Personal Finance

A July 2026 CFPB filing with federal regulators marks the first formal post-vacatur step toward potentially revisiting credit card late fee limits, but it imposes no new obligations and sets no rulemaking timeline. The current safe-harbor ceiling remains in the low $30s for a first late payment and low $40s for a subsequent one, following a federal court's April 2025 vacatur of the $8 cap rule. Even under an aggressive schedule, any new binding cap would be unlikely to take effect before mid-2027 at the earliest, and legal challenges under the CARD Act's proportionality standard would need to be addressed in any future rule.

Wells Fargo raised its Everyday Checking monthly fee from $10 to $15 in November 2025, with a July 8, 2026 addendum adjusting only how combined balances are calculated for waiver eligibility — not the fee itself. Bank of America's July 15, 2026 effective date on its Advantage account fee schedule reflects a disclosure refresh, not a new fee increase, with its existing tiers unchanged since February 2026. For customers holding idle cash in non-interest-paying checking accounts, the analysis finds that a $5,000 balance earns roughly $207 more per year in a top-of-market high-yield savings account than in Everyday Checking — an amount that already exceeds Wells Fargo's $180 annual fee.

Effective July 10, 2026, Vanguard Brokerage Services broadened its definition of Qualifying Assets to include non-Vanguard mutual funds, ETFs, stocks, bonds, and settled cash, meaning more clients may now cross the $1 million or $5 million thresholds that trigger automatic fee waivers. No existing fee dollar amounts changed; the update only expands who qualifies for waivers on items such as the $25 annual account service fee, $10 wire fee, and $100 account closure fee. Compared to Schwab and Fidelity, Vanguard remains cheaper for transaction-fee mutual fund trades and outgoing domestic wires but more expensive for options contracts and is the only one of the three to charge an annual account service fee and an account closure fee.