Good morning. The financial threats worth worrying about right now aren't the obvious ones. They're hiding in the things you do every day without thinking twice.
On The Money Today:
A routine rideshare charge turned into a fraud case driven by AI
The two expenses quietly consuming more than half of every retiree's budget
How a checked bag at the airport became a drug trafficking case
Let's get into it. But first…
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Bert Gor's daughters did nothing wrong on their ride home from the beach. Days later, a $75 damage charge appeared, backed by photos of spilled food that never existed. A teenager spotted something in the image that blew the whole thing open — but experts warn the tools to pull this off are free, invisible and getting harder to detect.
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The average retiree spends $59,616 a year and more than half of it vanishes into just two categories. It's not food. It's not healthcare. Federal Reserve data shows exactly where it's going, and for most people, the fix is simpler than expected.
You check your bag and head to security. What you don't know is that a worker has just attached your name to a suitcase packed with drugs headed to a country where trafficking carries the death penalty. It's already happened to 17 travelers out of Canada in the past year. There's one simple thing you can do at check-in that could save you.
MONEY IQ
How many countries currently impose the death penalty for drug trafficking offenses?
ALSO MAKING THE ROUNDS TODAY
INVESTING: Fidelity just slashed the minimum to get into the SpaceX IPO to $2,000, but sell too early and you could be banned from every future IPO for life
NEWS: The corporations funding Trump's $400 million ballroom have quietly raked in $50 billion in federal contracts since writing their checks
RETIREMENT: Dave Ramsey says one group of Americans should skip Roth conversions entirely. Are you in it?
LIFE: She paid $6,600 for business class, her seat wouldn't recline for 10 hours and the airline offered her $200 — here's what she should actually demand
MONEY IQ: HOW DID YOU DO?
The correct answer is D) 34. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 34 countries retain the death penalty for drug-related offenses and 2024 was the deadliest year on record. They include China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Malaysia — several of which are popular travel destinations. It's what makes the luggage tag scheme so dangerous for innocent travelers.
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See you soon with another quick roundup of the financial news that matters.
