06.30.08
What Not To Do #1 – Falling for a Scam
A friend of mine suggested that, given some of the stuff I have had to deal with over the past few years, a series on what not to do might be in order here (thank you, autographedcat)!
Given the recent problem my roommate has developed I think today’s post in the series will be about avoiding being scammed. (Not that I think for one moment that any of you are that gullible, but the reason scammers keep trying is there are tons of folks who are.)
First off, avoiding scams is not that hard. The general rule is, I think, that if it sounds too good to be true, it is. If someone you have never met is offering you huge amounts of money to do a job you never applied for in the first place, it’s a scam.
If someone sends you an email purporting to be from a small country and needing to transfer funds out, or claims to be in jail and needs to get their money out of the country to avoid it being seized, it’s a scam.
If you get a letter in the mail that promises you thousands for nothing but an illegal transaction on your part, yeah, that’s a scam, too.
However, in weak moments the best of us can be tempted. So here are a few clues for when you are considering that offer that looks like it could solve all your problems:
1. Do the addresses match? In my roommate’s case, the check was from a construction company in Georgia, the letterhead from a place in New Jersey, and the stamp from Canada. This should raise all sorts of hackles.
2. What do they want you to do for the money? In this case, the letter wanted her to deposit this check, then transfer, via MoneyGram, the bulk of it to “Pamela Your Last Name Here” of Toronto, Canada. If it was legit, why wouldn’t there be a name that matched either the check or the letterhead? (Not that this would necessarily make it legit, but it would look less like a scam.)
3. Again, is the offer too good to be true, or does it look like it would solve all your problems? I’ve learned over the years (and you probably have, too) that the only way out of the mess you dug yourself into is slogging your way out and learning to become accountable, both to yourself and to others.
In short, if it sounds too good to be true, toss it in the wastebasket, or delete it from your inbox.
And, in the event you do get caught, a lawyer I know suggests the following:
1. Don’t let how dumb you feel for having been scammed paralyze you, and don’t beat yourself up over it. Neither of the above will rectify the situation, and inaction may leave you open to further problems.
2. Notify your bank. Immediately. Yes, they will put a hold on your funds, but it’s better than having the scammers drain your account in addition to what they have already conned you out of.
3. Call the police. It’s likely you will have to talk to the Detective Bureau, during regular business hours, which is what my roommate is going to have to do.
4. If any part of the material is from out of your state, you are going to want to notify the FBI, and the Postal Inspectors. This kind of fraud falls into their bailiwick.
5. You will also want to notify the Big 3 credit reporting agencies, TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax. They need to block you accounts from giving out information that can be used to steal your identity.
6. And, if you don’t already, you are going to want to monitor your credit reports. You can do this once a year by going to annualcreditreport.com. (You all should be doing this anyway, just on general principles.)
Yes, it’s all a big pain in the butt, but it’s a lot less painful to be considered a victim of a scammer than to be considered an accessory to their actions. Believe me, that’s a level of problems that is almost impossible to resolve without throwing tons of money and time at.
And, once again, the easiest way to avoid being scammed is to commit to doing the work involved to straighten your life and finances out, and stop looking for shortcuts that will magically solve your problems. They don’t exist. Period.
Have you been caught by a scammer? What did you have to do to rectify the situation? How long did it take to resolve? What damage did it end up doing to you, beyond the obvious loss of money, credibility, and self-esteem?
Link to Note
While this is geared toward musicians, which many of my friends are, it can also be applied to pretty much any interest you are not professional level at!
With that in mind, enjoy!
06.29.08
How my roommate accidentally blew this month’s rent
I didn’t want to write this post.
And I have my roommate’s permission to write it.
As some of you know, last weekend I was running security for a convention in New Jersey. Since I had most of the rent money for July budgeted for, but was still a bit tight, I had asked my ex and best friend, Marc, to pay for my hotel room on his card, and promised him I would pay him back from my next paycheck, on July 3rd. He agreed.
On Tuesday, my roommate told me that the money for her share of the rent would be cleared by her bank on Thursday. I said okay, prepared the check to send to her mother (long story, not really relevant here), and things were fine. Thursday, my roommate told me her check wouldn’t clear until Saturday. I asked if she had called the bank and she said that she had, and that when she pointed out that they had sent her a notice that the money would be clear on Thursday, she said they would investigate.
On Friday, I was hanging out online when she got home from work. She told me that the notice from the bank that came in the mail that day was that a check she had deposited was returned as “Altered/Fictitious.” Since her paychecks are automatically deposited, I asked what check she was talking about. She said she has received a check for some surveys she was supposed to take. I asked more questions, and finally dragged out of her that she had received a check for almost $5,000 with a letter from something called “Money & Shopping”. it claimed that the funds were to pay her for an assignment, and that the first part of the assignment was an evaluation of Moneygram, where she was to take the money and deposit it, then go to a Moneygram location and transfer the bulk of the money to “Pamela (Your Last Name), in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.”
Needless to say, this was a scam, and if my roommate had been thinking, she would have seen the many clues: The check was from a construction company in Atlanta, Georgia. The stamp on the original envelope was from Canada. The destination of the money was fictitious. Lots of things.
However, she didn’t. And the money she was planning to hand me for her share of the July rent was from this check. And she had taken about $2,000 out before the bank stopped the check and put a hold on her account. So I have to pay the July rent on my own, and I have to put off returning the hotel money to Marc until July 9th. Not a huge dealy, but a problem in that money is a hot button for Marc and to him this is just one more time I am breaking my word. And the fact that I have not broken my word to him in over a year cuts no ice. And Marc is not completely wrong, because there were many years where my word around money wasn’t really good.
When I realized exactly how screwed up this was, I talked to a lawyer friend, who suggested that my roommate call not only her bank, but the police, the FBI, and the three credit reporting agencies. Marc added that she should also contact the Postal Inspectors because this constitutes mail fraud. She has called the bank, and is going there Tuesday. The police have been called, and she has to call them back on Monday, and talk to the Detective Bureau. She also has to call the Postal Inspectors on Monday, and find out what they need her to do, and all three credit agencies.
She has proposed that, once this mess is straightened out, she sees if her employer will allow her to deposit her share of the rent directly into my checking account. I am not happy about this, but since I will be the one writing the rent checks as of August, it may be necessary so that I can keep a roof over my head, let alone hers. Her original suggestion had been that her whole paycheck be deposited into my account, and I give her an allowance, so to speak , but I refused that, since I don’t really want to become her keeper.
The interesting thing is that, while it inconveniences me no end, it still is only a bump on my horizon, as opposed to the boulder it is on hers. It means that, until the bank gives her back access to her funds, we’ll be living on my summer pay, which slows down my plans, but it by no means brings my plans to a halt.
I will keep this blog updated on what happens over this; partly because of my desire to be accountable, and partly as a warning to anyone who might even vaguely be tempted to take up one of these scam offers.
Sadly, however, I suspect there will always be people who look for shortucts to get out of messes they got themselves into in the first place.
Sacrifice or Choice?
As I’ve already mentioned, I’ve been reading NoCreditNeeded’s series on “33 Days and 33 Ways to Save Money and Reduce Debt”.
In one of the response posts to his post on Sacrifice, Single Ma at Fabulous Financials gives her take here
I was thinking about what she said, and to some point I disagree.
For example, she notes that: “When I was a young teenage mother and cash was tight, I had to make sacrifices to create a better life for my child. I didn’t have a choice. It was something I had to do. Some nights I ate cereal for dinner in order to afford diapers. Some days, I had to miss work resulting in less pay because I had to stay home with a sick child. Some months I didn’t pay the electric bill because I needed money for transportation to work/school. They were sacrifices. I didn’t have a choice.” Without casting aspersion on her actions, since there are far too many days I eat mac and cheese to afford paying bills, these are still conscious choices that she is making. Granted they are the choices that consensus reality tells us are the “right” things to do in that situation, but they are still choices and she still had the option of choosing not to do so, even if the results would not have been to her liking.
Further along she notes that: “My point is, the difference between a sacrifice and a choice is your ability to maintain no matter which path you take. Sacrifices are painful and necessary. Choices are willful and selective decisions.” Well, yes, choices are willful and selective decisions. But choosing to do something “painful and necessary” rather than to not do anything is still making a choice, no matter how you slice it.
For the record, though: Whether we do without as a conscious choice, or because we “can’t afford” to do otherwise, we choose all the time. Remember, even doing nothing is still a choice.
Do you make sacrifices or choices, and why? How does how you frame the action affect your reaction to having to do it?
Anomoly, Anomoly….
I did note that, from time to time, things like knitting, jewellery-making, and books would grace these pages….
The lovely bevsyarncrazy over at plurk.com pointed me to this really neat article at Scienceline called“Move Over String Theory, It’s Yarn’s Turn”. Very enjoyable, and you should check it out even if you aren’t a crafter!
Recommendation
The marvelous NCN of No Credit Needed did a series of posts a little under a year ago called “33 Days And 33 Ways To Save Money And Reduce Debt.” The anchor post for the series is here. I highly recommend taking the time to read the original posts, the comments, and the posts that were written by others with this series as inspiration.
Sometimes, we forget the simple things
I was cleaning out my mailboxes this morning, and came across this entry from Mary Hunt’s Debt-Proof Living:
“Myth: Buying things on sale is a great way to save money. Truth: Buying things on sale is a way to spend less money, but it has absolutely nothing to do with saving money unless you actually stop by the bank and deposit the amount you did not spend into your savings account!”
Yeah, she’s right.
What other things are so simple we forget them on our road to financial recovery?
06.28.08
Whee!
My guest post “Arming Yourself”, is now live at Gather Little By Little, and Glblguy made it look really fabulous! And he really has a great blog, so everyone should go there and read not only my article, but some of his!
Thank you so much for the opportunity to stretch my wings a bit, Glblguy!
06.27.08
Order from Chaos 1 – An Experiment in Organization
I recently read Liz Davenport’s Order from Chaos: A 6-Step Plan or ORGANIZING Yourself, Your Office, and Your Life, which was recommended by Trent at The Simple Dollar.
Over the next few weeks, I’m going to follow her program, as best I can, and report the results in this blog.
Now, before I even start, I will note that, although she prefers a two-page per day planner for her program, I will be using my trusty Palm Pilot for several reasons: 1) I already have the Palm Pilot and use it for all my planning; 2) I do not want to spend money that I do not have on a fancy system; 3) If I was going to use a paper system, my system of choice would have been Franklin Covey’s, however, they have closed their two New York stores (where I could have gotten a good deal on their clearance binders) and are only doing mail order to NY…the nearest physical Franklin Covey store is in King of Prussia, PA, which is just not a feasible trip without a car.
So, with that constraint in mind, let’s start our journey.
Ms. Davenport, who has a website called Order from Chaos, divides her thirteen chapters into four sections, followed by a resource guide that basically tells you where you can contact the author and the URL for her website (which I linked to above).
The structure is as follows:
Section One: “Before You Begin”
“Why Get Organized?”
“The Game Plan”
Section Two: “The Physical Environment”
“Pre-Organizing – Creating a Vacuum”
“Step 1: The Cockpit Office”
“Step 2: Air Traffic Control”
“Step 3: The Pending File”
“Section Review”
Section Three: “Your Frame of Mind…or Incoming”
“Step 4: Decide Now“
“Step 5: Prioritize Ongoingly”
“Step 6: Daily Habits”
Section Four: “I’m Done…So NOW What?”
“I’m Done…So Now What?”
“Regular Maintenance”
“Support Systems”
“If You Fall Off the Wagon”
Resources: “What If I Want More?”
She further recommends spending at least a week on each step, which makes this a great summer project for me!
Next post in this series: “Section One: Before You Begin”
Ideas Into Actions
Recently, I came across a wonderful quote from Jon Carroll:
“Life is harder than that. If it weren’t then everyone who read a self-help book would be helped, and everyone who went to a 12-step program would be sober, and everyone who prayed for wealth would be rich.”
To me, this is a very elegant version of the concept that ideas without actions lead nowhere.
Okay, Deb, that’s nice and New Agey; how the heck is it relevant to anything this blog is about?
Well, anything we want to do or accomplish starts out as an idea. Yep. Anything. “It’d be way cool to climb Mount Everest!” An idea. “If Dave can get out of debt, so can I.” Also an idea. (And, yes, that’s the idea that started my recovery process!)
So. You have an idea. Now what? Well, you might turn it into a goal so that you can accomplish it. This means turning that idea into a set of actions that will cumulatively help you achieve it.
Let’s say you do want to climb Mount Everest. You probably start by looking at the geographical and topological information available, so you get an idea of where it is and what kind of terrain you will be dealing with. You probably start reading diaries and weblogs of contemporary climbers who have attempted it, and books by other climbers who have done so, in order to get an idea of the obstacles they faced and how they overcame them. Depending on your level of climbing skills, you might register for basic courses, or try some practice expeditions on lower peaks that are not as far from your home in order to build your skills and endurance. You’d research supplies and their costs, the going rate for guides and sherpas, and probably a lot of other things that I have no idea about since climbing Everest is not one of my goals. In fact, you would probably spend between six months and a year to research and prepare before travelling to Mount Everest to attempt the climb.
Similarly, I can sit here and maintain I want to get out of debt until the day I die, but if I don’t take action, it just isn’t gonna happen.
So. How do I take action on this particular goal? Okay, I obviously cannot speak for everyone who was ever in debt, especially as to the specifics, but I can start breaking down the goal into smaller goals.
First up would be to figure out exactly how large I hole I dug myself into. This didn’t take nearly as long as I originally thought it would…it took less than a week, making one or two phone calls a day. It was a bit harder to look at the mess without taking a blunt instrument to myself for my stupidity, but I didn’t, and that’s a whole different story anyway.
I then sorted the debts into stuff that had to be handled immediately and stuff that could wait a bit (mostly the personal stuff, but also the student loans).
Then I had to figure out which of the urgent stuff was most urgent, followed by contacting my creditors and working out arrangements to begin paying things off. This was a bit lengthy, as it involved negotiating a couple of reductions, and planning how much of my income I could put towards debt each month. In one case, when the creditor saw I had a real plan, I was allowed to postpone paying a small debt off for a month and a half. In another case, where one creditor had bought three accounts that were mine, I was allowed to pay them off sequentially, instead of having to do them simultaneously. I was surprised, but it made the whole process a lot less stressful.
While all this was going on, I had to set up a support system. This was not to toss money at me, but to listen when times got rough and to celebrate when I achieved milestones. This system also gave me folks to be accountable to when I had promised to do something.
The main thing, however is that I learned how to break a large, overwhelming goal into smaller, more manageable tasks.
See, you can have the greatest idea in the universe, but unless you break it down into smaller, more doable steps and tasks, an idea is all it will ever remain. If, however, you take that idea and break it into smaller bits, you not only can take the risk of actually accomplishing it, but you just might succeed in so doing.
Which would you rather do?
