Savings Accounts

Roberto Pagan-Franco didn't have a bank account for decades. His employer paid him in cash or with a check that the Baltimore resident took to a check-cashing store. A few years ago he lost his job after a severe illness and for a time was homeless. Not exactly the type of customer you'd expect a big bank to court. But Pagan-Franco enrolled in a PNC Bank program that targets consumers who otherwise might be shut out of the banking system. And today, the 54-year-old has checking and savings accounts at PNC and is in the process of getting a credit card.

Next time the more bombastic in Washington rail against government waste, let them include every cent lost to Wednesday's dog and pony show in the House of Representatives, where time that might have been used constructively was frittered away with yet another attack on health care reform. For those who might have accidentally tuned into C-Span shortly before 1:30 p.m., that was not a repeat but an actual live telecast. For the 33 r d time since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, the House held a vote to repeal part or all of it. Thirty-three times!

Are you missing out on free money? "Americans could be earning a lot more interest on their cash without taking any, or little, additional risk," says a study by the Consumer Federation of America. It points out that "Americans hold trillions in low-yielding savings accounts and could earn substantially more in interest by shifting that cash into higher-yielding alternatives." The study suggests moving some money from savings accounts into certificates of deposit ("the highest rates in several years")

Roberto Pagan-Franco didn't have a bank account for decades. His employer paid him in cash or with a check that the Baltimore resident took to a check-cashing store. A few years ago he lost his job after a severe illness and for a time was homeless. Not exactly the type of customer you'd expect a big bank to court. But Pagan-Franco enrolled in a PNC Bank program that targets consumers who otherwise might be shut out of the banking system. And today, the 54-year-old has checking and savings accounts at PNC and is in the process of getting a credit card.

A FEW years ago, investors expected double-digit percentage gains from investments. Now, their ambitions are far more modest - safety. Del Karfonta, executive vice president of the Columbia Bank, said the bank this year has seen deposits increase 10 percent in savings accounts and 35 percent in certificates of deposit by customers taking a wait-and-see approach to the stock market. "It's starting to grow to the point that it's catching our attention," he said. For these customers, Karfonta said, "It's not so much, `I want a 10 percent return on my money.

WASHINGTON - Vice President Al Gore will propose tomorrow a plan to set aside $200 billion over 10 years from the projected federal budget surplus to entice spendthrift Americans to save more money for retirement, a first home, education or catastrophic health care costs. Gore's Family Savings Accounts - the largest piece of a tax cut package totaling $500 billion - is the Democratic presidential candidate's answer to his Republican rival, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, who has proposed the partial privatization of the Social Security system.

PHILADELPHIA - Back in her native Ukraine, Irina Mitsik learned to mistrust banks. After all, they could be open one day, then gone - along with all her savings - the next. In the Ghanaian refugee camp where he spent seven years, Donald Todey never thought about saving for the future. After all, in a place where food was scarce and hardships plentiful, no one worried about tomorrow. These days, however, both are carving out new lives in a country where savings accounts, credit histories and checkbooks are not just a fact of life but a factor in determining who sinks and who swims.

Let 2008 be the year you finally carry through on your promises to pay more attention to your 401(k) retirement savings plan at work. If you are like most people, you have had plenty of good intentions. You have promised yourself that you will save more or figure out just which funds you should really be using. But perhaps you have left money languishing in a savings account in a bank earning a measly 2 percent interest, when you might have earned an average of 8 percent to 10 percent a year in your 401(k)

SIMPLICITY is a marvelous thing in investing. We love the notion of rolling up that motley assortment of retirement and brokerage accounts from jobs and advisers gone by and starting fresh with a single new firm that will let us manipulate our finances with a mere keystroke when it's time to rebalance. Investment firms love it, too, and most offer fee breaks for keeping more and more of our money - all the more reason for monogamy. But chaining ourselves to a single investment firm goes against the grain for many of us, and the rash of mutual fund scandals only highlights the fear.

DALLAS -- It's 8 a.m., hardly the hour most folks would eagerly stand in a bank line.But for Sarah Conant and other fourth-graders at Robert Hyer Elementary School in Highland Park, Texas, it's never too early to start saving, especially if the bank comes to you.Quietly waiting her turn behind a line of 9- and 10-year-old classmates, Sarah, 10, watches intently as a Bank One teller in the school cafeteria hands her a receipt for a $10 deposit. The deposit brings her savings account balance to $173.

Feeling pinched this Christmas season? Are your credit cards tapped from buying gifts? Are you underwater on your mortgage and wondering how you will be able to retire before 90? The answer is simple: Use government accounting! It will have you feeling rich in no time. Let's start with bills. If you do not have enough in your checking account to cover monthly expenses, take money from your children's savings accounts, their college savings fund and your retirement account — and run up your credit card bills, if you have any credit left on them.

Let 2008 be the year you finally carry through on your promises to pay more attention to your 401(k) retirement savings plan at work. If you are like most people, you have had plenty of good intentions. You have promised yourself that you will save more or figure out just which funds you should really be using. But perhaps you have left money languishing in a savings account in a bank earning a measly 2 percent interest, when you might have earned an average of 8 percent to 10 percent a year in your 401(k)

Health-savings accounts are growing fast, and so are the amounts of tax-free money consumers can sock away in the fledgling plans. The relatively new accounts, created for use starting in 2004, allow users of high-deductible health insurance plans to open tax-free savings accounts. The idea is to put consumers more directly in charge of their medical spending by making them financially responsible for more of their care. Health-savings accounts are the plan's carrot, enticing consumers to go with lower-premium, high-deductible plans in exchange for contributing tax-deductible dollars into accounts that grow tax free and are withdrawn tax free if used for health care expenses.

DUBLIN, Ohio -- President Bush, speaking at the home office of the nation's third-largest purveyor of hamburgers and French fries, talked yesterday about good health and his plan to help the nation pay for it. In the lobby at the headquarters of Wendy's International, Bush urged Americans concerned about health care costs to consider a fledgling government program built around high-deductible insurance for catastrophic illness or accidents and tax-free personal...

President Bush's expected push for health reform in tonight's State of the Union address could face significant political obstacles, but the president is counting on the public's deepening frustration with rising medical costs to overcome the resistance. Bush's proposals include a significant extension of tax breaks for individual medical spending and a broad expansion of tax-free health savings accounts, according to sources. The goal is to make medical markets more efficient and give consumers an incentive to shop more carefully for health care.

TUCKED WITHIN a wide-ranging piece of legislation aimed at reforming and strengthening regulatory oversight of government-sponsored housing finance agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is a timely and welcome requirement that would force the two mortgage giants to set aside 5 percent of their after-tax profits for affordable housing. The proposed legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives has cleared a key committee with wide bipartisan support. It could pump as much as $3 billion over the next five years into the production, preservation and rehabilitation of affordable rental housing and toward assisting first-time homebuyers.

Feeling pinched this Christmas season? Are your credit cards tapped from buying gifts? Are you underwater on your mortgage and wondering how you will be able to retire before 90? The answer is simple: Use government accounting! It will have you feeling rich in no time. Let's start with bills. If you do not have enough in your checking account to cover monthly expenses, take money from your children's savings accounts, their college savings fund and your retirement account — and run up your credit card bills, if you have any credit left on them.

SIMPLICITY is a marvelous thing in investing. We love the notion of rolling up that motley assortment of retirement and brokerage accounts from jobs and advisers gone by and starting fresh with a single new firm that will let us manipulate our finances with a mere keystroke when it's time to rebalance. Investment firms love it, too, and most offer fee breaks for keeping more and more of our money - all the more reason for monogamy. But chaining ourselves to a single investment firm goes against the grain for many of us, and the rash of mutual fund scandals only highlights the fear.

FOR MILLIONS of workers, open-enrollment season this fall will be the first time they will have the option to sign up for a health savings account. Created by last year's Medicare law, this account is praised by some policy-makers as an elixir for soaring health care costs. It attempts to make consumers better shoppers of health care while at the same time allowing them to accrue potentially thousands of tax-free dollars that can be used any time for medical bills, but particularly in retirement when health expenses typically increase.