Alpha Consumer

Dealing With Family, Friends, and Money

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February 5, 2008 Comment (9)

If you've ever had a family member ask you for a loan or been asked to split the bill when all you got was a salad, then you are familiar with the awkwardness that can surround money and relationships. In Isn't It Their Turn to Pick Up the Check?, Jeanne Fleming and Leonard Schwarz offer strategies for dealing with the most cringe-inducing scenarios.

In addition to answering my questions below, Fleming and Schwarz offered to respond to readers' questions, which will be published in an upcoming Alpha Consumer post. As an extra incentive to share your own sticky situation, I will mail a copy of the book to the person who asks the most intriguing question. Send your questions to alphaconsumer@usnews.com or post them in the comments section below.

Tags:: relationships,; personal finance,; family,; money

Report: Online Dating's Bad for the Wallet

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By Kimberly Palmer

February 4, 2008 Comment (2)

Not only do you have to worry about your heart while making dates online, but now your wallet is at risk, too. The Better Business Bureau reports today that complaints about online dating services are on the rise.

The most common gripe? Poor matches. Consumers said they were set up with people who did not meet their criteria, including some who were already married or who smoked despite their request for a nonsmoker.

Tags:: personal finance,; internet

The Art of Complaining

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By Kimberly Palmer

February 2, 2008 Comment (11)

Companies have over-charged me $1,100 during the past year. My health insurance provider rejected a $200 claim because it erroneously determined that I had visited an out-of-plan doctor. My flex spending administrator mistakenly said it would not pay for my $600 prescription eyeglasses. And my doctor performed an unnecessary diagnostic test, without asking or informing me, which landed a $300 bill in my mailbox.

Each year, millions of consumers are bombarded with these kinds of payment problems. One industry group estimates billing errors involving health insurance alone exceed $100 billion a year. It’s not just with healthcare. Consumers report that they often find mistakes on credit cards, cellphone bills, and government benefit checks. At the Social Security Administration, the inspector general found that between 1990 and 2006, over 90,000 Social Security recipients were underpaid a total of $120.4 million—some by as much as $25,000.

Tags:: consumers

Prevent Identity Theft

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By Kimberly Palmer

February 1, 2008 Comment (4)

At the Consumer Federation of America's conference this week, I spoke with Ed Farrell, associate director at Consumer Reports' National Research Center, about how to stop identity theft, and with Jean Ann Fox, director of financial services at CFA, about avoiding high-interest bank loans.

Tags:: identity theft,; personal finance

Fight Poverty With Love

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By Kimberly Palmer

February 1, 2008 Comment (2)

A couple of interesting ideas have come into my in box over the past few days:

• James Q. Wilson, professor of public policy at Pepperdine University, argues that the next president of the United States should encourage marriage as a way of reducing poverty. "The new president should realize that poverty in the United States is primarily a problem confronting children and young unwed mothers," he writes. He says the Health and Human Services Department should launch a marriage-strengthening program. He doesn't mention anything about a government-run dating service.

• A new paper from Dan Black, professor at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy Studies (disclosure: my alma mater), to be published later this year in the Journal of Human Resources looks at the wage gap between well-educated men and women. Black found that, as a whole, well-educated women earn about 30 percent less than their male counterparts. But when looking only at men and women who speak English at home, a significant chunk (between 44 and 73 percent) of the wage gap can be explained by age, education, and major. When looking only at women with work experience similar to their male counterparts, the gap disappears even more.

But Black warns against jumping to the conclusion that wage discrimination has all but disappeared among the well educated. It's possible, for example, that women select fields that pay less because they expect discrimination in their original, higher-paying choices.