Pierre Money Mart Blog

A thief goes through trash to find discarded receipts or carbons, and then uses your account numbers illegally.

A dishonest clerk makes an extra imprint from your credit or charge card and uses it to make personal charges.

You respond to a mailing asking you to call a long distance number for a free trip or bargain-priced travel package. You’re told you must join a travel club first and you’re asked for your account number so you can be billed. The catch! Charges you didn’t make are added to your bill, and you never get your trip.

Credit and charge card fraud costs cardholders and issuers hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

While theft is the most obvious form of fraud, it can occur in other ways. For example, someone may use your card number without your knowledge.

It’s not always possible to prevent credit or charge card fraud from happening. But there are a few steps you can take to make it more difficult for a crook to capture your card or card numbers and minimize the possibility.

One huge misconception is that identity theft insurance will cover any direct economic losses you incur. That’s simply untrue. All that most identity theft insurance policies do is reimburse victims for the expenses incurred in “righting” the situation with banks, merchants, and other parties. In other words, the policy will make the process of reclaiming your identity less expensive. Coverage may include:

- phone calls and faxes
- postage
- photocopies
- notary public fees
- credit report orders
- lost wages for time spent handling the identity theft
- legal fees (for the few and far-between cases where an attorney is needed)
- cost of reapplying for loans that you were denied (as many people don’t find out their identity was stolen until they are denied credit)

The purpose of the means test is to figure out whether you have enough disposable income, after subtracting certain allowed expenses and required debt payments, to make payments on a Chapter 13 plan.

To find out whether you pass the means test, you start with your “current monthly income,” calculated as described above. From that amount, you subtract both of the following:

* Certain allowed expenses, in amounts set by the IRS. Generally, you cannot subtract what you actually spend for things like transportation, food, clothing, and so on; instead, you have to use the limits the IRS imposes, which may be lower than the cost of living in your area.

* Monthly payments you will have to make on secured and priority debts. Secured debts are those for which the creditor is entitled to seize property if you don’t pay (such as a mortgage or car loan); priority debts are obligations that the law deems to be so important that they are entitled to jump to the head of the repayment line. Typical priority debts include child support, alimony, tax debts, and wages owed to employees.

If your total monthly disposable income after subtracting these amounts is less than $100, you pass the means test, and will be allowed to file for Chapter 7. If your total remaining monthly disposable income is more than $166.66, you have flunked the means test, and will be prohibited from using Chapter 7.

So what about those in the middle? They have to do some more math. If your remaining monthly disposable income is between $100 and $166.66, you must figure out whether what you have left over is enough to pay more than 25% of your unsecured, nonpriority debts (such as credit card bills, student loans, medical bills, and so on) over a five-year period. If so, you flunk the means test, and Chapter 7 won’t be available to you. If not, you pass the means test, and Chapter 7 remains an option

New Car Dealers, Used Car Dealers and Private Owners will have used cars or “re-sale” cars. Personally, I would suggest that the best buy for you would be to purchase a car that has been very well maintained (preferably at a dealership) and has never gone through an accident or other major problems. Most likely you’ll be able to find such a car sold privately by the original owner or at a new car dealership where it was traded in. The price for a used vehicle is usually higher at a new car dealership. However, paying a higher price may provide you with all the service records for the car. Most likely, the previous owner may have taken the car specifically to the dealership because he/she felt it was maintained very well, instead of taking it somewhere else to be traded in. You’re more likely to find a well maintained car through a dealership because previous owners have taken care of their car very well because they value it, and the dealership is more than likely to be particularly about the condition the car is in to ensure it has a high quality.
Now let’s discuss other places to buy a used car. Independent used car dealers will offer used cars at a less expensive cost but more often than not, you’ll find a cheaper car but it will have been less maintained. A word of advice: try to avoid dealing with curbsiders. Here’s what happened to someone who contacted me and then went on his own to buy from a curbsider: A person contacted me and in an effort to save on taxes, arranged the deal as a private sale. Later the buyer checked the history and found the car was written off in a different State in the USA due to an accident and the mileage was noted to be a lot higher than the curbsider stated to him. After repeated attempts this person cannot even locate this “dealer”.
On to the private owner… Quite often you can find a good car for a reasonable price from a private individual, and usually they will be more flexible in terms of price but keep in mind that they do not offer any warranties.

For online car loans, how much should you apply for if youdon’t know the cost of your car yet?How do you pay the car dealer when  you finance your auto loan with an online lender?

It’s very simple! You have not decided whether you want the Toyota Camry or Honda Accord, but you do know the sticker prices of these cars. So while you are car shopping go ahead and apply for your auto loan online. For example if your car has a sticker price of $25,000, you just apply for your car loan seeking $25,000 plus tax. The online car loan lenders approve you up to that amount, and FedEx you a blank check which you are authorized to fill out at the car dealer up to your approved amount. Whatever amount you write in that blank check becomes your car loan amount, usually a number much less than you applied for. So you see, it does not matter what the final selling price of the car is, it will likely be less than your car loan approval amount. So haggle your best deal at the car dealer, and with your down payment, you’ll be way below your pre-approved auto loan amount. This allows you to secure your auto financing a month before you buy your car, then you just endorse the check over to the dealer when you buy your car. Bottom line is you do not need to know the final cost of your car when applying for your car loan, so apply now at sites like PierremoneyMart You need to be pre-approved for auto financing before you ever talk to a car dealer to avoid scams and get the lowest APR.

Looking for a bad credit auto loan? You should read our chapter for people with bad credit: Bad Credit Auto Loans, Tips and Scams To Avoid. We give you the strategies for people with bad credit, tips to increase your credit score, how to increase your chances for approval on a new or used car loan, sites that can help you get a bad credit auto loan.

Identity theft, however, is an entirely different matter, usually involving new accounts opened in your name that may be difficult to track or identify in the first place. Here are the statistics on identity theft:

* “New account” identity theft costs over $25 billion in losses to the victims each year.
* Of the new accounts that get opened by identity thieves, approximately half are credit card accounts, but cell phone accounts, utility accounts, bank accounts and apartment rentals are also important targets for identity thieves.
* Americans between the age of 18-29 are the most likely to be the victims of identity theft.
* In cases where individuals know who stole their identity info, it turns out to be someone they know 50 percent of the time.
* Identity thieves get plenty of lead time: Identity theft victims typically don’t discover their information has been stolen until 12 months after a thief first used it.
* Identity theft victims who detected the crime by monitoring their accounts online had average loses of $551. Identity theft victims who relied on monitoring paper statements had average loses of $4,543.
* Between Feb 2005 and March 2006 more than 55 million Americans were put at risk by security breaches, leaving them vulnerable to identity theft.