Happy New Year! Now is the perfect time to get your finances in order, tackle your debt
and fend off scam artists. Crooks take advantage of the calendar when planning their schemes to take your money, and theyre using your attempts to make a fresh financial start as their peg right now. You need to be particularly careful before signing up for any of these e-mail credit-card deals or debt-relief programs, and be suspicious of a few other seasonal scams, too. Heres what to watch out for and how to protect yourself.
Credit-card scams. Just as you start the year resolving to pay off your bills, scam artists step up their efforts to steal your money.
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The British Insurance Brokers’ Association (BIBA) has launched a sanctions checking facility which will help brokers and insurers in screening their clients.
Currently under the Terrorism Act, it is an FSA requirement for any insurer or broker to ensure every client is not on an HM Treasury (HMT) list which identifies people involved in terrorism. Companies are also required to re-check this list every time the list is updated.
Until now, this screening process was sporadic, often neglected, and varied from company to company. T
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You have to wonder what anyone is thinking when they commit a crime, but credit cards crimes seem to really lend themselves to that question. You’ll see what we mean in a moment, as we present the latest in strange and unusual credit card crimes and wonder, “What were they thinking?”
Don’t use a stolen credit card where people know you
The crime: According to the Santa Clara (Calif.) Weekly, a local senior citizen had her credit card stolen. She noticed when she received her bill, which had $8,000 in charges she hadn’t made. It was used at two separate places.
What was this crook thinking?
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Uncertainty ruled world markets in 2011, but one thing was sure: A big bear clawed foreign stocks. Through November 4, the MSCI EAFE index, which tracks stocks in developed nations, tumbled 9%; the MSCI Emerging Markets index fell 12%. Over the same period, Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was flat.
Expect volatility through the early part of 2012, says Virginie Maisonneuve, co-manager of Vanguard International Growth Fund, in part because of unresolved issues from 2011. Details on how to solve Europes government-debt crisis still need to be ironed out. Economic growth in China, the worlds growth driver, is slowing, even as inflation worries weigh on markets from Asia to Latin America.
Europe controls the fate of international markets in 2012.
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New research by First Direct has revealed that UK homeowners could save £41,665 by paying off their mortgages earlier with the money that they are currently saving.
Based on a £100,000 mortgage and current average saving and mortgage rates, if borrowers paid the minimum repayment on their loan and saved £300 a month in a separate savings account over a 25 year term they would actually be £42,909 worse off once they have paid off the loan.
By comparison, if they had overpaid £300 a month on their mortgage they would pay it off 12 years early, saving £23,903 in interest. If th
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