Upvote This: Ranker Is Filling a Remote Copy Editor Position — Apply Today

Hey copy editors, here’s a gig you might want to upvote.

Ranker, the entertainment website, is looking to fill a remote copy editor position. The website publishes list articles that readers can upvote and downvote items as they see fit.

As a copy editor, you’ll be in charge of making sure images receive proper attribution and the articles are factually and grammatically correct before they get published on the website. Your duties will include verifying facts and sources, giving images proper attribution, spot-checking for plagiarism and using Ranker’s voice and style guide to ensure articles meet set standards.

Hours for this remote contract position sync with the copy desk at Ranker’s Los Angeles Headquarters, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. PST.

Not interested in being a copy editor? Don’t forget to check out our Jobs page on Facebook. We post new opportunities there all the time.

Copy Editor at Ranker

Pay: Not specified

Responsibilities include:

• Proofreading and copy-editing material to ensure content is grammatically correct, fact-checked, free of plagiarism and maintains the website’s voice and style
• Using best practices to make sure images are properly sourced and receive proper attribution
• Be the final set of eyes on content before it gets published
• Reporting to and working with the home office in Los Angeles (hours fall between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. PST)

Applicants for this position must:

• Have at least two years experience in a copy-editing position for a high-profile entertainment, celebrity, movie or television publication (online outlets preferred)
• Have a minimum of two years experience in digital media
• Have a bachelor’s degree in English, journalism, communications, film or related major  
• Have experience using a voice and style guide to make sure copy is clean, fact-checked, bias-free and legally low-risk
• Have experience doing large-scale cleanup projects to bring older content up to current editorial standards (preferred)
• Be comfortable working in a fast-paced environment for a data-driven publisher
• Have experience using various content management systems
• Have experience working with search engine optimization (preferred)
• Be a problem-solver and great communicator
• Have a love of pop culture

Apply here for the copy editor position at Ranker.

Matt Reinstetle 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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She Makes $45/Hour as a Massage Therapist — and All Her Clients Are Dogs

9 Ways to Get Free or Cheap Therapy When You Don’t Have Health Insurance

When you have poor or no health insurance, you might prioritize other issues over mental health care. This could mean ignoring undiagnosed issues or skipping treatment you know you need.

Even if you don’t suffer from mental health issues, you might neglect your need for support through a major life event when you see the cost of therapy.

As with any physical ailment, not seeking mental health care could be detrimental to your health in the long term.

Instead of forgoing care or winding up in debt over medical bills, try these options to find affordable or free counseling and other mental health care services.

1. Get Affordable Health Care

If you don’t have employer-sponsored insurance coverage and can’t afford private insurance on your own, you could be subject to a fee under the Affordable Healthcare Act.

For assistance, apply at Healthcare.gov. You could receive help covering the cost of insurance, or you may qualify for free health insurance through your state’s Medicaid program.

If you don’t want state-sponsored health care, you can also try a health care ministry like Medi-Share to cut costs. You’ll have to be an active member of a Christian community to join, and the program is best for those in generally good physical health.

When insurance fails you, here are some more options to get the care you need.

2. Find a Training Clinic

Like other areas of health and medicine, practitioners need to practice working with the public before they become clinical or counseling psychologists.

That’s good news for any of us who want to save money on therapy.

Training clinics are usually located near or as part of universities. You’ll attend sessions with a graduate student supervised by a licensed psychologist. These clinics typically charge on a sliding scale (which could be as low as $0, if that’s where your scale slides…)

To find one near you, you can browse the Association of Psychology Training Clinics for member clinics. Or just search “[your city] psychology training clinic.”

3. Visit a Community Mental Health Center

“Community mental health centers provide free or low-cost therapy options and services covered by Medicaid insurance,” says Julie Hanks, LCSW, at Psych Central.

Find a center through the Department of Human Services at your state’s government website.

You can also find services through private non-profit organizations. YMCA offers low-cost/sliding scale behavior health and family services for kids and adults.

4. Attend a Support Group

While you miss out on the personalized care and complete anonymity of private sessions, support groups can be the perfect solution for free or low-cost therapy.

Organizations like the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA), the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA), Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) host free community support groups in person or online.

If you want to work with a particular therapist but can’t afford private sessions — because you lost insurance coverage, for example — ask if they offer group sessions. These should come at a lower rate you could potentially afford out of pocket.

5. Negotiate and Ask for Discounts

You might not realize it, but your medical bills are totally negotiable. By a lot.

Don’t be afraid to lowball here — this isn’t a business deal, so you don’t have to worry about making a bad impression.

When you receive a bill for services, contact the provider to simply let them know you can’t afford it. They may be willing to cut the cost by more than half if you can pay a chunk upfront.

If you don’t have the cash handy, ask for a payment plan. Get on it before the bill goes to collections, and ask for a monthly payment you can handle to avoid a hit to your credit for late payments.

6. See a Doctor Online

You may be skeptical, but telehealth (or telemedicine) is legitimate and could save you a ton of money on health care.

Through an app like Teladoc, you can meet with a healthcare professional (for physical or mental health issues) for a fraction of the cost of a trip to the clinic.

Telemedicine doctors can diagnose, recommend treatment and even prescribe medication if necessary.

You can even get your therapy via text message — any time you want — through Talkspace! Get unlimited text therapy for $128 per month.

Or go the group therapy route with NAMI AIR, a free app that connects you with a community of people living with mental health conditions and their caregivers.

7. Lean on Your Spiritual Community and Leaders

If you’re involved with an organized religious group, you could find the help you need within that community.

Does your organization host free support groups or retreats where you can connect with others in your situation? Maybe your minister or other leaders in the community offer free individual or couples counseling.

If you’re worried about opening up about your struggles within a small community, remember: Everyone coming to group therapy is looking for help, just like you are.

8. Use Services at Your School or College

College or university students (and faculty) likely have access to health care services through their schools. Your tuition and fees subsidize them, so you might as well take advantage!

Children enrolled in a K-12 school may have access to sessions with a school counselor as well. Lean on these options when your family can’t afford private mental health services.

9. Consult the Internet

Going online to self-diagnose your ailments can be troublesome.

But if you already know what you’re dealing with, consulting a relevant association’s website could help when you have questions and lack access to a doctor.

For example, if you suffer from anxiety, you can find reliable resources at these websites:

• Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies
• Anxiety and Depression Association of America
• International OCD Foundation

Some people also find online forums like Reddit or Facebook groups useful for connecting with other people who understand your situation.

Just be careful to take advice from random individuals with a grain of salt, and never rely on them for a diagnosis.

If you prefer to speak with someone directly, you can call the NAMI Helpline to get answers about symptoms, treatments and resources. The Helpline itself doesn’t offer counseling, but it can help you connect with programs in your area.

Calling a complete stranger to talk about your difficulties can be intimidating but it’s a little easier when you know what to expect.

Dana Sitar (@danasitar) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She’s written for Huffington Post, Entrepreneur.com, Writer’s Digest and more.

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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The Gap Between Your Goals and Your Actions

For me, the biggest challenge of any major life change, whether it’s financial in nature or health-oriented or something else, is handling the gap between your goals and your actions.

Let’s say you’ve decided that you’re now going to turn your finances around. You’ve sat down with a good personal finance book or two, read through them, dived deep into the archives of The Simple Dollar (and perhaps some other personal finance sites), and you deeply understand the value of turning your finances around. You’re deeply committed to this goal. Let’s do this!

Yet, just a few days later, you take actions in your daily life that head in the exact opposite direction of that goal. You go out with friends and spend a bunch of money. You stop for a sugary coffee drink or for takeout or buy another Kindle book.

And then, a few hours later, you’re wondering why on earth you just did something so blatantly in opposition to your big goal.

Why did I buy that? Why did I spend that money? Why did I eat that?

You might feel stupid. You might feel like a failure. You might even just give up on your goals.

Don’t.

The reason there’s a gap between your goals and your actions is because the principles and goals that guide your actions in the short term aren’t lined up with your long term principles and goals.

I’ll give you an example.

In the long term, my goal is to build financial independence by spending significantly less than I earn and doing something smart with the rest. That’s a great goal with a good principle to guide me there.

The problem is that, in the short term, that principle stands along a big mix of other principles and desires and goals. Yes, I want to spend less than I earn and be frugal with my money, but I also want this new board game to play with my family and friends because I enjoy playing those games, having fun, and cementing a bond with my family and friends, and I see that game as a route to those goals. “Hey, buying this game checks off these three boxes, but not buying it only checks one box… I’ll buy it!” is basically the thought process of my subconscious mind.

Don’t feel bad when something similar happens to you with whatever long term goals you have. It’s a natural response.

The catch is that you have to treat it as a sign that there’s a lot more to work on regarding making progress on your goal. It’s not a sign of failure of yourself or of your goals. It’s a sign that you haven’t quite put all of the pieces for success into place yet.

There are four things in my life that I’ve found that offer real help with shrinking the gap between my big long term goals and my daily actions.

First, I try to keep my long term goals present in my mind as much as possible. I actually wrote about the power of long term thinking and how to encourage it very recently, and everything I said in that article rings true here.

You have to have your long term goals as front and center in your mind as you possibly can. The most effective method I’ve found for this is to just build up some daily, weekly, and monthly routines that force me to think about the longer term future and what I want out of it. I regularly write out detailed pictures of what I want my future to look like at different times – a year, five years, ten years, and so on. I consciously plant lots of seeds for the future. I spend time when I’m driving thinking about very specific long term goals, like “how can I improve my core strength over the next year” or “how can I maximize my children’s college savings by the time they go off to school.”

The more you do this, the more you nudge yourself to take the long term into account with all of your decisions. Your long term goals start to loom larger in your mind and thus you naturally consider it when making choices.

Second, I try to seek out routines that match my short term desires and my long term goals. I will go to great lengths to find things that match what I want in the short term (usually immediate enjoyment or time saving) with what I want in the long term and then add them to my routine.

I’m constantly trying out new foods because I want to find a wide roster of healthy foods I like so that I can eat a healthy diet without just repeating the same four or five things over and over again. I’m constantly trying out new low cost or free activities or hobbies because I want to find a wide repertoire of enjoyable things to do that don’t cost anything. I’m constantly trying out new fitness ideas because I want to find exercise that I enjoy doing in the moment that also improves my long term health.

Just try new things that match your long term goals and might click with your short term desires. If you find something that clicks, add it to your repertoire; if it doesn’t click, discard it and move on to something else.

Eventually, you’ll find that you have tons of options that fulfill your short term desires and your long term goals, thus drastically shrinking or even eliminating the gap between your goals and your actions.

Third, I try to find friends who have similar long term goals as myself and accentuate those friendships. My closest friends in the world – the people I enjoy spending time with – are all committed to pretty frugal lifestyles in an effort to eventually become financially independent. Most of them are really into keeping their spending low. Thus, it feels comfortable to do low cost or free things with them, and they often suggest low cost or free activities to do together.

This is true for almost every long term goal you have. If you want to eat a healthier diet, accentuate your relationships with people in your life who are healthy eaters. If you want to get more fit, accentuate your relationships with people in your life who are fit. If you want to quit smoking, accentuate your relationship with people in your life who don’t smoke.

If you don’t have friends or family members who meet these criteria, seek them out by going to community events or getting involved in civic groups or meet ups that would attract such people. See what your town really has to offer, then use those opportunities to build relationships.

Finally, I do at least one detailed “after action review” each day. An after action review simply means that I take something I did recently – a choice I made or some action I took – and I tear it apart in detail, deciding for myself with more detailed thought whether it was really the right choice to make considering my long term goals and other factors that I might not have considered in that moment.

For me, an after action review is simple. I think about a recent event that I’m not sure I handled well, and I start asking myself questions about it. What was the situation? Who was there? What exactly happened? How was I feeling? How were the other players involved actually feeling? What did I want? What did they want? How should I have ideally handled it? What can I do to make sure the next time this happens, my reaction is closer to the ideal?

For example, I was at the store and I bought a box of a particular kind of tea because I’d read a few articles about it and heard a podcast episode on it. I’ll break that down – should I really have bought that tea at all? Why did I buy it? Could I have bought it elsewhere? Did I really think it through at the store?

It takes me a little while to think through those thoughts. Sometimes, I’ll write it out in a journal. At other times, I’ll just think it through in my head while driving somewhere.

Often, I do after action reviews on little things that might seem like they don’t really deserve a second thought. However, what they reveal is my principles and instincts in action, and it’s a good way to check my principles and instincts and make sure they’re really working for me in the way I want them to work, in the service of my long term goals.

The thing to remember is this: the closer your everyday actions are to being in alignment with your long term goals, the easier it becomes to just march straight to those goals. That sounds easy, but it isn’t – we’re often driven by short term impulses that aren’t in alignment with our goals, and there’s sometimes a really big gap there. The challenge is to figure out how to massage that gap by considering our goals and our short term impulses and nudge them closer together so that our short term actions and impulses are much closer to our long term goals. This makes it far easier to march toward whatever big goals we have for ourselves.

Good luck!

The post The Gap Between Your Goals and Your Actions appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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The Ultimate B2B Marketing Guide

Your B2B marketing strategy will differ from your typical B2C approach.

Sure, you may notice some overlap between the two, but for the most part, you’ll need a new plan if you want to target other businesses.

Some of you may have companies focusing on other businesses as your primary group of customers. And some of you may be considered both B2B and B2C companies.

If that’s the case, one overlap you may see between the two strategies would be social media marketing. But the difference would be in the way you use it.

Here’s an example. You could be using Snapchat to promote your business as the B2C company. But that won’t be effective as your B2B strategy. But we’ll dive into greater detail on the social media subject later.

For our purposes, it doesn’t matter what type of company you have.

Whether B2B sales make up the totality of your revenue or only a fraction of it, you’ll be able to benefit from this guide.

I’ll explain everything you need to know about how to properly manage and approach your B2B marketing strategy.

Define your buyers

When it comes to B2B marketing, this step will differ from your typical approach to identifying your target market.

That’s because this scenario will be much more specific. You’ve got a unique product or service. Right away, you’ll need to recognize which companies can benefit from whatever you’re selling.

For example, let’s say you manufacture cleaning chemicals for commercial dry cleaners.

You may assume that any dry cleaning business in the country or your region will fall into your target market. While this may be true, that doesn’t necessarily help you define your buyer.

Take a look at this graphic that highlights some of the key differences between your B2B and B2C target audience:

With this information in mind, let’s continue with our dry cleaning example. Whom are you selling to? Is it the owner of the company? The production manager? Is it the person who answers the phone when you call the facility?

Recognizing who has the buying power isn’t the same as identifying your target market.

As we can see in the graphic above, you’ll be focusing your B2B efforts on a much smaller group of people. That’s why it’s helpful to develop a customer persona to boost your conversion rates. You need to realize that the customer persona will vary depending on which business you’re dealing with.

This is one of the first things you should do before going forward with your marketing strategy.

If your buyers aren’t clearly defined from the beginning, the rest of your campaigns won’t make a ton of sense.

Focus on long-term relationships

If you’re selling directly to consumer, it’s obviously important to put effort on customer retention as well. But these types of relationships are way more important for B2B companies.

Think of it like this. Let’s say you sell something simple, like desk chairs.

If a direct consumer buys a chair from you and never buys again, it won’t make or break your company. But let’s say a hotel chain decides to buy chairs for every single room in one of its new buildings.

This is a relationship you can’t afford to lose. That’s why you need to do whatever you can to go the extra mile for your B2B customers.

A B2C customer can just go online and order something from your website. But your B2B clients may require more in-person support:

Let’s continue with the chairs and hotel example. You’ve got a huge opportunity here to continue selling to this client in the future.

Maybe they’re going to build more hotels. Eventually, they’ll even need the chairs replaced in their existing buildings as well.

You can’t just look at the initial sale and be done with it. Always look toward the future, and try to build a long-term relationship.

Adding the personal touch of being present for a delivery of goods can go a long way when it comes to repeat business. I understand this isn’t always practical for every customer or every transaction, but do what you can if it means securing a long-term B2B client.

Prioritize satisfaction

With B2B marketing, you need to make sure the customer is always satisfied. This concept relates back to our previous point about long-term relationships.

For the most part, satisfied customers will keep coming back.

There are certain things you can do to satisfy your B2B customers. Here’s what I mean.

Let’s say you sell file cabinets for offices. You wouldn’t send a free cabinet directly to the consumer, ask them to use it for a while, and then place an order if they want to buy more.

That just doesn’t make any sense from a B2C marketing strategy. How many file cabinets could one person possibly need in their personal home or office?

They would likely take the free one, and that would be the end of it.

But for a B2B company, sending free products to focus on customer satisfaction is a much more reasonable strategy.

To enhance satisfaction, you need to focus on the customer journey process after the point of purchase:

One or two free file cabinets is nothing if that satisfied customer buys thousands of units for their commercial office space. Take their feedback into consideration as well.

If they intend to make more purchases in the long run, you can customize your production specifically for that customer.

But we’ll talk more about this subject in greater detail shortly.

Personalization matters

As I just said, under some circumstances, you might need to customize your products or services based on what the customer wants and needs.

Obviously, you’ll need to have some restrictions here. For example, if you manufacture cars and the client wants boats, you probably won’t be able to help them.

But if you manufacture 11-inch plastic bags, you should be able to manufacture a 20-inch plastic bag with the client’s logo on it to fit their needs. See the difference?

Again, this relates back to satisfaction and long-term relationship building.

Sure, you won’t be able to print that logo on any of your other products for the rest of your clients, but you’re hoping that this type of personalization will result in repeat business from that customer.

Furthermore, you should be personalizing your content to target your B2B customers. Currently, 68% of B2B marketers say they are testing personalized content and offers:

If you’ve properly defined your buyers, which I previously discussed, you can take that personalization strategy to the next level. Here’s what I mean.

Let’s say your company makes coffee mugs and you’re selling a huge order to a business that gives them away as marketing material. All they want is their logo printed on the mugs.

While you are negotiating, you learn the company representative is an avid fisherman.

This may sound like just some small talk, but you could give him a personalized mug with his name and some kind of fisherman design on it as a gift.

While the gesture may seem corny, this added personal touch can go a long way when it comes to building a relationship with this company. When they are ready to order more goods, that representative will think twice before switching to one of your competitors.

Sell your story

Mastering the art of storytelling is crucial for both B2C and B2B businesses.

Having a great story and showcasing it on your website or as part of your value proposition can help you generate leads. But with B2B marketing, you need to position your story to help drive sales.

Tell your clients why you got into business. What’s your background? What’s your experience like?

If you’ve got years of experience in the industry you’re selling to, your clients may be more likely to buy something from you because your products will probably be made accordingly.

Not sure how to get your story out there? This is a great opportunity for you to start blogging:

As you can see from this data, B2B brands who blog generate more leads than those who don’t.

Here’s an example that shows the importance of your story. Imagine you run a company that sells something like gym weights and other fitness equipment.

Recall our discussion about defining the buyer. In this case, you’d be dealing with gym owners and branch managers. It’s safe to say these people have lots of experience with this type of equipment.

But if your background is in accounting and you’ve never worked out a day in your life, it’ll be tough for you to relate to these clients.

However, if you’ve worked in gyms for years and have a personal training certification, your story will help you drive these sales.

You can talk about the way your experience helped you make modifications to equipment to make it safer, more ergonomic, etc..

Pay close attention to your pricing strategy

With marketing, most people don’t tend to think about the price of what they’re selling. But that’s a key component to your promotional strategy.

There are so many factors for you to take into consideration here.

First of all, you need to know what your competitors are selling the same or similar products and services for. Second, you need to know how your price will impact the image of your company.

If the price is too low, will your potential customers think the product is cheap and not made from high quality materials?

When you set your price, make sure you have it at a point that’s enough for you to turn a profit. Factor in all your costs such as materials, equipment, labor, rent, shipping, etc.

You also need to leave some room for negotiation. These things don’t matter as much when you’re selling directly to consumer, but they make a huge difference for B2B clients:

Take a look at how pricing influences repeat purchases for B2B customers:

Three of the top seven responses, including the top result, are related to price.

Here’s an example to show you just how big of an impact pricing can make on a purchase. Let’s say you manufacture clothing.

You sell directly to consumer as well as to other businesses. The price of a plain t-shirt on your website is $15. If it were $14 or $16 instead, it probably wouldn’t have had a huge impact on how many people would buy it. If they’re willing to pay $15, they’re probably willing to pay $16.

But now think about your B2C clients.

Your price for that same shirt might be $7 if they buy it in quantities of 1,000 units. If a commercial customer wants to buy 5,000 shirts, the difference between $7 and $7.50 is $2,500 on that order.

Think about how those numbers scale if that same customer wants to repeat that order twice per quarter for the entire year.

That’s an extra $20,000 they’d be spending. If you think regular consumers are price-sensitive, know that B2B customers pay even more attention to price.

If they weren’t so picky, they wouldn’t be able to stay in business.

Recognize how your buyers consume content

You won’t be advertising the same way to your B2B customers as you would to your B2C ones.

As I briefly stated earlier, social media is still a viable strategy for B2B marketing.

But you won’t be using platforms such as Snapchat. Instead, you’ll probably prioritize marketing channels such as Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

Here’s a comparison between B2C and B2B social media usage by platform:

Use promotional videos, photos, and other visual content to market to your B2B clients.

Just make sure you keep things professional at all times. Stay on brand. Build an email list.

When you form a new relationship with your customers, ask them whether it’s okay to use calling or texting as a method of communication with them.

B2C companies may have thousands of unique customers per year. But if your B2B brand has only a dozen or so customers, you can try to manage them through this type of personalized communication as opposed to traditional marketing tactics.

Putting out commercials on national television for everyone in the country to see may not be effective if you’re dealing with only 10 or 20 clients per year.

That’s a waste of your resources.

Always network with the intention of growing

Don’t settle.

Your B2B marketing strategy needs to make your company grow. Try to generate more leads and new customers. Get your existing customers to spend more money.

Networking is a great way to find new customers, especially in the B2B sector.

Take a look at this data of the top B2B marketing activities:

As you can see, attending events ranked high on this list.

Go to local, regional, and national events. Join industry networks to meet new people.

These networks host annual meetings and conferences that can be extremely beneficial to your company.

In addition to in-person networking at events, you can also network through digital platforms. As we just discussed, social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn need to be part of your B2B marketing strategy.

Conclusion

You need to take a different approach with your B2B marketing campaigns from the approach you’d take with your B2C campaigns.

Start by figuring out who has the buying power in the businesses you’re targeting.

Focus your efforts on customer satisfaction. Go the extra mile to please your customers, and use personalization to befriend them.

All of this will help you build long-term relationships so you can increase the chances of getting repeat purchases from the same clients.

Leverage your brand story to generate leads. Pay close attention to your pricing strategy.

Identify the best marketing channels to promote your content to prospective buyers.

And don’t forget: growing your B2B company requires your constant attention.

If you follow these tips, you’ll be able to create a profitable B2B marketing strategy.

How is your B2B brand generating new leads through promoting customer satisfaction?

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A Real Knockout: UFC and 7 Other Companies Could Owe You

CryptoKitties: The Future Is Meow

Why would anyone pay more than $100,000 for a cat that only exists in pixels? And what can these virtual kitties teach us about blockchain technology?

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CryptoKitties: The Future Is Meow

Why would anyone pay more than $100,000 for a cat that only exists in pixels? And what can these virtual kitties teach us about blockchain technology?

Source Business & Money | HowStuffWorks https://ift.tt/2HvGjd7

This App Helps This Makeup Artist Overcome Challenges to Pursue Her Passion

I Have a Stalker. Will a Landlord Rent to Me Without a Background Check?

Dear Penny,

The house we have been renting for the past eight years is being sold. We must be out on July 1.

My awkward money problem is I have a stalker. Therefore, I MUST stay private.

I can’t have credit or background searches done, because that’s how he’s found me in the past. We are offering two to three months’ rent upfront, a glowing letter from our current landlord, and a letter from my attorney about the stalker and restraining order. But no one is willing to help us out.

Do you have any suggestions? I can’t allow any searches. It’s too risky. It truly is a matter of my life.

-C

I can only imagine the stress you’re feeling right now. Moving is the worst when everything is normal; when you’re afraid for your safety, the stress must certainly compound.

Tenant rights vary widely from state to state, but one thing’s for sure: A landlord or property management company will want to check an applicant’s background in some way. Anyone can come to an open house with a smile and halfway decent handwriting and appear trustworthy; it’s not until landlords run the checks of their choosing that they can be confident prospective tenants will pay the rent on time.

Asking a potential landlord not to do a background or credit check is a major red flag. Even though you’re not at fault in this situation, a history with a stalker is something that will turn off many landlords from even considering you. Landlords want a drama-free property almost as much as you do.

Our lives are more public and easily accessible now than ever before — more than any of us probably wishes. When someone has enough information about you to check up on your affairs beyond what’s easy to Google, there aren’t too many places left to hide.

From your letter, it sounds like your stalker has access to databases that aren’t available to the public. If your stalker can see who recently ran your credit, he might be able to trace you to your new location.

If you can’t leave your geographic area, it might be time to call in reinforcements beyond your restraining order and attorney’s note.

Thirty-six states have address confidentiality programs to protect victims of stalking and domestic violence. The programs provide substitute addresses that can be used for government documents and with public agencies. Programs like these aren’t likely to be helpful if the stalker already knows your address, but they may slow down his search if he doesn’t.

If you think your stalker is finding information about you with your Social Security number, you can ask the Social Security Administration for a new number. You have to provide evidence for why you’re requesting a new number, but the application process is free.

The Stalking Resource Center at the National Center for Victims of Crime has resources you may want to review. The National Network to End Domestic Violence has a relocation tip sheet for people dealing with stalking.

In a movie script, I’d tell you to change your name, cut your hair and get the heck out of town. But this is real life. Work with law enforcement and local victim advocate programs, and ask for help from friends, family, your employer and anyone else who can keep an extra eye out on your well-being.

Have an awkward money dilemma? Send it to dearpenny@thepennyhoarder.com.

Disclaimer: Chosen questions and featured answers will appear in The Penny Hoarder’s “Dear Penny” column. I won’t be able to answer every single letter (I can only type so fast!). We reserve the right to edit and publish your questions. Don’t worry — your identity will remain anonymous. I don’t have a psychology, accounting, finance or legal degree, so my advice is for informational purposes only. I do, however, promise to give you honest advice based on my own insights and real-life experiences.

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