Parents should know - Scammers go after teens BIG TIME now too. My daughter (now in her 20’s) got an E-check sent to her a few yrs ago as an “advance” to promote a product on her Instagram page. She was excited. Deposited it. But then they needed her to send them some back. That’s when she got scared and told her mom and me what was going on. We called bank. Bank said it was a fraudulent check and they see more and more people in their late teens getting scammed by this type of stuff now. Recently my daughter’s friend joined a Facebook group of “Atlanta moms looking for babysitters”. Legit large group. A lady in the group set up a babysitting with her. First babysitting gig was going to be at the kids’ birthday party. But the “mom” was out of the country and needed my daughter’s friend (who is 18 and naive) to buy some party gifts and presents. Sent my daughter’s friend an electronic check. She deposits it and then they also needed her to go buy some gift cards with that money for the party. They needed “verification” that the gift cards were purchased and asked for a photo of the cards. The little girl obliges the request (again, teens are naive and most don’t know about these scams like we adults do), sends a photo of gift cards, e-check is fraudulent check, girl gets parents involved, gift cards balances wiped out (prob within 2 minutes of her sending a photo of them a couple of days prior). Talk to your teens about e-check scams as soon as you can. The scammers aren’t just targeting adults. In fact, the biggest markets for them I would guess are the elderly and now teenagers.

For me, I save hundreds of thousands. I can build at $175/sq foot. Builders in my area are charging $350-$400/sq foot and half of them are scam artists, robbing Peter to pay Paul…from one job site to the next.