The Real Reason Bank of America Changed Its Mind About ATM Fees

Ever since Bank of America announced it was going to charge $5 for ATM usage and other banks were considering a similar plan, there has been a lot public outcry and publicity.

There were OWS protesters who were arrested trying to close out their bank accounts.  There were online petitions posted and signed by hundreds and thousands of people.   Headlines were made in every major publication and TV news show across the nation.

But the real reason why they changed their mind is this:

650,000 People Joined Credit Unions In Just The Last Month!

And that does not count people like myself who joined a good local bank that also had absolutely NO FEES!

That is a lot of Lost Customers

Lost Money

and Lost Revenue

How Not to Teach Your Kids About Saving

When my daughter was younger and she started earning money for chores around the house and receiving birthday money from relatives, I thought it would a good time to start teaching her about finances and saving. So I jumped right in and explained to her that putting some money aside, say 10%, would be a good thing and asked her if she wanted to open a bank account like her older brother had.

Her reaction was not what I was expecting. She got this horrified look on her face like I was mad at her , or that she had done something bad, and promptly ran to my wife and burst into tears crying about how I wanted to take her money away from her.

Gee, I wonder if she’s going to grow up to be a great Tea Party Republican . . . 😉

However traumatic this was for her, and me, it did seem to make a positive impression. Years later when she wanted a dog, and a car, and to go shopping with her friends and at the same time realized that she would be going to college in a few years; my daughter decided she needed a job and to save for each of these goals. So, she asked to open a regular checking debit card account with a basic savings account and a joint account with us that she can’t touch until she is 18 (that one is for college) and each paycheck gets divided up among all the accounts.

After everything was set up and working smoothly, she commented to me one day that my idea about saving, putting money aside, was a pretty good one. She just wishes I hadn’t made her cry about it.

I feel slightly vindicated.

And yes, she nearly cried when she saw that taxes were taken out of her very first paycheck. I told her not to worry because she’d probably be getting some of it back.

Today, with the internet, there are a whole host of online resources you and your children can use to learn about, well, just about anything. And their methods are far less draconian than mine.

Here are some of my favorite ones:

ThinkQuest

Kids’ Finance

Planet Orange

 

Can your budget pass this test?

The MSN 50-30-20 budget test.

First,, before you begin or do anything like this, you will need to HAVE a budgetto take this test.

Once you have a budget, you will need to track your expenses.  You can do this manually via a spreadsheet or you could go to any number of free budget sites such as Mint.com.

Once you know where your money is going, you will have a good idea of where improvement(s) can be made.

What this MSN article does is provide a representative model to compare your budget with.  Now, this model is by no means a hard and fast rule, but it does provide a decent BASIC comparison.

First they set your monthly income level for a baseline.

Then you will be asked about your monthly costs for needs and wants and savings.  (note: Monthly needs + wants + savings should = monthly income)  A very basic but often overlooked fact.

Needs are the stuff you have to spend money on and or have a monthly bill to pay; like a mortgage or rent, utilities, or minimum monthly payments.

Then there are the wants; the stuff you feel you may need and are entitled too, but in reality can either do without or scale back and be just as satisfied.  Granted ,some of these wants could be considered needs;  such as clothing allowance, but mostly it is stuff like vacations, dining out, entertainment, gifts, and misc spending.

You will then be asked about savings amounts such as retirement funds, investments, savings accounts, emergency funds and any extra payments to put towards loans and such.

After these three basic screens are collected; two simple pie charts are displayed.  Yours and the 50-30-20 model.

So, how did the Fumbled Returns Budget compare?

Not so bad, I think.

You will notice that our “Needs” is considerably more than the model and I have a very simple explanation for this.

We have seven, count em, 7 people in our family.  Me, My Beautiful Wife and 5 tax deductions, Plus two dogs and a foster Greyhound.

This is considerably more than the 2005-2009 Census Bureau estimates of 3.19 persons per family and the 2009 National Pet Owners Survey of 1.7 dogs per household.

So, how does your budget compare?

Better late than never

My 2011 Goals.

You’ll notice not one of them is being on time 😉

1) Eliminate Non Housing Debt

I gave this one a good start in 2010 but ran into some added expenses which set me back.
I have a monthly plan in place and I am going to stick with it. Hopefully I will be able to put a much bigger dent into my balance this year. Knock on wood . . .

2) Beat Averages

Last year I increase my return average 50% to set a new goal. That was ambitious. For 2010 I did beat all the averages but feel short of the 24% mark. If I increase my 20% return by 50% that would push my goal up to 30%. That is a bit too ambitious even for me. This year I am going to keep my “beat the averages” goal with a stretch goal of 24%.

3) Cut Expenses by 10%

One way to increase savings and add to paying off debt is by taking a long hard look at your expenses and “cutting the fat” as they say.

We currently do “OK” but I know we can do better. Especially in the area of finding and shopping for deals. Some of the phenomenal success stories of the past year has been the rise of sites like Goupons and Couponmom. This year I am going to take a more serious look at saving with coupons and actively look to “trim the fat” from our daily / monthly expenses.

4) Double followers

I currently have 24.
I’m actually going to split this one out to 36 followers with a stretch goal of 48.

5) Win Fantasy Football

I came oh so close to this but fell short in the end.
I may never actually accomplish this but hey, I’m keeping up the hope and the goal.
OK lets split this one too:

– East Coast wins the championship
– With a stretch goal of me winning.

6) Fence and Shed clean out Garage!

A few months ago, one of my favorite shows – Criminal Minds – had a quote at the end of the show regarding a statistic which stated before 1960, there were virtually no personal storage units in the US. Today, there is more than 2.35 billion square feet of self storage in the U.S., or a land area equivalent to three times Manhattan Island under roof. It seems that the U.S. certainly has become the land of excess sometimes and personally I would like to do my part in reversing that trend.

Now, we are nowhere near as bad as compulsive hoarders or anything like that, but like many people we have “collected stuff” over the years. Stuff we probably do not need nor use or even know exist anymore.

Welcome to my garage.

Part 1 of this goal is to declutter my life and garage. The decluttering should help in finances, free time and finally getting at least one of our cars into the garage.

Part 2 of this goal: Putting a shed in the backyard will help with storing outside yard tools and stuff like bikes and sleds.

Part 3 of this goal: Putting up a fence will help with keeping said shed stuff from finding little feet and ending up cluttering the neighbors yards and provide our dogs some true running room.

Speaking of dogs . . .

7) Get Lola a Forever Home

My daughter, Alaina, will hate me for putting this up here, but hey, maybe it will ultimately inspire her to add a 2011 goal for herself.

Lola is our current resident foster greyhound.

Current Resident, because she has been here about 7 weeks. This is almost an all time record for us keeping a foster before getting him or her adopted.

Foster because she is a foster, which means the intent is to find her a forever home (other than ours).

As you can see, she is a very cute black and white greyhound. And trust me she is very affectionate and playful and will make a good addition to any home.

Her original racing name was Rico’s Hailey and though many greyhound agencies frown on renaming a foster we took that liberty because, well, she simply was not a Hailey or Rico.

We tossed around several potential names like Betty; if you are familiar with Ram Jam or Leadbelly you will know the reference, but thought it better to avoid potentially politically incorrect names for a black dog. Lola seemed to be a name that she responded well to and, well, it makes for one or two rather good Kinks songs too.

Oh, There is just one little caveat.

There seems to be a condition which has come up recently that says if Alaina gets a job, she can keep Lola as a pet. Hmmmm – I wonder who came up with that one. So, perhaps Alaina will add getting a job to her 2011 goals. This will go a long way towards giving her some much needed money, added responsibility and convincing me to actually keep Lola.

But until then . . .

Please contact the Virginia Greyhound Adoption Society for more information.