The percentage of U.S. households carrying any debt dropped to 69% in 2011 from 74% in 2000, the government reported. But the median debt load rose to $70,000, from an inflation-adjusted $50,971.

The article speculates that good portion of the increased debt by seniors may have been taken on to assist their adult children with their own financial struggles following the economic downturn that began in 2007.

Timely repayments improved on all 11 of the consumer loan categories tracked by the American Bankers Association in the final quarter of last year, the first time that has happened since 2004, according to the organization’s chief economist.

The increase is linked to guidance from the FDIC and OCC on overdrafts which in turn cost banks billions in fees. Moab believes the rise in overdraft fees will cost consumers who overdraw their accounts an additional $2 billion per year.

The changes by the FDIC and OCC required banks and other financial institutions to end the practice of automatically adding customers to overdraft programs, and instead required them to opt-in.

This change cost banks a lot more than they will recoup on the new charges. It is estimated that banks took in $29.5 billion in overdraft fees in 2011. This is down considerably from the $37 billion collected in 2009.

You’re not going to find many people shedding tears for the banks, but all customers will see increases in fees to offset this loss of revenue.

Note: This post is a bit meta, and not related to personal finance, but I believe it is important information that many people will find helpful.

This blog runs on WordPress and is hosted on 1and1.com. I have been generally happy with their service, but each time I have to upgrade WordPress, I receive an annoying error:

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 26476544) (tried to allocate 4247825 bytes)

I did a lot of searching on this problem, and found multiple suggestions including modifying my .htaccess file, or adding a line to my php.ini file, but none of these worked for me.

After manually upgrading several times, I was determined to figure this out. Here is what worked for me:

1. Disable all of your plugins upgrade. (This can be done via a bulk action.)
2. Run the WordPress automatic upgrade.
3. Re-activate your plugins.

It’s really that simple. I’m not sure why deactivating plugins is the key. I assume this frees up necessary memory.

Good luck, and I hope this works for you.

This is a must read for frequent flyers.

Mashable has found 5 ways Twitter can save you money:

1. Find Deals
2. Save on Gas
3. Budget Better
4. Collect Debts
5. Avoid Bad Investments.

Click through for the full article.

Even to Save Cash, Don’t Try This Stuff at Home

Eating leftovers is a great way to save both money and time. However, a problem can arise when you spot a tasty dish in the fridge and can’t remember when it was cooked.

Not wishing to take a chance on it, you chuck the leftovers in the trash and fix something fresh, or worse, call for take out.

Well, the very useful website the kitchn has the answer to our problem: the Leftovers Log.

The Leftovers Log is a pdf document, which you can print out and note both when you stored a food item and the date you should eat it by.

What a great little hack. You can download the Leftovers Log over on the kitchn’s site.

The uptick rule prevents a short seller from initiating a sale until a stocks last move was upward.

The uptick rule had been in place since the 1930’s, but was repealed in 2007.

Many investment professionals believe that market volatility in the last year would have been reduced had the uptick rule still been in place.