Need Financial Advice!

[UncleDave]

+1 on lifelock. I have been with them for years and they catch things early. Well worth the money.

[waxthis]

By law you are allowed one free credit report a year. I would get this one for now, then follow the great advice from the others here..

FreeReport

Official FTC Site

[Monky]

I joined lifelock a bit ago.. I know it's nothing that I can not do on my own.. but not like I have all the free time in the world to call all the credit agencies and speak w/ them.

[JohnTRourke]

DON'T USE DEBIT CARDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This shit can't happen with a credit card. By LAW your total liability is $50 (and thus the banks tend to shut it right off and call you when something way out of bounds happens)

Debit cards, it's only the goodness of their hearts that makes it stop and may or may not make you whole.

If Debit cards are so good for you, why do banks push them so?????????????

exactly

Also, put your wife on an allowance.

[snichols28]

Don't waste money on "LifeLock" or any of the credit monitoring. Place a "Fraud Alert" immediately with all three credit reporting agencies. ...You can do this online for each of the credit reporting agencies. ...or actually, I believe if you file a "Fraud Alert" with one company, it automatically get's sent to the other two companies. Do this immediately! Also, by placing these fraud alerts, you are entitled by law to a free copy of each credit report. (You are also entitled by law to a free credit report yearly from each of the credit agencies) Experian and Equifax credit reports can be obtained on their websites. I believe the TransUnion report has to be ordered and mailed to you.

Next, go to the website again for each of the three credit reporting agencies and place a permanent "Freeze" on your credit reports. By doing this, if someone ever goes to apply for credit and uses your information, the company/person trying to pull your credit report/score won't be able to do it until you provide the security code that is given to you when you freeze each credit report. Awesome security measure!

LifeLock and credit monitoring only do stuff that you can already do on your own. They try to make it sound like they have special powers, but they don't. Don't waste money on them.

PM me if you have questions!

[Jeff350]

I use IDExperts for my family. Its $12.50 a month for all of us. It isn't like Lifelock (a credit monitoring service), they simply do the work for you when your identity is stolen. Basically you are paying for an expert to go to bat for you in a identity theft situation.

As far as the lifelock services, you can do those yourself. snichols post above mine lays it out well.

When you do a fraud alert with one credit agency they are required to inform the other two agencies, so you don't really need to fill out all 3.

One other thing you can do to protect your identity is fill out an "opt out prescreen" form which will help reduce the number of unwanted credit applications you get in the mail.

[buckeye4rnr]

Yeah, I wish I would have just done that before. This is like the fourth or fifth time that she has lost either credit / debit cards or some form of ID. I cant take this crap anymore. So tonight she is getting her own checking account and she spends what she makes minus a contribution to the bills every month. Single guys, if you don't get married to a CPA, keep your finances separate from day one. It will be a fight in the beginning, but it will prevent about a million fights down the road, and you wont have to deal with this sh!t.

Treat her like a child and shame her into taking responsibility for her financial future.

In all seriousness get a credit card for her, do not give her a debit card, and let her keep her money separate except for portions of bills and saving for retirement.

[ScooterCO]

You might want to talk to your home insurer, in Farmers you can add yourself and your wife for $46.00 a year. Complete credit monitoring for two, not a bad price! Also our new policy has fraud expense recovery coverage included in the policy.
Warning .. This is not a commercial! Sorry guys.

[Chad4000]

Yeah, I wish I would have just done that before. This is like the fourth or fifth time that she has lost either credit / debit cards or some form of ID. I cant take this crap anymore. So tonight she is getting her own checking account and she spends what she makes minus a contribution to the bills every month. Single guys, if you don't get married to a CPA, keep your finances separate from day one. It will be a fight in the beginning, but it will prevent about a million fights down the road, and you wont have to deal with this sh!t.

fucking amen......

combined finances are seriously a huge burden... fight... stress. etc.. it WILL take a toll in some form or another at some point..

[Danimal]

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