This article is not intended as financial advice so if you require financial advice see your bank manager, financial advisor, or budget advisor
How to be money smart in a digital world
Written by R. A. Stewart
It is important to be smart in this digital world we live in and that applies particularly in the banking world. With digital currency and in particular Bitcoin gaining in popularity one needs to keep their eye on the ball in order to avoid being scammed.
Investing in Bitcoin, litecoin, or whatever digital currency you use is speculative therefore it is imperative that you invest only discretionary money in these things. That is money left over after paying your important household expenses.
Visa debit cards issued by the banks are recommended for use over the internet rather than credit cards; the difference between the two is that with debit cards you are using money on the card. If there is just $200 on the card then that is all you can spend. You simply top up the card regularly by making transfers from your everyday account.
When you use a credit card you are spending borrowed money and there is a cost to this. If a scammer gets hold of the card details then you are in trouble.
I will tell you a couple of stories;
A lady who is as financially dumb as it is possible to be had her benefit paid into her visa debit card and when her benefit money disappeared from the card she went to the police and accused her nephew of stealing the money. Do you see the first mistake she made?
Having your pay go into your visa debit card which is also used for buying off the internet is downright stupidity. The police could not find any information linking her nephew to the disappearing money. They said, “It looks like the money went to an overseas website.”
A person with sense would have gone to the bank first and asked them to investigate. Another thing she could have done is check her emails because when a website withdraws money from someone’s account they send the customer an email.
An uncomfortable truth
There is a lot of internet fraud which goes unreported because victims are too embarrassed or proud to admit how stupid they have been to have been scammed. People of all intelligence from university graduates to high school dropouts have been scammed. This issue is no respecter of people, but in the case above, the lady concerned has a very low IQ but that is another story.
In a separate case a young man deposited $3,000 into his everyday account on a Friday then on the Saturday he discovered the money missing from his account. He told the bank on Monday and they did their investigation. As it turned out, it went to an overseas website which he had been purchasing stuff from. The site was hacked and the hacker had access to the banking information. His three grand went into his everyday account but that account was linked to his visa card and that was the mistake he made.
You should never link your main account to your visa debit card. If you do you are leaving the door wide open for scammers. It is also advisable to have an account which is not accessed by the internet for larger sums of money.
In the case above, the bank did the right thing and deposited $3,000 into his account.
These situations are more common than you think so it is up to ordinary people to use their common sense.
To receive further updates then sign up here;