Latest / Becoming Financially Confident / BFC Weekly Recap: Fake Bank Logins, Widow Fraud, and a $200 Amazon Refund

Transcript

BFC Weekly Recap: Fake Bank Logins, Widow Fraud, and a $200 Amazon Refund · Becoming Financially Confident

• 0:00
  Foreign.
• 0:15
  Sometime these subprime lenders actually put a device called a starter kill in the vehicle and you have to enter a code every week.
• 0:22
  So when you, you have to make a weekly payment, if you don't enter that code, your car won't start.
• 0:27
  So.
• 0:27
  So a lot of these subprime lenders, that's what they were doing, and those folks got sued for those things before as well because they felt like that was predatory.
• 0:34
  So basically what they were doing, and I understand it from the standpoint of the lenders, because they're giving people loans who probably don't qualify, who haven't been great with their credit.
• 0:43
  What happened is you would go and make your payment every week and they would give you a code.
• 0:47
  You would go out to your car and type that code in your car and would give you another week to drive.
• 0:52
  So it's an interesting thing.
• 0:53
  So some of that equipment, you know, they overcharge for that equipment and that sort of thing.
• 0:57
  So it's a really interesting thing.
• 0:59
  But it's all about this subprime market.
• 1:01
  And as the credit tightens up, we start to see more of these subprime lenders coming out and saying, yeah, maybe we took advantage of people in this particular case.
• 1:09
  Maybe, maybe, yeah, but they're going to.
• 1:11
  Have to cough up a lot of money or pay or show a lot of these loans were no longer valid loans anymore.
• 1:17
  Very true, Ralph.
• 1:19
  Almway publishes its own official income disclosure.
• 1:22
  What did the typical person actually make?
• 1:24
  Yeah, this is really interesting because as a kid, I remember hearing about, well, you could go sell Amway.
• 1:29
  And that was like this side hustle that you could actually make money for.
• 1:33
  And what's interesting is that people who sign up for this and they were looking for greed, but they kind of been pushed into this.
• 1:40
  But the average income, and this is from Amy's own document from 2023 says that the average income was $657.
• 1:49
  Now, they were telling people, you can make upwards of $40,000.
• 1:53
  That's crazy.
• 1:54
  That's a huge difference.
• 1:56
  And what the Federal Trade Commission said is most spent more than they got back.
• 1:59
  That's the other problem here.
• 2:01
  Last September, the ofTC Amazon for $2.5 billion over how people signed, got signed up for prime and how hard it was to cancel.
• 2:09
  On Thursday, the FTC announced the refunds are getting bigger and reaching more people.
• 2:14
  The maximum payment goes from $51 to $200, and automatic payments to newly eligible customers start October 1st.
• 2:23
  So, Ralph, who is newly eligible.
• 2:26
  Yeah, so basically, what we're talking about here is if you signed up for Amazon prime and you didn't realize you were signing up for because they're a little deceptive in how they do.
• 2:35
  Oh, you want this delivered today?
• 2:36
  Do you want this delivered for free?
• 2:38
  You can sign up for Amazon Prime.
• 2:40
  So here's the thing about this settlement.
• 2:42
  Amazon already knows who they need to pay because they already see who was signed up.
• 2:48
  So there's nothing to file here, but it's basically an anti scam warning.
• 2:53
  Basically what they're saying is that Amazon was charging you for a service.
• 2:57
  You didn't realize what you were getting.
• 2:59
  You were paying more for it than what they disclosed and it was super hard to cancel it.
• 3:03
  So you just kept paying and kept paying 86 doll dollars a month.
• 3:07
  For some people, that's what they think they're spending.
• 3:09
  But when we did the research, what we found was more like $219 a month.
• 3:15
  That's a gap of $133 a month.
• 3:17
  If you do the math, that's 15 $96 a year.
• 3:22
  What we're talking about here is how much you're spending in subscriptions for streaming services for other things you have that you just have signed up for.
• 3:32
  And they just happen automatically.
• 3:34
  Yeah, nobody guesses high on this number, but when you guess low, you don't realize it because auto P means nobody ever decides.
• 3:40
  It just keeps charging and keeps charging.
• 3:43
  Because this is Ralph's truism on this thing.
• 3:45
  It's a little bit of a Ralph rant.
• 3:46
  If you're not putting in at least what the business is matching, you're leaving money on the table.
• 3:52
  It is literally stepping over top of $100 bills.
• 3:56
  And it's.
• 3:56
  A lot of people don't think about that, but it's a huge one.
• 3:59
  And if you compound that year after year after year, this number grows quickly.
• 4:04
  So just make sure you're asking the questions, make sure you're talking to HR, looking at your payroll portal, making sure your 401k is being funded.
• 4:11
  Sometimes you have a bump in the road, you got to get more cash in your pocket.
• 4:14
  So maybe you turn off the 401k or you turn down the percentage sometime during the year.
• 4:19
  Go check that.
• 4:20
  Because you still have time to make up the difference, to make sure you're contributing the match.
• 4:24
  It might make a little bit leaner paychecks for the next few months, but it's something that's going to pay you in dividends.
• 4:29
  And like we talked about, I waited 20 extra years to get my Retirement funding.
• 4:33
  And even at $500 a month, it cost me a million dollars and what I could have invested.
• 4:38
  So that's, that's how this money, how this math and this compound interest really works.
• 4:43
  You will not realize where your money's actually going.
• 4:46
  I have never met a single person that said to me, I bet that I spend this.
• 4:51
  And it was high.
• 4:52
  It's never high.
• 4:53
  It's always lower than what you expected.
• 4:55
  The number one thing I say to them, it's usually not an income problem, it's usually a spending problem.
• 5:00
  This is true of individuals and it's true of businesses.
• 5:02
  It's where your money is going.
• 5:04
  This is the big takeaway for today.
• 5:06
  If you don't hear anything else I say, unassigned money usually gets spent by accident.
• 5:11
  If your money doesn't have an assignment, it's going to get spent, it's just going to go away.
• 5:16
  You're going to be like, what happened to my money?
• 5:17
  Assigned money builds a life on purpose, but you can't give a dollar a job if you haven't counted it yet.
• 5:24
  If you want to become financially confident, you've got to know where your money is going.
• 5:30
  This is real work.
• 5:31
  Here's my promise to you.
• 5:32
  If you put in the real work, you will get real benefits from these things and they will happen quicker than you think.
• 5:38
  I dieted most years of my life.
• 5:40
  I've been on this diet and that diet and what they call it, the yo yo budgets work the same way.
• 5:45
  I know why most of my diets have failed now.
• 5:47
  I've been in great shape.
• 5:48
  I'm in a great place right now.
• 5:49
  I'm down £200 and I've kept it off.
• 5:52
  For me, it's been almost a year.
• 5:53
  That is the best I've ever done.
• 5:55
  Well, the way I finally did that was not say, Ralph, you can't do this, and you can't do this, and you can't do this, and you can't do this.
• 6:01
  Because that restriction is what fought me for so many years, why I struggled with that.
• 6:06
  So when I built this dollar job frame, the whole point of what's my dream, what can I do?
• 6:11
  What can I choose to do?
• 6:13
  And that's why you've got to build joy into this, build that entertainment, build those hobbies.
• 6:18
  Now, again, if you're in that survival, stability, future mode, you might have a very small amount that you can put in the joy.
• 6:25
  Ralph, some of our listeners may have gotten check in the mail for money they never asked to borrow.
• 6:30
  It looks like Free money, but it could actually be a loan that uses your home as security.
• 6:34
  So that's dangerous.
• 6:35
  What happens if, if they sign that check?
• 6:38
  Yeah, this is one of those junk mail things that a lot of people aren't aware about.
• 6:42
  What this basically is, it's a home equity loan that you're basically signing by signing this check.
• 6:49
  It's a big deal because you're putting your home on the line.
• 6:51
  I think that's the thing we need to understand.
• 6:53
  But it's one of those things where if you're not paying attention, you might think it's just a personal loan or some kind of line of credit that isn't attached to your home.
• 7:00
  But that's the sinister part of this.
• 7:02
  So here's my direction on this one.
• 7:04
  Go find that pile of mail that you were about to throw out.
• 7:06
  But.
• 7:07
  But if there's a check in there that you didn't apply for, shred it.
• 7:10
  Don't just toss it because it might have some personal information.
• 7:12
  Another thing you can do is you can dial this number, 1-888-5-5, opt out.
• 7:18
  Again, it's 1-888-5- opt out.
• 7:22
  And that gets your name off these mailing lists for good.
• 7:25
  And again, like I said, Maryland had Senate bill number 582, which is banning unsolicited secure checks, effective on October 1st.
• 7:33
  That's actually a Maryland statute, and if you do it in Maryland, it's going to be a misdemeanor, and they can charge the person up to 500 for the mailer.
• 7:42
  So this is an area, again, this is buyer beware or signer beware.
• 7:45
  Just pay attention to your junk mail because that stuff might need to be shredded.
• 7:49
  So there's a, there's a thousand dollars, $1,000 that the government will put in your kid's name.
• 7:56
  Is the thing that you're talking about a Trump account?
• 7:59
  It absolutely is.
• 7:59
  And my grandson Carson is the beneficiary of this because he was born in 2026.
• 8:05
  I want to remind the audience, if you have a child that was born in 25, 26, 27 or 28, my son and my grandson are beneficiaries of this.
• 8:14
  It's a beautiful program.
• 8:16
  It's free.
• 8:16
  It is absolutely cost you nothing.
• 8:19
  All you've got to do is set up the account.
• 8:21
  I've talked about this on the show before.
• 8:23
  It's free money, and it's for any baby born 25 to 28.
• 8:27
  So once July 1 came, my son said, you know what, dad, I'm going to go enroll him in this.
• 8:31
  So if you've got a child born in 20, 25 or later, you can do this right now.
• 8:36
  You go to trumpaccounts.gov and you open the account so that the government will put the money in that.
• 8:42
  Here's the best part of it.
• 8:43
  You don't have to put a dime of your own money.
• 8:45
  Get that seed going.
• 8:47
  My grandfather used to take me to the dump when we were kids.
• 8:49
  Like, we would do a project around the yard, and he would take me to the dump.
• 8:53
  Now, Julie, this is no lie.
• 8:54
  My grandfather.
• 8:55
  So the way it works is you load up your truck and you drive to the dump, and they've got this scale as you go in.
• 9:01
  But here's the problem.
• 9:03
  My grandfather would go find stuff at the dump.
• 9:06
  So he'd look around and be like, oh, I could use that.
• 9:09
  My grandfather was a tinkerer.
• 9:10
  So this one day, he takes me to the dump.
• 9:12
  Julie, this is no lie.
• 9:13
  We go in, they weigh us.
• 9:14
  So we leave the dump.
• 9:15
  And the guy in a little booth, it says, I'm gonna go ahead and weigh it now.
• 9:18
  And he looks at my grandfather and he goes, sir, I think our scale's broken.
• 9:22
  And my grandfather's chuckling the whole time.
• 9:24
  He's gone.
• 9:24
  He goes.
• 9:25
  And my grandfather says to me, he goes, watch this.
• 9:27
  They had to pay him because he took money from the dump.
• 9:30
  He took more weight out of the dump than what he took in.
• 9:33
  So the law was they had to pay him the difference.
• 9:36
  So here.
• 9:37
  So it's.
• 9:37
  It reminded me of the swap meet thing because basically he went into it with the idea of getting rid of stuff, but he came back with more.
• 9:44
  And of course, my grandmother was not happy about.
• 9:46
  About that.
• 9:47
  Have you ever been at the airport, you're sitting there waiting for your domestic flight, and you hear that dreaded thing come across the loudspeaker.
• 9:56
  Flight number 1234 to Tucson, Arizona, has been canceled.
• 10:02
  Do you know that the airline is supposed to pay you cash, not just offer you a voucher when this happens?
• 10:09
  But here's the deal.
• 10:10
  If they've canceled your flight or if there's a big delay, you don't have to accept a voucher.
• 10:15
  You can ask for it by name.
• 10:17
  Want a actual refund if the airline cancels your flight or delays it three hours or more on a domestic trip, that's the key.
• 10:26
  Domestic, you're owed a cash refund to your original payment method.
• 10:30
  Not a voucher, not a credit.
• 10:32
  So here's what you say.
• 10:33
  You be bold and say, I want the Automatic refund.
• 10:36
  And they have to put that on the card that has to land within your account within seven days.
• 10:42
  This is all Department of Transportation rules.
• 10:44
  Again, it's a significant change or delay of three hours or more for a domestic flight, six hours or more for international flight.
• 10:52
  This is a big deal and a lot of people don't know.
• 10:53
  Now there is a refund window.
• 10:55
  They've got seven days to put it on on your card.
• 10:58
  20 calendar days for other K.
• 11:00
  Do you come from a place where you were made to feel like spending money on yourself or doing things that weren't the routine was sort of like a no.
• 11:10
  No.
• 11:10
  Do you come from a place like that entirely?
• 11:12
  It's just I'm very used to not always having money.
• 11:17
  So when I did have it or when I do have it and I see something that I'm like, oh, well, I didn't have money for that before, but I have it now.
• 11:25
  It's like, that's what's on my mind.
• 11:26
  I want to get that.
• 11:27
  And then after I get it, I'm like, oh, well, I probably shouldn't have done that.
• 11:31
  I relate so hard.
• 11:33
  Me too.
• 11:33
  Absolutely.
• 11:34
  And I'll share a story here on the show.
• 11:37
  My parents split up when I was 8 and I lived in a very warped situation.
• 11:41
  My dad was very wealthy.
• 11:42
  Still is very wealthy.
• 11:43
  My mom wasn't so much.
• 11:45
  And listen, I'm not bad mouthing my mother, but there were times when I felt like.
• 11:48
  Like we were so restricted.
• 11:50
  And K, maybe that's what you're feeling too.
• 11:53
  I just want to say something to you.
• 11:54
  Kay.
• 11:54
  It's okay.
• 11:55
  It's okay to make mistakes.
• 11:57
  It's okay to learn from this.
• 11:59
  The whole point of this show is to help you make a better decisions.
• 12:02
  On September 8, the Justice Department announced that it extradited.
• 12:06
  Listen this.
• 12:06
  It extradited a man.
• 12:08
  It says to help run fake login pages.
• 12:10
  So people found these pages through paid ads.
• 12:13
  So Google was being paid to put these ads or sitting right at the top of the search results.
• 12:18
  And more than 5,000 usernames and passwords were typed into pages that looked exactly like the real bank.
• 12:23
  This is the.
• 12:24
  One of the things about AI when you have 5,100 account takeover complaints, $262 million lost since last January.
• 12:33
  That's crazy.
• 12:34
  That's a big deal.
• 12:35
  So here's your do for today.
• 12:36
  Bookmark your bank's real login.
• 12:38
  You can put it right into whichever browser you use.
• 12:40
  This way you don't go in there and type into like I said, the Google, and use that.
• 12:46
  And never log in from an ad.
• 12:47
  This is just one of those things.
• 12:48
  If you can avoid it, it's always a better thing to do.
• 12:51
  The newest scam, and this one's hard to hear, people are calling from within prisons and asking you to pay bail for somebody on the outside.
• 13:02
  They look up who just got arrested, which is a public record, and they call the family member pretending to be a bail bondsman or a court program, and say, pay now, and your son gets out.
• 13:13
  One man, listen to this.
• 13:14
  One man sent $12,000 through the cash app.
• 13:19
  Through the Cash app.
• 13:21
  And here's the thing you gotta understand.
• 13:22
  No real agency is going to allow you to release somebody money by phone.
• 13:28
  They're not going to allow you to do it with a gift card.
• 13:31
  They're not gonna allow you to do it with a payment app, and they're certainly not gonna allow you to do it with cryptocurrency.
• 13:36
  But here, if you get this call, hang up the call.
• 13:39
  And if somebody really was just arrested, call the jail on the number from its official website and pay only in person.
• 13:46
  A typical day would start like this.
• 13:48
  They'd go to the ATM machine, they'd take $500 out at the casino, then they would take another 500 out.
• 13:54
  Then they would take another 500 out, and then they would leave, and they go to a gas station down the road and take 300 out, and then they take 200 out.
• 14:01
  And I asked him one time, I said, explain this to me.
• 14:04
  Well, you know, we were getting money out of the ATM at the casino, but we thought maybe if we get money from over here, it'll be lucky money.
• 14:11
  And because we actually left, we came back, and it's like, you know, and then what would happen is they'd be so far down, they'd be down $1,500.
• 14:19
  And then they said, well, we'll just take $200 more.
• 14:22
  And then now they're down $1,700.
• 14:24
  Oh, I'm just gonna take $100 more, because if I win, I win all my money back.
• 14:29
  A lot of people don't know this, but casinos, the casino payout percentages is.
• 14:34
  Really low, isn't it?
• 14:35
  It's like 90%.
• 14:36
  When you look at most gaming regulations by the state, and this is where you have to be careful.
• 14:40
  Gambled on the first dollar, the payback's like 90%.
• 14:43
  But then when you put the second dollar in, it goes down and down and down.
• 14:47
  Look, if you're in a casino gambling, the Odds are stacked against you.
• 14:53
  This is an actual story that happened to a client of mine.
• 14:55
  Husband and wife got a little baby with them.
• 14:57
  They sit down in front of me and they show me this IRS notice.
• 15:00
  And the IRS was asking for $10,000.
• 15:03
  And I said, okay, did you file the return?
• 15:05
  They said, oh, yeah, we filed the return.
• 15:07
  We used TurboTax, and TurboTax actually got us the biggest refund we've ever gotten.
• 15:12
  Ralph.
• 15:12
  We got an $8,000 refund.
• 15:15
  So here's what happened.
• 15:17
  TurboTax talked them into deductions they didn't deserve.
• 15:20
  And instead of getting an $8,000 refund, which they got, the IRS sent them a bill for 10 grand.
• 15:26
  Because here's the thing, they had to pay back the 8,000 they got in error and they owe 2,000.
• 15:30
  Like the guy said, we usually owe around $2,000.
• 15:34
  Yeah.
• 15:35
  So this is a big deal.
• 15:37
  About 45% of returns this year were self prepared.
• 15:40
  That means the person prepared them themselves.
• 15:43
  And the interesting thing is many of those filers aren't sure they got it right.
• 15:47
  Scammers are mining obituaries to target widows.
• 15:51
  Scammers are using AI to read obituaries and they're calling new widows claiming the late husband owed taxes and that they have to pay now to protect the inheritance.
• 16:01
  But this is the problem with AI tools.
• 16:03
  These AI tools can go crunch all this data all over the place and give these people.
• 16:07
  And you know, here's an example.
• 16:09
  Money Wise said on an article they wrote on August 24th, one widow sent $7,000.
• 16:15
  Oh, no, she sent money.
• 16:17
  Yeah, she said money because she thought that something was going on.
• 16:20
  Older Americans in 2025 lost $7.7 billion.
• 16:26
  That's billion with a B to Internet crime.
• 16:28
  That's up 59% from 2020.
• 16:31
  The average case, average loss, $38,500.
• 16:36
  They're trying to manipulate emotionally and taking advantage.
• 16:38
  And so it's always going to be gross.
• 16:40
  But this one is gross on a definitely a different level to me.
• 16:42
  Yeah, this is a big deal.
• 16:43
  So here's my takeaway for this one.
• 16:45
  If you get one of these calls, hang up on any unsolicited call about a deceased relative, taxes or estate, call back using a number that you look up yourself, not the one that somebody gives you.
• 16:55
  And that's the unfortunate part of this.
• 16:57
  So many times people are very trusting.
• 16:59
  And this is going to sound like I'm being sort of age discriminatory, but older people a lot of times are really trusting.
• 17:05
  I have a question, though.
• 17:06
  I Have a valid question here.
• 17:07
  Sure, sure.
• 17:08
  Are you of the opinion that is it.
• 17:11
  Is it better to take the lower pay now?
• 17:14
  Because you don't know how long you will.
• 17:17
  You'll be here and.
• 17:19
  And, you know, is there some merit in, hey, let's just get that lower amount of money right now?
• 17:24
  Because you can never get that money back that you don't take by waiting to get a few hundred extra bucks down the road.
• 17:32
  Psychology.
• 17:32
  What's the answer to that?
• 17:35
  Well, I'll tell you this.
• 17:36
  When a client asks me that question, I get that question at least ten times a week.
• 17:39
  To be blunt, is I say to them, hold on a second, let me get my crystal ball out of the drawer, and I put my crystal ball on the desk because it's really that simple.
• 17:48
  Most of the time, what I say to people is, tell me about the genetics in your family.
• 17:53
  Tell me about how long your mother lived.
• 17:55
  Tell me about how long your father lived.
• 17:57
  Tell me about your current health situation.
• 17:59
  If I've got somebody that's staggered into my office with stage two cancer and they're like, ralph, should I take my Social Security early?
• 18:06
  I hate to be disrespectful, but yes, probably.
• 18:09
  So it all depends on the individual circumstance.
• 18:13
  You're not going to go watch a TikTok video.
• 18:15
  You're not going to watch a YouTube video and get an answer to this.
• 18:18
  And that's the thing that's really so scary, is so many people are getting their advice by the accountant named TikTok or the account named Claude or ChatGPT.
• 18:27
  Every eighth of a percent, which is 0.125%, is only 16amonth for every $100,000 you borrow.
• 18:36
  You can challenge me on it.
• 18:37
  Get a mortgage calculator and put it in.
• 18:39
  All right.
• 18:40
  Right now, if your interest rate is 6.875% or seven and a quarter, every $25,000 you borrow is going to be about 175 bucks per month in your payment.
• 18:51
  Okay?
• 18:52
  So if.
• 18:53
  If the consumer just has the philosophy of date the rate.
• 18:59
  Okay?
• 19:00
  Date the rate.
• 19:00
  Is that what you said?
• 19:01
  Date the rate and date the payment right now.
• 19:04
  Okay.
• 19:04
  Okay.
• 19:05
  We can't control what we can't control.
• 19:08
  Exactly.
• 19:09
  We can't control what's going on in the world, okay?
• 19:13
  But we know that conflict comes and goes.
• 19:16
  We know that oil prices come and go, but, you know, if you just love your neighbor, love your family, and just go on and treat.
• 19:24
  Treat your loved ones with respect and just move on, okay?
• 19:27
  We just can't.
• 19:27
  Don't get lost in the noise.
• 19:28
  Ignore the noise, all right?
• 19:30
  Just.
• 19:31
  Just find the home that you love.
• 19:34
  Move into the place that you want and find it.
• 19:37
  Don't lose opportunity by sitting around and just waiting.
• 19:40
  Because opportunity is going to go like this.
• 19:43
  Boom, boom.
• 19:44
  Okay?
• 19:45
  If you sit and wait for the rate to come up, you're going to lose.
• 19:48
  A new poll shows that 89% of people over 65 would rather raise taxes on younger workers than touch their own Social Security.
• 19:58
  And younger people see it almost the opposite way.
• 20:01
  Now, I'm not shocked by that, but the Cato Institute put out a survey.
• 20:04
  This is all money wise.
• 20:06
  On September 16, it said 89% of those 65 and older said that, hey, just raise taxes on younger people.
• 20:13
  And of course, if you look at Those in the 18 to 29 frame, only 47% said that this is a big deal because the people who are older, and I get it, like they're collecting Social Security.
• 20:24
  So their point now is I'll just push it on the younger people, push it on the younger people.
• 20:28
  But it's almost like we're getting into this position of revolt right now where the younger people are saying, yeah, well, guess what, maybe we need to trim the.
• 20:36
  The roles of Social Security.
• 20:38
  I think this is one of the things you're going to see talked about a lot over the next year to, to two years, because the Social Security system is going broke.
• 20:47
  It's just a true statement.
• 20:49
  And they're going to have to figure out something.