Scholarships are available to this November’s Jump$tart National Educator Conference in Washington, DC by Shane Tripcony The statistics paint a grim picture. According to the 2012 “Financial Literacy Survey of Adults,” two in five Americans gave themselves a grade of C, D, or F on their knowledge of personal finance topics. And if anything, the… Continue reading A Personal Finance Teacher’s Aide
Author: Shane Tripcony
Shane is an author and administrator on BestPrepaidDebitCards.com.
Study: Post Recession Changed Behaviors and Attitudes
New research by Chase and Aite Group reveals how the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression has affected Americans by Shane Tripcony The so-called Great Recession may have officially ended in June of 2009, but its impact has proved to be longer lasting. That is the main finding of a recent study conducted by… Continue reading Study: Post Recession Changed Behaviors and Attitudes
Hackers Target Walmart MoneyCards
Walmart MoneyCard holders around the U.S. report being swindled by Chris Warren It has been a miserable month for a small number of Walmart MoneyCard customers. According to a story on the website ConsumerAffairs.com, a host of Americans who use the retailer’s general purpose reloadable prepaid debit card have had their accounts hacked recently. In… Continue reading Hackers Target Walmart MoneyCards
Prepaid Debit Card Scams Proliferate
While popular, the utility scam is not the only type that relies on the use of prepaid debit cards. According to a story in the Arizona Republic, two citizens of Surprise, Arizona were indicted in a $2.5 million income-tax scheme involving prepaid debit cards. According to the charges brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, the alleged perpetrators told victims that they could receive “Obama stimulus money” or “government funding” via a prepaid debit card. In return for that promised government money, victims handed over personal information that was used by the alleged criminals to file false federal income-tax returns. In total, the 18-count indictment by the federal government says that the perpetrators received over $2.5 million in refunds.
Tax Refunds And Prepaid Debit Cards
Prepaid debit cards have recently become a favored way for states and the federal government to pay tax refunds. The arguments in favor of the use of prepaid debit cards over paper checks in states like Connecticut, Georgia and Louisiana are similar. Not only do citizens who lack a bank account – and therefore cannot take advantage of direct deposit – receive their refund quicker than if it came through the mail in the form of a paper check, but the governments themselves like prepaid debit cards because it save them money.Those are a few of the issues John Friedman took up in a recent story for Bloomberg Law entitled, “Policy Perspectives On Tax Refunds: An Economic Analysis Of Government-Sponsored Debit Card Refunds.” Friedman, an assistant professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, does an in-depth cost-benefit analysis of the embrace of prepaid debit cards and arrives at some conclusions that go counter to many of the arguments policymakers have made.
Oakland Issues Hybrid ID – Prepaid Debit Cards
According to the article by J.B. Wogan, the reason Oakland chose to do this is because of a desire to encourage more low-income residents – typically the segment of the population that does not already have an ID – to have access to traditional banking services. Often, citizens who don’t have bank accounts rely on expensive cash-checking and payday lenders for their financial service needs.