The North Carolina Bankruptcy Information Blog

According to a new report from the 2012 U.S. Banking Sector Outlook, the New Year’s ring could signal a major “cha-ching” for banks in 2012, as financial institutions all across the country react to timely federal restrictions by scrambling to add new fees to their recession weary customers.

Coming from a new report from The Huffington Post’s Catherine New, “ In 2012, expect to see higher minimum balance requirements and an ongoing push to increase customers’ credit card spending, according to a “2012 U.S. Banking Sector Outlook” report from Trepp, an analytics company that provides information to the banking industry.…

We all know that credit cards, with their excessive fees, high interest rates, and unforgiving fine print, can be the key to financial ruin…as well as many a personal bankruptcy filing. But now there’s a new unfriendly financial cost on the horizon: debit card fees.

These normally safe and fiscally responsible alternatives to their costly cousin, the credit card, are now coming into focus as the latest instrument by which banks are placing higher fees on unsuspecting consumers. The reason? New rules from the Federal Reserve poised to cut the amount banks can charge merchants for debit transactions.

And according to a new article in Raleigh’s News and Observer, these new rules for banks could mean new costs eventually passed on to you.  While we don’t normally notice these “swipe fees,” as they’re added into what retailers charge for goods and services, what we could expect are higher transaction fees or fewer benefits from banks looking to recoup what they’ll be losing in lost retailer “swipe” revenues.…

Debit cards are one of the many spending tools that can be good for a person rebuilding after bankruptcy. For the most part, anything that is backed directly by actual cash is the best way to ensure that you don’t get too deep again shortly after things are back in order.

There are some drawbacks to using a debit card though. Mainly, it won’t do much to re-establish your credit because it does not rely on credit and therefore won’t have any affect on your credit score. Debit cards are backed by a checking account with actual cash that gets debited according to what you spend.…

Bankruptcy and personal money management are tightly intertwined. As you read through the blog you will probably notice that a lot of our posts will offer advice and tips on saving, how to avoid scams and general philosophies about preserving financial stability.

Here is another post about how to hang on to more of your money, which is especially useful for anyone coming out of bankruptcy or performing some initial research. These tips involve banks, which many people believe want to help you with saving money. However, that is not always the case. In fact, it’s becoming quite the opposite.

Banks (and credit card companies) are in attack mode.…