By Kimberly Palmer | NerdWallet

For college students, sending money to friends has never been easier thanks to peer-to-peer payment apps like Venmo, PayPal and Cash App. But that convenience poses risks, including vulnerability to errors, fraud and the tendency to overspend.

As a result, payment apps can contribute to financial stress at a time when young people are learning how to manage their finances on their own. “Peer-to-peer payment apps are cash on steroids because they’re a straw stuck into your bank account,” says Anne Lester, author of “Your Best Financial Life.”

Not only does that make spending easier and more “frictionless,” Lester explains, but it also means “if you trust the wrong person, then you’re in big trouble,” because it can be difficult or impossible to get the money back.

To keep young people safe while using payment apps, money experts suggest taking these extra steps to guard against scams and overspending.

Triple-check the recipient

One risk with peer-to-peer payment apps is sending the money to the wrong person by accident. “If you send money, make sure you are 100% certain you are sending it to the right person, because it’s very hard to get the money back,” says Nilton Porto, associate professor of consumer finance at the University of Rhode Island.

For college students living on tight budgets, Porto says, an incorrect payment could really impact their ability to pay for essentials like rent and food, even if they eventually get the funds returned.

Protect against fraud

Porto suggests being wary of unexpected requests, even those purportedly from a roommate, that claim to be urgent. “We don’t need to send money to almost anybody right away,” he says, explaining that scam artists often use urgency as a way to trick people into sending cash to them. Similarly, disregard any requests received through one of the apps containing a link that requests personal information, as it could also be a scam.

Erin Lowry, author of the “Broke Millennial Workbook,” warns against downloading any unfamiliar payment apps. “I would not be an early adopter to a payment app,” she cautions, given that it has access to your bank account.

As an additional precaution, Lowry suggests connecting payment apps to a bank account that you don’t keep the bulk of your money in. “My payment apps are connected to a bank account that’s not my primary account, so if something were to happen, it’s a low risk,” she says.

Update your privacy settings

“Default privacy settings are usually public,” notes Amanda Christensen, an accredited financial counselor and extension professor at Utah State University. That means a young adult’s payments to friends or funds received for a job could be visible to the public.

“The social part of the payment apps is where we get some of the best scammers out there because they can see what’s being regularly paid for,” Christensen says. To adjust who can see your activity in Venmo, for example, go into “settings” on the app and scroll to find the various “privacy” options, such as public, friends or private.

Earn a return elsewhere

Christensen suggests establishing a habit of transferring any balance out of payment apps once a week. “Set a note in your phone,” she says, cautioning against treating the app like a checking account, where you let money sit.

Not only is cash sitting in an app vulnerable to fraud, but it also doesn’t earn a return like it could in a savings account. Jake Cousineau, author of “How to Adult” and a high school teacher, says he sees many young people receiving payments for side jobs like tutoring through payment apps. Instead of quickly transferring the money into a savings account, they let it linger, which means losing out on interest that would otherwise be accumulating. Payment apps also generally lack the protections from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. that come with bank accounts, he adds.

Don’t forget to budget

The convenience of payment apps makes it easy to overspend, Christensen notes. That’s why she suggests turning to cash at times for a week or so. “Reconnect yourself to the pain of spending,” she says.

Cousineau recommends not letting “these apps get in the way of having a detailed budget.” Just because you can easily send a friend $20 with a few taps doesn’t mean you should.

The apps might even be able to help. Porto says you can use the timeline of a payment app to help track your spending. Just as with a credit or debit card, you can scroll through your history to determine what changes you might want to make in the future. “You can see where all the money went, which can be very powerful for college students,” he says.

In other words, leverage the power of these payment apps to help you manage your money, instead of just spending it.

This article was written by NerdWallet and was originally published by The Associated Press.

 

The article What College Students Need to Know About Payment Apps originally appeared on NerdWallet.

A new study at Denver’s National Jewish Health found an unexpected potential culprit for lung disease in some combat veterans: silica, which is one of the most common elements in dust, soil and sand.

The study, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, examined lung tissue from 65 people with unexplained shortness of breath and other respiratory symptoms after deploying to Afghanistan or Iraq. Deployed veterans were more likely to have silica in their lungs than people who weren’t in the armed forces, with combat veterans showing more damage than service members who worked in other jobs.

People with combat roles tended to have a variety of unhealthy respiratory exposures, including burn pits, sandstorms, diesel exhaust, tiny particles generated by explosions, dust from heavy equipment on dry soil, and pollution from local industries or trash burning, said Dr. Cecile Rose, an occupational and environmental pulmonologist at National Jewish Health.

She and the other researchers didn’t think silica would be the primary contaminant they’d find in veterans’ lungs.

“That was unexpected, but not surprising” when considering their exposure to dust and sandstorms, she said.

People who inhale large amounts of silica over a prolonged period can develop silicosis, a disease in which inflammation in the lungs causes scarring and difficulty breathing, Rose said. Silica inhalation is one factor in the increase in cases of black lung disease among coal miners in recent decades, because the miners have to cut through other rock types to reach narrow coal seams, she said.

“Silica dust is a powerful stimulant of lung inflammation,” she said.

Lung samples taken from people who died in accidents and hadn’t deployed overseas during their lifetimes showed small amounts of silica, but not comparable to what the combat veterans had, Rose said. Because the veterans were younger and less likely to have smoked, if anything, their lungs should have looked healthier, she said.

Related Articles

With new PFAS limits, some east metro cities have big water cleanup jobs ahead

Fact check: Biden is right about $35 insulin cap but exaggerates prior costs for Medicare enrollees

To close racial gap in maternal health, some states take aim at ‘implicit bias’

Ten doctors on FDA panel reviewing Abbott heart device had financial ties with company

FDA announces recall of heart pumps linked to deaths and injuries

People who inhale significant amounts of silica can reduce their likelihood of disease by limiting further exposures, but that may not be feasible for career soldiers, Rose said. They also would want to avoid civilian jobs that would increase their risks, like mining, stone cutting and certain construction trades, she said.

Not everyone who served in combat experienced the same hazards, and the country needs more research to determine who needs careful lung monitoring, Rose said. Combat veterans shouldn’t ignore lung symptoms, though, and might consider joining the Airborne Hazards and Open Burn Pit Registry to help with research, she said.

“We don’t really know how many people are at risk,” she said.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get health news sent straight to your inbox.

The Twins walked off the field Wednesday in Baltimore with their heads down as Cedric Mullins rounded the bases and his Orioles teammates crowded around home plate waiting for him.

The fourth straight loss for the Twins plunged their record to 6-11 on the season. For a team that had high hopes of winning the American League Central for the second straight season, it certainly is not the start they envisioned.

It’s still early, but they’ve already dug themselves into a hole, currently sitting 5 1/2 games behind Cleveland in the division.

“It feels quite hard. It feels like no matter what you try, nothing is smooth, nothing is working like you want,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “And it’s tough to play the game with confidence and with an air of anything when it’s so difficult. Even when we do things well, we’re not getting the results.”

Here’s a look at how they got to this point:

Injuries

After a relatively healthy spring, the injury bug came for the Twins bullpen in the days before they packed up and left Fort Myers, Fla.

Jhoan Duran strained an oblique, Caleb Thielbar a hamstring and Justin Topa was shut down with patellar tendinitis, a blow to a bullpen that was expected to be a strength of this team. Just one of them — Thielbar — has returned thus far. The Twins also found out that starting pitcher Anthony DeSclafani would need surgery that would wipe out his entire season.

In the meantime, the position player group made it through spring training healthy, but once the season rolled around, it started to get dinged up, as well.

Royce Lewis looked every bit a star in his first two at-bats of the season, hitting a home run and a single. But while running the bases in the third inning on Opening Day, he suffered a quad injury that he’s not particularly close to returning from. In that same game, Max Kepler fouled a ball off his knee and exited early. Though he initially played through the pain, the Twins put him on the injured list, too.

And on their latest road trip, Carlos Correa, their most productive hitter at the time, strained his intercostal, taking him off the field as well.

“(We’re) missing our top three hitters in our lineup,” infielder Kyle Farmer said. “We’re in a tough stretch, but guys have got to step up.”

Offense

Correa said it multiple times early on: The Twins’ offense eventually figured it out last season after the all-star break, but they can’t afford to wait that long this time around.

“We don’t want to be here half a season trying to figure out when we know we’re capable of doing it a lot earlier,” Correa said earlier this month.

But save for a few hitters, Correa included, the beginning of the season has been a struggle and the team is collectively hitting .193, which is dead last in Major League Baseball entering Thursday’s games. They rank 27th in on-base percentage and slugging percentage, and 28th in OPS.

Simply put, it’s not good enough, and they’re well aware of it.

“Everyone right now has an adjustment to make,” hitting coach David Popkins said. “Some of that for some guys is just relaxing and believing in yourself and knowing you’ve done this before, you’ve done this many times throughout your career, and just takes — it’s very contagious when things get going.”

Kepler was hitting just .050 at the time he landed on the injured list. Left fielder Matt Wallner was striking out at such a high clip — 51.5 percent of his plate appearances — that the Twins demoted him to Triple-A for a physical and mental reset.

Byron Buxton (.193), Edouard Julien (.175) and Carlos Santana (.135) are among the starters off to slow starts.

“We have to get better, and we have to get better quickly, and that’s our goal, and we’ll continue to work until we do that,” Popkins said.

Pitching rotation

While the Twins’ rotation has been far from the biggest problem this season, the collective group has given up 56 runs, which was tied for third most in the majors as of Thursday morning. Their earned-run average as a group is 5.32, which is second-worst in the majors.

A big part of the reason why the Twins were able to remain competitive last season when the offense was off to a slow start was because of the rotation, led by Pablo López and Sonny Gray, who finished second in American League Cy Young voting.

But Gray walked in free agency, as did Kenta Maeda, and the Twins didn’t sink significant money into the rotation. The only move the Twins made to address the rotation from the outside was trading for DeSclafani, who needed flexor tendon surgery.

The Twins filled those holes with Chris Paddack, who returned to the rotation after spending most of last season rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, and Louie Varland. And while the Twins have high hopes for both pitchers, in the last series, the Twins saw Varland give up six runs (four earned) and Paddack allow nine. Those blowups ballooned each of their ERAs to 8.36.

“I’m letting the team down, and it’s a bad feeling,” Varland said after his last start.

Related Articles

Twins walked off by Orioles in series finale, spiral to fourth straight loss

Saints lose series opener in Indianapolis

Starting pitcher Chris Paddack rocked as Twins fall to Orioles

Twins option struggling Matt Wallner, bring back Trevor Larnach

Orioles ambush Louie Varland in Twins’ loss