Freezing Your Credit File
While credit freezes aren’t a foolproof barrier against identity theft, they can help to keep your information out of the wrong hands. You can also strengthen your defenses by checking your credit regularly, reviewing bank and credit card statements for suspicious activity and setting up bank and credit card alerts to notify you of new transactions. The more proactive you are about safeguarding your information, the greater the chances of preventing identity theft.
Freezing your credit file for free is simply a matter of contacting each of the three credit bureaus and requesting a freeze. All three bureaus allow you to freeze your credit online. You can also initiate a freeze by phone. When electing to freeze your credit, you’ll need to provide your name, Social Security number, birth date, address and phone number. If you’re freezing your report online, you’ll also be asked to create an account using your email address and a unique password. From there, you just need to verify your identity and you’re set.
For more information on managing your credit information, with links to the three credit bureaus, check out this article. It is also important to prevent your personal information from being stolen electronically. We have an article on our website explaining the things you MUST do to protect yourself from identity theft.
Stout Bowman regularly posts important and interesting information on our blog. Current topics include credit/debit/loans, estate planning, insurance, investing, Medicare, retirement, Social Security and taxes, as well as general information that we think you might find of interest. 
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At Stout Bowman every investment client is first a financial planning client; it's important to go through that process before we make any professional investment recommendations. Therefore, we strive to make financial planning understandable and comfortable every step of the way. One way to do that is to provide our clients access to financial education resources. To that end, we have subscribed to educational websites to receive their news feeds and present a list of their latest ten articles on a page on this website. Currently, we offer