From the folks that brought you the credit score system in all it’s glory, here’s MedFICO! It’s a new business project underway with the goal of assessing patient’s ability to pay their medical bills. The system would gather patient’s bill payment history from hospitals around the country and then assign patients a score similar to a credit score. Critics are worried if the same problems with people getting erroneous information in their credit report and then having an insanely difficult time cleaning it up would also affect MedFICO. They also worry whether hospitals would use MedFICO to determine the level of care offered, like whether the person gets a hospital stay or not. FICO scores are now being used by some employers to screen out potential employees, would they use MedFICO to see who might take a bigger chunk out of the health benefits?
personal finance
Walmart's Debit Card Has Lots Of Hidden Fees
Great idea, tap into the “unbanked,” and then rip them off. Here’s an even better idea for potential Walmart Debit Card users: cash! No fees!
Create A Virtual Piggy Bank For "Spare Change" From Debit Card Transactions
Consumerism Commentary wants you to “put your savings in hyperdrive.” Funny, we thought that’s what we already did, which is why our savings raced light years away from our bank account. But Flexo, in his series of posts this week on how to save, uses a more grounded definition of “hyperdrive” and offers suggestions like opening a high yield savings account, saving your spare change (or the contemporary equivalent of spare change if you pay with a debit card), and automating your savings. Yes, these are simple suggestions, but that’s what makes them easy to remember and easy to implement.
Owner Still Has To Pay For Dead Cat's Banfield Health Plan
Sarah Harper was surprised to learn she would have to keep making payments on her cat’s “wellness plan” even after the cat was dead. She was told that she had signed a one-year contract and would have to honor it. Though the service sold by Banfield pet hospitals is packaged like and sounds like insurance, it’s not, it’s a payment plan. The media kit Banfield sends to reporters explicitly says “wellness plans are not insurance policies.” The contract does say that owners will still have to make payments even if the animal has passed away. However, brochures provided to consumers don’t say anything like that, instead saying things like it’s, “”the best preventive care your pet needs to maximize its life,” and that after you enroll, “your pet is on its way to a happier, healthier and longer life!” Catveat emptor.
11 Tips For Making Extra Money
Would you like to make some extra income in 2008? So would I. I’m on a quest to earn an additional $10,000 this year above and beyond the typical cost-of-living adjustment I expect from my job. And to get kick-started, I’ve listed 11 ways to earn extra money including tips on getting a higher salary, starting side businesses, and even doing simple things like maximizing investments and checking to see if you’re due any money from abandoned accounts. For one thing, consider turning your hobby into an extra income. This could be anything from starting your own website to monetizing your artistic penchant to launching your own blog to creating crafts to whatever.
It's Time To Call The Credit Card Company When…
If you want to consolidate balances, you can ask them to waive balance transfer fees…
"Major Retailer's" Data Breach Results In Wave Of Credit Card Fraud?
Anecdotal evidence suggests that a recently reported data breach by an undisclosed “major retailer” has resulted in a jump in consumers having their debit cards forcibly reissued, or calls from their bank to verify their recent purchase history. The problems seem to have started just around Christmas time and have continued into mid-January.
Thief Buys $812.28 In Shoes Using Personal Finance Columnist's Stolen Identity
A Washington Post personal finance columnist got her identity stolen and someone tried to use it to buy $812.18 worth of running shoes. Somehow, the thief had gotten access to the Nancy Trejos personal information and stolen her Bank of America debit card number. The crook placed an order online with the store and arranged for an in-store pickup. The clerk grew suspicious when the woman couldn’t produce the card used to place the order.
Tennessee May Soon Require Financial Literacy Classes For High School Students
The Tennessee State Board of Education is expected to pass a bill on January 25th that will make Tennesee the eighth state (after Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri, South Dakota, and Utah) to require that its high school students take a personal finance class before graduation.
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How to cancel dead parent’s credit cards. Remember that when closing down a deceased relative’s accounts, any outstanding balances are to paid by their estate, not their heirs. [Kiplinger]
QuickBooks' Latest Update Destroyed Mac Users' Desktops
Here’s one reason to use an online service to store financial data: no buggy updates to deal with.* Intuit’s December update for 2006 and 2007 versions of QuickBooks Pro on the Mac platform wiped the user’s Desktop folder and anything stored there. The company released a patch, but it didn’t work if you launched QuickBooks while connected to a wireless hotspot, oops. The latest patch, so far as we can tell, simply disables any further updates to the application—on January 3rd the company “began automatically feeding a patch to Mac QuickBooks users that permanently switches off the program’s upgrade mechanism to prevent a repetition of a data disaster.” In the meantime, since they can’t offer a way to fix the deleted Desktop folders, they’re offering rebates to users who buy a copy of the data recovery program Data Rescue II.
How To Talk To Your Teen About Investing
In the list of most popular regrets, the “if only my parents had taught me that” one usually ranks pretty high, which is why we’re glad to have found this post titled “How to talk to your teenager about personal finance.”
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How many people resolved to be better with money in ’08? Here’s eight reasons to get your debt under control this year. [Bankrate]
How To Know The Value of Your Coins
Ever wonder if that 1897 silver dollar Uncle Joe gave you was worth anything? Who knows, maybe that trip to Hawaii you’ve been yearning for is simply sitting in an old box doing nothing (or perhaps it would pay off the debt you racked up this holiday.) How are you supposed to know if a coin has any worth above face value? Money blog Consumerism Commentary tells us that four simple factors determine the value of a coin including:
Finance Website Buxfer Lets You Store Sensitive Data On Your Own Computer
With its new Google Gears functionality, Buxfer might finally be the answer for people who want the bells and whistles of an online personal finance website (hello Mint!)—charts, pretty colors, and general infoporn goodness—without having to blindly trust an unknown company with sensitive data such as bank account or credit card numbers (goodbye Mint!). The service uses Google Gears to store account login information and credentials on your own computer, then syncs the data collected with the Buxfer servers, writes VentureBeat.
