Nursing Homes:

Check it Out Before Your Mom or Dad Move In Are you considering a nursing home for a loved one? If it's Medicare or Medicaid-certified you can use the Medicare web site to start your research on nursing home quality:

http://www.medicare.gov/NHCompare/Include/DataSection/Questions/SearchCriteriaNEW.asp

Check Up on Your CPAs and Enrolled Agents

The people who handle your cash, financial accounts, and tax records are in a position to do real long-term damage. Often times they're able to get away with it for many months or years because they can play with the numbers. Review the record or license of a CPA by going to your state's Board of Accounting or Board of Public Accountancy. You can also look up the CPA on the national American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) web site. And if you're going to work with an Enrolled Agent for tax purposes, go to the IRS web site to look up his or her professional record.

An Inside Look at Doctors, Dentists, and Hospitals

You won't get much help looking up the transgressions of a doctor on either the American Medical

Association or American Dental Association web sites, because they have an inherent bias (their dues–

paying members are the doctors themselves). It's better to start at your state's Board of Medicine.

may also be useful if you want to read user generated reviews on local doctors and dentists. Oftentimes however, Internet rating sites aren't much help because you don't know if you can trust the anonymous reviewers. What makes Angie's List different is there are "no anonymous reviews and they use a certified data collection process, which prevents companies and providers from reporting on themselves or their competitors." Through Consumer Reports, you can rate and compare hospitals in your local area or nationwide: http://www.consumerreports.org/health/

A Web Site IRS Agents Don't Want You to Visit!

Want to find out if an IRS representative has a reputation for being dishonest and abusive - or perhaps (against all odds) friendly and charitable? There's a web site for that! Point your browser to: http://www.irsdoghouse.com/ The banner on this site may amuse some and even offend others. But graphics aside, the site contains "the world's first and only database of anonymously publicly generated reviews of IRS personnel." On the site, individual taxpayers and tax professionals alike describe their experiences with particular IRS employees and rate them. You can browse the "doghouse" for reviews or search by employee name

Securities Brokers

Make Sure They're Well-Qualified and Well-Behaved Some brokers, unfortunately, aren't on the "up and up." But until recently, you had to jump onto three different securities related web sites to research a securities broker's record (NASD, SEC, and NASAA). Now there's a newly improved tool for vetting securities brokers, uncover credentials, customer complaints, disciplinary actions, and other tidbits via FINRA's (the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) BrokerCheck web page. According to its web site: "FINRA is the largest independent regulator for all securities firms doing business in the United States. BrokerCheck is a free tool to help investors research the professional backgrounds of current and former FINRA-registered brokerage firms and brokers. It should be the first resource investors turn to when choosing whether to do business or continue to do business with a particular broker or brokerage firm." You may be reassured by what you find – or alarmed. Either way, it's worth getting the down-and-dirty on the people to whom you're paying commissions! One last point: Make sure your broker reflects your personal values. For example, if you agree with much of what we alert you about, you might well want to shoot your broker a copy of our financial bulletins. But I must warn you in advance: Most brokers have spent their careers steeped in an investment climate dominated by debt-financed consumption, the financial industry, and the now-dying "service economy." So yours may have difficulty accepting our sober assessment of the nation's fundamentals, and he or she may not be eager to help you invest outside of the mainstream (which you MUST do). My advice? Make sure your broker understands the "hard money" issue.