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Creative Ideas for Budget-Conscious Travelers
After a long hiatus from traveling during the pandemic, many Americans are once again pulling their suitcases out of storage. While the impulse to go crazy with plans may be strong, you probably don’t want a vacation-debt hangover that lasts for months after your trip. Here are a few creative ideas for budget-conscious travelers.
Review Anticipated Expenses
Before you hit the road—or the air—tally up anticipated expenses so you know what to expect. Once you get a fairly accurate picture of what your vacation will cost, then start manipulating the numbers to make it more affordable. Here are a few ways you can save:
- Search online for cheaper accommodations and flights. Aggregator websites like Google.com/travel/ and HotelsCombined.com will look through online travel agencies and hotel sites to find the best deals. Go to Orbitz.com, Travelocity.com, and Expedia.com for deals on flights, but don’t stop there. Go directly to the airlines’ websites to see if they offer even lower prices with fewer fees.
- Look for package deals. Some packages even include meals, a big expense for large families. If you’re traveling to a family reunion or meeting up with multiple families, check out group-booking sites such as Groople.com.
Ideas for Budget-Conscious Travelers
- Consider swapping homes. Trade homes with people who live where you want to spend your vacation and save hundreds or even thousands of dollars on hotel costs for a two-week vacation. Do a Google search for “home swap” or “home exchange.”
- Plan ahead to save on meals and snacks. Stay at hotels that include continental breakfast for guests. If your room has a minifridge, buy your favorite drinks and snacks and store them in it.
- Look for two-for-one coupons and other discounts. Check in the hotel lobby, area newspapers, and on the web for money-saving coupons for area attractions, tours and restaurant meals. Deals are out there for those who look for them.
How Will You Pay?
Finally, figure out now how you’re going to pay for the vacation. A word of advice: Don’t let vacation debt linger for several months after you get back home. Ideas for budget-conscious travelers should inclPlan to pay off credit-card debt in full when the bill arrives by using savings in combination with money from a home equity line of credit or small closed-end loan from the credit union. Loans and lines of credit likely have lower interest rates than most credit cards, so you can pay down that debt much faster.
How to keep yourself safe from scams
scam/ skam/
noun. a dishonest scheme; a fraud.
According to the FBI, Americans were hit by an unprecedented rise in cybercrime during the pandemic, with nearly 850,000 reports to the FBI and losses surpassing $6.9 billion.
It seems like every time you turn around, a new scam is making the rounds and the goal is the same—to get you to provide your personal information so they can steal your data, money, or both.
Fortunately, there are ways to protect yourself. The most obvious is not to share your personal information like your bank account number, SSN, or date of birth. Common sense right? Yes and no. Criminals are continuously developing new and sophisticated ways to capture the data they need from you. The question now is how to recognize a scam?
Scams target everyone
Scams target people of all backgrounds, ages and income levels. There’s no one group of people who are more likely to become a victim of a scam, all of us may be vulnerable at some time.
Scams succeed because they look like the real thing and catch you off guard when you’re not expecting it. Scammers are getting smarter and taking advantage of new technology, new products or services and major events to create believable stories that will convince you to give them your money or personal details.
Learning how to recognize scammers’ tactics is the best way to avoid being scammed. Unfortunately, there is no guaranteed way to tell for certain if a request is legitimate. The things to consider as signs a company or person is trustworthy are some of the same things scammers imitate.
Reduce your risk of being scammed
- Be suspicious. Scammers work hard to appear trustworthy. Consider the request before you engage.
- Don’t trust unexpected contact. Scams often come through as an unexpected phone call, text or email. Always take steps to know who you’re dealing with.
- Do your research. Use Google or if it’s from a company or individual you are familiar with, contact them.
- Resist demands to act quickly. Anyone presenting a legitimate request will allow you time to consider your response. If you feel under pressure, take some time — or turn it down.
- Never open attachments or click on links in emails or texts if words or images make you feel wary. You have nothing to lose by ignoring or deleting the email.
- Check for spelling and grammar errors. Some scams are good at imitating the communication style of reputable companies, but many scam correspondence will include obvious mistakes.
- Don’t share personal information. Scammers number one priority is to discover bank details and passwords. A legitimate business will never ask for such information via phone, text or email.
- It’s not secure. Always look for the https (not http) and the padlock icon in the address bar to ensure there’s a secure connection between you and the website. This is not a guarantee that it is legit, however, so do not rely on this alone, as some scam websites are beginning to use https too.
- Offers you something that sounds too good to be true. If online shopping deal, a prize for winning a competition that you have not entered, or an unclaimed gift card sounds good to be true, it probably is.
- Asks you to use a non-secure payment method. How are they asking you to pay? Scammers often ask you to pay by non-secure payment methods such as money orders, pre-loaded gift cards, and cryptocurrency like Bitcoin. These methods are difficult to track and difficult to recover. Always look for secure payment options such as PayPal or credit card.
Remember that scammers will:
- Try to gain trust by claiming to be from a well-known business or impersonating a known contact
- Suggest their own verification procedures, like going to websites they have created or calling numbers they provide to you
- Appeal to your emotions to get what they want
- Create a sense of urgency to get you to make decisions without thinking.
Remember that you have the right to be impolite and to be firm to keep yourself safe from scams. It’s perfectly fine to say no outright if you have a bad feeling about something. Bottom line, if you think it’s a scam, it probably is.
For more information: Read Fraud or Stickley on Security Articles, explore Mid Oregon’s Security and Fraud Center, visit the FTC’s Identity Theft Information Webpage
You can also check out the Preventing ID Theft: Information from our webinar, presented by the Digital Forensics Team at the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office.
IRS Warns Of An Exponential Increase In Tax Related Scams
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is urging taxpayers to be mindful of scammers using emails and text messages to trick people into providing their personal and tax information. In a press release issued March 21, the IRS warned against clicking on or opening emails or text messages claiming to be from the agency, as the IRS never “initiate contact with taxpayers by email, text or social media regarding a bill or tax refund.”
NEWS RELEASE: WASHINGTON — With the filing deadline quickly approaching, the Internal Revenue Service today urged everyone to remain vigilant against email and text scams aimed at tricking taxpayers about refunds or tax issues.
In day two of the annual Dirty Dozen tax scams campaign, the IRS again includes a warning about phishing and smishing schemes where cybercriminals try to steal a taxpayer’s information through scam emails or text messages.
“Email and text scams are relentless, and scammers frequently use tax season as a way of tricking people,” said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel. “With people anxious to receive the latest information about a refund or other tax issue, scammers will regularly pose as the IRS, a state tax agency or others in the tax industry in emails and texts. People should be incredibly wary about unexpected messages like this that can be a trap, especially during filing season.”
As a member of the Security Summit, the IRS, with state tax agencies and the nation’s tax industry, have taken numerous steps over the last eight years to warn people to watch out for common scams and schemes each tax season that can contribute to identity theft. Along with the Security Summit initiative, the Dirty Dozen aims to protect taxpayers, businesses and the tax system from identity thieves and various hoaxes designed to steal money and information.
The Dirty Dozen is an annual IRS list of 12 scams and schemes that put taxpayers and the tax professional community at risk of losing money, personal data and more. Some items on the list are new, and some make a return visit. While the list is not a legal document or a formal listing of agency enforcement priorities, it is intended to alert taxpayers, businesses and tax preparers about scams at large.
Phish or smish: Avoid getting hooked by either
Taxpayers and tax professionals should be alert to fake communications posing as legitimate organizations in the tax and financial community, including the IRS and states. These messages arrive in the form of an unsolicited text or email to lure unsuspecting victims to provide valuable personal and financial information that can lead to identity theft. There are two main types:
- Phishing is an email sent by fraudsters claiming to come from the IRS or another legitimate organization, including state tax organizations or a financial firm. The email lures the victims into the scam by a variety of ruses such as enticing victims with a phony tax refund or frightening them with false legal/criminal charges for tax fraud.
- Smishing is a text or smartphone SMS message that uses the same technique as phishing. Scammers often use alarming language like, “Your account has now been put on hold,” or “Unusual Activity Report” with a bogus “Solutions” link to restore the recipient’s account. Unexpected tax refunds are another potential target for scam artists.
The IRS initiates most contacts through regular mail and will never initiate contact with taxpayers by email, text or social media regarding a bill or tax refund.
Never click on any unsolicited communication claiming to be the IRS as it may surreptitiously load malware. It may also be a way for malicious hackers to load ransomware that keeps the legitimate user from accessing their system and files.
Individuals should never respond to tax-related phishing or smishing or click on the URL link. Instead, the scams should be reported by sending the email or a copy of the text/SMS as an attachment to phishing@irs.gov. The report should include the caller ID (email or phone number), date, time and time zone, and the number that received the message.
Taxpayers can also report scams to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration or the Internet Crime Complaint Center. The Report Phishing and Online Scams page at IRS.gov provides complete details. The Federal Communications Commission’s Smartphone Security Checker is a useful tool against mobile security threats.
The IRS also warns taxpayers to be wary of messages that appear to be from friends or family but that are possibly stolen or compromised email or text accounts from someone they know. This remains a popular way to target individuals and tax preparers for a variety of scams. Individuals should verify the identity of the sender by using another communication method; for instance, calling a number they independently know to be accurate, not the number provided in the email or text.
Help stop fraud and scams
As part of the Dirty Dozen awareness effort, the IRS encourages people to report individuals who promote improper and abusive tax schemes as well as tax return preparers who deliberately prepare improper returns.
To report an abusive tax scheme or a tax return preparer, people should mail or fax a completed Form 14242, Report Suspected Abusive Tax Promotions or Preparers PDF and any supporting material to the IRS Lead Development Center in the Office of Promoter Investigations.
Mail:
Internal Revenue Service Lead Development Center
Stop MS5040
24000 Avila Road
Laguna Niguel, California 92677-3405
Fax: 877-477-9135
Alternatively, taxpayers and tax practitioners may send the information to the IRS Whistleblower Office for possible monetary reward. For more information, see Abusive Tax Schemes and Abusive Tax Return Preparers.