Scanned image of author's US Social Security card. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Identity theft is, at its most basic level, the act of using someone else’s identity or credit without permission.   From a stolen credit card to a forged phone bill in Moscow, it all involves your good money paying for the bad habits of another.    Thankfully, there are ways to reduce the odds of having your identity stolen.  LTC David Grossman reviews the “5 Ds of Survival” in his seminars and books.   Today, I bring you the 5 Ds of Identity Theft.

In the words of the master, “Denial has no survival value.” Denying the possibility of identity theft will not keep it from happening.  You have to take steps to keep yourself safe.  “It could never happen to me” is not a valid defense mechanism in any situation, financial or otherwise.

Deterrence means keeping the information away from identity thieves. The harder it is for the criminals to get your information, the more likely it is that they will move on to an easier target.  And yes, a kid stealing Grandma’s credit card is a criminal and needs to be treated as such.

• Some people use a shredder, but not me.  I have a fire pit that catches all of my personal documents.  I’d like to see an thief get my social security number from the ashes in the bottom of the pit.
• Don’t carry your social security card.  If you lose your wallet, your driver’s license and social security card contain all of the information needed to steal your identity.  Keep it locked up at home and don’t give the number out unless absolutely necessary.
• Don’t use stupid passwords.  Anything listed on yourFacebook profile or otherwise available on Google in association with your name is a stupid password.  Don’t make life easy for the people looking to screw you.  Your birthdate, maiden name, and “password” all qualify as stupid passwords.  Use KeePass to securely generate and store your passwords.
• Lock up your personal information.  I throw two large parties every year.   Purses and wallets get stored in a locked bedroom, so nobody can grab them.  That was a lesson learned the hard way.  If there’s someone in your home you don’t trust absolutely, lock up anything that can be used against you.
• Don’t release personal information to anyone, for any reason, unless you have initiated the contact.  Don’t give a credit card number to a telemarketer.  Don’t give a spammer your personal information.  It’s your privacy, use it.
• Don’t click anything in an email.  If it’s a company you have a relationship with, type the address in your browser by hand.

Detection is up to you. Some credit card companies will alert you to suspicious purchases, but you can’t rely on it.  I was once called because I went to the gas station and Best Buy, which is apparently a common pattern for a stolen credit card.

• Examine your credit card statements.  If there’s a purchase you don’t recognize, find out what it is.
• Watch for bills to arrive as expected.  You do know when you pay the gas bill every month, right?
• Watch for unexpected bills to arrive.  If you get a statement for a credit card you don’t have, it’s a problem.
• Check your credit report three times per year.  AnnualCreditReport.com will let you see each of the three major credit reports each year.  Space them out so you see your report every 4 months.

Defending your identity happens after you’ve detected a theft. This involves getting your credit and sometimes, your money, back.

• File a fraud report with the credit bureaus.  This will force potential creditor to follow certain procedures before opening new credit accounts for your identity, including calling your cell phone, if you choose.  Stop the identity theft in its tracks.
• Close the fraudulent accounts.   Don’t leave them open for abuse.
• File a police report and report the fraud to the FTC at ftc.gov/idtheft .  This may or may not help catch the criminal, but without it, there will never be a punishment.  Make stealing your identity an expensive proposition.   Hopefully, 1o years of his life will be wasted in jail in return for the theft.

Destroy.  Unfortunately, fraud and identity theft are not yet capital crimes.   Maybe someday.

Deter, detect, defend.  These are the secrets to avoiding, and recovering from, identity theft.

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 This is a guest post.

You can’t get credit without a credit card, and you can’t get a credit card without good credit. This is a dilemma that many people find themselves facing, whether they are trying to re-establish their credit or build credit for the first time. In fact, this is the dilemma that I found myself in. My solution was to get a prepaid card, and here’s why.

The Real Deal with Prepaid

Prepaid credit cards have earned a mixed reputation over the years. While it’s true that they usually have more fees than a regular credit card, they also offer a financial solution for people who don’t have good credit. And you should also keep in mind that they don’t charge interest because the cash that you are using is yours to begin with. The important thing to remember about prepaid cards is that they are a means to an end; once you rebuild your credit, you’ll find it much easier to apply for a card with better rates and fewer fees.

In addition, prepaid cards offer several advantages. The most important one for me was the convenience of having a card that I could use to make purchases. Prepaid cards look and work exactly like regular credit cards (you don’t have to enter a personal identification number to use them), so the only one who knows it is prepaid is me. And while I use cash for everyday purchases, there’s no avoiding the need for a card when you have to shop online or pay for gasoline at the pump, for example. Most digital merchants only accept payments from cards linked to large financial brands like Mastercard and Visa, and my card gives me a way to buy what I need from whoever has it in stock. In addition, my prepaid card offers me a way to keep track of all of my purchases electronically, which is helpful since I am trying to keep a closer eye on my budget.

Prepaid cards also offer security. Cash can easily be lost or stolen, but if you lose a prepaid card, you can easily get a replacement. More importantly, your balance is protected by a replacement guarantee from your bank, which comes in handy if you ever have to dispute fraudulent charges.

Perhaps the most convenient factor of a prepaid card, though, is how easy it is to get one. You don’t have to have a bank account in your name to receive a prepaid card. However, if you do have an account, you can easily link it to your prepaid card.

Changing my spending habits and getting out of debt hasn’t been easy for me, but one way for me to show creditors that I am getting better at managing finances is to build my credit with my prepaid card. It’s also a way for me to eventually be able to make big purchases that are necessary, such as a car, and hopefully one day, a home. Prepaid isn’t for everyone, but if you find yourself considering this option, it’s worth a second look.

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My mother-in-law died two weeks ago.

It’s sad, but I’m not going to get into the emotional devastation that comes with the death of a loved one here.  At least, not today.

Today, I’m going to talk about the money, but not the funeral expenses.

I’m talking about the expense of taking over her stuff.  When she died, she was living in her own home, paying her own bills.

Now, we have a small stack of expenses we weren’t planning for.

She had 2 cars.   She actively drove one, and kept storage insurance on one that was parked in the driveway.  Combined with the homeowner’s insurance, that’s $110/month.

One of the cars has a loan.   The car is worth $4000 more than the loan, so it’s not worth letting the bank repossess it.   That’s another $200/month.

The gas and electric add $50 to the monthly tab.

Setting aside money for the property tax adds nearly another $200 per month and the first half is due next week.

I rounded the numbers off here, but that’s $562.58 that’s outside of our regular budget and doesn’t address some bills that we paid off instead of arguing with bill collectors while we straighten out the estate.

This is the kind of scenario that makes me happy to have an emergency fund.  We are able to pay the property taxes and keep the lights on because of it.  A few years ago?   The car would have been gone and the house dark within a month.

Now?  The emergency fund covers the immediate expenses and we have some breathing room to adjust our budget.   For example, the money we were setting aside for our next car is now being earmarked for paying off our surprise car loan.

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© Jason for Live Real, Now, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments |
Post tags: Home insurance, Property tax

Everybody wants their children to do well.  I want my kids to grow up without making my mistakes.  Here are a few ways to help them avoid debt.

1. Talk to your kids about money.  Your kids will never learn how to handle their finances if nobody teaches them how.   This is important.    The factor that contributes most to stress, divorce, long hours, and unhappiness can’t be left to chance.
2. Set a good example. Spend less than you have and let them see you doing it.  No matter what you tell your kids, if they see you doing otherwise, they will learn the bad lesson.   Money, work, relationships.  They all need attention, and your kids are watching you manage each of them.  Make them proud.
3. Open a savings account for them, and let them fill it. Teach them the value of their money by letting them work for it, watch it accumulate, and spend it on something they care about.  I make my kids work to convince me to make a withdrawal, so they know it is only for the important things.  I don’t, however, decide what is important for them.
4. Start a college fund. $100 or $10, it doesn’t matter.  Start putting something aside today.   College costs keep rising.  In 10 years, or 20, you can be sure that college will cost more than it does today.  Last year, nearly two-thirds of students graduating with a four-year degree did so with an average debt of more than $23,000.   Anything you can do to move your kids towards the debt-free 35% will help.  They will thank you for it for the rest of their lives.  Remember, they are in charge of choosing your nursing home.
5. Teach delayed gratification. Don’t let them think that every whim needs to be satisfied…ever, let alone immediately.  Sometimes, anticipation improves the act.   When I am looking forward to a good meal for a few days or weeks, I really savor it when I finally do get the chance to eat it.  If they want everything they see, make them figure out what they want most, and what it will take to get it.
6. Teach them to balance a checkbook. This is one of life’s basic skills that far too many people are lacking.   If you can’t balance your checkbook, how do you know what you have?  If you don’t know what you have, how can you know what you’re able to spend on necessities, or even luxuries?  Knowing where you are is at least as important as knowing where you are going.
7. Give them control of money. This is the best time to learn how to manage money.  Give them an allowance and make it big enough to cover school lunch and bus fare.   Let them practice real-world skills and, more importantly…
8. Let them make mistakes with it. This is their opportunity to make financial mistakes that won’t haunt them for years or decades.   Let them have some money and let them screw it up.  When they can’t buy the new game, or can’t fix their car, they will learn.  It’s better to do that as teenagers living at home than as adults forced to move back home.
9. Let them see your pride in their good decisions. If they do well, tell them.  Let their endorphin rush come from your praise instead of their purchase.  You aren’t helping them by getting them hooked on the latest gadget.  You are helping them by making them feel good about making the right decisions.
10. Beat them with a stick.

How do you protect your kids’ future finances from the kids themselves?

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Sorry for the missing “real” post today.   My mother-in-law’s funeral is later and the day’s a bit hectic.

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© Jason for Live Real, Now, 2012. | Permalink | One comment |
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Spring is in the air.

Standardized Test (Photo credit: biologycorner)

At my son’s school, that means it’s time for the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment tests.  These are the standardized tests created by the No Child Left Behind Act that determine if a school is doing its job in educating children.  If too many kids have lousy scores, the school gets put on the “Adequate Yearly Progress” list and will eventually get penalized financially.

That creates a perverted incentive in the school system.   The main metric for a publicly-funded school’s success in Minnesota is the MCA.  If a school can churn out illiterate trench-diggers, they will get increased funding as long as the test scores are good.

For a full two weeks before this test, the school effectively shut down the education program to prepare for the MCA test.   That’s two weeks of studying for a set of standardized tests that focus on reading, writing, and arithmetic.  I’m a fan of schools prioritizing the three Rs over other subjects, but that’s not what they did.

They spent two weeks studying testing strategies, not the material contained in the test.

In science class, they covered essential scientific elements like “Answer all of the easy questions first, so you can go back and spend time on the hard ones later.”

Spanish class covered verb usage similar to “When the time is almost out on the test, answer ‘C’ for all of the hard questions you have left, que?”

They weren’t being educated, they were learning the most effective way to solve a test to gain funding for next year.

For 2 weeks.

That’s not reading practice, or reviewing the parts of speech, or covering the necessary math skills.   It’s “This is a #2 pencil.  This is a circle.  Practice until lunch.”

Is this really what NCLB was trying to accomplish?   Standardized tests to measure school proficiency should be a surprise.   Let’s randomly send in test proctors to take over a school for a day and see what the kids have actually learned.

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© Jason for Live Real, Now, 2012. | Permalink | 5 comments |
Post tags: Adequate Yearly Progress, education, Minnesota, No Child Left Behind Act, Standardized test

Losing a kid is terrifying.

Aside from impromptu–and panic-inducing–games of hide-and-seek while shopping, I’ve misplaced a kid three times.   My oldest walked out of the house twice when he little, once to find Mommy at a neighbor’s house–he didn’t know which neighbor–and once to find Grandma, who was in the backyard, but he thought she went home.   With the first, a fireman got him to my wife.  With the second, we knew he was gone within a minute and guessed where he went.  He’d only made it a few blocks before I caught up to him.   My middle kid walked out of the back side of a playground and somehow ended up in the parking lot before an attendant found her and brought her back.

We all know what to do when your kids disappears.  If you’re in a store, you grab an employee and tell them your kid is missing.   They’ll help.    If you’re at the park, you have a heart attack while calling your kid’s name.  Simple.

What’s your kid supposed to do?

If you’re kid gets lost, tell them to find a woman and ask for help.  Tell them before they get lost.

There are 4 reasons.

1. Pedophiles are rare.  Stranger-kidnappings are rare.  They are also predators, looking for a victim.  If your kid picks the stranger to talk to, the odds of picking someone who will victimize them are slim.
2. Kids are short.  Employee uniforms are well above their line-of-sight and can be confusing to a little brat.   What’s the kid supposed to do if she gets lost outside of a store?  Simple rules for little minds.
3. Women are very rarely predators.  It happens, but it’s a statistical anomaly within the statistical anomaly that is child-predation.  In general, women are safe.  They are also wired to watch out for small children.  It’s easier to get a strange woman to sympathize than a strange man.
4. Women tend to be less intimidating to small children than men.

That’s it.  Tell your kids to find a woman and ask for help if they get lost.

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© Jason for Live Real, Now, 2012. | Permalink | 8 comments |
Post tags: Child abduction, Child Safety, Children Youth and Family, Predation

Recently, a friend of mine told me about a friend of his who was attacked by a flash mob.  This was a negative flash mob, not the fun kind.

She was walking down the street with her phone in her hand when around a dozen thugs surrounded her, knocked her down, and stole her phone before running off.

With me being the person I am with the hobbies and side-hustles I have, certain things came to mind.

1. This is why standard capacity magazines should never be outlawed.   Sometimes, a six-shot revolver just isn’t enough.
2. Before anyone complains about #1, when you are beaten to the ground by a pack of violent thugs, the length of your life is up to them, not you.  They are the problem.
3. Walking down the street while talking on your cell phone is not the best way to stay aware of your surroundings.   Would she have been able to get away if she had been paying more attention to the thugs on the corner than her conversation?  I have no idea, but it’s certain that talking on a cell phone is a distraction.
4. Walking down the street with an expensive gadget in your hand is asking for trouble.
5. What were these thugs thinking?  Even a $500 cell phone turns into a $50 mp3 player the moment the victim gets to a real phone to call the cell phone company.   That’s a generous $50 payout.   With 12 people, that’s means everyone gets $4.10 as their share.   The federal poverty level is just under $12,000 per year, which means they would have to do this 8 times a day, just to get to barely enough money to survive.

   In Minnesota, this is, at a minimum, 3rd degree assault, which carries a possible 5 year sentence and $10,000 fine. That’s 8 public attempts to throw away 5 years of their lives, every day.   How can they consider this a good risk.

   It was pointed out to me that this thuggery is probably made possible by direct government sponsorship, in the form of welfare checks, so this is probably just a way to pass the time.   Somebody should tell those brutes that welfare checks stop when you’re in prison.

So I’m considering launching a basic economics class for thugs and street rats.  I want to teach them how to do a risk assessment by comparing the level of loot to the possible outcomes of getting caught.

Possible test questions include:

• I could stab that guy for the $10 in his wallet, but if I get caught, I’m facing 40 years in prison.  Should I do it?
• My flash mob makes $50 per phone we steal from defenseless women.   Would my buddies rat me out to avoid 5 years of hard time, and do I consider that worth $4?
• Meth makes the faces of my customers dissolve from the inside before killing them.   Is it possible to build a sustainable business based on slowly killing my customers?  What marketing skills do I need to develop to replace the natural attrition of poisoning my customers?
• Meth labs explode.  Is it better to hire my own junkies, or should I outsource that risk and take a smaller profit margin?
• This is a shall issue carry permit state.  There are nearly 100,000 carry permit holders here.  That’s 1.87% of the total population and 2.6% of the adult population.   Statistically, how many people can my friends and I jump before getting justifiably shot?  Is that number times the $4 profit considered a good return on investment?  What would the ROI have to be to make this a worthwhile career choice?

Anybody know any violent thugs willing to beta test my new class offering?

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© Jason for Live Real, Now, 2012. | Permalink | 11 comments |
Post tags: Cell Phone, Minnesota, Mobile phone, Thuggee

A few years ago, I was under the control of the Local Worthless Telephone Company(LWTC), and forced to use their long-distance provider, Evil Telephones & Thieves (ET&T). There was never a month that didn’t involve calling LWTC to get our bill corrected. Every month, something was wrong.

One month, we got a bill for $800 more than expected. Another month, another mistake. I called LWTC to get it corrected. This wasn’t a big deal, just another screwup in long list. They refused. They had never refused before. They informed me that the charge came from ET&T, not their system, preventing them from doing anything about it. There went an hour of hold time I’ll never get back.

I called the Evil Mother of All Telcos, The Malevolent Bastard Offspring of a Government-Shattered Monopoly, the Unholy Source of All Communications-Related Errors and Communicable Social Diseases. Hold. Hold for soul-rending abuse. Do you sense a pattern? Evil abounds. The inspiration for Wolfram & Hart. Employee meetings open with ritual sacrifice and close with the desecration of the holy symbols of obscure religions from distant corners of the globe.

Niue Island

When the customer service rep came on the line, I asked for an explanation of the charge. I was informed that I had made a 30 minute call to Niue Island.   I politely reminded them that I had long-distance blocking on my phone.  They couldn’t explain how the call went through, but it had, so I was obviously responsible.   They refused to consider doing anything about the charge.   The next day, I called back.  I explained the situation to a new rep, one who hadn’t yet been trained in the art of stealing the souls of the living.   She recognized the logical impossibility of international calls through the block and reversed the charge.   She was swell.

Ten minutes later, her supervisor called to explain that the good witch didn’t have the authority to reverse those charges.   I was responsible for paying the bill, even though she couldn’t explain how I was responsible for making the call.   I explained the situation, again.   I begged.  I pleaded.  Nothing.   I was informed that I had to pay the bill.  If I didn’t, they would take me to court to make me pay.  She swore their computer system was solid enough to pass as evidence in court. She was angry, rude and snotty.  She told me there was nothing I could do.

That wasn’t going to work for me.

I started gathering papers.   The next day, a certified letter was sent to both ET&T and the Evil Para-Monopoly Telco.   The contents of this letter were golden.

I sent:

• A dispute letter crafted using every bit of my experience in one of the largest collection agencies in the world.
• A copy of the problem bill, with the impossible charge and the long-distance blocking highlighted.
• A copy of a Minnesota Attorney General complaint.
• A copy of a Minnesota Public Utilities Commission complaint.
• A copy of an FCC complaint.

That was the end of it.  There was no follow-up call, no collections notice, no court notice.  There was nothing. The following month, there was no mention of the unpaid balance.  The bill disappeared.  Victory!  I had conquered evil, driven a righteous stake through its beating, dust-filled heart, and poured garlic salt in the wound.  I never even had to submit the complaints to their respective agencies.

That was the month we dropped our home phone line to eliminate that headache.   At the time, the cell phone with the best family plan gave us $300 shared minutes for $75.   It was worth it to get away from the Abomination That was the Union of LWTC and ET&T.   A year later, when a business telephone provider decided to expand into the residential market in our area, we had our home phone reinstated.   In the nine years since, we’ve never had to dispute a bill with McLeod USA.

Lesson learned:  When you are battling evil, go big or go home. It’s better to swat a mosquito with a sledgehammer than to poke a dragon with a safety pin.

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There comes a time when it’s too late to tell people how you feel.

There will come a day when the person you mean to talk to won’t be there.  Don’t wait for that day.

“There’s always tomorrow” isn’t always true.

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© Jason for Live Real, Now, 2012. | Permalink | 5 comments |
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