social security

Bucks Blog: Protecting Yourself After a Data Breach

June 6, 2013 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Javelin Strategy Research

Half of identity fraud victims in 2012 had also received a data breach notification in the same year, a new report from Javelin Strategy Research finds.

Javelin’s 2013 Data Breach Fraud Impact Report finds that data breaches are increasingly correlated with fraud; if your personal information is compromised in a data breach, you are much more likely to end up being a victim, said Al Pascual, a senior security, risk and fraud analyst at Javelin. The fraud in question usually involves using the stolen information to create a new account in your name, or to gain illegal access to an existing account.

Javelin cites information from the Open Security Foundation, a nonprofit that collects information about data breaches, which found that there were 1,611 breaches in 2012, a 48 percent increase over the prior year. And the impact can be significant. In a case study examined in the report, Javelin calculated that a breach of the South Carolina Department of Revenue, which led to the exposure of 3.6 million Social Security numbers and thousands of payment card numbers, cost affected consumers an average of 20 hours and $776 out of pocket to resolve.

While there is little consumers can do to prevent data breaches at large companies or government agencies, they can take steps to protect themselves if they get a notification of such a breach. But the statistics suggest that consumers aren’t acting when they are informed that their information was compromised, Mr. Pascual said.

“They’re getting notifications, but they’re not acting on them,” he said. “If they were, the numbers would be lower.”

His advice? If you receive a data breach letter, “Don’t just throw it away.”

Rather, he advises, if you receive a notification, there are some steps you should take as a result:

– If you are offered free identity protection services after a breach, use them. The services can help notify you of suspicious activity on your credit report, and offer assistance in resolving any fraud that occurs.

– Contact your bank or credit card company and ask about any potential effect the breach could have on your accounts.

– If your Social Security number is lost or stolen in a breach, placing a fraud alert on your credit report can flag lenders that any application for credit should be given greater scrutiny. A security freeze is a stronger option, as it will prevent any lender from accessing your credit file. But be aware that you will need to remember to lift the freeze temporarily, if you need to seek credit, apply for a job or rent an apartment.

– Monitor your financial accounts by signing up for e-mail or text alerts, which can notify you quickly of any unusual activity, such as an unauthorized funds transfer or a change of address. (According to Javelin, changing the physical address of a bank account occurred in more than half of account takeover frauds, in which a criminal illegally gains access to your bank account).

Have you been notified of a data breach? What steps did you take to protect yourself?

Article source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/protecting-yourself-after-a-data-breach/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Bucks Blog: Financial Lessons for American Expatriates

April 12, 2013 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Paul Sullivan, in his Wealth Matters column this week, writes about the tax rules in the United States that can trip up Americans living abroad. The rules have become tougher as the United States tries to find secret overseas accounts. And the rules are also affecting more people as more Americans find job opportunities far from home.

The column offered several pieces of advice for American expatriates. One is not to buy a house in the United States with the goal of retiring there many years in the future. As happened to the client of one financial adviser Paul spoke to, by the time the client was ready to retire, he didn’t want to live in the house anymore.

A second point to remember has to do with Social Security contributions. Americans who work abroad for foreign companies rather than companies with American ties may not be required to contribute to Social Security, which can affect the benefits they are eligible for when they retire.

And as one longtime overseas worker pointed out to Paul, he quickly discovered that it was far more costly to live in the United States, and he had to rein in his spending accordingly.

Have you ever worked outside the United States? Please share with us any financial lessons you learned from your experience.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 12, 2013

An earlier version of this post referred imprecisely to the responsibility of Americans working abroad to pay into Social Security. While American employees of foreign companies generally are not required to pay such taxes, American employees of United States companies, or companies affiliated with them, who work abroad generally do pay such taxes. It is not the case that Americans who spend their entire career working abroad cannot contribute to Social Security.

Article source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/financial-lessons-for-american-expatriates/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Your Money Tagged With: american expatriates, overseas accounts, social security

House G.O.P. Looks to a Round 2 Obama Hopes to Avoid

January 2, 2013 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

“I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they’ve already racked up through the laws that they passed,” the president said, pausing to repeat himself. “We can’t not pay bills that we’ve already incurred.”

But it is not clear exactly how Mr. Obama can avoid engaging in just such a tug of war.

In the wake of the president’s victory on taxes over the New Year’s holiday, Republicans in Congress are betting that by refusing to unconditionally raise the $16.4 trillion debt ceiling, they can force Mr. Obama to the bargaining table on spending cuts and issues like reform of Medicare and Social Security.

That would inevitably reprise the bitter clash over the debt ceiling in the summer of 2011, when the government came close to shutting down before lawmakers and the president agreed to a $1.2 trillion package of spending cuts in exchange for Republican agreement to raise the debt ceiling by about the same amount.

And that is exactly what Republicans want.

The party’s caucus in the House will discuss its debt ceiling strategy at its retreat in Williamsburg, Va., in a couple of weeks, according to a top Republican aide, who said it was determined to insist again on spending cuts that equal the increase in the amount the country can borrow.

“The speaker told the president to his face that everything you want in life comes with a price. That doesn’t change here,” the Republican aide said. “I don’t think he has any choice.”

That strategy could risk a new round of criticism aimed at Republicans from a public weary of brinkmanship. The 2011 fight ended with a last-minute deal but led to a downgrade in the rating of the nation’s debt and a slump in the economic recovery.

But Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Speaker John A. Boehner, said Republicans had made it clear what they wanted in exchange for a willingness to allow borrowing to increase.

“If they want to get the debt limit raised, they are going to have to engage and accept that reality,” Mr. Buck said. “The president knows that.”

In fact, the White House has been on notice for months that Republicans view the debt ceiling as leverage in the next budget fight. Now, the question is what Mr. Obama and his advisers can do to sidestep that fight.

One possibility is to turn to business executives for support. Many top chief executives view the possibility of a debt ceiling crisis as a significant impediment to the nation’s economy just as it is beginning to grow again. Those executives might try to pressure Republican lawmakers not to use the country’s credit as a negotiating tool.

Mr. Obama might also take to the road again, using the power of his office to try to convince the public that another fight over the debt ceiling risks another economic crisis. Public polls after the last debt ceiling fight suggested that more people blamed Republicans for the threat of a default.

The president and his aides have signaled that they will try to educate the public by explaining that the increase in the borrowing limit is necessary to cover debts that the government has already incurred. In his statement on Tuesday night, Mr. Obama warned about what would happen if the country did not meet its obligations.

“If Congress refuses to give the United States government the ability to pay these bills on time, the consequences for the entire global economy would be catastrophic — far worse than the impact of a fiscal cliff,” Mr. Obama said.

In the coming days and weeks, Mr. Obama is likely to try to focus negotiations on the other looming issue: how to avoid deep across-the-board cuts to the nation’s military and domestic programs. The deal passed on Tuesday postpones those cuts for two months, but Mr. Obama and lawmakers in both parties are eager to avoid them.

Instead, the president wants a debate over spending cuts and tax changes that would remove loopholes and deductions for wealthy Americans.

That fight is coming. The question is whether the president can avoid conducting it in the middle of a nasty, drawn-out debate over the debt limit.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/us/politics/for-obama-no-clear-path-to-avoid-a-debt-ceiling-fight.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: bargaining table, social security, spokesman

Jobless Go Without, but Stay Hopeful, Poll Finds

October 27, 2011 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Still, despite enduring hardships and being even more pessimistic about the nation’s economy than the general public, unemployed Americans remained optimistic about eventually landing jobs. A little more than half of those polled said they were either very or somewhat confident they would find long-term employment in the next year, and a majority said they expected that when they did find permanent work, it would be at a similar or higher salary than they had received in the past.

But the poll found deep unease about unemployment benefits. At a moment when several states have decided to pay fewer weeks of benefits to save money, and President Obama has been urging Republicans in Congress to renew a program — due to lapse at the end of the year — that pays federal jobless benefits to the long-term unemployed, 7 in 10 of those receiving unemployment benefits said that they feared their benefits would run out before they could find new jobs.

While jobless benefits have been criticized as unaffordable by some Republicans, particularly at the state level, three-quarters of the people receiving them said that they got “a lot less” than they used to earn at their jobs, and two-thirds said that the benefits were not enough to pay for basics like housing and food.

“I was earning $50,000 a year, and now I get $200 a week,” said Jan Thomas, 62, an unemployed marketing executive from Sarasota, Fla., who has been laid off from two jobs in the last three years. Ms. Thomas said in a follow-up interview to the poll that she recently dropped her health insurance “just hoping all will be well” and that she would soon lose her unemployment benefits, leading her to think about applying early for Social Security. “And I’m giving up my apartment and moving in with my mom because my unemployment will be running out,” she said.

The toll that unemployment is taking on families is not just financial, according to the telephone poll, which surveyed 445 unemployed adults from Oct. 19 to Oct. 25 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus five percentage points. More than half of those polled said that they had experienced emotional or mental health problems like anxiety or depression because of their lack of work, and nearly half said that they had felt embarrassed or ashamed not to have jobs. More than a third said that they had had more conflicts or arguments with family and friends because of being jobless. The top reason people cited for not getting work: Too many applicants.

Threats of foreclosure or eviction were reported by a fifth of the unemployed, and one in eight said that they had moved in with relatives or friends. More than half said that they lacked health insurance. A fifth said that they had received food from a nonprofit organization. And in a sign that the nation’s current economic woes could reverberate for years, nearly two-thirds said they would probably not have enough money to live comfortably during retirement. More than half said that they had taken money out of savings or retirement accounts.

But the unemployed continue to believe in the American dream. Two-thirds of those surveyed said that they still believed it was possible to start out poor in this country, work hard and become rich — only a little lower than the three-quarters of all Americans who said that they believed that, according to a New York Times/CBS News nationwide poll that was conducted at the same time as the poll of the unemployed adults.

Robert Roberson, 52, a licensed plumber from Corpus Christi, Tex., who has been out of work for a year, said that he hoped to get work soon when a delayed project to build a prison breaks ground. “I actually think the job market will get better because I think the recession will have a break and they’ll go back to building housing,” he said.

Unemployed people are now less likely to blame former President George W. Bush for the nation’s high unemployment rate than they were two years ago in the last Times/CBS News poll of the unemployed. But few blame Mr. Obama. Eight percent of the unemployed in the new survey said that Mr. Bush was most to blame, down from 26 percent two years ago. Five percent said that Mr. Obama was most to blame, almost the same as the 3 percent who said so two years ago. Nearly a fifth said “politicians” were most to blame.

There are currently 14 million Americans unemployed, and more underemployed, and the unemployment rate remained stubbornly high at 9.1 percent last month. Fierce debates over how to spur the economy, and how far to go in taking care of unemployed people, are consuming Washington and state capitals.

One of the most contentious policy questions is how long the government should continue to pay unemployment benefits. The length and depth of the downturn led many states to deplete the trust funds they use to pay such benefits, forcing them to borrow billions of dollars from the federal government and prompting some states to raise taxes on businesses to continue paying benefits. This year half a dozen states decided that they would no longer pay the 26 weeks of state benefits that has long been standard.

The federal government has been picking up the tab to pay extended benefits that allow some long-term unemployed people to collect checks for up to 99 weeks in states with the worst unemployment problems. If that program is not renewed at the end of the year, 1.8 million people could lose benefits in January, according to the National Employment Law Project, which advocates renewing the program.

Seven in 10 of the unemployed said that the government should pay benefits for 99 weeks or more. While a slight majority of Americans said that getting unemployment benefits makes people less motivated to seek work, only 40 percent of unemployed people said that it did, with half saying that it had no effect.

Three-quarters of the unemployed said that they were qualified, or overqualified, for the jobs that they were seeking. Four in 10 said that they would consider moving elsewhere to get jobs, but only 15 percent said that they had applied for jobs elsewhere. More than a third said that they had taken classes or trained for new jobs while unemployed.

One was Bobby Austin, 25, from Valdosta, Ga., who lost his job as a truck driver two years ago and whose benefits will run out soon. “Now I’m back in school to study nursing,” he said, “and I’m confident I will find a job when I finish next year.”

Marina Stefan contributed reporting.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=a134a75847335bd6b7c75ac19dfc07e8

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: poll, salary, social security

Bucks: AARP’s New Social Security Calculator

July 12, 2011 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

With all the chatter about making potential changes to Social Security, many people are probably thinking that they should start collecting benefits as soon as they can.

But that would be unwise, at least for many people. And a new calculator from AARP attempts to illustrate why you should wait — if you can afford to, of course. Figuring out the optimal time to collect benefits is impossible because nobody can predict how long they’ll live. Most people follow the bird in the hand philosophy and begin collecting as soon as they’re eligible.

AARP’s calculator, however, shows what you lose by collecting before your full retirement age, or the point at which you’re eligible to receive your full benefits without penalty. And while it’s helpful to see what you stand to gain by waiting, waiting won’t necessarily make sense for everybody.

The calculator, which happens to be very user-friendly, will be helpful for married people who are on the cusp of retirement because it shows an easy strategy couples can use to maximize their benefits. And it will also help pre-retirees better visualize the complex rules around working while collecting benefits before their full retirement age. (If you earn money above a certain amount, at least a portion of your benefits may be withheld.)

But there are also many things that the calculator does not do, like take into account any outside assets like retirement savings or a pension. In a previous article, I found that some singles in certain situations might be better off taking their benefits sooner rather than later. If they waited too long, they would have consumed too much of their savings to offset the loss with higher Social Security payments later.

Widows, widowers and the disabled won’t find the tool particularly helpful because it does not calculate survivor or disability benefits. Serial divorcees will also be limited: You can only calculate benefits based on one your ex-spouses, and it doesn’t take into account if you’ve remarried. AARP said it might add some of these features in future versions of the calculator.

It doesn’t require much time to get started. After entering some basic demographic information, the hardest decision you’ll need to make is whether to visit the Social Security Web site (do it) to get an accurate projection of your Social Security benefits (You can also use the number on your paper statement that arrives in the mail). The AARP calculator is capable of making an estimate for you, but it could be off because it’s not factoring in any years you may have left the work force, or some other aberration.

I based my first calculation on a 62-year-old married woman (we’ll call her Betty) earning $60,000 a year. Her husband, also 62, earns $85,000. His and her monthly benefits were estimated to be $1,996 and $1,609, respectively.

After clicking the ‘When should I claim Social Security?’ button, you land on a page that shows how much more you would receive — on a monthly basis — for every year you wait. You also have the option to see how much that translates to over the course of your lifetime (based on how old you are now and the average life expectancy for the United States population). Betty could collect her full benefit of $1,609 at age 66, but would take a significant hair cut if she started collecting at age 62 ($1,126). If she waited until 70, she’d get $2,123.

But because Betty is married, she probably wants to factor her husband’s benefits into her decision. Once she clicks on the “Does it Matter if I’m Married?” button, she’s told that when her husband is 66, he should apply for Social Security and request to have his payments suspended (known as “file and suspend,” this allows his benefits to continue accruing). Then, she should apply for spousal benefits on her husband’s record, which provides about $998 a month. When he turns 70, he should resume his own benefits (about $2,634 a month). And then when she turns 70, she should apply for her own benefits (or $2,123 a month).

The calculator also has another page that allows you to enter your basic monthly expenses, like food, shelter, and health care, and use a little slider that will tell you what percentage of those costs will be covered depending on when you start collecting.

Finally, it also shows you what you can collect if you keep working. If you haven’t reached your full retirement age and are still working, earning money above a certain threshold will reduce your benefits (though your checks will increase once you hit your full retirement age to account for the time your benefits were withheld).

You can play around with the age you claim benefits and how much you expect to earn. So if Betty decides to claim benefits at 62, but still wants to continue working, it shows her that about $13,500 in benefits will be withheld until her full retirement age of 66.

The calculator is a helpful educational tool, but don’t confuse it for comprehensive planning. It’s not. It doesn’t factor in taxes, for instance. I’m going to test-drive some more complex tools later this week, so stay tuned.

Try out the calculator and let us know what you think and what improvements you’d like to see.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=1a34f5606a14f4ca8bb18b7d2df23aaf

Filed Under: Your Money Tagged With: optimal time, social security, widows

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