7.9.19 When car brands no longer exist; Beware USB charging ports; Finding a good side hustle
What do you do if you own a car that is no longer being manufactured?; USB charging ports, especially in high traffic areas like airports, pose a new threat to your phone and personal information; How can you find a good side hustle? There's a new site to help you with that.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Read more
Zelle, the popular payment app backed by the big banks, has become such a security risk that only people with money to lose should use it.
That’s the advice from money expert Clark Howard, who is on record as warning consumers to stay away from Zelle due to previous infractions.
Hackers have figured out that Zelle and similar apps are low-hanging fruit when it comes to stealing people’s hard-earned money, Clark says.
Here’s their latest strategy: You think you’re buying something online on a marketplace site like Facebook or Craigslist and the seller tells you to pay using Zelle.
Once you do that, the seller (scammer) simply takes your money, shuts down their bank account and never sends the product, according to TechCrunch.
The kicker in all this is that Zelle users have virtually zero recourse for getting their money back.
The banks behind Zelle — JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and more — have been largely silent on problems with Zelle fraud protection.
Clark says the fact that Zelle being fully integrated into the banking system is what makes it different from the other payment apps from a security perspective, as well as fraud protection.
Many banks have built Zelle into their apps. Here’s the Wells Fargo app. You can see there’s a “Send Money with Zelle” button dead-center:
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Because real bank accounts are involved — and you figure that the big banks are backing and securing the transaction — many people feel a false sense of security when using Zelle.
The banks’ position has been that if you agree to send money to someone, there’s no turning back. Here’s what it says in Zelle’s fine print:
So, unlike with a credit card, there’s no mechanism for reversing or disputing a payment once you’ve made one using Zelle.
If you take nothing else away from this, let be that Clark absolutely doesn’t want you to set up Zelle if your bank offers it.
However, other payment apps can be useful when it comes to transferring money to family, friends and trusted merchants. Here is the #1 thing you need to do if you use payment apps.
There’s a hidden time bomb ticking in your 401(k) that could leave you with $300,000 less to spend in retirement than you would otherwise have, according to a new study from Deloitte Consulting LLP.
RELATED: Why you shouldn’t cash out your 401(k) when changing jobs
When people borrow money from their 401(k)s at work, they often do so with the best of intentions.
They really mean to get around to “paying themselves back” — a rationale that is more fallacy than truth, as we’ll show you in a moment — but sometimes life gets in the way.
There are a couple problems here right off the bat…
In the first place, the fact that you need a 401(k) loan may signal you’re in a financial death spiral, as hard as that can be to admit.
If this is the case, borrowing money as a quick fix — instead of getting on a tight budget as a way to implement a long-term fix — is nothing more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as it goes down.
Another potential problem with taking out a 401(k) loan is what happens if you suddenly and unexpectedly lose your job.
If that happens, you typically have 60 days to repay the loan in full — otherwise the money is treated as income and taxed accordingly.
And then there are the other ever-present dangers when you have a 401(k) loan, namely defaults and cashouts.
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Say you’re a 42-year-old with a 401(k) balance of around $77,000. Now, let’s say something happens in life and you need to borrow $7,000.
Sure, it’s less than a tenth of your balance — but it can have an outsize impact on your future, as we’ll see in a moment.
Now consider this: We’ve already established that you may be teetering on the precipice of financial chaos if you need to take a 401(k) loan. So what happens if Murphy’s Law prevails and everything goes wrong in your financial life, culminating in you defaulting on that $7,000 loan?
Well, Deloitte has a grim picture of the future in the scenario they’ve run.
Let’s say that initial default is followed up by you saying the heck with it and just cashing out the entire remaining $70,000 of your 401(k) to deal with taxes, early withdrawal penalties and to help clean up whatever financial mess you’re in.
This is more common than you’d think. Deloitte says that about two-third of folks who default will just go ahead and liquidate their account entirely.
That’s expected to account for $48 billion of lost wealth that’s being self-plundered from retirement accounts in 2018 alone, according to Deloitte.
But, wait, there’s more!
What started as a $7,000 loan that you defaulted on quickly ballooned to a $77,000 cashout in our example. But here’s where it gets really bad.
Deloitte crunched the numbers and found it all adds up to a scenario where you’re likely to have $300,000 less in retirement.
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That’s because you miss out on $217,000 of potential investment return when your money isn’t there to grow for you!
If you’re a dog or cat person, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to monetize your affection for animals. There are a lot of people out there right now actually making money as pet sitters!
Believe it or not, there’s been quite a bit of market research around the pet-sitting industry. More than 80 million households in the United States have pets, according to a study by Acosta, a sales and marketing firm. That means that the market is there for you animal lovers to turn your hobby into a full-scale business.
Obviously, you must love pets, but more than that, you’ve got to see them as your potential clients do: as family members. A pet sitter’s responsibility isn’t just to watch Fido; they’re expected to provide and maintain a healthy, safe environment at all times. That goes for what the animal eats, where they play and where they go you-know-what.
Is pet sitting for you? The going rate for a pet sitter depends on a lot of factors. Glassdoor.com has pet sitting pay as low as $7 an hour and up to $2,000 a month. Obviously what you take home will be based on the amount of time you put into it. One question you’ll have to decide is whether you want to get paid hourly, by the day or even a weekly rate.
It’s a good idea to focus on the scope of your work as well. Are you going to run what is essentially a dog-walking service or will you offer full pet-concierge amenities? Logically, the more you can offer, the more you can charge.
In addition to liking animals, you’re going to have to be a people person— someone who can win a family’s trust in a short period of time. A confident smile, capable resume and solid references will go a long way.
It may make sense to test the waters first by signing up to work with an online service. That way, you can get a feel for the rigors of “industrial” pet-sitting as well as learn some market trends first-hand.
