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Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Zip Codes and Credit Scores: Why Your Address and FICO Score May Be Driving Up Your Car Insurance
New data reveals that your ZIP code can increase car insurance costs by 20–40%, while a poor credit score may lead to a shocking 60% increase; learn how to fight back and save money by understanding these hidden factors and shopping smart. LOS ANGELES, June 11, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- A new analysis from reveals that where you live and how you manage your credit may significantly affect what you pay for car insurance even more than your driving history. The findings are part of a broader education initiative tied to the company's latest report, How Often Should You Get a Car Insurance Quote?, which encourages drivers to regularly reassess their policies as insurers weigh unexpected factors in premium pricing. Key insights from the report and supporting data include: Your ZIP Code Can Add Hundreds to Your Annual Premium : According to analysis in Does Your Zip Code Impact Your Car Insurance Rates? , urban residents in high-density or high-claim areas can pay 20–40% more than drivers in neighboring ZIP codes—even when all other factors are equal. Theft rates, accident frequency, and even weather events can all play a role. Credit Score is Quietly One of the Biggest Factors in Pricing : Many drivers don't realize that their credit score can be as impactful as their driving record when it comes to setting rates. In The Role of Credit Score in Determining Insurance Rates , found that drivers with poor credit may pay up to 60% more than those with excellent credit even if they have a clean driving record. 2 in 3 Drivers Don't Know These Rules Exist : Consumer sentiment is one of confusion and frustration. According to internal surveys, fewer than 1 in 3 drivers are aware that non-driving factors like ZIP code and credit can impact their rates. The result? Many overpay without realizing they're being penalized for something unrelated to their behavior behind the wheel. Americans can get the best deal by checking their quote every 6-12 months : The article emphasizes the power of regular comparison shopping. With rates shifting due to economic and underwriting trends, checking quotes every 6–12 months is one of the most effective ways to save especially for those who've recently improved their credit or moved to a lower-risk area. "Drivers are often told that safe driving saves money. But too often, your ZIP code or FICO score does more to shape your premium than your time behind the wheel," said Fausto Bucheli, Founder & President at "We're committed to helping drivers take back control by understanding how the system works—and how to beat it." The Bottom Line: Knowledge is Savings offers a growing suite of tools and resources to help consumers better understand what's behind their rates and how to reduce them. From location-based quote comparisons to guidance on improving insurability, the platform helps drivers optimize their coverage without compromising protection. Explore the Full Report Visit to read How Often Should You Get a Car Insurance Quote? and access comparison tools, savings tips, and expert advice. About Founded in 1974, is a trusted insurance solutions broker dedicated to helping individuals and families across the United States find affordable, high-quality insurance coverage. With nearly five decades of experience, the company partners with top-rated national insurers to offer a wide array of products, including auto, SR-22, motorcycle, home, renters, life, health, RV, and boat insurance. simplifies the insurance shopping process through its user-friendly online platform, providing instant quotes tailored to each customer's unique needs. By combining unbeatable affordability with reliable coverage options, the company ensures that customers can secure the protection they need without compromising on quality. Headquartered in Chino Hills, California, is committed to delivering exceptional service and value to its clients nationwide. For more information, visit or contact info@ View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE
Miami Herald
12-05-2025
- Business
- Miami Herald
5 investment scams millennials fall for and how to avoid them
Age is just a number, particularly for online criminals. Scammers don't care how old someone is-if they can dupe someone into giving them money, that's all that matters. While always a problem, the proliferation of online scams exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic. Between 2019 and 2020, scam complaints to the FBI increased by 69% to nearly 792,000, according to the FBI's 2023 Internet Crime Report. Losses increased 20% to $4.2 billion. Criminals have continued to up their game ever since. In 2023, the most current year available, complaints exceeded 880,000, with losses skyrocketing to $12.5 billion. used data from the FBI's 2023 Internet Crime Report to analyze the scams that frequently target millennials. The general perception of online fraud victims is that they're older people who aren't technologically savvy, making them prime targets for scammers. However, as online criminals have become more sophisticated, that belief has become outdated. In 2023, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center tracked over 101,000 scam complaints from people 60 or older that resulted in $3.4 billion in losses, but the 30-to-49 demographic reported more complaints-over 172,000-for $2.7 billion in losses. People may equate susceptibility to scams to older adults because they lose more money than other generations. Compared with a median loss of $450 to $500 for those ages 30 to 49, those ages 60 to 69 had a median loss of $691, per 2024 data from the Federal Trade Commission. Those losses escalated with age-those 80 and over lost over twice as much as their younger counterparts, with a median loss of $1,650. Although their financial losses weren't as high, millennials were as susceptible to scams, according to the FTC. About 1 in 3 people ages 30 to 49 reported frauds and losses in 2024, about the same likelihood as those 60 or older. It's hard to imagine that millennials, who have spent most of their lives online, would fall for financial scams, but criminals have learned to shift their focus from phone-based scams to online, social media, and text scams. According to the Pew Research Center, millennials trust information on social media more than their older counterparts-about 40% compared with about 20%-so they are more vulnerable on these platforms. Of course, everyone is human. Even savvy tech users can fall for a social media ad proclaiming a too-good-to-be-true sale on their favorite brand of shoes, respond to a bogus text about their bank account having issues, or pay someone online to "buy" bogus cryptocurrency. Cybersecurity expert Bruce Schneier told The Harvard Gazette that scammers have become relentless in finding victims. If they find someone having a bad day, they can easily exploit that weakness. Criminals have more touchpoints to exploit as people conduct more of their lives online. Online accounts, bill pay, and peer-to-peer money transfers simplify daily transactions, but fraudsters have proved to be particularly adept at exploiting these relationships. They pretend to be a legitimate business or a government entity like the IRS and text or send direct messages about issues with an account, potential prize money, or a missing payment that an individual can easily resolve by clicking a link. Unfortunately, the link is fraudulent and designed to get account information or payments. In early 2025, scammers bombarded phones with unsolicited texts about unpaid tolls and E-ZPass bills. The FBI told NBC it had received over 60,000 complaints about this scam. Scammers imitate trusted sources Government impersonation scams are becoming increasingly profitable for criminals, who ask victims to urgently pay cash to fix a "problem" like losing Social Security benefits or owing taxes to the IRS. They go to extensive lengths to build a story to get victims to part with hard-earned money, and even the savviest people get duped. In 2023, personal finance reporter Charlotte Cowles fell victim to an Amazon scam claiming that someone had hacked her account. She eventually lost $50,000 to people impersonating the FTC and the CIA. She's not alone. The FTC reported $76 million in consumer losses to government imposters in 2023, almost doubling 2022's $40 million in losses. Online shopping scams surge Most people shop online, but scammers also exploit those transactions, particularly around the holidays, when people shop more. In 2024, the second most reported type of fraud came from online shopping scams, including texts or emails about unexpected packages or changes in travel plans that require clicking on a spoofed link. Some online shopping scams start as social media ads for massive sales that dupe people into buying merchandise that never arrives because it never existed. Social media platforms generally don't screen to see whether an advertiser is legitimate because it's not in their best interest to do so. Schneier told The Harvard Gazette, "They don't do a good job because fake ads generate the same revenue as real ads. Why should they screen it? It's profitable." Job and investment fraud on the rise Job hunters are also easy targets. In 2024, people lost $501 million to job and employment agency scams, a nearly 457% increase from 2020, per a 2025 FTC report. Popular scams include work-from-home schemes that offer much higher pay but may involve purchasing a starter kit, scams involving reshipping or reselling merchandise, paying for recruitment services, or paying for a federal job. The rise of cryptocurrency has fueled more investment fraud. Scammers will offer tremendous returns on crypto purchases. They encourage individuals to invest on platforms that show growth so victims invest more in crypto-except the platforms were never real. Many criminals also demand up-front payment in cryptocurrency. Because crypto payments don't have legal protections and typically aren't reversible, one small mistake can send thousands of dollars into a scammer's account. Why is it so easy to lose hard-earned money? Criminals go to great lengths to illegitimately build their wealth. They target homebuyers by impersonating sellers, creating fake real estate listings, and intercepting title payments before closing. CertifID's 2025 State of Wire Fraud report found that scammers targeted 1 in 4 homebuyers and sellers and were successful every 20 tries. Millennials who have grown up online and rely on social media every day can be prone to social media hacking. This can result in identity theft or profile "spoofing"-creating a fake account that impersonates a real person-to exploit friend and follower lists. Scammers know how to push the right psychological buttons on their victims. Many scams have a sense of urgency, tapping into people's fear of missing out through limited offers or exclusive deals. Romantic scams play on people's loneliness and create an emotional bond before scammers help victims invest in cryptocurrency-and take their money in the process. Many millennials face financial pressure due to student loan debt, making them more prone to scam promises for debt relief. These scams may require up-front payment for services that never materialize or make false promises about debt relief. Criminals also know how to use just enough information to sound legitimate. For Cowles, hearing scammers discuss details like the last four digits of her Social Security number lured her further into their deceit. While criminals are experts in bilking increasingly younger people out of money, millennials can leverage their digital know-how to protect themselves from becoming scam victims. Being aware of current fraudulent schemes and second-guessing products that seem too good to be true can go a long way to preventing financial ruin at the hands of a scammer. Story editing by Carren Jao. Copy editing by Yvonne Ngai-Fodge. This story was produced by Cheap Insurance and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker. © Stacker Media, LLC.
Yahoo
24-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Who are the 26 million Americans without health insurance?
Many ominous ills are likely curable, especially if you have insurance. Without it, patients can find themselves facing life-threatening consequences, as physician Ricardo Nuila, an associate professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, told Public Health Watch. Nuila had a stage 1 cancer patient who lost his insurance just as he was to receive treatment. "Without insurance, [my patient] was given the run-around for months by his doctors," Nuila said. By the time his patient was seen at a hospital where he could be treated without insurance, the cancer had already spread. Delayed diagnosis and care, increasing medical debt, and higher mortality rates are some of the outcomes for uninsured patients. However, 2 in 25 Americans (approximately 26.2 million people) did not have health insurance as of 2023, according to the most recent available Census Bureau data. While this represents a significant drop from the almost 4 in 25 people uninsured rate in 2010—when the Affordable Care Act was enacted, cutting the rate nearly in half—major coverage gaps remain. Younger adults, Hispanic or Latino people of any race, foreign-born populations, part-time workers, and residents of states that have not expanded Medicaid were found to be disproportionately uninsured, according to the Census Bureau's 2023 Health Insurance Coverage in the United States report. The rate of Hispanic adults (of any race and aged between 19 and 64) who lacked insurance was about twice the rate for Black adults. The disparities that still exist highlight the pervasiveness of systemic hurdles facing health insurance coverage for many, despite the aims of such a major health care reform. examined the demographics of the uninsured population in the U.S. using data from the Census Bureau to see who is slipping through the cracks of the American health care system. The American Community Survey was used for historical and state estimates, and estimates for different demographics as of 2023 are from the Current Population Survey. Editor's note: and Stacker recognize that Hispanic and Latino are not interchangeable terms. The usage of Hispanic and Latino are in accordance with the language of the sources included in this story. Additionally, Census Bureau data was collected using a binary understanding of sex and gender, which excludes important information about gender-diverse professionals. The impact of this exclusion means that this story's coverage may lack nuance related to biased language and nonbinary individuals. The ACA used a combination of carrots and sticks to promote greater health insurance access. The law expanded eligibility for Medicaid for individuals of low income under 65 years old (though not all states opted to participate), and an individual mandate requiring most Americans to have health insurance or pay a penalty. In 2017, Congress reduced the penalty to $0 through the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, effectively eliminating it. Then, in 2019, a federal court ruled the individual mandate unconstitutional since it no longer generated revenue. Still, the Supreme Court upheld the ACA in California v. Texas, stating that the plaintiffs lacked standing and could not demonstrate "personal injury fairly traceable to the defendant's allegedly unlawful conduct." If the case went further to invalidate the mandate, it would have opened up the potential for the rest of ACA to be questioned and even dismantled, MaryBeth Musumeci, then associate director of KFF's Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured, explained in an article published in 2020. The implementation of ACA prompted a significant increase in health insurance coverage rates. By 2023, just 1 in 13 Americans lacked coverage, compared to 1 in 6 pre-ACA. However, coverage is still not equal across the board, and Americans in the lower socioeconomic categories continue to be the most uninsured in the country. Citizenship status is a major factor when it comes to health insurance, according to the Census Bureau data. In 2023, noncitizens had an uninsured rate of 3 in 10 people—almost five times that of the 6.2% rate for citizens and more than four times higher than the 6.7% rate for naturalized citizens. Employment matters, too, spotlighting features of the American health insurance system, which provides most full-time workers with insurance through an employer. This system most likely leaves unemployed or underemployed Americans without the employer-provided insurance offered to their employed counterparts. While almost 1 in 10 employed Americans were uninsured in 2023, that rate is closer to 6 in 25 for unemployed individuals. With employer-sponsored insurance being the norm, job loss can mean losing health care entirely. Breaking down the varying rates of health insurance coverage by age group reveals that young adults between the ages of 26 and 34 face the highest uninsured rate at 13.8%, followed closely by those aged 19 to 25 at 13.1%, according to data from the American Community Survey released in September 2024. Many lose coverage after aging out of parental plans or having to work jobs without benefits, a trend called the young adult coverage gap. The ACA contains a provision that allows adult children to stay on their parent's health insurance plan until the age of 26, but the provision has not eliminated the gap. Men are also more likely to be uninsured, at 9%, compared to women, with a 6.9% uninsured rate. And disparities by income? The wealthier you are, the more likely you are to have insurance. Only 1 in 20 households earning over $100,000 are uninsured, but for families making less than $50,000, that rate more than doubles, according to the Census Bureau. Insurance coverage also varies sharply by race and ethnicity. In 2023, just 1 in 20 non-Hispanic white and Asian Americans were uninsured, compared to more than 2 in 25 Black Americans and 4 in 25 Hispanic or Latino individuals. American Indian and Alaska Native populations had some of the highest uninsured rates at 183 people out of 1000. The disparities along racial and ethnic lines demonstrate the persistent structural barriers to health insurance coverage and, more broadly, health care access. Some of these coverage gaps are rooted in historical policies that codified segregation in health care. For example, Black women ages 15 to 44 have been found to have higher rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion care, compared to their white counterparts, according to national data analyzed by the Morehouse School of Public Medicine and published in 2020. "There are a multitude of reasons, and we don't fully understand what's going on," Christine Dehlendorf, a professor of family and community medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who specializes in reproductive health research, told The Atlantic on the same finding nearly a decade before. "But ultimately I think it's about structural determinants—economic reasons, issues related to racism, differences in opportunities, differences in social and historical context." Another notable example of health care segregation was perhaps the 1946 Hill-Burton Act, which modernized health care facilities across the U.S. but also allowed "separate-but-equal" facilities that excluded many Black, Hispanic and Latino, and other non-white workers from the employer-sponsored benefits afforded to white workers. Although Karen Kruse Thomas, staff historian at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, found in a 2006 study that while the Hill-Burton program drew racial lines, it also provided Black people more access to hospital care. Going back to the Jim Crow era, research has shown that systemic racism, such as occupational segregation (where one demographic group is overrepresented in a certain job category) and structural barriers to health care, has persisted across generations in ways that perpetuate the disparities we see today. The higher a person's education level, the more likely they are to have insurance. Among individuals without a high school diploma, 20.7%—more than 1 in 5 people—were uninsured. That is nearly six times the close to 3.5%, or 1 in 25 uninsured ratio, among those with a bachelor's degree or higher. And even high school graduates, as well as those with only some college, see significant gaps, with uninsured rates of 10.8% and 7.1%, respectively. State policy plays a role in coverage too. States that took advantage of the ACA's Medicaid expansion provision now have lower uninsured rates, and the uninsured rate has fallen even more in those states since the law's passage. In 2023, Census Bureau data shows that the uninsured rate was 6 in 100 people in states that expanded Medicaid, compared to close to 12 in 100 people in those states that did not. Texas, one of the states that chose not to adopt the Medicaid expansion, leads the nation with the highest uninsured rate, at over 16 people out of 100. The decision not to adopt the Medicaid expansion was concentrated in Southern states, where the highest uninsured rates are also found. While the ACA allowed states to expand Medicaid and lower income thresholds for eligibility, states that opted out left millions without the affordable plans covered by Medicaid. The result? Sharp differences in coverage across the country. Story editing by Carren Jao. Copy editing by Sofía Jarrín. Photo selection by Lacy Kerrick. This story originally appeared on and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.
