Money Management

Domino’s is giving customers the option to have their pizzas delivered without an actual address. Read on to learn more. 

What Happened

Domino’s is on a quest to make pizza delivery more accessible to customers. The pizza chain is launching a new Pinpoint Delivery service that allows you to have food delivered wherever you are — even if it’s a public space.

So What

Most food delivery services and apps require a physical address to deliver your goods. Now, Domino’s is making it easy to have pizza delivered anywhere, whether it’s a park, a beach, or a random street corner.

All you have to do is select Pinpoint Delivery on the Domino’s app and allow it to use your location. Then, you simply tap the map that comes up and drop a pizza pin in the location where you want to receive your order.

“Domino’s Pinpoint Delivery is a new feature within the Domino’s app that provides you with even more ordering convenience when you’re out and about or on the go,” said the company.

To use the service, you must prepay for your pizza with a debit or credit card. You can also use a Domino’s gift card. Cash won’t be accepted.

Now What

Domino’s new delivery service is only one of several perks you might enjoy if you’re a fan of the pizza chain. In addition to getting your food delivered anywhere, you can sign up for the company’s rewards program, which allows you to snag free pizza by racking up points.

That said, you may want to be judicious in how frequently you order from Domino’s. Although Domino’s tends to fall under the “cheap eats” category, pizza delivery is apt to be more expensive than a comparable amount of home-cooked food. So if money is tight and you’re already struggling with higher living costs due to inflation, you may want to limit your Domino’s orders to a couple of times a month.

However, the ability to have Domino’s delivered anywhere might also save you some money. Let’s say you’re at the beach and you’re hungry. If given the choice between splitting a couple of Domino’s pizzas with friends or having to pay a premium for food at the beach concession stand, Domino’s might be the more cost-effective option. And if you can redeem reward points or gift cards for free pizza, even better.

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Scammers frequently use Venmo to steal people’s money. Protect yourself by learning how to spot one of the most common Venmo scams. 

Venmo makes it quick and easy to send money to other people. For the most part, that’s a good thing. But it also means that Venmo, like other popular payment apps, is a hotbed for scams.

Victims usually don’t just lose a small amount, either. The median loss for Venmo scams was $700 in 2021, according to a report by the Better Business Bureau.

If you use Venmo, it’s important to know about what kind of scams are out there so you can protect yourself. And there’s one, in particular, that has been extremely common for years — the “accidental” payment scam. It’s simple and effective, but once you know the warning signs, you won’t have any trouble spotting it.

1. Someone you don’t know sends you money

The scam starts with the victim receiving money from a stranger. It can be for any amount. This often throws people off and gets them to let their guard down, as you might think that a scammer wouldn’t give you free money.

2. They send you a message saying it was a mistake

Next, the scammer messages you and says they sent you that payment by accident. This normally happens pretty shortly after you get the money. They may also make up some story about how you have a similar username to a friend of theirs, who was supposedly the intended recipient.

3. They ask you to send the money back

In their message, the scammer will ask you if you can send them a payment for the same amount. If they sent you $500, they’ll ask you to just send $500 back. It may seem reasonable. After all, won’t you be sending back the money you received by mistake? Unfortunately, that isn’t how it works.

What happens next

If you send any money back as requested, you’re going to lose it. And it will be your own money that you’re losing.

That’s because the scammer sent you the original payment using a stolen credit card, debit card, or bank account number. When the person who owns that card or bank account notices the fraud, they’re going to dispute the transaction. Venmo will then reverse it, taking that money back from your account.

Here’s a summary of how it all happens, when the scam goes as intended:

You receive money from a stranger on Venmo. The source of that money was a stolen payment card or bank account.You send the stranger the same amount of money back. However, the source of this money is technically your Venmo account.The stranger withdraws the money right away so that Venmo can’t take it back.The account holder reports the fraudulent payment.Venmo withdraws the money from the original payment sent to your account.

Let’s say a stranger sent you $500. You technically can’t refund it, as Venmo doesn’t allow that. Instead, you’d need to create a new transaction to send the same amount back. But once the original transaction gets reported as fraud, Venmo is going to take $500 from your account.

If you don’t have $500 in your account, it will leave you with a negative balance. Venmo will freeze your account until you’ve paid off the balance, and if you don’t, it could send your account to collections.

What to do if you get an unexpected Venmo payment

If a stranger sends you money on Venmo, don’t send them anything back. Contact the Venmo Support team and let them handle it. That’s advice provided by the Venmo Help Center, which also says that you can block the stranger who sent you the payment. That way, they won’t be able to send you any more “accidental” payments or messages.

This is one of those situations where scammers take advantage of people’s good nature. If this really was an accidental payment, the person who sent it can handle that with Venmo. Don’t put your own money at risk, because odds are it’s a scam.

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We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers.
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Getting a new job? Find out what that means for your IRA. 

There may come a point where you find yourself looking for a new job. Maybe you’re unhappy with the fact that your salary barely pays you enough to cover your expenses, let alone pad your savings account. Or maybe you’re just not content with your work environment and want a more laid-back atmosphere.

It’s generally a good idea to move your retirement savings into a new plan when you leave a job at which you participated in a 401(k) plan. But if you have your long-term savings in an IRA, there’s really no need to do anything.

Your IRA won’t be impacted by a job switch

As a salaried employee, to save in a 401(k) plan, you need to be offered that option by an employer. (If you’re self-employed, you’re eligible to open a solo 401(k) that you fund and manage on your own.) But an IRA is an account you open and manage yourself, and it’s not tied to an employer. So if you leave a job and take a new one, there’s really no need to do anything with your IRA. That move won’t affect your IRA at all.

Now if you’re moving from one job to another and you have a 401(k), that’s a different story. In that case, it’s generally not a good idea to leave funds in an old 401(k) even if you have the option to do so. Going that route runs the risk that you’ll forget about that money and join the ranks of the roughly 29.2 million orphaned 401(k) plans that are floating around to this day, according to Capitalize.

If you have a 401(k) through your employer and are switching jobs, it pays to either roll that money into an IRA (even if you have to open a new one from scratch), or roll that money into your new employer’s 401(k). However, for the latter option to work, you’ll need to make sure that your new company offers a 401(k), and that new employees are allowed to participate right away. Some companies force new hires to wait a certain amount of time before signing up for their retirement plan.

Should you keep saving in your IRA once you get a new job?

It may be that you opened an IRA because your former employer did not offer a workplace retirement plan. If your new employer does offer a 401(k), participating in it could be a really good idea if your company offers a match.

There are no hard-and-fast rules when it comes to employer matches, and it’s at the discretion of your company to offer one in the first place. But let’s say your employer will match up to 100% of $3,000 in 401(k) contributions annually. This means that if you were to contribute $3,000 from your salary, you’d end up with $6,000 added to your 401(k) plan per year. That’s a really good deal.

However, if your employer doesn’t offer any sort of match for its 401(k) and you’re not all that happy with the investment choices offered by that plan, then it could pay to continue saving for retirement in an IRA. One advantage of IRAs over 401(k)s is that they commonly offer a wider range of investment choices. That could help you not only build a portfolio that works well for you, but minimize investment fees. So it could pay to stick with your IRA and keep doing what you’ve been doing.

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We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers.
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My emergency savings actually help me sleep better at night. Read on to see why I prioritize them. 

I write about financial matters all the time, so you’d think I’d be equipped with enough knowledge to not have to worry about money incessantly. But in reality, a lot of people worry about money.

Heck, even millionaires have been known to stress about not having enough money to meet their goals. And so I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve done my fair share of stressing over financial matters, such as not having enough savings for retirement or worrying about how to pay for my kids’ college.

Another thing I tend to worry about big time is unplanned expenses. I own a home and two vehicles, and that alone subjects me to a host of unknown costs.

Plus, I have kids. And kids tend to fall and get hurt and get sick. When that happens, the medical bills can be enormous.

That’s why I make a point to maintain a pretty large emergency fund. In fact, I try to keep enough cash in my savings account to cover a year’s worth of living expenses, even though that’s the high end of what financial experts tend to recommend.

But having a solid emergency fund isn’t just good for my financial health. It’s also really important to my mental health.

When I don’t have to sweat random bills

Nobody likes to see an unplanned expense land in their lap. But these days, the idea of one is so much less stressful because I’ve made a point to build up a solid level of cash reserves.

To be clear, I’d still panic if I were to find myself staring at a $20,000 home repair. But I’ll be honest and say that the idea of a $500 repair here or a $600 repair there doesn’t worry me so much. It’s not that I want to have to spend my money to fix my home. But I’m at least less generally worried about it.

Many people, however, aren’t in that boat. A recent SecureSave survey found that 67% of Americans don’t have enough savings to cope with a $400 unplanned expense.

But because I maintain a large emergency fund, the idea of having to shell out $400 out of the blue really isn’t so worrisome. And so it’s worth it to me to keep that cash in the bank for the mental health benefits involved.

Set yourself up to worry less

Building emergency savings may not be the easiest thing to do. But it’s worth making some sacrifices to get there, like I did.

Through the years, I’ve driven older cars, lived in smaller homes, and given up certain luxuries, like nicer vacations, to pump money into my savings. You may need to do the same to build up enough cash reserves to protect yourself from emergency expenses. But what you lose in the form of a nicer car or more meals out, you might gain in the form of better sleep — as in, not lying awake at night worrying about money.

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We’re firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers.
The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

 Read More