Making Money Your

This was probably inevitable: the minute that Dodd-Frank cracked down on the fees charged by credit cards aimed at students, some other bright financial innovation would crop up. This time, a debit card aimed at students. Which carries lots of fees. Ylan Mui reports that a company called Higher One has started signing up colleges around the country, taking on the burden of providing cash to students. In return, it gets lots of fees:

Students say several of the fees associated with Higher One’s card are particularly irksome, including the $19 inactivity fee, a 50-cent charge for using a PIN to make a purchase rather than a signature, and a $2.50 fee for using other banks’ ATMs…

Higher One said that only 1 percent of customers have been charged an inactivity fee and that more than half are charged the 50-cent fee only once. All fees are listed on Higher One’s Web site, along with tips on avoiding them.

“We have a big effort with educating students on how to use the account,” Smith said. “We’re very passionate about financial literacy.”

If the fees are listed on Higher One’s website, they’re not exactly prominent. I did find this page, eventually, via this blog entry, but it just says that “when you swipe & sign, you won’t be charged the PIN-based transaction fee”. I haven’t been able to find a page showing a 50-cent transaction fee anywhere*, although I did manage to find this page, showing a $25 fee for domestic wire transfers and a $50 fee for international wire transfers. “Higher One offers less costly alternatives for transferring funds”, it says, without giving any indication what they might be; I suspect that what they’re talking about is transfers to or from people who have already registered somehow with Higher One.

It should go without saying that any firm which is “very passionate about financial literacy” would encourage, rather than penalize, simple, cheap and safe PIN-debit transactions. It would not give students a debit card and then tell them that if they want to avoid fees they should select the “credit” option rather than the “debit” option when they come to pay.

And I can’t think of any good reason to charge a $19 inactivity fee to people who haven’t used their cards in 9 months.

The fact is that students are often very naive when it comes to money, and it’s easy to gouge them once or twice before they learn that banks are not necessarily on their side. If you can get your card accepted by a majority of freshmen every year, and then come up with all manner of weird fees to hit them with, that’s a great way of making money out of ignorance.

Meanwhile, all students should have a bank account: giving them a debit card instead only serves to maximize the number of unbanked students. So while I’m sure cards like this are attractive to colleges, it would be great if either the colleges or else the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau started being a lot more critical of them. Prepaid cards only ever make sense if the alternative is being completely unbanked; that should not ever be the case for students.

*At Southern Oregon University, Higher One agreed to waive the 50-cent PIN-debit charge, but only if there was a simultaneous “swipe-and-sign” campaign. If the campaign is unsuccessful and students do the sensible thing by using PIN debit, then the university can be charged $2 per student for “PIN fee elimination”.

Update: Higher One’s Donald Smith responds:

Higher One was founded 10 years ago by three college students (undergraduates at the time) who were looking for streamlining the way financial aid refunds were distributed to students. Today we work with more than 675 campuses across the country, have a 97% client retention rating, and an A+ rating with the BBB.

The OneAccount is Higher One’s optional, no minimum balance, no monthly fee, FDIC-Insured checking account created by students for students. We do not offer a stored value card. We are very open with our fee schedule. We post it on every program website for all to access, explain each fee, discuss how to avoid each fee, and provide students with a web page that tells them how to use the account for free (which you’ve already found). Because of this, we believe that our customers pay less than half the amount in fees that the average bank checking account customer pays per year.

Two of the fees you referenced in your blog are the PIN fee and the Abandoned Account Fee. The PIN fee is easily avoided by choosing a signature based transaction at the checkout. The majority of students uses it in this manner and is in turn protected by MasterCard’s Zero Liability Policy against fraudulent charges (a safer way of purchasing than a PIN based transaction). We do not have an inactivity fee on our fee schedule – we don’t penalize students who do not use their accounts. We do have an Abandoned Account Fee of up to $19, for those who have abandoned their accounts, but this has been charged to less than 1% of all OneAccount holders in our company’s history because of our proactive outreach plan.

Higher One offers no instruments of credit. As a matter of fact, we’re generally in favor of initiatives restricting students’ access to credit cards and promoting financial literacy. This is why we offer a full range of financial literacy resources along with the services we provide.

I particularly dislike the implication, here, that PIN-based transactions are unsafe. They’re not; they’re just less lucrative, in terms of interchange fees, than signature-based transactions.

The power of hands-on learning is indisputable. But when it comes to investing your money in the stock market, however, making a beginner’s mistake can cost you more than just your self-esteem. Thankfully, the web makes it easy to practice with virtual money.

There are a multitude of online investment games like Investopedia and gnuTrade that play with virtual money, but not all of them are easy for beginners. Here are five of the best free (because you shouldn’t have to spend real money to play with fake money) online games for getting your feet wet.

1. Wall Street Survivor

Invest $100,000 in virtual cash via drop-down menu choices. A friendly cartoon version of stock guru Mark Brookshire helps you make your final decision by providing some rating numbers when you input a stock. These include a rating for survivor sentiment, fundamentals, technical and a Motley Fool class='blippr-nobr'>Ratingclass="blippr-nobr">Rating.

For additional help choosing stocks, the site has an impressive resource library that spans beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. Start with Investing 101 and consider taking advantage of the community forums if you have specific questions. Those who need a little help getting started can also choose to adapt one of the preset portfolios created by proven traders.

While the $100,000 competition is most popular, anybody on the site can create a contest. Prizes vary, but most often consist of competitive pride.

2. HowTheMarketWorks

Owned by the same company as Wall Street Survivor, this game is great for investors looking to gain experience with a new type of portfolio. In addition to stocks and indexes, there are options to experiment with Forex portfolios, penny stocks, mutual funds and short selling.

Beginners can execute market order-based trades in a “fun mode” without worrying about things like set hours, maximum number of trades per day, per stock and order expiration. A “realistic mode” amps up the complexity after they’ve mastered the beginner level.

Players can manage up to three stock portfolios and three Forex portfolios on the site at once. For each portfolio, they select a starting value between $100 and $500,000 and set how much virtual commission you are charged per trade.

The competition aspect is optional. General monthly contests give each player $25,000 as a virtual starting point. Other public contests include challenging restrictions like “short sells only” or “penny stocks only.” Users can create their own password-protected games as well, which is a feature that teachers find helpful for creating class competitions.

3. Young Money Stock Market Game

Young Money Magazine’s stock exchange game is easy to learn but also fairly realistic, which is a hard balance to strike.

Realistic aspects include a virtual commission that’s taken out of each trade, adhering to market hours and rules about how you can invest. Unlike many investing games, trades are made at a real-time price. Learning aspects include convenient help icons on key terms and an intuitive tabbed interface.

The site runs a monthly contest with a $100 (real) cash prize that goes to whoever gained the highest percentage. Players can also create their own contests or join other user-made contests.

4. MarketWatch Fantasy Earnings Trader Game

MarketWatch will run this mock stock market contest for a total of four weeks, awarding the winner of each week with an iPad. It’s on week three right now, but there’s still time to get in on the competition for week four.

You must have your selections picked before the week starts on Monday. The shares that you select are “purchased” at Monday’s open and will “sell” automatically at Friday’s close.

The catch is that all players can only use the 15 to 20 symbols selected for each week. The companies are selected by the game owner for companies that are projecting their earnings during each week. Lining up picks is easy — players simply drag the company’s logo to their trading card and designate if they want to sell short or go long.

Although there are some pros playing, this game is especially manageable for beginners due to the limited stock options for each week.

5. UpDown

Like Young Money’s game, UpDown has helpful icons that explain key terms for beginners. More comprehensive resources in the education center mercifully cover even the most basic of investing concepts.

Community features, like the opportunity to collaborate with a group and to see the most-bought and most-sold stocks, are also helpful for beginners. The “watch list” tool provides a convenient dashboard for monitoring potential picks.

UpDown sponsors a monthly contest that rewards players who beat the market with real cash.

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- 5 Lessons to Learn from Web Startups/> - 20 of the Best Resources to Get Your Startup Off the Ground/> - 5 Startup Tips From the Father of Gmail and FriendFeed/> - 6 Ways to Recruit Talent for Startups/> - 10 Essential Tips for Building Your Small Biz Team

Image courtesy of iStockphotoclass="blippr-nobr">iStockphoto, H-Gall

For more Business coverage:

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eric seiger eric seiger

This was probably inevitable: the minute that Dodd-Frank cracked down on the fees charged by credit cards aimed at students, some other bright financial innovation would crop up. This time, a debit card aimed at students. Which carries lots of fees. Ylan Mui reports that a company called Higher One has started signing up colleges around the country, taking on the burden of providing cash to students. In return, it gets lots of fees:

Students say several of the fees associated with Higher One’s card are particularly irksome, including the $19 inactivity fee, a 50-cent charge for using a PIN to make a purchase rather than a signature, and a $2.50 fee for using other banks’ ATMs…

Higher One said that only 1 percent of customers have been charged an inactivity fee and that more than half are charged the 50-cent fee only once. All fees are listed on Higher One’s Web site, along with tips on avoiding them.

“We have a big effort with educating students on how to use the account,” Smith said. “We’re very passionate about financial literacy.”

If the fees are listed on Higher One’s website, they’re not exactly prominent. I did find this page, eventually, via this blog entry, but it just says that “when you swipe & sign, you won’t be charged the PIN-based transaction fee”. I haven’t been able to find a page showing a 50-cent transaction fee anywhere*, although I did manage to find this page, showing a $25 fee for domestic wire transfers and a $50 fee for international wire transfers. “Higher One offers less costly alternatives for transferring funds”, it says, without giving any indication what they might be; I suspect that what they’re talking about is transfers to or from people who have already registered somehow with Higher One.

It should go without saying that any firm which is “very passionate about financial literacy” would encourage, rather than penalize, simple, cheap and safe PIN-debit transactions. It would not give students a debit card and then tell them that if they want to avoid fees they should select the “credit” option rather than the “debit” option when they come to pay.

And I can’t think of any good reason to charge a $19 inactivity fee to people who haven’t used their cards in 9 months.

The fact is that students are often very naive when it comes to money, and it’s easy to gouge them once or twice before they learn that banks are not necessarily on their side. If you can get your card accepted by a majority of freshmen every year, and then come up with all manner of weird fees to hit them with, that’s a great way of making money out of ignorance.

Meanwhile, all students should have a bank account: giving them a debit card instead only serves to maximize the number of unbanked students. So while I’m sure cards like this are attractive to colleges, it would be great if either the colleges or else the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau started being a lot more critical of them. Prepaid cards only ever make sense if the alternative is being completely unbanked; that should not ever be the case for students.

*At Southern Oregon University, Higher One agreed to waive the 50-cent PIN-debit charge, but only if there was a simultaneous “swipe-and-sign” campaign. If the campaign is unsuccessful and students do the sensible thing by using PIN debit, then the university can be charged $2 per student for “PIN fee elimination”.

Update: Higher One’s Donald Smith responds:

Higher One was founded 10 years ago by three college students (undergraduates at the time) who were looking for streamlining the way financial aid refunds were distributed to students. Today we work with more than 675 campuses across the country, have a 97% client retention rating, and an A+ rating with the BBB.

The OneAccount is Higher One’s optional, no minimum balance, no monthly fee, FDIC-Insured checking account created by students for students. We do not offer a stored value card. We are very open with our fee schedule. We post it on every program website for all to access, explain each fee, discuss how to avoid each fee, and provide students with a web page that tells them how to use the account for free (which you’ve already found). Because of this, we believe that our customers pay less than half the amount in fees that the average bank checking account customer pays per year.

Two of the fees you referenced in your blog are the PIN fee and the Abandoned Account Fee. The PIN fee is easily avoided by choosing a signature based transaction at the checkout. The majority of students uses it in this manner and is in turn protected by MasterCard’s Zero Liability Policy against fraudulent charges (a safer way of purchasing than a PIN based transaction). We do not have an inactivity fee on our fee schedule – we don’t penalize students who do not use their accounts. We do have an Abandoned Account Fee of up to $19, for those who have abandoned their accounts, but this has been charged to less than 1% of all OneAccount holders in our company’s history because of our proactive outreach plan.

Higher One offers no instruments of credit. As a matter of fact, we’re generally in favor of initiatives restricting students’ access to credit cards and promoting financial literacy. This is why we offer a full range of financial literacy resources along with the services we provide.

I particularly dislike the implication, here, that PIN-based transactions are unsafe. They’re not; they’re just less lucrative, in terms of interchange fees, than signature-based transactions.

The power of hands-on learning is indisputable. But when it comes to investing your money in the stock market, however, making a beginner’s mistake can cost you more than just your self-esteem. Thankfully, the web makes it easy to practice with virtual money.

There are a multitude of online investment games like Investopedia and gnuTrade that play with virtual money, but not all of them are easy for beginners. Here are five of the best free (because you shouldn’t have to spend real money to play with fake money) online games for getting your feet wet.

1. Wall Street Survivor

Invest $100,000 in virtual cash via drop-down menu choices. A friendly cartoon version of stock guru Mark Brookshire helps you make your final decision by providing some rating numbers when you input a stock. These include a rating for survivor sentiment, fundamentals, technical and a Motley Fool class='blippr-nobr'>Ratingclass="blippr-nobr">Rating.

For additional help choosing stocks, the site has an impressive resource library that spans beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. Start with Investing 101 and consider taking advantage of the community forums if you have specific questions. Those who need a little help getting started can also choose to adapt one of the preset portfolios created by proven traders.

While the $100,000 competition is most popular, anybody on the site can create a contest. Prizes vary, but most often consist of competitive pride.

2. HowTheMarketWorks

Owned by the same company as Wall Street Survivor, this game is great for investors looking to gain experience with a new type of portfolio. In addition to stocks and indexes, there are options to experiment with Forex portfolios, penny stocks, mutual funds and short selling.

Beginners can execute market order-based trades in a “fun mode” without worrying about things like set hours, maximum number of trades per day, per stock and order expiration. A “realistic mode” amps up the complexity after they’ve mastered the beginner level.

Players can manage up to three stock portfolios and three Forex portfolios on the site at once. For each portfolio, they select a starting value between $100 and $500,000 and set how much virtual commission you are charged per trade.

The competition aspect is optional. General monthly contests give each player $25,000 as a virtual starting point. Other public contests include challenging restrictions like “short sells only” or “penny stocks only.” Users can create their own password-protected games as well, which is a feature that teachers find helpful for creating class competitions.

3. Young Money Stock Market Game

Young Money Magazine’s stock exchange game is easy to learn but also fairly realistic, which is a hard balance to strike.

Realistic aspects include a virtual commission that’s taken out of each trade, adhering to market hours and rules about how you can invest. Unlike many investing games, trades are made at a real-time price. Learning aspects include convenient help icons on key terms and an intuitive tabbed interface.

The site runs a monthly contest with a $100 (real) cash prize that goes to whoever gained the highest percentage. Players can also create their own contests or join other user-made contests.

4. MarketWatch Fantasy Earnings Trader Game

MarketWatch will run this mock stock market contest for a total of four weeks, awarding the winner of each week with an iPad. It’s on week three right now, but there’s still time to get in on the competition for week four.

You must have your selections picked before the week starts on Monday. The shares that you select are “purchased” at Monday’s open and will “sell” automatically at Friday’s close.

The catch is that all players can only use the 15 to 20 symbols selected for each week. The companies are selected by the game owner for companies that are projecting their earnings during each week. Lining up picks is easy — players simply drag the company’s logo to their trading card and designate if they want to sell short or go long.

Although there are some pros playing, this game is especially manageable for beginners due to the limited stock options for each week.

5. UpDown

Like Young Money’s game, UpDown has helpful icons that explain key terms for beginners. More comprehensive resources in the education center mercifully cover even the most basic of investing concepts.

Community features, like the opportunity to collaborate with a group and to see the most-bought and most-sold stocks, are also helpful for beginners. The “watch list” tool provides a convenient dashboard for monitoring potential picks.

UpDown sponsors a monthly contest that rewards players who beat the market with real cash.

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- 5 Lessons to Learn from Web Startups/> - 20 of the Best Resources to Get Your Startup Off the Ground/> - 5 Startup Tips From the Father of Gmail and FriendFeed/> - 6 Ways to Recruit Talent for Startups/> - 10 Essential Tips for Building Your Small Biz Team

Image courtesy of iStockphotoclass="blippr-nobr">iStockphoto, H-Gall

For more Business coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Businessclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Business channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

The Fox <b>News</b> “Lawn Jockey” and The Tolerant Left | RedState

Juan Williams' firing did not happen in a vacuum. It happened in the context of him having been the official Fox News lawn jockey stooge for years.

Nuclear submarine runs aground off Skye | Scotland | STV <b>News</b>

Royal Navy submarine HMS Astute stranded after accident near Skye Bridge.

BBC - BBC Comedy Blog: Impersonating The <b>News</b> Quiz

Funny stuff from the heart of the BBC Comedy Department.

eric seiger eric seiger