Personal Finance

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, about 17.6 million persons, or about 7 percent of U.S. residents age 16 or older, were victims of identity theft. In fact, two thirds of the victims experienced a direct financial loss, while 14% of which lost $1,000 or more. But there is an easy and quick way to help protect your identity for free. By law, each year you are entitled to see your own credit report from the three major credit bureaus. The only requirement is you have to ask for it. So make sure to request your annual reports for free at www.annualcreditreport.com. With the report in hand, you can check for any suspicions. Forbes personal finance contributor Laura Shin advises, “if you believe you’ve been a victim of identity theft, file reports with the Federal Trade Commission and your local police, close the affected accounts and follow the steps on IdentityTheft.gov. Keep records of all your correspondence until the matter is fully resolved.” Alternatively, you can check your free credit score and free report online at CreditKarma and can dispute directly from its site. (forbes.com)

Health Savings Account (HSA) is the best saving vehicle for health-related spending with triple-play tax benefits: Save money on a pre-tax basis, earn interest on the funds, and withdraw the money tax-free. To take advantage of HSA you have to understand more about it.

Forbes contributor Nancy Anderson shows you how best to withdraw funds from HSA account for medical expenses. There are two main ways to withdraw:

1. Using HSA debit card that comes with your account
2. Paying out of pocket then get reimbursement back from HSA account

Make sure you save all your receipts for tax report later on. The main advantage of a Health Savings Account is tax savings, and if you have the savings capacity and want to max out the tax savings, you want to fund the HSA to the max. For 2016, the annual limit is $3,350 for individual coverage and $6,750 for family coverage.

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According to Diana Clement, having a manageable student loan is the first step to future happiness. She advises students 10 good ways to leave university with below average debt. First, borrow wisely and spend less. Beware of the banks and be picky with credit cards. Get a job and earn more than the minimum wage. Most importantly, make a budget. “A lot of your financial success comes back to what’s percolating around your head. People who think positively — see the cup as half full — get ahead in their career and financial life.”

Going out to eat with friends who have higher income than you or have a bigger appetite that order steak with extra glasses of wine, how do you split the bill? Should everyone just split it evenly? If you’re being cost conscious, Equipay might has an solution as the new app helps you split up the dinner bill with some adjustments for race and gender income inequalities. For instance, when using the app, women would only pay 78 cents for every $1 men pay of the bill. Other apps that help to split the bill include Foodivide, Splitwise and Venmo. Pleasing others is what leads to subsidizing your friends’ drinks and dessert which then leads to resentment, so don’t be afraid to stick up for yourself after ordering the cheapest item on the menu. (kshb.com)

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, a typical American family spends annually $3,971 on groceries, $2,468 on gas, and $2,787 on food away from home. Using credit cards that give back 3% cash back on gas, 6% cash back on groceries and 2% on everything else, you can easily save an extra $1,094.86 a year. Personally, I also use PenFed Visa to get 5% cash back on gas and Citi Double Cash to get 2% cashback on everything else. As Jason Steele said: “If you’re already spending this money on everyday purchases, there’s no reason not to save an extra thousand dollars a year.” (wisebread.com)

Julie Shea on The Spectator  warns consumers to beware of free advice from banks and Wall Street as they are there to purely make profit. “When we are in these warm, welcoming banks we forget the mammoth towers on Bay Street housing these corporations that make hundreds of millions in profits and pay their CEOs tens of millions of dollars. Profit is their bottom line. When advisers are compensated to sell and not paid a fee to provide advice, people can sometimes be sold things that don’t necessarily fit into their overall plan or that they don’t even understand… The moral of this story is that the compensation structure of our financial services industry, which pays advisers to sell and not to give advice, creates an unavoidable bias. Consumers need to take time to educate themselves and get second opinions so they can determine whether the free advice that they are receiving is worth the price they are paying.” (thespec.com)

As outstanding student loan debt in the United States rose to $1.3 trillion and the class of 2015 was the most indebted ever with the average of over $35,000 for 70% of graduates, free college degrees in Europe become an option for many families. Katie Lobosco writes on CNN Money: “There are at least 44 schools across Europe where Americans can earn their bachelor’s degree for free, according to Jennifer Viemont, the founder of an advising service called Beyond The States. All public colleges in Germany, Iceland, Norway and Finland are free for residents and international students. And some private schools in the European Union don’t charge for tuition either. Many are going out of their way to attract foreigners by offering programs taught entirely in English. When they do charge for tuition, the bill is paltry compared to the U.S. The average cost of tuition in U.S. is currently $9,410 at public colleges and $32,405 at private colleges, while a majority of programs in Europe charge less than $2,225 a year.” (cnn.com)