This morning, as I was drinking my coffee and waking up slowly, I watched a report about a new type of scam which involves unauthorized bank transfers. Although the report mainly applies to the German banking system, this could also apply to other countries where law permits it.
Basically, fraudsters will generate a random bank account number, and they will try to transfer 1 cent to that account number. If the transfer bounces, it means that the account number is non-existent. However, if the transfer is accepted, fraudsters will know that …

As I wrote in my last personal project Growth Update, I want to actively start investing in stocks and options, in order build my net value and to generate a passive income and incremental retirement plan on the long run. But then, as I was ready to buy some call options ING Bank, my online banking account returned an error:
You do not have permission to conduct this type of transaction.
I was a bit confused, and decided to dig into the complete setup of products at my bank. And I was …

I have been working in the credit card industry for some years now, and one topic which is keeping fraud departments busy is skimming. Skimming is a practice, during which the card details on the magstripe (magnetic stripe on the back of the card) is being copied, and then written onto another card.  Since the magstripe data is electronic, it could travel to the other side of the world before it written onto another card. Often, the cards used as a ‘host’ for the stolen data are stolen cards which have …

I was thinking a few things over last night, amont others how my financial situation would look if everything crashed: stocks plummet and I would lose my job due to a financial crisis. In my case, this wouldn’t look good at all.

As soon as you spend money, it is gone and you will never get it back. Surely you will earn some more money, but it is not the same money. You have lost the money, unavailable for investing it, unavailable for paying back debt. Looking at things differently, you may actually have spent much more on your purchase.