And for ATM Fees?

If you’re not sure, it’s time to find out.

Checking account fees have soared over the past year as banks try to boost profits. Depending on your situation, it may be time to jump to another bank.

The average monthly service fee on checking accounts that don’t pay interest is now a record $5.48, a 25 percent increase over last year, according to Bankrate, a financial data publisher.

The fee for using an ATM outside a bank’s network rose to $2.50, a 4 percent increase.

Overdraft fees, which you’ll pay if there’s not enough money in your account to cover a check or debit card payment, rose to an average $31.26, up 1.4 percent.

If you’re paying hefty fees, you don’t necessarily have to switch banks, says Greg McBride, a senior financial analyst at Bankrate. Ask your bank if there is anything you can do to get your fees waived. Some banks will give you free checking if you set up direct deposits into the account or maintain a minimum balance in your accounts.

If that’s not possible, it might be time to explore other options.

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DECIDE WHAT YOU WANT

You need to look for a bank that suits your specific needs. Sometimes that means sticking with a bank that charges a checking account fee.

“It’s not all dollars and cents,” says Kevin Kautzmann, a certified financial planner at EBNY Financial in New York.

If you think you’ll need to sign up for multiple products, such as mortgage or a car loan, you have to decide if you want a bank that offers all those things or use multiple banks.

Bigger banks have more branches, making it more convenient if you prefer speaking to someone. But if want to get to know the people who work at your bank, a smaller one might be right for you.

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SHOP AROUND

Several websites enable users to search for checking account offers in their area. NerdWallet.com and Bankrate.com lay out the fees that could be charged and also lists any rules, such as direct deposits or minimum balances that you need to follow in order to qualify for free checking.

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CONSIDER CREDIT UNIONS

“All my clients who switched to credit unions have nothing but good things to say about them,” says Kautzmann. Most credit unions offer truly free checking accounts, meaning you won’t have to maintain a balance or sign up for direct deposits to avoid a monthly fee.

Credit unions cater to a specific group, such as employees of a certain company or residents of a specific neighborhood. “Most people qualify to join a credit union, you just have to find one you qualify for,” says Bill Cheney, CEO of the Credit Union National Association. You can search for a credit union near you at www.ASmarterChoice.org or www.CULookup.com .

Credit unions also have more favorable interest rates on their savings accounts and loans. Interest on a savings account at a credit union averages 0.20 percent and 0.15 percent at regular banks, according to a report released by CUNA in March.

Credit Unions also have large ATM networks that are comparable to the big banks.

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EXPLORE INTERNET BANKS

Online banks such as ING Direct and Ally Bank do not charge monthly maintenance fees. They also let you open an account with no minimum deposit.

ING Direct and Ally also pay interest on their checking accounts, which is hard to find at brick-and-mortar banks. ING Direct offers a 0.19 percent interest rate on balances under $50,000 in their checking accounts.

But Internet banks are not for everyone, especially if you value talking to someone face-to-face, like if you’re asking for a small business loan.

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When Greig Detering left behind his comfortable life as a telecom engineer and set out to do missionary work abroad, he had a powerful calling — but not a lot of financial firepower. While he owned a home in Phoenix, he says, he lost most of his nest egg in 2002 when his employer’s stock dropped from $83 to (ouch) $2 a share. Fortunately, after his own resources ran dry, Detering’s fledgling ministry found a steadfast benefactor who kicked in $5,000 to $20,000 annually for several crucial years — to help support his evangelistic efforts across more than a dozen countries. And when Detering, now 54, began looking for a “transportation and communications hub” for his South American operations, the same supporter kicked in $120,000 to purchase a Buenos Aires condo in a deluxe residential tower, complete with a pool, a fitness center and conference rooms. It wasn’t the larger option on the higher floor that Detering had originally proposed — but, hey, a kid sister has to set some limits.

It didn’t hurt that the sister in question, 53-year-old Diane Paddison, had been chief operating officer of two Fortune 500 companies and, Detering admits, had done a better job of managing (read: diversifying) her nest egg. It also helped that she and her husband, Chris, a management consultant, found Detering’s missionary work in keeping with their largely faith-based philanthropy. Then there was the fact that they “learned to take care of each other,” Diane says, when they were growing up on the family farm. But while Detering says the property has appreciated 25 percent in value since 2007, owning real estate overseas turned out to be a huge administrative hassle; in fact, much of that gain was offset by the $20,000 cost of officially transferring the title to his ministry. Ultimately, says Detering, “it was really just them helping me out.”

Say, Brother, can you spare a…few thousand bucks? We’ve all heard about the so-called sandwich generation, anxiously watching as its retirement savings are chipped away by the needs of aging parents on one side and boomerang kids on the other. But financial planners say that few people factor in the impact of other family members — that is, financially challenged siblings — who might sheepishly slip in a loan request while helping dry the holiday dinner dishes. Sometimes — like when the contributing sibling can afford to provide the help, as with Detering and Paddison — the arrangement can work out well. (Bonus points when the borrower’s needs align with the lender’s charitable values, and when the receiving sibling isn’t addicted to gambling, controlled substances or daytime TV.)

But experts say that in this unforgiving economy, baby boomers in particular, many of whom grew up in fairly large broods, are seeing a bump in financial requests from close kin who lost a job, ended a marriage or — sounding familiar yet? — got caught in the housing bubble. According to a recent MetLife study, nearly half of Americans say they gave money to a family member in the prior year to help pay bills. And as boomers move beyond their prime earning years, experts say, requests will likely accelerate. Forecasts of historic wealth-transfer windfalls (aka inheritance) for boomers in the coming years are overstated, reports AARP’s Public Policy Institute. What’s more, the Employee Benefit Research Institute predicts that nearly half of Americans ages 36 to 62 may not be able to afford even basic living expenses in retirement.

That financial pressure could make a tough — and often fraught — decision to mix blood and bank accounts that much tougher. “Money often is the adulthood trigger for childhood issues,” says Suzanne Slater, a Northampton, Mass.-based psychotherapist specializing in family wealth dynamics. On the asking side of the equation, experts say, the risk includes not only the shame brought on by sibling competition and the resentment of being beholden, but also the prospect that a buttinsky brother or sister will feel justified in doling out heavy doses of advice with their dollars. There’s also the “hidden string” factor, where the receiving party is pressured to, say, spend weekends expressing gratitude by cleaning his brother’s gutters.

For the giver, problems start with the strong prospect that a family “loan” — especially an undocumented one — can be as good as money flushed. “Precisely because a sibling loves and trusts you, they may expect you to understand when there’s a barrier to repayment,” says Timothy Burke, CEO of Massachusetts-based National Family Mortgage, which facilitates loans between kin. Indeed, financial therapists, a new breed of psychologists who help people understand their money-related behavior, say the line between compassion and enabling is frequently a blurry one. Plus, the situation can easily rankle a lender’s spouse, who may be less inclined to allocate hard-earned marital assets to a brotherly bailout. But as the economy leaves many Americans struggling to pay for basics like homes, health care and higher education, more will be facing the question of who they are willing to backstop in life — and to what degree. “I’m definitely seeing more noise and discussion about siblings,” says Erin Botsford, a Dallas financial adviser and the author of The Big Retirement Risk, who says she’s seen such requests jump 20 to 30 percent in her practice in the past few years. “To ignore them is to the clients’ peril.”

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By Alex Coppola

–A client is buried by debt and a poorly managed portfolio
A DOW JONES NEWSWIRES COLUMN

–Adviser helps readjust every facet of his finances

–There are no silver bullets when it comes to helping sinking clients

Kevin Kautzmann’s client wasn’t just struggling when he came to see the fee-based adviser in 2001. He was dead broke.

The client owned an independent law practice, but he had a negative net worth, nearly $100,000 in credit-card debt and a fully mortgaged home. To make matters worse, the bursting tech bubble had left him with less than $20,000 in his retirement accounts.

Over the next three years, Kautzmann, who manages more than $50 million in assets at EBNY Financial in New York City, managed to guide his client back into the black. After 10 years, the client’s net worth topped $1 million.

What was the key to the client’s turnaround? Not a complex financial fix or a blockbuster investment. Instead, Kautzmann says, success came from the client’s willingness to change his lifestyle and adjust every facet of his financial life.

His client’s problems weren’t a result of what his previous stockbroker had done, shifting IRA assets into risky investments in early 2000. Instead, the trouble was what the client hadn’t done: Confront his own unsustainable spending habits.

Kautzmann sat his client down and presented him with a record of expenditures, debts and the bloated rates he was paying on his five maxed-out credit cards. Next, Kautzmann showed his client a series of annual reports detailing a steady accumulation of liabilities that resulted in declining net worth. Until that point, the client had had no idea of how far gone he actually was.

“Being faced with those figures can be overwhelming, but I give him a lot of credit,” says Kautzmann. “He not only understood he needed to make a change, but he was prepared to take the steps necessary to make it happen.”

They started by tackling the debt, first targeting the area with the highest interest rate. In just three years, the client paid down and closed out each maxed-out credit card. Next, Kautzmann targeted the host of insurance policies — covering the home, long-term care and life insurance — that his client had purchased over the years. Consolidating the various policies generated thousands of dollars in annual savings.

They put that savings toward rebuilding the equity in his home. “It was as simple as paying himself as if he were a monthly bill,” explains Kautzmann. “That, and helping him to stop spending money he didn’t have.”

On the investment side, Kautzmann sold off the speculative investments that had destroyed his client’s portfolio and instead aimed for stocks and bonds from established companies with solid track records. He also made sure his client took advantage of tax deductions he had missed, including setting up a 401(k) and maxing out contributions to his IRAs. He even had him build up a reserve fund of municipal bonds in a taxable account.

They then turned to the client’s business. Kautzmann encouraged him to downsize from a large office in Times Square and to hire an assistant to handle the practice’s administrative duties. The move actually reduced the company’s overhead, increased internal profits and made the practice far more efficient.

The client is now worth about $1.4 million, just a decade after walking into Kautzmann’s office without a penny to his name. Despite all the help, Kautzmann understands his client deserves a lot of the recognition for the success. “If a client has dug themselves a hole, an adviser can’t go down into it to carry them out,” he says. “We can give them support and show them the tools, but ultimately they’re going to have to climb out themselves.”

– Two pension payout options each have a drawback

– Life insurance improves options

– Guaranteed universal life has scant risk of lapsing

The client, 68, was mere months away from retirement but couldn’t figure out which of two pension payout options to choose. When Kevin Kautzmann, president of fee-based EBNY Financial in New York City, took a look, he quickly saw why.

“One option would force him to put his own financial security over his wife’s, while the other would cause him to miss out on more than half a million dollars over his 20-year life expectancy,” says Kautzmann.  Option A paid out a whopping $7,000 a month, totaling $84,000 a year. But if the client died, his wife wouldn’t receive any payments. Option B paid out only $3,600 a month (just $43,200 annually), but was guaranteed as long as either of the spouses was alive.

Then his client offhandedly mentioned a separate topic: life insurance. A relatively healthy non-smoker, he was still easily insurable.

So Kautzmann suggested that he choose the $7,000 a month option on his pension and take out a life insurance policy naming his wife as the beneficiary. If he died and his pension payments stopped, the insurance payment would help support her.

Kautzmann, who had previously worked in the insurance industry, pointed the client to guaranteed universal life. Unlike variable life insurance, it would have almost no risk of lapsing. He also insisted on insurers with an A or higher rating.

To keep costs at a reasonable amount, the client opted for a $500,000 policy with a $300 monthly premium. If the husband dies, that payout would need to earn just 3% to 4% annually to effectively supplement the wife’s other sources of retirement income (including Social Security, income from investments and another $200,000 in pre-existing life insurance on the husband). And if the wife died first, the client could simply cancel the policy.

Kautzmann’s client has since retired and is pleased with the decision to stick with the higher pension payout. “He visits his family across the country whenever he likes, and he recently bought a vintage 1960s muscle car that he’s always wanted,” Kautzmann says.

–Practice Management is a column that looks at ways financial advisers can build and improve their business. Harper Willis can be reached at 212-416-2245

For Mary and her husband, Rick, the empty-nesting phase began with a few splurges aimed at getting them away from their suburban hustle and bustle. First, they bought a 35-foot RV for tooling around the Golden State on weekends, with their Jeep in tow. A couple of years later, they found a little five-acre ranch getaway not far from Napa Valley. And like a lot of empty nesters, they eventually brought some four-legged “children” into their lives. Only these weren’t run-of-the-mill rescue tabbies or finely bred pedigreed pups. The two creatures Mary and Rick bought on an impulse weighed around 250 pounds each, had lanky necks, two-toed feet — and alluringly long eyelashes. Today the couple’s llama herd numbers more than 50, and Mary says they’ve spent upwards of $500,000 living la vida llama: buying animals, breeding them and showing them competitively at every opportunity. Asked whether raising llamas might ultimately be even more expensive than raising kids, she does the mental math. “Given how many we’ve got,” says the self-described llamaholic, “probably — yes.”

Wait a minute, parents are saying: Can there be anything more expensive than raising kids? The way most Americans figure it, by the time they finally reach their empty-nest years, they’ve gotten over life’s biggest spending hump. After all, the government (conservatively) estimates that for an upper-income family, the cost of raising a single child from birth to age 18 will run about $377,000 — and that’s before the little matter of college tuition. Once the kids have gone, parents often experience (in addition to those well-documented feelings of loss) an exhilarating sense of financial freedom: No more bills for braces and tennis lessons. No extra mouths to feed. No need for the large house and the large mortgage that comes with it. And of course, no six-figure tuition to spend years saving up for and then shelling out. Only it turns out that, at least according to the most recent evidence, when kids go out the door, many parents discover that their days of spending have just begun.

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As businesses, the stakes are even higher for charter schools. Entrusted with the lives and minds of America’s youth, failure to carry mandated insurance requirements or dropping coverages designed to protect a school against reasonable exposures as a cost-cutting measure not only puts a school in tremendous risk in the event of a damaging lawsuit, it places the educational future of students in peril with the prospect of a school closure.

Economic factors appear to have played a role in some schools defaulting on their insurance premium payments, prompting carriers to cancel coverage. For charter schools, ongoing economic woes can compound an existence already made difficult due to lack of funding and annual budgetary shortages and concerns.

“Charter schools are on a tight budget, and insurance expense is a line item that can be taxing on the school,” notes John Pagliaro, vice president of property and casualty for Summit Consolidated Group, which offers comprehensive commercial property and casualty insurance plans, including those for charter schools.

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But what do you do if you want cosmetic surgery? In 2010, 13.1 million people underwent a cosmetic procedure in the U.S. — a figure that is up 5% over 2009, and which cost patients a whopping $10.7 billion, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

Break it down, and the figures are steep. ASPS reports that breast augmentation costs almost $4,000, nose jobs $4,300 and facelifts $6,231 (not including surgical facilities, anesthesia and other fees, which can add thousands more to the final bill).

And insurance doesn’t typically pitch in to help. “Consumers should be aware that cosmetic surgery is not covered under insurance, so all of the expenses must be paid out of pocket,” says Kevin Kautzmann, a New York City certified financial planner. Only in rare instances, such as reconstructive surgery after an illness or accident, will insurance cover the costs.

So what are your payment options?

Consider Kathy Riffey, a Baltimore medical insurance analyst who recently lost 40 pounds. The resulting saggy skin caused her to seek a breast lift and implants, and she did not have $8,000 saved to pay for the plastic surgery procedures.

With the aid of her plastic surgeon’s finance office, she chose one of the medical credit cards on the market. With an introductory 0% interest rate for six months, followed by a moderate rate hike, Riffey opted for a 24-month plan, for which the bill is just $167 per month. “It was a lower interest rate than a credit card with better payment plan options,” she says. “And, as I pay it off, I can use the remaining credit for braces, which I plan to get.”

If you are considering plastic surgery, here are some payment methods to explore:
Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2011/07/20/10-financing-options-for-cosmetic-surgery/#ixzz1iRts2vlR

“This past year he forgot my birthday and he forgot my brothers’ birthdays, so we realized he was slipping pretty fast,” says Dorrell, a certified financial planner and founder of Senior Financial Security in Summerfield, Florida.

An Alzheimer’s diagnosis is a devastating blow, one that requires immediate action to ensure the financial resources built over a lifetime can sustain a person through this progressive and fatal disease.

The costs associated with Alzheimer’s can be just as debilitating as the symptoms. In 2004 – the latest data available – the cost of caring for a Medicare patient with Alzheimer’s or other dementia was $42,072 compared to $13,515 for patients without these conditions. (Those figures have been adjusted for 2010 dollars).

And the costs are climbing: Healthcare, long-term care and hospice payments for Alzheimer’s and dementia are projected to increase from $183 billion in 2011 to $1.1 trillion in 2050 (in 2011 dollars), the AA report states.

Despite the hefty price tag for care, the financial services industry seems ill-prepared to deal with the needs of this particular group. Even though 84 percent of financial advisers have come in contact with a client who suffers from Alzheimer’s, 96 percent don’t feel ready to assist, according to a 2009 study from Fidelity Investments. Kevin Kautzmann, a certified financial planner with EBNY Financial LLC in New York, says that’s got to change. “While there is a prevailing fear within the industry of accusing a client inappropriately and getting fired for it, if the issue is handled with respect and sensitivity, clients and their families respond very well to the fact that their financial adviser is genuinely concerned about their loved ones,” Kautzmann says.

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At age 45, I can still call my grandmother to hear stories about the Great Depression. She turned 97 this year. More than half a dozen close relatives have lived into their 90s, and that’s just going back to my great-grandmother.

A long life, of course, can be a blessing. But financial advisers typically use a more-daunting term: longevity risk. It’s the reason that many develop retirement plans that assume their clients will live to at least age 93, reflecting the growth of the country’s oldest population. The number of Americans who live to age 100 or greater increased 43% between 2000 and 2010, to 71,991 from 50,454.

The concept of planning for my financial well-being in 50 years is so overwhelming, it’s easier just to ignore my family history. But there are tricks to thinking so far ahead. One is to break long- and short-term goals into smaller parts, so each seems more doable, says Lisa Kent, a Princeton, N.J.-based vice president and wealth-management adviser for Merrill Lynch & Co., a unit of Bank of America Corp.

What follows are some of the parts that go into planning for a very long life:

Don’t Play It So Safe

Investors typically retreat from stocks in the years before they retire, slowly shifting their portfolios from growth and income stocks to more conservative fixed-income bond portfolios. Some future retirees, for example, may decide to allocate at least 60% of their portfolios in high-grade bonds by age 60.

Funding a retirement well into my 90s, though, could require investing more in equities until age 70, says Vivian Groman, senior adviser at Starmont Asset Management in San Ramon, Calif. How much risk I accept should depend on how much I’ve saved, my lifestyle and the health of the economy at that time, Ms. Groman says.

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Whatever its cause, an accidental retirement can leave you scrambling to come up with a Plan B. With the economy still shaky, and unemployment still far too high, many more people are finding themselves looking for ways to the plug the financial gap created by an early retirement. Here are a few ideas.

Get Real About Your Situation

Once you get over the shock, get a clear picture of where you stand. Start by charting your monthly expenses. “If you don’t track expenses, now would be a good time to go back over the last 12 months of expenditures and set up a cash-flow-tracking program like mint.com or quickbooksonline.com,” says Rick Kahler, a certified financial planner with Kahler Financial Group.

Next, conduct a “gap analysis,” advises John Diel, a certified financial planner with The Hartford. How much do you need to cover the basics? How big is your buffer? How many months will any severance you receive last, compared to your expenses? What unemployment benefits are you eligible for, and for how long? And how big is your own emergency fund?

See full article from DailyFinance:http://srph.it/iKj0cX