Herding Cats: Our Favorite Savings Stories for the Week of March 7th

This week's stories feature good news if you have a Bank of America checking account and bad news if you're Icelandian. Icelandish? An icycle? Whatever people in Reykjavik call themselves...

WalletPop: Bank Of America Announces New Information On Overdraft Policies - I vaguely remember sharing my personal debit card overdraft tale of woe, so I'll spare you a repeat of the heart-wrenching details, but I had to include this story in celebration of the tens of billions of dollars this policy change will save my fellow B of A customers in the coming years (U.S. banks shook down their account holders for a total of over $38 billion in overdraft fees last year alone). Hooray for transparency! Or at least a semblance of it.

Fortune: Welcome To The United States Of Iceland - Here's a pretty fascinating/disturbing look at the similarities between Iceland's financial meltdown and our own. How bad was theirs, you ask? "[Iceland's] financial system, at its peak just a minor moon in the constellation, is already as barren as the island's volcanic bedrock," Wow. Emo. In fact, thanks to a few hundred of their investment bankers, Iceland owes the British and Dutch almost $17,000 per capita for bailing them out. I'd say this is one of Iceland's most embarrassing international moments, second only to America's legendary upset of their hockey team at the 1994 Junior Goodwill Games.

Gizmodo: Say Goodbye to Unlimited Wireless Data Plans - Awww @#$%!  Smartphone use is taking such a toll on 3G networks that Verizon and AT&T have finally decided to commence price-gouging on the data hogs (yes, that's the conclusion I'm jumping to). We can all agree that it's not fair to charge the "email-checkers" for unlimited data usage, but extending those pricing tiers upward is going to completely defeat the purpose of having a smartphone. Hopefully the ink will be dry on my new iPhone 4G contract before this nonsense goes into effect.

Consumerist: Homeless Guy Lives On Rewards Points From His Former Life - This guy sounds pretty resourceful, but if he were really sharp, he would have pitched his reward-points-for-shelter homelessness saga to CNBC as a reality show a long time ago. Other laid-off six-figure corporate types could learn how to squeeze every penny from their old credit cards, until they become, you know, actually homeless. Unfortunately, I pretty much stole this idea from a comedy short called "House Porsche" that I saw on Comedy Central show "Tosh.0" (I'd link to it but the language is rather NSFW).

Lifehacker: Get The Most From Your Point-And-Shoot Camera - If you can't afford an SLR, or just don't want to lug around such an incredibly unwieldy device, here are some tips on how to utilize the strengths and avoid the weaknesses of your regular ol' camera. The main takeaways: beware of the flash, never use digital zoom and learn how to get creative with your presets.

MainStreet: The Highest Taxes In The World - Last but not least, yet more evidence of why Americans have no reason to complain about taxes. Our average all-in income tax rate comes in at 17.75%, while six European countries take an average of over 30% from their residents. One major difference you might notice between us and the majority of the first world: our tax code still gives parents huge incentives to have kids, which is awesome news for the environment when you consider the fact that one American consumes roughly the same amount of resources as twelve people in a developing nation. If you still want to complain about taxes, there's a new angle for you.

Have a happy St. Patty's Day!