The North Carolina Bankruptcy Information Blog

Try as we might to understand some the esoteric banking principles that contributed to the recession or give the industry any benefit of the doubt, the folks on Wall Street just keep giving us reasons to believe they are, and will forever be, drastically out of touch with the way the rest of America lives.

Last year, CitiBank, one the nation’s major banking services players, announced a plan to provide customers with a truly free checking account, provided some account usage stipulations were met, in an effort to attract new accounts and to do their part in helping us stave off the effects of the recession.…

With the government’s new credit card legislation possibly reaching its stride two months early on December 1, a lot of frustrated credit card users may be breathing a collective sigh of relief. Given the tighter restrictions on credit card issuers, you might want to take the opportunity to be a little more choosy in selecting your new card, as industry players are going to push hard to win customers from competitors, using reward plans and low introductory rates as incentives. However, unknown to many credit card users is how reward plans are handled when payments are missed.

What far too few consumers understand is that not only do credit reports get the news when a payment is missed, so do the third party companies that handle the reward plans.…