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Dad Joke
My friends get mad when I steal their kitchen utensils...
but it’s a whisk I’m willing to take.
Now Let’s Make Your Money Smile
Loved, and cleaned out
I’ve seen so many men and women who were older, lonely and most needed their retirement savings fall for this scam. It never ends well.
Romance scams are back in the news this morning. A piece on AOL puts last year’s losses at $1.49 billion. The FBI’s own count is a little lower, and most of that money came from people over sixty. The people with the least time left to earn it back.
The part nobody warns families about is what happens after they figure it out, and that AOL piece gets it exactly right. A family sits down with Grandma and lays out the proof. The fake photos, the “stuck overseas” story, the wire receipts. And the money keeps going. A psychotherapist in that piece put it this way: showing someone proof “does not automatically disrupt the emotional and behavioral attachment.”
That’s the whole thing. The scam was never selling facts. It was selling being wanted. The need to be wanted and loved is a powerful emotion that overrides logic, and you can’t argue somebody out of a feeling with a spreadsheet.
The families who do better, according to the experts in that piece, stop trying to win. They skip the shame and the repeat arguments, keep the connection, ask questions that let the person spot the holes themselves, and put firm limits around the money. The goal isn’t to be right on Tuesday. It’s to still be the person they call when it falls apart.
Where it starts matters too. The FTC says most people who lost money to a romance scam last year said it started on social media. Not a dating site. Facebook, Instagram, a friendly stranger in the comments.
One more wrinkle this week. Amazon’s Prime refunds are going out to more people, and the FTC says plainly that it is not contacting anyone about them. The FTC says a call from someone claiming to be the FTC about it is a scam.
I wrote about the red flags before you send money to someone you’ve only met online, if you want to go deeper.
Somebody you love lives alone and spends evenings on Facebook. I’d forward this to whoever checks in on them. The money a romance scam takes is usually retirement money, and the only thing that reliably brings a person back is someone they still trust enough to call.
Both sides are describing the loyalty app
Two sides fought over grocery prices in Seattle last week, and I think they were describing the same thing. The city council voted 7-2 to ban grocery “surveillance pricing,” which the labor groups behind it call AI price gouging. It stops grocers with more than twenty locations from using your personal data, like where you live or what you browse, to set the price you personally pay, and it requires every price to be posted and equally available to everyone. The Stranger reports it keeps the traditional discounts for seniors and veterans. It takes effect September 1, 2027.
The other side came from a Safeway-backed campaign, which said Seattle families could lose an average of $100 a month in discounts, according to Newsline Local. No math was published for that number.
Here’s what neither headline tells you. Both sides are talking about the same thing from opposite ends. A “targeted discount” in your loyalty app is personal-data pricing that happens to point down. “Surveillance pricing” is the same machinery pointed up. The supporters point to a 2025 Consumer Reports investigation, Newsline Local reports, that found price differences of up to 23% for the same groceries. The grocers point to the coupons.
What gets lost is the shopper with no app. Once the good price lives behind a login, the number on the shelf quietly becomes the price for people who didn’t sign up, and that’s often the oldest and the busiest people in the store. There was a time the price was the sticker on the can, the same for everybody in line. The fight in Seattle is really about whether that’s worth anything anymore.
A price lock that doesn’t lock the fees
Price locks have a back door, and it’s the fee line. T-Mobile is raising its “Regulatory Programs & Telco Recovery Fee” again, to $5.49 a line on October 12, Droid Life reports. That’s the third bump in under two years, with no change to anybody’s plan.
While you might think your plan price is fixed, it’s not, and this doesn’t apply to just T-Mobile. You’ll see lots of bills creeping up.
The plan price is what the lock protects. The fee line isn’t. Asking what a new customer would pay today costs one phone call, and Friday’s Xfinity story showed how wide that gap can get.
Things to check this week
A few things sitting in a lot of homes got recalled last week. The Consumer Product Safety Commission’s latest list has several sold on Amazon: NEWDERY power banks and Blue Cactus reclining-chair battery packs, both for fire and burn hazards. It also covers three mattress brands that fail the flammability standard, Yuyitop 8-drawer dressers for tip-over risk, and kids’ bike helmet sets. And the CPSC is telling people to stop using FOTING pressure washers right now because of shock and electrocution risk.
Ask me on Facebook
Every week I answer a reader’s money question on the Get Out of Debt Guy Facebook page. If you’ve got one, a reply to this email reaches me, and you might see the answer there.
Also on the site since Friday
I’m in my 70s, judgment-proof, and ready to file bankruptcy. I just can’t afford the lawyer yet.
I settled this debt years ago. Now a collector is threatening me with a fake lawsuit.
The VA says I was overpaid and wants the money back. What to do right now.
If any of this was new to you, somebody you know hasn’t heard it either. It’s free at yourmoneyactually.com, and I don’t sell the list. The places I actually use for my own money, and what I get out of telling you, are on one page where they’ll always be.
Nothing here is advice for your specific situation. It’s what I’d tell a friend over coffee, and I’d tell the same friend that the details of their own life outrank anything I’ve written here.
One more thing. Wanting to be loved isn’t a weakness, and it isn’t something age cures. It’s the best thing about us. The people who get taken aren’t foolish. They’re lonely, and lonely is fixable, mostly by the rest of us picking up the phone. If you’re the one who’s been feeling alone lately, you’re not the only one, and the right people are closer than a stranger in your messages. I’ll be back tomorrow.
— Steve