checking with no minimum balance requirement and no direct deposit requirement. Now, the monthly fee is either $8.95 or you need a direct deposit. And you can now be dinged by the $35 overdraft fee up to 10 times in one day. I guess they aren’t scared of another class action lawsuit. You can see all the pricing changes outlined here.

I guess they need to drum up some more money somehow, and most of the fees are still avoidable. But given that around 27% of their revenue comes from fees, and that there were $36.7 billion of overdraft charges by banks last year, I really think this is another reason banks are pushing their debit cards so much. Not only do they earn transaction fees, it makes it that much more likely that people rack up more overdraft fees. Imagine this: You lose track of your balance once, but make 5 small purchases over two days before realizing. That’ll be $175, please!

Be careful out there… those “free” checking accounts have to be paid for somehow.

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Welcome to the Million Dollar Journey April 2009 Net Worth Update – Is this really a bull market edition.
My last net worth update in March indicated that we just started a market rally.  The rally has continued throughout April and I’ve actually done a little buying within my leveraged portfolio as well as within my [...]

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