Scary Stats On Identity Theft

In the novel Don Quixote, author Miguel de Cervantes writes, By a small sample, we may judge of the whole piece. Hi, I'm Rob West. That, of course, is an early reference to statistics. They're often useful and sometimes just plain scary. I'll talk about some scary statistics concerning identity theft, and then it's on to your calls at 800-525-7000.

That's 800-525-7000. This is MoneyWise Live, biblical wisdom for your financial journey. The financial information review site, Fortunately, recently compiled the list of identity theft stats that should have us all concerned and ready to take steps to guard ourselves against this growing type of fraud. Now, since these stats were drawn from many different sources, some would appear to contradict others, but taken as a whole, they're really eye-opening. So to start with, there's a new victim of identity theft every 14 seconds in the US, and this would include adults and children. Put another way, about 50 million people become victims of this fraud every year. Identity theft costs Americans well over 50 billion a year. This includes IT professionals who've lost their jobs due to data breaches and consumers who are scammed through direct interaction with thieves, like in phishing emails and telephone fraud. The elderly are most likely to become victims of identity theft, and each year, the Federal Trade Commission receives well over 2 million related complaints.

Now, this next stat is really scary and almost hard to believe. Listen to this, 33 percent of Americans report they've been the victim of identity theft at least once in their lives, and the US seems to be a world leader in this regard, with numbers higher than other nations like France and Germany. Not surprisingly, credit card fraud is the most likely way you'll be hit by identity theft. It's the most common form of identity theft, with the FTC getting nearly 20,000 complaints a year.

Do you spend a lot of time on social media? Well, users of Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram are 30 to almost 50 percent more likely to become victims of identity theft than folks who are not active on social media. Thieves have discovered those apps are a gold mine for collecting personal information on individuals to steal their identity. Most often, thieves use stolen identities to apply for government documents and benefits, like with Social Security and filing fraudulent tax returns to get your refund. The next most common use of stolen identities is credit card fraud, followed by banking and utility fraud. Now, could where you live make you more likely to experience identity theft?

Apparently so, according to the FTC, which has received nearly 150,000 complaints from California alone. Next in line is Illinois, then Texas, Florida and Georgia in that order, rounding out the top five worst states for identity theft. Your age is another determining factor, with millennials, those 20 to 40 years of age, making up more than a third of victims. Folks 60 to 69 make up a far lower percentage of victims, but their losses tend to be much higher when they're scammed. The fastest growing demographic for identity theft seems to be children, with over 1.3 million of them becoming victims each year. Half of those are age six or younger, and victims are getting younger all the time. The annual price tag for families suffering child identity theft is well over 500 million dollars. So who's stealing children's identities? Well, it's interesting that only 7 percent of adults know the person who commits this fraud. But in the case of children, that figure is a whopping 60 percent. That means children are far more likely to have a family member or a family friend, using that term loosely, of course, steal their identity. Here's another scary statistic. Up to 10 percent of the annual U.S. health budget is lost to identity theft. That's about two million cases a year. You may be wondering how that works because I was. Well, medical identity theft is when someone steals or uses your personal information, like your social security or medicare number, to submit fraudulent claims to medicare and other health issuers without your authorization.

And one more stat? Well, gift card fraud now amounts to losses around 150 million a year and is trending upward. That's not necessarily identity theft. It's when you're scammed into paying a bill or taxes that you don't owe by using a gift card. So what can you do? Well, don't pay for anything over the phone or click a link in an email you don't know.

Get a copy of your credit report and freeze your credit with each of the bureaus. It's free. All right. Your calls are next. 800-525-7000. This is MoneyWise Live. We'll be right back. Thanks for joining us today on MoneyWise Live. I'm Rob West, your host. We're taking your calls and questions today on anything financial. 800-525-7000 is the number to call. Again, that's 800-525-7000.

We'd love to hear from you. Coming up on the broadcast today, you know, we started by talking about some scary stats on identity theft. Well, how do you avoid identity theft in the first place?

There are some best practices you could follow to make sure that you have a lower chance, at least of being the victim of identity theft. I'll share a few of those best practices with you today to see if we can keep you far from that. We'll also tackle a couple of your emails today. And we're joined by Bob Doll. A little later in the broadcast, Bob will stop by with his market commentary and analysis. Tell us what he's looking at this week. His dolls deliberations commentary this week focused on the election tomorrow and its implications for the markets.

We'll hear Bob's analysis a little later in the broadcast. Again, your calls and questions will be front and center, so we'll look forward to hearing from you. We've got some lines open, so give us a call. 1-800-525-7000. That's 800-525-7000. Let's begin today. Well, right down the street from me, Atlanta, Georgia. Kenny, thank you for calling, sir.

How can I help? Thanks for taking my call. Sure. Well, I did, I did freeze my credit. And I want to know, I was supposed to be in my minimum required distribution.

I'm 71. And I just want to know where to put it in. Could I take that out and put it in some type of of IRA? No, to be tax free. Yeah, so you're the only way you can skip this being recognized as taxable income, Kenny, would be to take it out as a qualified charitable distribution. So this is essentially where it goes directly from the IRA to your church or a ministry, a not-for-profit organization. And then it's not added to your adjusted gross income for the year. It satisfies your required minimum and it goes direct to that charity. Now, if you were already doing giving, let's say you're tithing out of your checking or savings account, you know, every week or every month, or you're giving a couple of times a year to a favorite ministry or charity. One option is you could make that gift from your IRA and then reclaim that money that you were going to send out of cash. And by doing so, you would effectively give the same amount to your church or a ministry that you were already planning this year, but at the same time satisfy that RMD and not increase your taxable income one penny.

So that's one strategy. The second would be you go ahead and take the distribution, you pay the tax, and as long as you have earned income, and that's going to be key, then you could turn around and contribute that to an individual retirement account, an IRA, but you would have to have earned income in order to be able to do that. That's taxable income and wages you get from working for someone else, for yourself, or a business, or a farm, something like that.

Does that make sense? Yeah, I got a venture from Southern Company and also I get Social Security. Okay, yeah, neither of those would be earned income.

You would have to get wages or salary tips, bonuses, commission, that type of thing, so you would not be able to contribute to the IRA, but the qualified charitable distribution might be a great option to in effect replace giving you are already going to do with after-tax money and do it with this pre-tax money coming out of the IRA. Okay, because I got some money and a whole lot of other things and I got that. Yeah, you just don't need it, right?

Is that the point? Right, yeah. So when you don't need it, you know, a lot of times folks will say, well, I'd take the distribution. Well, it's just because the IRS says you have to based on the balance of your life expectancy and that's where I think this qualified charitable distribution could be a great option for you, but apart from that I think you just take it out, recognize it as income, and you could put it in savings or something like that. So it's a charitable distribution. Yeah, and you could either use it to increase the giving you're doing for the year or you could just replace the existing giving you were planning on doing for the year, but instead of sending after-tax dollars already in your checking or savings account, you'd do it from your IRA and that's a way to do the same giving without increasing your taxable income. Okay, I got you.

All right, excellent. I'll talk to my tax clerk. Oh, there you go and if you want to take advantage of that you would just call the institution that's the custodian for your IRA and tell them you want to do what's called a QCD, a qualified charitable distribution.

They'll give you the paperwork and get that going and once you're 70 and a half you can do up to $100,000 as a QCD. So appreciate you calling Kenny. God bless you, sir, and we'll hope to talk to you again real soon. 800-525-7000 is the number to call. If you've got a question today, financially speaking, we'd love to hear from you.

Let's head to St. Louis. Hi, Sue, thank you for calling today. How can I help you? Oh, hi.

I listen to you every day. Well, it's been an interesting dilemma because you talked about fraud and how much fraud goes on throughout on a daily basis and I fell for a keto fraud as it turns out and apparently that seems to be a big area for scammers. Anyway, here's the situation.

My bank which is out of Lenexa, Kansas called Community America Credit Union notified me by text, possible fraud, call us right away. Yeah. Okay, when I saw the text I called and they said, all right, we will block this. Good, all right, thank you so much.

Sure. Well, I thought it was blocked because they said it was blocked by text. As it turns out, the same scammer was allowed to within two weeks send me another five bottles of the same thing and so I sent the information back and the packaging and pictures of it and I took it to the post office and they said, okay, send it by priority, okay, put pictures of what the postal service, we put the original packages in and my bank has turned me down and said, well, you're just out $500. Yeah, what's the justification they're giving you for that if these purchases were fraudulent? The justification is that I did not support enough for the dispute and it's like, wait a minute, you guys contacted me first and that's why I alerted you that I didn't order five bottles, I ordered one bottle and now I've got 10 bottles over a two week period. Yeah, are you able just to return them? So it sounds like this was a legitimate business because you ordered one and you end up getting more, is that right? Yes, I did, yes, without ordering them, I got more. Yeah, but rather than going through your bank as a fraudulent purchase, could you go back to the original vendor and just let them know that additional bottles were ordered by error and see if you could return them or get a credit? Well, what happens is when I went to the original vendors and called them and said, hey, I didn't order all these bottles, I'm sending them back, don't want to do business with you.

It was in the Philippines and they gave me a cancellation number which was bogus. I told my bank about it, I said, I've called them. I said, what are you doing on your end to help me?

You told me initially. Well, I'd probably try to escalate this maybe to the next level of support, Sue, and just see by working either side if you could get somebody to help you take some action. The other option you have is to submit a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the CFPB at CFPB.gov. You stay at it.

I know it's frustrating, but we'll pray the Lord gives you some wisdom and you get some... Delighted to have you with us today on MoneyWise Live. I'm Rob West. We're taking your calls and questions. We've got some lines open. What's your financial conundrum today?

What are you thinking about? How can we apply the biblical truths we find in scripture to your financial situation today? We'd love to hear from you so we can do just that. 800-525-7000 is the number to call.

It's 800-525-7000. Hey, before we go back to the phones, have you signed up for our weekly wisdom email yet? Each week's email includes a special message from me, featured articles, podcasts, and video clips designed to educate and equip you to be a better steward of the resources God has entrusted to you. Our goal is to give you a convenient source to access the latest and best content from a biblical financial worldview. So, to get these weekly messages delivered to your inbox at no cost, just go to MoneyWise.org and click the button that says Create a Free Account. It's right there on the home page. Your personal information is safe with us and we'll deliver the MoneyWise weekly wisdom email to you each Thursday and we'll look forward to doing that. Again, MoneyWise.org is the place to go. All right, let's see.

Shererville, Indiana. Hey, Sue, thanks for calling. Go right ahead.

Hi, thank you so much for taking my call. I am a 69-year-old widow and when my husband was alive, we tied all the time, always on what we worked, and once he got cancer and got on disability and social security and he said, I'm not tithing on this because I've always tithed off the gross, not the net, and now as I'm by myself, I still tithe on my earnings, but it just kind of eats at me a little bit that I can hear his voice saying, don't tithe off of that social security, and I was just interested in what are your thoughts. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I love that you all have been diligent and faithful givers, cheerfully, you and your husband for a long, long time, and I think that should be the starting point is to say we want to give proportionately and systematically off the top as a demonstration of our trust and our gratefulness for the Lord's provision and then look to give beyond that as we're able to over time. You know, it is challenging with social security because although it may be possible to distinguish between the after-tithe amount you contributed to your personal retirement savings and the increase from the yet-to-be-tithe investment gains, that's possible.

It's more difficult to do that math with social security benefits and besides, what you also have to recognize is that unless you were self-employed during your entire working years, it wasn't just you who contributed to social security, your employer contributed half of that as well. So I think as we think about that, you know, we have to recognize, you know, when we ask this question, it's generally from, and this is what I hear in your voice, a desire to say, how do I be found faithful in honoring the Lord with this? You know, my perspective, it doesn't mean it's the right one because ultimately this is between you and the Lord and I think you need to pray through kind of how you want to approach this. I don't drill down on trying to estimate how much is considered an increase, how much is a return of capital. They certainly didn't do that in the farming times by subtracting the amount of the wheat they had planted and computing the tithe that was on the whole increase. So I think, you know, the approach I take is just to say whatever I receive in terms of an increase, it's a gracious gift from the Lord regardless of what I've invested and giving is really at the end of the day about nurturing a closer relationship with the Lord by loving him for his provision. But I can certainly understand your perspective in saying, listen, I've been a gross tither all these years and in a sense, I'm tithing twice on this money.

And I totally get that, but I just think if you were going to try to compute what is a return of capital versus what is an increase because clearly there is an increase that would be baked into this beyond what you even contributed, then it would be very difficult to do. Okay, because I don't think I can ever stop working because I like tithing off of my actual money that I'm working and my children are always saying to me, mom, aren't you ever going to quit working? And I still feel my husband's voice in my head and I think I don't know if I can ever clearly stop working. Yeah, well, you know, the Lord calls us throughout our entire lives to be workers, right? Adam and Eve were workers before the fall, they had a job there in the garden and we're to do meaningful and productive work throughout our lives, but that's going to change over time. And at some point in our lives, it may be away from paid work to something else, but I think in each season, as long as we're on our knees saying, Lord, what do you have for me so I can use what you've entrusted to me, gifts and talents for your glory and benefit until you call me home, I think that's great. Now, whether that includes paid work or not is going to be the reason we want to continue to save for the long term so that you have the ability in that season of life that you're in right now. If the Lord directs you away from paid work, you'd have the ability to do that because you've built up assets and between the investment assets that you have and the retirement income through Social Security, your bills are covered, you're living modestly, you continue to give, but you're open to the leading of the Lord as to what that looks like. So I think that's the right perspective is that even when we retire, we retire to something and not from something, recognizing God's handy work in our lives and that he's called us to a life of faithful service to him until he calls us home.

But I love the question, Sue, because I think at the end of the day, as long as you're giving cheerfully, not out of compulsion, but really to honor the Lord and thank him for his gracious provision in your life, I think that's the right hard posture and what that exact percentage is based on what income sources you have, I think is ultimately between you and the Lord. Okay. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you. You're welcome.

Absolutely. Thanks for your call today. Let's see, we're going to head, well, it looks like we've got just a minute left before our break.

So James, you stay there. Randy, coming your way in Missouri as well. Plus perhaps your question, we've got some lines open today, the number to call 800-525-7000. Again, that's 800-525-7000. Let me also remind you that MoneyWise Media is listener supported.

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Thanks in advance. We'll be back with more questions and Bob Dahl just around the corner. Great to have you with us today on MoneyWise Live, biblical wisdom for your financial decisions. Before we go back to the phones, we started today by talking about identity theft. That's right, identity theft it costs Americans over 50 billion dollars a year. 50 million people become victims of identity theft every year. The numbers are staggering. So what can you do about it?

Well, if you want to protect yourself, there are some best practices you can follow that I think will go a long way toward helping you avoid this major threat that affects so many Americans. Number one, take advantage of the opportunity to freeze your credit. That would be with all three credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.

As of a few years ago, it is now free and required by law for you to be able to do that at no cost. You'd simply add a PIN number to your credit files with each of the three bureaus. That would restrict access to those records so new credit files can't be opened. Essentially, when a fraudster tries to open a new credit account in your name, your credit bureau's report would have to be accessed to determine your credit worthiness, when in fact it's not you doing it. But when they can't because of this frozen credit and the lack of the PIN number to unfreeze it, well, they'll be stopped in their tracks.

So you may want to consider doing that. Safeguard your social security number. Don't carry the card around with you.

Secure it safely and shred the paperwork. Be aware of phishing and spoofing. This is not responding to incoming phone calls or emails with links from what appears to be a government entity or a legitimate business.

Instead, initiate that contact with each of these entities directly. If you suspect there's something going wrong, don't respond to what you're getting coming in on an inbound basis. Use strong passwords and perhaps a password manager to have unique, strong passwords that are changed regularly. Watch your mailbox. This is one of the easiest paths to a stolen identity. And if you're going to be out of town, consider stopping your mail or using one of the USPS approved lockable mailboxes. Make sure you shred when possible and check your credit reports regularly.

Through the end of 2023, you can actually access your credit reports free weekly from annualcreditreport.com. You can spot negative, inaccurate information or accounts that are not yours. And that's a dead giveaway that there is some activity that is fraudulent. So if you follow those best practices, oftentimes you can stay safe from identity theft.

It's not foolproof, but at least something worth thinking about. Hope that helps you. All right. 800-525-7000 is the number to call back to the phones to Weeki Wachee, Florida. James, thanks for calling, sir.

How can I help you? Yes, sir. Thank you for taking my call. Yes, sir. My question is that I was considering making an investment, purchasing a new home through a contractor with one of the, not an end loan, but the other type of loan where you take draws. And what I was thinking about doing was taking cash out of the home that we own right now, which is mortgage free and taking out, well, I think I can take out 80% if I'm not mistaken and using that to purchase this investment home that I'm looking at. Is that a wise thing to do?

And, you know, considering the economy and the interest rates that are up at 7% now. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't love this plan, James, but let's talk it through. You mentioned taking draws. Are you talking about a home equity line of credit? Well, not, well, a cash out, but what the contractors do is that I think there's a thing called an end loan.

What's the other one? The upfront loan. There's another there's another type where you pay the contractor in draws, but that would be yeah. Construction loan.

Construction loan. Thank you. Yes, sir. Yeah. That's what I was thinking about doing.

And so I don't know. I wasn't sure that was a wise thing to do or not, but it would be secured by your primary residence. Is that right? That's correct. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't like that option. And let me ask you secondly, do you have anything to put down in the way of cash or would you be financing a hundred percent? No, we could put, we would be able to put down the required, I think it's 20% I believe. Yeah. We have, uh, we have enough funds for that. Okay. So you'd put down 20%.

Yeah. If you're going to do this, I would love for you to, you know, typically with a rental property, I would prefer folks to have closer to 50% loan to equity going in. Um, I think the other thing is I'd love to do it where the collateral is the rental property and not your primary residence just to keep that separation there.

So if something happened, you know, if you lose the rental property, you don't put your primary home at risk. Uh, you know, the other challenges buying a new construction, there's just a lack of really data on how well it's going to perform in terms of a rental property. Whereas, you know, something that's been around either an established neighborhood, uh, or, you know, homes that even if they're, uh, in a community like this one, one that's been around for a while, you can go in and find, you know, how likely are they to rent and at what price, you know, right now there's a lot of speculation. And typically with a new home, especially in this market, like we're in now, you're going to pay top dollar because of the dramatic increase we've seen in the housing market. And I think if anything, this housing market is cooling off at a pretty rapid pace. So you'd be in a sense buying at or near the top because with these interest rates, it's made home affordability. It's just plummeted as a, you know, folks are trying to buy in in these sky high housing price levels. And now with the debt service being so expensive because mortgage rates are, you know, North of 7%, it's just created a real problem. So in order for you to cashflow positive this house, when you've got a service, an 80% loan to value note at the interest rates that you'd probably be likely be paying, it's going to be very difficult. You'll probably be coming out of pocket. And then what happens if we do get into a full blown recession and we see these housing prices, you know, take a further dip, you might even, you know, get close to being upside down. And, you know, if you run out of renters, you know, then do you have the cash flow to support it?

So I think for all those reasons, you know, I just am not loving this plan. I'd probably rather have you guys wait. Let's see what's going to happen with the housing market. Let's let interest rates come back down and they will in the next couple of years. Let's also let you continue to build up more savings so you can have a better loan to value ratio before you do this.

And hopefully in the neighborhood you're talking about or development, you'd have some homes that have been lived in long enough where you can kind of prove out what the rental demand is and, you know, what you can expect to receive on a monthly basis, you know, for some length of time. Should I do an option two with you? A second question?

Okay, sure. Okay, option two we considered, we considered option two would be to the primary resident to do an Airbnb at the primary residence to generate income to be able to pay the cash out loan and live in the other property, the other house that we plan to buy. Yeah, I mean, you certainly could do that. I think the key is, again, what is that Airbnb market? And you're putting a lot of, you know, emphasis on that and, you know, that's really going to have to prove out because you're not going to be able to unwind this purchase. I mean, it's expensive to buy a piece of property and all the costs of the purchase plus the loan itself. You better have a pretty high confidence that that Airbnb income is not only going to be there now, but it's sustainable for the long term because you've got a lot riding on that in terms of your ability to continue to service the other house.

So I'd probably go slow and wait six months or a year to see what's going to happen with both the housing market and the economy for either option A or B and continue to save in the meantime. That's just my best advice. Hope that's helpful for you, James, as you think through this. Thanks for listening and calling today. More to come on MoneyWise Live just around the corner.

Stick around. Bob, great to have you with us today. Your deliberations this week are all about, well, among other things, the election and what you're expecting with the market green across the board today. It sounds like the prospect of a Republican controlled Congress is something the market likes, huh?

Sure seems to be. We've had a rally here in the last few weeks, Rob, as you know, and I think that's the beginning of the market smelling a Republican victory accelerated Friday and again today. You know, elections, midterm elections typically, especially when the president is unpopular, go to the other party. In this case, that's the Republicans. Most everybody expects the Republicans to take the house.

There's still legitimate debate about the Senate, but our guess is when the dust settles, which might be later than tomorrow night, the Republicans will have won the Senate narrowly as well. Interesting. Bob, also some inflation data coming out this week. I guess all eyes will be on that as well.

Yeah. Even more so as soon as the election is done, people will focus on the consumer price index. Consensus is up 6.5 percent for trailing 12. And that's not a good number. It's better than where we've been, but still not a good number, Rob, which means the Fed has more work to do.

Yeah. What about on the international front? I know a part of your comments included some remarks about China reopening. What are the implications there? You know, it's not a foregone conclusion, a lot of rumors that that's happening. Some confirmed, some denied.

Who knows what the real truth is. China has been locked down much of it. And that, given the size of China's economy, is important for certainly that region of the world, but for the world as a whole.

And an opening, a reopening would be good news. So anytime there's a whiff of that markets, including the Chinese stock market, takes a lift. And we've seen that in the last few days. Yeah.

No question about that. Bob, is there, I mean, there's always a chance, but what are your thoughts on the fact that we may have already seen the bottom on this versus retesting or even going lower? It's possible we've seen the bottom. I give it one chance out of three.

So two out of three. We got to go back down, Rob, at a minimum and test the lows of thirty five, thirty six hundred on the S&P that we witnessed not that many days ago. We still haven't seen the capitulation, the the out and out selling people dumping stocks.

That's usually what makes the final bottom. And that tells me the Fed's got more work to do. It's that earnings estimates still have to fall further. So we probably have a little more wear and tear to get through before this is all over.

Yeah. Lastly, Bob, as you continue to watch earnings come in, are you encouraged? Yeah, I'd say they're coming in on the phrase I've been using is they're coming in less bad than expected. Not great, but not as bad as people anticipated. But every time there are more earnings announced for twenty three, people lower their estimates. Two hundred and fifty two dollar peak for next year's earnings are down to two thirty two dollars.

And our guesses are coming down a little further. All right. Very good. Bob, always appreciate your insights. I know you're on the road. So safe travels to you.

We'll talk to you next week. Thanks. God bless. All right. You too. Bob Doll, chief investment officer at Crossmark Global Investments.

You can learn more at Crossmark Global Dotcom and sign up for his dolls deliberations, his weekly investment commentary while you're there. All right. As we round out the program here today, we'll get to as many questions as we can. We've got some wonderful questions holding. So let's head to Missouri. Randy, thank you for your patience.

Go ahead, sir. Yes, thanks for taking the call. My wife is turning 62 in February and in her company, they will disperse her retirement, but she's not quitting or retiring. They they have what they call a quasi and she has a new one that starts over and we owe about eighty thousand on our house.

And she was wanting to know if it be wise just go ahead and pay that off. So we don't have that over the head, you know, over the next five years before we do retire. Yeah. Are the assets in that 401K, Randy, that we're just talking about here, are they currently invested?

Have they been in stocks and bonds this whole time? Yeah. OK. Yes. All right.

So naturally, you've seen some declines in that portfolio, correct? Right. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. So, you know, I think the key here is, first of all, if you sense a real conviction from the Lord together as husband and wife that you all just need to get out of debt as soon as possible, I'd say do it and don't look back and you probably won't regret it. If you want to be a little more tax efficient by doing it, you'd probably spread it out over a couple of tax years. So you could, you know, take half of the withdrawal in one tax year, half in another.

So you're not pushing your any portion of your income up into a higher tax bracket. I think the third consideration is given that we've seen some declines. I mean, the market to peak to trough is down more than 25 percent.

So given that, it's probably not an ideal time to be taking this money out. You'd probably at the very least want to wait for this to recover. Now, as Bob Doll just said, could we retest our lows? You know, if in fact we haven't already seen the low, which he said there's probably two out of three chances that we haven't. So this could go lower.

But the idea is we don't try to pick the bottom or the top. But, you know, you stay invested with this 401k until it fully recovers. Let's say that's a year from now.

Could be a little more, a little less. And at that point, then you start thinking about, okay, now we're going to take 80,000 this half million. We're going to move it over to cash. And then on a tax efficient basis, we're going to start pulling it out because we want to get out of debt, you know, completely, including the home. That makes some sense to me.

But if you all don't have this kind of real strong conviction about being debt free, at least from my perspective, I'd wait for the portfolio to recover before you take those distributions. I understand totally. Okay. Very good.

Is that all you needed today? Yes, sir. Thank you.

Okay. You're welcome. Thanks for calling, Randy. God bless you.

To Stillwater, Oklahoma. Judy, how can I help you? Yes, I'm a victim of identity theft. So the IRS has told me by a five page letter. And I was wondering what is my responsibilities. I kind of need some guidance here. Do I have to hire an attorney? I've already put a red flag on my checking account.

I just don't know what procedures I should follow right now. Yes. Did you say that the identity theft specifically came through the IRS, the Internal Revenue Service? Yes. Okay. All right. And have you talked to their taxpayer protection department where they deal specifically with these types of issues? My son and I are approaching that right now.

Okay. I think that's really the first thing is to complete this form that's called an identity theft affidavit. And you would mail that to the IRS and you'd receive a letter from them acknowledging that they've received this form. And your case is then assigned to what they call identity theft victim assistance where it would be researched and resolved by an employee with a specialized identity theft training. And then they would work to resolve your case.

So if you head to IRS.gov or you just Google IRS identity theft, you will find an article on how the IRS identity theft victim assistance program works. And I think that's really what you need to follow. They'll tell you all the steps for you to take as a part of that and make sure that you are covered. You'll also want to talk to or follow the steps from the Federal Trade Commission at FTC.gov.

There's some recommendations in that article on the IRS's website. You'll also find some information about how you can contact the Federal Trade Commission as well just to let them know. And I think between the two, that should really get you going in the right direction. Okay. Sounds like a lot of work. Unfortunately, it is, Judy. And I hate that this has happened to you. I'm so sorry to hear you're dealing with this. But the good news is that this is not new and there is a process for you to follow. I'm glad your son is going to walk alongside you in helping you to deal with this.

So you just need to kind of follow the steps, know that it's going to take some time, but you can get past this. And we appreciate you calling today. God bless you.

Deerfield, Illinois. Helen, how can I help you? Yes. Hi.

Can you hear me? Yes, ma'am. Okay.

Thank you. Basically, very quickly, my husband and I are pretty set for retirement, like $1.3 million. And I have a pension that I'm pulling. And it's this life insurance, a term life insurance that's about $400,000 on my husband that we got eight years ago. Right. We locked in at $177 a month. How long do we keep that? I mean, he's going to work till 65. He's got two and a half times his salary, which his salary is $160,000. Do we need this life insurance, this term life insurance?

You really don't, Helen. I mean, really, the only purpose for it is if one of you is counting on the other's income to be able to support yourselves during this season of life. And if you've built up the assets to be able to cover this because either you're no longer working or you're soon not to be working, and if the Lord were to call one of you home, it wouldn't create any kind of hardship for the other spouse, then there's not a need to pay a life insurance premium any longer because essentially you've saved and done what you need to do to put yourselves in a position where you're no longer counting on an income from either of you. And you've got the assets and Social Security and retirement accounts to cover that. And so this is an expense we can drop during this season. Okay. Yeah.

It's just we've had it so long. It just feels comfortable to keep it. I totally understand. Well, it's a great opportunity for you to lower your expenses and put that money to use somewhere else. So that's really the key, I think, with life insurance. Thanks for calling today.

We appreciate it. Barbara, you had a quick question on private mortgage insurance. Does it automatically go away when you get to 20% loan to equity? You would typically have to get an appraisal to prove that until it gets to 78% and then it has to go away automatically. I would call your lender and find out the process to get that taken off.

And again, it could require a home appraisal. Thanks for your question as well. MoneyWise Live is a partnership between Moody Radio and MoneyWise Media. Thank you to Ryan, Courtney, Amy and Jim. Thank you for being here as well. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.