One of the biggest surprises about the whole Suze Orman “Approved Prepaid” Scam/Fiasco, to me, is that Suze Orman is a person who has been a role model, financially, for many people. She has been dispensing her brand of advice for many years, has multiple best-selling books on the subject, and regularly appears on news [...]

It’s important to trust your financial advisor. A few years ago I caught a story on the local news about a financial advisor from my hometown who was arrested for violating that trust. He had been a financial advisor for many years and was charged with financial exploitation of the elderly. In one instance, he [...]

Have you ever watched your family open up Christmas gifts while mentally calculating how much each gift cost and comparing that against the amount you have in your checking?  Have you dreaded opening the bills in January because you know the credit card statement from holiday shopping will be coming soon and you do not [...]

Building credit is a phrase that you’ll see around the Internet and anywhere most financial experts talk.  It’s basically the act of getting a loan with easily repayable terms, or piggybacking on someones loan, in order to create a positive record on your credit report and thus increasing (building) your credit score. But, for many, [...]

Everybody makes mistakes.  It’s just how quickly you discover them and if you recover and learn from them that makes the difference.  Make a mistake and ignore it, and you’re likely headed for disaster.  Learn from the mistake, and avoid making it again, and you just might save yourself. Recently, while catching up on our [...]

Save! Be Frugal! A penny saved is a penny earned. There’s a plethora of maxims meant to encourage us all to save our money for a rainy day. To hoard our excess funds so that we can spend them at a later date and enjoy their usage. But, is saving our money a waste of [...]

When it comes down to setting your budget, saving your money, spending your money, and acting responsibly with money overall, you are your own worst enemy.  You and only you are responsible for keeping your self-made goals.  There are tools that you can use to help yourself, but the only enemy that you need to [...]

Personal finance isn’t all just about the best ways to save money and live frugally.  There are other things to consider; other rules that should be followed.  Some have absolutely nothing to do with saving money.Many of the posts here at Beating Broke deal with saving money, budgeting, and living frugally.  On many occasions I [...]

LifeLock will pay $12,000,000 in a settlement with the FTC and 35 states.  The states and the FTC claim that LifeLock’s Identity theft and data security claims were not true. In one of the largest FTC-state coordinated settlements on record, LifeLock and its principals will be barred from making deceptive claims and required to take [...]

Just what is reactive personal finance?  It’s the management of your personal finance in reaction to events or situations as opposed to the management of personal finance in anticipation of events or situations. The best example of this is a budget.  A budget is built and held to in anticipation of events in your financial [...]