Stephen Brobeck Consumers Quotations

We recommend that consumers shift their funds from traditional savings to CDs and from banks to credit unions. If everyone did so they would earn about $40 billion more in interest annually. That's an average of about $400 per household.

Despite all of the news coverage about credit scores over the past year, many consumers still do not understand important facts about these increasingly influential numbers.

The bottom line for consumers is potentially billions of dollars a year in additional charges, fees, and higher interest rates and lower yields on savings.

If consumers started to shift money, however, ... from an interest checking or a traditional savings account into even a bank CD or from a bank to a credit union. That would place market pressure on the banks to raise those interest checking rates and those traditional savings rates. They (banks) do not feel as if consumers are demanding higher rates.

If consumers would simply maintain the minimum balance requirement, they wouldn't get hit with monthly fees and wouldn't bounce checks. You want to find a bank that has a minimum balance requirement you can meet.