Identity Theft – Stealing Your Identity So They Can Break the Law

Identity theft victims can have their credit ruined or even end up in jail as the result of having their personal information stolen.

Stolen Identity Can Mean Jail Time
Imagine being pulled over for a broken tail light only to end up being hauled off to jail because there’s a warrant out for your arrest that you knew nothing about.  It sounds crazy but unfortunately it does happen to some victims of identity theft.  Instead of simply using your identity to borrow money, which is bad enough, some criminals use your stolen personal information to fraudulently obtain a driver’s license or identification card in your name.

In the event they’re pulled over or are arrested the law breaker gives the police your name and id.  Then they don’t pay the ticket or show up for court and the judge issues an arrest warrant for the name on record. Or the criminal may even show up and plead guilty, using your identity the whole time.  In the eyes of the government, you are the one that broke the law and the offense goes on your record.

Criminal Identity Theft Example
For example, here’s an identity theft story of a guy in Albuquerque, New Mexico who was in jail for days because a criminal wanted for drug charges had assumed his identity. His story is a good example of how this kind of identity fraud can follow a person around for years.  After an initial run-in with the law in 2003 due to his stolen identity, he was locked up for six days in 2005 because the police again mistook him for the wanted criminal.

Combating Criminal Identity Theft
While identity theft can be hard to prevent there are steps you can take that we’ll discuss in further posts.  Here are some of the suggestions the Albuquerque Tribune article makes for dealing with criminal identity theft when it does occur:

• Get yourself fingerprinted so that your prints are on file for comparison. Contact your local law enforcement agency.
• Ask arresting agency to amend all criminal complaints that wrongly name you.
• Ask the appropriate courts to provide you with official documentation showing that your identity was wrongly used in a criminal case, then carry those documents with you at all times.
• Keep the phone number of a good attorney handy.

Although these tips may be use, obviously the goal is to avoid the id theft in the first place.  Next time in the Identity Theft series we’ll start to look at how you can prevent identity theft.

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Saving Money on Gas with a Four Day Work Week

How much money would you save on gas each month if you only had to drive into work four days a week?  As gas prices climb, businesses, government, and consumers are looking for creative ways to cut fuel costs; one of the methods being used is working four 10 hour days instead of 9–5, five days a week.

Desire to Drive Less
In a recent employee survey at my job, one of the most frequent requests was the option to work from home or work a four day week.  I have little faith that our company will allow these changes but there are governments and businesses around the country that are trying them out.

Government Reducing Energy Costs
Just last week, Utah announced it’s state workers would be in the office ten hours a day Monday through Thursday and that offices would be closed on Friday.  The state estimates it will save $3 million a year in energy costs by reducing lighting, heating, and air conditioning usage.  Of course, state employees will benefit by saving money on gas during the one year trial period.  Hopefully the government will deem the one year trial successful and the model will become more widespread.

Benefits of a Shorter Week
Not only would I save money on gas if I could work 4 days a week, I’d also save a lot of time and reduce my stress levels.  A major highway I drive on is down to one lane for summer construction making my afternoon commutes home a miserable, time-wasting experience.  Even when there is no construction, I spend at least an hour a day driving to and from work; which of course pales in comparison to some people who spend two or three hours a day commuting.

The gasoline savings have come in particularly handy for workers that are paid a lower hourly rate and have long commutes into work.  A local company put the four day work week into effect once gas prices hit $3 a gallon for this reason.  A lot of the workers were earning $8–10 an hour and spending $70 a week on gas, basically working almost one whole day just to pay for gas for the week.

Challenges of a Four Day Week
There are definitely people and companies that are opposed to working only four days a week.  I don’t see a way our office could shut down every Friday due to the needs of the industry we work in.  In addition, some salaried employees are already working 10 hour days, but for 5 days a week instead of 4.  Cutting back to only working Monday through Friday would probably make it challenging for the company to keep up with it’s current work load.

One issue encountered by the Utah state workers was finding child care for the longer hours.  Also, some workers that don’t drive to work but take the bus or commuter train instead were running into issues finding transportation earlier in the morning and later in the evening.

The MSNBC article included one lady who’s been working 10 hour shifts for a long time who brought up the fact it’s “harder to make doctor’s appointments and do other errands Monday through Thursday, and working longer hours can be rough.”

Adapting to the Times
It will be interesting to see how government and corporations respond to higher energy costs and how they can adapt their policies to help minimize these costs.  Personally, I’d love to work four ten-hour days so I hope the trend continues.  What do you think?  Do you already work longer shifts for fewer days?  If not, would you want to?

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Blockbuster Total Access – Free Trial Plus Cashback Promotion

Blockbuster Total Access has been running a free trial offer for their online movie rental service and is now offering a cash back promotion. Signup for a free trial of Total Access and setup PayPal as your billing option to receive the $10 cash back.

Total Access Free Trial Options
The one month trial of the online dvd rental service ended a while back but Blockbuster is still offering a two week free trial or a 50% discount off your first month. Typically I’d go with the two week free trial but the cash back promotion basically gives you one month of Total Access for free.  The first month is $9.99 but you get $10 cash back for setting up your account with PayPal.

Cashback Offer

You don’t need a promotion code to take advantage of the cash back offer. When you signup for the free trial, Blockbuster will ask you to enter your billing information. On the “Trial Confirmation” tab, make sure you select the PayPal option as shown in the picture so you qualify for the money. Your $10 will be deposited into your PayPal account after you’re finished signing up.

Saving Money on Movies
I’ve talked before about how online movie rental services can save you money on entertainment.  My wife and I really enjoy going to the movies but it keeps getting more expensive as the price of movie tickets, refreshments, and gas keeps going up.

Rather than drop a bundle at the movie theatre, we prefer to have the DVDs delivered to us in the mail.  We can watch multiple movies a month through a service like Blockbuster Total Access for much cheaper than the price of one theatre visit. Plus it works out better for our schedule anyhow, we don’t have to setup and pay for a babysitter for our son, we can just watch them once he’s in bed.

Free Trial Signup
Unfortunately the Blockbuster offer is only open to new customers but if you think you could save some money on entertainment with the online dvd rental service and aren’t already a member you can use the links below to signup for Total Access:

Two Week Free Trial – Click Here to Signup

50% Discount – Click Here to Signup

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Stock Market Investing 101 – How Does the Stock Market Work?

Investing in stocks has become a simple process for most people.  Technology allows you to login to your favorite online discount broker and buy and sell stocks with a click of the mouse.

What exactly happens when you click the buy button?  Who decides which stocks you can buy? Who’s buying the stocks that you’re selling? When you decide to buy stock who is selling you the shares you want? You don’t have to know the answers to these questions to trade stocks but it does help to understand how the stock market works before you use the market to invest your money.

What is the Stock Market?
There are actually multiple different stock exchanges that make up what people refer to in general as the “stock market”.  The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the Nasdaq are the two largest exchanges in the United States, a stock exchange is a place where investors come together to buy and sell, or exchange, shares of a company.

Which Companies are for Sale?
The goal of an exchange like the NYSE is to make it as efficient and cost-effective as possible for investors to buy and sell stocks.  The NYSE is a publicly traded company so the value of it’s own stock depends on how well it runs the exchange.  To insure that only legitimate companies are bought and sold on the exchange the NYSE has a set of requirements all companies must meet before their stock can be traded on the exchange.  One of the main requirements is that companies comply with the rules established by the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), the portion of the US government that monitors and regulates the securities industry.

The listing rules are designed to protect investors.  The goal is to insure that companies who are offering shares of stock for sale are relatively stable and profitable and that they provide investors adequate financial information about the company.

Buying & Selling Stock
One of the other rules of stock exchanges is that you need a license to be able to buy and sell shares of companies listed on the exchange.  As Investopedia explains it, this is where stock brokers come into the picture:

“Brokers have the authorization and expertise to buy securities on an investor’s behalf – not just anyone is allowed to walk into the New York Stock Exchange and purchase stocks; therefore, investors must hire licensed brokers to do this for them.”

Instead of using an eBay like model where people buy and sell from each other directly, the stock market uses brokers as intermediaries to execute the transactions on behalf of shareholders in return for a fee.

Prior to the Internet, an investor would work with an individual broker to buy and sell shares of stock; the personal interaction made it more expensive to invest in individual stocks. The introduction of online brokerages such as Etrade drove down the cost of making a trade and enabled investors to buy and sell stocks on demand via a Web based interface provided by the brokerage company.

Who’s Buying the Stock You’re Selling?
When put in an order to sell 100 shares of a company, who is it that buys the stock from you? If you had to depend on a broker to find someone else who wanted to buy exactly 100 shares of the same stock you might have to wait for a while. This is why firms called market makers exist, to help facilitate transactions in the stock market. Investopedia does a good job explaining the role of market makers:

“A broker-dealer firm that accepts the risk of holding a certain number of shares of a particular security in order to facilitate trading in that security. Each market maker competes for customer order flow by displaying buy and sell quotations for a guaranteed number of shares. Once an order is received, the market maker immediately sells from its own inventory or seeks an offsetting order. This process takes place in mere seconds.”

Thanks to market makers, individual investors can trade in and out of the stock market without worrying about finding an individual buyer or seller for shares of stock. Next time in Stock Market Investing 101 series we’ll look more closely at how stock prices are determined and why they rise and fall.

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Saving 15 Cents a Gallon on Gas – Plus Doubling Our Savings at the Pump

Saving money on gas is becoming more and more important as fuel prices continue to climb so I wanted to share another gas saving tip with you.

Gas Rebates for Groceries 
I’ve written before about grocery store chains that have installed gas stations alongside their stores and offer a discount on gas based on the amount of money you spend on groceries.  You show them your grocery receipt and they calculate your gas rebate based on a tiered savings structure, the more money you spend on groceries, the higher your gas discount.

Saving 15 Cents a Gallon
We were at the grocery store yesterday when they announced they would be offering all customers a discount of 15 cents a gallon on gas. Unlike the double cash back days that saved us money before, this was a blanket discount that applied no matter how much you spent on groceries.

Doubling Our Savings
Due to my having to work some over the holiday my wife and I each had our own car out and had met up at the grocery store. After checking out we headed over to the gas station and filled up both our cars from the same pump, getting the 15 cent discount for both cars! 

I’ve never used the same pump to fill up two cars but there was nothing in the rules that stated you couldn’t; once her tank was full, she set the gas nozzle to the side, pulled forward, and I filled up my car as well.  The 15 cents a gallon savings on top of the cash back from our American Express Blue Cash helped take some of the bite out of the money we spent traveling to see family over the holiday weekend.

Deals on Gas
I know this gas saving tip won’t apply to everyone but make sure to check your local grocery stores to see if they offer similar deals.  I know in the Mid-West, some Hy-Vee stores have the attached gas stations and there may be others as well.

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Writer Auditions at Money Smart Life

The time has come.  I’ve decided to shut down the site and spend my evenings vegging in front of the television.  Just kidding, I’d go absolutely crazy if I didn’t have something productive to keep me busy! 

Planning for Success
Speaking of busy, I’ve been debating for a while now the best way to keep the content flowing on the site while meeting my obligations at my job, spending time with my family, and pursuing my goal of quitting my day job. 

I’ve gotten some great emails full of advice from Darren “Problogger” Rowse and The Money Writers and had some good conversations with friends and family on the topic.  Thanks to their feedback a plan has been forming over the last several weeks and I’ve found a great way to get some help on the site.

Writer Auditions
In the coming week or two there will be several people auditioning for a writer’s spot on Money Smart Life.  I alluded to this process last week when I mentioned that your opinion and readership is what keeps this site going.  I’ve gone through a careful interview process to choose some quality writers, the decision tool I wrote about came in quite handy when analyzing the writer candidates.

Reader Opinions
As I already mentioned I want your opinion on the future of the site, so I’m going to be asking you for feedback on the candidates.  They’re each currently working on a series of articles that will be published here in the near future and I’m looking to you to help me choose your favorites.

We’re not starting the “write-off” right away. Not all of the details are ironed out yet, I just wanted to let you know what’s coming up.  They’re all smart and interesting people so I look forward to reading what they have to say and hearing what you think!  Stay tuned, I’ll keep you informed as the audition progresses.

Weekly Post Round-Up
Speaking of article reviews, here are some of the ones I enjoyed this week.

– The Digerati Life tells us how we can lose weight while spending less on food & exercise.

– My Dollar Plan offers 7 ways to payoff credit card debt.

– Suns Financial Diary talks about what qualifies as a bear market.

– Brip Blap asks if the government will raid Roth IRAs?

– Lazy Man & Money questions the example of giving a $1225 Baby’s First Bunny Bank.

– Million Dollar Journey looks at disability insurance.

– Gen X Finance reminds us to review our financial goals and progress.

From the Money Blog Network
– Mighty Bargain Hunter offers some neat eBay tricks for buyers.

– No Credit Needed lists 5 free ways to reduce your debt.

– Free Money Finance looks at whether the government is fibbing about inflation.

– Consumerism Commentary reminds investors not to follow the crowd.

– Gas prices, gas prices. Five Cent Nickel offers more gas saving tips and All Financial Matters talks about lowering oil prices.

From the Blogosphere
– Blueprint for Financial Prosperity explains how you can use target retirement funds for short-term goals, I discussed something along the same lines, investing in your kid with lifecycle funds.

– The Simple Dollar lists 7 websites that saved him money last week.

– My Money Blog let us know about a free movie ticket giveaway.

– Frugal Dad asks a good question, who is responsible for your misery?

– Thanks to Greener Pastures for including my post about saving money on gas in the Carnival of Personal Finance.

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How Much Job Detail Should You Put on Your Resume – Ask the Readers

Do you put your entire work history on your resume or only jobs that are relevant to the position you’re applying for?

We’ve been doing a lot of interviewing at work lately and I’ve noticed that a lot of applicants list every single job they’ve ever had on their resume, regardless of whether they’re applicable to the job they’re applying for.

Looking at it from the perspective of the candidate, I guess they’re trying to show a long steady history of work ethics and continuous employment. Some of the jobs are quite diverse which I suppose could catch a potential employer’s eye and help them stand out. 

Just listing all your past jobs isn’t such a big deal but when you give extensive detail on past (irrelevant) jobs and even discuss them in the application letter or email it seems almost a form of “resume stuffing”.  As if you don’t have all the skills necessary for the job in question so you talk at length about other qualifications.

So what do you think, from the perspective of someone doing the interviewing/hiring for a specialized job do you care that the candidate delivered pizzas in high school?  When you submit your own resume, how do you decide which details to include and which to leave off? You can share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Gas Credit Cards – Pay at the Pump and Save Money?

Saving money on gas by paying with a cashback gas credit card is one of the ways that people are helping cope with higher fuel prices. An article on MSNBC reports that according to the National Association of Convenience Stores:

“about two thirds of transactions at gas stations were with credit or debit cards in 2007”

Of course, not all of those are cashback cards but even so, that’s a lot of people who are earning some type of rewards for buying gas on credit. 

The reason that credit card companies offer cashback rewards is to encourage consumers to use their cards to pay for purchases.  They can afford to give you money back because they’re charging the merchants a fee to process the payment, so every time you swipe your card, credit card processors are making money.

Gas Stations Feeling the Pinch
The gas stations have always paid a percentage of each sale to the credit card companies. It’s been worth it to them to pay this amount because customers have come to expect gas stations to offer the convenience of payment with credit cards.  Paying at the pump with credit makes it easier and faster for customers to buy fuel, which is obviously a benefit to gas stations.

The problem that fueling stations are running into is that the percentage fee they’re charged increases along with the total cost of the transaction. I’m not sure the reason why the fee scale is setup this way, perhaps to help offset the risk of non payment to the credit card company as the dollar amounts increase.  Whatever the reason, as gas prices climb the fees take a bigger bite out of gas station profits. 

Owners are not happy about this and would like credit card companies to change their fee structure. The article explains the opinion of the National Retail Federation:

“Gas stations are paying more in interchange fees because the price of gas has gone up, while the cost of processing credit or debit cards remains the same.”

Gas Stations May Stop Accepting Credit Cards
Gas stations are working on regulations to address the fee structure but meanwhile some of them are no longer taking credit cards as forms of payment.  In fact, some stations may start offering discounts to customers that pay with cash.  One additional benefit of this change to gas station owners is that if people have to come inside to pay, they’re more likely to buy something else from the convenience store.

My Gas Payment Strategy
I’m going to continue to use credit cards to pay for gas as long as I can for several reasons.  Not only do I earn cashback on my card, I also use the credit card as a financial tracking tool.  My family hardly ever carries cash, instead we charge everything and just pay off the bill every month.  The simplicity of not needing cash and a consolidated tracking system is something we’ve gotten used to and that works for us.

The convenience of paying at the pump is another reason why I’ll continue to use plastic as long as I can.  Being able to avoid the trip inside and potentially waiting in line is a nice benefit, after all time is money. 

Going back to something I mentioned earlier, if I don’t go inside the gas station, I won’t buy anything in the convenience store.  Self control over buying junk isn’t a problem for me as an adult, however kids don’t have the same level of discipline and as our son gets older I have no desire to fight the “I want this gum daddy” battle every time I fill up.

No More Credit?
I doubt that every gas station will stop accepting credit cards but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it as a growing trend, especially for the smaller struggling stations.  We may look back and remember the “good old days” when every filling station took credit as payment : )  If you’re not taking advantage of gas rewards cards now you might consider it since it may be harder to do in the future.

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Highlights of the Month and a Preview of Some Excitement for July

June was a very productive month here at Money Smart Life, despite my laziness of being gone on vacation for a week.

Thanks for Your Thoughts
One of the most exciting events was getting to know each other a little better through the reader survey. If you didn’t get a chance to see the results, you can read about your fellow readers here and if you missed the chance to take the survey you can take it here.  Thanks for your feedback, I’ve begun incorporating some of your requests into the topics covered here, for example I’ve started a series on Stock Market Investing 101 in response to those asking for more coverage on the basics of investing.

Special Deals
Another popular request was coverage of special deals being offered to help save you or make you money.  I haven’t really done much of that in the past so I’ll come up with a way to screen those for you.  One deal that a lot of readers have taken advantage of to help save money on movie rentals over the summer is the free trial of Blockbuster Total Access.

Popular Topics
The most commented post of the month was the one on direct sales parties, people offering their opinion on making extra money by selling to their friends. 

My favorite article of the month was a recent one, how to decide when to quit your job.  I think the tool I described in that post is great for making financial decisions.

Graduation season is winding down but there are still a lot of people looking for gift ideas for college grads.  Now that the graduates are out on their own and having to make financial decision, the series covering health insurance, investing, student loans, best credit cards, and budgeting for college grads has become quite popular.

It’s obvious a topic on many people’s minds is the price of gas.  As fuel prices continue to climb readers are frequenting articles like small easy gas saving tips, save gas money by riding the bus, and the best gas credit cards.

Article Series
I had two different series of articles in June, one on identity theft and one on selling your home by owner.  I’ve always felt running a series of articles was a good way to take a more in depth look at a topic rather than trying to cover everything in one article.  I was glad to see that approach supported by some of the comments in the reader survey, here are the two series from this month.

Identity Theft

• Identity Theft Protection
• Identity Theft Costs
• Identity Theft Tips

For Sale By Owner

• Selling Without a Realtor
• Backing Up Your Home’s Asking Price
• Getting Your House Ready to Sell
• Marketing Your House

Coming Attractions
After the 4^th of July weekend is over I’m going to be doing something a little different on the site.  I won’t give it away yet but I’m excited to announce it.  I’ll put it this way, your opinion and readership is what keeps this site going so you get to make some decisions that will impact the future of Money Smart Life.  Stay tuned for more!

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Quit Your Job Or Keep Your Job – How to Decide When a New Job’s Right for You

Quitting your job isn’t easy but sometimes it’s the right thing to do.  The problem is, it’s not an easy decision to make.  In fact, a lot of times it’s an easy decision to avoid because you can’t figure out what your best options are.

Quit Your Job or Not – What’s Best for You?
One of the tough things about deciding whether to leave your current job is the many factors that go into a “good” job.  As you’ve probably learned, the grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence. So a new job may sound appealing due to a higher salary or opportunity for career advancement but how does it measure up all around?

One tool I’ve used to help me overcome similar analysis paralysis in the past is something called a weighted criteria model.  This method is a great one to use when making a major decision because it helps you quantify all the different factors (or criteria) that have an impact on your decision.  I’ll walk you through an example of how you can use this decision making tool to determine the best job for you.

Identifying Your Criteria
The first step when making a decision is to come up with a list of things that you’re basing your decision on.  When you’re considering a job change, here are some criteria you might consider:

• Commute
• Salary
• 401k Options
• Profit Sharing
• Stock Options
• Health Benefits
• Career Advancement
• Interest in Job
• Parking
• Office Environment
• Hours Worked
• On Call

Prioritizing Your Criteria
Once you’ve made your list, order it based on which factors are most important to you.  Then assign each criterion a percentage weight, in other words, how important that factor is compared to the other factors.  In my example, I came up with 12 job criteria.  I decided that salary was the most important factor and assigned it a weight of 30%.  That left 70% to split among the remaining 11 criteria, you can see how I ranked them in the example below.

I’m including an image of the finished model for taking a new job, you can refer to it as you read through the description.  I’ll do my best to give a straight forward explanation but, picture == 1000 words.

Rating Each Decision Factor
Once you have your criteria prioritized you come up with a rating scale and assign each decision factor a rating.  To keep things simple I chose 0, 1, and 2 in my example.  I’m comparing my current job against potential Job A and potential Job B. 

The ratings are relative to one another, I gave my current job a score of 1, job B has a lower salary so it gets a 0.  Job B on the other hand has a much higher salary so I give it a score of 2.  You don’t have to give out a 0, 1, and 2 for each factor, if two of the options are pretty much the same you can give them the same score (Ex: Salary for Job A & Job B).

What Does the Weighted Score Mean?
Once each decision factor has a value you multiply the score by the weight you assigned it.  Look at the weighted scores for Salary below:

• 0.0  – Job A
• 0.6 – Job B
• 0.3 – Current Job

Confused yet? Don’t worry, this score will mean more in a second.  If you look at the example, you can see the next step is to add up all the weighted scores for all factors for each job.  The job that has the highest score is the one that is the best fit based on how you prioritized your criteria.

In my example, Job B is pretty close to my current job and Job B has the best score by far.

Why Do I Use This Method?
I find the weighted criteria model useful because it helps you take all the different factors into consideration and allows you to somewhat objectively compare them against one another. When you’re trying to make a big decision that has multiple factors, it’s easy to get one or two major points stuck in your head and let those drive your choice.  This helps you keep your eye on all the different pieces without getting overwhelmed by the decision.

Not only that, it can be a good tool to use for hindsight.  Let’s say I took Job B and absolutely hated it.  I could look back at why I chose Job B and might realize that even though it had:

• the highest salary
• most opportunity for career advancement
• the technologies I was most interested in

I may have been underestimating the importance of things like

• lack of health benefits
• long hours
• having to be on call

I can then tweak the priority of my factors when looking for my next job and help myself make a decision I’m more comfortable with.

Major Decisions Made Simple
You can obviously use this method for any major decision that involves multiple deciding factors, hopefully my description made sense, if you have any questions just leave them in the comments.  Happy job hunting!

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