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6 Ways to Protect Your Finances From a Workplace Injury

December 19, 2022 By Erin H Leave a Comment

No one likes to think about a workplace injury, but the truth is that it happens more often than you might think. Furthermore, workplace accidents can be expensive, both for the worker and the employer. Workers suffer from medical costs and lost wages, and businesses lose an average of $5,600 for every minute of downtime, per Gartner reports. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to protect your finances from a workplace injury. Here are some key ways to mitigate the financial risk of an accident.

1. Invest in Health Insurance

One of the best ways to protect your finances from workplace injury is to ensure that you have good health insurance coverage. Health insurance can help to cover some of the costs associated with a workplace injury, such as medical bills, rehabilitation, and other costs related to recovery. It’s a good idea to take the time to research different health insurance plans and find one that meets your needs and budget.

2. Consider Supplemental Insurance

While health insurance can help to cover some of the costs associated with injury, it may not always provide enough coverage. For this reason, it’s a good idea to consider investing in supplemental insurance. Supplemental insurance policies provide additional coverage for disability, critical illness, and other medical expenses.

3. Utilize Employer Benefits

Employers are required by law to provide workers’ comp and disability benefits to their employees, which can be incredibly helpful when dealing with the financial burden of an injury. During the initial five months of 2020, more than 1,300 requests were filed in Kansas alone for workers’ comp benefits, demonstrating how important these benefits can be for injured workers.

Furthermore, many employers also have other types of benefits, such as discounted healthcare services, that can help their employees protect their finances. It’s important to familiarize yourself with the details of your employer’s benefits program and take full advantage of them if and when you need to utilize them.

4. Seek Medical Attention Promptly

If you have been injured at work, it’s important to seek medical attention as soon as possible. According to the American Hospital Association, the United States boasted 6,210 healthcare facilities in 2017, providing plenty of options for anyone with an occupational injury to get the immediate medical attention they need.

Prompt medical treatment can help ensure that your injury heals properly and quickly and document the circumstances of your accident. Furthermore, seeking treatment right away can help to reduce the amount of time you spend away from work. This reduces the financial burden of workplace injury.

5. Contact a Workers’ Compensation Lawyer

A workplace injury often involves complicated legal issues. Even if you feel confident you are entitled to compensation from your employer, it’s best to retain an experienced lawyer specializing in workers’ comp claims. An attorney can assist you in filing the workers’ comp claim and help you navigate the legal system, ensuring that you’re properly compensated for your lost wages and medical bills.

6. Find Financial Support

If your injury results in long-term medical costs, consider seeking financial support from charitable groups or non-profit organizations. Various programs are available that provide financial assistance to those in need and are often tailored to specific medical needs. They can help you get through the tough time so that you can pick back up when you’re healed.

The possibility of a workplace injury isn’t something that anyone likes to think about, but the truth is that it is a potential reality. With these six tips, you can protect your finances from the financial burden of a workplace injury. Invest in good health insurance coverage, utilize employer benefits, consider financial support, and seek legal and medical help. This will help you ensure that any workplace injury does not put a financial strain on your life.

Filed Under: General Finance

How to Freeze Your Family’s Credit

September 5, 2022 By MelissaB 2 Comments

How to Freeze Your Family's Credit

About 15 years ago, I discovered someone had opened an account in my name and charged $1000. Luckily, I caught the fraud early, and the business where the theft occurred gave me my money back. However, that experience spooked me, so I froze my and my husband’s credit within days. At the time, parents could not freeze minor children’s credit, but that has since changed. Just recently, I started the process of freezing my younger children’s credit. If you’d like to do the same, here’s how to freeze your family’s credit.

The Drawbacks of Freezing Your Credit

My husband and I love that our credit is frozen because we feel less vulnerable to identity theft. However, there are a few drawbacks to this peace of mind.

You Must Thaw Your Credit in Advance If Applying for Credit

Recently, we bought a new house. The mortgage broker needed access to our credit scores and history, so I had to thaw our credit for all three credit bureaus. This takes me about 30 minutes each time I have to do this.

You Can’t Apply for Credit Spontaneously

Likewise, if you’re in a store and the clerk offers you a discount if you apply for the store’s credit, you won’t be able to because you have to thaw your credit first. But, again, I don’t consider this a drawback because it helps me avoid spontaneously signing up for credit, but some people feel boxed in by having frozen credit.

Limitations of Freezing Your Credit

While a credit freeze prevents thieves from opening new accounts in your name, it does not stop credit theft entirely. For example, within the last five years, my credit company has notified me three times that someone had fraudulently tried to charge something on my card. Luckily, each time the credit card company caught the theft and issued me a new card. However, in instances like this, my credit freeze did nothing to protect my existing lines of credit that I legitimately opened years ago.

How to Freeze Your Credit

Freezing your credit is simple. You can choose to call each credit bureau or complete an online form. Online is the easiest and fastest. You’ll need to give your name, address, and social security number. You’ll also need to answer some personally identifying information such as former addresses and counties you have lived in. This will allow you to set up an online account with each bureau so you can freeze and thaw your credit.

You can also choose to freeze your credit by mail, but this is the least efficient way and takes two to three weeks.

How to Thaw Your Credit

If you want to thaw your credit over the phone, you’ll need to use the PIN that the credit bureau gave you when you froze your credit.

If you want to thaw it online, log into your account with the credit bureau. A PIN is not required. Then you choose whether you want to temporarily or permanently remove your credit freeze. If you remove it temporarily, you can enter the date you want the thaw to begin and the date you want it to end.

Some credit bureaus used to charge a fee to thaw your credit, but, thankfully, now each of the three credit bureaus offers this service for free.

Why Should You Freeze Your Minor’s Credit?

Your child’s credit is a blank slate for a criminal. Because your child is too young to open credit, you will likely never check to see if their identity has been stolen. Unfortunately, this means criminals can open up a line of credit in your child’s name and have it for YEARS before your child first applies for credit or you check their credit for theft.

Furthermore, unscrupulous relatives can also steal your child’s identity. There have even been cases of parents using their child’s identity and opening lines of credit in the child’s name.

How to Freeze Your Minor’s Credit

How to Freeze Your Family's Credit

Freezing your minor’s credit is more complicated than freezing your credit.

You must freeze your credit at the three credit bureaus, just like adults do. However, to freeze your child’s credit, you must establish both your child’s identity and yours as the child’s parent. You will need to send copies of the following documents to the credit bureaus:

  • Your driver’s license (or other government-issued ID),
  • Your birth certificate,
  • Your child’s birth certificate,
  • Your social security card,
  • Your child’s social security card,
  • A utility bill with your name and address on it

In addition, you’ll need to complete and send in the Minor Freeze Request form from Equifax and Experian. Transunion requires you to complete the Child Identity Theft Inquiry and send in the necessary documentation.

If your child does not have a credit report (which is what you want since it means no one has opened credit in their name), the credit bureau will first need to open a file on your child. Then, the bureau freezes the child’s account. This process can take 10 to 15 days or longer before the freeze takes effect.

When Can a Minor Control Their Credit Freeze?

When minors are 16 or older, they can decide to leave their credit freeze in place, temporarily thaw it, or permanently remove it.

Final Thoughts

Freezing your family’s credit may seem over the top or paranoid, but it’s not. With our increasingly online data-driven culture, our personal information is on many online sites. As the news reminds us, these sites are regularly hacked allowing thieves to sell and use our personal information to their advantage. A credit freeze on each family member’s credit bureau file helps protect them from identity theft and the nightmare that comes from trying to prove you are not the one who ran up thousands of dollars on credit.

Read More

The Biggest Reason to Always Pay with a Credit Card

Help Your College Student by Adding Them as an Authorized User to Your Credit Card

Is It Worthwhile to Still Use Credit Cards with So Many Data Breaches?

What Is The Minimum Score Needed For Care Credit?

MelissaB
MelissaB

Melissa is a writer and virtual assistant. She earned her Master’s from Southern Illinois University, and her Bachelor’s in English from the University of Michigan. When she’s not working, you can find her homeschooling her kids, reading a good book, or cooking. She resides in New York, where she loves the natural beauty of the area.

www.momsplans.com/

Filed Under: Credit Score, General Finance Tagged With: credit, credit report, freeze credit, identity theft, thaw credit

3 Lessons I Learned When Looking for a New House

July 18, 2022 By MelissaB Leave a Comment

Lessons I Learned Looking for a New House

This is a crazy market in which to buy a house. While I knew that from watching the news, recently we got to experience the market firsthand because we’re moving from Arizona to New York. The plus side is that our house in Arizona sold within three days of listing. The bad news is that we had to visit many properties in New York and put in offers on three different houses before we finally got one. Along the way, there were many lessons I learned while looking for a new home. These were the most important ones.

Beware of Low Prices

We started our search by looking at houses at the lower end of our price range. We have one child starting college this year, and two more in the next five years, so keeping housing costs low made sense. However, we quickly veered away from those houses for two reasons:

House Problems

Most houses in the lower end of our price range had problems. Two of them stunk. One smelled throughout the house, and the other smelled fine until we opened the basement door. Then we were confronted by an awful odor we couldn’t place. Others were outdated or had a strange layout such as having to walk through one bedroom to get to another one.

Neighborhood Problems

If the houses in the lower price range didn’t have problems externally, the neighborhood did. We saw one meticulously kept and updated property. However, it was the nicest house in the neighborhood, which means it might be more difficult for us to sell later. Plus, the neighbors were gathered outside and started talking about us as we walked into the house. Not the type of neighborhood in which we wanted to move.

Beware the Unkempt Exterior

Lessons I Learned While Looking for a House

I was amazed how many homeowners didn’t attempt to create curb appeal. We walked up to homes with dirty siding, peeling paint on the window frames, and a rotted piece of wood with a hole on the steps to the home, just to name a few problems.

Unfortunately, many of the backyards weren’t much better. One had a tiny mowed section, but the rest of the small yard contained weeds and overgrown grass.

If you want people to buy your home, try to make the yard and exterior of the home inviting! Not surprisingly, most properties with unkempt exteriors were also not in good shape inside.

Final Thoughts

Finding a home to purchase is a challenge no matter when you’re looking. However, in this current seller’s market, there are important lessons I learned when looking for a new house. Hopefully, we won’t need to buy another house anytime soon, but if we do, I know what to look for and when to walk away, sometimes before even seeing the inside of an unkempt house.

Read More

Declutter Your House Like You’re Moving and Make Some Cash

Making an Offer on a House

Shopping for a New House

 

MelissaB
MelissaB

Melissa is a writer and virtual assistant. She earned her Master’s from Southern Illinois University, and her Bachelor’s in English from the University of Michigan. When she’s not working, you can find her homeschooling her kids, reading a good book, or cooking. She resides in New York, where she loves the natural beauty of the area.

www.momsplans.com/

Filed Under: General Finance, Home Tagged With: buy a home, buying a house, property, real estate, relocation

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