The Finance Buff

The Carnival of Personal Finance #127 is up at Moolanomy this week. My entry was Opt Out of Credit Card Convenience Checks. Here are two articles I’d like to comment on:

5 Reasons You Should Buy A New Car at Gather Little by Little. It’s actually 5 reasons you should NOT buy a new car. I have to disagree with the author there. The conventional wisdom of buying late model used cars just doesn’t work any more for the cars many (most ?) people want, namely Toyota or Honda sedans. The prices on used Toyota Camry and Corolla and Honda Accord and Civic are bid up to a point which makes more sense to buy new and drive until they die. The car dealerships make much more money selling used cars than selling new cars because new cars have become a commodity, which makes comparison shopping easy.

Bank Transfers To Accounts Not in Your Name at 2million. The author is disturbed by the fact that anybody having the bank routing number and the account number can do an ACH pull from another person’s bank account through Citi credit card. This is true. The originating financial institution which performs the transaction is supposed to obtain proper authorization. Some will use a prenote process which verifies the account ownership. Some will do a random deposit and ask you to come back and verify the amount. In 2million’s case, Citi did nothing. As the account owner, if you see a debit in your account you don’t recognize, you can go to your bank and tell them it’s unauthorized. The ACH transaction will be reversed. You have 60 days from the date of the transaction to do it.