Piggy Award: Business professor learns a lesson
Tess Vigeland: And finally to this week’s Marketplace Money Piggy Award. Our little blue plastic friend is heading to Atlanta, Ga., and listener V.S. She wrote to us this week to vent about her account at Bank of America. She gets paid nine months out of the year and keeps thousands of dollars sitting in her checking account. But the bank imposed fees for the three months she didn’t have direct deposits. So she moved her money to a different B of A account. Then on a trip abroad, she accidentally withdrew from her savings instead of checking.
Ka-ching! Overdraft fees. So she closed the savings account and another emergency account and was charged for transferring those balances.
“I’m a business professor,” she tells us, “and am so ashamed of myself for being cheated that I don’t want to use my name!”
Don’t be ashamed. Our pig is coming to your rescue. And it’s not nearly as deep in the slop as your bank is.
Don’t forget, one of our coveted blue friends will be awarded to the person who becomes Facebook fan X. We haven’t hit the magic number just yet. It could be you — so head on over and like us!
So, how do you get a prized Marketplace Money piggy bank? Well, you may be a caller or a listener, a Facebook or Twitter friend or maybe somebody we interview for a story. And we decide you’ve done something really cool and/or smart with your money or perhaps, you’re in need of a helping hand to get to your savings goals.
Here’s one way to win: A couple of months ago host Tess Vigeland picked a random number between 1,000 and 2,000 and wrote it on her office wall. When we hit that number on Facebook, that fan gets a piggy.
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