The best CD rates on the five terms we’ve regularly tracked held steady over the past week.

We can only hope that remains the case with the Federal Reserve reiterating its determination to hold interest rates at record lows for the foreseeable future.
We’re also adding 60-month CDs to our rundowns of the top-paying certificates of deposit.
Some [...]

We’re adding the high-yield checking account at Danversbank to our list of favorites.

It’s paying 4.01% APY on balances up to $25,000 — a rate that’s almost impossible to find these days, even on 7-year CDs — with free ATM use and no monthly fees.
Although the rate on these accounts is always variable, Danversbank hasn’t changed [...]

We thought the Chase Freedom Visa card had one of the best cash reward programs when we wrote about it last fall.
Now Chase has increased the bonus rebate for its “seasonal rewards” from 3% to 5%. (The standard rebate for all other purchases remains 1%.)
Each quarter of the year represents a season, and this spring [...]

Fortune Bank, with a single branch in suburban St. Louis, held onto the top spot in our 3-month CD rankings for the second straight month.

It continues to pay 1.25% on this certificate of deposit with a $1,000 minimum deposit.
Only six months ago TotalBank was paying a top rate of 1.85% on 3-month CDs and [...]

Here’s a trick Citibank pulled before the Credit Card Accountability and Responsibility Act took effect last month in an effort to circumvent the new regulations.

Two of the act’s most important provisions require credit cards to:

Provide 45 days notice before raising rates, and the new higher rate can’t be imposed on existing balances, just new purchases.
Wait [...]

A couple of months ago we advised against buying long-term CDs at the bottom of a rate cycle.

The common wisdom is to go long at the top of a rate cycle and short at the bottom.
Some of our readers disagreed with that strategy, arguing that it’s possible to make more money with long-term CDs [...]

The nation’s largest bank, and biggest issuer of debit cards, is finally doing the right thing.
Bank of America will stop letting customers overdraw their checking accounts just so it can zing them with hefty overdraft fees.

Starting this summer, it will decline purchases that overdraw a customer’s checking account and inform them that they’ll have to [...]

The best rates for three of the five CDs we regularly track fell over the past 10 days.
Hudson City Bank, which had the best 24- and 36-month CD rates for almost five weeks, reduced its returns and fell out of our rankings.
The Palladian Private Bank also lowered its rates and no longer offers the top-paying [...]

Talk about cynical.
A shadowy special interest group is trying to turn consumer anger at big banks into anger against new federal regulations intended to protect us from another financial crisis.
The ad claims that the “Big Bank Bailout Bill” amounts to a “new $4 trillion bailout for banks.”
Of course the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection [...]