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Insurance, fraud, lawsuits, estate documents, and your rights as a consumer. Guard what you have against loss.
Before you hire a financial advisor, look them up on FINRA’s BrokerCheck and the SEC’s adviser database. Both are free, and in a few minutes you’ll see a registered advisor’s licenses, past firms, customer complaints, regulatory actions, and any terminations. One old complaint means little. A disclosure at each of several recent firms means a lot.
Send Zelle only to people you know in person. A payment usually lands within minutes, and if you authorized it yourself, even to a scammer, federal law doesn’t require your bank to give it back. Pay a marketplace seller or any other stranger with a credit card, which you can dispute if nothing arrives.
State-minimum car insurance stops paying at limits set by law, and one serious crash you cause can cost far more. You owe the rest yourself. Ask your insurer to quote liability limits of at least $100,000 per injured person, and add uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage at the same limits.
To anyone who pulls it from your mailbox, a preapproved credit card offer announces your name, your address, and that a lender has already picked you. Opt out of these prescreened offers at OptOutPrescreen.com or 1-888-5-OPT-OUT, the free service the credit bureaus run, and the offers drawn from your credit report stop coming.
Set a water leak sensor under each sink and beside your water heater. For under $50, it sounds an alarm or alerts your phone the moment water touches it. Many homeowners policies exclude damage from a leak that seeps for weeks, so the slow drip nobody noticed can be yours to pay.
Two-factor authentication means a stolen password alone is no longer enough to get into your accounts. Turn it on for your email and every bank, card, investment, and payment account. At a few minutes each, ten accounts take about 30 minutes. Pick an authenticator app over text codes wherever a site offers both.
Social Security figures your benefit from its earnings record, not your pay stubs, so a year that never posted can lower every check. Pull your record from a my Social Security account and compare each year with your W-2s. Fix errors fast, since a year gets hard to correct after about three years.
Your landlord’s insurance covers the building, not anything you own inside it. Renters insurance does, and adds liability coverage plus the extra cost of a place to stay if a fire or burst pipe forces you out, for about $15 a month on average. Get a quote this week, starting with your car insurer if you have one.
Check your homeowners or renters insurance declarations page to see whether your house and belongings are covered at replacement cost or actual cash value. Replacement cost pays today’s price to rebuild or rebuy, if your coverage limits are high enough. Actual cash value deducts wear and age first, so wherever you find it, ask your agent to quote the upgrade.
A friendly text meant for someone else is a common opening for crypto investment scams, and a polite reply is exactly what the scammer wants. Don’t answer, even to say it’s the wrong number. If someone you met by text ever brings up investing, stop replying and never invest where they tell you to.
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