Category: FINANCIAL PLANNING

In part one of this series, we explored two popular scams that are targeting older adults this year: the grandparent scam, and cryptocurrency pickpocketing. In this week’s blog, I’m sharing two more scams that you and your parents need to be aware of, plus tips for staying protected.

Let’s dive in.

03 | PERSONALIZED PHISHING EMAILS

Imagine opening your inbox to an urgent email from a seemingly legitimate source – perhaps your bank, a popular online retailer, or even a social media platform. The message claims there has been suspicious activity on your account and urges you to click a link or provide sensitive information to verify your identity. This is the classic phishing email – a crafty attempt to deceive you into revealing your personal data.

Phishing has been around since email became mainstream, but what has changed is the depth to which scammers feign legitimacy. Even if you or your parents are familiar with phishing email schemes, new approaches and advances in technology are making it harder than ever to detect a phishing email.

Same Scammers, New Tricks

Phishers often pose as trusted entities such as banks, governments, or department stores. But in recent years, phishers have been sending their victims more personalized emails to trick them into thinking the message is from someone the victim personally knows or is personally connected with. The email will address the victim by name and may appear to come from a friend, co-worker, or supervisor. It may even contain a legitimate-looking email domain, signature, or logo. 

The email will usually claim that there is a time-sensitive matter that needs to be addressed, such as a gift that needs to be purchased for a co-worker’s birthday or important client, and asks the victim to purchase the gift via online gift cards, PayPal, or crypto.

For example, you may see an email that reads:

“Hi Jim, this is Mr. Boss. I’m going to be in meetings all day today but I need to send a gift to our new client right away. Please purchase a $200 gift card on Amazon and send it to this email address. I will then forward it to our client.” 

Some phishers will pose as banks, lending agencies, or debt relief programs and claim that you have been approved for special credit or financial assistance. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, student loan pause, and hurricane season, you may have seen an email like this:

“Hi Aaron, it’s Gav with Hardship Relief Program. We tried reaching you at your home and did not hear back… I’m not sure if you’ve spoken to an assigned agent yet, but I do see that you’re pre-approved for our Hardship Program. So, what I’m going to do is keep this in a pending status. Please give me a call between the hours of 8 AM and 10 AM EST to go over the details. My number is 555-886-3424.” 

Identifying Scams: It’s All in The Details

Before you respond to any kind of email requesting a phone call, consider whether the sender’s request seems legitimate. Did you actually open an account or fill out an application?  Is it normal for your boss to email you about important requests? 

Always scrutinize the sender’s email address, even if it looks legitimate, by hovering your cursor over the email address to reveal its true origin. Avoid clicking on suspicious links, and never share personal information via email, no matter how professional the sender’s email appears. 

Check the email and “from address” for typos, and verify the information provided by the sender, such as the company name and phone number, by searching for it online. When in doubt, contact the company directly through official channels to confirm the authenticity of the message.

04 | THE ONLINE OVERPAYMENT SCAM

In the world of online buying and selling sites like Etsy, Facebook Marketplace, Poshmark, and Craigslist, scammers are increasing their attacks and their success by preying on the good conscience of other people. 

In the overpayment scam, the fraudster contacts the victim pretending to be interested in purchasing an item the victim has listed for sale online. The scammer offers to purchase your item, usually at an inflated price and appears to make a payment that’s higher than the agreed-upon amount.

The scammer then requests that you refund the excess amount they “accidentally” sent, and will usually act panicked, upset, and harried. The scammer may even threaten to report the victim to the police for “stealing” the scammer’s money.

But here’s where the twist comes in: the overpayment sent by the scammer was actually fake – a fraudulent check or a forged payment confirmation email that made it seem like you received funds when in fact the scammer didn’t send anything at all. When you refund the overpaid amount, you’re essentially giving away your legitimate money, and by the time the scam is realized, the scammer has disappeared into the digital abyss.

To protect yourself and your parents from this sinister scam:

• Always require online buyers to pay through traceable means, such as PayPal, Cash App, or Venmo. 
• Avoid sending and receiving money from strangers through non-refundable money transfer services like Zelle.
• Never accept more money than the purchase price.
• If the buyer wants a refund, verify that you actually received the funds by logging into your payment servicer account and checking your balance there. Do not rely on a confirmation email which can be easily faked, especially if your payment account does not show any payment received. 

Preserving Your Assets and Protecting Your Loved Ones

Staying on top of constantly changing financial scams can feel overwhelming, but with the right knowledge and tools, you can help keep yourself and your aging parents safe from the financial and emotional harm scams cause. 

As your Personal Family Lawyer™ firm, we’re available to help guide a discussion with you and your parents about your financial well-being as part of your estate plan, including how to catalog their assets and how to make it as easy as possible for you to help each other in the case of an emergency or scam attempt.

If you want to know more about how working with a Personal Family Lawyer® firm can help you and your family, schedule a free 15-minute discovery call today. It would be my honor to look after your family’s plans now and for years to come. 

If you are going to take investment and estate planning advice from anyone, Warren Buffett is likely one you want to consider. As one of the most successful investors in history, his track record speaks for itself. However, his wisdom goes beyond picking stocks and making money. 

At this year’s Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting, Buffett shared several pieces of financial advice but also provided insights on the importance of personal growth and estate planning when seeking to grow wealth.  While many of us may feel overwhelmed by the thought of estate planning or building our wealth, Buffett’s advice reminds us of two key but simple steps we can take to create financial and generational wealth.

Focus on Your Human Assets to Build Your Wealth and Your Legacy

In almost every interview Buffett provides, he stresses the importance of investing in yourself.  “The best thing you can do is to be exceptionally good at something,” said Buffett. “Whatever abilities you have can’t be taken away from you. They can’t actually be inflated away from you. So the best investment by far is anything that develops yourself, and it’s not taxed at all.” 

Your earning power is the greatest determiner of your financial well-being, and the one thing you can count on no matter what’s happening in the external economic environment. If you have a highly valuable skill, and you know how to get paid well for that skill, market your services, and sell your services to those who need them, you’ll never have to worry about money. That doesn’t mean you won’t worry about money; but it does mean you don’t have to worry about money.

If you don’t have a highly valuable skill or if you have a skill that will soon be replaced by AI, that’s the first place for you to invest. You may need to get retrained, or uplevel your skills to be more human or relational so you can use AI, but not compete with it, and all that may take investment. Don’t shy away from investing in additional training to get even better at your service, or even get the additional support to learn to market and sell your services. Those investments will always pay off whereas the stock market is out of your control.

Investing in yourself not only leads to financial success but also personal fulfillment and a clear sense of purpose that will organically become your legacy. At the end of the day, you likely won’t be remembered for your financial success (though it’s a nice bonus if you are!). Even Warren Buffett, who is renowned for his wealth and investment skill, is even more often acclaimed for his wisdom, humility, and generosity than for his money.  

Raising Kids Well is Key in Effective Wealth Planning

During a Q&A session with an estate planning attorney, Buffett stressed the importance of talking to your children about your estate planning well before your death. Buffett stated, “If the children are grown when the will is read to them and it’s the first they’ve heard about what the deceased thought about things, the parents have made a terrible mistake.” 

Leaving your family in the dark about your personal and financial wishes until you die or become incapacitated due to an accident or illness can lead to large amounts of confusion and conflict among family members. If you don’t want to leave a mess, don’t wait to talk to the people you love.

 As we recommend and build into our Life & Legacy Planning Process, Buffett recommends involving your heirs in the planning process. By doing so, you can ensure that everyone is on the same page and that your wishes are understood and respected far in advance. Additionally, this provides an opportunity to discuss your values and beliefs with your heirs, which can have a lasting impact on their lives.  Buffett expressed that if you really want your heirs to act responsibly with their inheritance, you must live out your values and instill them in your heirs.

How to Start the Conversation About Estate Planning With Your Heirs

So how do you start the conversation about estate planning with your heirs? We recommend you do it directly and with an invitation to meet with you and your lawyer together. This is something we love to do with our clients, and we’d love to support your family in this way too. You might say something like: “I want to make sure that we’re all taken care of, both now and in the future. That’s why I’d like to talk to you about my wishes for our family resources, and how we can ensure that everything is handled smoothly when I can’t be here.”

If your loved ones aren’t immediately open to having a conversation about estate planning with you or are resistant to how you want your assets managed after your death, don’t worry. Talking about estate planning can be uncomfortable at first, but as you normalize the topic, the conversation will become easier and more open. 

Or, if you are worried that filling your heirs in on what they’ll receive will cause harm, please call us. This is a place we can really help by supporting you to get prepared to have a conversation with your heirs and also supporting them to be ready to receive their inheritance. 

When you talk money and inheritance with your heirs during your lifetime, you have the opportunity to truly pass on not just the money, but your values too. If you wait until you are incapacitated or have died, it’s simply too late.

Finally, if you are the future heir of a parent who has not yet talked with you about estate planning, you can jumpstart the conversation by getting your own planning done, and then talking with your parents about the choices you made, why you made them, and letting them know you’d like to help them feel comfortable talking to you about the choices they are making. If you aren’t sure how to handle any of this, please reach out.

Thoughtful Guidance to Build Your Personal and Financial Life and Legacy

Warren Buffett’s advice on building and preserving wealth is timeless and valuable no matter the size of your family or your estate. By involving your heirs in your estate planning and investing in yourself, you can set yourself and your loved ones up for long-term financial success and create a legacy that spans not only through your life but through the generations that follow you. 

If you aren’t sure where to start or how to talk about your wishes with your family, give me a call. I’d be happy to guide you and your loved ones through the process of creating an estate plan that focuses on the needs and hearts of everyone it involves, so you can build a life you love today knowing that your loved ones and your community will be impacted by your legacy for years to come.

To learn more about my heart-centered approach to estate planning, click this to learn about my Family Wealth Planning Session™ process.

Whether you’re turning on the news or scrolling through Instagram, it’s hard not to hear about AI technology, so this week I wanted to take some time to cover what the buzz is about and how you can use this technology to make your own life easier. 

AI (artificial intelligence) language models like ChatGPT and Jasper in particular are enjoying the spotlight this year. Essentially, these are online software programs that have the ability to interpret natural language and provide human-like responses. In a nutshell, that means you can type in questions or commands as if you were writing a message to a real person, and the software will produce an equally human-like response. 

What has the world buzzing over these programs is their ability to understand and interpret the text you enter into them in the same way a real person would, including an ability to modify its response based on your follow-up questions or commands.

If you think AI technology seems a bit too “sci-fi” for daily use, I’m happy to share that there are a number of ways you can use an AI language model to make your family’s life easier right now, from saving you time, helping you communicate, and even helping you plan that much-needed vacation. 

Here are three everyday applications for AI that you’ll want to start using today.

1. Get Help Writing a Tricky Email

I think it’s safe to say that we all have times in our lives when we have to deliver an uncomfortable message via email, text, or phone. Maybe you’re resigning from a job, critiquing someone’s work, or delivering bad news. Whatever the situation might be, it can be stressful to try and deliver a message in a way that clearly delivers your message with the right tone for that situation.

Instead of staring blankly at your email or anxiously picking up the phone, try drafting out your message in an AI language model like ChatGPT or Jasper first. 

For example, I typed the following into ChatGPT to get a prompt for approaching an employee about a performance issue:

“Imagine you need to give negative feedback to an employee. This employee is friendly and hard-working but makes many spelling mistakes in the company’s meeting minutes. You want the employee to know that you value having them on your team, but that their accuracy needs to be improved. Write an email that I could send to this employee.”

ChatGPT provided the following sample email that I can use:

“Dear [Employee Name],

I hope this email finds you well. I wanted to take a moment to provide you with some feedback regarding the meeting minutes you have been responsible for drafting. First and foremost, I want to express how much we appreciate your hard work and dedication to the team. You are a valued member of our team, and we are lucky to have you.

However, I have noticed that there have been a number of spelling mistakes in the meeting minutes recently. While I understand that mistakes can happen, accuracy is critical when it comes to recording important decisions and actions taken in meetings. I wanted to bring this to your attention so that we can work together to improve the accuracy of the meeting minutes.

I would like to suggest that you take some extra time to review your work before submitting it to ensure that it is error-free. You might also consider using spell-check or grammar-check tools to assist you in catching any mistakes.

Please know that we have confidence in your ability to improve in this area, and we are committed to supporting you in any way we can. Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or concerns.

Thank you again for your hard work and dedication to our team.”

Not only did the software draft a natural-sounding email, but it suggested ways the employee could remedy the situation. What’s more, you can ask the AI to further modify and refine its previous responses. For instance, you could ask it to rewrite the email with a more empathetic or casual tone, or to shorten the length of the message. 

Gone are the wasted hours trying to craft the perfect email for a challenging situation!

Even if you need to communicate with someone over the phone, using an AI language model can help get the conversation off on the right foot by providing you with an outline for how to start the conversation or outlining the points you want to cover. 

2. Find the Best Flight Prices Faster

If you’ve ever planned a family vacation, you know how time-consuming searching for flights can be.  What seems like an easy enough task on the surface can easily become a days-long marathon of comparing airlines, prices, layovers, seasons, and the difference in travel time if you fly from one city versus another.

Now, thanks to an integration with KAYAK, you can ask ChatGPT questions about your travel plans and ChatGPT will sort through your travel options for you.

For example, you could ask, “What’s the cheapest flight from Fargo to Orlando?” and the software will provide you with the best options that meet your request.

Want a direct flight? You can alter your request by adding, “Show me direct flights only” to further narrow down your options. No need to worry about manners, you can simply be direct and to-the-point with your requests.

Want to compare prices depending on what day of the week? You can ask the software, “What is the cheapest day to fly to Orlando from Fargo in June?” 

The KAYAK integration is currently only available for paid ChatGPT subscribers, but plans are underway to make it available in the software’s free version. If you’re anxious to do some traveling and want to try out ChatGPTs KAYAK integration, paid subscriptions are billable based on how much you use the software and include a free five-dollar credit to get you started.

3. Create a Better Resume and Cover Letter

Whether you’re actively looking for a job or wondering how you could improve your resume to increase your chances of a promotion, having a great resume can mean the difference between getting an interview and being passed up. But it can be difficult to write a resume or cover letter that truly conveys the value of what you bring to the workplace without sounding overly self-promoting. Thankfully, using an AI language model like ChatGPT can help flesh out your resume and create a cover letter that will stand out to a company’s hiring manager. 

For example, let’s imagine I’m a receptionist for a medical clinic and want to apply for a similar position at another clinic. I’ve written a resume, but I don’t feel confident that it highlights my skills in the role. In this situation, I pasted my skills from my resume into ChatGPT and entered the following instruction:

“Improve this job description for my resume: 

• Take patient phone calls and respond to messages
• Schedule appointments based on the provider’s availability
• Help team members with questions
• Follow-up with patients to reschedule canceled appointments”

ChatGPT provided the following improved bullet points:

• Responding to patient inquiries via phone, email, and messages with a friendly and professional demeanor, while providing accurate and helpful information.
• Coordinating and scheduling appointments based on the availability of healthcare providers, while ensuring that patient needs were prioritized.
• Supporting and collaborating with team members by answering questions and providing guidance when needed.
• Conducting timely follow-ups with patients to reschedule canceled appointments and ensure their continued care.

The output from ChatGPT conveys my responsibilities as a receptionist in a more interesting and descriptive way, while also highlighting my skills by showing my focus on patient care and teamwork. 

By using an AI language model such as this, you can either start your resume or cover letter from scratch or get tips for how to improve a resume you already have. You can also use the software to customize the same cover letter for different companies, saving countless hours in your job search.

4. Get Help with Your Kids Homework 

If you have kids, you know that helping them with their homework can sometimes feel just as tough for you as it does for them. The good news is that you can use an AI language model to walk through homework problems to make them easier for your child – and you – to understand. 

All you need to do is type the math problem into the software program and ask for an explanation. For example, I entered the following into ChatGPT:

“Explain how to do this math problem to a 4th grader: 1/2 X 2/3 =”

ChatGPT responded with the following:

“Certainly! We want to find out what happens when we multiply these two fractions together. To do that, we need to multiply the numerators (which are the numbers on top) and then multiply the denominators (which are the numbers on the bottom).

So 1/2 X 2/3 would look like this:

To multiply the numerators, we just multiply the numbers on top:  1 X 2 = 2

And to multiply the denominators, we just multiply the numbers on the bottom: 2 X 3 = 6

So the answer is 2/6!

But we can simplify this fraction by dividing both the numerator and the denominator by the greatest common factor, which is 2. If we divide 2/6 by 2, we get 1/3. So the final answer is 1/3!

That means if we had one whole thing that we cut into two equal pieces, and then we shaded in one of those pieces, and then we took that one piece and cut it into three equal pieces, and then we shaded in two of those pieces, we would end up with 1/3 of the whole thing.”

Pretty helpful, right? Now that was a pretty simple example, but you can even ask more complicated math questions or questions for other subjects as well.

Not only can this help you and your child better understand their homework, but can help eliminate the frustration you two may feel over the daily homework struggle.

More Than Legal Advice – Your Trusted Advisor

By using AI technology, you can save time, communicate more effectively, and plan vacations with ease. As your Personal Family Lawyer ®, I will use AI and other technology in my own practice to create more efficiencies and better service, so I can use my heart and humanity to serve you.  I’m here to do the parts of lawyering that can never be replaced by a machine and be a trusted advisor for my clients and their families.  I know that life can be hectic and stressful, and I’m here to provide resources that can make your life easier now and in the future. 

In that vein, I love learning about new technologies and the ways they can improve our lives. But I also know that technology – no matter how good – can never replace the care and humanity that real people have to offer. To me, the best part about technology is that by saving us time, it frees us up to spend more time connecting with one another. 

That’s why when it comes to your legal planning, I offer a Family Wealth Planning Session™ where I not only discuss how the law affects you and your loved ones, but I truly get curious with you about your life, your goals, and the legacy you want to leave behind, so you can rest assured knowing that your estate plan will work perfectly for you. And by using the best technology and systems to do my work, I’m able to be more available to my clients when they need me most.

If you’re interested in learning more about how I serve my clients differently than most lawyers or have questions about estate planning, please don’t hesitate to schedule a free 15-minute discovery call with me today.  I’m not just your family’s legal advisor, I’m a trusted advisor for life.