How persistent and brazen are phantom debt collectors? Last month, when I emailed a firm named Advance Cash Services asking for comment on collection harassment allegations, the firm replied by saying I owed them $935.76 for an unpaid payday loan. A few days later, I wrote about Susan Marquardt of Chicago, who [Keep reading]
This might be the most sophisticated job scam I’ve ever seen. Thanks to a near-victim, you’ll get a rare chance to see a real pro almost pull off a nearly perfect digital caper. You do things when you are job hunting that you wouldn’t normally do. You meet strangers. You [Keep reading]
The Affordable Care Act is having (another) existential moment. This one will be supercharged by a presidential election, which is a shame, because improving America’s health care insurance system is a really complicated project — sloganeering has no place. But the atmosphere around the topic so poisoned that it’s hard to [Keep reading]
Watching athletes stand on the podium, sniffling as their national anthem plays, it’s easy to get swept up in the romance of winning a gold medal. It’s also easy to forget that television has the bad habit of compressing time for viewers. Michael Phelps makes winning gold medals look easy. [Keep reading]
Americans are doing a little bit better at saving money in an emergency fund — but women, some minorities, young adults, and the less educated are still woefully unprepared for a financial emergency, according to a new study. Overall, there have been marginal gains in the number of Americans who [Keep reading]
One of the most common recommendations for using a credit card successfully is to pay off the balance in full every billing cycle so you avoid interest charges. Just about everybody knows that — but that doesn’t mean everyone does it. In fact, despite some modest improvements in credit card [Keep reading]
Never had this happen before: When I tried to email a company accused of scamming a consumer to ask for a comment, the company immediately tried the same scam on me. Read on… — She was accused of check fraud, and theft by deception. She was told that she owed $4,526, [Keep reading]
By now you’ve probably heard of RFID blockers — those wallets, purses and other gadgets offering protection from hackers who can pluck your personal information out of thin air. RFID, or radio frequency identification, chips are growing in popularity. But there’s something you need to know about those blockers before you buy them. The rise [Keep reading]
When people say they own their home, it’s usually a half-truth at best. Often, a bank owns the home they live in — most of it, anyway. Still, Americans have a lot of real money tied up in their homes — on average, $150,506, according to a new report by [Keep reading]
Rana Foroohar’s new book, Makers and Takers, is a first-class takedown of the way many American firms make money today. The book’s subtitle – The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business – lays out the sad paradox. Some people make money by making things. Others make money [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan