Dad Joke
I’m so bored that I just memorized six pages of the dictionary.
I learned next to nothing.
Now Let’s Make Your Money Smile
Uncheck the box. It takes ten seconds.
That little “shipping protection” charge at online checkout? A class action filed in New York federal court alleges Route App slips it into your cart through a widget the store installs — pre-selected, without you agreeing — and that it doesn’t deliver the protection its name promises. Route App hasn’t answered the allegations; no court has found wrongdoing.
The number that stopped me: the complaint says 98% of merchants leave that box pre-checked.
Two or three dollars, by default, on every order, is money that never shows up in a budget. Nobody decides to buy it. They just don’t uncheck it. Today: read the line items before you hit Place Order, and uncheck anything protecting a package you never asked to protect.
⚠ Forward this one before somebody you know places their next order.
Whoever in your life clicks straight through checkout has been paying that box for years and has never once looked at it. Ten seconds of their attention ends it permanently. Not looking costs them two or three dollars on every order they ever place.
$90.1 billion. And 0.38%.
Two FDIC numbers, days apart, both the government’s own.
Banks earned $90.1 billion last quarter — 4,238 of them, up 12%. The national average savings account pays 0.38%; checking pays 0.07%. A Treasury I bond pays 4.26% for bonds issued through October 31.
Fine print, straight: 0.38% is an average, so yours may beat it. I bonds cap at $10,000 a year, lock for twelve months, and cost three months’ interest if you cash out before five years.
And you don’t have to lock anything up to do better than 0.38%. I checked Betterment’s own page this morning: their Cash Reserve account is paying 3.25% APY, variable — no lock-up, withdraw whenever you want. On $10,000 that is $325 a year instead of $38. They also run a new-customer offer of 4.00% right now, which is the 3.25% plus a 0.75% boost on up to $1M through January 15, 2027 — so treat 3.25% as the real number and the boost as a bonus that expires. Betterment and the other cash options I actually use are in the Bonus Section at the bottom, with a plain link beside my referral link every time.
Today: log in and read the actual rate on your savings account. That’s the whole assignment. If you opened it in your twenties and have never looked, you already know how this ends. It’s the one item here that pays you instead of just protecting you.
Amazon owes $309.5 million on returns — and there’s nothing to sign
A judge gave preliminary approval on August 18 to a settlement covering anyone who returned something to Amazon since September 5, 2017 and never got the refund, got the wrong amount, got it late, or got charged again for the item. According to the settlement filing, Amazon denies any wrongdoing and the court was explicit that preliminary approval establishes none.
There is no claim form yet. So if an email or text this week offers to file your Amazon claim for you, that is not Amazon and not the court. Today: nothing — except don’t pay anyone to file it. Watch for a real notice.
Before you sign with a debt relief company, open one free website
From Connecticut’s banking bulletin: on August 14 the Commissioner entered a consent order with Clarity Debt Resolution, Inc. of Irvine, California, alleging it operated in violation of Connecticut’s debt negotiation licensing law since at least June 2023. Clarity paid a $7,600 penalty and $2,400 in back fees.
We already have a page called “Is Clarity Debt Resolution Legit?” — people search that exact question constantly. A regulator just answered it on the record.
Today: if anyone wants you to sign a debt relief agreement, search your state’s banking regulator for their name first. Free, five minutes, and the file almost nobody opens.
That business credit card is probably yours, personally
People keep asking me about a defaulted business credit card and a collector calling, assuming the business shields them. Usually it doesn’t. Almost every small business card is personally guaranteed — you signed individually when you opened it. The business dies; the card doesn’t. And if that balance is later forgiven or settled, the cancelled debt can hit your personal tax return as income unless you were insolvent or it went through bankruptcy.
If that’s you, ask me directly. Free, private, nothing for sale.
One quick one, because the headline is wrong
Ignore the “highest gas price ever” stories — the record is $5.0165, set June 14, 2022. The real number, from the EIA’s own table: $4.085 a gallon last week against $3.147 a year ago. That is 93.8 cents more per gallon, arrived a few cents at a time, with no announcement. Fill up twice a week and roughly $60 a month left your budget in the last year without anyone telling you.
The complaint database just got quieter — and almost nobody will hear about it
On August 14 the CFPB stopped publishing consumers’ written complaint narratives — the actual text of what people wrote about a lender, bank or collector. The counts stay public; the stories move to the FOIA reading room.
I send people to that database constantly, and the narratives are the useful half. Twenty complaints in people’s own words tell you whether a company has one bad department or a bad business model — a number can’t tell you that. If you were ever going to research a company that way, the window on the easy version is closing.
The door most people don’t know they have
At least 25 new federal cases hit the three big credit bureaus in two days — 15 Equifax, 7 Experian, 3 TransUnion. “At least,” because that sees federal courts only and indexing lags a week or two. Ordinary people sue over credit report errors constantly, and most never knew they could. Two from this week: Leandre v. Transworld Systems and Campbell v. Midland Credit Management — allegations only. The honest other half: the same law lets a court award fees against you for a bad-faith filing. A door, not a lottery ticket.
What I published yesterday
One more thing
The longer version — deep dives, full case write-ups — is the Weekday Briefing. This one stays short on purpose.
And if the 93 cents a gallon, or the business card that turned out to be personal, made you think of someone specific — send this to them too.
Nothing here is legal or financial advice. I don’t sell debt relief, I take no referral fees from debt companies, and I don’t know your situation. What I have is thirty-some years of watching how this plays out.
None of today is glamorous. Uncheck a box. Read a rate you’ve ignored for a decade. Open a regulator’s site before you sign. But that is how people climb out, and I’ve watched a lot of them do it — one honest look at a time, on an ordinary Thursday, when nothing in particular was on fire.
Start with whichever one takes ten seconds.
Back tomorrow.
— Steve
Bonus Section
A few places I actually use, and what I get out of telling you. Each one shows a plain link and my referral link. If you use mine, the company may hand us both a small bonus. The plain link goes to exactly the same place — it just pays me nothing, and you nothing. Use whichever you like; genuinely, it’s your call.
I’ve also listed places I like that pay me nothing at all, so you can see the difference.
Cash that actually earns something
Betterment — their Cash Reserve account is the closest thing here to a plain high-yield savings account. (my referral link)
Robinhood’s cash sweep pays competitively too. The good rate sits behind their paid Gold tier — I pay for it myself — so on a small balance the subscription can eat the gain. It’s under Investing below. Do the arithmetic before you subscribe.
And one where nobody pays anybody: TreasuryDirect is the government’s own site. You buy Treasury bills straight from the Treasury with no broker in the middle — $100 minimum, in $100 increments, terms from four weeks out to a year. There is no app, no bonus and no referral link in existence for it. I mention it because for money you know you won’t touch for a few months, it’s usually the honest number the others have to beat.
Saving without having to think about it
Acorns — rounds up your spare change and invests it automatically. I pay for it, and the reason is simple: it saves money I’d otherwise spend without noticing. (my referral link)
And the version that costs nobody anything, me included: a standing transfer out of checking on payday, at the bank you already have. Acorns works because it moves the money before you notice it; a transfer you set once and forget does the same thing. If you’d rather not open another account, do that instead — I’d genuinely rather you saved something than used my link.
Investing
Robinhood — the platform I run my own experiment on. Uninvested cash is swept to FDIC-insured program banks, so it doubles as a cash account. The competitive rate requires their paid Gold subscription, which I pay for myself — worth it at my balance, but do the arithmetic on yours. And note Robinhood doesn’t pay that interest itself; the program banks do. (my referral link)
And three I recommend on merit, where I get nothing at all: Vanguard for low-cost index funds, Schwab for a full-service brokerage, and American Century — I was a happy customer there for decades.
Rates and terms move, and each of these has its own conditions. Go look at today’s numbers before you move a dollar.
A free conversation about your situation
Damon Day is an independent debt coach, and my co-host on Get Out of Debt Guy — you can also hear us on Spotify. I want you to know that before you decide anything. I receive no payment for this referral.
The consultation is free. The only time money changes hands is if you decide you want to hire him as a consultant. Go to DamonDay.com and schedule — he doesn’t cold-call anybody, and neither do I.
Or ask me, anonymously
Ask Steve — free, private, and I’m not selling anything. No account, no email, no sales pitch at the end of it.