By Bill Cunningham
New Year Resolutions
Let’s say we’re allowed more than one NY resolution. So we can include being even more vigi-lant this year, to protect our ever decreasing savings from scammers. It’s a credible assumption that we will have a challenging year ahead with our finances. We should assume too that scam-mers will be ramping up their approaches to us to prise out whatever money we have left. Often we hear of victims saying “but they were so convincing”. Well, yes! We should expect that. That’s their job, their livelihood at risk if their charm fails to have us part with money. Or at least part with enough banking details to then raid our accounts for money. Scammers feed on news items about grants that we can get, eg for home energy improvements. These are grants that are coming along before long so the approach sounds credible. Anything that may be a wee bit complex too, and so by offering to help us reach out for financial freebies we benefit by be-lieving in them. For some of us it will soon be tax year end form filling time, and scammers are on to that too, helping us to provide our financial details onto a website that appears very simi-lar to the HMRC one. If we’re tempted to reply to a loan advert to see us through, then this can be snake pit time. If we’re approved automatically and asked to pay a loan insurance fee, then that’s the last we’ll see of the money or hear from the company again. One good new year’s resolution to follow: if we have some money to invest and are tempted to go for something that looks a bit special, then visiting fca.org.uk shows if the Financial Conduct Authority knows of the seller.