SoFi Blog

Giving back during the holiday season can feel really great. When you donate a portion of your hard-earned money to charitable causes such as homelessness, wildlife preservation, hunger relief, or many others, you could potentially make a positive impact on someone’s life or even the world as a whole.

In theory, the internet makes it extremely easy to donate to these causes. However, there are many organizations and individuals who prey on others’ generosity via false and/or unsecure websites.

These swindlers aim to con people into handing over funds to fake charities for personal gain. If you fall for one of these donation scams, you could run the risk of not only losing your money but also compromising your personal information.

There are many honest and reputable charities out there doing great work, but how can you tell the difference between the real and the fake? The following seven guidelines could help you identify and avoid charity scams this holiday so you can better protect your money while still giving back.

Alexa, how can I protect myself from… you?

Baby monitors, digital assistants, thermostats, doorbells, security cameras, even light bulbs and refrigerators are now able to connect, share, and interact with users and other devices.

With so many smart devices available, it might be hard to see the downside of technology that puts monitoring and control of homelife directly in the hands of the consumer.

But when connecting these everyday objects to the Internet, however, there is also the possibility of leaving your home vulnerable to attacks from digital hackers.

As 2019 comes to a close, we are eager to look back on the year and see how our members fared financially. From paying off student loans to getting started with investing, we found that members really focused on building their financial health this year—and they achieved a number of milestones along the way.

To really dig into the specifics, we surveyed over 1,000 SoFi members and 1,000 general consumers (ages 24-73)¹ across the U.S. to get their insights on how they did financially in 2019, the key financial trends of the year, and the financial goals they hope to achieve in 2020.

So you thought your mac and cheese and ramen days were over? Well, maybe not quite yet.

If you’re overwhelmed by the thought of managing student loan payments for years or even decades to come, there are strategies that can help you dump that debt faster. Unfortunately, many require cutting back on your spending or finding ways to make more money.

That might not seem fair if you were thinking graduation would mark the start of a sweeter lifestyle—not more austerity. But the thing to keep in mind is that if you can pay off your loans faster, you’ll typically save money down the road.

Potentially a lot of money: trip-to-Europe, house-down-payment, let’s-get-married kind of money. And knocking down your student debt is a goal worth working toward if you like the idea of financial freedom. Here are some ways to get after it.

It’s Halloween 2008.

One of the enduring mysteries of technology, cryptocurrency, and the internet is about to announce himself, herself, or themselves to the world by posting a white paper to an internet mailing list for cryptography geeks.

The subject of the post is “I’ve been working on a new electronic cash system that’s fully
peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.”

That’s it.

What follows in the body of the post is a description of what’s in the white paper and the electronic cash system it lays out for the first time. Then there’s an abstract and a link to the full paper, which all this time later is still live, and then—a signature.