Guides

How to Find Every Subscription You Forgot You Were Paying For
You are probably paying for something right now that you have entirely forgotten about. Not one thing. Usually several. A trial that converted. A service used twice in 2022. A second cloud storage plan running alongside the first because two "storage full" prompts landed years apart. Here is the twenty-minute version of finding all of them. Why they are so hard to see Three reasons, and all three are design decisions rather than accidents. The billing name is not the product name. You will not find "that meditation app" on... Read more...
How to Freeze Your Credit at All Three Bureaus (Free, About 30 Minutes)
A credit freeze stops a criminal opening new accounts in your name. It is free, it is a legal right in all fifty states, and it is the single most effective thing most people can do about identity theft. It also does not affect your credit score, your existing cards, or anything you already have. That is worth saying first, because it is the objection that stops most people. Do all three, or you have done nothing There are three major credit bureaus. A lender might check any one of... Read more...
The Grandparent Scam: What It Actually Sounds Like, and the Six Words That Stop It
The phone rings early in the morning or late in the evening, when people are least sharp and most likely to be alone. A young voice, upset, slightly muffled: "Grandma?" And here is the part that does the real work: your mother supplies the name herself. "Michael? Is that you?" "Yeah. Grandma, I'm in trouble. Please don't be mad." The caller did not know Michael existed. She just told them. From that moment the caller is Michael, and everything after it is built on a foundation she laid herself, which... Read more...