How Much More is Life Insurance for Smokers in 2018?

It may not seem so on the surface, but obtaining life insurance as a smoker is actually super easy.

When I tell people I used to smoke, they are completely shocked. Being a health nut and Crossfitter, that’s the last thing people would expect that I would do.

To my defense, it was during a stressful time in my life. While I was deployed to Iraq I smoked a cigarette at least every day. It even got to the point to where I was buying cartons of cigarettes.

My wife wasn’t keen on the idea, but I promised her when I returned I would quit for good. Since I got back home in 2006, I’ve smoked (I think) 3 cigarettes total.

How’s that for going cold turkey?

If you smoke, it’s going to hurt your rates.

Since this habit carries so many health risks, smokers generally need to pay more for their coverage; and they could have a more complicated application process.

 

If you handle your application properly though, you can minimize the extra costs you’ll need to pay. Here is a complete guide to life insurance for smokers to help you get prepared.

Life insurance is the best safety net you can buy. It’s one of the only ways you can ensure your loved ones will be taken care of.

If you’re a smoker, you may think you won’t be able to get an affordable life insurance plan. I’m here to tell you how to do it.

Can You Get Life Insurance as a Smoker?

You can absolutely get life insurance if you are a smoker of any kind.

In fact, you can even get instant approval through some life insurance companies.  This is not to say you will not pay higher rates.

Since smoking has been proven to increase the risk of various ailments, smokers will pay higher rates than non-smokers who otherwise have the same risk factors.

If you have two men, both are in good shape, both have similar family histories, and both pass their exam, but one is a smoker and the other is a non-smoker, then the smoker is going to have a higher premium.

According to LifeInsuranceForSmokers.com, even if you have poor health, on top of smoking, you could get as much as $50,000 in life insurance, guaranteed. So, no matter your condition, you can find insurance.

It’s just about how much you’re willing to pay.

How Much Higher are Smoker Life Insurance Rates?

Most smokers realize their life insurance rates will be more expensive, but many are shocked by just how high their rates actually are.
Life insurance for an individual in their 30s can expect to pay two to three times as much than a nonsmoker. A smoker in their 40s can expect to pay three to four times as much.

Insurance companies charge this massive price increase because smokers have such a higher risk of death than nonsmokers. In addition, smokers often have other health problems like a poor diet or an inactive lifestyle. This is just one more example of how it pays to quit smoking. Some of the best life insurance rates for smokers can be found at Transamerica Life Insurance Company.

Sample Life Insurance Quotes for Smokers

	30 Year Old Male 20 Year $500k Policy	40 Year Old Male 20 Year $500k Policy	50 Year Old Male 20 Year $500k Policy
Preferred Plus Non- Smoker	SBLI $20.88/mo	SBLI $30.45/mo	SBLI $81.35/mo
Preferred Smoker	SBLI $77.00/mo	Banner $134.31/mo	Transamerica $337.75/mo

Testing for Tobacco

If you are a smoker, you won’t be able to hide this fact.

First of all, your life insurance application will ask you directly about whether you smoke. You need to be honest and say “yes” because if you don’t, it’s a form of insurance fraud.

Most policies also require you see a nurse or doctor for a medical exam. As part of this exam, you’ll need to give your blood and urine for testing. The insurance company will check to see if tobacco shows up in either. If you test positive for tobacco but reported that you didn’t smoke, your odds of getting a fair insurance rate plummet.

Even if you can hide your smoking from the insurance company, you’re still taking on a big risk.

The first two years of a life insurance policy are known as a contestability period. If you die during this time and the insurance company discovers that you were smoking, it can deny paying out your death benefit.

Being honest is the best way to deal with smoking.

Through the years, I’ve heard a lot of crazy ways people have tried to hide their smoking from the insurance companies. I’m here to tell you, none of them work. You can try all you want, but you’re going to be found out. Lying on your application is going to make the process much more difficult and trickier.

As an added note, no exam life insurance is an option for smokers. But be warned, the premiums are going to be MUCH higher. Not only are you a smoker, but the company isn’t getting the info they need to add up your rates. I rarely advise smokers to go the no exam route.

Cigars, Electronic Cigarettes, and Chewing Tobacco

If you smoke cigars or chew tobacco, you should make sure to note this distinction with your insurance agent. All these forms of tobacco would show up on your blood test and could get you rated as a smoker.

However, insurance companies are sometimes more lenient with these types of tobacco use. For example, some companies give a non-smoker rating to applicants which only use chewing tobacco. If you only smoke cigars a few times a year, you might also be able to qualify for a non-smoker rating by not smoking for several weeks before your application.

Each company looks at different forms of smoking with various medical underwriting. Some companies will still give you preferred rates if you smoke electronic cigarettes, but other companies are going to lump you with smoker’s rates, regardless of what kind of smoking that you do.

This is just one example of why you need to find a company who is more favorable towards your specific tobacco use. Not every carrier views cigars and vaping the same. Picking the wrong company can cost you thousands of dollars.

The best rule of thumb is to let your insurance agent know what’s going on ahead of time so you the underwriting department won’t just assume you smoke cigarettes.

Vaping and Electronic Cigarettes

Vaping has completely changed the way that life insurance companies must look at smoker’s rates.

There are thousands and thousands of people who are starting to vape, or are switching from traditional cigarettes to vaping.

In fact, a lot of smokers are using vaping to kick their tobacco habit, which can work wonders on your health, but how is it going to impact your life insurance rates. When you’re applying for life insurance coverage, you may wonder how vaping is going to impact your rates, and the answer is, “it depends.”

Just like with other kinds of smoking or tobacco, every insurance company is different. Some companies are going to automatically give you smoker’s rates if you vape, but other companies will give you non-smokers rates or have a separate category. Finding the perfect companies for people who vape could save you hundreds of dollars on your insurance plan.

Because the idea of vaping is new, there is little research on how it will impact smokers in the long-run, which means that insurance companies don’t know how to rate it.

As more studies come out on the impact on vaping, insurance companies can accurately calculate the risk associated with vaping, but until then, you can expect to get rates that vary drastically from company to company.

Quitting Smoking Helps

You can use your life insurance bill as one more motivation to quit smoking. If you smoke now and can only get a smoker rate, you could still qualify for a discount later on. You need to quit smoking for at least one year.

At this point, you can request another health exam. If you come through clear as a nonsmoker, your insurance company will start charging you the lower nonsmoker rates.

I would never suggest waiting year to buy life insurance, even if you’re going to pay smoker sized premiums. Go ahead and buy your policy, and then commit to quitting.

There are HUNDREDS of ways you can increase your chances of quitting. More than likely you’ve tried before.

Grab a partner. Use gum or patches. Do whatever you have to do to quit. If you do, you’ll find a hundreds of dollars in your wallet at the end of the year.

Once you’ve quit smoking for good. All you have to do is call your insurance agent and tell them you’ve quit smoking and want to retake the medical exam. They will be happy to set up another appoint. You can enjoy those lower premiums in no time.

A Smoker’s Case Study

I had a 34-year-old male client who was seeking $250,000 of term life insurance coverage.  He had been smoking for most of his adult life but was determined to quit.  He had two young children so getting some life insurance coverage was a major concern of his.

He had stopped smoking for just 4 months so he would have still been subject to smoker rates.

What I suggested was to take out a shorter term policy (10 years vs. 30 years) to make sure he had the coverage he needed while not having to pay a fortune to have it.

The only reason I suggested this was because I knew my client was serious about quitting. If you’ve been trying to kick the habit for years and have been unsuccessful, get the full term of life insurance you need. If you’ve been wanting to kick the cigarettes once and for all, the thousands of dollars that you would save is a great incentive.

Not only will quitting smoking work wonders for your health, but it will also work wonders on your bank account as well.

Find the Right Company

Each insurance company has a different process and different rates for smokers. In addition, some treat all forms of tobacco the same while the best companies for smokers make a distinction between cigars, electronic cigarettes and/or chewing tobacco. Taking the time to find the right match for your situation could make a big impact on your insurance premiums.

To help you in your search, you can work with an independent insurance broker like our company. We regularly work with smokers so we are experts in this market. We can show you how to put together a smart application and match you up with the best companies for your needs. To learn more about our service, call or fill out our online application form for free life insurance quotes.

Unlike a traditional insurance agent, independent brokers represent dozens of insurance companies across the nation, which means they can bring all of the lowest rates directly to you. Don’t waste your time calling dozens of insurance companies and answer the same questions over and over again.

Working with an independent insurance agent is going to save you both time and money on your life insurance policy.

Getting the Right Amount of Coverage

Aside from picking the right kind of policy, it’s vital that you get enough insurance coverage to protect your family.

When calculating your insurance needs, there are different factors that you’ll need to take into account. The first thing that you should calculate is your debts and final expenses. Your family would be left with your mortgage payments, car loans, and much more. All of those can put your family under a mountain of debt.

The next thing that you should account for is your paycheck, you will want your life insurance policy to be able to replace your income. Your family would struggle financially if they no longer had your salary, but that’s where your policy comes in.

These are only two of the things that you should consider when adding up your life insurance needs. I can help you make sure that you’re getting the coverage that you need, and at an affordable price. Just because you’re a smoker doesn’t mean that your life insurance plan has to break your bank every month.

The post How Much More is Life Insurance for Smokers in 2018? appeared first on Good Financial Cents.

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Live in Pennsylvania? This Remote Job With Progressive Could Be for You

Do you have the inner Flo dwelling within you?

If you dream of being the perky Progressive spokeswoman, you could get one step closer without leaving your couch by becoming a customer service representative for Progressive Insurance.

To snag one of these full-time jobs working from home, you must live within 60 miles of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Here’s why companies restrict location for work-from-home jobs.) Previous contact center and remote work experience are preferred qualifications.

Progressive will provide you the virtual training and the equipment, but you’ll need to be physically connected to the Internet via a modem or cable — no wireless connection allowed.

The start dates are July 9, July 16 or July 30, with training from Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 6:45 p.m. EST. Schedules come in six varieties, but all include working at least one weekend day.

Don’t live near Pittsburgh? Cheer up, you can always find more opportunities by checking out our Jobs page on Facebook. We post new opportunities there all the time.

Customer Service Representative at Progressive

Pay: $15.00 to $19.00 per hour.

You get an extra 10 to 15% shift differential pay when you work evenings or weekends. You can also receive up to 16% of your salary as a bonus, based on company performance. Top performers can also earn cash payouts.

Responsibilities include:

• Answering customer questions about billing, policy coverage and products
• Assisting customers with purchasing, renewing, canceling or reinstating policies
• Helping customers manage their accounts, such as adding or deleting vehicles and drivers from a policy

Applicants for this position must have:

• The right location. You must live within 60 miles of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• An internet connection via DSL or a cable modem; the connection cannot be wireless
• A surge protector — you’ll need one for connecting the Progressive hardware
• A year or more of college education or work experience in customer service
• The ability to multitask in a fast-paced environment
• Computer skills
• Verbal and written communication skills

Benefits include:

• Standard benefits like medical, dental and vision insurance, plus a 401(k)
• Progressive pays for training and career development and offers tuition assistance
• You can join Progressive’s wellness program, which offers discounts and rewards

Apply here for the Pittsburgh customer service representative job at Progressive.

Tiffany Wendeln Connors is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.

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How to Reduce the Urge to Eat Out

Jennifer writes in with a bit of a twist on a topic I’ve addressed in the past:

How did you and Sarah break out of the routine of eating out all the time? You mentioned that the two of you used to eat out several times a week and now eat out once a month or less. How did you do it? It always feels like it’s just way easier to eat out.

I’ll be fully honest – a big part of the equation was having children. Children present a certain set of difficulties when going out to eat at a restaurant. Children can be noisy and impatient and picky eaters; though that’s not true of all children all the time, it’s definitely true of most children at least some of the time, and such a situation is very hard to deal with in a restaurant setting. Family restaurants tend to succeed when they cater to this by having a children’s menu and some sort of activity to keep children distracted for a short period, but even then, it’s often not worth the added expense and the additional effort to take a child to a restaurant as compared to one or two adults without children.

Having children wasn’t the whole solution, however. During our financial turnaround, Sarah and I made a lot of conscious decisions about our spending and tried out numerous approaches. Our goal was simple: we wanted to get our food spending in check. It was unnecessary for us to be spending a thousand dollars a month for Sarah and I and our infant child simply to eat. We should be eating on a third of that, or less.

The thing is, as Jennifer mentioned, eating out has a lot of advantages, most particularly the convenience of it. It’s easy to just go to a restaurant, sit in a chair, have someone bring you food, and then have someone clean up after you. The convenience of that, especially at a quick glance, is pretty compelling when you have a busy life without a whole lot of downtime. Eating out is an expensive routine, but it’s a routine with a lot of perks.

How did we break this habit? Here are some of the strategies we employed.

Consider the Full Cost of Eating Out

Eating out at a restaurant isn’t just the financial cost of the entrees you order. You have to add in the cost of the drinks. You’ll add in the cost of the tax on your meal, which can be as much as 10%. You’ll be adding in the cost of the tip, which is somewhere around 20% of the bill. You’ll be adding in the cost of transporting yourself there and then transporting yourself home – that’s gas and miles on your car. All of that really adds up.

Let’s say, for example, that Sarah and I decided to go out for dinner at Red Robin. I’m just pulling a restaurant out of the air, an established one that many people might recognize that isn’t overly expensive but has a pretty decent reputation.

I order the veggie burger for $9.99 and Sarah orders the grilled turkey burger for $9.69. We skip the appetizers. We each order an iced tea for $2.99 to go with it and skip any alcoholic drinks. It’s a pretty cheap meal, as meals go, right?

Our bill comes to $25.66, but we’re not done there. There’s $2.05 tacked on for sales tax. We decide to give a 20% before-tax tip, so we leave $5.14 as a tip. We’re at $32.85, just for two burgers and an iced tea for each of us at Red Robin.

We’re not done there. We had to drive to the nearest area where there are restaurants in amongst our normal activities – let’s figure it’s 5 miles out of our way, on average. That’s 10 miles. The current federal government reimbursement rate, which is a pretty good average of the cost of gas and maintenance and auto depreciation, is $0.53 per mile. So that’s an extra $5.30 to get there and get home. Our new total? $38.15.

It costs us almost $40 in total to each have a burger and fries and an iced tea at Red Robin. Ouch.

I’m not picking on Red Robin here. It’s a good restaurant – it’s just the one I decided to use as an example of a well-regarded chain restaurant many might be familiar with. Your mileage may vary when you eat out – you may eat at a cheaper place. Still, the point is that when I simply look at the cost of a burger on the Red Robin menu, I see $9.99, but the cost is actually much more when I sit down and look at the full picture.

What if you go super cheap? At that point, you start getting into some pretty substandard quality with your food – it just isn’t good food. It’s often pretty poor quality food with some flavorings slapped on it.

The point is this: restaurant eating is expensive. Whenever you eat at a restaurant, the cost is usually more than you think it is.

Doubt it? Go through your credit card statement and bank statement and look at all of the entries associated with a restaurant meal over the course of a month. Each one of those covered one meal for you – maybe with some leftovers it covered two, but that doesn’t always happen – and maybe meals for dining companions. See how much that all adds up to over a month. I bet it’ll shock you. What’s the average cost per meal, too? I bet that’s a painful number as well.

It’s well worth your time to look at the reality of the costs of your own restaurant dining. It almost always adds up to a lot more than you expect that it will, and knowing that there are a lot of hidden costs in eating out can nudge you away from the concept.

Add Up the Full Cost of Eating at Home, and Compare

One great way to put that cost of eating out in perspective is to simply sit down with your grocery bill, subtract out the household items (the things that aren’t directly food related) and the taxes, and then divide that remaining total by the number of meals that the receipt represents.

So, for example, let’s say I spent $180 at the grocery store for actual food items (this was a recent receipt for us) and those items represented breakfast for all five of us for seven days, lunch for me and Sarah for five days, lunch for all five of us for two days, and dinner for all five of us for six days. That’s 35 breakfasts, 20 lunches, and 30 dinners, or a total of 85 meals. $180 divided by 85 is a cost of about $2.12 per meal. This was actually an above average receipt for us, as we stocked up on some items that we’ll use in the future when we have much lower food bills. (Another thing to note: that also includes things like after school snacks and having fresh fruits on hand.)

Now, a person could in theory eat off of the dollar menu at fast food restaurants and get by on about 1500 junk calories a day if you spend $2.12 per meal. You’d order something like a double cheeseburger or an egg sandwich with water to drink and that’s all you’d have for every single meal if you’re figuring in the extra transportation cost, taxes, and so forth.

The thing is, if you start using that $2 per meal baseline to compare all of your restaurant meals, which is what I do, they all start looking overpriced really fast.

I encourage you to do this yourself. Sit down with a grocery store receipt, figure out much all of the food actually cost by subtracting out the household supplies, and figure out how much that represents per meal. You’ll be stunned how low it is.

Step Up Your Cooking Game

Once it’s clear to you how much eating out is really costing you, the next step is to start clearing out the challenges to cooking at home, and those challenges really boil down to one thing: experience in the kitchen. The more familiar you are with your home kitchen and how to prepare a variety of meals, the easier it becomes to just eat at home instead of eating out.

For me, the most effective way of getting started cooking at home is to cook really really simple meals I knew I liked on weeknights and then learn how to cook more complicated things on weekends.

On weeknights, at the start of all of this, we had a lot of spaghetti nights. We had a lot of scrambled eggs and bacon and toast nights. We had a lot of grilling nights. We had a lot of taco nights. Those were all things that I knew I could prepare at home and that I knew that I liked. The thing was, even though I felt okay tackling those kinds of simple meals at the start, practicing them over and over made me more efficient at them. With practice, I learned how to crank out those meals quite quickly with good results and really efficient cleanup.

On weekends, I started cooking more complex meals. I made lasagna. I learned how to cook roasts. I learned how to make a small rotisserie-style chicken in the oven. Sometimes, these experiments took way longer than necessary. Sometimes, they turned into a disaster. Each time, though, I learned quite a few things, and I usually ended up with a pretty good meal for my family. Over time, my cooking skills grew and grew, to the point where I started preparing things like this even on weeknights, when I needed things done quickly with minimal fuss.

I started learning nice shortcuts, like how to use a slow cooker and making meals in advance starting with just making things the night before and eventually progressing to making several batches of meals and freezing them.

Basically, I just cooked and cooked and cooked some more until it felt really easy and natural, and I got started by making really really simple meals at first until I had those down to an exact science.

Splurge a Little on Home Cooking

To me, this is one of the advantages of cooking at home: you can splurge on the ingredients and the cost is still way cheaper than eating anything comparable at a restaurant. So, splurge on ingredients when there’s reason to!

That doesn’t mean that every meal should be made solely of gourmet ingredients. That would be silly and wasteful, honestly. Many meals that you eat at home are going to be quickly assembled and eaten, so there’s no need to go beyond the basics.

However, when you’re looking at a meal where you might otherwise obviously go out for a nice meal instead, consider making something amazing at home instead. It’s really okay to splurge a little.

I really like pasta, so for me splurging means eating fresh pasta. It takes time more than anything to make fresh pasta, so it’s a splurge for me. I also love fresh mushrooms and good craft beer, and if I’m going to have a good meal, I’m willing to splurge on those things.

Even with the splurging, though, I’m still making a less expensive meal than I would if I were going out to a restaurant, and it’s likely a tastier meal, too. We tend to splurge on one or two meals a week at home in this fashion.

Do Some Meal Prep in the Morning

Before you go to work, spend a little bit of time doing some meal prep for the meal you intend to eat in the evening. Chop some vegetables, put something in the slow cooker, put something out to thaw, whatever it is that is appropriate for a meal you’re considering having that evening.

The reason this trick is so effective is that it really nips the “spontaneous meal” in the bud. You might be tempted to just get takeout after work or just meet at a restaurant, but knowing that you’ve already invested time in getting a meal going at home will often motivate you to just go home and make that instead.

What you’re doing is taking advantage of the sunk cost to nudge you in the right direction. The time invested in that stuff is already lost, but the output of it just goes completely to waste if you don’t go home for dinner, and that feeling of having wasted your time and energy that morning is not a good one. It can push you to simply go home and make dinner.

Another advantage is that the meal prep steps you took earlier in the day will make the actual meal preparation in the evening that much quicker. If you made a slow cooker meal, then you probably don’t have to do anything much at all when you get home. If you chopped the vegetables, you probably just have to go home, turn on the skillet, and throw those vegetables in there. The time and energy you’ll need in the evening to get dinner on the table is less if you have some elements of the meal already finished.

I do this all the time, even now. I’ll put a meal in the slow cooker, or I’ll put some rice in the rice cooker and set the timer, or I’ll chop up a bunch of vegetables. I just try to take care of some portion of the meal prep earlier in the day so that I’m motivated to finish it that evening.

Issue Yourself a Challenge

One great way to initiate this kind of habit in your own life is to issue yourself a thirty day challenge. Simply pledge for the coming month that you’ll cook every evening meal at home for thirty days. That’s it. The purpose is to show yourself that it’s actually easier than you think to pull it off, but such a challenge doesn’t seem impossible.

Then, simply spend the next thirty days doing just that. Cook every meal at home and don’t go out once during those thirty days. Try making lots of different simple meals, but also don’t be afraid to repeat them, either, if you find that you like them, because repetition leads to mastery.

Thirty day challenges are really effective for things like this because they push you to really try something new in your life, but don’t push you hard enough that it becomes miserable. It’s long enough to really enjoy the “honeymoon” phase of a new initiative and to assess whether it can become a permanent thing for you, but it’s not long enough that it becomes dull and oppressive. I use thirty day challenges all the time to try out new routines and life patterns, and I stick with the ones that really work well and discard the ones that do not.

Don’t Break the Chain

One of my favorite strategies when trying to establish a new daily habit in my life is to use the “calendar chain” strategy popularized by comedian Jerry Seinfeld, which I’ve discussed before.

The “calendar chain” is simple, really. Just put up a wall calendar somewhere where you’ll see it all the time; a full year calendar like this one is perfect. Each day you live out the habit you’re trying to encourage, cover up that date with a big fat X. After a week or two, you’ll start to notice that you have this long chain of Xs starting to build up, and what you’ll find is that you really don’t want to break that chain of Xs. You don’t want to finish your day without adding an X to that chain.

The motivation to keep the chain going is often plenty of motivation to keep doing something. You can most certainly apply it to cut into the urge to eat out. Simply make an X on any day where you chose not to eat out. You can make exceptions for professional-related meals, but any time you’re choosing what to eat on your personal time, if you didn’t eat out, put an X on that calendar.

Soon a chain will form, and you’ll feel proud of that chain, and you won’t want to break it. That’s a pretty big nudge in a positive direction.

Final Thoughts

There is no “magic key” for breaking the urge to eat out. For us, it was a confluence of many of the above factors all at once, but it’s really hard to say which one really caused us to switch from eating out several times a week to eating out once a month or so. It just happened, thanks to a mix of children, becoming more adept at home cooking, and making a conscious choice not to eat out.

The main goal of all of these tactics is to reset your mind so that you view eating at home as the absolute normal thing to do, while eating out is an expensive splurge to be done when it’s a treat and when there’s a social benefit to it. Once you start to view eating out with that mindset, eating at home almost all of the time becomes natural.

Good luck!

The post How to Reduce the Urge to Eat Out appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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IKEA Visa Credit Card Review

Solar King’s worthless guarantee

A Moneywise reader gives good advice on warranties and guarantees

I read with interest your piece [in May’s Moneywise] regarding [laser eye clinic] Ultralase. It sounded very similar to our predicament last year. We had bought solar panels from a company called Solar King, with a 25-year guarantee. So when the system stopped working, we contacted the company. And, similarly to Ultralase, the website played on its history and also used all original Solar King logos and phone numbers.

But it is now apparently a completely different company. I was told the guarantee is not valid, but we could pay the new firm to have it inspected and repaired!

• 'I'm worried about my credit score after my bank's missed payments'

Luckily, I had saved the original paperwork and the warranty was with an independent company. It did take some time and we were without any solar income through some of the year’s sunniest months, but it was repaired free of charge.

So please advise readers to check any warranty or guarantee is worth having before parting with hard-earned money.

PC/Liverpool

That’s good advice. The more I come across guarantees offered by firms, the less useful they seem. In many cases, they’re just marketing gimmicks that may never be honoured.

In your case it was a local solar firm, based in St Helens, Merseyside, that offered you the guarantee. The firm – which also appeared to trade under the name Solar Crown – actually went bust in 2016, although a new firm called SCUKL appeared from its ashes before going bust in turn in 2017. The company you contacted has nothing to do with the old firms and so refused to honour the guarantee.

• Hermes won’t pay up over lost TV

But it obviously sniffed an opportunity for some business, so I’m glad you managed to find the old paperwork and instead get things repaired for free.

As an aside, the former boss of Solar King now runs a thriving six-strong pub and restaurant business in Liverpool and surrounding areas. It’s pleasing to think that he’s made a really good go of things and is not losing any sleep over the broken promises he made to customers.

OUTCOME: Finding old paperwork means reader gets free repairs

 

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• Scams & rip-offs
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How to Eat Healthy When You Only Have Time to Swing By Taco Bell

This Stay-at-Home Mom Banked an Extra $1,700 Last Year. Here’s How

Beat the pension scammers

Pension freedoms were introduced in 2015, allowing over-55s to spend or invest their pension as they want. However, in the first year of the relaxed rules the government says that around £19 million was lost to pension fraud – double the figure for the previous year

Fraudsters typically encourage people to withdraw their savings to invest in high-risk investments that fail. Often victims are urged to complete a pension transfer to another scheme and the money is invested via the new pension, but with the same outcome – the investor loses their cash.

Analysis by pension consultancy firm Xafinity in September 2017 found signs of potential fraudulent activity in one in 12 pension transfer requests. The scams are numerous. Here’s what to look out for.

• About to retire? It’s time to make the most of your pension freedoms

1 Burial plots

Fraudsters are taking advantage of the UK’s booming population and limited land supply to get people to buy burial plots.

Martin Tilley, director of technical services at pension provider Dentons, says ‘marks’ (potential victims) are provided with information that is factually accurate to build trust.

“The way these people operate is they give people a hook, a fact that is correct,” he says. “For instance, Muslims by their faith are buried and not cremated, so people are offered burial plots in areas where there is a high concentration of Muslims.

“The idea being there is limited supply and high demand, so the land will go up in price.” However, Mr Tilley says that “scammers are controlling the market” and the plots are “vastly overpriced”.

2 Off-plan property

Off-plan hotel rooms are a common racket seen by Mr Tilley. He says investors are offered the chance to buy rooms in hotels that are being constructed in holiday destinations such as Cape Verde, with the promise of high returns. However, the rooms are being sold to UK investors at inflated prices.

“You are buying a hotel room for £50,000 in Cape Verde and being offered a 10% return... but you can buy them directly for less than £15,000,” he says.

“The first £10,000 you pay is funding your 10% a year for the first two years, because the hotel hasn’t been built yet. Then you pay 15% commission to whoever is flogging the rooms and another 15% to the intermediary.”

The development may take years to build, and even if it were successful, there would be no guarantee you could sell when you wanted to access your pension.

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3 Bitcoin

Bitcoin is big business and news of its soaring value at the end of 2017 (it has since fallen) has made investors susceptible to fraud.

Michelle Cracknell, chief executive of The Pensions Advisory Service (TPAS), says one pensioner moved their money into a new pension believing they were buying the cryptocurrency, but had actually just bought shares in a bitcoin company that subsequently went into voluntary receivership.

As a shareholder they were at the bottom of the pile for payouts on any money recovered, and “to add insult to injury” were then billed by the administrator of the company, saying they owed admin fees.

“When we checked, the trustees of the pension, the administrator and the director of the bitcoin company all had the same surname,” says Ms Cracknell. “It was a family set-up.”

“Scammers use SSAS to get around the stricter Sipps rules”

4 Self-administered pension schemes

Most investors will have heard of self-invested pension schemes (Sipps), but maybe not small self-administered schemes (SSAS). The latter are typically used by businesses to hold assets in a pension, but fraudsters use them to get around stricter Sipp rules on permitted investments.

An investor will be encouraged to move their money into a SSAS, which are not as carefully regulated. As anyone can legally set up a SSAS and demand a transfer of pension funds into it, the original pension provider moves the money across without question. The fraud occurs when the money is transferred and the pension funds are placed into high-risk investments.

“People are told to move their money so they can invest [through a SSAS] and are told that the returns on these dodgy investments are so good that the HMRC does not want [people] to invest in a tax-exempt environment [like a Sipp], so you have to take all your money out [of the Sipp pension and put it into the SSAS],” warns Mr Tilley.

To protect investors, Dentons does not allow investments in some high-risk areas, including hotel rooms, storage pods and land banking, in its SSAS. However, not all providers are so scrupulous.

5 Offshore bonds

It isn’t just dodgy investments that savers need to be alert to, they must ensure the wrapper they are investing in is legitimate.

Mr Tilley says crooks like to dress unregulated investments up in investment wrappers that are regulated to provide investors with peace of mind.

“Some [of these investments] are packaged up as offshore bonds, which are regulated entities,” he says. “The offshore bond may be regulated, but what they put inside the bond is a load of rubbish... like car parking spaces. Putting them in an offshore bond means the investments are dressed up to look legitimate.”

He says although the bond will promise 8% a year, in reality the scammers “run it for two years, pull all the money out and disappear”.

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6 Double advisers

Just as important as the investments you are putting your money into is who is advising you to transfer your money.

John Moret, a pension consultant, says investors should watch out if their pension transfer is managed by one adviser and the investments by another.

“Usually you have an unregulated adviser who is promoting a pension transfer, but not authorised to do it. So they get an independent financial adviser (IFA) who is regulated and then that regulated adviser walks away,” he says.

The regulated IFA gets paid to do the transfer and then absolves responsibility for their client. This leaves the unregulated adviser to invest the transferred pension money and the investor without any protection or ability to claim compensation when the investments go bad.

“It’s easy for fraudsters to target people by using LinkedIn”

7 Payment protection insurance

If you have received a payment protection insurance (PPI) refund via a claims management company, be wary of offers to deal with your pension, warns Ms Cracknell.

She says one woman who called TPAS’s advice line had been approached about a transfer by a company which had previously won her PPI compensation.

“She received £200 back on her PPI and then they called her about pension transfers,” explains Ms Cracknell. “The company had already built up trust with the woman because they had delivered pound notes to her.”

Websites of companies running scam transfers often offer other services such as PPI and road accident compensation, which should be red flags if you are approached.

8 Redundancy risk

Con artists are using personal information online to target individuals.

Ms Cracknell says she has seen cases of people being approached for fake pension reviews after they have been made redundant. After a restructuring at a big-name insurance company, a former employee was contacted by scammers. Ms Cracknell adds that it is easy for the fraudsters to target former staff by using the networking site LinkedIn.

“The scammers told the person the employer had asked them to contact them about transferring their pension,” she says. “The fraudsters had a valid reason for calling because the employer was going through a change and a pension review wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility.”

9 Claims management con artists

If being conned into transferring your pension money into a rogue scheme wasn’t bad enough, those who have lost money are now being targeted by claims management companies.

Ms Cracknell says one man who called TPAS had already lost his pension after he was targeted by a claims company.

“He was contacted by a company which said they could get his pension money back,” she says. “He paid them £500 to do it, but it was a scam. The reality is that once that money has been transferred and put into high-risk investments, it’s gone. If the Pensions Regulator and the police cannot get the money back, what makes you think a claims management company can?”

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10 Cold calls

Cold calling is pension scammers’ preferred way of operating. Citizens Advice reckons 10.9 million consumers have received unsolicited contact about their pension since April 2015, when pension freedoms were introduced.

The government has announced that legislation to ban cold calling, texting and emailing will be brought in by this month specifically to try to stem the flow of pension scams.

However, Ms Cracknell warns this does not mean pension savers can take their eye off the ball.

“The size of the prize means the scammers will find an alternative route or take the risk and keep cold calling,” she says. “Just because there is a ban, do not assume that every call is a bona fide call.”

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What to do if you’ve been scammed

Michelle Cracknell (pictured above), chief executive of The Pensions Advisory Service, says those who have fallen prey to scammers should report the incident to Action Fraud, the UK’s national fraud reporting centre. Although it’s still unlikely they will get their money back, sharing information will help police crack down on fraud.

Fraud victims will undoubtedly be angry, but Ms Cracknell says they need to take action to rebuild their pension fund.

“We will talk to those affected by fraud about what they need to do to get a full state pension record and matching employer pension contributions, because they will have a hole in their pension,” she says. Also be wary of claims management firms that promise to recover your cash. It will be another scam.

To report a scam and/or get a crime reference number, contact Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040 or at Actionfraud.police.uk.

 

The telltale signs of being conned

New types of fraudulent schemes are emerging all the time as scammers try to stay one step ahead, but there are some common telltale signs that you’re being taken for a ride.

Martin Tilley, director of technical services at Dentons, says if you are contacted about a pension transfer or a too-good-to-be-true investment, it pays to be suspicious. “If it’s not a regulated investment, then take every fact as a lie before they prove it is not,” he says.

“You have to dig, ask questions about the investment, and if they do not want to give answers, they will stop talking to you. For them, it’s a waste of time and they will move on.”

If you are unsure about an investment, TPAS’s Michelle Cracknell says you can do some basic searches, such as seeing whether the company offering the investment is located in the UK. Although she says an offshore location does not automatically mean it’s a scam, regulation and compensation schemes may differ.

She also recommends using the internet to do background research on the directors to see whether they hold numerous directorships in a variety of companies, which could ring alarm bells.

Investors can also call TPAS and run an investment past the organisation before it is too late. “If you are worried and suspicious, give TPAS a call,” says Ms Cracknell.

Contact TPAS on 0300 123 1047 or visit Pensionsadvisoryservice.org.uk.

Michelle McGagh is a personal finance journalist who has written for The Guardian, Citywire, AOL and Money Observer

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