The Web's No. 1 personal finance columnist

Liz Pulliam Weston

Your Money

4 reasons we get ripped off

For starters, we're not always smart or careful consumers. But let's not take all the blame. Sometimes, the odds really are stacked against us.

A law office is advertising its mortgage modification service on a local radio station. If its lawyers aren't successful with a single phone call made while you wait, the ad proclaims, you don't have to pay the office's $995 fee.

Here's the problem: There's no way to get a mortgage modification with a single phone call. The process takes months, and you have to submit tons of paperwork. The most a single phone call can do is get you started with an application -- and that you can do, on your own, for free.

Yet this advertisement has been repeating on the station for weeks and doubtless is raking in business from desperate homeowners.

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What's on Liz's bookshelf?

"A great credit score can help you finish rich! Liz Pulliam Weston gives solid, easy-to-understand advice about how to improve your credit fast. Read this book and prosper." -- David Bach, bestselling author of "The Automatic Millionaire and The Automatic Millionaire Homeowner."

"Your Credit Score, Your Money & What's at Stake"

by Liz Pulliam Weston

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Liz Pulliam Weston is the Web's favorite personal finance writer

Liz Pulliam Weston is author of the books, "Easy Money: How to Simplify Your Finances and Get What You Want Out of Life," "Deal with Your Debt" and "Your Credit Score: How to Fix, Protect and Improve the 3-Digit Number that Shapes Your Financial Future."

She is a personal finance columnist for MSN Money and author of the question-and-answer column "Money Talk," which appears in newspapers throughout the country. Formerly a personal finance writer for the Los Angeles Times, Pulliam Weston is a graduate of the certified financial planner training program at the University of California, Irvine. The winner of the 2007 Clarion Award for online journalism, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.

A January 2008 independent study by Nielsen NetRatings found that more than 3.4 million people turned to Pulliam Weston for advice and commentary about the personal finance issues that affect them. That's nearly 20 times the readership of any other personal finance columnist on the Web. Her columns appear exclusively on MSN Money every Monday and Thursday. She also answers reader questions on the Your Money message board. You can read her blog here.

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More recommendations from Liz

Liz Pulliam Weston regularly recommends books on personal finance and other topics covered in her columns. Visit Liz's personal Web site. You can see her MSN Money bookshelf here.

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