Save Your Identity

You’ve seen the commercials showing a bus driving from town to town promoting a credit protection service.

The bus isn’t just an ordinary coach, or a school bus. It’s a bus with the social security number of a multi-million dollar CEO painted on the side.

He’s not crazy–he’s the CEO of Life Lock.

LifeLock is an identity theft prevention service like no other. They don’t just monitor your credit and send alerts if something changes. LifeLock actually has a four-step program that secures your identity from fraudulent use of current accounts and prevents the unauthorized opening of any new accounts.

Then, if your wallet happens to get stolen, LifeLock will assist you with the necessary phone calls to prevent the use of any information contained in it. We’ve all lost our wallets at one time or another, and just trying to remember what was in it is a chore in itself, let alone making all the calls to the various card companies to alert them that your wallet has been stolen.

And if that wasn’t enough, LifeLock offers a $1 million guarantee. If anyone succeeds in stealing your identity (or using a protected card or account), LifeLock will do everything in their power to restore your good name. This includes the hiring of attorneys, accountants, and investigators, if necessary. If someone succeeds in withdrawing cash from an account that was supposed to be protected, LifeLock will pay the sum back to you.

How much does the service cost? Your answer should be “whatever it takes.”

I was shocked to find out that the service costs $10 per month.

So, for the price of lunch, you can protect your identity, and maybe even drive around with your own social security number painted on the side of your car.

I Found $102.84 In My Trash!

Remember the movie “Dave,” where the “fake” president is sitting in a finance appropriations meeting, arguing with the committee members about continuing to pay for services that the government hadn’t been receiving or using? By cutting recurring payments that should have been discontinued long before the meeting, Dave was able to fund a new children’s program for the First Lady.

Well, lastnight I held my own little appropriations meeting as the new CEO of our household and continuing my commitment to become a frugal mom. What I found was astonishing–and had me kicking myself and wishing I wasn’t so unorganized.

I downloaded a range of transactions from my bank account into excel, and sorted through them all by name, then amount.

I found that I was still paying $15.99 per month for a stamps.com account that I was no longer using. (I’d opened it to use for my Cookie Lee Jewelry shipments, but since I’m not selling Cookie Lee anymore, I can just buy regular stamps as needed when checking out from the grocery store.)

I also found that I was still paying $12.95 per month for an XM Radio subscription that I no longer need. I get free satellite radio at work, yet I still prefer to plug into iTunes and listen to my own mixes when the mood strikes.

There were also duplicate gym memberships on our account: One that I thought we’d canceled a long time ago, and another that my husband just began through a wellness program at his company. Since the old one was never canceled, we were still being charged $44 per month, in addition to $36 per month for the new membership. (Not to mention the fact that my husband hasn’t even seen the inside of a gym since . . . well, it’s been a really long time.)

The last item I found was created by my pregnant alter-ego during the summer of 2007. I was bored to death while out on maternity leave, and since I was suffering from round ligament pain, I couldn’t sit, stand, or walk for long periods of time. Having grown tired of daytime television, I signed up not once, or twice . . . but THREE TIMES for an introductory account with audible.com. I was charged $7.49 for the first three months, then $14.95 each month after that. (Multiplied by three, that’s $44.85 for three downloads per month. I really only need one.)

So, let’s add up how much money I’ll no longer be throwing in the trash each month:

Stamps.com: $15.99
XMradio.com: 12.95
Gym membership: 44.00
Audible.com: 29.90
Total: $102.84

It took about an hour of phone calls to get all of these services canceled, since the employees of these companies are trained to say just about anything in order to keep you as a customer. But, an hour of my time is a drop in the bucket compared to the $1,234.08 that I’ll be saving this year.

See–it truly does pay to look at your bank statements once in a while. How much money can you find in yours?