Spin180

I saw an interesting article on Yahoo! Finance the other day and thought I would sahe it. It lists eight foolish bargains and bundles being offered to the marketplace right now. It’s not as great as investing on high risk life insurance.

Read on:

1. Unlimited Long Distance

Many telephone plans bundle "free" unlimited long-distance service with local calling service. If you don’t make a lot of long-distance calls — or if you make a lot of them from your cell phone — these plans may not be cost effective. A bundled plan typically costs about $20 more than a local plan, but the average American consumer makes fewer than two hours of long-distance phone calls a month, according to the Federal Communications Commission. That’s about 17 cents per minute.

Better Deal: Skip the extra fees, and buy your long-distance service from a reseller such as ECG or Pioneer Telephone.

2. Frequent-Flier Rewards Cards

Credit card rewards tied to airline miles or gift points were the earliest players in the sector, but it’s time to dump them. For one thing, the benefits have shrunk, particularly on airlines: They’ve increased the number of miles needed for a free flight; reduced flight schedules, making free seats harder to find; and, in some cases, imposed a booking fee on rewards flights.

3. Checking Accounts That Pay Interest

Interest-bearing checking accounts at traditional brick-and-mortar banks often pay only 0.13 percent interest but require high minimums to avoid a monthly maintenance fee. On, for instance, a deposit of $3,400 — the average minimum required to avoid monthly fees, according to Bankrate.com data — that amounts to just $4.42 in annual interest.

4. Overdraft Protection

Many banks used to offer it automatically when you opened an account, making it sound like a valuable safeguard. After all, if you bounced a check or tried to withdraw more cash from the ATM than you had in your account, you wouldn’t suffer any embarrassment when the bank refused to process a transaction.

But consumer advocates long argued that overdraft protection was just a way for banks to earn money at your expense, charging $20 to $35 per overdraft — a substantial penalty, considering the typical transaction prompting the overdraft fee is $20. That’s why the government has ordered new rules to take effect this summer that will require banks to get your approval before enrolling you in overdraft protection.

5. Extended-Warranty Protection

Don’t buy additional warranty coverage for electronics and major appliances. For one thing, some repairs are already covered by the standard manufacturer warranty. And Consumer Reports‘ researchers have found that products seldom break within the extended-warranty window — and that when electronics and appliances do break, average repair costs are about as much as an extended warranty.

6. Going-Out-of-Business Sales

They don’t offer the bargains you’d expect — at least at the outset, when the promoted discounts are usually off the full retail price. That "30 percent off" sale may not be any better than the deals you could get before the liquidation process started. In some cases, you may actually be better off buying from a rival store that is trying to compete with the bankrupt retailer — and will be around to take care of any problems after the liquidating store is out of business.

7. Paying for a Credit Report

Despite its name, FreeCreditReport.com is not gratis. Here’s what the fine print really says: Order your free report and you get a seven-day free trial membership in a credit-monitoring service. If you don’t cancel within seven days, you’ll be billed $14.95 a month until you bail out. Be wary of other sites making similar come-ons.

8. Fraud Alerts

Don’t pay for identity-theft-protection services that automatically put fraud alerts on your credit report. You can do that yourself; it’s easy — and free. But be careful: Don’t put a fraud alert on your credit report as a general matter, because that means you can’t easily open new accounts. You should use fraud alerts only if you’ve had your wallet stolen or something else has happened to put you at real risk.