EE: Don’t Just Toss Away Bank Statements

re: introducing Shawn Vestal’s terrific new blog, Everyday Economy:

This is no time to be skipping the fine print on any agreement you have with a bank. Credit card terms are changing. Checking account fees are going up. And the changes are very hard to detect in the “notifications” institutions send out. For example, credit-card companies are lowering people’s credit limits, changing minimum monthly payments and raising interest rates – but the notifications typically don’t provide clear, easy-to-understand explanation of the changes. They bury the new rate or fee under a mountain of language that must have some contractual or legal purpose, but which seems not to have a communicative one.