Step 12 of The Financial Fitness Bootcamp Course

Today’s challenge is based on an experience Karen, the co-author of our book: Living a Rich Life as a Stay-at-Home Mom, had.

She wrote,

“Recently, my husband’s employer called him and asked if he had filed for unemployment. He hadn’t of course, considering he was still employed!

Apparently, someone had used his social security number and filed for unemployment. They were receiving payments from our state fraudulently.

So, we began the long-drawn-out process of trying to fix the problems associated with identity theft. This was a very frustrating experience and quite time consuming.

We eventually found out that a hacker from China had hacked into the medical records of our doctor’s office and had stolen everyone’s information.

Through my research into how to prevent identity theft, I found out one very important fact: Very few organizations actually have the legal standing to require you to give your social security number to them.

The advice I kept reading over and over was that you should never give out your social security number to anyone unless it is required by law. You should also review your credit report often, at least yearly, and verify that no one is using your information fraudulently.

So next time you are at the dentist, doctor, etc. and they give you a form that has a place for you to fill in your social security number…leave it blank!

I wish I would have known this earlier and it would have saved me hours of time and hassle.”

Challenge #12 is to commit to not give out your (or your family member’s) social security numbers to anyone -unless you are legally required to do so-.