Four things renewed themselves this month
Your bank owes you thirty days' notice before one of them. Ask when you last saw it.
| The Walkthrough | ||||
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Good morning.
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Thirty days
What your bank owes you in writing before an automatically renewing certificate matures. Almost nobody I have asked remembers receiving it. |
Four things in an ordinary household renew without anybody agreeing to it again. Here they are in the order of how much they tend to cost.
| 1. |
The homeowners policy Renews at whatever limits it carried last year, adjusted for whatever the carrier felt like adjusting. We spent a week on this one, so I will leave it there. |
| 2. |
The certificate of deposit This one has actual rules behind it, and they are better than most people realise. Regulation DD, which sits under the Truth in Savings Act, requires written notice at least thirty calendar days before maturity on an automatically renewing certificate with a term longer than a month. On terms longer than a year that notice has to carry the new rate. Where the bank has not set the rate yet, it must say so, tell you the date it will be set, and give you a telephone number to call and find out. After maturity you get a grace period, commonly seven to ten calendar days, to move the money without penalty. Do nothing and it rolls at whatever the bank happens to be paying that week. |
| 3. |
Subscriptions and service contracts You may remember hearing about a federal rule requiring companies to make cancelling as easy as signing up. It was finalised in October 2024 and vacated by the Eighth Circuit on 8 July 2025, days before it was due to take effect, on procedural grounds. It never applied to anybody. The Commission restarted the process in March this year, which means nothing yet. What does exist is state law: roughly thirty states have their own automatic renewal statutes, New York among them, and those were never affected by the ruling. Your protection depends on where you live rather than on that headline. |
| 4. |
The extended warranty on something Usually a boiler, a car, or an appliance bought in a hurry. These renew on their own terms, which are printed somewhere, and I have never once met anybody who could produce the paperwork on request. Including me. |
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The telephone number on the maturity notice is the most useful thing on the page and the least used. |
Where I was wrong this week
I have been writing cheque. I am from Buffalo and I have never written the word that way in my life, on a form or anywhere else. It is check, and it went out in a subject line, which is the one place a mistake is hardest to take back.
Nobody wrote in about it. I noticed it myself on Wednesday and have been annoyed since.
Scope, ten minutes
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The money meter
| 30-year mortgage | 6.66% | 6.56% a year ago |
| 15-year mortgage | 5.98% | 5.69% a year ago |
| Fed funds target | 3.50–3.75% | held 29 Jul |
| Inflation, 12 months to July | 3.4% | core 2.5% |
Freddie Mac PMMS, 27 Aug 2026. Federal Reserve, 29 Jul. BLS, 12 Aug.
Adjuster's note
None of these four are scandals. Automatic renewal exists because the alternative is a household re-signing eleven contracts a year, which nobody wants either. The cost is that a decision made once keeps being made on your behalf by somebody who has no particular reason to make it in your favour.
The copy of my policy has not arrived. I sent for it on Tuesday and the fortnight is not up. Day seven on the telephone call, which I am now avoiding out of something closer to superstition than laziness.
Monday I will have gone through my own statement line by line and I will tell you what was on it, including the parts I would rather not put in writing.
Read the policy before you need it.
— Rita
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THE WALKTHROUGH · BUFFALO, N.Y. · SIX MORNINGS A WEEK Nothing here is insurance, legal or financial advice. I am a former claims adjuster, not an agent, a lawyer or a financial adviser. Banking and renewal rules differ by state and by institution. Read your own terms. |
