Friday, November 2, 2012

Needing to Roll Over Your 401k? Get Tips on How to Manage Your Retirement Assets.

New Content Added on DebtConsolidationLoan.com:
We recently published some new content to our personal finance help area at debtconsolidationloan.com. Our new section, devoted to 401k rollovers, but is also applicable to anyone that currently participates in one, is the result of our collaboration with an outside expert. Roy Bodinus is a registered investment advisor and one of the founding partners at CBG & Company, Inc., an Indianapolis-based company that specializes in financial planning for dentists in various markets throughout the United States. During his career in investment management, he has managed hundreds of millions in assets on behalf of his clients, and we are pleased to have him as a featured partner on our personal financial content development team.

[A group of frequently asked questions with answers can be found on the new section's main page.]


A Few of the 401k Rollover Subsections:
Investment Management Fees - Review an example of an ideal investment management fee structure and compare it with what you currently have in place for your retirement savings. In case you were wondering about what all of those fees are and what they are paid for, you can also review a fairly detailed descriptions of these fees.

Glossary of Related Investing Terms - Do you want to know the definition of a hedge fund? Or, have you heard about Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) and wanted to know what effect it has on your investment strategy? Check out this page to get basic information on these terms, as well as other commonly used words that you may hear being tossed around by individuals that provide investment services to consumers.

Options for Rolling Over a 401k - Do you know what your options for rolling over your 401k are? Should you roll it into the plan of your new employer, cash it out, or roll it over into a new IRA? Review this information, so that you can make the best decision, that not only takes into account your current needs, but your retirement goals, as well.

In case any of the information, that is provided, is unclear and you still have questions, please feel free to interact with us and ask for help or more information on our social media accounts at: Google+, Twitter or Facebook. We love to receive your feedback!

Sunday, June 3, 2012

The Apprentice becomes the Master

I enjoy teaching my children how to think critically and about good ways to solve the complex problems we will face in life. There are times when it takes awhile for a lesson to sink in, and then there are the times when they are already way ahead of me and manage to throw me for a loop in return. This would be one of those times.
The other day, I helped guide our 9 year old son through a particularly difficult issue he was presented with. Together, we came up with a set of potential solutions, and then we worked through them one by one until he made what he thought was his best choice.
Me: "Do you know what method of problem solving we just employed?"
Son: "Yeah, we made aluminum."
Me: "Huh? What are you talking about? Were you even paying attention?"
Son: "Process of alumination".
Well played son. Well played. Perhaps it was best that he walked off. He knew the answer and was able to stump me at the same time. There is obviously nothing more I can teach him at this point.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Going into Debt or Paying it Off - It All Adds Up

This is a piece I recently wrote for my section on ArticlesBase. Good personal financial decisions owe the bulk of their make-up to plain old common sense, and this posting is no different. The most common slip-ups we make (not just with our finances) are due to issues that are often right under our noses.

Author: Jonathan Kolanowski

Other than a true lack of money, people put off paying down their credit card debt for one of two basic reasons.

  • They get discouraged. "It will never be paid off, so why should I try?" -- Have you made an effort? Do you have an actual budget?
  • They think they don't have the money. "I don't have any money to pay it down. I have to spend every dime I make." -- Are you sure about that?

First of all, the most important thing to remember is that every little bit helps. The reverse applies to how many of us put ourselves into debt in the first place. Every little bit hurts. Too often, it is the small items that we overlook when managing our money. Those small items can add up very quickly. A few lifestyle changes might go a long way towards helping to fill some holes in your budget. Stop and take a minute to consider how much you actually spend on bad habits or small impulse items. Do you really need to use debt consolidation loans, credit counseling and other forms of debt relief, or do you simply need to be better with how you spend and manage your money? In some cases, the latter may actually be true.

Let's pick off an easy one. Do you enjoy a morning coffee? I'm not a coffee drinker, so for me, it was caffeinated pop (still applies). Even though it is better move for your cash flow (and in my case, my health), you don't have to give it up entirely in order to give your budget a shot in the arm. What is important, however, is for you to take a look at how and where you purchase your coffee. Do you stop by the gas station convenience store or "trendy" coffee shop on the way to work, or do you shop at your supermarket, buy in a quantity that will save you money and brew it yourself? That daily $3 or more for your coffee fix can add up to $1,000 or more per year. [My wife keeps excellent records. My Mountain Dew addiction cost me $978.20 in the 12 months leading up to the point I quit!] Don't forget to figure in what is often overlooked, the tax. I'm not referring to the sales tax you pay when you buy your drink, but the income tax that you already paid. Go ahead and tack on a couple hundred dollars more (depending upon your tax bracket). Do you lean on coffee to keep going in the afternoon? Uh-oh! Two times a day is really going to hurt.

OK, so you may not be a coffee drinker. Or, maybe you just aren't convinced that you have some fat that can be trimmed from your budget. Try this little experiment, and use it as a visual aid.

  1. Use a personal accounting software program like Quicken. If you don't have one (and, you should), a great place to get trial versions of software is on DownLoad.com.
  2. Start by adding categories for your common, necessary expenses. Examples, such as: loan and credit card payments, housing expenses, groceries, gas, utilities, etc.
  3. Next, insert one category for the non-essentials you spend money on. Add them all in there: your coffee, trips to the pop machine, alcohol, fast food, snacks and cigarettes.
  4. Continue with your daily routine as normal, but record all of your purchases for the entire month.
  5. At the end of the month, have your software program create a pie chart of the money you have spent.

Are you surprised by the result? It may be a rude awakening for you to see the size of the piece that is going to items that aren't really necessary. Or, at least, what is going to ones that could have been bought in a much less expensive manner. At this point, you should feel a question nagging at you. "Do I really not have the money to pay down my debt?" It is a little harder to ignore the truth when it is staring you in the face. What about those of us that are just plain discouraged? Well, it all comes down to looking at the situation as a set of alternatives. You can either start to climb out of debt, or sink deeper in. What do I mean? Just going with our coffee expense, carrying a $1,000 credit card balance could very easily cost over $200 a year. Tack that on to what you already owe and slide a little bit deeper in debt, or make some positive changes and start to get control of your finances.

Paying down debt becomes easier once you put it into perspective. Never try to bite off more than you can chew. Do what you can. Cut back on your stress by keeping your spending habits in check. Or, better yet, skip the bad habits altogether. Your wallet will thank you!

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/personal-finance-articles/going-into-debt-or-paying-it-off-it-all-adds-up-5833694.html

About the Author

Writes on various personal finance subjects and offers help and suggestions for consumers on how to shop for financial services online, such as debt consolidation and other forms of debt help. In addition, authors content on home financing and responsible budgeting.

Monday, January 30, 2012

Tips for Internet Marketing using Facebook

Setting up Custom Usernames and Releasing Select Profile Information

If you're on Facebook for business, as well as for personal use, make sure you are getting the most of their service. I was surprised to find out how many people I knew had not already set up their own personal Facebook username. In an extremely competitive landscape, this is simply another way of getting your name out there. It can also serve as a very basic method of protecting your name, because you are assisting in the control of what shows up when you are searched for online. Because of Facebook's popularity, it should show up on the first page of results on Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. (As long as you don't have a common name or celebrity status). If, after a week or so, it isn't showing up in searches, just link to your custom URL from another of your visible online profiles, and that should take care of it.

Setting custom personal Facebook urls.

Setting a username:
1. From your wall, click on the down arrow next to "Home".
2. Click on "Account Settings" from the drop-down menu.
3. Set your username.

If you only wanted a custom username, you can stop here. However, if you want to do a little Internet marketing, and add your profile to Facebook's search and outside search engines, keep going.

What information should be shared?
Regardless of whether you are marketing online (or not), you should check your profile's settings to make sure they are set up the way that you want them.
1. From your wall, click on the "Edit Profile" button in the upper right-hand menu.
2. In the left hand column, notice the list of sections, starting with: "Basic Information", "Profile Picture", etc.
3. Go through every item in the list. Choose the desired privacy setting for each of the sub-types of information, and then move on to the next section.

Check to see how your information displays to others WITHIN FACEBOOK.
1. From your wall, click on the "View As..." button in the upper right-hand menu. In the "This is how your profile looks to you..." box, click on the "public" text link.
2. This is how your profile looks to the public in Facebook. To set how it looks to the outside world and search engines, continue reading.

Check to see how your information displays to others ON THE INTERNET.
1. Log out.
2. Type in: www.facebook.com/[insert your username]
As an example, here is mine: http://www.facebook.com/jonathankolanowski

Different view than expected?
Per Facebook, The information marked as public in your profile MAY show up on your profile page to those that are not logged in (search engines, individuals, etc.) In my case, not everything marked as public is able to be viewed. Perhaps they are using it as bait to get people to sign up, but I find this a little misleading as you are not truly in control of what is made publicly available. I have sent in a support message about it, and will update this post if I receive a reply.

Page not accessible from a web browser when logged out?
If you are like me, you may have to change one more setting in order to make this page publicly available.
1. Log in again.
2. Click on the down arrow.
3. Choose "privacy settings" from the drop-down menu.
4. In the list of displayed options, click on "Edit Settings" in row labeled "Apps & Websites".
5. In the list of displayed options, click on "Edit Settings" button in the row labeled "Personal search".
6. Check the box next to "Enable public search".

From here, you can get a preview of how the page will look to search engines and the public when not logged in. If you do not see all of the information you marked as public, you may want to follow up with an email to support as I did. Perhaps, if enough people want to be able to control what truly goes public, Facebook may change the way that it is currently being done.

Additional Reference:

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Digging into the Loan Spam on Google Places

Yesterday, I suggested that Google Places had been hacked for searches on "personal loans" and related terminology across the United States. If you haven't read my first post, I recommend doing so in order to get the complete picture. After I initially wrote this up, I got curious and decided to get in my car and go find these local listings. I wanted to make sure that they were, in fact:
1) legitimate, and;
2) had been hacked and overwritten.

As it turns out, I was only half right if you define a hack as strictly the unauthorized access to password-protected accounts. From what I can tell, that has not happened here.

1) Hack is a pretty vague term and I probably should have avoided using it. Even though I originally thought there was a possibility accounts may have been compromised, I view a hack as any attempt to look for vulnerabilities in a system and then use that system for purposes other than it was intended. If you have a similar viewpoint, it was most certainly hacked, but sorry for any confusion this caused.

2) The Google Places pages in question were built off of legitimate businesses, but not off of legitimate listings. If you have already verified your listing, there is probably no need to check that it is accurate. Rather, this issue concerns established businesses that have never set up a Google Places page, and may not have even realized that they already had one.

Essentially, what we are looking at here is a simple form of business identity / credential theft.

Annabelle's:
We are located in Fishers, so I stopped by Annabelle's Consignment (mentioned in my last post) near our office. It has gone out of business. Not much help.

qiLoans... Fishers Eye Care?
I then tried to find: qiLoans Inc at 11565 Cumberland Road #300 Fishers, IN 46037. There is a small one story office complex in this location (intersection of 116th and Cumberland Rd) with four separate address numbers, but unfortunately 11565 is not among them. There is, however, a 11579 that has a suite 300. That office is for Fishers Eye Care. The Google Places listing for qiLoans has one of its listed categories as Optometrist, so that seemed to be a little too coincidental. I tried to pull up the website for Fishers Eye Care to see if the telephone numbers matched, but their site was timing out. I discovered later, that this is one of the ways that I got tricked into thinking that this was an intrusion into Google. The number for the listing was 317-429-1134, and 317 is the area code for this area. It appeared legitimate, but there were no other review sites tied into this page in order to determine if this had been the listing of Fishers Eye Care. So, I moved on to the next one, and that is where the pieces started to come together.

The Scam:
Previously unverified business listings (the opposite of how it first appeared) were falsely verified and then modified. This seems to be fairly straightforward, but the method of implementation, scope of how much was inserted into Google Places and the efforts taken to conceal this operation were actually pretty sophisticated.

How it Worked:
I now know how this worked, but as to how exactly it was done, that is over my head, and I would only be able to guess. I will leave that one for someone that is much more knowledgeable about such things.
If I remember correctly, Google originally populated its local listings, just like Yahoo and other sites, with basic business data from third-party sources in order to kick-start things. Companies could go in and claim their listing and improve it. However, it appears that Google went a step further than just placing the listings and collecting reviews from its own users. Without ownership being verified, ratings from other services were also being picked up and inserted into these basic listings. Even though the owner had not yet claimed the page, these ratings gave the listing the appearance of legitimacy. My guess is that in most cases, as I discovered yesterday, the owners didn't even know that they had a page to claim.

guLoans Inc - Victim: Gregory Hancock Dance Theatre


To recreate what I am discussing here:

1) Set your location to - Carmel, IN.
2) Do a search for - personal loans.
When I did the screenshots and started writing this last night, there were actually two listings for guLoans Inc at the same address. (I haven't figured out how this happened yet.) Unlike qiLoans, the area code is for Gainesville, Florida. Why this, along with a complete name change didn't set off some red flags at Google, is beyond me.
[UPDATE: While posting this, I just checked this listing and it looks as if Google is in the process of updating it to the correct owner. The Place page is now mostly correct, but it still shows up as guLoans in Carmel when searching for "personal loans." Even if it is gone when you follow up, no worries, there are plenty of other examples still in place. And, I view this as a validation by Google that these listings were hijacked... and not just inserted by a spammer.]

----


1) If you simply click on the guLoans link, instead of the Place page, you get redirected through carmel-in.igpaydayadvance.info domain to Ameriadvance.com. This is the scammer's source of money, and as I pointed out yesterday, it is probably an affiliate program relationship.
2) If you go to the Place page, this is where it becomes a little clearer of how this was working.

----

1) The listing is verified. I am going to speculate that this probably gives the listing more juice in Google's ranking of these results. The problem is, who actually verified this listing? Was it the owner? In a word... No.
2) When I got to 335 Gradle Dr (just like qiLoans) the business that appeared to be attached to the Google Places page was not located there. It was once again, just slightly off and located at 329 Gradle Dr.
3) Why was the address changed, and why was it such a small change? I think the address was changed in order to conceal the listing. As anyone with a business on the Internet knows, your listings may bring you business, but they also bring a lot of solicitations your way. Well, if you owned a dance school and started getting mail for guLoans, you might do a search and find it with a listing at your address, and then ask that it be removed. The scammer did not want this to happen, so the address was changed in order to conceal the listing from the owner. --- Wrong name. Wrong address. Return to sender. --- Even if you stumbled across this listing, you wouldn't give it a second look. The small change was probably for the benefit of dealing with Google. Typos occur frequently, and because the address is on the same street, it was made to look like a minor correction.
4) As mentioned yesterday, categories were inserted to get this listing to show up in loans-related searches.
5) This is where it first became apparent that this listing wasn't simply inserted, but hijacked. This particular listing was accumulating reviews from cityvoter.com. If you click on the picture or the reviews link, you get a ratings page for Gregory Hancock Dance Theatre. I went into the dance school to see if they were even aware that they had a Google Places listing. They told me that they did not have one. Then, I showed them what I had found. They were familiar with the picture, but their response was, "That is not from our website. That is an old picture."

----


This is perhaps not as good as some of the other examples I found, like Yelp or Google's own ratings showing up in the general search results under a business name. However, it still works towards legitimizing a listing, when in actuality, it has been hijacked from the true business owner that never even realized that it existed.
----



Finally, I went back and searched for - dance school, and there is our listing. However, it simply looks like an out of place listing and most people will simply pass it over without notifying Google that it is spam. This is why it was so important for the scammer to overwrite the listings from multiple categories. The more difficult to piece this all together, the longer amount of time that this scam will remain in place.
Mistakes:
I see three mistakes made here that might have allowed this to go on for a longer period of time unnoticed.
1) As with the example in Fishers, he should have used the same area code as each listing (unlike what was done in Carmel) in order to go undetected at Google, but also to possibly fool anyone manually viewing the Place page. I called the 317 number in Fishers and it turned out to be a fake. This still would have been uncovered, just not as quickly.
2) In Carmel, there actually is another company located at 335 Gradle Dr. This was just dumb luck I guess, so mail would have eventually found its way there for guLoans. Anyone that can automate an operation of this size should have been able to program in a method of verifying that the addresses used did not exist.
3) In some areas, such as with Carmel, this scam was so successful that a bunch of listings all come up at once on personal loan searches. Another key to getting away with a scam like this is to go unnoticed by those that know how the system works.
Suggestion to Business Owners:
Have you lost potential business because of this? It is possible. If you own an established business, but have never set up or verified a Place page, do a search in Google with the search settings set to your community. If you cannot find your business in the Google Places listings, you may never have been added, or your business may have been affected by this scam. Repeat the search using popular terminology related to the products or services that you offer and look for listings near your location. If you find a listing that may have been yours (is attached to reviews for your business), contact Google.

Technorati Verification Code: VZ52UJ7CB732

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Google Places Has been Hacked by a Loan Spammer

Business Owners and Managers, Check Your Listings!


We're a marketing firm that mainly does financial authoring and publishing. We're small, always have been, and we're OK with the fact that most people don't know who we are, even though we have been around for ten years (and in the industry since the beginning). We don't go looking for chaos. It is the Internet. We trip over it every day!

Earlier this evening, I was checking in on Google's Webmaster Tools to see how quickly we were recovering after nearly getting link-spammed out of existence by a self-proclaimed "SEO expert." He thought it might be a good idea to link to our homepage ~12,500 times, for the same irrelevant phrase, presumably, in order to raise his own ranking. It was evidently a good idea, because it sabotaged us.

He has since removed them, but unfortunately, his links to us have not been delisted from Google yet. Nonetheless, Webmaster Tools still had a nice surprise in store for me. We supposedly now had a first-page ranking for the phrase "personal loans", which was great news. So, I did a search to confirm. Unfortunately, what I found was this:
Example of a Google general search result for "personal loans".
Location setting of: Carmel, Indiana.

As it turns out, an individual in Moscow (a simple whois on the domains below reveals the perpetrator) has figured out how to hack Google Places. Occasionally, you'll read about someone getting their account hacked by a competitor, but this is different. It is considerably more than that. It is a widespread hack, that spans across the United States, not just of a few individuals that were loose with their passwords. This has affected verified listings. Something big has happened here, and I haven't been able to find anything released from Google, or written about it by others in our industry. If someone has already covered this, let me apologize up front. I'm not trying to step on any toes. The Internet is where I make my living, and it is how I provide for my family, so I tend to be a little protective of it. The scam artists need to be called out by our own, or this nonsense with SOPA is only going to be the beginning.

I am on Google+, and included +Matt Cutts on my post, but have not heard anything back yet. I have him in my circles, but he is not in mine. I'm not completely sure of how that network works yet, so I'll just have to wait and see if he weighs in on this. Also, he just posted that he is in India, so he may be a bit busy. If you have connections at Google, please feel free to pass this on, because it needs to be addressed.

Good News: This issue is constrained to just "personal loans" and "payday loans", as far as I can tell so far. There may be other terminology affected, but I wouldn't know where to begin. If you find more issues, please let me know.

Bad News: These may be the only search results affected, but not only financial services pages are being attacked. Ordinary pages are being hijacked, as well. A small consignment shop down the road from our office, had their title, categories and url modified. I have seen other examples, where the phone number was modified, too. The listing below is for a restaurant in Chicago.
Robinson's Ribs
Who Else is Benefitting from This? The links all redirect back to one address, which I am going to assume (without having time to look into it further right now) is an affiliate landing page. The company is: AmeriAdvance. This url is: https://www.ameriadvance .com/?cid=28122 (I added a space before the domain extension in order to keep this from becoming a link in syndication).
You can do these searches in almost any major city and find this hack in play. Here are the cities I did searches in and confirmed the presence of this problem.
  • Indianapolis, IN
  • Carmel, IN
  • Fishers, IN
  • Dayton, OH
  • Boston, MA
  • Washington DC
  • Pittsburgh, PA
  • Palo Alto, CA
  • Santa Clara, CA
  • Sunnyvale, CA
  • Anchorage, AK
  • Honolulu, HI
  • Tampa, Fl
  • Mountain View, CA
These are the domains (identified so far) that are being used to redirect out the Google Places traffic. If you find more, please post them here.
  • f2loans .info
  • igloanspayday .info
  • igpayday .info
  • igpaydayadvance .info
  • jmfinance .info
  • jmloans .info
  • jmpaydayloans .info
  • k3loans .info
  • moneyadvance .info
  • pay-advance .info
  • pay-day-cash-loans .info
  • payday-loan-1hr .info
  • rjloans .info