Personal Finance Advice

Last week I wrote a piece about the advantages of keeping accounts at multiple financial institutions. The benefits range from having fall back money if one account is compromised to taking advantage of the strengths of certain types of banks. While I feel that it is best to keep accounts at a least a couple [...]

Did you know that many people don’t actually know how to obtain a credit report? More importantly, some of them don’t even know why they should check their credit report each year. Credit reports help prove your credit worthiness to potential lenders or creditors. It’s also important to check your credit report each year to [...]

In this day and age, you have to guard against people who want to steal your financial information. Thieves want your credit card numbers, bank account information, and even your retirement accounts. Heck, thieves are even filing tax returns under other people’s Social Security numbers to claim the refunds. Even if the thieves don’t steal [...]

I was recently in San Diego for a conference when I heard a commercial on the radio discouraging people for signing petitions to try and place measures on upcoming ballots because doing so would leave signers open to identity theft. The commercial used the following scare tactics (you can listen to the entire commercial here) [...]

This week’s lecture was about credit reports, credit reporting bureaus, identity theft, and collection agencies. Quite a scattering of topics. The first part of the class was on credit scores and credit bureaus. Dave makes the point that a FICO score is an, “I love debt score” because the only way to get a FICO [...]

Each of us has a personal reason for saving money. I very much doubt that any of us does so just to be able to brag about having died with the most money in the bank. Whether you are frugal because you need to be frugal in order to make ends meet, or you pursue [...]

You’ve probably seen the ads for LifeLock, an identity theft protection service, where the CEO gives out his Social Security number and claims that he can do that because he has such confidence in his company’s ability to protect his identity. It turns out that his confidence may have been misplaced. In recent days, stories [...]