Don’t lose your smartphone. It is as simple as that. It does not matter how secure your phone happens to be. Yes, some phones are more easily hackable than others. That is true. But all computing devices are vulnerable when a motivated thief has possession of the device.

Major companies don’t even try to recover lost or stolen devices. They just wipe and replace them. Even if they got a lost device back, they couldn’t trust it. The smart hacker will not keep the device, they will return it with some kind of trojan in place so that it continuously feeds them valuable information. The device is actually more valuable to the thief if the owner gets it back because the thief can gain access to secured, private networks and the sensitive information from everyone in the company. That is quite the haul.

Even if you are not a corporate target, you still have a lot to lose when you lose your phone. Without replacement insurance, you are going to have to purchase another one even if that means securing a quick personal loan. These days, no one can go without their main computing device for very long. You are likely not their exception.

Also, regardless of your worthiness as a target, most finders of lost phones try to access personal information. Even if they return your phone for the reward, the damage is already done. If you don’t have a passcode on your phone, they will access your credit card information, passwords, bank accounts, and everything else they can get their hands on. These are just a few reasons why you can’t afford to lose your phone:

Your Phone Is Your Wallet

Before smartphones, we carried fat wallets stuffed with all kinds of personal information, including things we shouldn’t keep in wallets such as social security cards and passports. A wallet is a one-stop shop for identity thieves. And they are surprisingly easy to pluck from a back pocket.

Guess what, smartphones are also surprisingly easy to pluck from back pockets. And people carry them in just that way. Furthermore, they carry all of that information on the phone. If your phone is your only payment source and you happen to lose it while out and about, good luck getting home. You can’t even call an Uber because that requires a smartphone app. Even if you have paper backups of everything at home, you will have to cancel everything and get new ones. In some ways, it was better to lose the wallet than smartphones.

Your Phone Is the Key to All of Your Accounts

If you are thinking that you can just dash home and close all of your accounts, think again. Once a thief has possession of your phone, they also have possession of the treasure-trove of passwords on your phone. The first thing the smart thief will do is log into your accounts and change the passwords so you can’t get back in. You can lose your Twitter account, your Facebook, Your AppleID can be compromised. Your Amazon Prime account is vulnerable. Every account that holds value could be suddenly and irrevocably locked to you because your phone fell into the wrong hands.

Your Photos Are Priceless

One of the great tragedies of modern life is that the best camera we own is the worst place to store the most important photos we take. A shocking percentage of people only have their photos located on their smartphone because that is where they took the picture. And they will not pay for online storage. They will only use free solutions or no solutions.

If you don’t have some sort of cloud backup of every photo you take, all those baby pictures, wedding pictures, and vacation pictures are lost to you forever when you lose your phone. This is just one of the reasons you need to do whatever it takes to keep up with it.

Smartphones serve the function of our external brain. Losing it is like getting a digital lobotomy. We lose our wallet, our accounts, and our photos along with the device. None of us can afford that loss.

Justin Weinger

A married father of three, Justin Weinger works in private equity as a Corporate Finance Manager, he is also an avid blogger and personal finance enthusiast with a strong history of working in the automotive and publishing industry.

Some people realize that diamonds are made up of different colors, while other people do not pay close enough attention to the various shades and hues the diamond colors have to offer. If you feel that a diamond is only a diamond and color doesn’t matter, you’re about to learn an important lesson today.

No one said that all diamonds are created equally. They’d certainly vary in shapes and sizes. And they definitely vary in color as well. The diamond color scale existing should be reason enough for anyone to realize that diamonds have multiple colors. We’ll discuss the scale in greater detail right now.

Colorless: Diamond Scale Grade D-F

If a diamond fails to have any type of tint within it, it is known as a colorless diamond. Most people would be ecstatic if they were to have a colorless diamond since it is the rarest type of diamond out of them all. As you can imagine, they are very popular yet they are also very expensive.

Diamonds in this color scale range will vary in price. A diamond graded D will cost about $1500 more than a diamond graded E. And a diamond graded E will cost about $1500 more than a diamond graded F.

Near Colorless: Diamond Scale Grade G-J

At this stage of the grading scale, you’re still looking at diamonds that technically appear colorless to the naked eye, but if you look at them under magnification you will see that these diamonds do have a slight tint to them. The tint is very subtle and very difficult to notice, which is why it’s definitely good to buy diamonds on this section of the grade scale. They are cheaper than colorless diamonds yet still nearly perfect.

Faint Color: Diamond Scale Grade K-M

The diamonds that are known as part of this color scale consist of grades K, L, and M. This is a very popular point on the color grade scale because the diamonds definitely have color them and it’s certainly noticeable, but it’s not that noticeable. So people can purchase these diamonds for a fraction of the cost of colorless and near colorless diamonds, but still have a diamond that looks incredibly beautiful.

Very Light Color: Diamond Scale Grade N-R

On this point of the color grading scale, the diamonds in this range do have color, it is noticeable, and the colors are typically either a light brown or a light yellow. Since many people do not want to purchase these particular diamonds, they are very cheap. It’s good they aren’t expensive because it gives people with little money an option to buy a diamond without spending a small fortune.

Light Color: Diamond Grade Scale S-Z

Believe it or not, diamonds light in color are more popular than very light color diamonds at the moment. The fact that the color is so prominent is the reason why people are buying them. They appreciate yellow gemstones, like the way they look, and buy them because they are inexpensive. It’s definitely a good option if you don’t mind the color.

James Hendrickson

James Hendrickson is an internet entrepreneur, blogging junky, hunter and personal finance geek. When he’s not lurking in coffee shops in Portland, Oregon, you’ll find him in the Pacific Northwest’s great outdoors. James has a masters degree in Sociology from the University of Maryland at College Park and a Bachelors degree on Sociology from Earlham College. He loves individual stocks, bonds and precious metals.

www.dinksfinance.com