Over at MSN Money Central, Liz Pulliam Weston argues that you should send your comments to the Federal Reserve on their proposed changes to banking rules related to various types of fees and fee calculations.

I'm not going to comment on the pros and cons of the proposed rules themselves. Rather, I'd like to focus on how you can set up a few personal rules that you can follow yourself to avoid having to pay fees like those described in Ms. Weston's article. You'll note that a lot of them have a common solution, which makes it easier for us because it means we only have a few simple personal rules to follow.

Retroactive re-pricing, double-cycle billing, unfair payment allocation and bait-and-switch offers – These practices are all related to interest rates. The best way to avoid finance charges for both high- and low-interest rate credit cards is to simply pay the complete balance every month. If you have a balance that is going to take you awhile to pay down, look for a card with a good 0% balance transfer offer, and then focus on paying that card down.

Arbitrary due times – If you're consistently failing to make a payment by a matter of hours, then something needs to change. Whether sending a check by mail or using an online bill payment service through your bank's website, you should give yourself at least seven business days for the payment to go through. If using your credit card company's site, be sure you know the cutoff time.

If you're having trouble remembering when things are due, there's a great task/reminder service called Remember the Milk that can help. I use it to set reminders for my upcoming bill payments (when I don't schedule them right away), as well as a number of other things.

Mandatory bounce protection – This one is easy: Don't overdraft your checking account. You should always know how much you have in your account and are able to spend. If you don't, then put away the debit card and stop writing checks until you straighten it out.

Charging overdraft fees based on holds – This one is a bit tougher, because it's hard to know when a merchant is going to place an arbitrarily large hold on your account. However, as Ms. Weston says, certain merchants (like gas stations and rental companies) are notorious for this, so when purchasing goods and services from these types of merchants, you should either pay in cash or use a credit card (a rewards card is even better, since you'll earn some bonus cash or points with the purchase) – just remember to pay it off in full!

The bottom line

When it comes down to it, we shouldn't need the government to step in and prevent banks from charging fees that we can avoid by following some personal rules. The rules I've outlined here are nothing revolutionary, and for the most part they are things that anyone who is interested in personal financial freedom should be doing anyway.