Six Reasons Why Gen X & Gen Y Need Some Serious Financial TLC

• They’re scared: They’ve entered their adult years during a gut-wrenching economic and job market.  With unemployment over 9.5%, they’ve seen their parents struggle. Over 7 out of 10 Americans are now living paycheck-to-paycheck.

• They are making poor decisions: As a result of that fear they are not making the best long-term decisions for their futures. A recent ICI study shows only 34% of investors under age 35 are willing to take substantial risk with their retirement money – the exact time in their lives when they should take that risk.

• Something as “simple” as a 20-year head start can give you 5x more money: Let’s take 2 people. Jane starts saving $5,000 a year at age 25 for her retirement every year until age 65 and gets an average return of 7%. Jane has a $1 million nest egg by retirement. Joe starts saving $5,000 a year at age 45 for retirement every year until age 65 and also gets an average return of 7%. Joe has $200,000 in his next egg. That 20-year head start gave Jane 5x more money. That’s why learning the basics of personal finance – how to budget, get out of debt, and save so you can get that retirement fund funded in the key early years is so vital.

• Young adults consume information differently so there’s a delivery challenge when it comes to education: Studies shows that young adults want their financial education delivered in a 21st Century way. They want it web-based with robust, interactive tools. And unlike their “I’ll do it myself” parents, these emerging adults want help and guidance.

• Nearly half of Gen Y has below average financial fluency: A study by The National Foundation for Credit Counseling showed that nearly half of this generation did not understand how to save and budget and that 45% of them have no savings!

• The financial world is geometrically more complex: Part of the reason for the above statistic is due to the fact that financial literacy is not taught in schools as a core life skill. Young adults often rely on parents who were brought up in “financially simpler” times and aren’t equipped to help. They are also bombarded by so many more unrealistic media images about what “normal” lives are like.

So, what’s the solution?

If you or someone you love is a Gen X or Gen Y-er… encourage them to self-educate.  Here are five of my favorite personal finance sites that give great financial advice for women – all of which I’ve either written for or read regularly myself:

• For everyone:  GetCurrency.com & SmartAboutMoney.org
• For women:  LearnVest.com and DailyWorth.com
• For men: IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com

What about you – any additional resources to recommend to Gen X & Gen Y?

© 2010 SingleMindedWomen.com All rights reserved. Permission to reprint this article must be obtained from SingleMindedWomen.com.

Want more financial love? You can follow Manisha on Twitter at @ManishaThakor and sign up for her email updates here. Starting in Fall 2010, Manisha will teach an innovative online course on “Financial Literacy 101″ for women through www.Sympoz.com. Manisha Thakor, personal finance expert for women, can be reached via her website, www.ManishaThakor.com.

To spend a lot more money than you planned on spending.

That’s right. Everything in a modern supermarket is done with that one thought in mind: getting the customer to spend more money than they intended.

Don’t think that’s possible? Well then take a little shopping trip with Single Minded Women and we’ll show you how it’s done:

1. Distance between key items makes you roam the store. Ever notice that what we call the basics: milk, bread, meat, are arrayed in three separately distinct points around the store. For example meat, chicken, fish, are often in the very back. Milk and dairy products, cheese, yogurt, eggs, are often to the extreme left, bread products can be found on the extreme opposite right side of the store.

Don’t think that happened by accident? The idea is to get you to walk passed every other part of the store. Passing by the chips, the beverages, the cereals, the cosmetics, the magazines, the gift cards, and so much more as you go searching for that loaf of bread and that carton of eggs. For a grocery store to put “the basics” up front is as unthinkable as a Las Vegas casino putting the elevator banks just off the main lobby. No, you have to wind your way through the casino, often getting lost one or more times, before you find the elevators that will take you to your floor.

But the marketing games don’t stop there.

2. Specials on “endcaps” make you buy even more on impulse. Getting you to walk the entire store is also why so many of the “doorbuster” special items, big sale on Special K for example, can be found on an end cap display at the back of the cereal aisle. At certain times of the year, you can find sale displays at the front of the store, (turkey stuffing, cans of cranberries, etc. at Thanksgiving or Christmas for example) because grocers know that most shoppers at these times of year have a long list of items to pick up anyway. But for the other 48 weeks of the year, most of the really good buys are in the back of the store.

Grocers even take care to put more expensive items to the shopper’s right and sale items to the buyer’s left. Take salad dressings, as one example. Sale items will be generally on the two bottom shelves and or to the left side of a display section. Full retail items will be placed at eye-level or to your right. So if you’re thinking that your being left handed, and petit will save more money on your groceries, more often than not you’re right.

3. Impulse items: do you really need them? Have you noticed all those tempting little things are almost always placed near the checkout stand? Those expensive little chocolates or, the celebrity tell all magazines, are all designed to get you to say, “Oh what the heck, I deserve a little treat.”

In other words, buy on impulse.

There’s nothing evil or sinister in all this. It’s simply free enterprise. And if you want to wander the aisles and pick up items that you did not intend to buy, go right ahead and do just that. But, if you’re trying to stay on a budget, and you’re tired of seeing your credit card debt climb higher, rather than sinking lower, keep all of these simple tricks in mind.

Approach your shopping trip with a clear objective: to pick up just the items you need, and not all the things you don’t.

Looking at circulars, knowing what’s on sale, making a list of what you need, and sticking by that list will lead to a happy and unexpected result: a lower monthly grocery bill. And that means more money to buy the things you really want, lower your credit card debt, and perhaps save a little of your hard earned money for the future.

It is continually amazing to me that the simple calculation of “income minus expenses over time” can bring such a calming sense of control to personal financial matters.

What is maybe more fulfilling is that the positive conversation around women and money is expanding and gaining ground. Everyone in a recession is forced to face their finances. We’re all getting creative together, trying to squeeze the most out of every resource. Getting to know one’s own finances is the first step, and cash flow is pioneering its way into the everyday lives of single women.

Spend Cash

While we’re talking about pioneering concepts, here’s another radical new idea. What if the next generation of money consciousness is cash-and-carry? What if we regularly only spent money with the cash in our pockets, and did away with our credit cards and debit cards?

What if cash became a daily part of our lives, and when did we start believing collectively that if we don’t spend on a particular day, we are not participating in the world?

Did you spend money today? What did you buy? How about yesterday? Do you remember everything you purchased 12 hours ago? Do you, like most of us, have a formidable stack of receipts from purchases as part of your daily living?

It’s clear that I map my road trips around where there’s a Peet’s Coffee Shop. I have a coffee maker at home. I have a French press I love. But if I don’t wake up and go purchase my morning coffee at Peet’s, I don’t know what to do wth myself. The habit is engrained after 19 years of doing it the same way every day.

New Money Habit

That is a foreign concept to my parents. They can easily go several days without spending money. They don’t relate to the deep, unspoken feeling that they won’t exist in the world if they refrain from spending for a day.

Here’s another radical idea. Maybe not spending every day is more an act of participating in the collective than spending daily, considering our country’s collective ache in the financial parts.

What did you refrain from buying today?

© 2010 SingleMindedWomen.com All rights reserved. Permission to reprint this article must be obtained from SingleMindedWomen.com

More Money Saving Tips on SMW

5 Tips to Help You Avoid Overspending

5 Unconventional Ways to Save Money on Food

What You Need to Know About Credit Card Debt

Here’s a fun tip for the $200/week grocery challenge.

1. Throw a supper party!

When reserves are running low, throw a supper party. Invite guests to bring ingredients they have hanging around in the fridge. Then, together, design and make a meal out of everything that people bring. You can get really wild and creative…and come home with some new dinner tips from others, to mix up the regular menu.

2. Trade gift certificates and coupons.

After dinner, make the theme of savings a clever event. Have guests bring coupons, and a list of local discounts they have heard about. Be prepared to share and trade. Over dessert, bump up the stakes. Invite your guests to round up all of their unused gift certificates and free dinner coupons, and bring them to the supper party. (We all have some stuffed in a drawer, don’t we? The massage certificate we gave our mom for her birthday and she never used. The $50 restaurant raffle we won and never spent.) Then open the trading floor! Someone else would use that massage certificate in a heartbeat, and you could get something you really like in return. Commit to using the coupons and gift certificates you end up with, and see what kind of new experience it leads you to. I love to use mine for inevitable special occasions where I’ll be treating, like birthday dinners.

3. Eat out more often.

Not at restaurants. Instead, consider the dinner invitations you have gotten from friends and neighbors over time. Start taking people up on them. Instead of putting it off, say yes! Offer to bring a salad.

4. Share a farm fresh produce box.

Nearby farms often provide monthly or weekly produce delivery to urban areas. If you go in on a share with enough friends or neighbors, it could cost as little as $20 a week for a big box of vegetables. And the vegetables change with the season. Yum.

5. Make a night out special.

Instead of fancy Italian dinner, head to an all-night taco stand. Broaden your adventure horizons, and go on a walk. Look up at the stars. If you go to a discount theater, bring your own popcorn that you made at home. Money can be a short cut to gratification that creativity can make up with more fun. If the intent is having a memorable night out, you’ll have a great time getting creative.

More Money Saving Tips

The 30-Day Grocery Challenge

Step-by-Step Guid to Mastering Your Money and Managing Debt

GreenSherpa Money Management Tool

Enter the 30-Day Grocery Challenge: 30 days, $200 limit on groceries.

Months back, I decided to give myself a challenge and spend no more than $100 that month on groceries. Eeek! Yes! That was $25 a week on a family of four for food! A hundred bucks was slim cash. It got incredibly challenging, but it also got really fun! It pulled out my most creative self, and gave me ideas for cost cutting in other areas I never would have considered had I not entered the challenge. It also taught me the value of food, what I most enjoy at dinner, and how much I can save if I just put my mind to it.

To make the challenge user-friendly, I’ll publish a weekly update with recipes and helpful ideas. Feel free to comment with your progress, challenges and recipes. The rules of the game are that you have $200 for the whole month. So if you under-spend one week, you have that surplus to add to your balance for later in the month. Don’t overspend! It’ll make it really hard to eat later in the week. Get resourceful! It’ll go a long way.

Here are some tips to getting to Day 30 well fed and on budget.

1. Take inventory of your pantry and freezer.

- Go through your entire cupboard and pull out the staples—pasta, rice, beans, grains. Line them up in order of weeks. How many meals can each of them contribute to each week till they are gone?

- Then pull out the long neglected items—the canned garbanzo beans, hearts of palm, and Thai chili soups—and set them aside to start planning how you can turn them into spectacular feats of cuisine as the month unfolds.

- Label the items in your freezer in order of the weeks you want to eat them in your 30- Day plan. It may be gratifying to save those burgers till Week 4, when creativity is waning.

- Take note of the condiments in the fridge. What can you make in the next 30 days that you can use those pickled lemons in?

-Use your $50 a week to augment what you already have.

2. Uncover your favorite all-purpose recipe books.

Hint: Vegetarian chefs are known for their remarkable creativity with staple ingredients and a few dashes of produce. These can be prolific help on a budget, and refill your reservoir of recipe ideas when wondering what to make with the three bags of rice you found in the back of the cupboard. Pick up one at the library, borrow one from your neighbor, or find several at a used bookstore.

3. Plan, plan, plan.

- Once you have inventoried your food supply, make a list and don’t buy anything you already have!

- Make a loose meal plan for the month, based on what’s in your kitchen, and what you think you might buy on your budget. As each week begins, make a more detailed meal plan for that week.

- Keep the grocery trips to a minimum, and never shop hungry. To stay inside the budget, it’s best to buy once, maybe twice for the week. Bring your list of items you have (keep it in your purse or your car). Cross items off the list once you have eaten them.

-Keep the perishable food items to a minimum, especially if you live alone. Avoid spending too much of your weekly allowance on produce, meat, and baked goods that won’t get eaten before their expiration date.

4. Get creative with single ingredients.

If you purchase a main course item on special, like fish or meat, consider serving part of it as a main course one night with rice or veggies, then mincing up the rest for tacos or casserole.

5. Stick to it.

After a couple of weeks, the challenge can get a little dicey. Week three, you may start looking longingly into the grocery market freezer at the $5 Ben & Jerry’s. The trick is to stay on track, stick to your daily plan, and know that in 30 days, you can have your specialty ice cream.

6. Talk about it!

It’s best to start this challenge with a partner or a group. Enroll people at work to take the challenge with you. Get your neighbors in on it. You will keep each other on track and hold each other accountable. And truthfully, it’s just more fun that way. You can go so far as to make a big progress chart in someone’s garage, trade recipes, or trade items you have a surplus of for items your neighbor has a surplus of. The possibilities are endless there, and the encouragement that kicks in when you’re ready to quit is priceless.

Success Pays

When you get into the challenge, it becomes a ritual, and all of a sudden, you find yourself through one week saying, I can’t believe I did it! The success feels fantastic. You feel freedom in it, more than what you might imagine on a reduction plan. Throughout the 30-day challenge, I was able to craft awesome new recipes, learn how to make granola really cheaply, and get the value of my dollar out of every meal.

Is it sustainable after the first month? If you have a great time, and it’s a breeze for you, keep at it. For my family, we got busy after we completed the challenge, and let the plans slide. But the experience of those 30 days gave us cost saving, valuable habits we still use today. I find myself shopping with that hawk-eye for value. And certain weeks, I take stock of the pantry and launch a mini-challenge to last through the week.

Join us! Take the 30 Day Grocery Challenge and tell us how it goes. Happy eating, and even better, happy saving.

Erin Lozano is COO of GreenSherpa.com, a unique Cash Flow Management tool makes your financial future as important as your financial history. Automated to all of your online banking and credit accounts, Green Sherpa handles expenses and plans up to twelve months ahead to give you 100% visibility on your goals.

© 2010 SingleMindedWomen.com All rights reserved. Permission to reprint this article must be obtained from SingleMindedWomen.com

More articles on saving money here at SMW

Getting Honest About Your Money

Step-By-Step Guide to Mastering Your Money and Managing Debt

Retirement Planning: A Woman’s Issue

We have some good news though. Relief does exist. Today there are a variety of programs available that can help you lower interest rates, extend payment terms, help you negotiate a new loan, and reduce the principal you owe. Here are the facts on each program to help you determine which is right for you.

Debt Consolidation

One of the most widely known credit card debt relief programs in existence is debt consolidation. Simply put, debt consolidation is the process of combining multiple existing loan payments into a single, more manageable monthly payment. A debt consolidation company has the expertise and knowledge to work with multiple lenders and extract more favorable terms. The end result is is a program and monthly payment that you can afford.

Pitfalls

Credit card debt is unsecured debt. There is no collateral tied to it. If you were suffering a financial hardship and could not for a time or for the foreseeable, future pay your credit card bills, you could be subject to harassing phone calls from the credit card company and collection firms. You could also be sued for repayment of this credit card debt. Lawsuits over credit card debt depend on many factors including:

• Whether or not there is a co-signer on the account(s) which the credit card company can pursue
• The length of  time at your current job for a long period of time or not
• Age of the customer
• Total dollar amount of the debt owed

These factors and other determine whether a credit card company decides to pursue a lawsuit against a customer that has defaulted on credit card debt. But generally, credit card issuers are usually willing to work with their customers towards repayment of the debts owed.

However in the case of debt consolidation loans for homeowners, you are  essentially exchanging unsecured debt for secured debt. And this security almost always comes in the form of a home equity loan. If a consumer goes down the road of a credit card debt consolidation loan, and it is in the form of a home equity loan, and they do find themselves unable to make their new payments at some time – they risk losing their home. Therefore, for debt consolidation to work and be successful, you must have reached a point where you are on sufficiently stable financial footing to be able to continue to make your new payments – because the stakes are high.

Consumer Credit Counseling

If you are in a position where you find youreslf beginning to slide down that slippery slope of credit card debt, then consumer credit counseling can be extremely beneficial. Credit counselors are able to analyze every aspect of your finances and budget. Based on this in-depth evaluation they can craft a personally tailored strategy for paying down credit card debt.

One of the key methods employed by credit counseling is the creation of a personal or family household budget. In order to understand and follow the money trail it’s important to lay down on paper or on an Excel spreadsheet every expense that comes up. Seeing in black & white how much is being spent and on what every month can be a real eye-opener. Those gourmet morning coffees surely add up, as does dining out, entertainment, etc.

A household budget designed with the aid of a skilled credit counselor can therefore be extremely beneficial for those whose credit card debt issues have not yet reached critical stage. And many consumer credit counseling services are in fact non-profit groups, so you can rest assured the credit counseling service has your best interest at heart.

Debt Settlement

A newer program and method of debt relief that has been gaining in popularity and getting much media attention of late is known as debt settlement. The program differs greatly from debt consolidation. For starters unlike debt consolidation which simply seeks to gain a lower monthly payment with a lower interest rate and/or extended payment terms, debt settlement works to actually reduce the principal that a consumer owes.

Here’s how it works. A cosumer will authorize a debt settlement firm to negotiate on her behalf with her creditors. Also known as debt arbitration or debt negotiation, this type of program can typically achieve reductions of debt as high as 50% to 75% off of the original amount(s) owed. What is even more amazing is that this reduction in debt is achieved without all the harmful effects of a bankruptcy filing.

Debt Relief Takes Time

Even a debt settlement program however takes time to complete and to eliminate one’s debt. Consumers in debt need to realize that their personal credit card debt issue did not arise overnight; it grew over time, typically several years. And it will take a few years to complete any debt relief program. The good news is that there are indeed many programs in which those who are struggling with credit card debt can use to their advantage beginning with today.

© 2009 SingleMindedWomen.com All rights reserved. Permission to reprint this article must be obtained from SingleMindedWomen.com

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What You Need to Know About Credit Card Debt: Part 1

Getting Honest About Your Money

First Steps to Mastering Your Money and Managing Your Debt

The truth is sneaky sometimes. We think we’re speaking it. Playing our cards. But sometimes it is deeper than we are used to playing. How many times have you hemmed and hawed your way out of a commitment? Do you leave sundry items off of your budget and wonder where the money went? When you’ve overspent, how long does it take you to reconcile your check register and uncover just how much you’re behind? Do you put one more thing on credit and promise yourself to get on track next month?

In personal finance, personal honesty cannot be overstated. The broader culture has certainly felt this truism as we spiral into the consequences of inflated obligations and unstable economies. We are seeing on a community level how our personal choices affect each other. I call this effect “the Spiral Concept”: it’s the idea that I really don’t do anything in my world that doesn’t affect someone else.

Lighting the Dark Spots

Women by nature are community-aware. We radiate outward and we notice the effects we have on our friends, our relationships. I might do something mundane, but I can see its effects on myself, my community, my workplace. (Try whistling a popular tune in the morning, and listen for how many are humming the same tune by afternoon.) The great news is that I can use this awareness to create change. If the spiral is negative, by becoming aware of my place in it, with complete honesty about my contributions, I can make it a positive spiral. My actions can create a positive affect outward.

So how do you get honest about money? Allow every last aspect of it to surface. What follows are a couple of exercises to help you explore where you are being honest and where you are falling short of it. As you approach the exercises, open yourself up to your deepest truths and fears. If you are making a budget and looking at options, bring up the possibility of failure. List it as one of your options. It is mortifying, but when you confront failure in the light of day, it becomes an option. Options are choices. When you know all of your choices, you are empowered. You can get a sense of how resisting some of them in silence is affecting the rest of your abilities and actions.

Knowing is Better Than Hiding

- Write down the general themes or your repetitive behaviors around dishonesty:

I set myself on a budget every month and fall off two weeks later.

- Then write down who that behavior effects:

Me, because I get down on myself; my close friends because I overspend, which makes me stressed, so it affects the time I spend with them; sometimes I don’t see them at all when I’ve overspent because I can’t afford to join them. My work, because I start to feel slave to the grind.

- Write down actions you need to take to clean up that agreement:

1. Create a budget that works with real numbers.

2. Enroll a mentor or my community to stay on track.

3. Do my budget on Sunday morning, rather than Monday night when I am wiped out from work.

5. Create a new agreement, rather than continuously falling off the old one.

6. Admit I’ve fallen off if I’ve fallen off.

Another process you can take is almost the reverse. Write down any “incompletes” you have in your world. What did you say you would do that you did not complete? What emails have you left untended? Are the bills late?

1. Tag, highlight or make note for those that are money related.

2. Next to that, figure out the actions you need to take to clean up the money-related items.

3. Mark home-related items in another highlighter color, and figure out the actions needed to cross those off of your list.

4. Highlight personal relationships in another color.

5. Categorize topic by topic in different highlighter colors, and then go about completing each category. Organizing them in categories makes the list less dominating, and easier to tackle.

When listing these things, let go of shame. Being honest isn’t about finding shame. It is about looking at your financial life with a fresh eye. How can you stay on track with your budget or goals if you are not honest about yourself and whom you impact? From ruthless honesty comes a new perspective, and a roadmap out of unknown territory.

Erin Lozano is COO of GreenSherpa.com, a unique Cash Flow Management tool makes your financial future as important as your financial history. Automated to all of your online banking and credit accounts, Green Sherpa handles expenses and plans up to twelve months ahead to give you 100% visibility on your goals.

© 2009 SingleMindedWomen.com All rights reserved. Permission to reprint this article must be obtained from SingleMindedWomen.com

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A Single-Minded Savings Plan

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Typically in times of plenty, we think little about contingency and reserve funds. When times are lean, having some extra resources is just about all that we think about. It’s a story that is as old as the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament, when Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dream that seven lean cows devour seven fat cows, foretelling a time of drought and famine coming to the fertile lands along the Nile.

Thanks to Joseph’s cautionary tale, Pharaoh’s ministers directed that generous amounts of grain be stored for the coming years of drought and low crop yield. And so the story has taken root in our culture over several thousand years:

That fat times are not just for celebrating  bounties of plenty, but also a time to save for the lean years that will inevitably follow.

If you’re under 50, this recession is , possibly, the first one you’ve experienced as a self-supporting adult, and with vastly inadequate resources.

And no doubt you are feeling the consequences.

There are two things that you can do right now to help your present situation, and make certain that this does not happen to you again in the future.

1. Eliminate all unnecessary spending as of today. No, not next week, but now. Under the assumption that you still have a job and a reasonable income flow coming into your home, your lack of savings in past years is no reason to delay saving now. I’m not going to take you through a long list of “living on the cheap,” ideas, but I will tell you this: a month of Netflix is cheaper than one movie ticket, and you can buy four bags of groceries at Wal-Mart for every two to three bags you’ll purchase at your boutique grocer down the block.

2. Now, put these newly-saved funds to good use. For those who have never been savers, I will tell you that if you are indeed a cautious consumer, this case will eventually add up to something substantial. So, what do you want to do with those savings?

Bank 65% of the money you save in a rainy day fund. Then take the balance and invest it in the stock market.

OI can hear you gasp now. “The stock market! Isn’t that where all this trouble began?” It is, in a sense. But the market is always the leading edge of a downturn, and the leading edge of the next upswing as well.

One basic rule of the market: be a contrarian. When you see everyone rushing in to buy stocks, get out.

And when you see people rushing out of the market, get in.

That doesn’t mean buying any stock your eye happens to land on. You still have to be a smart shopper. Bank stocks in recent weeks are a good example. Given up for dead in February, they have bounced back nicely in the last two weeks. There are always good buys in down markets, you have to do some studying and search out the bargains.

Okay, this time you got caught in a storm without a savings plan or an investment umbrella. That doesn’t mean you can’t learn from your mistakes. When we get back to a healthy economy–my guess late 2010, early 2011,–do what Pharaoh learned to do: eep being a smart consumer, and a good saver.

Come the next downturn when someone says, “What’s in your wallet?” You can flash a wise smile and simply say. “Enough that I’ll be just fine!”

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But an identity thief does.

Identity theft is a serious crime. People whose identities have been stolen can spend months or years and thousands of dollars cleaning up the mess the thieves have made of a good name and credit record. In the meantime, victims of identity theft may lose job opportunities, be refused loans for education, housing, or cars, and even get arrested for crimes they didn’t commit.

Humiliation, anger, and frustration are among the feelings victims experience as they navigate the process of rescuing their identity.

Working with other government agencies and organizations, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has produced this booklet to help you remedy the effects of an identity theft. It describes what steps to take, your legal rights, how to handle specific problems you may encounter on the way to clearing your name, and what to watch for in the future.

How Identity Theft Occurs

From a consumer’s complaint to the FTC, July 9, 2004:

“I first was notified that someone had used my Social Security number for their taxes in February 2004. I also found out that this person opened a checking account, cable and utility accounts, and a cell phone account in my name. I’m still trying to clear up everything and just received my income tax refund after waiting four to five months. Trying to work and get all this cleared up is very stressful.”

Despite your best efforts to manage the flow of your personal information or to keep it to yourself, skilled identity thieves may use a variety of methods to gain access to your data.

How Identity Thieves Get Your Personal Information:

•    They get information from businesses or other institutions by:
•    stealing records or information while they’re on the job
•    bribing an employee who has access to these records
•    hacking these records
•    conning information out of employees
•    They may steal your mail, including bank and credit card statements, credit card offers, new checks, and tax information.
•    They may rummage through your trash, the trash of businesses, or public trash dumps in a practice known as “dumpster diving.”
•    They may get your credit reports by abusing their employer’s authorized access to them, or by posing as a landlord, employer, or someone else who may have a legal right to access your report.
•    They may steal your credit or debit card numbers by capturing the information in a data storage device in a practice known as “skimming.” They may swipe your card for an actual purchase, or attach the device to an ATM machine where you may enter or swipe your card.
•    They may steal your wallet or purse.
•    They may complete a “change of address form” to divert your mail to another location.
•    They may steal personal information they find in your home.
•    They may steal personal information from you through email or phone by posing as legitimate companies and claiming that you have a problem with your account. This practice is known as “phishing” online, or pretexting by phone.

If Your Personal Information Has Been Lost or Stolen

If you’ve lost personal information or identification, or if it has been stolen from you, taking certain steps quickly can minimize the potential for identity theft.

Financial accounts: Close accounts, like credit cards and bank accounts, immediately. When you open new accounts, place passwords on them. Avoid using your mother’s maiden name, your birth date, the last four digits of your Social Security number (SSN) or your phone number, or a series of consecutive numbers.

Social Security number: Call the toll-free fraud number of any of the three nationwide consumer reporting companies and place an initial fraud alert on your credit reports. An alert can help stop someone from opening new credit accounts in your name. See consumer reporting company contact information. For more information about fraud alerts, see the Fraud Alerts box.

Driver’s license/other government-issued identification: Contact the agency that issued the license or other identification document. Follow its procedures to cancel the document and to get a replacement. Ask the agency to flag your file so that no one else can get a license or any other identification document from them in your name.

Once you’ve taken these precautions, watch for signs that your information is being misused. In other words, STAY ALERT.

If your information has been misused, file a report about the theft with the police, and file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, as well. If another crime was committed for example, if your purse or wallet was stolen or your house or car was broken into report it to the police immediately.

–Carol Mathis, RHU, is president of  Choices LLC, a company that provides a variety of specialty insurance benefits.

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This particular downturn is starting to go beyond the ordinary economic contraction, in other words a recession, possibly passing a deep recession as well. When that happens the next stop is the “D” word.

You guessed it, depression.

And while I continue to believe that is unlikely, it’s certainly true that there are some ominous signs, the darkest of which are: the rapidly growing unemployment numbers, the stock markets steady trend downward, and now the most dramatic drop in the consumer price index, one full percentage point in a single month, which has not happened since the index began in 1947.

Granted much of that was driven by a 14% fall off in energy prices, but retail sales have fallen off the cliff, as consumers have dramatically cut spending in the face of uncertain financial conditions.

The fear is that we might be facing a deflationary cycle and that’s an unsettling prospect from which the silver lining is that the Federal Reserve can stop worrying about inflation and focus fully on aggressively re-inflating the US economy.

The bottom line for the SMW consumer, investor, or both, is that we’re seeing some bargains that we have not seen in a very long time. Here are a few you may consider:

1. Google, the stock.
For example, on Friday, November 21st, it closed at $262 a share. One year ago a single share of Google sold for $725. And compared to the performance of other big corporate names that’s quite good.

Take for example one of the previous stars of the financial sector: Citigroup, it closed under four dollars, last year it was over $35 per share. General Motors at three dollars a share is worth exactly ten percent of its value of one year ago. The obvious question now, is this a good time to buy? Perhaps. It might be the bargain of the century. Some one in 2080 might say “Can you believe my grandmother bought  stock in General Motors at $3 and today it’s worth over $900 a share.” Or they might say, “My poor grandmother, she put her money into GM thinking the government was going to bail them out, they didn’t and she lost a bundle.”

That’s the scary part of deflation: it’s very hard to say when you’ve hit bottom. At least as it pertains to GM and Citigroup we know the bottom: that’s zero.

And that’s just three or four dollars away from where they are today.

For consumers, the choice is clearer. When you want something and you see a really good price, go for it.

And this holiday season, and in the winter months coming up just behind it, we are sure to see a bumper crop of great prices as retailers try desperately to keep their ship afloat with one sale on top of another.

Speaking of keeping the ship afloat, pun intended, any article about bargains would not be complete without a mention of—

2. The cruise industry.
If you ever wanted to take a seven-day cruise for $350, your time has come. There are lots of cruise lines offering jaw-dropping bargains so find one now online. And while we’re on the subject of travel, check out hotel rooms in some of America’s priciest markets. From New York to LA, it’s time to book a room at rates not seen since the travel market freeze in the months following 9/11.

Of course all this talk of bargains begs the question, should you go for it or lock up the credit cards?

I think that depends on the best reading you can take of your own immediate future. If you’re working in the financial sector, not at a solid Wells Fargo, but a very shaky Citigroup for example, hold tight. No matter how tempting those bargains are, you may want to hold onto any money you can at this point.

But if on the other hand, you’re working in the healthcare field, say, as a radiation technologist, chances are you’re job is just fine. Shop for bargains and enjoy that cruise. Healthcare jobs don’t, as a general rule, rise and fall with the economy.

We only know the top of a market or the bottom of a bad slump when it is in our collective rearview mirror. My guess is that some of these deep discounts won’t be quite so deep in another couple of years. As for that GM stock, take a risk and buy a hundred shares. Don’t you want your grandchildren to say you were a visionary?

That’s what I’m going to do. I’m always going to bet on tomorrow.

If it was good enough for Lil’ Orphan Annie, it’s good enough for me.

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Self-Employed, with an Uneven Income? Some Smart Financial Planning
Tax Deductions for a Home Based Business

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