Courtesy Chase

A Chase investor presentation slide shows the new $1 and $5-dispensing ATM in action.

Even if you only have a dollar to your name, Chase and PNC want you to be able to take it.

The banks are in the process of deploying a new generation of ATMs that, among other features, will let you take out bills as low as $1 and $5. Chase's even have the ability to give out coins.

In recessionary times, it's perfect for draining your account to the last drop!

"We are always looking for ways to upgrade our ATM network with new functions that will make banking easier for our customers," PNC spokesperson Marcey Zwiebel told TODAY.

Just like how airlines have saved their customers, and themselves, time by installing machines that let customers print out boarding passes at the airport, for Chase, the new ATMs are more like full-service kiosks that supplement traditional tellers, company spokespersons told TODAY. Besides $1 and $5 bills, they'll give out the usual $20s, along with $50 and $100 bills.

The machines will be found inside Chase bank lobbies, vestibules, and drive-thru areas. Slides from a February 2012 investor presentation (PDF) say the the purpose of the "Self-Service Teller" is that it "allows customers to perform 90%+ of current teller transactions via self-service."

The ability to cash checks made giving out exact change to the penny necessary, a company spokesperson told TODAY. The presentation noted that checks cashed via a traditional teller line dropped 40% in the six-location pilot tests after the robo-teller was introduced, which "allows more efficient staffing."

So, long customer lines can get swift service, without the need to pay more human tellers.

Fees for using the machines will be the same as at traditional ATMs, free for customers and $3 for out-of-network transactions.

Company spokespersons told TODAY that Chase has deployed about 400 of the machines in the past year-and-a-half, and PNC has upgraded over 3,600 to dispense $1 and $5 bills. Both banks to double those numbers by year's end. Meanwhile, the lowest bill Bank of America ATM's spit out is $10, while Wells Fargo doesn't have any ATMs that dispense $1 or $5 bills.

"We're always looking at ways to make banking at our ATMs more convenient for our customers," Bank of America spokesperson Tara Burke told TODAY.

Perhaps they'll be inspired.

Let's just hope they don't hire HAL as the personality for the new automated tellers. Then if you try to switch banks he'll never open the lobby doors for you.

Thinking of a career as an investment banker? Get ready for insomnia, alcoholism, heart palpitations, eating disorders and a violent temper.

A University of Southern California researcher has found these health issues are part and parcel of the lives of entry-level investment bankers that she shadowed as they started their new careers fresh out of business school.

“When you work 120 hours a week, something snaps,” said Alexandra Michel, an assistant management professor at USC’s Marshall School of Business, who shadowed bankers for a decade to collect findings for the study.

“But the interesting finding is what exactly snaps,” she told CNBC. “It’s not technical accuracy; the bankers were quite precise in what they were doing. What snaps is creativity, judgment, and that’s really important in our new knowledge-based economy, because we now compete on innovations.”

Michel began shadowing Wall Street bankers for her study a decade ago, sitting next to them at the office, following them to meetings, basically mirroring their hours at the office and even staying up all night when the bankers pulled all-nighters.

She found that newly minted investment bankers can put up with long days at the office -- on average 80 to 120 hours a week -- and high levels of stress for about four years. After that, there are signs of long-term physical ailments, including insomnia, and substance addictions. Every banker she observed developed a stress-related physical or emotional injury within several years on the job, she said.

One bank vice president who struggled with addictions described his work life as a never-ending nightmare.

“I sometimes wake up in the morning and remember what I have done the day before and wished that it was just a bad dream and all I want is to keep it together for the day ahead and not allow my body to take over again,” the unnamed banker said.

Wall Street workers are likely putting in long hours now as the economy continues to struggle and the financial services industry contracts, said Dr. Alden Cass, a clinical psychologist in New York who specializes in treating Wall Street executives.

“People are working harder, longer and making less,” he said, and it’s leading to apathy and job burnout.

While people criticize Wall Street bankers for excessive pay, it’s an incredibly difficult and unpleasant job, said William D. Cohan, a former Wall Street investment banker and best-selling author of “Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World.”

“I used to say the job was good only one day a year -- the day when you got your bonus, and sometimes that day wasn’t that great,” said Cohan.

“You work too hard. You gain weight because you don’t get enough exercise, and you don’t get enough sleep,” he said. “It’s a surprisingly unpleasant job, but on the other hand you’re not putting your life on the line, and you’re not risking your own money. It’s an unpleasant lifestyle, unless you get to the top, and even there it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

The life of a junior investment banker is notoriously demanding, with long hours in a high-stress environment. The profession attracts ambitious business school graduates who are attracted by high salaries, and many of them know the grueling hours and stress  the job requires.

Michel notes that her research was qualitative, involving a small group of bankers and no control group. It’s designed to identify patterns that can later be examined through systematic empirical investigation, she said.

However, Michel says the study’s findings can be applied to other areas of the working world.

“We have a lot of people in our knowledge-based economy -- lawyers, doctors, engineers -- who work really hard, and also in more traditional industries that are now competing because of globalization and fast-paced technological change. These people are also pushed to work quite hard,” she said. “So the study asks what the consequences are for these industries, and also for companies and society as a whole.”

The consequence of the overwork is a diminishment of creativity, and that can have a detrimental effect on the economy as a whole, Michel said, citing technology powerhouse Apple as an example.

“They outsource everything that’s related to manufacturing, but what stays here [in the U.S.] are the creative aspects, so I think we need to listen to this,” she said.

Do you feel sympathy for investment bankers? Let us know on our Facebook page.

Short on cash? I know a quick and easy way you can get a short-term loan.

The catch: The interest rate is 5,000 percent.

Doesn't sound like much of bargain, but millions of Americans conduct such transactions every year with major U.S. banks in the form of overdraft fees. According to a new report by the Pew Health Group, the median checking account overdraft amount is $36, and the median overdraft penalty fee is $35 with a repayment period of seven days. That translates into the astronomically high annual percentage rate for this "service."

The Pew report gives more support to the not-so-shocking idea that America’s banks don’t really have their customers’ best interests at heart. Some highlights of the Pew report:                       

• Americans will spend an estimated $38 billion on overdraft fees this year.
• The average checking account user faces 49 different fees.
• More than 80 percent of accounts contain either binding mandatory arbitration agreements or provisions that require the customer to pay the bank's "loss, costs and expenses" in a legal dispute regardless of the outcome to the case.
• Bank customers are not provided full information about the costs of overdraft options.
• Banks do not provide policies and fee information in a concise and easy-to-understand format. The median length of checking account disclosures is 111 pages — that's twice as long as "Romeo and Juliet."
• Banks only deposit customer funds five days a week, while they withdraw funds seven days a week.

Pew reached its findings after examining more than 250 types of checking accounts offered online by the 10 largest U.S. banks. Click here for the report.

Even in these divisive times, here’s one thing most Democrats, Republicans and independents can agree on: There's too much power in the hands of a few big players.

A new Gallup poll finds that more than two-thirds of Americans think lobbyists, major corporations and banks and financial institutions are too powerful.

Democrats and independents are more likely than Republicans to say that big companies and banks and financial institutions have too much power. Still, more than half of Republicans also agree the major corporations and financial players are too powerful.

For lobbyists, there is little good news in this poll: The feeling that they are too powerful cuts about equally across party lines.

Republicans and Democrats are much more divided when it comes to another group making a lot of news these days: Labor unions. Nearly seven in 10 Republicans say labor unions have too much power, while only two in 10 Democrats think that’s true. Independents are nearly equally divided.

The Gallup poll is based on a sample of 1,027 adults and was conducted in late March.

Quick word of advice: If you need to go talk to a teller this Friday about  11 a.m. and you live in Alabama … don’t.

Reuters advises us that according to government statistics, the most common time for bank robberies are midmorning on Fridays. The most common place is southern and western states.

The good news? It appears that despite the fact that more people may actually need the money, the number of bank crimes (that includes burglaries, even though we thought that only happened in the movies) fell from 6,065 in 2009 to 5,628 in 2010.

No word on how long the robbers had to wait at the four-window counter that – of course – always only has one window open.