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Banks typically look for every possible instance to charge customers to fees. That’s why it’s particularly important to stay aware of your bank account balances. With the increasing popularity of automatic payments (outgoing) or automatic withdrawals (pulls), a poorly timed deposit can result in overdraft fees or insufficient funds (NSF) fees. A few years ago, I took a survey of the different ways banks process their customers’ debits and credits, and saw how easily it would be for banks to trap customers treading close to low balances in a maze of fees.

Fair Isaac Corp. is changing the FICO score calculation, and many consumers will have higher credit scores as a result. The FICO score is still the most widely used measure of a consumer’s creditworthiness. The current calculation is called “FICO 08″ and the new calculation to be rolled out soon is called “FICO Score 9.”

Banks rely on credit scores like the FICO score to determine whether to lend money to consumers and how much to charge borrowers for that privilege. Overall, the higher credit score you have, the lower loan interest rate you may qualify for. FICO isn’t the only game in town. Lately, it’s been seeing some competition from products like VantageScore. VantageScore recently updated their own scoring algorithm to better reflect risk, and because this score is backed by the three credit reporting bureaus, Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion, it has been gaining traction among banks and lenders.

An estimated 9.1% of the population in the United States have symptoms of depression, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Depressive illnesses are more than just being sad occasionally. Among people with depression, there is a measurable chemical imbalance in their brands, and this prevents signals from being transmitted from neuron to neuron correctly. So depression changes how people think. And any obstacle to rational decision-making has significant long-term effects on an individual’s quality of life. As a family’s financial situation is one of the primary concerns of this blog and a primary factor in the quality of one’s life, it stands that depression can cause difficulties with money worth a discussion here.

Naked With Cash is an ongoing series at Consumerism Commentary in which readers share their households’ finances with other readers. These participants benefit from the accountability that comes from tracking their finances publicly and the feedback of the four expert Certified Financial Planners (CFPs).

For more information, read this introduction.