VeriPlan is personally customizable financial planning software that helps you develop your own comprehensive lifetime financial and investment plan for your family. Functioning as financial decision support software, it automates millions of integrated projection calculations behind the scenes. With VeriPlan you can improve your financial decision-making, because you are better informed about the implications of your decisions. VeriPlan demonstrates the value of improved financial practices within your particular situation and can save you many thousands of dollars.

VeriPlan automatically develops fully integrated projections of your lifetime income, expenses, debts, taxes, and assets. It gives you direct control over all the data and assumptions that underlie your lifetime financial plan. After any change that you make, VeriPlan will instantly project a revised lifetime cash flow and asset growth scenario for you.

For “financial planning,” every year millions of people do the following. They find a simplistic, free retirement planning calculator on a website. They plug in a few numbers and press the magic button. The free calculator shines a green or red light or spits out a “save this much more” number. Even worse, they get instant buy-me-now recommendations for expensive financial products that just happen to be promoted by the website.

The average person works about 2,000 hours per year for about 35 years (70,000 hours). Given just how very difficult it is to earn a good living and to develop financial security, it makes sense to spend more effort on your financial planning. You cannot do informed financial planning without sophisticated retirement planning software. Unless you can afford an expensive financial advisor with access to professional grade financial planning software, you cannot begin to do your own planning without VeriPlan. It is the most sophisticated do-it-yourself financial planning software available to home users.

You dedicate the necessary time and effort to model your financial situation in VeriPlan. It will handle all the calculation grunt work for you. With VeriPlan, you can make better informed choices about your financial alternatives for the future. In general, the following steps are how you develop and update a financial plan with VeriPlan.

1) Think about your lifetime financial goals and what you want to achieve financially

Developing a lifetime financial and retirement plan is much more than just putting numbers into a financial planning software tool. Comprehensive lifetime financial planning is an iterative process wherein you:

A) establish financial goals and objectives,

B) make assumptions about the future,

C) model your lifetime finances in software, and

D) evaluate your opportunities and constraints.

As you study your opportunities and limitations in light of your personalized financial projections, you will refine your goals and financial plan. With a better understanding of potential opportunities and constraints provided by your customized VeriPlan financial projection models, you will decide what you intend to change or not to change in your real-life regarding your financial behaviors going forward.

Your initial usage of VeriPlan will be thought provoking and the most labor intensive. You will consider your objectives, load and refine your data, and test alternative assumptions. During this process, you will move iteratively toward the development of the “baseline financial plan” that you intend to implement. VeriPlan aids you in this planning process by allowing you to model your alternatives very quickly and make better informed decisions.

Once you have established your baseline lifetime financial plan, you challenge will be to implement those decisions in real life. After some period of time (e.g. months or a year), you could then update your information in VeriPlan to see whether you are on track toward achieving your financial plan. All data and parameters in VeriPlan are user-changeable, so you can continue to use it without requiring software updates, upgrades or maintenance contracts.

2) Read VeriPlan’s embedded documentation and learn how to use its functionality

Read and understand this “How to Use VeriPlan” guide. Open VeriPlan within Microsoft Excel and read the informational worksheets toward the left. These worksheets provide an orientation to VeriPlan’s functionality, layout, and design philosophy. Also, note that spreadsheets within VeriPlan are arranged into groups. The left-most worksheet tab of each group is named with capital letters and provides an overview of each of the worksheets within that grouping.

VeriPlan’s embedded user documentation will help you to understand how VeriPlan works and what it allows you to do. All VeriPlan documentation is placed within VeriPlan where you need it, explaining to do and why. VeriPlan’s embedded documentation includes extensive information on “best practices” in personal financial planning and investment management. In addition, it provides hyperlinks to external financial information for further reading.

3) Navigating within VeriPlan

VeriPlan groups worksheets with similar functionality. These worksheet tabs are arrayed along the bottom of your computer screen from left to right. Worksheet groups have descriptive names on their tabs and are numbered within groups.

Since VeriPlan has a large number of user-accessible worksheets, not all tabs are visible on the screen at once. To scroll the tabs, notice two small arrowheads pointing to the left and two small arrowheads pointing to the right. Use these arrows to scroll among the worksheet tabs. The leftmost or rightmost of these small arrowheads, you will be taken to the first and last of the spreadsheets. Clicking repeatedly on the two inner arrowheads or holding down an arrow with your pointer will allow you to scroll spreadsheet tabs one at a time. When you find the tab that you want, click on it to open the worksheet.

VeriPlan’s 72 user-accessible worksheets are grouped as follows from left to right:

* 3 Information worksheets

* Input worksheets:

>> 13 User Profile worksheets

>> 12 Tools worksheets

* 2 central reference and links worksheets that summarize your data entries and settings on the User Profile and Tools worksheets. These worksheets provide hyperlinks allowing you to jump quickly and directly to specific locations on the User Profile and Tools worksheets, to make rapid changes to your data and settings.

* Output worksheets:

>> 22 Financial plan graphics

>> 22 Financial plan data tables

To navigate within any worksheet, use the vertical scroll bar on the right edge of your screen and the horizontal scroll bar in the lower corner of your screen, adjacent to the worksheet tabs. Only some of VeriPlan’s worksheets require use of the horizontal scroll bar, and this is dependent upon you screen size and choice of screen resolution. When you review VeriPlan’s output graphics worksheets, scroll bars are unnecessary and will not be displayed. On many worksheets, you will find bold and underlined blue hyperlinks. The labels of these hyperlinks tell you where they will take you. These hyperlinks allow you to jump within a spreadsheet, between spreadsheets, or to external sources on the Internet.

4) Load your financial data and choose your initial VeriPlan tool settings

All user-changeable financial data inputs and parameter settings are found on the 13 “User Profile” worksheets or on the 12 “Tools” worksheets. These input worksheets all provide detailed instructions that will not be repeated here. Instead, this guide will summarize the general approach to loading your personal financial information into each worksheet and setting the parameters. While the actual data entry does take some time, most of the time involves finding financial records and researching needed information. Few people already have well-organized financial information, and for many people, VeriPlan will provide the first consolidated picture of their financial affairs that they have ever had.

All input worksheets are divided into sections and at the top of each input worksheet there is a “What To Do” listing of sections within that worksheet. This listing includes hyperlinks that allow you to jump down directly to each section. Each of the listed workbook sections will categorized as one of these three types:

* Required:  (a specific instruction will be provided for each required section)

* Optional:  (a specific instruction will be provided for each optional section)

* Informational:  (No required or optional action — informational only)

To make your financial data entries within workbook sections, select the data entry cell directly by using your cursor or by tabbing between cells. Then, either type your information directly into that cell or into the Excel “Formula Bar” near the top of the screen. All standalone data entry cells or data entry cells in tables are outlined with a bold black line around them. All other cells are locked and are not user selectable. Some standalone cells and cells in tables may be outlined with solid or dashed lines, but are for information. If you cannot select a cell, it is informational and not user-changeable.

Once selected, every data entry cell has a “Movable Data Entry Guidance Box” that will appear to provide instructions. Select and move these boxes with your cursor. All data entry cells have error checking to prevent entering inappropriate data. If you enter inappropriate data, an error box will pop up with instructions on how to revise your input.

You should NOT use cut-and-paste operations from one data entry cell to another. In some circumstances, cut-and-paste actions can overwrite cell error checking and logic. This would disrupt your worksheet and require you to fall back to your most recently saved version of your plan. Follow the instructions on the ReadMe worksheet concerning saving VeriPlan files with unique names, so that you do not keep overwriting the same file (e.g. MyFinPlan_05-22-2011-A, -B, -C, etc.).

5) Compare different projection scenarios to refine your baseline financial plan

In general, to determine whether personal financial “Strategy A” or “Strategy B” is likely to be better for you in your particular circumstances, you will compare two VeriPlan projection scenarios to see which yields a better long-term financial result. After you have loaded your financial data and made you initial parameter settings, you have automatically created a draft baseline financial plan. However, this draft plan is unlikely to be your optimal lifetime financial plan.

There are no restrictions within VeriPlan on the number of different VeriPlan models that you can run simultaneously on your PC or Mac. In practice, the maximum number would be limited by the amount of system memory (RAM) that you have and the speed of your processor. Yet, even with a ten-year-old Windows XP PC with only one-quarter megabyte of RAM and a slow processor, you can run numerous copies of VeriPlan simultaneously and achieve rapid performance.

Therefore, to refine and optimize your financial plan in VeriPlan use this approach (which compares investment costs):

A) Complete your data entry and parameter settings for your initial plan and save it with a unique file name, such as “MyFinPlan_04-17-2011-A”

B) Resave your plan with a different file name, such as “MyFinPlan_04-17-2011-A_Lower-Investment-Costs”

C) Open both “MyFinPlan_04-17-2011-A” and “MyFinPlan_04-17-2011-A_Lower-Investment-Costs” and have these two VeriPlan models running simultaneously on your PC

D) Go to Section 4 of VeriPlan’s 6-Cost-Effectiveness Tool worksheet E) Within the “MyFinPlan_04-17-2011-A_Lower-Investment-Costs” version, go to Section 4 of VeriPlan’s 6-Cost-Effectiveness Tool worksheet. Change the “0” to a “1” to use the user-changeable “reasonable investment cost” assumptions in VeriPlan.

(Note: Even “average” investment costs are horrendous and unjustified. Cut them to the bone and save thousands yearly. The financial industry feeds on your assets – leading to worse, not better returns.)

Now, you have two alternative lifetime financial plans that differ in one respect, that is, the level of investment costs that you plan to pay over your lifetime. In this comparison, the first version of VeriPlan automatically projects your lifetime investment costs in proportion to those of your current investment portfolio. The second version uses alternative investment cost assumptions. Now, the question is simply to compare one scenario with the other. If one strategy is more appealing that the other, then this strategy becomes part of your baseline family financial plan. Use that version of VeriPlan going forward, as you test additional strategy projections and chose between them.

Compare one VeriPlan projection scenario with another by using VeriPlan’s standard output graphics and corresponding data table worksheets. They enable you to make easy visual and numerical comparisons between your projections:

A) Use the two alternative projection scenarios that you have open in your PC

B) Choose which of the output graphics (and corresponding data tables) you wish to use in your comparison (In most cases, you would use one of the total assets graphics, because they project your cumulative long-term financial assets, which are the net result of all prior income, expense, debt, tax, and investment asset growth factors over the intervening projection years.)

C) Collect data from a graphic or from the green-tabbed data worksheet that corresponds to that graphic.

D) Choose one or more future ages as your comparison benchmark age(s). (You can do this comparison live by switching between these projections. Alternatively, you write down data to compare the projections. Since all VeriPlan graphics and data worksheets are pre-formatted for printing, you could also compare printouts.)

In general, the projection with the highest projected dollar amount at some future age(s) would be the preferred strategy. However, you need to judge the magnitude of the projected financial advantage to decide whether the advantage warrants the effort in real-life required to achieve that advantage.

6) Update your baseline financial plan and evaluate new decisions in the future

To refine your baseline financial plan, you simply keep making comparisons between alternative strategies and projections, until you have a refined lifetime financial plan that reflects your family’s financial needs, desires, constraints, and intentions. Then, the real challenge becomes how to alter your real-life financial practices related to income, expenses, debts, taxes, and investing to conform to your financial planning intentions.

Since VeriPlan allows you to change all financial data and all settings and parameters, it has no built-in obsolescence. After the passing of some months or a year, you could update your model with then-current data to check your progress. As new financial decisions arise in the future, you can update your model and evaluate those future financial decisions.

VeriPlan is a comprehensive, automated, and fully integrated lifetime cash flow and asset valuation tool that you can customize in detail to your particular financial situation. Therefore, it can help you to evaluate a very long list of financial strategies. When you compare strategies using different VeriPlan projection scenarios, it is important that you think clearly about the positive and negative financial characteristics of each financial strategy. As you would normally do, list those characteristics on a piece of paper and estimate any associated costs and returns. Then, plug those numbers into an alternative VeriPlan projection scenario and compare the projection results with your current baseline financial plan.

This “how to” guide will not attempt to list all of what VeriPlan could enable you to compare. For more information, on the range of what VeriPlan can do, refer to its embedded user documentation. For a few examples of how to model alternatives within VeriPlan, see these sections:

A) Section 3 of the “9-Home Purchase Tool” –  An example of how to use this Home Purchase Tool

B) Section 5 of the “1-Expense & Savings Tool” – The Children’s Education Expenditure Planning Tool

C) Section 6 of the “1-Expense & Savings Tool” – The Mid-Career Education Planning Tool

D) Section 5 of the “3-Tax-Advantaged Plan Tool” – Evaluating alternative tax-advantaged investment strategies

Also, refer to the articles in the blue horizontal menu bar at the top of this page or in the sidebar.

7) VeriPlan and Microsoft Excel set-up tips

VeriPlan set-up tips:

A) VeriPlan requires Microsoft Excel 2002 (or a later “year” version of Excel) running on Windows XP (or a later version such as Vista or Win 7) or on the Macintosh (though OS X). VeriPlan is tested up to Excel Version 2010, on Windows 7, and on Mac OS X.

B) Copy the files from the VeriPlan CD into a directory on your hard drive using your Windows or Mac file system.

• If you get a “Read Only” warning, you opened VeriPlan directly from the CD and are trying to save to the CD. Files cannot be saved to a CD, and thus are “Read Only.” Instead, just save VeriPlan to your hard drive with a different name.

C) IMPORTANT: Before using VeriPlan every time, shut down all other Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and close down Excel.

• Microsoft Excel has global settings that are determined either: A) by its default settings or B) by the first spreadsheet that is opened within Excel. Other spreadsheets opened thereafter during an Excel session will inherit these global settings.
• VeriPlan comes with particular global settings, which differ from the Excel defaults and from many other spreadsheets.
• If you shut down Excel first and then open VeriPlan by clicking DIRECTLY on the VeriPlan file name within your file system, then Excel and VeriPlan will open automatically, and Excel will not inherit inappropriate global settings.

D) The first time you use VeriPlan, open the original, master VeriPlan file by clicking DIRECTLY on its original file name within your file system. Then, before doing anything else, resave your working VeriPlan model to your hard drive with a different life name.

• When saving your VeriPlan files that contain your various personal lifetime financial models, use some file naming convention, such as MyFinPlan_05-22-2011-A, -B, -C, etc. that works for you. b.Back up your work frequently and do not keep writing over the same file with the same filename.
• To end a planning session, just save your VeriPlan file and shut down Excel. To restart the next time, reopen VeriPlan by clicking your most recently saved VeriPlan file name within your file system. (After ensuring that Excel is already shut.)
• You can run more than one VeriPlan model simultaneously using different descriptive file names.

E) VeriPlan is performance optimized for sub-second revisions to your model. It has a very large (~50Mb) file size which can take time to open and save on your PC. Newer, faster machines open and save VeriPlan faster, and run more simultaneous VeriPlan models.

Optional Excel set-up tips:

To adjust Excel’s Options, find its “Options” panel, which Microsoft keeps moving around from version to version. For Windows Excel 2002, look for Options in the Tools menu. In Windows Excel 2007, look in the left-hand part of the ribbon near the bottom. For Windows Excel 2010, find Options on the File menu. For Excel on the Mac, see Properties on the Excel menu. For other Excel versions, look around – it is there somewhere.

• If you get a “Circular Logic” warning when you open VeriPlan, just shut any pop-up warnings and tools that appear. VeriPlan intentionally uses iterative logic in some of its projection calculations. Setting Options “Calculation” to “Automatic; Iteration box checked; 500 iterations: .001 max change” will eliminate these warnings. (This also means that you probably opened VeriPlan after Excel was already running, and it inherited inappropriate global settings.)
• To adjust cursor movement go to “Edit” – “Move cursor after Enter Direction”: Left or right movement prevents the cursor from jumping up or down the page to the next data entry box. Your taste, but horizontal cursor movement is better.
• To adjust auto-save frequency on “Save” – Check “Save AutoRecovery” box and choose the minutes. With Autosave, Excel consecutively saves each open VeriPlan file. If this is irritating with many VeriPlan files open, increase the minutes.

Note: We mail your VeriPlan retirement tools CD on the next business day after PayPal has notified us of your order. When your order ships, we will send a shipment notification email to you using the email address supplied by PayPal. VeriPlan is shipped via the USPS, and deliveries typically take 3 to 10 days to arrive.

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If you have a question or comment, we would like to hear from you. Please use the form below to get in touch with us. Thank you!

Copyright Best Personal Finance Software

Whenever you invest in multiple mutual funds and ETFs, you may wonder how broadly and appropriately diversified your aggregate portfolio might be. Have your investment holdings and mutual funds that you have chosen increased the global diversification of your personal financial asset portfolio? Do they just duplicate what you already own?

There is a free on-line tool that you can use to measure your portfolio diversification, and better understand the relative contribution that each of your investments makes to your goal of holding a broadly diversified global investment portfolio. On the Morningstar website, you can find their “Instant X-Ray” tool. Go to the Morningstar site at http://www.morningstar.com/

Click the “Tools” tab in the horizontal bar, select the “Morningstar Tools” pull down menu, and then choose “Instant X-Ray.” To go directly to this tool, use this URL:

http://portfolio.morningstar.com/NewPort/Free/InstantXRayDEntry.aspx

To use the Instant X-Ray Tool, just enter the ticker symbols for all of the mutual funds, ETFs, and individual securities that you own or intend to own with the dollar value of each holding. Then, click “Show Instant X-Ray” to see a summary of your overall portfolio.

Note that when you enter only one mutual fund or ETF ticker symbol or only one stock or bond holding into the Instant X-Ray Tool, the summary provides data for that single fund or security. This can be very useful, as you evaluate individual investment funds and investment securities. When you enter multiple funds, you will get an overview that blends all the funds and securities in proportion to the dollar values that you enter for each holding.

This free Instant X-Ray summary provides a variety of data about your overall portfolio. The overview allows you to evaluate how diversified your portfolio is on a variety of dimensions, including the major dimensions that are summarized in the other articles on this website about selecting a broadly diversified investment portfolio. (See the Sitemap for these articles.)

Incidentally, if you click on the other views that are offered with the Instant X-Ray tool, then Morningstar will try to get you to sign up for a “Premium” subscription. The information provided by this free summary overview in the Instant X-Ray tool is sufficient, and you are not required to pay for a premium subscription.

Note that there is no relationship between this website and Morningstar, and this website did not receive any form of consideration, financial or otherwise, to write this article. The “Instant X-Ray” is a useful financial tool for individual investors, and that is why we have provided this article.

High qualityinvestment planning software is necessary to generate a fully personalized family financial strategy

Our free “financial freedom guide” personal financial planning website publishes write-ups on how to produce do-it-yourself personal financial plans

The financial and investment planning postings on this free information site supply important ideas to households about personal finance plan topics that they should consider. These essays help in establishing a lifelong personal finance planning strategy. Furthermore, to generate a fully comprehensive plan for financial success requires that you use a first-rate financial planning calculator with the top investment calculator and the top financial calculators.

Furthermore, this free financial freedom web site helps you to find a superior ALL-IN-ONE home financial software home software product with the leading financial retirement planning program, a high quality home budget planner, and a superior investment planner for your personally customized life time family financial planning.

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READ THIS PAGE, THEN CLICK THE GREEN ARROW ICON BELOW

TO DOWNLOAD THE FREE VERIPLAN TUTORIAL

VeriPlan is the best personal financial planning software for individuals and families who want to develop a comprehensive lifetime financial plan.

We provide this free, downloadable ‘Sue and Sam Saver’ VeriPlan tutorial to help you to understand what VeriPlan could do for you. In this tutorial are a series of rose-colored tutorial commentary boxes that discuss VeriPlan’s features and Sue and Sam’s projection. You can see all of VeriPlan’s functionality and better understand how VeriPlan could help you with your own lifetime comprehensive financial planning.

Includes a 24 Month Free Budget Planner!

Whether or not you choose to purchase VeriPlan, this free tutorial download includes a very flexible and completely free monthly budget planner that you can keep using. This free monthly expense planner covers 24 months and allows you to define your own expense categories and to set up month by month expense budgets for each of your budgetary expense categories. Then, each month you can enter your actual expenses into each expense budget category, and VeriPlan will automatically calculate your positive or negative budgetary variances by expense category.

Provides free, high quality “How to Do Financial Planning” documentation equal to the best personal financial planning books!

In this tutorial, you can read all of VeriPlan’s fully integrated and very informative personal financial planning user documentation. VeriPlan is much more than a comprehensive and highly automated lifetime financial planning software application. It also includes extensive financial education information that you can read for free. In effect, the VeriPlan tutorial also includes a well-researched and free money management, investment management, and personal financial planning book. Whether or not you decide to buy VeriPlan, with this tutorial you get a free personal finance ebook by reading VeriPlan’s extensive and fully integrated how-to documentation!

TO DOWNLOAD THE FREE VERIPLAN TUTORIAL

CLICK THE HARD DRIVE ICON BELOW





Note that VeriPlan is a standard Microsoft Excel spreadsheet application. The VeriPlan file is very large (~50Mb) and will take time and patience to download. For faster downloading, SAVE this file to your local disk drive. (Do not select "Open"). Thank you!

SO, PLEASE BE PATIENT

Re-clicking the icon will just restart the download and waste your time. Particularly if you do not have a fast broadband connection, just do something else and let the download complete. A watched pot eventually does boil, but …

The free tutorial file demonstrates a full and comprehensive VeriPlan “baseline” lifetime financial projection for Sue and Sam Saver.

Sue and Sam are a typical, successful professional couple. They have two young children, whom they intend to send to college. Currently they rent their residence, but they plan to buy a home with a mortgage in three years. They also own an inherited rental property. They have chosen to purchase investments through and be advised by a full-service broker. They pay average investment costs that are typical of such a relationship.

This VeriPlan tutorial is built upon a full function version of VeriPlan that is not user changeable (except for the investment cost control factor, which is changeable). VeriPlan tutorial functionality and data are locked, so that the tutorial commentary overlays by Sue and Sam will remain consistent. Of course, you can also use the free 24 Month Budget Planner, which is also unlocked. Just look for the orange-tabbed “1B-Budget Planner” worksheet.

VeriPlan and the VeriPlan tutorial requires a modestly powerful personal computer that runs Microsoft Excel 2002 or later.

YOUR MICROSOFT EXCEL VERSION MUST BE 2002 OR LATER. Internet connectivity will augment the information available to you, but Internet connectivity is not required, whenever you run VeriPlan. Once you have down loaded this tutorial, it will run in a standalone configuration. To check your version of Microsoft Excel, open Excel and click “Help” and then “About Microsoft Excel.”

This tutorial file contains all of VeriPlan’s functionality and all of its extensive user documentation. It is large file of approximately 50Mb.

Consider this file size, when you open and save this VeriPlan tutorial on your PC. VeriPlan’s large file size enables both high performance and extensive capabilities. When VeriPlan develops projections for you, response time to any user changes is virtually instantaneous. If you decide to purchase the unrestricted VeriPlan software product, it will be shipped to you with a variety of files on a standard CD.

WE RECOMMEND THAT YOU FIRST SAVE THIS FREE VERIPLAN TUTORIAL FILE ON YOUR LOCAL MACHINE, AND THEN OPEN IT USING THE “FILE OPEN” COMMAND WITHIN EXCEL.

Tutorial is Provided “As Is” Without Warranty

When you down load this file, you agree that this file and down loading process is provided “as is” without any warranty either expressed or implied. For more information, see this website’s DISCLAIMER below. When you down load any free or paid version of VeriPlan, you also agree to abide by the Terms of Use that are provided with VeriPlan, including the agreement that you not provide or otherwise retransmit any copy of the VeriPlan file that you have down loaded to any other person or entity by any means.

For a functional description of VeriPlan’s fully integrated financial projection calculators and investment calculators for financial planning, debt management, and retirement planning, see our Home page here –>> Best Financial Planning Software.

VeriPlan Is Simply The

Best Financial Planning Software

You Can Buy!

Only $57 for a license for ALL your household PCs

… with Free Shipping of the CD within the USA

Full 30-Day, 100% Money Back Guarantee — No Questions Asked

No Support Contract Required

No Need To Buy Upgrades, Since All Parameters Are User-Changeable

VeriPlan is a Great Product, a Great Deal,

and a Great Help with Your Personal Financial Planning.

Thank You Very Much for Your Order!

Note: We mail your VeriPlan CD the next business day after PayPal has notified us of your order. When your order ships, we also send an email to you. VeriPlan shipments via USPS typically take 3 to 10 days to arrive.

Copyright Best Personal Finance Software

Copyright Best Personal Finance Software

Without becoming a victim of identity theft, you can get a free credit report from each of the three credit reporting agencies once a year. Federal law requires the three major credit reporting agencies to provide these free reports annually. To satisfy their obligations, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion jointly have established www.annualcreditreport.com, where you can order your free credit reports.

You can also call them at 1-877-322-8228 or write to them at Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281. Because the material in your credit reports is usually largely redundant across these three companies, stagger your requests over the year and rotate between the three firms. If there is any problem with your credit report, it usually will show up on any of your reports from these three firms.

(Avoid using any of those obnoxious free credit report copycat companies, such as “freecreditreport.com,” that advertise on TV, but will only supply “free” credit reports, when you pay a lot for their other supposedly valuable premium services. Also, if you are a woman, you probably have already figured out these freecreditreport.com TV advertisers are not to be trusted. Incredibly cluelessly, their TV ads always blame the bride’s bad credit for young guitar playing slacker hubby having to work at a pirate themed fast food job. What a clueless company marketing department to insult the female half of their target audience with their advertising budget! Have they written off women because women shop and are too smart to pay for something that is supposed to be free? Free credit reporting my keister! This is another confirmation that the Federal Communications Commission is dead at the wheel with respect to consumer protections. Companies can get away with confusing people, screaming “free, free, free,” and then charging people for something that they have a legal right to get for free, if they just knew the correct web address.}

Identity Theft Events Provide Opportunities to Lock Down Reporting about Your Credit

While identity theft is a large and growing problem and can be very costly and inconvenient to you, it is just a business cost and headache to financial and retail firms, who also have benefited greatly from the proliferation of easy credit.

One way to protect yourself is to put restrictions on your credit records with the three major credit reporting agencies, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. These credit reporting companies have made profitable businesses on both sides. They charge fees to business firms who may not always treat your financial information carefully, and they charge you fees when you want to restrict access to your financial information in their data bases.

For some, these credit information access restriction fees go away when you become an identity theft victim. Whether or not you lose money, if you become a victim of identity theft, this may actually be an opportunity for some of you. In some states, like California, identity theft victims can get long-term locks put on their accounts without having to pay fees to the three credit bureaus.

California Residents Can Get a Free Fraud Alert for Seven Years Following Even a Minor Fraud Event

If you live in California and have become a victim of identity theft, you have rights under California law as an identity theft victim to have your credit files frozen for seven years without paying fees to the credit reporting agencies for such a long-term “fraud alert.” For example, if your credit card shows suspicious charges that you did not make and even if your credit card company takes them off your statement, you still can make an identity theft report to your local police and get a police report. With this police report and by writing to the appropriate addresses and following the procedures, the three credit reporting agencies are obligated legally to put long-term fraud alerts on your credit reports.

The downside of locking your credit report is that you cannot yourself apply and be approved immediately for instant credit. The good news is that nobody else can do the same for seven years, as well. (Note that if you do need to apply for a credit card or refinance a mortgage, you still can do so, but the credit lock on your account just creates a delay. You have to proactively contact the credit bureaus to inform them of the validity your efforts to apply for more credit.)

Lock Up Your Credit at the Credit Reporting Agencies

The upside to locking your credit report is that new attempts to establish credit in your name are blocked without your permission. Not only does that mean that criminals cannot open new credit cards in your name, it means that you have greater protection from other kinds of credit related crimes. For example, the credit crisis has spawned a crime wave of mortgage and real estate line of credit frauds.

Criminals have opened credit lines in home owners names and then have quickly drained the credit lines of their funds. In addition, homes have been sold without the home owners knowledge and sometimes the knowledge even of the “buyer” who also had his or her identity stolen and was an unwitting participant in the transaction.

Obviously, it is better to prevent costly situations like these than clean them up. In addition, pay close attention to any document sent to you by your county registrar. Because of increasing real estate fraud some county registrars, including Los Angeles County, now send notices to the address of record whenever any deed or other records change is filed with them.

<<<<< Go back to the previous part: Protect Your Financial Security

Personal financial planning tools are recommended to generate a thorough plan for your financial freedom

This free “steps to financial freedom” information site has info concerning how to develop a personally customized family financial plan

The personal finance plan essays on this free web site give important ideas to families and individuals about financial planning program strategy subjects that they should consider. These write-ups help in producing a life time family financial planning strategy. Also, to establish a fully personalized plan for your financial freedom demands that you use an excellent financial calculator with a high quality investment calculator and the top home financial software.

In addition, our free financial freedom information site helps you find the best ALL-IN-ONE financial planning software program home software product with a high quality retirement investment calculator tool, the top personal budgeting software, and the leading investment calculators for your personally customized life long family financial planning.

Copyright Best Personal Finance Software

Reduce the Chances of Mail Theft

Never leave any outgoing financial letters containing checks or sensitive information outside in public for the postman. To receive mail, you should have a mail drop slot rather than a mailbox on the outside of the house. Always mail your financial letters inside of a reliable US Post Office. Theft of checks in the mail – from outside your home happens more often than you may think. And, you are the one who suffers when your payment is not received in time; you credit rating gets dinged; your check is stolen, washed, and cashed; you lose your money; and you waste a huge amount of time puting your financial identity theft Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Stolen checks can be chemically washed to remove ink. To do this criminals tape over your signature on both sides, and then remove the tape. The end result is a blank check with your signature. To avoid check washing, you can purchase certain gel pens with ink that cannot be washed in this manner. Several vendors offer gel pens that claim not to be washable. You can research them on the web with Google. For example, Sanford distributes the Uniball Signo line of gel pens with gel ink that supposedly cannot be washed. These pens may be found in local stores.

Review ALL Bills and Financial Statements Promptly and Handle Significant Problems in Writing Within 60 Days

Review your credit card bills and other financial account statements carefully and respond to any problems promptly. Unfortunately, after 60 days the few consumer protections that are available to you under the Fair Credit Reporting Act will cease. Thereafter, you are at the mercy of the goodwill of banks and other financial institutions, which all too often is sorely lacking. Never count on the goodwill of any financial institution after 60 days has passed. This is particularly the case, with financial services companies that you cannot visit locally in person. Over the telephone, financial services companies — particularly credit card companies — have mastered the art of (usually) politely telling you that they are sorry, but there is nothing that can be done to fix a problem without, of course, it costing you a lot of money!

Check every financial statement that you receive in a timely manner and report any problems. If the dollar amount in question is significant, read the instructions on your statement or on the financial institution’s website about how to make a report in writing. Only when you follow these procedures in writing within 60 days are you protected under this law.

If you attempt to resolve a problem over the telephone, take careful notes including who, when, and what was stated, etc. Nevertheless, telephone conversations do not protect your legal rights, so when the amounts in question are significant to you, you must put it in writing.

Dispose of Financial Records Properly

Be careful in disposing of all financial records and statements. Do not simply discard them in the trash or recycling. Use a crosscut shredder, which makes small confetti and not strips. Alternatively, you can keep a bag of discarded financial records, which you burn periodically. These financial records disposal recommendations also apply to preprinted credit card and other debt applications that you might receive in the mail. Do not throw these applications in the trash without first tearing off your name and address from the application.

<<<<< Go back to the previous part: Financial Planning and Identity Theft Prevention

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You should take the potential for financial identity theft very seriously, as a threat to your financial security. Identity theft can sometimes entail loss of your financial assets, whether small or large. However, very often it requires taking a very large amount of your time to rectify an identity theft breach. Given the interconnectedness of the personal asset and personal credit system, any breech of your financial identity can have very time consuming ramifications, and the value of your time can many times exceed the value of the money that might have been stolen from you or from some firm through your stolen identity. Furthermore, once your identity is “out on the black market” you are more vulnerable to subsequent attacks. Taking certain steps to prevent an occurrence of identity theft in the first place is prudent. This is why identity theft prevention is a key, but often overlooked, component of a prudent financial plan.

Protection Practices for Sensitive Information and Passwords on Banking, Mutual Fund, Investment, and other Financial Websites

As you set up Internet accessible financial accounts, be very careful with your financial information. Furthermore, as you utilize the Internet it is important that you use what are known as “strong” passwords with more characters (combinations of letters, numbers, special symbols, upper and lower cases). Vary your passwords from one account to another. Never use the same password across your important financial sites. It is much better to maintain list of different passwords that you carefully protect at home, rather than to use a single weak or even strong password across various financial websites. Furthermore, it is a good practice to vary your user name from one account to another. In effect, different user names and different passwords in combination make your identity on any single site much more secure.

Therefore, it is recommended by security authorites that all your financial passwords for your on-line accounts be both strong and different. Many identity thieves are clever and sophisticated. Furthermore, there is a cyber underground and internet black market where compromised identity information is shared, bought, and sold. This cyber crime underground stretches around the world. When your user names and passwords are both strong and different, you could avoid a single identity breach from cascading across your other financial accounts.

Avoid using more sensitive information, such as mother’s maiden name or your city/state/date of birth, for example, as your answer to security challenge questions on any ordinary, non-financial website.  Reserve this information only for those sites that hold your financial accounts and your financially sensitive information. Simply assume that the vast majority of websites have absolute amateurs in charge of their website systems architecture and security. While this may not be true of any given website that attempts to collect sensitive information from you, assuming that the site security is poor is a wiser assumption, because you never know which site could be the weak link. Systems administrators of financial web sites tend to be much more sophisticated concerning security affairs, but they certainly are not infallible. Furthermore, all it takes is one corrupt employee at firm with strong or weak web systems security, to circumvent any protections that are in place.

Deal with Financial Services Company and Non-Financial Websites

With less important and non-financial web sites that require registration, you could use the same username and the same easily remembered strong password. However, it would be very wise never provide these sites with any additional information that is accurate about your name, address, phones, the security challenge answers above and other potentially sensitive information. Always assume that security on any of these “unimportant” web sites could be breached and that your password information could be used to access other accounts elsewhere. By drawing a strong distinction between the user names and passwords that you use on financial and other sites that are important to you versus those unimportant sites requiring registration information, you can in part firewall yourself from security breaches in the less well managed part of the Internet. Why supply via perhaps a forum registration to some hobby web site your actual name, address, etc. And, certainly do not supply your date of birth or mother’s maiden name as the answer to the security challenge questions. If that forum website’s membership database is breached you will have supplied key information needed to breach the financial accounts that are really important to you.

Access to your personal email system or systems should require a strong and different password. Stored email messages can contain passwords for which a thief could search. Furthermore, on your home computer systems, you should always have a fully functioning firewall and up-to-date anti-virus/anti-spyware software that is always on.

Take these issues seriously. Cyber crime is worldwide, cooperative, and increasing sophisticated. Since it is highly profitable and risks of criminal prosecution are low, do you think this problem is going to go away. The prudent thing to do is to keep identity theft away from your door, if you can.

Avoid Phishing and Other Impersonation Attacks

Avoid phishing of all kinds. For example, never provide any personal data of any kind in response to a link provided to you via email. Always ensure that the URL of the site you are using is the correct URL. If you are ever in doubt, type in the URL yourself or search for the site on Google and then enter the site with the link from Google.

Furthermore, never enter any financial information or other sensitive information into any website that does not use the secure “https” protocol (note the “s” added to “http”). When buying over the Internet with a credit card or otherwise, if a site does not use https, do not use it. Use only one credit card when buying on the web. If that credit card is compromised, you can close that credit account number and replace the card.

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