It's tax-filing season, and the fastest-growing way to receive tax refunds is on prepaid cards. So it is a great time to review how prepaid card vendors can do a better job explaining how the cards work and what the true costs are. More clarity will help reduce people's anxiety...

Saving money isn't always easy. And when people are struggling financially, it can seem impossible, yet that's when it's even more important to save for the unexpected.

Source(s): U.S. Department of Commerce: Bureau of Economic Analysis

The Federal Reserve today issued the final rules on the Durbin Amendment, and it's an ultimate win for retailers, although I predict some battles to come from the banking industry and consumers before the dust settles.

The Amendment, part of the sweeping Dodd-Frank financial overhaul legislation, allows the Federal...

During tough economic times, many of us can get dangerously close to the bottom of our checking accounts several times a year. As checks may not clear in the order we write them, sometimes our balance will even go negative by accident. This is the dreaded overdraft.

Many years ago,...

Two weeks ago, Consumers Union's report "Adding It All Up: How Prepaid Card Fees Compare to Checking Account Fees" found that prepaid cards often are more expensive than checking accounts.

A week before, a Bretton Woods Inc. report "

Americans who ditch retail banking due to higher fees this year might look for inspiration to a surprising group: low-income African American women with kids and no college.

Last month, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon made headlines when he estimated that roughly...

No, Twitter is actually not six years old yet. I am talking about using Twitter when you are only 6 years of age.
Yesterday on French television, the evening news had a segment about a teacher in Dunkirk (Dunkerque for the...

On December 16, the Federal Reserve Board proposed a new rule that would lower by as much as 84 percent the $16.2 billion in fees that merchants pay annually when you swipe your debit card at...

Today, the Kardashian sisters are putting name and celebrity status behind a Mastercard prepaid card. The sisters, Kim, Khloe and Kourtney, are the latest in a line of celebrities who have launched branded prepaid cards, including Russell Simmons, Lil Wayne and Amar'e Stoudemire. [Disclosure: the Amar'e card is an UPside...

By the time you read this, Keith Richards' book, "Life", will be available from Apple's iBooks store.
While I could only pre-order the book and read the first 40 pages, I enjoyed one of the best reading experiences in...

Gary Rivlin's book "Broke USA" describes Sandra Harris, an accounting technician who borrowed $200 from a payday lender to pay her car insurance after her husband lost his job. Eight thousand dollars in fees later, the couple...

As college students head back to campus, a financial question of the moment for students and parents is whether to set up credit or debit accounts to back up the plastic in your wallets?

This question, of course, is spurred by bank...

I am midway through reading Gary Rivlin's new book, Broke, USA. As CNN Money contributor Dan Okrent puts it in his review, Rivlin's book is about the industry of "vulture finance." It exposes large and small financial services companies that prey on financially vulnerable people because...

While a certain class of people, myself included, obsess about our iPhones, there's a quieter yet bigger cell phone revolution going on: the worldwide growth of prepaid phones.

Prepaid phone plans, where you pay as you go with no contract, are the largest...

People sacrifice their privacy for financial gain on a regular basis. This trade-off is the foundation of loyalty cards. Every day, I allow SafeWay to track my purchases, and from time to time I get 70 cents off of a box of Kleenex or something similar.

But exposing private...

April is financial literacy month. It does not bode well for financial literacy. When a calendar month gets dedicated to a cause, it is often because that cause remains easily forgotten during the rest of the year. Personal finance is not consistently...

Today, I am visiting Washington High School in Phoenix to present "The Fundamentals of Finance" seminar, in partnership with Plastyc, to encourage responsible money management skills. In conjunction with the seminar, we're posting these financial tips for teens:

Earn money

Besides gift-money or money you get from your parents, earn...

In a prior post , I took a shot at venture capital firms' lackadaisical interest in funding financial services innovation.

Now two recent events signal increasing activity in the sector: Green Dot Corporation's $150 million initial public offering filing and Kwedit's venture capital-backed launch.

At...

The IRS is the first to tell you that the fastest way to get your tax return is by direct deposit. And tax preparing services such as H&R Block or Intuit's TurboTax are actively supporting the...

On Feb. 22, new first of many new financial regulations to protect consumers takes effect. It's not a moment too soon. Banking, especially retail banking, is ripe for change, and the new regulations provides the catalyst that will help shift the power from the bankers to the consumers with technology...