Wealth Today

With the rising costs of health care, it’s important to take care of your body. My wife and I were very very sick a couple of years ago. It cost for the doctor visit, the missed time from work, affected attendance history, etc. Since then, we started taking vitamins, and have hardly been ill since then. The general feeling of a better well-being is worth it alone. We’re also likely to live longer, be productive longer, and be able to enjoy life longer. With this, our investments will continue to grow longer. We’ve been using BetterLife for our vitamin source for about two years, but thanks to Froogle we’ve been able to find a better supplier. We ordered Kal Vitality For Women and Solaray Twice Daily Multi Energy Iron-Free. They delivered faster, and for 7$ cheaper for our regular order. We order two month supplies at a time. Five minutes on Froogle and the courage to try a new vendor will save me $55 or more for the year.

Some key lessons here:

• Do your research on your expenses.
• Do your research on your vendors.
• You might get a better deal somewhere else.
• Don’t be afraid to try new things.

Oh boy. Here we go. I took a trip to Baton Rouge, LA over Christmas weekend. My Speedpass was stolen and I didn’t realize it until this morning. Yes, that’s been a long time, but my regular ExxonMobil stations have switched to Texaco and Chevron, so I haven’t needed it. I noticed a charge at an exxonmobil yesterday that showed FL and I haven’t been to FL in a couple of years, but sometimes merchant accounts will report a corporate address or something like that, so I kind of questioned it, however no big alarm went off in my head. $20 so it looked like a fill up. I thought : “My wife used the car in a different part of town on the day the charge was taken, so maybe she filled it up.” Today, I see two more. Another city in Florida and one in Mississippi. Now I know something’s amiss. I noticed they’re all at ExxonMobil’s and checked my keychain. Sure enough, it’s missing and I’m short $64. I called ExxonMobil and they’re cancelling and re-issuing new SpeedPasses and referred me to my bank. I called Wells Fargo and they’ve filed a fraud claim. I have to fill out some paper work, get it back to them, and jump through those hoops. I dug back a little further to see when the last time I used my speedpass was, because Wells Fargo asked me, and I noticed another fraudulent use of the Speed Pass. This time it was the day I left Baton Rouge (I didn’t get gas the whole time I was in Baton Rouge) and it said this charge was in Baton Rouge. I called Wells Fargo back and told them about it and asked if it could be put on the same fraud claim. I was told “not usually”. It takes Claims 24 hours to get it. They were nice and said that since this charge was so small ($11.75) that they would simply credit it back to my account and reference the already open claim. I know Wells Fargo is extremely conservative and has high fees, but quite frankly when I deal with them, they’re great.

I’ll let everyone know how the claim continues. Speedpass told me to call them back if Wells Fargo is unable to resolve the unauthorized use claim.