It’s bad enough when someone steals your identity and opens accounts in your name. What happens if thieves steal part of your identity and use it to create a non-existent person?
Synthetic identity theft occurs when criminals “synthesize” a false identity using made-up Social Security numbers and other personal information. Sometimes, synthetic identity thieves start
Credit Rating
What are your top five must-have factors in a romantic partner? If you selected trust, communication, honesty compatibility, and sexual chemistry, you’re in sync with most respondents in a new survey from Elevate’s Center for the New Middle Class.
The Elevate survey was designed to study how finances play a role in dating for both
You know you need to protect your accounts and personal information – but what is the best method? Should you use a credit monitoring service or subscribe to identity theft protection instead? What’s the difference between the two methods?
Credit monitoring services do exactly what they say they do – monitor activity on your accounts
Have you ever experienced that sinking feeling when you reach in your pants or purse for your wallet, and it’s gone? You’re not alone. According to an exclusive MoneyTips survey, 62% of respondents have had their wallets lost or stolen. More than 1 in 3 had suffered both from wallet loss and theft, while 36%
Another Use for Your Credit Score You probably know that your credit score affects the interest rates you’ll pay for credit cards and loans. Did you know that your credit score could also affect your auto insurance rates?
It can in all but three states (California, Massachusetts, and Hawaii). Those three states have banned credit-based
You’ve taken steps to avoid identity theft, and maybe even applied a credit freeze to your credit report. You can sit back and relax, right? Wrong. You may have prevented identity thieves from opening new accounts in your name, but have you kept your existing credit accounts secure?
As opposed to identity theft where your
Medical identity theft is an increasing concern for Americans. According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, 27.9% of 2018 data breaches as of mid-June are in the Medical/Healthcare category, exposing almost 3 million records – second only to business data breaches.
Why is medical identity theft so desirable to thieves? Not only does it allow
Your checking account is a tempting target for thieves. You must stay alert for the many varieties of checking account scams – but first, you must be able to recognize a scam when you see one. Have you ever been targeted by any of the scams below?
Free Prizes – This scam usually starts with
Tax liens are claims made on your property by a government entity for failure to pay your taxes. A lien doesn’t mean your property will be seized – it just means that the agency applying the lien has the first right to your property compared to other creditors.
A tax lien on your credit report
Debt, Shmebt Do you pay off your credit card bill every month? If not, how often do you pay off the full balance? If you haven’t in the last year, you’re with the majority of balance-carrying Americans.
According to a recent CreditCards.com poll, over half (56%) of Americans who have balances carry them for over
When it comes to dealing with risk, America’s housing market struggles with balance. How can lenders offer affordable home mortgages for more Americans and still maintain proper safeguards?
The Great Recession was driven in part by overly risky loans that were packaged as securities and sold to investors who were unaware of the underlying risk.
Are you having trouble getting a date? Could be your rap, your looks, or your excessive debt.
According to a recent survey by Finder.com, 72% of respondents say they would re-think a relationship with a partner in significant debt. (That’s similar to the percentage in last year’s Finder.com survey, so don’t expect debt to
If you’re a furloughed government employee or other worker sidelined by the shutdown – or worse, working without a paycheck – you’re probably at risk of missing payments or racking up large credit card bills. How do you keep your credit score from dropping as a result?
On-time payments are one of the
Identity thieves have many ways to steal your money – including fraudulent tax returns. They file a return in your name as early as possible to beat your legitimate return, with fake financial data designed to claim a large refund. You won’t realize this until your tax return is denied because there’s already been a
How often do you change passwords on all of your accounts? Or, are all of your passwords simply “password” or “123”?
Like most of us, you probably don’t change passwords very often or make them very challenging because you’re afraid you’ll forget them. As a result, we leave ourselves vulnerable to identity theft – yet
Times aren’t great in the mortgage refinancing market. According to the October 2018 Origination Insights Report from mortgage application software provider Ellie Mae, refinancing homes make up 32% of October’s closed mortgages – continuing a drop in refis that began five to six months prior.
It’s likely that mortgage rate increases are to blame for
Our prior article, 5 Steps To Be Your Own Mogul – Part 1, covers the first three steps to manage your finances like a business. Below we present the final two steps.
4. Forecasting
If you have performed the budget exercise and broken your expenses out into categories, you can start to highlight areas
Why not take some financial pointers from the business world and apply them to your personal finances? Whether you are a party of one or a family of four, it pays to be fiscally agile. Some of the longest financial plays in the business world today are small businesses that perennially stay afloat and drive
With all the security breaches in the news, you’ve decided to protect your credit by placing a fraud alert on your account with the major credit reporting agencies (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion). Now you can rest easy, right? Guess again.
A fraud alert notifies businesses that you have reason to believe identity thieves may open
You’re never too old to learn new things – including better money management practices. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) agrees.
To address financial literacy concerns, the FDIC created the Money Smart teaching program in 2001 to help educators and financial institutions increase consumer understanding of basic financial systems work and how to use them
Do you monitor your Social Security number for any signs of fraudulent use? A new survey suggests you think that you should, but you probably don’t.
According to the 2018 Capital One Credit Protection and Security Survey, only one in seven Americans uses a service to monitor activity on their Social Security number – but
Credit Scoring Improvements Credit card issuers want accurate ways to assess risk while opening credit lines to potential new customers. The credit scoring system they choose plays a huge role.
In recent years, both the VantageScore and Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO) systems have released newer versions expected to help consumers who are fiscally responsible but
How do you get credit without a credit score? If you’re new to credit, you don’t have any history for lenders to assess. You’re effectively “credit invisible.”
You can build credit with a secured credit card that reports activity to the credit reporting agencies, but you’ll need to put up a security deposit and
Do you have a bill that has been turned over to a collection agency? Of course, you’ll want to make things right as well as remove the negative effect on your credit score. But what if you can’t afford to pay the bill in full? Why not try to negotiate with the debt collector? They
You may think you have an average credit score – but do you really? How does your credit score compare to the national average? How about within your age group? Thanks to new information from FICO, you can see where you stand.
The average FICO score reached an all-time high of 704 this year– right
In September 2017, America learned about the massive data breach at the credit reporting agency Equifax that affected approximately 148 million consumers – one of the largest breaches ever. Identity thieves suddenly acquired a new batch of Social Security numbers, names, addresses, phone numbers, and other personal information.
Consumers were advised to take steps immediately
Finding a job can be a stressful and difficult task – and if you have poor credit, you may have an even harder time finding a job. A 2016 CareerBuilder study found that almost one-third of employers run credit checks on their potential hires, on the assumption that people with good credit are more likely
The Crushing Effects Of Medical Debt How pervasive is America’s medical debt problem? According to 2017 data from the credit bureau Experian, unpaid medical debt in America topped $127 billion. New data from Consumer Reports shows that almost 30% of insured Americans had unpaid medical debt turned over to collection agencies in the past two
By Eric Olsen, Executive Director, HELPS
Nonprofit Law Firm
I just got off the phone with a senior couple who have a timeshare they can’t afford and don’t use any longer. They had called a company who advertised that they help people get out of timeshares. (I hear such advertisements on the radio and television
How did your toddler rack up thousands of dollars in charges on an unfamiliar credit card?It’s not Junior’s fault if identity thieves have stolen your child’s identity and used it for fraudulent purchases.
According to Javelin Strategy and Research, over one million children were identity theft victims in 2017, racking up over $540 million in