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Experts are continually warning Americans about phone scams. Learn how to protect yourself.

Smartphone users are accustomed to texting, emailing, surfing the Web, playing games and running a wide variety of apps with their devices.

Theft, which is the most common type of credit card fraud, happens in several different forms. It may involve a person manually rummaging through a dumpster for papers with sensitive information or a hacker stealing credit card numbers online.

How to Handle Water Damage

People often worry about fires damaging their homes and commercial buildings. While fires are dangerous and can cause extensive damage to property, they are rare compared to another element that is in the home or building every minute of every day: Water.

Properties suffer water damage more frequently than they do other causes of loss. Water damage emergencies occur 14,000 times a day in American homes and businesses, according to insurance industry data. In comparison, fires occur in fewer than 3,600 homes per day, and burglaries occur 8,200 times a day. The basements in 98 percent of US homes will suffer water damage during their lifetime. The average home water damage insurance claim is almost $7,000. Insured losses from water damage equal $2.5 billion per year; that figure does not include uninsured losses caused by floods and other naturally occurring waters.

New research from the Employee Benefits Research Institute showed that the average American household spent less after retiring. However, this was not true with all households, and not all households changed spending habits in the same ways. Although the average spending amount fell during the first two years of retirement, about 50 percent of retired people spent more than they did before they retired. As the years of retirement increased, that percentage declined considerably. By the sixth year following retirement, less than 35 percent of people spent more than they did prior to retiring.

According to recent research from the Insured Retirement Institute regarding women's perspectives on retirement planning, about 80 percent of women are concerned about not having enough money for retirement. More than 50 percent of the participants in the study said that they were "very concerned" about lacking enough money to be able to retire or not having enough money to retire comfortably. In comparison with men who were surveyed on the same topics, women were more concerned. About 35 percent of men expressed concerns for either lacking enough money to retire or not having enough money to live on comfortably after retiring.

Are you putting together a business plan? Well, good luck with that. Lots of business have been prepared by many well-meaning business owners for themselves, their bankers and investors. Just about all of them have been useless.

Want to know why? It’s almost always one or more of the following three reasons.

According to the Insurance Information Institute, in 2013 there were 487,500 structure fires (55 every hour) in the U.S., costing $9.5 billion in losses. In 2012, there were 670 burglaries for every 100,000 inhabitants. In addition to the expense, these losses were disruptive, dangerous, emotionally upsetting, and bad for business. Small wonder that many households and businesses invest in automated systems to prevent or reduce losses.

Workers' Compensation is a compromise between employers and employees. Employers cover injured employees' medical costs and lost wages. They do this even if they were not at fault and employees lose the right to sue their employers over injuries

For possessions that are more valuable, it is important to obtain valuable items coverage. Items such as original art, expensive jewelry and collectors' items are some examples of what this coverage is useful for. Homeowners' policies place limits on the amount of money provided for personal items, but this supplemental form of insurance goes beyond that to cover specific valuables. If they are stolen, destroyed in a fire or lost to a natural disaster, the policy will cover them.