Best of Blogs for Week of January 31st

Every Friday afternoon I share some of the more interesting or notable posts that I have seen in the personal finance blogs and other sources for the past week

PlanetMoney gives us a look at Who Are The Long-Term Unemployed? (In 3 Graphs)

BLS tells us the Occupations projected to add most new jobs, 2012 to 2022
Nursing and accounting jobs make the list along with a lot of low paid  service jobs.

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What Do People Heat Their Homes With?

I've seen a couple comments on line lately from people who seemed to think everyone uses natural gas to heat their homes.     Natural gas is actually the most common home heating fuel source.   But there are still a lot of people in the nation who use other fuels.    Electricity is actually quite common in some regions as well as for rentals.

I found the data in the American Housing Survey for 2009 
The specific data is in table 2-5 for fuels.

For all homes the mix of heat sources are : 

I combined the smallest categories into an 'others' group.    The 'others' listed above includes kerosene, coal or coke, solar and other.



Natural gas is indeed the #1 form of home heat.  However its still only barely over half the homes and the other half are heated by electricity and other sources of heat.

The mix for owner occupied homes looks similar to the larger picture.

For renters the picture is a lot different.   Electricity is actually the winner with a fraction of a percent more homes than natural gas :

There are also pretty big differences between different regions of the country.  For each of the four major regions of the country I chart below the top 3 heat sources as well as the % heated by less popular energy.

Most notable are the use of fuel oil in the Northeast where nearly 1/3 of homes still use that : 

And then the popularity of electricity for heat in the South where it beats out gas for the #1 spot : 

The Midwest and West look similar to one another.   The pattern is closer to the national average but natural gas is even more popular out West.

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List of Merchants for 5-20% Cashback Bonus at Shop Discover

If you have a Discover card you can shop online through their ShopDiscover site to get 5-20% cash back.   The ShopDiscover bonus is in addition to any other Discover cash back bonus you may earn so it doesn't replace the normal 1% Discover bonus (or 5% promo bonus).  

There are a LOT of notable merchants that offer the 5% bonus.   I tried comparing to Ebates but there are so many on this list that I grew tired of looking them up one by one on Ebates.  From the ones I looked at the vast majority of 5% bonus merchants  for ShopDiscover  paid less at Ebates.  But if you are looking at a merchant with the intention of buying I'd recommend checking Ebates as well.  Some merchants do have better cash back at Ebates, like for example Magazines.com is 26% at Ebates and 20% for ShopDiscover.

Each merchant will have terms for the offer so you need to read the details.   From a couple I looked at it seems they don't usually offer cash back for the purchase of gift cards or gift certificates.

Here is the list of current merchants that offer ShopDiscover bonuses categorized by the amount of cash back.

5% cash back from : 

7 For All Mankind	Kohl's
A Pea In The od	Lancome
ABT.com	Lands End
Ace Hardware	LeapFrog
Advance Auto Parts	LEGO
Aeropostale	Lenovo
Ann Taylor	Levi's
Apple Store	LivingSocial
Athleta	LLBean
Atlantis and More Bahamas Resorts	LOFT
Avalon Waterways	Lord & Taylor
Avon	Lowe's
Backcountry.com	Lumber Liquidators
Banana Republic	Luxury Link
Bass Pro Shops	Macy's
Bath and Body Works	Madewell
Beauty.com	Marriott
Bed Bath and Beyond	Mattel
Best Buy	Meijer
Beyond the Rack	Microsoft Store
Bloomingdales;'s	MLB.com
Bluefly	Motherhood
Bobbi Brown	Neiman Marcus
buybuy Baby	Nordstrom
Carnival Cruises	Norwegian Cruise
Carson's	Oceania
Carter's	Office Depot
CB2	OfficeMax
Celebrity Cruises	Old Navy
Chadwick's	Omaha Steaks
Chefs Catalog	Orbitz
Chicos	Origins
Clinique	OshKosh B'gosh
Coach	Palace Resorts
Coldwater Creek	Panasonic
Crate& Barrel	Paper Source
Darphin	Pcrush.com
Dell	Perry Ellis
Desination Maternity	Piperlime
Dillard's	Princess Cruises
Dockers	QVC
Dollar Rent a Car	Rakuten Shopping.com
Drugstore.com	Ralph Lauren
DSW	Regent
Eddie Bauer	Royal Caribbean
Enterprise	SaksFifthAvenue
Estee Lauder	Sears
Expedia	Sephora
Express	Smashbox
Fairmont	Sony
FansEdge	Sports Authority
GameStop	Staples
GAP	Starbucks
Globus	Target
Godiva	Tauck
Gordons	The Body Shop
Groupon	The Childrens Place
Guess	The Container Store
Guitar Center	The Land of Nod
Hammacher Schlemmer	The Limited
Hanes	Things Remembered
Hanna Andersson	Thrifty.com
Harbor Freight Tools	TigerDirect.com
Hard Rock Resorts	Timberland
Harry & David	Tory Burch
Holland America	Toshiba
Home Decorator's	Travelocity
Homedepot.com	Tumi
Hotels.com	Universal Studios Resort
Hotwire	Urban Outfitters
HP Home	Vera Bradley
HSN	Viking River Cruises
J Crew	Vistaprint
J.Jill	Walgreens
jcpenney	Walmart
Jos A Bank	White House Black Market
Justice	World Market
Kiehl's	Zales
Kmart

10% cash back from : 

1800Contacts	Lucky Brand Jeans
Allposters.com	Moosejaw
Art.com	New York & Company
Blair.com	Nike
Brookstone	Petco.com
Columbia	PetSmart
Eastbay	Puma
Fandango	RedEnvelope
Finish Line	Rosetta Stone
Footlocker	Shari's Berries
Fossil	Sharper Image
Gaiam	Shindigz
GNC Live Well	Snapfish
GolfSMith	The North Face
GourmetGiftBaskets.com	UGG
Jewelry.com	Ulta
Lids.com	Under Armour
Lobster Gram

15% cash back from :

1800 Flowers

1800Baskets.com

Bliss

Fannie May Candies

FTD

Magellan's

OnlineShoes

OvernightPrints

Shoes.com

Teleflora

The Popcorn Factory

TurboTax

VisionDirect

Wine Enthusiast

20% cash back from : 

 

H&R Block

Magazines.com

Music Space.com

ProFlowers

Restaurant.com

--This article may contain referral links which pay this site a commission for purchases made at the sites.

Every Single Credit Card In America Has Been Hacked. (...Or Might As Well be)

I honestly do think its quite likely that every credit card number in the country has been stolen somehow and somewhere.    Recently Target announced that 110 million card numbers and other data were stolen from their stores by hackers.    But that is certainly not the first major security breach and it seems every month or two we're hearing of a new company announcing that all their customers data was stolen or 'might have been' stolen or was lost, etc.    Its a reality today that your credit card numbers might fall into the hands of criminals.   Not only do we have to deal with hackers stealing information from companies we can also have a card number stolen during its routine use.   Sounds awful right?    But what do we do about it... ?

First :  Don't panic.   For a credit card you have no liability on losses.

If your credit card number is stolen you are not liable for unauthorized use.   

Really its true, trust me or you can read it yourself right off the FTC website.   This is federal law.

While you're not liable for unauthorized charges they can still be a hassle and we'd all certainly want to avoid the nasty surprise of a $1500 charge showing up on your card.   So what else can we do to help avoid unauthorized activity? 

1. Watch your statements.  Watch your statements.   Watch your statements.    I said that three times since its important.   You won't catch fraud on your account if you aren't paying attention to your statements.   In fact you should really do more than just watch your monthly statement (see item 3) but watching your statement is the minimum.


2.  Use a credit card instead of a debit card.    The liability for credit card fraud is zero.  The liability for debit card is potentially unlimited.   What this means is if a thief steals your card number and makes fraudulent purchases then you should pay nothing with a credit card but they could potentially empty your bank account with a debit card.   Its not usually nearly that bad with a debit card but there is certainly more liability.  Again see the FTC rules.

3.  Set up alerts and notices for your account.  Credit card providers often have ways to setup text and email alerts for activity on your credit account.    You should setup up alerts for any kind of suspicious activity.   My Discover card has options to notify me of suspect activity, charges over a $300, charges occurring outside the USA and similar items.  The exact alerts you'll want will depend on your situation but you would probably benefit from some sort of notice if abnormal activity occurs.

4. Get a new credit card number.   If you're particularly worried about identity theft you can simply get a new card number.   In fact getting a new card number on a periodic basis may be a good defensive measure.   No telling when your cards was stolen or who might have it.  Its not as if every security breach is immediately announced in the press since many are never even detected and merchants  are hesitant to admit their security failures.


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