The Kevin Trudeau Show: 6-23-12

Today, Kevin explains how the media is only there to distract you from the real issues. Plus, friend of the show, Fred Van Liew, stops by to give you the facts behind electromagnetic chaos and how it is virtually killing you and your children.

Self Help:
Diversify Your Income
Change The Way You Think

Media:
TV Tells Kids Fame Is Most Important Thing In Life

Conspiracy:
Whistleblower Found Dead!

Everything Kevin:
Become An Insider!
Stand with KT!
Kevin is on YouTube!
Sign Up For Kevin’s FREE Podcast
Follow Kevin on Twitter
Become A Fan of Kevin on Facebook
Kevin’s Film Club
Kevin’s Book Club

Take Trudeau on the Go! Click here to download this show to your iPod, mp3 player, or PC through iTunes!

Click below to watch the Kevin Trudeau Show!

8 Ways To Challenge Yourself For More Fulfillment

March 20, 2012

Activist Post

By Jeff Vervier

“Life is tough. We all know this. But to keep it interesting and fulfilling, you should think of challenging yourself and trying new things. It’s way too easy to get in a rut – we’ve all been there.” –KTRN

We live in a modern world with modern conveniences. Modern challenges to our everyday lives consists of ensuring our iPhone has been updated to the latest operating system or trying to find the cheapest gas in town without driving too far for the savings to be pointless. Our desire to streamline and simplify everything has left little challenge to our daily lives and allows many of us to go on ‘auto-pilot’. For some this may be fine and dandy, but for those who feel the word “monotony” is a noun from Hades, it is not “fine” or “dandy”!

Does the word and its adjective brother (monotonous) sound like long fingernails on a school chalkboard to you when it comes out of someone’s mouth or when read? To get out of this awful state we need to constantly give ourselves something to work toward. Challenges allow us to break the monotony (or painful noise) of daily life. To me, the definition for the word challenge is: an act that pushes you out of your comfort zone and forces you to change your perspective. Without a proper challenge to yourself on a daily basis, how will you truly know what you are capable of?

Many generations prior to ours would have scoffed at our daily to-do lists; get coffee, drive Johnny to school, and go sit in front of a computer screen all day. How about crossing the Atlantic Ocean for a month to try and get a job in which you worked 14 hours of hard labor for the equivalent of a few dollars an hour? I can hear them shouting if they were here. My grandfather, just as many grandfathers walked to school uphill both ways! In retrospect it may not have been that extreme and in truth not possible, but we all get the point. It was rough.

Click here for the full report.

Zappos Says Hackers Accessed 24 Million Customers’ Account Details

January 17, 2012

Forbes

By Andy Greenberg

“Think about how many companies have your Credit Card numbers or banking account information.  This could happen to any of us.”  –KTRN

Twenty-four million Zappos customers are getting an unpleasant Sunday-evening surprise.

The Amazon-owned e-commerce firm has revealed that it was the target of a cyber attack that gained access to its internal network, including the accounts of 24 million of its users. Though the company says that no complete credit card numbers were revealed in the breach, the intruders may have accessed customers’ names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, addresses, the last four digits of their credit card numbers, and encrypted passwords. Zappos says it’s taken the precaution of resetting the passwords of all its customers and directing them to set a new password upon visiting the site.

“We were recently the victim of a cyber attack by a criminal who gained access to parts of our internal network and systems through one of our servers in Kentucky,” chief executive Tony Hsieh wrote to Zappos employees in an email posted to the site, declining to offer more information about the breach. ”We are cooperating with law enforcement to undergo an exhaustive investigation.”

Click here for the full report.

Credit Card Firms: They Don’t Just Steal From Cardholders

January 12, 2012

Rolling Stone

By Matt Taibbi

“Get those credit cards paid off.  They are robbing you blindly.  Never pay the minimum payment.  That is what they want you to do.”  –KTRN

Great story out this morning by Bloomberg reporter Thom Weidlich, detailing yet another devious and dirty scheme in the consumer credit industry.

The story outlines the misfortunes of a successful Park City, Utah restaurant called Cisero’s that is best known for serving the movie stars and film glitterati attending the nearby Sundance film festival. The restaurant is engaged in a legal battle with its bank, but the larger struggle is between the restaurant and major credit cards like Visa and MasterCard.

It’s a complex tale, but the gist of it is that the credit-card companies invoked arcane provisions of operating contracts with the merchant, and unilaterally “fined” the restaurant for enormous sums of money without proving any of the charges. Some of that money was actually debited from the merchants’ account before they managed to close it.

When a restaurant opens for business, it signs service contracts with middleman firms that allow them to accept charges from Visa and MasterCards. These middleman firms process the charges on behalf of the issuing cards, and also debit the accounts of merchants for things like debit fees.

The problem is that when merchants like these restaurant owners in Utah sign their service contracts, they also have to agree to a series of draconian security rules, under which they are automatically liable to the card companies if the card companies suspect fraud or lax security procedures.

In the case of the Utah restaurant, Visa and Mastercard both claimed that the restaurant allowed charges from fraudulently used cards, and also violated security rules by keeping the data for too many customer accounts on their company computer.

Click here for the full report.

Bank Of America Charges Man $39.23 On A $0 Balance

November 8, 2011

The Consumerist

By Ben Popken

Bank of America charged Roger $39.23 in interest on his credit card, even though he had a zero balance. How could that be?

Chicago Tribune reports that when Roger asked Bank of America for an explanation, he got one. But it didn’t make sense. He had run up a $5,734.13 balance, got $1,450 in credit from two of the merchants, and paid off the remaining balance. So how can you get charged interest where there’s nothing due on the account?

Bank of America told Roger that those credits “are not considered payments,” therefore, “the interest charges were applied correctly.” He contacted a 2nd Bank of America rep to verify, and got the same response.

When Chicago Tribunes “Problem Solver” columnist Jon Yates stepped in, the bank changed their tune. They agreed to waive the fees as a “courtesy” but said the interest charges were valid. They claimed the interest was from a $600 balance Roger had carried. Roger says that doesn’t make sense either because he carried that balance during a 0% promotional interest rate period.

“They never gave me a real good explanation,” Roger told the Chicago Tribune. “I’m not sure that they understand it.”

Word to the wise, if you got a large amount of credit back on your Bank of America credit card, better check your next statement to make sure you they’re not erroneously charging you interest.

Click here for the full report.

Student Loans Outstanding Will Exceed $1 Trillion This Year

October 19, 2011

USA Today

By: Dennis Cauchon

Students and workers seeking retraining are borrowing extraordinary amounts of money through federal loan programs, potentially putting a huge burden on the backs of young people looking for jobs and trying to start careers.

The amount of student loans taken out last year crossed the $100 billion mark for the first time and total loans outstanding will exceed $1 trillion for the first time this year. Americans now owe more on student loans than on credit cards, reports the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Students are borrowing twice what they did a decade ago after adjusting for inflation, the College Board reports. Total outstanding debt has doubled in the past five years — a sharp contrast to consumers reducing what’s owed on home loans and credit cards.

Taxpayers and other lenders have little risk of losing money on the loans, unlike mortgages made during the real estate bubble. Congress has given the lenders, the government included, broad collection powers, far greater than those of mortgage or credit card lenders. The debt can’t be shed in bankruptcy.

The credit risk falls on young people who will start adult life deeper in debt, a burden that could place a drag on the economy in the future.

“Students who borrow too much end up delaying life-cycle events such as buying a car, buying a home, getting married (and) having children,” says Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org.

“It’s going to create a generation of wage slavery,” says Nick Pardini, a Villanova University graduate student in finance who has warned on a blog for investors that student loans are the next credit bubble — with borrowers, rather than lenders, as the losers.

Full-time undergraduate students borrowed an average $4,963 in 2010, up 63% from a decade earlier after adjusting for inflation, the College Board reports. What’s happening:

•Defaults. The portion of borrowers in default — more than nine months behind on payments — rose from 6.7% in 2007 to 8.8% in 2009, according to the most recent federal data.

•For profit-schools. The highest default rates are at for-profit schools that tend to serve lower-income students and offer courses online. The University of Phoenix, the nation’s largest, got 88% of its revenue from federal programs last year, most of it from student loans.

“Federal student loans are like no other loans,” says Alisa Cunningham, research chief at the Institute for Higher Education Policy. “The consequences are so high for making a mistake.”

Click here for the full report from USA Today

A 5-Step Plan For Dumping Your Bank

October 4th, 2011

DailyFinance

By: Catherine New

Over the weekend, we heard from more than 1,300 DailyFinance readers who said they’re considering switching banks in light of increased fees at some of the nation’s largest financial institutions. As consumers, we do an increasing amount of our personal banking with debit cards, and many of us have an elaborate system of direct deposits and automated payments in place. So if your savings margin is thin, switching banks requires some forethought and planning to ensure that you are not placing yourself at risk of an overdraft while you migrate your account. Richard Barrington, a personal finance expert for MoneyRates.com, shared his expertise with this five-step process on how to handle a bank swap.

1. Find the right bank or credit union for you. The financial institution that works best for your brother may not be the best one for you, so do your own research. It comes down to a matrix of three things for each customer, says Barrington: services, fees and locations.

Ask yourself: How do I use my bank? Do I use a debit card and ATMs? Do I prefer mobile banking and online transactions, or do I prefer paper checks and statements? Is international access important to me? If you’re moving a checking and savings account together, compare the interest rate earned on the savings account with the service charges on the checking account.

“You want to closely scrutinize the the fee structure,” he says. “Start with the monthly maintenance fees.” Take this example from Personal Finance for Dummies: If you plan to keep $2,000 in a savings account and earn 2% interest, you will earn $40 in interest over a year. Meanwhile, your checking account charges a monthly $9 fee (or $108 a year) for a low balance. Would that extra $2,000 bump your checking account balance above the requirement and cancel out the monthly fee? Calculate if you can avoid a higher fee in place of smaller earnings. (Note: This strategy only works if you can resist spending that extra money when it’s sitting in your checking account.)

Also, take a look at this primer on how to choose the right bank. Other online tools, including Google Adviser, MoneyRates.com and Bankrate.com, offer easy side-by-side comparisons of checking account services or find a credit union.

2. Open a new account, but leave the old one open. Create overlap between the accounts to make sure bills get paid while the new account starts to build a capital reserve. It may be useful to create an inventory or calendar of all the automatic credits and debits to the account to plan when to start moving the money. Barrington recommends leaving a statement cycle’s worth of overlap in the old account.

3. Shift your direct deposits to the new account. The next move is to redirect any direct deposits, like your paycheck, into your new account. This requires speaking to your employer’s payroll department — or whichever part of the organization handles your checks — and giving them your new account information. Wait a pay cycle before taking the next step.

4. Move all the automatic payments. Contact the organizations doing direct billing and advise them of your new bank account. This could also be an opportunity to reschedule payments so that they are evenly spread through out the month, rather than in the first half. Another strategy for credit-card holders is to use a dedicated credit card to pay monthly bills, then pay that sum in full from the checking account.

5. Write a letter to the old bank to close the account. Emptying your old account of all the money doesn’t close it automatically. Even worse, you could get maintenance fees on that zero-balance account, which could land you with overdraft fees. So, write an old-fashioned letter to your ex-bank specifying the date the account is to be officially shut down.

Click here for the full report from DailyFinance

Reclaiming Your Life From Identity Thieves

September 29, 2011

Chicago Tribune

By: David Lazarus

You can’t know how big a hassle it is to have your identity stolen until some scammer enters your life and starts taking over.

Michael Kalbs and his wife, Judy Rosen, learned this the hard way recently when they discovered that someone was applying for — and receiving — credit cards in Rosen’s name and running up thousands of dollars in bills for gas and other everyday purchases.

Then they had to spend weeks untangling the mess with various banks, businesses and credit reporting companies.

An estimated 10 million Americans fall victim to ID theft every year, with related losses running in the billions of dollars. The Federal Trade Commission warned last month that fraudsters are increasingly snatching the Social Security numbers of children from school forms and using them to open credit card accounts.

“I have no idea how this happened to us,” Kalbs, 72, of Sherman Oaks, told me. “We’re not dumb. We’re educated people. But when it does happen, it can be hell to get out of.”

Pay attention now. What happened to Kalbs and his wife could easily happen to you.

First, Kalbs and Rosen were fortunate to have a credit-monitoring service keeping tabs on their files. The service, Privacy Assist from Bank of America, notifies you if there are any changes to your credit records.

Most people probably don’t need their credit files reviewed on a daily basis. If you do sign up for such a service, make sure it’s offered by a reputable outfit like a bank or one of the credit reporting companies.

“The best $12.99 a month I ever spent,” Kalbs said. “Of everyone we had to deal with, the Privacy Assist people really seemed to care. They walked us through the whole process.”

The first inkling of trouble came in June when Privacy Assist sent Kalbs and Rosen a notice that Rosen’s credit file had been changed. Kalbs immediately went online and saw that his wife’s address had been switched to a location in Illinois.

He also discovered that credit cards had been sent to that address by BofA, Chase, Wells Fargo and American Express, and that someone had been busy quickly running up tabs on each card.

So Kalbs set about doing what all ID theft victims have to do: Jumping through hoops to convince the world that you’re really you. He and his wife filed a police report and then worked their way through the fraud divisions at each bank.

“It can be really time consuming,” Kalbs said. “And frustrating.”

I know what he means. When my ID was stolen a few years ago by a man in Connecticut, I spent weeks trying to get rid of him. Each ID theft victim spent an average of 59 hours last year recovering from the incident, up from 41 hours in 2009, according to consulting firm Javelin Strategy & Research.

Kalbs thought he and his wife finally had things under control last month, but then they started getting calls from Wells Fargo saying they still owed hundreds of dollars for a credit card that wasn’t theirs. Worse, the bank didn’t seem interested in hearing that they were victims of fraud.

That changed after I contacted Wells Fargo on the couple’s behalf. “We apologized to them,” said Jennifer Langan, a bank spokeswoman. “It took us more time than it should have to correct this error.”

The Consumer Federation of America launched a new website the other day with plenty of tips to help you avoid the hassles of ID theft. It’s called IDTheftInfo.org.

Another tip: AAA members in Southern California can sign up for free monitoring of their Experian credit file. This won’t provide comprehensive protection — you’ll need to monitor all three of your credit files for that — but it’s better than nothing.

Protecting privacy

Along these same lines, here’s a cautionary tale about keeping your personal information under wraps.

Ernie Tamminga, 67, of Goleta, Calif., got a new Chase credit card a few months ago. He immediately went online and “opted out” from allowing the bank to share his information with marketers.

The next month, Tamminga received a letter from Chase instructing him to opt out again if he still wanted to keep his data to himself. Then he received the same instruction a month later. What was the deal? Would he have to opt out on a monthly basis?

The bank assured Tamminga that he had nothing to worry about — his privacy preferences were on file. “But I’m not so sure,” he told me. “At the very least it’s confusing as to whether I’m still opted out.”

Under federal law, once you opt out from having a financial institution share your personal info, you should never have to do so again — it’s set in stone until you tell the institution otherwise.

Some businesses make it easier than others to opt out. Generally speaking, all you should have to do is click on the privacy page of the company’s website, where you should find a link enabling you to opt out online.

Another resource to keep in mind is a program run by the Direct Marketing Assn. called DMAchoice. It allows you to put a halt to credit card solicitations, catalogs and other forms of direct-mail marketing. The service used to cost $1. Now it’s free.

As for Chase, a company spokesman had no explanation for why Tamminga received repeated opt-out letters. He said the company was looking into the matter and would reassure Tamminga that his preferences were indeed recorded.

One less opt-out to worry about.

David Lazarus’ column runs Tuesdays and Fridays. He also can be seen daily on KTLA-TV Channel 5. Send your tips or feedback to david.lazarus@latimes .com.

Click here for the full report from Chicago Tribune

The Kevin Trudeau Show: 7-26-11

Today, Kevin responds to the skeptics who claim Your Wish Is Your Command is a scam and reveals his solution to America’s debt ceiling issues.

Self Help:
Energetic Balancing
Protection From Electromagnetic Chaos
Become a Success Story!
Have Dinner with KT

Government:
U.S. Funding For Future Promises Lags By Trillions
Obama Fundraisers Postponed Amid Debt Limit Talks

Everything Kevin:
Become An Insider!
Stand with KT!
Kevin is on YouTube!
Sign Up For Kevin’s FREE Podcast
Follow Kevin on Twitter
Become A Fan of Kevin on Facebook
Kevin’s Film Club
Kevin’s Book Club

Take Trudeau on the Go! Click here to download this show to your iPod, mp3 player, or PC through iTunes!

Click below to watch the Kevin Trudeau Show!

The Kevin Trudeau Show: 7-23-11

Today, Kevin explains how the media is only there to distract you from the real issues. Plus, friend of the show, Fred Van Liew, stops by to give you the facts behind electromagnetic chaos and how it is virtually killing you and your children.

Self Help:
Diversify Your Income
Change The Way You Think

Media:
TV Tells Kids Fame Is Most Important Thing In Life

Conspiracy:
Whistleblower Found Dead!

Everything Kevin:
Become An Insider!
Stand with KT!
Kevin is on YouTube!
Sign Up For Kevin’s FREE Podcast
Follow Kevin on Twitter
Become A Fan of Kevin on Facebook

Take Trudeau on the Go! Click here to download this show to your iPod, mp3 player, or PC through iTunes!

Click below to watch the Kevin Trudeau Show!

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