Author: Alerts CC

According to a recent report from NBC News, a man from Puyallup, Washington, who was in the process of selling his family’s home, pulled into the driveway last Tuesday and discovered something wasn’t quite right. Ed Saurds, 58, expected to see his real estate agent’s car, but instead, saw an unknown Chevy that belonged to a young man who was waiting in the front hall.

“I asked: What are you doing in my house?” the former Air Force loadmaster remembered. “He said, ‘I’m here to buy the microwave.’ I said, ‘My microwave is not for sale.'”

While Saurs was away, an intruder had broken into his house, used it as a landing pad, and began selling his personal belongings on the internet. The items sold included a lawnmower, an iPod, the microwave, and Saur’s 84-year-old father’s golf clubs. The man who Saurs encountered initially was not the culprit, but one of the customers of the scam. Saurs recalls seeing the real perpetrator down the hall in the kitchen.

“He peered around and saw me coming, [so] I ran out the side and chased him.”

Unfortunately, his chase was unsuccessful, and the suspect escaped, though his image was caught on a nearby surveillance camera. Saurs reports several thousand dollars’ worth of items were stolen, including the new refrigerator and the house’s convection oven, known for cooking food 25% faster with less energy. (Points that probably contributed to the items’ speedy sales.) The appliances didn’t bother Ed nearly as much as the invasion of privacy.

“We’ve got 25 years of memories here. Christmases. My daughter was married in the backyard. …To cap it off with a violation like this? It doesn’t sit real well.”

Police took fingerprints from a water bottle left in the house by the suspect, who also left behind some assorted drug paraphernalia. No word from police on whether or not they’ve found a match.

Winning the lottery can set you up for life. You can take all the money in one go, and pay off staggering debt, or invest in a business opportunity. You could also get the money as an annuity, and have an amazing source of income for decades. The Mega Millions annuity, for example, is paid out as one immediate payment followed by 29 annual payments that increase 5% each time.

Now, imagine being told that your winning lottery ticket doesn’t count.

When a Washington D.C. woman won $20,000, she couldn’t have been more excited, she told WJLA. However, the Virginia State Lottery said that her ticket doesn’t count. Apparently, Ardella Newman’s ticket had been issued in error.

Apparently, winning tickets have winning numbers at the top, but Newman’s winning numbers appeared toward the bottom. The Virginia Lottery said that this likely happened, because the machine cut the ticket in the wrong spot, basically allowing Newman to combine two tickets to win.

She argues that she bought it as one ticket, and that since the error wasn’t hers, she deserves to receive the winnings.

“I want the money that I thought I won. If you look at the ticket, it says I won this money,” said Newman. “It wasn’t anything that I did wrong. It’s what they did wrong.”

This isn’t the first time something like this happened in the lottery. Earlier this year, a New Mexico man’s $500,000 winning ticket was misprinted, making it worthless. Two numbers that looked like winners actually had extra digits that were printed as smudges. The New Mexico Lottery offered him $100 in the form of lottery tickets as compensation, but told him he wouldn’t receive the $500,000 under any circumstances. Now, he’s filed a lawsuit against the state lottery.

“It’s like I told them, I didn’t misprint it,” the New Mexico man told KOB. “I bought the ticket in good faith thinking if I won I was going to get my money.”

Newman has only filed a complaint, so far, while the Virginia Lottery says it’s investigating her case.

Acupuncture, the Chinese treatment of inserting one to 20 FDA-approved, metallic needles into a person’s body for between 15 to 30 minutes as a way to treat pain, has long been seen as a form of medicine without any genuine scientific benefits. However, more and more research has been proving acupuncture has real, medical benefits — including the ability to help lower blood pressure.

The new study, which was published in the journal Medical Acupuncture, analyzed acupuncture’s effects on 65 hypertensive patients who weren’t taking any hypertension medication at the time of the study.

Researchers divided them into two groups. The first received electroacupuncture — a low-intensity electrical stimulation on different needle points in the body — on the patients’ inner wrists and below their knees. The second group received electroacupuncture treatment on their forearms and lower legs.

In the first group, 70% of participants saw a reduction in blood pressure, which lasted for over a month, and a reduction in blood concentration levels of norepinephrine, a hormone and neurotransmitter that constricts blood vessels and elevates blood pressure.

The second group didn’t see the same lowered blood pressure effect as the first group, which suggests that the location of electroacupuncture has a role in determining the efficacy of the treatment.

“This clinical study is the culmination of more than a decade of bench research in this area,” said study author Dr. John Longhurst in the press release. “By using Western scientific rigor to validate an ancient Eastern therapy, we feel we have integrated Chinese and Western medicine and provided a beneficial guideline for treating a disease that affects millions in the U.S.”

High blood pressure is both a widespread and tricky problem. About one in three U.S. adults — 70 million — have high blood pressure, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, it’s believed that only half of those adults have it under control, which means that half have a condition that could lead to stroke and heart disease.

Getting into shape, taking medication, or a combination of both can lower blood pressure, but these approaches don’t always work. Medication can also cause side effects, particularly among elderly.

The results of this new study are promising, in that they suggest acupuncture as a possible alternative that could help that some 35 million people get their high blood pressure in check.

As Dr. Longhurst explained, “Potentially, blood pressure can be kept low with a monthly follow-up treatment.”

A Mississippi woman has defied unbelievable odds to win $250,000 playing a McDonald’s sweepstakes game.

On September 1, the fast-food chain announced Megan D. as the winner, and presented her with the big check. She was one of four $250,000 winners, and plans to use the money to fund retirement and pay for other expenses.

In order to participate in the sweepstakes, players could peel a game piece from the McDonald’s meal, or enter an online code. Each week, there was a guaranteed jackpot of $250,000. According to officials, the fast-food chain gave away a cool $1 million during the nationwide promotion.

Companies often uses sweepstakes as a way to encourage people to do their marketing for them. Consumers can tell their family and friends about the contest — and the company — not only through a phone call or face to face, but instantly through social media, blogs, text messaging and e-mail, where the brand can be exposed to others. It was through a Facebook ad that Megan D. found out about the Minion Mania sweepstakes.

That’s not all. In addition to the increased generation of brand awareness, sweepstakes marketing is also cost-effective. It draws staggering amounts of participation, despite the rough odds of winning.

Consider McDonald’s most famous sweepstakes: its Monopoly contest.

Every sweepstakes needs to have a “no consideration” clause such as “no purchase necessary.” In 2012, a man decided to see if he could win the Monopoly contest without having to pay for anything at McDonald’s. He looked through the rules, and found that in order to participate without purchasing anything, he had to request game pieces be sent through the mail, using hand-written letters sent in a self-addressed stamped envelope. Since the cheapest thing on the menu that came with game pieces was the 99 cent hash brown, he realized that 90 cents in postage was a more cost-efficient way to play.

Ultimately he spent about 10 hours and $117 to send 100 letters and get 400 stamps. So while it is technically free to play, it’s more or less easier to purchase to participate.

Once participants do wind up playing (by purchasing something, most likely), they’re probably going to lose. Business Insider reported that there are about 602,490,060 game pieces in play, which means that there’s about 1.2 billion game stamps, or individual attempts to win. However, only one stamp in each of the sets is actually worth something.

The logical thing most people assume about the game is that each space is equally likely. For example, if McDonald’s wants the odds of drawing a green piece to be one in 1,000, they’ll make the odds of getting each of the green squares one in 1,000. What they actually reportedly do, though, is make one green piece show up about one in 10 times, and another show up one in 100,000 times, which means that the majority of the game pieces are essentially worthless, except for one from each set.

In other words, although McDonald’s does just give away copious amounts of prize money and other goods in its contests, sweepstakes marketing is an ingenious ploy to get more business. And people like Megan D. will wind up being a brand follower for the rest of their life. Who wouldn’t for $250,000?

Considering the number of financial issues that have been thrust upon them by older generations, Millennials have been forced to adapt and learn how to be financially savvy, whether they like it or not. But a new NerdWallet survey reveals that, while these money-saving efforts might be well-intentioned, some habits — specifically relating to credit cards — might be hurting Millennials more than helping.

This generation, considered to be adults currently between the ages of 18 and 34, appears to be making two major mistakes: applying for a credit card without having the minimum qualifications, and avoiding credit cards altogether.

As NBC News reported, nearly 50% of all Millennials have applied for a credit card because of an advertisement or limited-time promotional deal. The good news is that credit card companies are still monitoring qualifications closely, so that the country doesn’t experience another major financial crisis similar to that of 2008. This means that Millennials who fail to meet the qualifications aren’t getting approved for credit cards they can’t handle.

The bad news is that, whenever a person applies for a credit card, his or her credit score is affected, slightly more so when the line of credit is denied. Add up multiple applications over a short period of time, and the individual will begin to see a low credit score for no apparent reason.

The other major problem that Millennials are making, TIME stated, is that they’re avoiding credit cards entirely. Almost one-third of this generation has never applied for a credit card, according to the NerdWallet data, and this negatively impacts one’s credit score as well, because 15% of a person’s total score is based on his or her credit history length.

Many financial advisers believe that these two problems are exacerbated by the fact that Millennials are, quite often, choosing the wrong company or type of card when they finally do apply for a credit card. These young adults are particularly astute when it comes to seeing through temporary promotional offers and too-good-to-be-true promises; instead, the majority of Millennials (60%) value factors such as customer service and convenience.

While that predisposition is beneficial in most cases, it also means that credit card companies can win over Millennials easily by ensuring that a friendly and persuasive sales rep is taking care of them.