AARP Bulletin - January 2011

; Your Money Save a Buck
Fed up with air travel? Consider the bus. Inter- city buses are not only
a lot cheaper than airplanes,
they’re “greener,” too, and they
pick up and drop o; in the center
of town. Many o;er free Wi-Fi
and power outlets. ; Bolt Bus,
a Greyhound-owned line, goes nonstop from New York to Boston for
$15—cheaper if you score a super-bargain fare. Greyhound (which has
3,800 U.S. destinations) makes five stops on that route and costs $37, less
with advance reservations. ; Travel from Detroit to Chicago on a Mega-
Bus double-decker for $15. For more bargains, check out other o;-brand
lines that ply the roads between many cities. —Joan Rattner Heilman
; Take the Bus

Many of us figure store-branded food
is second-rate compared with the well-
known names. Consumer Reports mag-
azine begs to differ. Its trained tasters
compared store brands with big brands
in 21 food categories and found that the
generic tasted as good in 11 categories,
better in three and not as tasty in seven. ; Nutritionally there
was no significant difference. Store brands often cost about
30 percent less, Consumer Reports says, in part because you’re
not paying for the national brands’ research, marketing and
fancy packaging. Also, some companies simultaneously man-
ufacture the private labels and big-brand names. —JRH
; What’s in a Brand
FROM TOP: K YODO/NE WSCOM; DAN BARBA/PHOTOLIBRAR Y; JAMIE MACFAD YEN/GALLERY STOCK

Free checking, once standard, is going the way of the VCR—a re-
cent study found that the number of financial institutions offer-
ing it is down 11 percent from a year ago. But if your bank starts
charging, you have other options: ; Without the overhead cost of
brick-and-mortar branches, Internet banks can still afford free
checking. Check out Ally, ING Direct and Everbank, all of them
FDIC members. There are others—but make sure that any Internet
bank you use is FDIC-insured. ; Many credit unions, which are
nonprofit and organized to benefit members rather than share-
holders, still offer free checking. —Nancy Mann Jackson
; Looking for
Free Checking?