Debit

If you vacation outside the country this summer, you might come home to find your checking account smaller than expected. Who raided it? It might have been your bank. The fees charged by banks as well as other financial institutions to use foreign automated teller machines can deplete cash faster than lunch in London. Some U.S. banks charge as much as $5, plus a percentage, every time a debit card they issued is used at a foreign ATM. Not that you would know it at the time. Unlike in the U.S., where you receive an on-screen warning if additional fees are to be collected for a machine withdrawal, these charges can be invisible until you receive your bank statement back home.

Bill Gant no longer carries rolls of quarters to pay for the 50-cents-an-hour metered parking in downtown Bel Air. Instead, he carries a debit card for use with digitized meters that the town debuted this month. The Bond/Thomas Street parking lot has 17 new digitized parking meters. Designed for convenience, the new black meters accept nickels, dimes, silver dollars and quarters. But the devices also take the Smartcard, which works like a debit card that can hold up to $100. "I was putting quarters in the meter for 20 years," Gant said after sliding his card into a meter when leaving recently.

Spending smart isn't just about what you buy, but how you pay. Often that decision is based on the same question you're asked about grocery bags at the supermarket checkout: paper or plastic? Paper includes cash and personal checks, while plastic includes debit and credit cards. Which should you use? In the end, the answer mostly depends on how disciplined you are with money. Here are some pros and cons of each type of payment, along with a tip you might not already know. Checks Pros: You won't incur credit-card finance charges and you can track spending in the checkbook register.

THE PROTESTS OF local pharmacists should not stop Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke from allowing retired city employees to participate in a mail-order drug prescription program. The pharmacists complain that they will lose a significant portion of their business to a St. Louis company from which retirees will be able to purchase prescribed drugs at wholesale prices. But the city is doing what it needs to do to ensure its own financial viability.Budget deficits projected for each of the last two years have been only narrowly averted.

IT'S SAID the worst job on earth is meter maid.But your Intrepid One recently discovered something worse in the dirty deed department: paying for those tickets.Call it double jeopardy -- or even triple or quadruple jeopardy -- if pTC you happen to slip up, forget to shell out $20 for the violation and, heaven forbid, cause a flag to rise over your state Motor Vehicle Administration registration.That's when bureaucrats start laughing -- all the way to the bank.Such human error happened to your wheelster last month, dear drivers, and the memory remains fresh and painful.

An Ellicott City businessman and three employees have been charged with stealing more than 19,000 copies of public records from the Howard Circuit Court clerk's office by illegally using a state-owned debit card.Police say Melvin Gary Rybczynski, 50, who researches land titles from his office on Court Avenue, and his employees used the card without authorization for six months. Officials said they ran up $4,800 in costs -- 25 cents a copy -- that they never paid.According to a charging document, the card was issued to a clerk's office supervisor whose wife is an employee of Mr. Rybczynski's.

NEW YORK -- Last Christmas, Marcie Knapik Sanders of Charlton, Mass., got a plastic card in the mail that she thought was a MasterCard. It came unsolicited from her new bank, the Shawmut. If she spent enough money with it, she could win a Jeep Cherokee. So she put her other card away and bought Christmas presents with the new one.Big mistake. Although it looked like a credit card, felt like a credit card and acted like a credit card in the stores, it wasn't one. It was a debit card and there's a world of difference.

Procter & Gamble profit up 16%Procter & Gamble Co. said yesterday that its fourth-quarter profit rose 16 percent, to $472 million, while sales increased 13 percent, to $8.49 billion, compared with the same period a year ago.For the year that ended June 30, profits reached an all-time high of $2.65 billion, or $3.71 per share, up 20 percent from $2.21 billion, or $3.09 per share, for the previous year. The company cited cost-cutting and growing worldwide demand for its household products.Sales for the year climbed 10 percent, to $33.43 billion from $30.3 billion.

Progress in newspaper talksSan Francisco's two major newspapers agreed to delay yesterday's deadline to replace striking workers after Mayor Frank Jordan reported progress in labor talks to end the week-old strike.Negotiations continued in the mayor's office yesterday to send 2,600 striking reporters, ad sales workers, printers and delivery drivers back to work at the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner.Bank to help military familiesU.S. military personnel and their families will be able to use credit and debit cards to buy groceries at base commissaries worldwide under a plan announced yesterday by NationsBank Corp.

Life got a little easier for Darrell Davidson when he found a way to shop, dine or pay for just about anything without carrying cash, checks or credit cards. The Mount Washington resident now carries an "electronic check."When Mr. Davidson makes a purchase, NationsBank authorizes the merchant to withdraw the amount directly from his checking account. He doesn't have to carry checks or cash, and no interest mounts on his credit card.Mr. Davidson carries a debit card, and such cards have been around in one form or another since the first automatic teller machine card was issued.

Recession pushes debit card spending past credit NEW YORK - Debit card use was growing rapidly before the economy tanked, but the recession appears to have made them the preferred form of plastic. Both in terms of the number of transactions and the total dollar amount spent, debit cards have overtaken credit cards for U.S. consumers. In dollar terms, debit cards are now used for 50.4 percent of all noncash sales, though they have a lower average dollar amount per transaction, according to research from TowerGroup, a subsidiary of MasterCard Worldwide.

A Maryland state trooper who took a routine complaint from a woman about a stolen debit card number uncovered an alleged identity-theft scheme that led this week to an arrest of a teen who authorities said had more than 80 credit cards and a machine to make them. Police said the suspect's undoing came after he went on a weekend splurge using the woman's card, starting with a vehicle emissions test and ending with a $650 tab at a nightclub where the trooper said "he had partied with friends."

There is no reason to buy anything full price these days, especially apparel. Retailers have been slashing prices deeper and more frequently than ever before to entice financially strapped consumers. That means the shirt or boots you've been eyeing could be marked down more than once. Instead of stepping inside a store to keep track of new sales and snatch bargain-basement deals, let e-mail alerts and Web sites do the work for you. You can sign up for online sale notices directly with your favorite retailers.

The paper unemployment check will soon be a thing of the past for Maryland residents who file for the insurance benefit starting today. In its place comes plastic. The state's Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation will issue prepaid debit cards to people seeking unemployment insurance benefits and forgo the use of paper checks for new applicants. Department officials said the switch to plastic will save taxpayers about $400,000 annually in postage, paper, staff time and other processing costs.

All parents want to protect their children from harm and failure. That was Alan Zulich's first instinct when his 24-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, ran into a mysterious financial mishap. It came after a three-day stay at the Fenwick Inn in Ocean City left her with a $715.38 deficit in her checking account. Upon being told by hotel staff that the problem stemmed from a $700-plus security hold placed on her debit card account for the room, Zulich dashed off a sharply worded letter in June to the hotel's general manager to complain.

THE Q: After making a purchase on Restaurant.com recently, reader Richard Szymkiewicz decided to take a survey for a $10 coupon good toward a future purchase. He said he later discovered that he was "fraudulently charged $14.95 per month for a membership" he did "not knowingly join." "Restaurant.com gave our card information to a company, AP9/Shopping Essentials, without our informed consent," Szymkiewicz said. "They do tell you your information will be given to companies they think you might be interested in. What they don't tell you is that all information means your credit card number as well.

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. - Most people who use credit have more than one card. But just how many cards are too many? Some experts believe there is no set number to shoot for when it comes to how much plastic to have in your wallet. It's not the number of cards, but how the cards are used that's important. Others say how cards are used is indeed important, but so is having just a few cards as part of a strategy to help achieve or maintain a good credit score. In the United States, the average cardholder has seven credit cards and two debit cards, according to www.cardtrak.

To improve retirement savings, we should be making it harder for workers to get their hands on 401(k) money -- not easier. Certainly not as easy as going to the ATM machine. But that's exactly what the 401(k) debit card by Reserve Solutions does. The ReservePlus card allows you -- with the 401(k) plan's approval, of course -- to tap retirement money by using the card at an ATM or to make purchases at merchants that accept Visa cards. This seems like a new way to sacrifice your future.

Two city police officers, including a member of the police commissioner's security detail, face criminal charges in unrelated incidents. Officer Robert Snead, a member of Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III's security detail since July, faces handgun and other charges stemming from a confrontation with the husband of his former girlfriend. Another officer, Lakisha Davis, a six year veteran, has been charged with going on an $8,000 spending spree using a debit card that had been erroneously issued.

How are you doing with those New Year's resolutions? Did you resolve to save money, reduce stress and make more time for what really matters? Here's something that accomplishes all of those goals: Efficient bill-paying. Spending smart is not only about what you buy, but how you pay. And when it comes to paying bills, the old ways just don't work well anymore. Being unorganized isn't an option today, with sizable fees for paying late and bouncing checks and the possibility you can do expensive damage to your credit score.