SoFi Blog

A great way to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the infamous Equifax breach (September 7, 2017) is to take steps to protect yourself to keep your information secure.

First, the backstory: Equifax, a financial information company based in Atlanta, reported a cybersecurity incident that potentially affected 143 million U.S. consumers. Between May and June 2017 , criminals gained access to certain Equifax files through application vulnerability on a U.S. website.

The information exposed included social security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and drivers’ licenses. Approximately 209,000 credit card accounts for approximately 182,000 U.S. consumers were also compromised. These accounts include dispute documents and personal identifying information. Even a year later, the cleanup continues .

By Tony Morosini, VP of Banking

There’s no question deposit accounts are having a moment. In a rising rate environment, banks earn an increasing yield on the deposits they hold, and these additional proceeds can often go directly to earnings. To gather more deposits, banks fight to get consumers to switch banks, but it’s a tough sell because changing banks is painful.

While lots of institutions are offering deals to entice people to move their accounts, they haven’t invested in making the consumer experience as good as it should be. People have been using and managing money online at scale for 20 years, and we’ve now gotten to a place where people are not just comfortable with handling money online, but they expect it. The traditional financial institutions have improved on some marks, like improving their mobile experiences (or at least creating one at all), but there’s still a lot of space to tackle.

They say falling in love leads to happily ever after. But when you throw money in the mix, that ending can get complicated.

Couples frequently have issues around finances, whether it’s about budgeting, debt, spending, or simply aligning on future goals. But how they deal with those issues can be a different story. While some fight and get it all out in the open, our recent survey on the topic suggests that plenty of couples prefer to keep their money troubles under wraps—including from their partner.

After surveying over 3,300 couples across the U.S. (ages 18-45), the SoFi team dug into the details of financial infidelity, and discovered which kinds of money-related experiences can cause even the most communicative of partners to keep their other half in the dark. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, here are a few eye-openers around money, love, and pure deception.

In her book The Art of Money, author and therapist Bari Tessler writes, “We conflate it with our identity, our sense of worth, our definitions of success and maturity.” The “it” she writes of is money— specifically the concept of “money shame”—but she could easily be writing about sex.

In fact, money may actually be a greater taboo than sex today.

When you work hard, you want to play hard. We get it. You deserve to enjoy the finer things in life, and you can have them—you just have to be smart and strategic with your spending. Sticking to a budget while saving toward financial goals doesn’t mean you can’t splurge a little. In this, our second story in a series on spending hacks, we continue to help you figure it all out. With some savvy tweaks and an eye for planning ahead, you can have what you want.