Overcome Emotional Spending and Spot Job Scams That Could Cost You Thousands

Today's episode is sponsored by Quince.

You know that moment when summer winds down and your closet suddenly feels like a mashup of beach leftovers and wishful thinking?

Yep.

That's when you realize it's time for a reset, minus the luxury price tag.

Enter Quince.

What I love about Quince is the huge variety of products that they offer.

I picked up their organic Turkish waffle robe and now I'm living my white lotus fantasy every time I step out of the shower.

And Elizabeth, you know that I'm in the middle of planning my honeymoon to Japan, so I I also got their Napa leather RFID passport holder and luggage tag set.

So now I'm ready to travel in style.

Sounds very stylish to me, Sean, and you're going to have to send me pics of all of the items.

Oh, you know it.

So I personally have been lounging on their cotton velvet pillow covers.

When I saw that they were 100% cotton velvet and they were machine washable, I was sold.

I also got the pillows in my favorite color, which is yellow or marigold technically.

And I just love how soft the pillow covers are and it seems to be great quality for the price.

That's because Quince works directly with top artisans and skiffs the middleman markup.

Plus, they only partner with factories using safe, ethical practices, and premium fabric, so you can feel good about what you're wearing and where it came from.

I use this stuff, and you should too.

Elevate your fall wardrobe and home essentials with Quince.

Go to quince.com/slash smartmoney for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

That's q-u-i-n-ce-e.com/slash/smartmoney to get free shipping and 365-day returns.

Quince.com slash smartmoney.

In business, every dollar counts.

So Comcast Business is giving you a year of mobile on us with your internet service.

Save hundreds with the fastest mobile service with 5G cellular and Wi-Fi hotspots.

Get mobile on us and get one year on us.

Comcast Business, powering possibilities.

In 9-22-25, restrictions apply.

New mobile customers only with internet standard service or above.

Limited to value of one unlimited intro line apply via 12-month internet bill credits.

one discount per account, fast and mobile based on mobile, wifi, and cellular data and service areas.

UCLA speech test intelligence 2H24.

So, Elizabeth, I know you've been on a journey of trying to rein in your spending, have a little more self-control, some more mindful purchasing habits.

How is that going?

I like to be honest, Sean.

So, it's twofolds.

Last week, I spent a lot of money.

I was spending money like it was growing in my backyard, okay?

But I am compensating by not spending money this week.

So.

Okay, okay.

It's about balance, I guess, right?

Exactly, exactly.

Well, this episode, we're going to check in with our intentional spending aspirations and see how they line up to reality.

Welcome to NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast, where you send us your money questions and we answer them with the help of our genius nerds.

I'm Sean Piles.

And I'm Elizabeth Ayola.

On this episode of the show, we answer listeners' question about how you can recover from a job scam and also how you can protect yourself from being victimized by scammers.

But first, we are going to check in with one of our nerds, Amanda Barroso, about how their year of intentional spending is going.

And shout out to one of our listeners, Tiffany, who asked for this follow-up to our initial conversation with Amanda that we had back in February.

So we got you, Tiffany.

Well, Amanda, welcome back to Smart Money.

Thanks for having me, Sean and Elizabeth.

I'm happy to see your faces again.

Of course.

So we talked to you a few months back about your low slash no spend year.

Can Can you remind us what your goals were behind this and the general rules that you set for yourself?

Like many people on the internet, I started the new year feeling really overwhelmed by stuff.

Like I was sick of spending money on things that I thought were going to magically fix my life, all my problems, but just ended up cluttering my space.

I was tired of being so easily influenced by strangers on the internet.

And I was also frustrated that I wasn't able to build the kind of savings that I wanted for like home projects and travel and just other experiences with my family.

So when I sat down to create those rules, I think the ultimate goal of the low-buy year was to shift my mindset from one of consumption, like always thinking, what can I buy, to contentment and gratitude.

I also wanted to get comfortable with the feeling of wanting something, but not immediately buying it.

You know, like as an adult, we make money.

And you want that immediate gratification.

Okay, let the thing exist in the world without owning it.

So Amanda, tell us, what did you do?

So I watched a ton of videos online of people who were doing similar challenges.

And I kind of got a feel for what the rules could be and created some rules of my own.

I wanted to reset my relationship with shopping.

So some of my goals were around like no new clothes, no new household decor, no new books.

I wanted to focus on buying things secondhand, prioritizing clothes that were made of real materials, like 100% cotton and linen and things that just didn't look like trash after two wears and a wash.

There were some other categories where I wanted to cut some spinning to like personal care items, kids' toys.

I just wanted to put some friction between myself and my credit cards so that I could more carefully curate my life, I think is the best way to say it.

So it seems like you had these ideas of sort of aspirations around where you wouldn't be spending your money or how you would change how you spend your money.

Did you create any specific tactics or strategies for implementing this?

Yes.

So I'm a paper planner girly.

So in my calendar, I was going to make a green X for the days where I didn't spend and then on the days that I did spend to kind of write down what I did.

And for the first few months, I actually did make like a running tally.

If I did buy something, I would sort of add it up and keep it in the column of that calendar.

However, I'm sad to report that has fallen a bit by the wayside.

Tell us about it, Amanda.

And I hope you're not being hard on on yourself.

No, I'm not.

I'm not.

So, you know, I'm a bit disheartened with how things have gone the past few months.

I started out really strong.

I remember checking my bank account and seeing no new transactions for like weeks in a row.

I mean, it was like historic.

It must have felt good.

It was epic.

I felt so good.

I felt strong.

I felt in control.

I was so optimistic.

about how the year would go.

Then I found out how I respond when I'm faced with grief, and which apparently is to shop.

So my dog Ellie was diagnosed with cancer and she passed away in May.

Oh, I'm so sorry, Amanda.

Thank you, Sean.

You know, she was my dog with me for 13 years.

Before I met my husband, before the kids, it was me and Ellie.

So I was so sad.

I was just like, as sad as I've ever been, really.

And my response was to shop.

So I entered into this cycle of like overbuying and returning because getting that little hit of dopamine felt good in the moment, but then the guilt would sink in later.

You know, in this first episode where we talked about the rules, I mentioned that story about like how the old Navy checkout lady recognized me and how that was like a breaking point.

It was like getting back into this cycle that just did not feel good.

As you were spending like this, were you aware that you were breaking these quote-unquote rules that you'd set for yourself?

Was that where a lot of the guilt came from?

Absolutely.

I didn't care.

Yeah.

Like, like, truthfully, I was just so sad.

I didn't want to be home because when when I was home, I would look at all the places where Ellie used to lay.

And so I, my response was to like, get out of the house.

I live in Georgia.

It's so hot.

We're going to the store.

It was not a healthy response, but it was what I did.

It seems like you were completely aware that this was a coping mechanism for your grief in the moment.

For sure.

But yet you still went ahead with it.

Not that I'm judging you or anything, but it's just interesting how you can carry both of those at the same time where you knew you quote unquote shouldn't be doing these things or that you actually didn't really want to do them, but but that you couldn't help do it because that's how you could feel better in the moment.

Absolutely.

Like in my head, I was like, you get a pass.

You don't feel good, and you get a pass.

And this is, this thing makes you feel good.

And like, hey, that dress is cute or whatever it is.

You know, I will say though, some of the aspects of my rules stuck around.

So, like, the things that I would buy, I like if I was going to buy a new dress, it was going to be 100% cotton.

Like, I was going to buy the nicer thing.

Which is maybe the more expensive thing as well.

Yeah.

But so many of my rules went out the window.

Uh-huh.

So are you still in this place or have you kind of gotten back to where you were?

Okay.

So I think I've always known that my shopping habits were tied to my emotions, but the term retail therapy really makes sense to me now.

I'm definitely not in that grief-stricken stage that I was.

And honestly, when you asked me to come chat about my experience, I felt a little shame, a little embarrassed that I hadn't lived up to the expectations and the goals I set for myself, even despite this really sad thing happening.

To have to admit it publicly on a podcast, it does feel a little vulnerable, but I'm really glad you invited me to come back on and talk about it because it's a chance to reset and refocus on my intentions because I still really believe in those intentions that I set for myself back in January.

I have a question for you, but first of all, I want to say, because you said to have to come on a podcast, you chose to, and that is very powerful.

Well, I love you guys.

Yeah, for you to be vulnerable and share it, because I'm sure there are a lot of listeners who also feel maybe the guilt and shame you're feeling, who started the year with goals and haven't exactly stuck with them.

But I also want to ask, in retrospect, since the relationship that we have with money is ongoing and we're continuously learning, you've learned that you, like you said, you like to deal with grief, not like to, but deal with grief by shopping.

So, in retrospect, are there anything about your goals that you set earlier in the year that you would change six months later?

Are there any things you would tweak based on your learnings?

This is a good question.

I think that even looking back on it, if I would have known this sad thing was going to happen, I probably would have made a list of some things that I could do that would make me feel better.

Like go for a walk, take your kids to the park, lay in your hammock and read a book.

But at the time, I think when you feel so sad, it's like the creativity part of your brain is just out the window.

And I also think think that maybe I would have let myself do a little shopping.

There are some things like a book about that you can customize for your kids about your dog going over the rainbow bridge or a little stone for the garden that's personal, like little things that kind of felt healing that were still purchasing kind of outside of those boundaries for myself, but did the function of kind of healing and honoring that.

relationship that I had with with Ellie.

So I don't know if that fully answers your question, but I think I would have just given myself a little bit of grace.

And maybe even creating some room in your budget for that spending, right?

Because budgeting is so personal.

So yeah, a little grief bucket in memory of Ellie.

Seriously, right?

I'm glad that I'm here and I'm glad that you've given me the space to talk about this.

And, you know, it's funny, knowing that I was going to come on here and chat with you all, I went back online and typed low-buy 2025 into my TikTok browser.

So much of the conversation around this stuff has fallen away.

It was so prevalent in my feeds in the beginning of the year.

And so I do kind of wonder, like, hello, is anybody out there?

Like, how are we all doing?

Like a collective check-in, you know, I don't know.

Yeah.

It's a check-in and a reality check as well.

But it's good to have this moment of reflection and think about how you can carry what you've experienced over the first part of the year into the back half.

So what lessons do you think you're really going to try to follow or that you maybe want to share with our listeners about your experience and trying something that can be really challenging, like totally shifting your spending habits?

I think that a year is a really long time.

If you can take it almost quarter by quarter, it gives yourself a chance to reset without feeling like you failed the whole thing.

So checking in here at the middle point of this journey, okay, maybe I wasn't as successful as I thought, right?

Like I'm not rolling in cash, right?

I did just spend hours cleaning and organizing my house over the weekend, and I still feel rage at the amount of toys and stuff that my kids have.

It's reinvigorated me a little bit.

So, I don't know.

I feel like some things have stuck, and this is a chance to reset.

It doesn't mean that you've failed, it just is a chance for you to reprioritize, to introduce new goals.

In fact, there are a couple things that I'm going to be working toward as

I start the second half of the year.

Things that were not on my radar, even in January.

Like what?

They're both travel related, which is kind of exciting.

The first is a trip to Spain and Portugal next year with my husband.

We haven't,

well, yeah.

Damn, kids or with the kids.

Oh, they're going to Grammy's house.

Yeah.

We'd love to hear it.

We love the kids.

Well, we love to hear it.

We love the kids, but we have not traveled internationally since our honeymoon.

We went to Greece.

It was lovely.

And I'm just so excited about the prospect of like reconnecting, exploring these two new countries that we've never been to.

And that really draws in that desire to save.

Like if I have that image of us eating tapas in Spain, that no, you don't need that shoe.

You don't need the dress.

Put that in the travel bucket.

Yeah.

We often say no, your why, and your why is tapas in Spain.

So put back the dress on the rack and walk out of the store.

Absolutely.

I mean, come on, right?

Now, as we get closer shopping for Spain, you're going to have to hit me up.

Oh my goodness.

Guys, we need an episode.

I saw a meme the other day that said, you do not need to buy new outfits every time you're going on vacation.

And that meme needs to be deleted forever because yes, we do, but we're going to budget for it.

So.

Right.

Okay.

The second, and I feel like I might need to talk to some fellow nerds to get advice about this, is a trip to Disney World with my husband's family in 2027.

So we have some time because we need some time because Disney costs a lot.

I'm learning.

It makes a mortgage to go to Disney.

It does.

We just got back from a trip to New Jersey where my husband's family is from.

And my sister-in-law, she put together a PowerPoint for our family.

She priced out family unit pricing where we're going to stay.

I mean, a lot of the logistical details are, thank goodness, out of my control.

But what I can control is budgeting for that trip.

And, you know, Disney is not going to be a frequent vacation for our family.

So I want to make sure that I save so that we can do all the things that make it especially magical for the kids.

So, those are the two big travel-related things that I'm really focused on saving for.

Yeah.

What I'm hearing is that you are adapting to your new reality, shifting some of your priorities and focusing on your whys and then making an action plan to move forward for the rest of the year and into next year.

I am.

And I am going to actually employ a new tool.

My husband and I are going to try a new budgeting app called Monarch Money.

And what I'm intrigued by with this app is that they market it as like being four couples.

So we're going to set that up soon and see if we can cut back on some mindless spending and like other areas of our lives.

I think having that sort of joint accountability can help us identify some bad habits that we have and work toward our shared goals.

Well, we might need to have you and your husband come back on the podcast and talk to us about this.

I know.

I've told him I've mined our marriage for so much content.

Just like, get ready.

What's another podcast segment?

Yeah.

Well, Amanda, thank you so much for coming on and talking with us and giving us this update.

Oh, thanks for having me, you guys.

And if folks are interested in a low spend year, but are not sure how to track your progress, then I should mention that the free NerdWallet app can be a really helpful tool in this area.

You can track your spending among lots of other features.

It's about time to transition into a conversation about scams.

But before we get into that, a reminder, listeners, you know the drill.

Send us your money questions.

We live on your money questions.

We want to answer them.

We want to help you make smart money money decisions.

And it all starts with what you're wondering about.

You may be wondering how to get back on track after falling away from your goals for the year.

Or maybe you want to know what other budgeting tools there are out there beyond the ones that you're using.

Whatever your money question, we nerds are here to help you.

You can leave us a voicemail.

You can text us on the nerd hotline at 901-730-6373.

For anyone who missed that, that's 901-730-N-E-R-D.

Or you can shoot us an email at podcast at nerdwallet.com.

Okay, let's get to this episode's Money Questions segment.

That's up next.

Stay with us.

Mama, Papa, mi corpo crece a unrimo alarmante.

Y la ropa que me comprerena, me que dora muy pe queña, muy pronto.

Pero subieteran no tina que su frí por la moda cons precios vacos de la vuenta classes de Amazon.

Amazon, dastamenos sonriemas.

The slumber party for five is now ten.

Just tap Target.

Better get more glitzy nail polish and pancake mix.

You tap a same-day order and it's off to find those extra pillows.

Delivery when you want it.

Just tap Target.

We are back and we're answering your money questions to help you make smarter financial decisions.

This episode's question comes from a listener's text message.

Here it is.

I wanted to ask if you can offer any advice on a scam I was involved in.

The job title was data optimization, and I fell victim to it multiple times.

Advertised on social media, the job requires patrons to upload money in order to cover the marketer's costs, and then the user is rewarded with a supplemental amount for completing this task.

The companies use various types of cryptocurrencies for payment.

I wanted to confide in you nerds on what to do to get my finances back.

I wound up being requested to deposit an amount of money I did not have in liquid assets and was shamed into believing unless I deposited $5,000 on top of the $3,000 I had already deposited that day, I would lose my job and money.

So I took the hit and ate the $3,000.

Now jobless and undergoing some alterations in my life, I seek much guidance from your podcast.

To help us answer this listener's question on this episode of Smart Money, we are joined by Eva Velazquez, CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center, a nonprofit which helps people recover from scams and identity theft.

Eva, welcome back to Smart Money.

It's a pleasure to be here.

And do I get to be an honorary nerd now?

Because I've been here a couple of years.

You absolutely are.

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm an honorary nerd.

The more, the merrier.

Eva, so I love this topic around scams because I've been speaking to people lately and people are getting scammed just like our listener and it is pretty devastating.

So it sounds like our listener experienced a classic job scam.

Can you describe how job scams typically work and also how pervasive they are?

Well, unfortunately, scams in general are growing at an extraordinary cliff.

So even if you're not in the market for a job, this information is for you, dear listener, because these scams are everywhere and there's some commonalities to them, but different hooks.

So the job scam hook is quite popular.

right now because it's lucrative and it can come in a variety of ways.

It can either be incoming communication to you.

You get an email, you get a text message, sometimes even a phone call, but more commonly an email or a text message, often from a recruiter saying they know you're on the search, you're on the hunt, and they found this perfect position for you.

Now, sometimes they do come in the form of posts.

So it's not just some scammy hiring website.

These fake postings do appear on legitimate job search websites.

As hard as these organizations organizations like Indeed, like LinkedIn, try to police those sites, they can't catch everything.

So, I don't want people to have a false sense of security that everything they see there is true.

And generally, what ends up happening is the job is not real, and the scammer is seeking to get you to either part with your data, your personal information, like name, phone number, social security number, bank account, credit cards, maybe it's your crypto wallet.

They're looking for data and they're they're looking for you to part with your hard-earned money.

This is a very interesting scenario that this listener presented because I'm sure that in addition to that money, there was some data that was also parted with and that also needs to be addressed.

Well, I would like us to walk through the listener's experience and hear from you what red flags you might see that point to this being a scam.

The first thing that stood out to me is that they had to pay their employer to cover some marketing costs.

That's a pretty classic one.

What else do you see?

That's the biggest one.

Your employer pays you.

You don't pay them.

Sometimes there's some of these multi-level marketing, I'll call them schemes because some of them may somehow have some air of legitimacy where you have to pay for inventory.

But generally speaking, if the employer is saying you have to pay a fee to work for us, that's not a job.

The fact that you're being paid via crypto is also a red flag.

Not to say that every crypto transaction is not legitimate.

That's simply not true.

But payroll through crypto, I have not heard of that before.

And it certainly would make it very difficult for a legitimate business to keep track of things like employee taxes that they have to pay and workers comp, all of these things going on in the background that using crypto to receive your paycheck, that's a huge red flag for me too.

Another big one that stood out to me was the pressure tactic.

The person was told that if they don't deposit an additional $5,000 on top of the $3,000 they had first put in, then they would lose their money and their job.

As devastating as it is that this person lost $3,000, I'm so glad to hear that they didn't lose that additional five because that is what the scammers are preying on.

They want to create the sense of urgency, the sense of fear of missing out, fear of losing something, so that you will do things like go try to borrow the money, put it on a credit credit card, try to get it any way you can.

He's feeling like he took the hit of a loss of $3,000, but he actually saved himself from a loss of $8,000.

And the other red flag is the notion that you can't get this money back.

And the job sounds very nebulous.

Anytime we see job listings for what I would call low skilled, not highly specialized types of positions that pay a lot of money.

That's a huge red flag.

Why that job?

Why is that employer paying wages that are so far above the market for a particular skill set?

If it sounds too good to be true, it is.

I know we say that all the time, but it's a great reminder.

I love what you said about urgency as well.

I tend to get these text messages.

They love me maybe once a week.

These job scam text messages.

I wonder where they get my information from.

So with that said, our listener does want to know whether they can get any of their money back.

So what do you think about this?

I want to set expectations here and really have this person focus on recovery and not clawing that money back.

Now, are there steps that you can take?

Yes, you can report it.

If there was an exchange that was used, you can report it to the exchange.

And some of them really do their best.

to have fraud processes and detection processes in place where they can freeze assets and do those types of things.

But time is of the essence and that has to be reported right away.

I would still report it.

I still urge this person to report it, gather all of the documentation that they have.

I would like to have this person contact the ITRC for a risk minimization plan.

It's no cost.

Remember, we're a 501c3.

All the services we provide to the public are free.

I'm betting that there was other data about himself that he shared and we need to kind of do a a really strong look at his identity data and what was self-compromised and help him to take some risk minimization steps there.

So, there's a couple of steps that need to be taken.

So, Eva, as I was preparing for this conversation, I received a scam text about an alleged traffic violation that I owed payment on, and that if I didn't pay quickly, my license would be suspended.

And that really underlined how pervasive scams are today because they are just seemingly everywhere.

So, to zoom out just a little bit, can you talk about some of the most common scams that you are seeing at the moment?

I received that text message as well.

It's a

twist on the toll roads text message.

So I think everyone has probably heard about that by now.

But the verbiage is exactly the same, only this time it's from my DMV telling me that I have a traffic violation.

And, you know, I'm going to go straight down into the bowels of hell if I don't pay this fee and click on this link.

Right now, I would say the most common scams that we're hearing about, of course, job scams are up there, but it's really about impersonation and phishing.

So I'll start with impersonation.

That's just people are pretending to be something they're not, whether it's a romantic partner, a government agency, an employer.

It's just imposter scams are running rampant and people don't actually know who they're talking to.

And then the other one we're seeing is just so many phishing emails, so many things designed to get you to click on links, to open attachments, to engage in some some way with this unsolicited communication that's that's incoming.

What always strikes me about scams is that the general playbook or the tools are often the same, but the moment that they're capitalizing on or whatever they're doing to create a sense of urgency is what shifts from one month or one year to the next.

So right now it might be about tariffs.

I was talking with a colleague who mentioned that they heard of someone receiving an email that said, oh, you have an incomplete purchase.

You didn't pay your tariff surcharge.

Click this link to pay the tariff surcharge and we'll send you your order.

So that's an example of them capitalizing what's happening nowadays to get your money, your information.

Oh, absolutely.

Anytime there's a big external event and it's confusing to people, the scammers will not only kind of insert themselves into that conversation, they'll just start making things up.

If you think about the way information moves now, and how much we're being bombarded with, the bad actors just use that to go, oh, here's my little kernel of truth.

Now i'm gonna confuse people and in some way ask them for money i mean that's the bottom line somehow someway you're going to be asked for money and i just encourage people to be really judicious before they part with that money well eva you just said a key word which is being judicious and i have found because i have almost fallen prey to scams before but i found what has saved me is the pause the pause and then the verifying you know cross-checking that email address is it actually from at ⁇ T or is there AT ⁇ T- and then it's a Gmail account?

Just looking for typos inside of the message.

Did a professional really write this?

So what are some ways that people can pause and what are some things that people should check before jumping into action when they receive these scam messages?

Actually, I think the first step is to acknowledge that we're all vulnerable.

And I think it's great that you acknowledge that and say, hey, I've almost been taken in by these scammers.

Guess what?

So have I.

We're all vulnerable to it.

It's not about being being gullible or you're not savvy.

They are really playing on our emotions.

So acknowledge that you have a vulnerability here and then let your behavior follow.

When you get an incoming communication, if you didn't initiate that contact, go to the source.

You don't need to engage.

The great thing about this advice is it applies across every platform.

Phone call, email, text message, DM on social media.

If you didn't initiate that contact, go directly to the source and verify that that information is correct.

Frankly, it saves you time because yes, you can read through the whole email or look at the text message and sometimes you can suss out where is does that not sound legitimate?

But isn't it just easier if you get something incoming that looks like it's from your cable provider that you just go talk to your cable provider in whatever way you normally do?

You call the number on your bill, you log into the app, and if it's some strange entity that you never communicate with, why are they trying to get in touch with you in the first place?

Is it really that important?

So I love that you like take that pause, take five, act, but you don't have to react.

You know, it's not a time to panic.

I want to go back to what you said about everyone being vulnerable, because that's something that we have talked about extensively.

And some folks listening might be hearing this listener's story or think about a relative who was scammed and think that there's no way they would fall for something like that because they're too savvy, they're too smart, they are up on the latest scams.

But all it really takes is one moment of letting your guard down.

And that actually can be what makes you more vulnerable, thinking that you aren't actually susceptible to scams.

Why do you think people still believe that they are impervious to scammers?

And how do you think folks can get over that?

There's two reasons.

The first one is I think we're protecting ourselves a little bit.

I mean, if you saw what I saw every day and talked to the people we talk to every day, you would be like, the world is a terrible place and there's nothing good in it, it, right?

Which is not true.

But I think it's a way to protect yourself and go, well, I don't have to be afraid of that big scary thing because I'm immune to it.

It's not going to happen to me.

And I also think that there's a lack of understanding about how social engineering really works and how it engages the emotional part of our brain.

That emotional part of our brain does not make logical decisions, but it can be hijacked.

It can be triggered.

And that's why these tried and true tactics like the sense of urgency, the fear of missing out, the fear of like reputational damage, something bad happening to me if I don't respond to this.

Those are primal instincts.

That's that lizard brain of ours trying to protect ourselves.

And the bad actors know it and they leverage that against us.

And I want to add desperation can be leveraged too.

I remember once a scam I almost fell for many years ago was I was going to get a tax refund.

And I was just like, oh my gosh, because it came at a time where I needed money.

So I was like, wow, this must be legit.

And I put in my information and then I realized, wait, this, this is not right.

And I'm not owed a tax refund.

And like you said, after doing my research and contacting the right organizations, it happened to be untrue.

So desperation, I think, can also lead people, the smartest of people to fall prey to a scam as well.

And hope.

I mean, look at the lottery scams, but it's preying on hope because people go, it's probably not true, but what if it is?

And, you know, what's your price?

What are you willing to lose for that hope?

$100, $500?

Everybody's different, but some people are like, I had to take that gamble.

And Eva, before we invited you on, I had a phone call with this listener to hear their story.

I could tell that this listener felt really embarrassed that this had happened.

That really speaks to the cycle of shame that comes with being victimized by scammers.

How do you think people can try to get out of that when being scammed can feel so isolating?

Part of the way that we can help with this is things like doing just what we're doing right now, normalizing the conversation around it, normalizing the fact that everyone is vulnerable.

It's not just somebody else and making it normal and reasonable for people to reach out.

and ask for help.

I think that's going to be a big step.

And the last thing I'll say is, I think the way that we talk to

and even about scam victims really, really matters.

But even when I read some media headlines, you know, elderly widow falls for a scam,

even falls for, I don't particularly like because really that's not the case.

You were lied to and you believe that lie.

That's it.

What adult in North America, what adult in the globe doesn't have that experience?

It may not be for a scam, but we have all been lied to and believed a lie.

So we have to normalize it.

That kind of language is so helpful too.

I try to use the verbiage around experiencing a scam because if you are victimized or if you fell for something, it puts the onus on you.

Oh, you did this to yourself, basically.

Right.

When in fact, a criminal targeted you and you were the victim of their crime.

And so you're paying the cost of that.

And it's not something that it's a character flaw that you have.

Right.

If we look at other crime types, there are some crime types where we still engage in victim blaming and some that we don't.

If your car is stolen, most of the time, people are going to say, that's just terrible.

I'm so sorry that happened to you.

Can I help?

Do you need a ride?

I don't know that they're like, well, did you make sure you parked it in the right place?

Was it under a light?

Are you sure it was locked?

They don't immediately start grilling you about what behavior you engaged in.

Now, there are still things like domestic violence, sexual assault, sexual abuse.

There's still a lot of victim blaming there.

But I feel like for some reason, we've decided scams also kind of fall in that category.

And let's blame the victims.

What did you do to deserve this?

How was it your fault?

And I just don't see it that way.

And I don't think you guys do either.

And you're helping to change that perception.

Eva, if you could leave our listener and everybody else out there with one piece of advice about recovering from this kind of scam or any scam at that or avoiding it in the future, what would it be?

I think it would be to be nice to yourself and just realize this is a terrible experience that's happening to you, but there is help and there's a lot of reputable free help.

The ITRC, AARP has resources.

The Federal Trade Commission has resources.

So you can get the help that you need at no cost to you.

And you can give yourself a break because bad things happen.

Give yourselves a break and get the help that you need.

You don't need to beat yourself up or feel ashamed.

Well, Eva Velasquez, CEO of the Identity These Resource Center, thank you for coming back on Smart Money and sharing your insights.

So happy to be here, and I'm glad I'm now officially an honorary nerd.

Absolutely.

And that's all we have for this episode.

Remember, listener, that we are here to answer your money questions.

So turn to the nerds and call or text us your questions at 901-730-6373.

That's 901-730-NERD.

You can also email us at podcast at nerdwallet.com.

Join us next time to hear about a listener who's trying to figure out their life after early retirement.

Follow Smart Money on your favorite podcast app, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and iHeartRadio to automatically download new episodes.

And here's our brief disclaimer.

We are not your financial or investment advisors.

This nerdy information is provided for general, educational, and entertainment purposes, and it might not apply to your specific circumstances.

This episode was produced by Tess Viglund.

Hilary Georgie helped with editing.

Nick Karissami mixed our audio.

And a big thank you to NerdWallet's editors for all of their help.

And with that said, until next time, turn to the nerds.