Friday Flight - Protecting Your Tax Refund, Credit Reporting Errors, & Fake Amazon Reviews #324

personal finances, our money. Uh. And we got a great note actually the earlier this week from a listener talking about one of the ways that she's kind of able to make a little bit of money on the side while also helping her neighbors. Yeah. Man, I thought that was so cool. Listener Stephanie wrote to us, and she she mentioned that she was shopping for groceries not just for herself, but for health vulnerable friends who just like

don't feel going to the grocery store right now. And um, like, what a sweet thing to do, right, to offer to go pick up their groceries, because, like we've talked about before, getting food delivered or even groceries delivered, there's additional fees involved, right, It's gonna cost him more, and so Stephanie doing that for them is just a super sweet thing. But at the same time, Stephanie is putting those grocery purchases on

her m X Blue Cash Preferred credit card and said maybe. Yeah, so it's like nobody else gets charged the fee like that, her friends don't get charged the fee. But she's you know, racking up a little bit of those rewards at the same time while she's like doing something noble and helpful. Yeah, like a pretty good sized grocery run, like maybe two in her bucks. That's twelve bucks just on one run. I mean that could definite at least pay for your dinner,

you know. But I think that this is a good way to think about it if you're kind of maybe on the fence about whether or not, uh, the annual fee that comes with that card, if it's worth it, right, because if you don't go to the grocery store all that often. But you know, I can definitely go to the grocery store, use it for you know, neighbors, for other friends who yeah, like you said, might be vulnerable. That's definitely can tip the scales a little bit and

make it a little bit more worthwhile. But again, yeah, it's just a nice thing to do regardless, you know, to do it for for your neighbors, do it for some friends. I like that. Yeah, super sweet. So Stephanie, thank you for sharing and glad you're getting some extra cash back. Just a little bonus in your life for doing something nice. Alright, Matt, let's get onto the Friday flight. Let's talk about the stories we found interesting this week

that pertain to our personal finances. Uh. First, let's talk about taxes. It is tax season. Tax season is in full swing now. The I R S is accepting tax returns UM. And you know, we've talked about where you can go to file your tax return for free. If you make under a certain amount and I think it's seventy two adjusted gross income, you can hit up I

R S free file go there. But one thing we haven't talked about is that identity theft is a legitimate concern when you're filing your taxes, given that nearly half of the country had their Social Security numbers compromised with the Equifax breach a few years ago. We're gonna talk more about that UM later on in the show. We're glad to see that the I R S is now issuing identity protection pins, uh, because you might need them

now filing your taxes. Basically, what this pin does is it prevents thieves from filing a fake tax return before you do, which would potentially give them access to your tax refund if you're owed one. And a lot of people are they count on that tax refund. They usually

set it up. You know, we don't advise this, but a lot of people set it up to where they're gonna get a two, three or four thousand dollar tax refund, and if somebody else files taxes before you do, they get that money and then you have to calaw it back, usually in a long process with the I r S. Right. And so though even though you don't have to do this, you don't have to get one of these protection pins, it's not mandatory, we would suggest that you do it.

You can get your own PIN by going to the I r S website where you provide your info and you opt into the program, and then when you file your return, you input that PIN, and a potential identity thief, well, they wouldn't have access to that PIN, meaning they can't file that return as if they were you. So we'll put that link in the show notes. Because it's not like some easy term member u r L. But it's not like it's like thirty or forty characters long. Yeah.

So yeah, go to our site how to money dot com. You'll find that link so that you can sign up for your own I r S protection pin. It's pretty easy to do it, and you know what, it could save you a bunch of hassle, you know. On the note of not only taxes, but Texas as well, we know Texas is still recovering from the storms from last week. We know things have been crazy out there right due to the storms. We definitely feel for everyone who is suffering.

But there is some good news regarding UH taxes. The tax deadline has been extended to June for residents of Texas as well as other states that had disaster declarations issued by FEMA. And so this also means that affected taxpayers will have until June ira A contributions as well as quarterly estimates as well, if that's something that you have to pay. Yeah, smart moved by the I r S. Very helpful to the people of Texas that have suffered

greatly in recent weeks. And Matt two, let's talk about how people at an individual level can actually help some of the people out there in Texas to you can donate and help people that were affected by the extreme weather and power outages. The Houston Food Ban is collecting donations to help feed people. They're saying that a hundred and fifty meals can be provided with a donation of just fifty bucks, which is really cool. And so in Oklahoma,

the Homeless Alliance is doing something similar. Will link to an article that The New York Times published where you can learn how to donate, how you can help, and also we'll put a link to Charity Navigator in our show notes as well. But if you've got a little bit of extra money and you're feeling generous, those people went through a lot and so if you can spare

some money to donate in that direction, we would encourage it. Yeah, I mean the reason who we mentioned Charity Navigator is that anytime there is a crisis or or folks who are asking for money, sometimes you'll hear from organizations kind of out of the wood work, you know, they'll kind of just show up, and you want to make sure that you are giving to an organization that is doing what you want them to do, that's legit. Yeah, you want to vet that organization and charity navigators in place

to do it. Yeah. Yeah, So let's shift gears. Let's talk about the wedding industry, man, which is, by the way, a seventy three billion dollar market, and really, of course, that industry saw a massive shift last year. The Washington Post reports that about eight of couples post owned or canceled their ceremonies, and those who still had weddings massively

scaled back for obvious reasons. But it's interesting that though couples cut back on some things like venues and catering, they redirected that money towards things like bigger and more expensive floral arrangements and wedding rings as well. So they're not doing just the cheap silicone rings like I'm doing. No. I kind of wish they would have, you know, like it would have been an awesome way to just save

money overall. But folks, they I don't know, they I guess they still wanted to spend that money, but they just spend it in other areas. There's there's this other couple too, who said that they're planning to spend more on their honeymoon. In fact, they were gonna go on two honeymoons instead of just one, the old double honey Yeah. Once uh, you know, once travel is able to open up, and so it's just an interesting observation of kind of

what's happening there within that industry. I gotta say I am in favor of the double honeymoon, Like why not? Man Like, especially if you're able to save money on other parts of your wedding right now and you can spring for two awesome trips, go for it. I'm sure the story how Kate and I went on two honeymoons, Yeah,

because of the hurricane. The hurricane and Jamaica. So we had our initial kind of week off you know that we had planned, uh, and so we instead just kind of found a really affordable bed and breakfast in Charleston and spent the time at the beach. But then, yeah, because of that hurricane, we were able to then go on the actual honeymoon and go to Jamaica, and we did that over Thanksgiving. It was slightly shorter, but we got two trips out of it that fall. See, you're

a fancy dude. You've been on two hunting super nice. All you need is a hurricane to line up. Yeah, it's similar to travel. There's going to be like a lot of pent up demand. Of course, in the wedding industry, things are going to ramp back up this summer in

a big way in all likelihood. But the problem is, Matt, that there are going to be a lot of wedding vendors who are gonna be booked up and won't be able to meet the demand because I don't know what twice as many people are gonna want to get married this summer as in a normal Yeah, I mean there's there are certain vendors who can only do one thing a day, Like as a former wedding photographer, there's only

one wedding I'm going to shoot that day. Like same thing with venues as well, like there's typically only one wedding that you can knows per day. You can't just like work harder and in order to meet all this demand, can't be in two places at once. And as more venues are booked up, and you know more photographers are booked up, um, you know you're gonna have to make some different choices if you're planning to get married this summer.

In a particular, if you're a listener and you've got a cool space, you might want to consider listening it on a site like pier space or this open space dot com. More couples are gonna be out there looking at less traditional platforms to play in their wedding because some of the traditional wedding venues are going to be all booked up. So if you have a place where you're like, man, people will be interested in getting married in my yard. Um, I've got a nice little thing.

We can make a fancy pergola or something where people get get married, toss some seating out there. You know, I might want to consider, you know, listening your space because you might be able to make some money off of it. Yeah. I mean, like some folks might have had an airbnb and instead they're like, you know what, I don't want to do like the every two days cleaning thing instead, Like what if we just host a

party every weekend or something like that. I think it all just depends on what kind of space you have, you know. I think folks are realizing that people are down to get married wherever, you know, like a farm that overlooks the mountains. Sure, like it doesn't have to be some traditional chapel you know, in the middle of the city, like like I think folks are often used to, So that's definitely something to keep in mind as we're

expecting things to kind of ramp back up this year. Also, we're seeing gasoline prices really continue to climb since this past winter, in large part because demand is increasing as as COVID numbers are starting to go down. The national averages now around two dollars and six cents a gallon, and experts are saying that that's actually only going to get worse in the coming weeks with refineries that shut

down because of all that winter weather. So you know, next time you're at the pump, maybe you can go ahead and fill up the tank all the way as opposed to just a quick fill. And if you don't already use it, the gas Buddy app is a great app to look up to see the prices around you. You know, like we wouldn't recommend for you to drive across town just to save a few cents, but it is a convenient way to at least know where to look.

If you've got two gas stations that are equidistant from your home, definitely go to the one that's ten cents cheaper man, and so we'll make sure to link to that app gas Buddy in our show notes. We will and also to make sure that you're putting those gas charges on the right credit card, because that can effectively lower the price you pay per gallon at the pump. Right.

Having a dedicated gas credit card or card that you know gives you the best cash back at the gas station is a no brainer, and so if you're a Sam's Club or Costco member, those cards offer the best cash back on purchases that you make when you're fueling up five percent and four percent, respectively. It's also important to remember that for most people, even as gas prices rise, they're often still a small sliver of your overall budget. So don't freak out. Don't go swapping your SUV for

a new Prius just because gas got more expensive. I know, as I read these headlines, Matt, I kind of start to miss my niecean Leaf a little bit. You't you do? Yeah, but I'm like, electricity so much cheaper than gas. But um, but really, when it comes down to it, we don't drive very much, and obviously what we're saving by having only one car versus too far outweighs the additional price that we're gonna pay in gas. Also to one quick note update, the mileage that you're driving with your insurer.

If you're not one of those people who's ramping back up, you're driving. If you have curbed, you're driving in large part due to COVID Let your insurer no, because you might be eligible for you know, discounts on your premiums because you drive under a certain amount of miles. That's right, man. And as gas prices rise, the exact opposite is actually

happening in the world of solar. According to our World and data that the price of producing electricity via solar has plummeted eighty nine in the past ten years, which is remarkable. As solar paywall production has scaled up, these productivity gains are having a major impact on our ability to implement solar more broadly at an individual level on our own roof. And you know, utility companies are opting for solar over say, you know, let's you know, like

building a new natural gas plant. Uh. It's incredible to see how solar has gone from kind of the most expensive way to produce power to the cheapest in just a decade, and they're still federal tax credits available to for folks. So this year, if you install a new solar system on your house, you still get a federal tax credit, which is pretty sweet, and that it's actually set to expire in two unless the government steps in, which they might then they might. Yeah, but it is

really incredible to see. We'll link to that article map, but the visual to see what's happened with solar prices over a decade. It's just like it's it blows your mind that the solar prices have plummeted that far um and that it used to literally be ten years ago, like the most expensive way to generate power, and now it's literally the cheapest. And with a tax credit too. It could make sense for a lot of people. It

doesn't make sense for everyone. There are other factors you have to uh, you have to think about when you're designing to install solo at your house, but it could make sense for a lot of people, especially you know, with that tax credit still hanging around. That's right, when the sun is not shining, you don't make power, That is true. But we got more to get to, including some interesting stuff about credit reporting errors and maybe something

that the Biden administration plans to do about that. We'll get to that and more right after this break. Al Right, we are back and it's time now for our ludicrous headline of the week. There was a pretty ludicrous headline that we saw from CNBC and this one was titled millionaire who bought a home that regrets paying off as mortgage early. Uh. And then they had a quote from him which is, this is the biggest downside no one

tells you. Uh. And you know, part of the reason we chose this article is because the headline is kind of tough to stomach. Let's all, I feel sorry for the millionaire who you know, paid off his mortgage right I'm playing my little violine over here right now. But I mean, despite the kind of crummy clickbait headline, the the actual content of the article had some surprise, like really helpful advice, you know, if you are one of those people who might be a bit obsessed with paying

off your mortgage early. Yeah. I agree that it was a ludicrous headline, but actually had some legit helpful money insights. Uh. The author his name Sam. He goes by financial Samurai on the on the internet. On the webs. He he detailed his obsession with paying off his mortgage early. He and his wife were able to get their mortgage paid off in just twelve years, which is pretty good, right. A lot of people will be happy with that, would be thrilled to be able to pay off their mortgage

in that amount of time. But once that mortgage was paid off, Sam kind of details how he lost his psychological edge to continue making financial prog rest. He saw that additional bucks a month that he was paying towards his mortgage kind of as extra spending money in his life, and he kind of started to soak it in and

and you just buying more stuff, and that curbed. He also said some of his desire to hit some of the other financial goals that he had for himself, and that you know, when I was reading that, I could totally identify with Sam in that regard. Like as as our family wealth has continued to grow, fortunately, I've had to set up mental and physical roadbox to prevent me

from seeing or using that money. It's helpful that you know most of the wealth that I'm accumulating is in retirement accounts that I can't touch for decades anyway, right, and in home equity that's harder to get to. I can mentally convince myself that it doesn't really exist. Now, you can't just show up at the bank and take some money out of that home equity account. Yeah, exactly, you have a helo, which I guess I could do. But like knowing that it's over there, it's siphoned off,

it feels like it's very removed from your every day spending. Yeah, it feels like vapor money that doesn't exist. And obviously, you know, someday if I sold the home, it would, But I'm all about these kind of tricks that keep us motivated and on track. And for Sam, paying off his mortgage, um kind of took him off the track

that he wanted to be on. Yeah, I mean, and we would never want to stand in the way of someone who is, you know, attempting to pay off their debt and do so in short order, especially when we're talking about high interest rate debt like credit card debt. In that case, we would recommend for folks to pay

it off quickly. There's no downside in terms of math or psychology, but attempting to pay off your mortgage as quickly as possible can have downsides on both fronts, So we just want folks to be aware before you put

too much energy into that pursuit. Like, honestly, I think in the end, what folks need to do once they've achieved a goal like that is to remember, like why it is that they set out to achieve that goal, right, And so if for you, maybe that meant like being able to step out of like a more stressful work situation, maybe part of the reasoning was for you to spend more money, right, Like if you want to be able to increase how much you spent on vacation every year,

or like how much you want to be able to give away, it's just important to kind of loop back around and revisit why it is that you had set these financial goals, and just to make sure that you're you're kind of seeing to those you know. Like I guess the idea is that we want to make sure that you're not just by default, just spending more money

without really thinking about it. Like all of a sudden, you're like buying more junk on Amazon, You're getting more meals delivered over priced meals delivered to your door because you don't feel like cooking. It's things like that. It's the mindless consumption that we're against here, not necessarily the consumption that you've sought out to pursue. Uh. And these financial goals have allowed you to pursue those goals. If you if you pay off your mortgage in twelve years,

you're you're obviously being intentional. Right, that's a that's a very specific goal you said not to achieve and then you hit it. But once that happens, you almost have to be intentional again, right, you have to figure out what what's the next thing I want to tackle, What's what's the next place I want to go with this money, and not just achieve a goal? Um, and then you know sit back and get lazy. Well and that yeah, yeah,

and and setting new goals is super important. But I guess what I'm kind of honding on on like making sure that you achieve that goal and then make sure like you think about why it is that you've even set that goal to begin with, you know, and like actually make sure you realize the things that you wanted to achieve with that goal. But yeah, like setting that next goal is super important though, as well, to make sure that like cool. Otherwise you're gonna just kind of

coast along. Make sure that you are just living the life you want to live totally. All right, let's get to credit reports. Matt. We mentioned briefly at the beginning of the episode the Equifax credit breach of a few years back, and it turns out that more Americans are

reporting errors on their credit reports these days. According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, consumer complaints about errors found on a personal credit report doubled in the past year alone, and currently americans have at least one error on their credit report. Ouch a lot of folks. That's a lot of folks. This is a huge problem because the accuracy of what's on your credit report has a direct effect on your credit score. Your credit score, of course, impacts

a ridiculous amount of things in your life. We've talked about that many times on the show. Matt, I was just talking with someone this week who is in the middle of a refinance and there's something awful on his credit report because someone else with the same name had is a massive outstanding debt of sixty and he's like, that's not that's not me. I'm not the end you're looking for. And this is called a mixed file, and it's one of the most common credit reporting error complaints.

And just try getting that error resolved. It's incredibly difficult, right, because the credit bureaus aren't really interested in serving the masses. They're interested in selling your data, selling your information, not making sure necessarily that your report is exactly the way it should be, that your that your report is accurate, and that your score is accurate. Yeah, they're way too comfortable with their being casualties, you know, along the path

that them making a profit. Right, and one in five Americans are casualties. That's way too much. Yeah, that's right. And so if that is you, if you do find yourself in that situation. Uh, there are some templates, some some sample letters that the CFPB, which is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, that they have on their website. And not only do they have that, but they also have instructions as to how you can best dispute these inaccuracies

on your credit report. And we'll make sure to link to those in our show notes. UM, but just generally speaking, we have seen issues somebum is when it comes to the credit bureaus. UH, and so que the government, you know, the possible government intervention. UM, it looks like the three major credit bureaus might not be around for forever uh, and they could be replaced by a completely new credit scoring system that would essentially be run by the CFPB.

The major credit bureaus they haven't been very consumer friendly, like we discussed, you know, in general, uh in the effects credit breach. In response to that breach, Dude, we're worse than like the Dumb and Dumber sequel, which is that was a bad movie. Was it wasn't very good. Uh. This move would do more than just centralizing credit reports, though. It would also create a new algorithm that would include

information like on time utility and rent payments. The current credit bureaus don't give those items much weight, if any at all, which negatively affects tens of millions of people who are paying those utilities on time. So we'll see what happens. But we wanted to mention that this is something that you might start seeing uh and hearing more about, and if so, will make sure to let y'all know

about it. And you know, it remains to bec what happens, UM, And you know, maybe the and maybe the CFPB, you know, starts handling credit reports at the same time though, and that might be the best way forward, but at least at a minimum, um, I feel like the CFPB and the federal government has not been doing the oversight of these credit bureaus that needs to be done, because literally, if one in five Americans is struggling having inaccurate information

on their credit report, we at least need to see some more scrutiny over how these you know, private companies are coming up with these credit scores and their attention to detail over the data that they have on us. The current state of things just isn't working for a whole lot of people. Yeah, regardless of where you stand, you know, government regulation, when so many Americans are being negatively affected, this is definitely uh an area that could

see some improvement for sure. All Right, matt Our last story of the day, Let's talk about online reviews and fake reviews on Amazon. Let's hear it. Online reviews as has always been like a weird spot, right. I remember when Yelp started and it was kind of cool to to get to see reviews about local restaurants and stuff like that, and then they were like lawsuits because someone would leave a one star review and be like that

sand which was trash. And so online reviews are in interesting space and for you know, us as consumers, like, can we really trust what we're reading when we see an online review? Well, according to analysis from fake spot last year, roughly half of the reviews on Amazon are fraudulent. Fake Spot and review Meta are sites designed to catch fake reviews and then notify you so you can get a more accurate picture of an item before you buy. Like, let's say you're looking at an alarm clock that has

a four point seven star rating on Amazon. You're like, that's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah, when you see four point seven stars, you just click by um. But maybe it turns out that checking one of those sites could alert you to a ton of fake reviews for that particular product. The alarm clock, in reality might be more like three point two stars, And if I saw a three point two star alarm clock, I'm way less likely to buy it.

And both of these sites have browser extensions that work while you're shopping, or you can copy and paste the r L of the product you're looking at onto their sites and they'll rate the quality of the reviews for that specific item. So if you have been just willy nilly buying stuff on a site like Amazon based on the overall star rating, well you're gonna want to dig a level deeper because of the abundance of fake reviews

that are out there. Yeah, a British consumer advacy group they found ten websites offering review manipulation services for products listed on Amazon. And on these sites merchants can buy reviews for as little as eighteen dollars a pop, or they can like drop ten grand, you know, and buy bulk reviews by the thousands. And so before you buy something, always cheaper to buy in bulk, it's I want to

be the costco of the fake reviews site. Second, not not the aldi, but before you buy something on Amazon, you know, because of the overall star rating, think again, you know, do some digging on other sites before you make that purchase. Consider using those two extensions that we mentioned, and actually to read the actual reviews as well. You might see a ton of reviews that that contained poor spelling. I think that could be a fake review red flag.

But then again, you think about just how people write to each other these days, it could be a completely legitimate review and there's just terrible spelling. But you know, hopefully this doesn't make you paranoid, but it does help you to shop online with a bit more of a critical I it's just gotten way more difficult to shop online. You know. I've even received products before where there's an insensive packaged with the product to leave a positive review.

And so it's not it wouldn't necessarily be a fake review, but it can influence how positively you might, you know, rate that product. This is just another one of those areas whereas consumers, as we've moved more to online shopping, we we just need to basically get better at becoming online shoppers, you know, like there's there's little things that

we need to pick up on as shoppers. And so keeping an eye out for those fake reviews, looking for like reviews with pictures I feel like are actually really helpful to pictures that like kind of highlight a little defect, like something that's not listed in the description, or something that other folks aren't talking about, or how someone who has actually used the product, right, Yeah, those are the

reviews that I think are the best. It's like you didn't just get it and you're like, yeah, it looks nice, you implemented it into your life, and then you leave the review, and those are the reviews I find most helpful most um. All right, well, speaking of reviews, Matt, thanks everyone for listening to this episode, and if you decide you want to go leave a real review for our podcast How the Money, we would appreciate it. When you write a helpful review. It lets other people know

about the value that the show is providing. It grows to How the Money community and helps other people get their personal finances in order. That's right, and we appreciate you know, great reviews, but honestly, we appreciate any true, honest review from from all of our listeners out there, So thanks in advance for that. Uh and folks, and find our show notes up on our website at how to Money dot com. Will make sure to link to

any of the stories that we mentioned during this episode. Yeah, lots of links today so that you're gonna want to get on our website. All right, So, Joe, that's gonna be it for this one man. Until next time. Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out.