Protect Yourself

Although some identity theft is electronic and sophisticated, most identity theft actually still takes place by dumpster diving and mail theft. If you are looking for additional ways to protect against identity theft keep reading…

This is a guest post from Kevin Mercadante who runs OutOfYourRut.com, a website focused on micro strategies for surviving in the current economy. Kevin is also the author of Lighten Your Load: Living Well On Less, an e-book focused on reducing living expenses while still maintaining a comfortable lifestyle.
In different ways it’s been said that [...]

This great video answers the question, “How does phishing work?” in less than 3 minutes!

With the challenges in the economy there are many stores that are in danger of going bankrupt. Apparently some of these stores are still selling gift cards that, of course, my only be honored for a couple more months if they go out of business. This isn’t necessarily a suggestion not to get gift cards from these stores, but to make sure that you ask questions and to take advantage of them as quickly as possible.

With the high gold prices over the last couple years we have seen quite a few businesses get in the gold game. I have seen some companies selling gold and countless ads for companies who buy scrap gold and allow you to sell yours for cash. Just because I was curious about the gold selling process, I did a bit of research.

Doing a bit of research about flood damaged cars, my sister quickly came to the conclusion that no one really wants to buy a flood car. She found page after page talking about why you should never buy a car that has been in a flood or how to tell if a car has had flood damage. Since there have been so many hurricanes and floods in recent years this seems to be a cause for concern when buying a used car. Once a car has had flood damage..

These are the pros and cons of money merge accounts… Doing the research, building spreadsheets and running the numbers about MMA’s has led me to one conclusion… So, those are my thoughts on Money Merge Accounts…

It’s good to check your credit report. It’s bad to pay for it. It’s worse to think you are getting it free and then you get charged.

What happens to my gift card if the retailer goes bankrupt? You might have heard about the recent bankruptcies of Bombay, Sharper Image, and Linens-N-Things. Well, I hope you don’t have a gift card for one of them still sitting in your drawer. According to the recent issue of Money Magizine, you are not likely to get anything from them. It is possible that you could get a fraction of what it was worth, but not very likely.

Being impacted by my uncle’s premature death and wanting to do everything I can do to help my wife, I decided to create a system for keeping things organized. It has been a work in progress over the last few years, but has evolved into a very helpful tool. Simply put, it is a single file or location for all your financial account details. I call it a FLOP (Financial Life on One Page). FLOP sounds a little cooler than FLOOP, but not much

Cash sitting in our wallets, under the mattress and even in many savings accounts is becoming less valuable because of inflation. At 3% inflation (which I think has been the average over the last decade in the U.S.) we are essentially losing money when our cash is not earning at least that amount in interest. So, if you have a savings account that pays 1.5% interest and inflation is at 3%, you are losing spending power.

Banking with ING seems to be the way to go. They are the least prone to identity theft of any of the big banks. It is no surprise to me that ING Direct has the lowest incidences of identity theft on the list. If you bank with ING, you will know that they have so many security measures that it can ALMOST be annoying.

Phishing is when a scammer sets up a phony website using legitimate company logos and tries to direct you to that site usually via email. They normally will send you an email with a link appearing to go to the legitimate site, but it will actually lead you to their phony site.