Thursday roundup: Personal finance around the web
FiveĀ interesting stories from around the web:
- After a two-day policy meeting, the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee released a new statement Wednesday, indicating that it would not raise the benchmark interest rate anytime soon. Bankrate.com translates the statement into plain English in this handy table. [The New York Times, Bankrate.com]
- Bank of America pledged to stop increasing interest rates for current cardholders, only to announce the introduction of new annual fees for some users starting next year. Odysseas at WalletBlog alleges it's a bait-and-switch — and a violation of the forthcoming CARD Act. [WalletBlog]
- Your bank account balance rises after you sign up for text-message reminders to save, concludes a new study. [It's Your Money]
- Sign up for the British Airways Signature Visa card and get 100,000 bonus miles, one of the most generous offers around. [Bucks]
- Intuit closed its deal to acquire money management site Mint.com this week, and it comes with the news that all Quicken Online users will be migrated over to Mint in the coming months. [TechCrunch]
I have two options:
1. Close my CC accounts with BofA and take a hit to my credit rating for closing accounts and dropping my credit line significantly.
or
2. Eat whatever "membership fee" they feel like imposing in order to keep my credit above the new "minimum" standard of 750+ for any kind of financing.
yet another high note for BofA. i wish i had never started with them in the first place. i have had:
1. my HELOC reduced 2 times, then cut off WITHOUT NOTIFICATION
2. 4 of my credit cards (not all started with BofA, but they bought out MBNA) credit lines slashed WITHOUT NOTIFICATION
3. received NO response from anyone about loan modification requests for my home loan.
4. now this.
the best part is that as a taxpayer, i paid 35 billion dollars for the this treatment.
as soon as i can i am getting away from these idiots.
Odysseas Papadimitriou is completely right. Membership fees are considered finance charges. They think they will call it something else and get away?? What a waste of taxpayer money it has been to invest on BOFA!!
WOW! The WalletBlog article is so interesting. Good job in finding it. It can change so many things!












BofA also eliminated my Heloc without warning tho I had no balance and was never late.Then I got an offer for another Heloc from then two wks. later!Then they cut my cc limit in half tho I was never late and had no balance.my fico score during this period was 790.