The financial news that actually matters
A hurricane, a wildfire, or a deadly flood does two things at once: it opens people’s wallets, and it opens a window for fraud. In the days after a disaster fills the news, fake charities and imposters posing as real ones flood phones and inboxes with urgent appeals. The money moves quickly and, in the…
Most brokerage forms ask for a name and a phone number under a heading many customers skip: the trusted contact. Leaving it blank feels harmless, but that single field can be the reason a suspicious withdrawal gets paused instead of processed. When a firm suspects an older customer is being pressured into draining an account,…
When money starts draining out of an older person’s accounts, the instinct is often to stay quiet and hope it stops. That silence is exactly what a scammer or an exploitative relative counts on. Financial exploitation of older adults moves fast, and the two channels most likely to slow it down are a report to…
A credit report is usually where identity theft shows its face first. A card, a loan, or an account opened in someone else’s name lands on that file before any bill or collection letter ever reaches the mailbox. For older Americans, whose Social Security numbers keep surfacing in one corporate data breach after another, catching…
Preapproved credit-card and insurance offers seem harmless as they pile up in the mailbox, but each one is a small liability. Those envelopes are generated because a credit bureau sold a lender or insurer a list that included a consumer’s name, and a stolen offer can give a thief the raw material to open an…
An unfamiliar charge on a checking account is unsettling, but federal law gives account holders a powerful lever the moment they report it. Under the rules that govern electronic transfers, a bank that cannot quickly resolve a disputed debit-card, ATM, or automatic-payment error must generally hand the money back on a temporary basis while it…
A cup of coffee bought on a debit card should never cost thirty-plus dollars, yet that is exactly what can happen when an account runs a few dollars short and overdraft coverage is switched on. Federal rules give account holders a say in that outcome, because a bank generally cannot charge an overdraft fee on…
A savings account paying a rate far above everyone else’s is the oldest lure in banking, and online it has become a fraud tool. Criminals build convincing websites that borrow a real bank’s name, logo, and layout, then advertise eye-catching yields to collect deposits that vanish. The good news for older Americans is that confirming…
Every legitimate investment ties its reward to its risk. The safest places to keep money, such as an insured savings account or a short-term Treasury bill, pay the least, and any product dangling a bigger payoff does so by exposing the saver to a real chance of loss. So when a pitch promises large returns…
Not every investment that a broker or acquaintance describes as “exclusive” has been through the review that public stocks face. A large share of money raised in the United States flows through private placements sold under a set of Securities and Exchange Commission rules known as Regulation D, or Reg D, and those offerings are…