All posts in category personal finance

PayPower – Meta Payment Systems are a Scam

Paypower held my $4000 for no reason and refuse to give me my money!!
When I asked them to close my account and give me back my money, they refused!

 

You don’t even have to put in your card number or identify yourself when you call them, they know you by your voice!

They refuse to give their last names and the Nevada detectives are investigating them!

Don’t use them!!!

 

They have at least 72 complaints on ripoffreport.com and at least 90 on pissedconsumer.com!!!!

 

They claim that all the reviews online are not true and that they are reputable but they steal your identity and your money!

 

I sent them all the documents they requested and then they are asking for a copy of my paycheck to release the hold that they placed on my $4000 for NO REASON AT ALL!

 

PAYPOWER IS A SCAM!!!!!!!!

 

PayPower stole $4000 from me!!!!

 

Mrnd5 would like to thank you for your input. We also need you to help consumers even more.

The scenario as described above indicates clearly that you have been  

scammed by Pay Power. Please contact your attorney general or the US

Attorney General or anyone who can effectively change these practices.

 

This is a common complaint about how Meta Bank operates.

We were all scammed by Meta Bank or another bank operating like Meta Bank or by Meta Bank using another name.

As consumers, we want to be protected from such abuses.

Please let your elected officials know about your needs as a consumer and only vote for people who will serve you as a consumer.

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by mrnd5 on October 13, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Advocate for your needs and concerns as a consumer, Avoid This Service, Bank Reform and Proper Regulations are Needed, Banking, banking in Storm Lake IOWA, Banks Designed To Keep Consumers in Debt, being manipulated, Complaints Against Meta Bank, Consumer Abuse by PayPower, Consumer Advocate, Consumer Alert, Consumer Rights Advocacy, Consumer Rights- consumers have no or few protections from predatory banking practices, Consumers align to protect yourselves, Consumers are Vulnerable: Help each other, Consumers being forced to use plastic, Consumers Demand Bank Reforms That Serve Their Real Needs, Consumers Join Forces to Protect Each Other from Bank Scams and Frauds, Consumers must speak out, Consumers suffer at the hands of METABANK, Corporate Partner to be excluded from the process that Meta Bank puts in place, Corrupt Practices found within METABANK, Creating Easy Preys Doesn't Make METABANK's Practices Moral, Customer Loyalty, Customer Loyalty Program, Customers of METABANK continue to complain about how they have been mistreated by METABANK, Do not give up control of your own money by using a prepaid card, Human Rights, information systems, Integrity, Just Curious About Meta Bank's Ad Placement, marketing is basically Meta Bank's major strength just behind collections, META BANK bilks their customer base, Meta Bank charges customers for spending their own money, META BANK doesn’t serve the general public, Meta Bank is nothing but a publicity scam, Meta Bank never accepts responsibility, Meta Bank Scams Americans, Meta Bank sells VISA and Mastercard Pre-Paid Cards, METABANK's PREPAID CARD, METABANK's publicity is a lie and filled with false promises, NBPCA is a scam on the American public, Ordinary customers can't get the METABANK PREPAID CARD TO SERVE THEIR NEEDS, Payment Systems, PayPower Scam, personal finance, PrePaid Bank Cards bad for consumers, Respect Consumers, Risk Retention Crisis and the consumer, Thrift Bank - the concept is a scam, unbanked, Usury, We are all vulnerable to predatory practices of banks like METABANK
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Posted by mrnd5 on October 13, 2013

https://mrnd5.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/paypower-meta-payment-systems-are-a-scam/

Making a budget, Paying using only cash… Easier and safest approach at this time

Budgeting simplified to allow us to save and to spend using cash only!!!

10 Ways to Simplify Your Budget

Every Tuesday is Finance & Family Day at Zen Habits.

I’m always looking for ways to simplify my finances (I’m weird like that, I know), and recently I’ve been scrutinizing my already-simple budget to make it even simpler.

I thought it would be helpful to share some of the ways to make your budget as simple as possible.

The goal is to

  • reduce headaches,
  • eliminate the need for complicated tracking schemes,
  • and reduce the time you spend on your budget and finances to about 15-20 minutes per week.

I can’t claim these ideas are original, or that I haven’t discussed them in various places before, but in my experience, they work. They’re simple and powerful.

Let’s first look at setting up a budget.

If you haven’t done it yet, it’s probably because budgets seem intimidating to you, or they are too much hassle to set up and maintain.

Those are both valid points — which is why you should follow this simplified plan if these things apply to you. Now, there’s plenty of fancy software out there for setting up budgets, but I don’t think they’re necessary. A simple spreadsheet will do — and if you can create a SUM formula to add up the total of a column of numbers, you have all the spreadsheet knowledge necessary.

1. Create a simple spreadsheet for your budget, if you haven’t already, and start by listing your income and your monthly expenses. Estimate, in round numbers, how much you spend on each expense every month. You can adjust later, but it’s better to err on the side of too high a number, rather than putting a low number and breaking your budget.

Now let’s look at ways to create a simple budget:

2.  60 Percent Solution. There are many ways to structure your budget, but the simplest I’ve found is the 60% solution. Basically, this budget asks you to fit your regular monthly expenses within 60% of your gross income, so that you have room for savings (long-term and short-term), retirement and spending money (“fun money”). These are the things that most often break a budget, because most people don’t budget for them.

Now, your percentage will vary, but the percentages given here are just rough guidelines:Fewer categories.

A lot of budget software asks you to fill in a million categories and subcategories. Those can be useful if you want to track all that stuff, but I don’t. I recommend simplifying: just use broad categories like food and gas and spending and utilities. Use what works.

  • 60 percent: Monthly expenses — such as housing, food, utilities, insurance, Internet, transportation. This is the part most commonly thought of as a budget.
  • 10 percent: Retirement — and if you’re doing it right, this is being automatically deducted from your paycheck for a 401(k) investment.
  • 10 percent: Long-term savings or debt reduction. It’s best to invest this in something such as stocks or an index fund, and this can serve as your emergency fund. But if you are in debt (not including a home mortgage), I would advise that you use this portion of the budget to pay off your debts, and even draw some from the other categories such as retirement to increase this to about 20 percent for now. Once your debts are paid off, you can switch this to long-term savings. You still need to have an emergency fund, but while you’re in debt-reduction mode you can either create a small, temporary emergency fund out of the money from this category or the next.
  • 10 percent: Short-term savings — this is for periodic expenses, such as auto maintenance or repairs, medical expenses (not including insurance premiums), appliances, home maintenance, birthday and Christmas gifts. For this savings account, be sure to spend the money when you need it — that’s what it’s for. When these expenses come up, you will have the money for them, instead of trying to pull them from other budget categories.
  • 10 percent: Fun money — you can spend this on eating out, movies, comic books — whatever you want. Guilt free.

3. Pay bills online. As much as possible, pay your bills online. These would be most of the bills in the first category above — utilities, rent or mortgage, cell phone, Internet, etc. If you can’t pay electronically, have your bank send out a check to the vendor. Make these payments automatic, so you don’t need to worry about them.

4. Automatic savings. Make your savings automatic as well. Every time your paycheck is deducted, have a scheduled transaction transfer a set amount from checking to savings. Use a high-yield online savings account such as Emigrant Direct, HBSD, or ING Direct.        [I am not familiar with any of these companies so I cannot endorse them…. They were in the original article… Please note though that you are not being sent to bank at METABANK. There is a very good reason for that.]
5. Cash. For everything else, use cash. If you’re doing automatic bill payments and savings deductions, the only things you’ll likely need cash for are gas, groceries and fun money. Withdraw these amounts in cash twice a month, rather than using checks or credit cards. The reason is that it’s simpler — with cash, you don’t need to worry about overspending, or tracking how much is left in that category. You can see how much is left. Leave the credit cards for when you absolutely need them — traveling, for example.
6. Envelopes. If you use cash for three categories, for example, use three envelopes. This is an old-fashioned system, but I use it because it works. I have an envelope for groceries, gas and fun money. If I’m going grocery shopping, I bring the groceries envelope. I know how much is left in the envelope before I go grocery shopping. I spend the cash for groceries, and then can easily see how much is left now. Simple, and no tracking necessary. When the money is gone, you’ve spent your budgeted amount. If necessary, you could transfer cash from one envelope to another, and there’s no need to adjust your budget.
7. 15-20 minutes a week. Now, the budget and spending plan I’ve outlined above is fairly simple and headache-free — but you shouldn’t assume that it doesn’t need any maintenance.
You should devote 15-20 minutes a week to ensuring that your finances are in order. Just this little amount of time each week will greatly simplify your financial life, reduce headaches, and prevent any messes from occurring later. Set a day and time when you take a look at your finances each week.
Set aside 30 minutes, just to be safe. Now take 5-10 minutes to enter your transactions into your financial software (I use MS Money, because it came with my computer, but a spreadsheet or other financial software will do fine).
If you’re following the plan above, all you’ll need to do is go online, look at your bank account, and enter your deposits, bills paid, ATM withdrawals (only do this twice a month!), and any other fees. It shouldn’t take long.
Now spend another 5-10 minutes to review your budget and make sure that all bills have been paid that should be paid. If not, pay them.
It’s that simple. You’re done. Now go back to reading your blogs.
8. Fewer accounts. Some people have complicated systems set up with lots of different accounts. I say simplify. You don’t want to be checking a million different accounts. You should have one checking account and one or two savings accounts (one for emergency fund and one for periodic expenses). You could have a bunch of investment accounts if you want, but I’ve found it simpler to just have one. I lose diversity, but my fund is already pretty diversified.
9. Dump credit cards.
[Dump all  bank cards period…. Get rid of all those plastic nooses!!!!] Multiple credit cards are also a headache. Simplify by just having one. Or do what I do — have none.
This will draw the usual outraged or preachy reaction from those who really love their credit cards, but I don’t care.

 

I don’t like credit cards. Call me old fashioned.

 

They charge high interest and they’re potentially dangerous (if you run up a high bill and an expense comes up that you need to pay for which means you can’t pay your credit card bill on time, you now are stuck with high-interest credit card debt).

 

Use a debit card if you need to.

[NO, NO, NO!!!!!  

……We cannot advise using a debit card  either because this amounts to being an interest free loan to a bank and often the consumer is charged activation fees for these cards on top of giving out an inbterest free loan…

…This is the biggest gimmick to come about in centuries… Clever marketing makes the debit card sound like a way to keep yourself from over spending, but the way that METABANK operates internally means that customers are kept from being able to access their own money when they really need it. Some have complained that they had to get a loan to even be able to pay routine monthly bills. METABANK is operating  a fraud on their customers. They lied to me about why they felt they should keep me from accessing my own cash money…. METABANK made themselves into the “PREPAID CARD POLICING SYSTEM.” However, it is METABANK who is doing a major scam…..

…All that we can do is to warn others not to use any kind of METABANK PRODUCT]

10. Pay all bills at the same time. It often just takes a simple call to get a vendor or creditor to change the due date on your bills. If you can get all your bills to be due on, let’s say, the 10th of the month, you can do all your bill paying at once. For some people, this will mean they will need to do a bit of scrimping to get ahead enough so that they can afford to make all their month’s payments at the beginning of the month, but it’s worth it. You can pay all your bills and be done with it.
[Because the product that METABANK, a PREPAID CARD, didn’t work at all from a consumer’s perspective for us and many others who complain regularly about how they have been kept from being able to access their own money once they gave METABANK cash money to place on a prepaid card, we feel compelled to alert other consumers that the METABANK PREPAID CARD isn’t good for customers/consumers.]

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by mrnd5 on February 5, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Bank Reform and Proper Regulations are Needed, BANK REFORMS NEEDED TO BE CAREFULLY REGULATED, Bank regulators shut down MetaBank payday loans, banking in Storm Lake IOWA, Banks Designed To Keep Consumers in Debt, Banks have created all the rules for PREPAID CARDS, Banks Lying to Consumers To Trick Them into taking on Debt, but it is still Meta Bank's same service and poor quality, Complaints Against Meta Bank, Consumer Advocate, Consumer Alert, Consumer Rights Advocacy, Consumer Rights- consumers have no or few protections from predatory banking practices, Consumers align to protect yourselves, Consumers are Vulnerable: Help each other, Consumers being forced to use plastic, Consumers Demand Bank Reforms That Serve Their Real Needs, Consumers Join Forces to Protect Each Other from Bank Scams and Frauds, Consumers must speak out, Consumers Need To Save Money And Stay Out of Debt, Corrupt Practices found within METABANK, Creating Easy Preys Doesn't Make METABANK's Practices Moral, Customer Service isn't listed as being one of META FINANCIAL GROUP INC areas of interest or studied skills, Customer's being scammed by Money Network, Customers of METABANK continue to complain about how they have been mistreated by METABANK, debit card fraud is always a possibility, Don't Invest in META BANK, Don't pay using a debit card, don't take on more debt to pay off the first debt, Don't use PREPAID BANK CARDS of any kind, Economic Servitude needs to be studied and abolished in the USA, fast paced banking systems, Fight Corruption, future oriented, getting out of debt, Gift Cards May be Suspended After Purchase and without notice, Holiday Gift Cards: have hidden fees, How to make a budget and to save money, Just try to save, marketing is basically Meta Bank's major strength just behind collections, Meta Bank charges customers for spending their own money, META BANK doesn’t serve the general public, Meta Bank is nothing but a publicity scam, Meta Bank never accepts responsibility, META BANK same poor service as always, METABANK CEOs create and require all of the rules, METABANK CEOs make huge annual incomes, METABANK customers are still complaining about the abuse they have received from METABANK, METABANK Customers complain about METABANK's mistreatment, METABANK is a collections agency and not a bank, MetaBank is corrupt, METABANK lies to their own customers, METABANK operates using many different names, METABANK practices are dragging the economy down, METABANK PREPAID CARD, METABANK uses both Pyramid and Ponzi Schemes, METABANK uses false awards- false testimonials, METABANK's partner company provides METABANK with access to their customer base, METABANK's publicity says that their prepaid card will meet your specific needs but in reality they are the exact same card just using different publicitty, Money and Spending Wisely, Narcissistic practices found to be within METABANK's operation, personal finance, PREPAID CARDS are not adequately regulated, PREPAID CARDS are not consumer friendly, PrePaid Name Brand Bank Card Association a non-profit is a scam, Saving Money, Scams by banks like METABANK, Stay Out of Debt, Stay out of debt- don't get loans to pay off loans, Success shouldn't be about profits - People mattter, Suspicious Activity is within Meta Bank's internal practices and policies
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Posted by mrnd5 on February 5, 2013

https://mrnd5.wordpress.com/2013/02/05/making-a-budget-paying-using-only-cash-easier-and-safest-approach-at-this-time/

“Remember the famous marshmallow experiment”

The Secret to Saving for a Rainy Day

By KIMBERLY PALMER
July 19, 2011
How connected do you feel to your future self? It might seem like a strange question, but the answer determines how likely you are to blow your money today or save it for later.

A new report from the Columbia Business School and University of Chicago Booth School of Business reveals that consumers make money choices based on how connected they feel to their future identities—and that it’s relatively easy to manipulate those feelings.

Remember the famous marshmallow experiment, where Stanford researchers offered children one marshmallow now, or two marshmallows later?

The children that opted for two treats later were more likely to be successful in life, suggesting that the ability to defer gratification is a valuable trait to have. This new report, published in the June 2011 edition of the Journal of Consumer Research, expands those findings to explain what causes some people to defer gratification and others to gobble up their marshmallows—or spend their money—as soon as possible.

The two researchers, professors Daniel Bartels of Columbia and Oleg Urminsky of Booth, asked graduating seniors at a Midwest university to read one of two statements:

The first emphasized how big of a deal it was to graduate and how much they would change afterward.

The second one did just the reverse, emphasizing that one’s core identity changes very little throughout the course of one’s life.

Then participants were told they could receive a gift card right away, or a bigger gift card later.

The results were clear: Students who read the statement emphasizing continuity in one’s identity were more likely to elect to receive the larger gift card (worth up to $240) later; those who read the statement focused on change were more likely to opt for the lower-valued gift card (worth $120) immediately.

In other words, people seem to be very easily manipulated into feeling either more or less connected with their future identities, which in turn influences whether they delay gratification or not.

It’s easy to imagine that flexibility being used for nefarious purposes: Companies could get you to spend more if advertisements convinced you to first feel less connected to your future self, for example.

But these findings also have extremely useful implications for anyone who wants to save more for a rainy day (or retirement), stop spending so much, or just practice more self-discipline.

To convince yourself to delay gratification to achieve any of those goals, the researchers have a relatively simple solution: Take a moment or two to meditate on your future self, and just how similar it is to your current self.

As the researchers put it, “[S]imply…maintaining a sense of connectedness to the future self may help resolve these dilemmas, yielding more farsighted choices.

Rather than employing guilt or complex incentive schemes pitting the interests of future and current selves against each other, simply fostering the sense that what matters most in defining us persists over time may represent a powerful means to help us persist in achieving important goals.”

That kind of future-focused thinking might be especially important during major life events, such as college graduation, marriage, and divorce, when people are particularly vulnerable to feeling disconnected to their future selves.

Some consumers, however, have the opposite problem. They are so good as saving for a rainy day that they forget to enjoy the current one. Ran Kivetz, a business professor at Columbia University, has identified the concept of “self-control regrets,” which describes what people feel if they deny themselves some indulgence that they later wish they had sampled. “People feel guilty about luxuries and it’s hard to justify them, so they under-consume them,” he explains.

Over time, Kivetz says, guilt over indulgences tends to dissipate, while feelings of “missing out” on a pleasurable experience or purchase remain.

That explains why, five years after deciding against taking a wine-soaked cruise to Italy, for example, one might wish he had gone.

So what is the “right” amount of indulgence?

How do we know if we are truly being smart by avoiding a purchase, versus inflicting unnecessary guilt upon ourselves?

Kivetz says there’s no easy answer, and that not surprisingly, it depends entirely on the individual. In other words, each person has to decide for himself.

Kivetz recommends making decisions with the long term in mind.

Ask yourself, “How will I feel about this many years down the road? Will I wish I had made the purchase?”

In other words, the solution is the same whether you are prone to over-spending or under-spending: Take a moment to think about your future self. 

One day, you’ll thank yourself for it.

Kimberly Palmer (@alphaconsumer) is the author of the book Generation Earn: The Young Professional’s Guide to Spending, Investing, and Giving

*********************************

Please know that the CEOs of METABANK are spending all of their time and energies looking for ways to make money for themselves so they can insure their own future. Unfortunately, our experience is that METABANK’s success is at the expense, and through the abuse of their customers. Potential METABANK Customers are being cautioned and warned by our previous experiences using METABANK’s PREPAID CARD to not be mislead by their publicity. METABANK’s publicity is deceptive and misleading.

 

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by mrnd5 on February 5, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Accountability, Annual Income of META BANK's CEOs, being manipulated, future oriented, personal finance, saving
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Posted by mrnd5 on February 5, 2013

https://mrnd5.wordpress.com/2013/02/05/remember-the-famous-marshmallow-experiment/