It's been an interesting few weeks with all this financial crisis & I can't begin to comprehend the fact my shares have lost the value they have!

To date, I haven't lost anything because I haven't sold anything, but that's small consolation because it might be years before they claw their way back to break even.

Aside from all of this though, is what people are doing to generate income for themselves & it's worthwhile being over cautious.

I had a call from Singapore offering me an investment opportunity of a lifetime here in Australia. Through the accent, it was something about buying into a local water resource company & I'd get rich along the way. They had gone to the effort of finding my direct line & email address at work & they knew my full name, so I played along to try & get some info about them.

A trick I use often is to give false info. If they ask to confirm my email address, I'll change a letter or two. It's easy since a couple of letters in my email address are doubled up, so it still looks authentic to them & it never makes it to my inbox.

During the call, they gave very leading questions, trying to get me to answer with a simple "Yes". I became suspicious when they told me I was happy to accept the proposal. That was a statement from them & not a question!!

They then proceeded to ask if I'd had a good weekend, was I having a good day & was I over thirty. Each time I gave an answer which never included the word "Yes". Eventually they got so frustrated they just hung up!

The scam is if you say "Yes" to anything they ask, they'll re-record the phone call & claim you agreed to a contract. Companies like Telstra & Optus do verbal contracts over the phone all the time, but they do it legitimately. Yes, you would be able to fight & win against one of these scams, but I just prefer to not be put in that position to start with.

I've also noticed short-changing is on the rise & it's been tried on me a couple of times in the last week.

All the supermarkets now display how much change you should receive on the checkout terminal, so it requires very little thought by the cashier. Basically short-changing should never occur. It's worthwhile watching each cashier as they collect the change & work out that what they are handing you is correct before they hand it to you.

In both my recent experiences, the cashier tried to both hand over the change & start the next customers transaction at the same time. They are hoping you can't be bothered checking & they collect the difference before the end of their shift.

If it's happening to me then it's more than likely happening to everyone else & someone's making a fair bit of extra cash in the process.

I've even gone to an extreme & purchased a paper shredder to avoid the identity theft epidemic. I'm down enough in the stock markets without all these other bastards giving it a go as well!