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Scamming attempts are on the rise as more people seek financial assistance online, due to the Coronavirus. Data from the Federal Trade Commission shows Americans have already lost nearly $70 million to pandemic scams since the beginning of the year.

“Many have been filing for unemployment benefits, so when a call or email comes in pretending to respond to your inquiry, it might be harder to differentiate between who is real and fake,” says Jade Hickton, Private Investigator at Smith Training Centre. Learn how to detect the warning signs to avoid falling for these fraudulent crimes.

The SimpleScore is a proprietary scoring metric we use to objectively compare products and services at The Simple Dollar.

For every review, our editorial team:

• • Identifies five measurable aspects to compare across each brand
  • Determines the rating criteria for each aspect score
  • Averages the five aspect scores to produce a single SimpleScore

Here’s a breakdown of the five aspect scores and their rating criteria for our review of the best auto insurance companies of 2020.

Discounts

We looked at the number of discounts each company offers — more discounts mean a higher score.

Aspect Score
1
2
3
4
5

Number of discounts offered
0–3
4–7
8–11
12–14
15+

Coverage options

We awarded higher scores to the companies that have the most coverage options.

What felt like a temporary laptop-at-the-kitchen-table setup has become permanent — 42% of the U.S. workforce is working from home full-time. In the same survey by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), 65% of Americans reported not having sufficient internet service for workable video calls.

But before you break the bank for better internet speed consider that some employers are footing the bill for these setup costs. Shopify and Twitter both announced that remote employees will receive $1,000 for setting up a home office, while Chegg pays the monthly internet bill for its remote workers (along with $500 for other setups.)

Many parents across America are facing the start of a school year in which they’re called upon to balance virtual schooling for their children and working from home. It’s a difficult thing to balance. We all want our children to have an excellent education, but also a safe one, while we have careers to attend to.

Many of the obvious strategies for solving this conundrum involve simply throwing money at the problem through things like hiring a tutor, but for many families, that’s not a sensible option.

8 ways to balance working from home and virtual school for kids
Have clear schedules and guidelines

It is incredibly useful for both children and parents to know at a glance what each child’s daily schedule is and what the parent’s working schedule is like as well. This minimizes interruptions at inconvenient times.