Notify the credit reporting agencies and have a fraud alert placed on your account with each agency.
Report the crime to the appropriate authorities where you live and where the fraud occurred. Use the FTC's ID Theft Affidavit.
Inform all your creditors that you have become a victim of identity theft.
Get new credit cards with new account numbers for all tainted accounts.
Set up passwords for new accounts.
Change your PIN numbers (I know this is redundant because PIN is an acronym for Personal Identification Number, but it just sounds right).
When you close tainted accounts, make sure the accounts are reported to the credit reporting agencies as being closed at the customer's request due to identity theft.
Ask your creditors to notify each of the credit reporting agencies to remove erroneous and fraudulent information from your file.
If your checks are stolen, promptly notify your bank and close the account immediately.
Notify the check verification companies and request that they contact retailers that use their services to advise them not to accept checks from any checking accounts of yours that have been accessed by identity thieves.
Contact the creditors who have tainted accounts in your name and request that they initiate a fraud investigation. Get a copy of |
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If your checks are stolen, promptly notify your bank and have the account closed immediately. If your checking account is accessed by checks with forged signatures, you obviously have not authorized the withdrawals and should not be held responsible for money stolen from your account. However, if you neglect to monitor your account and fail to promptly notify your bank when there is an irregularity in your account or your checks are lost or stolen, you may be held partially responsible for your losses. It is not even necessary to have your checks physically stolen for you to become a victim. An identity thief armed with your name, checking account number, and bank routing information can use one of a number of inexpensive computer software programs to create checks for your account.
Contact the various check verification companies and ask that they, in turn, contact retailers who use their services telling them not to accept checks from your accounts that have been accessed by identity thieves. Check verification services are companies that maintain databases of bad check writers. Retailers using their services contact the verification service's database before accepting checks. Among the companies that do check verification are CellCharge, CheckCare, and |
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A home will probably be one of the best investments you'll ever make. It will certainly be the most expensive investment you'll ever make. I'm not talking about the mere $439,000 that the house originally cost (or the $43,900 your parents originally paid when they bought their first house). I'm talking about what it costs to maintain it. But that's beside the point. Aside from the quality-of-life advantages of owning a home, there are two very significant financial benefits (beyond the obvious tax deductions for mortgage interest and property taxes): 1. You have the opportunity to be mortgage-free by the time you retire or shortly thereafter. 2. The home can be a source of additional income during retirement for downsizers.
How much house can you afford?
Before getting tied up in the theatrics of finding a home, take a dispassionate look at how much you can afford to pay. Figure out how much more it will cost you to own a home compared with renting. After you factor in the tax savings from mortgage interest and property tax deductions, you may be pleasantly surprised to find that the cost of owning won't be much more than what you are paying in rent.
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