5 Places Never to Use Your Debit Card

No doubt about it, debit card usage is a big part of the new normal on Main Street these days as consumers try to manage credit card debt.

According to the TSYS & Mercator Advisory Group Debit Survey 2011, debit is now  the preferred payment type in most point-of-sale locations, beating cash, credit cards and checks.

But that doesn’t mean you should use debit cards all the time. In fact, there are some places and times that using a debit card is actually a lousy proposition.

For example, using a debit card online can work against you. If you have a problem with the purchase or your debit card number is stolen, it’s a huge hassle to get the money restored to your account and making your card number safe and secure again. In the online world, credit cards are usually a better bet.

Here are some other instances where debit card usage is a bad idea:

Rental or security deposits. If you have to put money down to rent a car or heavy duty home improvement equipment, try not to use a debit card. Why? Because the business will actually take the money out of your account in the form of a security deposit. You’ll get the cash back when you return the car or equipment. But with a credit card, the money is just “frozen” but not actually charged and you won’t ever notice it’s gone.

Restaurants and bars. There are way too many prying eyes around a dining establishment to trust using your debit card. Apart from the risk of having your card stolen, restaurants are one of those rare places where someone actually walks away with your card and you don’t see them for a few minutes. Much better to use cash when dining out.

Regular payments. Businesses love to get their sticky little fingers on your debit card number so they can extract dues straight from your bank account on a regular basis. Whether it’s a gym or your insurance company, you’re better off using a credit card. That’s because if there’s a dispute, the business won’t take the cash right out of your checking account if they don’t have your debit card number.

Wi-Fi hot spots. Never use your debit card for an online purchase while at a coffee shop or other business that offers free Wi-Fi access. Many of those businesses have unsecured wireless connections, so it’s much easier for hackers and scammers to log on and steal your data.

Any retail outlet where you choose the “credit” option. Debit cards allow you to choose between a debit (having cash taken straight out of your account) and a credit transaction (where the money will be taken out but it could be a few days later). For one, credit purchases cost the retailer more cash in swipe fees, so you could be hurting a small business owner. But the real problem is the delay when choosing credit – you may forget the purchase and not account for the money. That can lead to an overdraft situation and the onerous fees that go with them.

Debit cards are great financial tools, and it’s easier carrying a card that a wad of cash. But debit cards shouldn’t be used all the time – and the situations listed above should be at the top of your list of “no debit” zones in the future.

Lesson for Obama and GOP rivals: Don't play politics with jobs issue

As America returns from Labor Day weekend, not enough Americans are returning to actual labor. With Wednesday night's Republican presidential debate and President Barack Obama preparing to address the nation Thursday with his new economic plan, one thing is on the country's mind: jobs.

Last Friday's anemic jobs report, the first time since 1945 that the government recorded a net jobs change of zero, suggests that our economy is stalled and slipping ever so closer to a double dip recession. The pressure is mounting on Obama, in particular, to deliver a noticeable, tangible prescription for what's ailing America's economy.

The president is nearing the third year of his term, a time in which presidential reputations are crystallized, for better or for worse. He's on pace to complete a four-year term with little or no economic growth of which to boast. The Misery Index, which calculates the unemployment rate plus the inflation rate, was 7.83 when Obama took office. Today it is 12.73. Even his own Congressional Budget Office predicts the unemployment rate, currently at 9.1%, will only drop to a listless 8.5% in the fourth quarter of 2012. And according to a new CNN poll, eight out of 10 Americans think we are in a recession.

In response to the economic malaise and growing criticism, Obama will address the nation and a joint session of Congress on Thursday night with his new plan to jumpstart the economy. His task is daunting.

He must not only quell public suspicion of a double-dip recession, but also supply a detailed, feasible roadmap to economic recovery. The president has yet to deliver a plan like this, so the expectations are high and the consequences will be permanent.

Come Wednesday and Thursday night, the Republicans and the president would do well to avoid partisan attacks. After weeks of fist-pounding political gamesmanship over the debt ceiling, voters are increasingly skeptical that Washington can come to any solution to the jobs problem.

The jobs debate should focus on the merits and philosophies of the economic plans, not small-time political jabs and barbs. It's time for serious economic ideas to get America back to work.

On their side of the aisle, Republican presidential candidates are lining up to offer their counter plans, and some have already debuted theirs. Last week, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman launched his own economic plan, focused primarily on broad and deep tax reform. The Wall Street Journal said Huntsman's plan is "as impressive as any to date in the GOP presidential field."

In short, Huntsman's proposal would create three new income tax rates (8%, 14% and 23%) and eliminate all deductions and credits. He is far from a presidential front-runner, but Huntsman's plan is serious and detailed and will shape the presidential debate for the better.

The pressure is now on his GOP rivals to offer proposals equally as substantial. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has already announced that he will unveil his plan on Tuesday, the day before the next GOP presidential debate. He claims that his solutions will be bold and sweeping.

But with Texas Gov. Rick Perry leapfrogging Romney in the latest batch of polls, the onus is on Romney to prove that his ideas are the right medicine for our economic ailments. With Huntsman raising the stakes, Romney will have to go bigger and bolder than expected to steal back momentum from Perry.

The aforementioned front-runner, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, already has an impressive jobs record, but he too needs a jobs plan. The economic parameters that Perry says built the Texas Miracle -- low tax rates, tort reform, controlled government spending -- do not exist in Washington. Perry must prove how he can implement those reforms on a national level.

Earlier in August, Herman Cain presented his own plan for economic recovery, dubbed the 9-9-9 plan -- a 9% business flat tax, 9% individual income flat tax and a 9% national sales tax. Likewise, Newt Gingrich published his own jobs plan early in his campaign, but it does not rival the scope of Huntsman's or what we are to expect from Obama.

While we are familiar with the remaining candidates' positions on key economic issues, i.e. Michele Bachmann's opposition to the debt ceiling and Ron Paul's staunch objection to the Federal Reserve, they too should release their own in-depth proposals.

With the 2012 election looming, this week is shaping up to be a make or break moment for the president and the GOP presidential contenders. Even though these are highly politicized times, the severity of the jobs crisis deserves the most serious and proper treatment of the problem. America is looking for a leader who can do that.

Ancient fossils question human family tree

At a family reunion of the direct evolutionary predecessors of our species, there would be a lot of arguing over whether Australopithecus sediba gets in the door.

Australopithecus sediba is the name of an ancient species discovered in South Africa in 2008. Researchers now have substantial evidence, published in this week's edition of the journal Science, that Australopithecus sediba could be a direct ancestor of the Homo genus, of which humans are a part (we are Homo sapiens). If that's true, it means our family tree may have to be redrawn, with Australopithecus sediba at the stem of the Homo line.

But that's just one possibility, and a controversial one at that.

Researchers studied two partial skeletons, a young male named Karabo and an adult female who has not yet been named, which were found in the remains of a collapsed cave. "Australopithecus" means "southern ape," and "sediba" is "natural spring" or "fountain" in the Sotho language. The team announced the discovery of the previously unknown species in 2010.

Scientists have several theories about what these skeletons might mean for human evolution.

The earliest undisputed Homo genus member is Homo erectus, which researchers estimate to be about 200,000 years younger than Australopithecus sediba, so Homo erectus could theoretically be the direct evolutionary descendant. Alternatively, Australopithecus sediba could be the direct ancestor of Homo habilus, considered to be a toolmaker because its hand bones were found next to stone tools, or of Homo rudolfensis, a contemporary of Homo habilus of disputed evolutionary origin. Australopithecus sediba could be related to both of them, and perhaps their current labels are inaccurate. Or, of course, it could be a dead end, although researchers say the skeletons' human-like features suggest otherwise.

Species as experiments in evolution

It makes sense that there seem to have been many variations in anatomical form evolving around 2 million years ago, said Lee Berger, paleoanthropologist at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, who led the discovery of the fossils.

"As you’re beginning to have the stresses and stressors of environmental change and the things going on in Africa around 2 million years (ago), you would think that many experiments would emerge, Sediba just being one of those," he said.

There can be only one species that gave rise to Homo erectus, which is our direct ancestor, however. To demonstrate stronger evidence, Berger said, archaeologists would have to find fossils that come before and after Australopithecus sediba in the evolutionary lineage.

Based on the variety of Australopithecus forms that have been found, Ian Tattersall, paleoanthropologist and curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who wasn't involved in the study, said he believes Australopithecus sediba probably did not give rise to Homo. Instead, it represents the context in which our true ancestor, in whatever form it was, did arise: during a time when there were many different forms of upright creatures. About 2.6 million years ago there was a huge change in the African fauna, with more grasslands arising; these kinds of environmental factors probably shaped the evolution of different species.

"In some population, some genetic novelty became established which basically set the patent for the genus Homo in a short period of time," Tattersall said. "What we’re not going to see, I think, is the gradual modification over millions of years of an Australopith into Homo."

Exploring the skeletons

Based on the two skeletons studied so far, Australopithecus sediba represents a curious, unique combination of human-like and primitive features.

For instance, consider the brain: Australopithecus sediba's skull shows a cranial capacity of 420 cubic centimeters, whereas a chimpanzee's is about 380 cubic centimeters. Homo erectus is about 200,000 years younger than Australopithecus sediba, and its cranial capacity would be a whopping 900 cubic centimeters. If Australopithecus sediba is the direct evolutionary ancestor of Homo erectus, it suggests a more rapid expansion of brain size over the course of evolutionary history than previously believed. Also, the overall shape of the brain appears to resemble a human's more than a chimp's.

Then there's the matter of feet. Australopithecus sediba has a mostly human-like ankle joint, but the heel bone is mostly ape-like. That's surprising because the species of Lucy, the famous 3-million-year-old skeleton classified as Australopithecus afarensis, has a more advanced heel than Australopithecus sediba. If Berger's skeletons descend evolutionarily from Lucy's species, that would mean that heel anatomy would have evolved from advanced to primitive to advanced again - which is unlikely. Alternatively, Lucy's species may be more of a cousin to Australopithecus sediba, and to our genus, on the evolutionary tree, rather than an immediate relative.

"If that's the case, then there may very well be a ghost lineage," Berger said. In other words, there are probably more fossils out there to explain where these species came from.

At the same time, Australopithecus sediba's pelvis is the most human-like of any found in the Australopithecus genus, Berger said. While females of Lucy's species have wide, stable platforms with a birth outlet, the human pelvis is more bowl-like and curves around the body, and Australopithecus sediba's pelvis is closer to that.

Researchers have good evidence from the hands and feet that Australopithecus sediba was spending a decent amount of time climbing in trees. And the hands, which have grasping capabilities, are more advanced than those of Homo habilus, suggesting it, too, was an early tool-user.

"Sediba and the other early bipedal apes were creatures of relatively small stature that retained a lot of climbing features, particularly in their upper body skeleton, so they spent a lot of time in the trees even though, when they came to the ground, they walked on two legs," Tattersall said.

What led to the deaths of these possible proto-humans that Berger's team studied? They appear to have fallen, perhaps while looking for water, Berger said. But further investigation will reveal more precise details.

From the other evidence that hasn't yet been unearthed or examined, Berger promised his team will also likely discover the dietary habits of Australopithecus sediba and whether they were hairy. Researchers may already have found evidence of soft tissue. And they've got more skeletons to explore from the same area.

"What makes this really exciting is that this is opening this whole question of where the genus Homo came from to re-examination. What they have is a wonderful sample of individuals, of a kind that we don’t really expect to find in the human fossil record. Just one complete skeleton is rare, let alone a whole bunch of individuals," Tattersall said.