| Volume 136 Number 5 |
Subscribe to the Newsletter
Forward this news alert to your family and friends
Helpful Links
Texas Consumer Complaint Center
Credit Reports and Identity Theft
Your Guide to Small Claims Court
Contact Us
1-713-743-2168
The People’s Lawyer’s Tip of the Day
When it comes to privacy, you don’t have much at work. Don’t say anything in a phone call or email or do anything at your desk, that you don’t want your employer to see. Click here for more.
FTC Amends Complaint Against Invention Promotion Scheme Defendants
The Federal Trade Commission has amended its complaint against the operators of an invention-promotion scheme, World Patent Marketing (WPM), that allegedly deceived consumers and suppressed complaints about the company, including by threatening dissatisfied customers with criminal prosecution. According to the FTC’s original complaint, filed in March 2017, consumers paid the defendants thousands of dollars to patent and market their inventions based on bogus “success stories” and other misrepresentations. The amended complaint alleges that WPM claimed its clients’ products were sold in numerous popular “big box” stores, even though no such inventions are sold in any brick and mortar stores. According to the FTC, WPM also touted licensing deals between inventors and “WPM China” involving WPM’s purported manufacturing plant in China; yet, “WPM China” does not exist, and WPM has no manufacturing plant in China. Further, the amended complaint alleges that WPM falsely told consumers that its review team needed to approve their ideas before they could move forward with the company, when in fact no such review occurred. Click here for more.
Your Money
Retirement planning: 11 steps to a million-dollar nest egg (1) Start early; assuming your money grows at an average rate of 8% per year, you’ll only need to invest about $285 per month to get there if you have 40 years of work ahead of you; (2) Take advantage of all the “free money” you can from employers matching contributions; (3) Make it automatic; (4) Boost your savings rate every time you get a raise; (5) Keep your investing costs low; (6) Be prepared for bad stretches in the market; (7) Set a reasonable target return for your investments; (8) Let your time frame determine your allocation choices; (9) If you can’t beat the market, track it; (10) Leverage tax-advantaged accounts to help you get there faster; and (11) Review your progress regularly and adjust if necessary. Click here for more.
For the Lawyers
Changes in debtor’s financial condition allow modification of confirmed plan. The United States Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan recently allowed a debtor to modify his confirmed Chapter 13 plan based upon a mistake by the debtor’s counsel. The result of the modification was to reduce the plan to 36 months from 60 and reduce the repayment to unsecured creditors by 80 percent. In re Luman (Bankr. E.D. Mich. 2017). Click here for more.