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.…

As you made your New Year’s resolutions to dispense with debt and start on the road to saving, it appears many American banks made their own commitments to upping customer fees and, in the process, further padding their coffers in 2011.

In fact, according to a new article from The New York Times’ Ron Lieber, “Earlier this month, Bank of America announced its intent to test a number of different monthly fees for customers in some states, depending on the balance in their accounts or other relationships with the institution. Right before the new year, meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase informed customers that under certain circumstances it would add monthly fees to many of the accounts it inherited from the now-deceased Washington Mutual.”

Banks are justifying these fee increases by blaming federal regulators, regulators who, in reality are actually making fees lower, or, at least, as Lieber describes it, more transparent.…

The credit card industry is changing. Some of the change is good, some of it may be bad. But the best news is, the credit card industry is changing.

It was recently reported that since the start of the year, eight million fewer people used a credit card.

There are not many industries that would be happy with losing eight million customers in only a year. However, they did not all walk away by choice. Whether through bankruptcy, charge-offs or account cancellations, many credit card users were simply told to hit the road. That’s fine. It’s for the better.

The recent stats were assembled and published by TransUnion.…

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.…