As of yesterday, it costs 5% more to travel on the New York State Thruway. As usual, the increased is justified with the promise of future maintenance projects.

Of course, this just a couple weeks after Governor Paterson listed a host of tax and fee increases he wants to implement to help account for budget shortfalls, including an 18% sales tax on soda.

Consumerism Commentary has a post about predatory bank fees. As you might think, I have a few thoughts.

Let's face it, nobody forces anyone else to sign up for a bank account. If you want a bank account, then you go get one. And you pay the fees agreed upon.

Okay, maybe you've been here before. You have a credit card payment coming up so you go online to pay it. Everything goes smoothly, and you're feeling good. You've gone another month avoiding late payment fees and finance charges.

Three days later, your gut feels like it suddenly dropped to the center of the earth as you stare at an overdraft charge in your bank account. You slowly realize that you had put in the wrong account information, and you have no excuse except silly inattentiveness.

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.

First, hope all my regular readers (yo, Dave!) had a good Thanksgiving. I didn't intend to be silent over the last several days, but we ended up staying over at my in-laws' house on Thursday and Friday nights, and then on Saturday I was doubled over with a stomach bug.

Anyway, two things have gotten me thinking recently about the psychology of interest rates:

In case you don't know about it, earlier this year a number of the major credit card issuers settled a lawsuit claiming that they were charging too much on foreign transactions made with a credit card. Anyone who made a foreign purchase with a credit card between February 1, 1996 and November 8, 2006 could be eligible for a refund of part of the foreign transaction fee.

I made a boo boo.

I've several times mentioned the AOR I did back in August, and the subsequent refinancing of all my credit card debt with a plan to pay it off by end of next year. I've implemented this plan in a couple different ways:

I heard a bit on NPR this morning about New York City selling 500 pounds of foreign coins harvested from parking meters throughout the city.

The Department of Transportation, which makes about $90 million from parking meters annually, has collected bids for the foreign coins and plans to announce the best offer Monday.

A couple months ago I signed up for Obopay, a payment service loosely similar to PayPal that promotes ease of sending payments using a mobile phone or debit card. The primary reason I signed up for the service is that I could get an easy $85 in account-opening bonuses and referrals.