7 Credit Mistakes That Could Wreck Your Retirement | Adam Levin

7 Credit Mistakes That Could Wreck Your Retirement

Yes, just like clockwork it happened again this year: I got older. As of this week, the Beatles song, "When I'm Sixty-Four," went from being a hypothetical to a reality for me. This means that next year, I will officially become a senior citizen.

It's a jarring prospect. Like most baby boomers, I don't feel especially old. We're the cool ones, the generation that brought America rock 'n' roll, yoga, and the belief that we can do well by doing good. With good reason, we view ourselves as eternally young, hip and savvy.

We are a confident generation, which is a good thing. But when it comes to the way we manage our financial lives -- particularly our credit -- that confidence can make us vulnerable. With that in mind, here are the top seven credit mistakes senior citizens make.

1. Assuming You Are Nearing the End of the Road

When we grew up, 70 was old. Now 70 is the new 50. (80, however, is still 80.) Now the average life expectancy is 84 for men and 86 for women, according to the Social Security Administration. Among married couples where both partners are 65, there's a seventy percent chance that at least one person will live to 85, according to a report by the Society of Actuaries.

How to Fix It: Take Billy Joel's advice and don't go changin'. Or at least don't change too much. If you're 65 or older, the rules are the same as when you were 25. Treat credit as a long-term asset with important risks, responsibilities and benefits.

2. Avoiding Credit

Many seniors are justifiably proud of their financial accomplishments. They've paid off their mortgage, chopped up their credit cards, paid cash for their car.

But if the car dies, a financial emergency arises, or after the kids go off to college and the dog dies, you may need or decide to sell the family home and buy something more suitable. You may need a loan. And if you foreswore credit years ago, you might have become a "credit ghost" and your credit score likely has dropped, which means you will pay more money in interest.

How to Fix It: Don't fear credit. If you don't have a credit card, get one. Use it as you would a debit card, charging only what you can afford to pay in full at the end of each month. This will help rebuild your score, hopefully in time for the next emergency or life event.

3. Taking on Too Much Debt

A recent study by Demos finds that Americans aged 50 and over have an average credit card balance of $8,278, compared to $6,258 for people under 50. Kent State University researchers found that elderly people are more likely than any other age group to file for bankruptcy.

As Gerri Detweiler, director of consumer education at Credit.com, wrote in a recent column, senior debt has many causes. More than a third of people over 50 with credit card debt use their cards to cover basic living expenses, Demos found. Afraid to seek advice from licensed financial professionals, they may fall prey to debt collection scams or get hoodwinked into withdrawing money from their retirement accounts to pay off credit cards.

How to Fix It: Avoid taking on too much debt. If you're concerned about debts you already have and don't know what to do, find an approvedcredit counseling agency. (Hint: Good ones don't tend to charge upfront fees.)

4. Student Loans

Many senior citizens are drowning in student debt. Americans over 60 owe about $43 billion in student loans as of Q4 2012, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The average borrower over age 60 owes $19,521 in student loan debt, and 12.5 percent of them are delinquent on their payments. Some took college classes later in life. Others have debt leftover from school days long past, or cosigned on student loans for their children and grandchildren.

How to Fix It: Look Before You Leap. If you're a senior, think twice before signing for any student loan, whether for you or someone else.

5. Co-signing

To help their kids or grandkids buy a car, get a mortgage or attend college, many seniors co-sign loans. What many don't realize is that lenders and credit reporting agencies don't distinguish between borrowers and the cosigners.

If the borrower fails to make on-time payments, the cosigner's credit score could take the same big hit. Embarrassing phone calls--and lawsuits--from debt collectors could follow.

How to Fix It: Just say no. Avoid co-signing loans. Lend money directly, which won't put your credit at risk. A monetary loan or gift could help a loved one get a secured credit card and start establishing credit of their own, without endangering your financial future.

6. Failing to Check Your Credit

Only a quarter of all seniors regularly check their credit histories, according to a report by the Society of Certified Senior Advisors. Of those who do, 36 percent found errors, some of which were severely damaging their credit scores.

How to Fix It: Check your credit for free once a year with each of the three major credit bureaus and sign up for tools such as Credit.com's free Credit Report Card, which allows you to see your credit profile and provides free scores that update monthly.

7. Failing to Understand Reverse Mortgage Risks

A reverse mortgage can provide seniors extra money during retirement by tapping all the equity they've built up in their home. The loan is repaid only when they die, sell or move out of the home

However, reverse mortgages can also be complicated, and come with risks. The average age of seniors obtaining reverse mortgages is dropping, according to a report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and 70 percent of them take their payments in one lump sum. That could leave them with fewer financial resources to deal with moves or other future expenses, the bureau found. A growing number of reverse mortgage borrowers are at risk of foreclosure. Additionally, depending on the terms of the mortgage, the spouse of the reverse mortgage borrower might be forced to move out of their home when the borrowing spouse dies or moves into an assisted living facility.

How to Fix It: Do your homework. Meet with a certified financial advisor to see whether short- or mid-term reverse mortgage is right for you

It's a new age for me, as it is for America. As our generation gets older, more senior baby boomers will face questions about credit. The good news is that as we lead longer, healthier lives and the same good practices that got us so far will continue to help us now.

 

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Find out why Gen Y tourists refuse 2nd visit to M'sia, says former Aussie minister - ANN

Malaysia has to find out why many "Generation Y" tourists do not return for a second visit, said a former Australian minister.

Fran Bailey, who was a former Small Business and Tourism minister, said with Visit Malaysia Year 2014 around the corner, this was the best time for Malaysia to develop targeted programmes to woo young travellers.

The best way to attract the Gen Y, she said, was by engaging with them directly via social media to find out what they wanted.

"It may be affordable accommodation or better accessibility to tourist spots," said Bailey, who held the minister's post from October 2004 to November 2007, and is well versed in tourism trends.

"By using social media, the (Malaysian) government can reach out to a huge Gen Y audience," she pointed out.

Gen Y generally refers to those born between the early 1980s to the early 2000s.

The global youth travel industry is estimated to represent almost 190 million international trips each year, growing faster than the rate for overall global travel.

The United Nations World Tourism Organisation had predicted that by 2020, there would be almost 300 million international youth trips every year.

Bailey cited Australia's A$4 million (US$3.7 million) "Best Jobs in the World" campaign in 2009 – which offered six "extraordinary jobs" to collectively showcase the best of the country – as one of its programmes to attract youths.

The successful applicants were offered a six-month salary of up to A$100,000 (US$94,150) and tasked with writing about their region and experiences, which they then shared through social media channels and blogs.

More than 40,000 video entries were uploaded by youths all over the world, vying for the six jobs under the programme that contributed nearly A$12 billion (US$11.3 billion) in tourism spending that year.

"In Australia, we have a 54 per cent return rate for Gen Y travellers.

"But this did not happen overnight. It took us many years to achieve this," said Bailey, who is on a visit to Malaysia.

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Have No Doubt, Markets Depend on the Fed | Mohamed A. El-Erian

Have No Doubt, Markets Depend on the Fed

This week should remove any doubt about whether markets are highly dependent on the Fed. They sure are. Indeed, you could not have constructed better conditions for a controlled experiment. Yet, ironically, the medium-term investment stakes are now higher.

There's been no major economic news this week to speak of. On the corporate side, and with the exception of Microsoft's dividend/buyback announcement, it's also been relatively quiet.

Yet the Dow gained 300 points in the last three days (Monday-Wednesday). The S&P, a broader measure of the stock market, did even better in percentage terms.

Equally notable, the surge in equities was accompanied by a similar increase in bond prices. Gold also rose by over 2 percent. Even oil prices recovered, overcoming the dampening impact of a reduced probability of a military strike on Syria.

No matter how hard you look, there is only one major factor that can consistently explain this week's market moves. And it centers on expectations of Fed policy.

On Sunday night, Larry Summers withdrew his name from consideration for Fed chair. This immediately restored Janet Yellen's front-runner status to replace Ben Bernanke -- a change that was quickly embraced by markets given that investors know a lot more about Ms. Yellen's views on monetary policy. The resulting reduction in uncertainty was turbocharged by markets perceiving, rightly or wrongly, Ms. Yellen as potentially more dovish than Mr. Summers.

Earlier today, the Fed delivered an ultra-dovish policy message at the end of its two-day meeting -- and, I stress, ultra-dovish.

The central bank surprised materially by maintaining "as-is" its support for markets. Indeed, most analysts and many market participants were expecting some "taper" in its monthly $85 billion of unconventional bond purchases.

The Fed also downplayed its previously-articulated concerns about the collateral damage of prolonged policy experimentation. And it added to the surprise by sounding dovish on already-specified policy conditionality.

The markets should be expected to celebrate; and they sure did, courtesy of the Fed.

Looking forward, it is only a matter of time until markets (and the Fed) will need to revisit a central issue -- the extent to which fundamentals can be persistently disconnected from artificially-supported asset prices.

The hope is that a durable improvement in economic fundamentals -- particularly brighter prospects for jobs and growth -- will validate the high prices over time. The risk is that prices will converge down to fundamentals and, in the process, undermine the longer-term policy credibility of the Fed.

Pending this important medium-term clarification, markets are celebrating; and the Fed has proven that it still enjoys tremendous influence on asset prices regardless of fundamentals.

 

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What could really spook financial markets?

2008 crisis still hangs over credit-rating firms

Three big credit-rating agencies are still trying to restore reputations damaged by the high ratings they gave risky securities before 2008 financial meltdown.

Lehman Bros. wasn't the only storied name on Wall Street to get sullied when the investment bank filed for bankruptcy protection five years ago.

The big three credit-rating agencies — Standard & Poor's, Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings — are still trying to repair their reputations as being a level-headed, sharp-penciled bunch following the collapse of Lehman. These agencies are roundly criticized for not only failing to warn investors of the dangers of investing in many of the mortgage-backed securities at the epicenter of the financial crisis, but benefiting by not pointing out deficiencies.

S&P is being sued by the Department of Justice over its role. Some academic financial experts say that credit-rating agencies haven't changed. But the rating agencies strongly disagree, saying they've learned from the debacle and have made meaningful adjustments to their due diligence.

"They (credit-rating agencies) understood that they were pushing the envelope on these products, but they didn't care," says John Griffin, professor of finance at the University of Texas-Austin. "They were focused on the profit they were getting from the deal."

The agencies' ratings played a critical role in the marketing of risky mortgage-backed securities, such as collateralized debt obligations, which helped bring the U.S. financial system to its knees.

Investment banks had bundled collections of individual mortgages, which by themselves can be hard to trade, into baskets that could be bought and sold like any bonds. These financial instruments were then sold to investors. But in order to sell them, the investment banks counted on them receiving stellar ratings from the agencies to tempt investors starved for return.

Commanding a top price for the securities wasn't the only reason. High ratings were critical in allowing the investment banks to sell them at all. For instance, many money market funds are only allowed to invest in debt that fits the highest ratings categories.

"We conclude the failures of credit-rating agencies were essential cogs in the wheel of financial destruction," according to the report submitted by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in January 2011. "The three credit-rating agencies were key enablers of the financial meltdown. The mortgage-related securities at the heart of the crisis could not have been marketed and sold without their seal of approval."

But despite the lessons learned from the financial crisis, analysts say that shortcomings with credit-rating agencies still exist, and the problems could happen again because of:

• Analyses that rely too much on the recent past. Credit-rating agencies make the classic mistake of thinking recent financial history is likely to repeat, says Bonnie Baha, portfolio manager at DoubleLine Capital.

Lehman Bros.' own debt still had an investment grade rating when it filed for bankruptcy protection, Baha says. Credit-rating agencies and investors made the mistake of thinking that because the federal government intervened with Bear Stearns, it would do the same with Lehman. Bear Stearns was sold to JPMorgan Chase in a government engineered takeover that protected Bear's debt holders. Investors betting the same would be done with Lehman lost big, she says.

The agencies made a similar error in rating structured debt products whose value was tied to mortgages, such as collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs. The rating agencies looked at recent trends in housing and decided to base their worst-case analysis on a 10% decline in the housing market, Baha says. But home prices fell by more than that, demonstrating their models were way too conservative, she says.Even today, many credit-rating agencies continue to pay too much attention to recent history rather than using human judgment to determine how a market might change, she says.

"Recent history is not a particularly good indicator for the future in real estate," she says.

• A profit incentive to be uncritical. Credit-rating agencies are paid by the companies that issue debt. This model creates a big incentive for agencies to "bend their standard to gain business," Griffin says. Structured debt products were especially vulnerable to ratings inflation for the sake of business. These products would most likely fail if the economy short-circuited, allowing credit-rating agencies the ability to say that the economic downturn changed the facts, he says.

Additionally, the products were being created and the ratings paid for by investment banks, which were focused on boosting short-term profitability, he says. Despite roughly 75% of the debt securities getting the top AAA rating from agencies, ultimately more than 70% of CDOs defaulted, Griffin says.

• Over-reliance on ratings. One of the biggest reasons why credit ratings held so much sway is because investors relied on them too much. Rather than doing their own due diligence, many investors simply looked at a bond's rating and used that as their guide, Baha says. That's a mistake, as investors found. But investors often had no alternative. Many debt products were so complicated only the credit-rating agencies had access to the details about the individual loans in the portfolios, Griffin says. Additionally, 86% of CDOs had ratings from two agencies, giving them more perceived credibility when they scored top ratings, Griffin says.

There have been some reforms.

Moody's, for instance, now factors into its ratings "systemic support" or the chances that a bank could get bailed out if it got into trouble. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act also adds new regulation, including continuing on-site oversight of the agencies. Additional disclosures are required for ratings of asset-based securities. Changes are also being phased in that would allow investors to buy certain securities, even if they do not meet certain credit ratings, such as the top credit ratings.

"S&P has taken to heart the lessons learned from the financial crisis. In the past five years, we have spent approximately $400 million to reinforce the integrity, independence and performance of our ratings. We also brought in new leadership, instituted new governance and enhanced risk management. Based on what we learned, we changed the way we rate almost every type of security that was affected by the financial crisis," said Standard & Poor's in a statement.

But little has changed in how credit-rating agencies operate, potentially setting them up for being a part of the next financial problem, Griffin says.

"Have there been any admissions of guilt by credit-ratings agencies? The answer seems to be no," he says, adding that the next problem will likely be something other than mortgage-backed securities. "It could definitely happen again."

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Will the Fed Kill the Recovery? | Robert Kuttner

Will the Fed Kill the Recovery?

For decades, you could always count on the Federal Reserve to pull the plug on prosperity too soon, seeing ghosts of inflation everywhere. The Fed, responsive as it was to creditors, preferred a dose of recession to any sort of price pressures, especially wage increases.

That changed with the regimes of Fed chairmen Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke.

Greenspan was willing to keep interest rates low because the banks kept getting into difficulty after bouts of speculative excess in the 1980s and '90s and needed the cheap money to rebuild their balance sheets. The ultimate such collapse occurred just five years ago this week, when the crash of Lehman Brothers revealed the rot in the entire system, and one over-leveraged domino after another fell.

Greenspan's successor, Ben Bernanke, kept the cheap money policy, but combined it with a dose of salutary regulation. Now, however, the usual suspects are issuing the usual warnings about the dangers of inflation. The word has been passed, and Fed is expected to begin pulling back on its heroic program of bond purchases (otherwise known as printing money) any month now.

The Fed, after a somewhat anomalous run as the engine of recovery, seems to be reverting to type.

Trouble is, the economy won't cooperate with this scenario. Inflation is nowhere to be seen, and the recovery continues to be weak.

The latest jobs numbers are just dismal. In August, the measured unemployment rate ticked down one-tenth of one percent to 7.3 percent, but only because more and more people are dropping out of the labor force since looking for work is futile. The percentage of adults in the labor force is at its lowest level since the 1970s, a period when most married women with children still stayed home.

Only one demographic group increased its rate of labor force participation -- people over 65, because they can't afford to retire. Even the rate of people over 70 is increasing, as the retirement system collapses.

Until now, Chairman Bernanke has had the votes to continue his program of bond purchases and cheap money. But the center of gravity on the Fed's policy-setting Open Market Committee is gradually shifting to the inflation hawks.

The financial press is convinced that the Fed will begin "tapering" (cutting back) its bond purchases as early as its next meeting. Interest rates have already risen in expectations of the Fed's policy shift.

The hawks are wrong. In the face of a feeble recovery, the Fed should be keeping interest rates extremely low. But it needs to combine loose money with tight regulation, so that the easy money doesn't induce financial speculation as it did last time.

There is historic precedent for this. In the well-regulated financial economy of the postwar boom, the Fed kept interest rates so low that they were effectively negative when adjusted for inflation. But because there were so few opportunities for financial speculation, the low interest rates translated to cheap capital costs for the real economy. It was an era of robust growth, broad prosperity, and a terrible time to be in the bond market. But what was bad for the bond market was good for everyone else (maybe there's a lesson there?)

Today, however, we are a long way from effective financial regulation. The the Dodd-Frank Act is more loophole than law, and five years after the crash the same business model that produced the collapse lives on.

Which brings us to the final act of the drama of Larry Summers versus Janet Yellen, soon to be resolved by President Obama (or perhaps, if Obama appoints Summers to chair the Fed, it could be resolved by the US Senate.)

Summers is more the inflation hawk of the two. He is also more of a light regulation man. If he gets the job, the Fed is likely to pull back from its low interest rate policy, with little improvement in the regulatory process.

Yellen, by contrast, has spoken out on the need for the Fed to keep doing what's necessary to stimulate a stronger recovery, and to offset the easy money with tough regulation. Wall Street, not surprisingly, prefers Summers. If Summers does get the job, it will be proof positive that the Fed as servant of the bond market is reverting to type.

 

 

 

 

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Can Abenomics save Asia? | Forum:Blog | The World Economic Forum

Can Abenomics save Asia?

Once again, Japan is Asia's odd country out. For two decades, as one Asian economy after another boomed, Japan's economy remained virtually stagnant. Now, with GDP growth in Asia's two giants, China and India, slowing precipitously – a decline that appears to be contributing to diminishing economic performance in much of the rest of Asia – Japan is recording its strongest growth since its 1980's boom.

But, just as Japan's post-war economic model became the template for the Asian economic miracles of recent decades, the reforms currently being implemented by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ("Abenomics") may offer Asian economies a path back to strong growth. If the fallout from China's slowdown is not to hit the entire region and jeopardize the economic integration that has already taken place, Asia's governments – beginning with China – will need to embrace similar reforms.

How did Asia's boom fade so quickly? Economics is supposedly a cold-blooded subject. Yet successful economies are prone to one of the most dangerous emotions of all: self-satisfaction, that excessive pride that Confucius condemned, which makes governments wary of reforming what has been a winning model, even when stresses begin to appear.

Japan has paid a high price for this attitude. Even after its property bubble burst 24 years ago, the authorities continued to believe that the country's growth model needed no adjustment. The result was two lost decades of deflation and introspection before Japan finally embraced the reforms needed to kick-start a new, more open – and hence more vibrant – economic model.

China and India, it seems, have also succumbed to economic hubris. Three decades of success in China, and a decade in which India supposedly overcame the old, slow, "Hindu rate of growth," are ending with both economies slowing precipitously. And both are slowing for the same reason: stalled reform, which is a direct result of governments being so satisfied with today's conditions that they fail to address tomorrow's rising dangers.

China's government continues to turn a blind eye toward banks that lend to the politically well connected, or that tolerate companies – mostly state-owned – with poor financial discipline. Indeed, total public- and private-sector debt in China is now around 200% of GDP, up by more than one-third in five years. Reckless lending is undermining efficient allocation of capital and preventing China from drawing a line under the investment- and export-led growth model of the past three decades and basing future growth more on domestic consumption.

Likewise, India's government, having embraced economic liberalization, has essentially pulled back from it in recent years. Plans to allow foreign investment in retailing and other key economic sectors have been put on hold. In critical industries – mobile communications and mining are perhaps the two most important examples – privatization has been corrupted by cronyism.

Moreover, India remains an inward-looking economy that attracts relatively little foreign investment and plays a much smaller role in world trade than it should. Notwithstanding its renowned software industry, India plays little part in the production chains that underpin Asia's regional trade patterns. The result – as visible as it was predictable – has been a sharp slowdown in economic growth.

To be fair, there is a growing recognition in some countries of the need for change. The need to restore economic dynamism was the focus of South Korea's presidential election in 2012, which brought the country's first-ever female president, Park Geun-hye, to power. Today, the country is gripped by an important debate about how to reform the chaebol, the mammoth industrial conglomerates that did so much to lift the country out of poverty and into the front ranks of the world's economies. Park's status as the daughter of former President Park Chung-hee, who put the chaebol at the center of South Korea's economy, could give her the credibility needed to recast their economic role.

Elsewhere in Asia, including in China, the debate is only beginning. But progress on reform, particularly in finance, must come quickly, because in most countries – India is the main exception – the demographic window of a growing working-age population is closing, if not already shut. It is not necessarily bad for Asia's traditionally high savings rates to fall; after all, consumption typically rises with an aging population. But savings will need to be allocated far more efficiently than in the past. Japan's lost decades provide a grim lesson of the economic cost of neglecting such reform.

Moreover, borrowing in US dollars to finance current investment spending – as many emerging economies have done in recent years, as the US Federal Reserve's policy of quantitative easing flooded emerging markets with cheap funds – is no substitute. Indonesia, Thailand, and others are now finding it difficult to service these loans as their exchange rates fall against the dollar in the wake of the Fed's plans to "taper" its policy. Indeed, the debt build-up is so large that markets now fear a repeat of Asia's financial crisis.

The Japanese precedent matters all the more, given that, 16 years after the Asian financial crisis nearly wiped out decades of hard-earned growth, Asia's banks and capital markets remain inefficient. Asia's economies need deep, well-regulated capital markets, so that savings can be allocated to where they yield the highest returns. Instead, today's poorly regulated financial sectors – China is the biggest culprit – misprice capital. Moreover, banks are too dominant: Asia (including Japan) accounts for more than half of the world's population but barely a quarter of global capital-market capitalization.

Sixteen years ago, the Asian financial crisis erupted, following the Thai government's decision to float the baht in the face of speculative attacks. The response of governments to that crisis has shaped much of the region's economic policymaking ever since. If Asia is to avoid another crisis on a similar scale, or lost decades of growth, its governments will need to embrace the type of all-encompassing reforms that Japan is undertaking. Abenomics, it seems, is for everyone.

Author: Yuriko Koike, Japan's former defense minister and national security adviser, was Chairwoman of Japan's Liberal Democrat Party and currently is a member of the National Diet.

Image: A man looks at a stock quotation board displaying Japan's Nikkei average REUTERS/Toru Hanai.

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How to Prevent Financial Snooping | Richard Barrington

How to Prevent Financial Snooping

Edward Snowden made waves internationally with his revelations about the electronic snooping the U.S. government does into personal communications. But government spooks aren't the only people who may be trying to peer over your shoulder digitally.

The growth of electronic banking has spurred growth in the number and sophistication of criminals using computers to pry into the private accounts of people and businesses. Getting taken by one of these criminals may not be as traumatic as an on-street mugging, but it can be every bit as costly.

Here are some things you can do to protect your accounts from criminal snooping:

1. Cover the keypad. Behind you at the ATM or in line at the supermarket checkout, there may be someone waiting to casually observe your PIN for future use. Don't even bother looking behind you -- whatever the situation, get in the habit of using your free hand to screen the keypad as you type in your PIN.
2. Take a good look at that gas pump. Thieves are increasingly using credit card skimmers -- devices that look like card readers, but that secretly transmit your credit card information to their operators. If the card reader at a gas pump seems loose-fitting, sticks out more than usual, or doesn't quite match the surrounding equipment, notify a station employee -- and don't insert your card!
3. Don't use public networks to view sensitive financial information. Online savings accounts and checking accounts may be increasingly popular, but pick your spots to check your account. Public networks are typically not as secure as those at home or your place of business.
4. Don't broadcast your information. Another drawback of accessing sensitive information in public is that if you are using a WiFi hotspot, scammers can use Bluetooth-like devices to pick up the information you are transmitting from your computer to the network.
5. Always log off when finished. Wherever and whenever you access your account, always log off the bank site when you are done. Logging off is like locking the door when you leave the house: It doesn't make breaking in impossible, but at least you won't have made it easy.
6. Know what's in your wallet. Periodically make a photocopy of the credit cards in your wallet, and keep it in a secure place. This will help you quickly identify the cards and the numbers that need to be reported if your wallet is stolen or missing.
7. Go through credit card statements line-by-line. Don't just look at the total amount you owe -- check out each transaction on your credit card bill to spot anything unusual. Some scammers are subtle enough to use card information for a series of transactions that are small enough to go unnoticed, so they can continue to bleed accounts over time.
8. Balance your checking account. This involves a statement review similar to checking your credit card statement, but balancing the bank's records against your own is a real double-check for preventing unauthorized transactions of any type from endangering your checking accounts.

Think of your bank accounts as a pile of money: You wouldn't invite a stranger into a room with that money just sitting there, so don't allow criminals to get that kind of ready access to your money electronically . 

 

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