Your Bank Is Ripping You Off: How to Fight Back and Save a Fortune - Softcover

Mrkvicka Jr., Edward F.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312152469 ISBN 13: 9780312152468

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 1997

Synopsis

You will overpay your bank more than $100,000 during your lifetime-through mortgages, credit card fees and interest, ATM charges, checking and savings fees, loans, and service charges.

Or you'll read this book and keep that money for yourself.

A former banker, Ed Mrkvicka knows all the tricks of the trade-how banks rip you off and how you can fight back. This book will show you how to save hundreds, even thousands of dollars every year. It reveals:

-How a $120,000 home or condo can cost more than double the purchase price--and how to stop that from happening
-How to shop around for credit cards that charge reasonable interest and minimal annual fees
-How to reduce of eliminate ATM charges and other fees you pay for access to your own money
-How to negotiate better loans for your home, car business and other needs
-Why "safe-deposit" boxes aren't safe-and how to protect your most valuable possessions and documents.

Everyone with a bank account should own this book..

About this title

About the Author

Edward F. Mrkvicka, Jr., is a past chairman and CEO of a national bank. His five previous books on banking and personal finance have been selections of the Book-of-the-Month Club and the book clubs of McGraw -Hill, Macmillan, Rodale, Fortune, and Money. He is the banking/financial columnist for Bottom Line Personal and The National Enquirer. Now president and CEO of Reliance Enterprises he lives in Merengo, Illinois.

Reviews

Your bank is your enemy, charges former Illinois banker Mrkvicka in this well-documented, convincing expose. He begins by pointing out that the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 violates the Constitution by giving "the power to regulate money to a handful of unelected private bankers." He excoriates the so-called prime rate as price fixing, and he labels bank deregulation a sham. As currently configured, he argues, banks exist principally to extract as much money as possible from their customers, with exorbitant interest rates on loans, pressure to encourage credit-card borrowing, outlandishly prolonged holds on checks deposited in checking and savings accounts and inflated charges for overdrafts. Worst of all, according to Mrkvicka, banks are shielded from lawsuits by federal regulations. Lest it be thought that the author is a radical, he stresses that he is a free-market conservative who believes there is nothing free-market about the banking business.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Mrkvicka draws on his experience as CEO of a national bank to reveal the increasing number of ways that banks are adding charges for services provided to individuals. He also points to a widespread practice of discrimination against minorities and women in spite of provisions of the federal Equal Credit Opportunity Act. He asserts that a bank's lending activity creates an adversarial relation with customers; loan rates are negotiable only if the consumer is knowledgeable and creditworthy. Mortgage loans are attractive to banks because most consumers fail to shop intelligently and neglect to accelerate principle payments. Mrkvicka counsels against have a bank checking account because of the high cost, and credit cards also come under scrutiny. All of his cautions suggest a strategy of shopping intelligently for financial services rather than an alarmist notion that all banks are run by thieves. As such, his work offers excellent, authoritative consumer awareness advice.?Joseph Barth, U.S. Military Acad. Lib., West Point, N.Y.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312152469
• ISBN 13: 9780312152468
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224