| Guarding your identity
That's Det. Kristin Daly's best advice for coping with an onslaught of determined identity thieves.Daly, a Howard Township resident who has been with the Cass County Sheriff's Office for about 10 years after four years with Probate Court, said this area has experienced its own version of the notorious e-mail "Nigerian scam.""A couple of weeks ago in Dowagiac a gentleman was contacted by someone in Nigeria. He said, 'I've got a job for you. I'm going to give you these names and addresses and you forward these checks to these people. Tell them to cash these checks and send you some money back, then you keep a portion and send the rest to me.' People still fall for it." "Another scam we've just got within the last couple of weeks" at the Sheriff's Office involved eBay, the online auction service.An individual was legitimately bidding on a tractor.He received notification that he won, but failed to notice he was sending $5,000 to New Mexico instead of to the owner in New York.
Writers on the Range: Down but not out in Missoula, Montana
The American dream is alive and well in Missoula, Mont., sort of. Not long after arriving here in the late 1990s, I found myself in the same conversation about real estate, hearing the same words and sharing the same sentiment. "You can't eat the landscape," someone would say, and everyone within earshot would laugh at the cliche;, though it would usually be followed by an uncomfortable silence.
Here's what wasn't funny then or now: In a recent Missoulian article, local realtors tallied their statistics and calculated a whopping $206,850 median price for a house, but only a median income of $43,200.
At that income level, according to the article, a family could afford to buy a house for $143,000, and at the time the report was completed, there were all of nine such houses for sale.
Selling Your Ecommerce Business
To web entrepreneurs who contemplate selling their online businesses, experts issue a single warning: Get your financial house in order. Online endeavors are frequently launched by people who have a great idea, a great passion or a distinctive skill set, but who often lack traditional business acumen. Partially-completed financial statements and an incomplete balance sheet might not impede day-to-day operations, but when it comes to selling the business, such disorganization can be a liability; a prospective buyer wants to see much more than a shoe box full of receipts. When you commit to selling your business, "you have to start running it like you are going to sell it today," said Mike Gravel, co-founder and managing director of eBizBrokers, Inc., a mergers and acquisitions firm specializing in Internet businesses.
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