This week, March 7-13, marks the 12th Annual National Consumer Protection Week (NCPW). The purpose of this week is to encourage consumers to be more knowledgeable about what their law-protected rights are as consumers.

Digging a little deeper into the consumer.gov website, I found many useful tools consumers should use to educate themselves on a variety of issues such as ways to avoid identity theft and how to safely get out of debt.

President Obama and Congress have been working hard to ensure the proper consumer protections are in place and passing the new credit card laws were a good step. I don’t know about you, but seeing how long it would take to pay off my credit card by only making the minimum payment really put things into perspective.

All the new technologies enabled by the advent of the internet (did you know the internet was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize last year?) are great, but it’s important that we have policies that reflect the ever-changing tech landscape AND continue to provide consumer protections like proper oversight over things like billing, sales, consumer fraud, and collections.

So educate yourself friends!

The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture Trade and Consumer Protection and the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions also have great websites full of free resources for consumers looking to get a better handle on their financial situation as well as protect themselves from scams.

http://www.wdfi.org

http://www.datcp.state.wi.us/core/consumerprotection/consumerprotection.jsp

http://consumer.gov/ncpw/