The Get Ready Money Podcast
The Get Ready! Money Podcast with Tony Steuer features insightful conversations with financial experts who are changing the way we think about money. Listen each week to catch up on the latest financial trends and hear practical advice from Tony and his expert guests aimed at demystifying the complexities of finance, so you can build healthy habits that ACTUALLY work.
Each episode will leave you with tips for implementing small changes that can have a big impact on your financial future. Tony’s podcast is perfect for listeners seeking to get ready, be prepared, and transform their financial future.
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The Get Ready Money Podcast
The Get Ready Money Podcast: Change The Way You Think About Elder Financial Abuse
On this episode of The Get Ready Money Podcast, I was joined by Cameron Huddleston, author and Director of Education & Content at Carefull; Cathy Sikorski, author and speaker along with Neil Granger, Consultant and Expert to talk about changing the way we think about money and elder financial abuse.
Here’s what we discussed:
- Defining elder financial abuse and prevention tips.
- What is a trust mill?
- How to spot red flags.
- The importance of being proactive with your parents and communicating about frauds and scams.
- Adult children should pay attention to their parent’s behavior.
- What to look for in an advisor.
Bios:
Cameron Huddleston:
Cameron Huddleston is an award-winning personal finance journalist, author of Mom and Dad, We Need to Talk: How to Have Essential Conversations with Your Parents About Their Finances and director of education and content at Carefull. She also is an award-winning journalist with nearly 20 years of experience writing about personal finance. Her work has appeared in Kiplinger's Personal Finance, Chicago Tribune, Forbes.com, MSN, Yahoo! and many more online and print publication
Cathy Sikorski:
Cathy Sikorski, Esq. a Speaker, Elder Lawyer, Author and Media Guest unravels the complex financial and legal problems in the caregiving crisis. Cathy uses her own caregiver experience and expertise to educate, entertain and elevate the conversation around work, money, aging and caregiving. In October 2021, Corner Office Books released her latest book 12 Conversations: How to Talk to Almost Anyone about Long-Term Care Planning.
Neil Granger
Neil Granger has been in the financial services industry for more than 39 years. In addition to being a California Life Agent, he is also licensed as a Life and Disability Analyst-one of less than 40 in the state.
Neil has spent most of his Insurance career as an independent agent in the area life, health, disability and Long Term Care insurance sales, working with individuals and small businesses.
Since 2009, Neil has focused his practice on Consulting and Expert work in the area of Elder Financial Abuse prevention. Neil has worked with several District Attorney Offices as a member of their Financial Abuse Specialist Teams, has testified in both Criminal and Civil cases, and works with the Investigative Unit of the California Department of Insurance.
Neil has also helped draft, and has testified in favor of, insurance legislation, which has helped strengthen financial protection for California Seniors. He recently stepped down from the California Department of Insurance Curriculum Board after 12 years of membership- 6 years as its Chairman.
Connect with Cameron Huddleston:
Connect with Cathy Sikorski:
The Get Ready Money Podcast and its guests do not provide investment advice. All content is for educational purposes. Guest opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Get Ready Money Podcast and Tony Steuer.
Are you looking to get ready, be prepared and transform your financial future? Then you've come to the right place. This is the Get Ready Money Podcast with Tony Stewart, where Tony has insightful conversations with financial experts who are changing the way we think about money. Catch up on the latest financial trends and hear practical advice from Tony and his expert guests so you can build healthy habits that work, Be empowered with tips for implementing small changes that can have a big impact on your financial future. So sit back and get ready to hear from today's guest.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Get Ready Money podcast changing the way we think about money. I'm pleased to be joined today by Cameron Huddleston, author and director of education and content at Careful, kathy Sikorski, author and speaker, and Neil Granger, consultant and expert. In this special episode, we'll be discussing changing the way we think about elder financial abuse. Welcome everyone to the Get Ready Money podcast. Thanks for being here today. Thanks, happy to see you. Yeah, well, you know, let's jump in with a quick round of introductions a little bit about yourself, your origin story and your connection to this topic of elder financial abuse. Cameron, you want to kick off.
Speaker 4:Sure, my, my superhero origin story, or is it like your evil bad guy origin story? Or is it like your evil bad guy origin story? My 12-year-old son references this often Not my story, but like the evil bad guy's backstory. But I don't consider myself an evil bad guy. I'm fighting those evil bad guys because I was a caregiver for more than 12 years for my mom who had Alzheimer's disease and had to protect her from scammers, and I'm trying to protect people every day from scammers. And my job? I've been a financial journalist for more than 20 years. As you mentioned, I'm now the director of Education and Content and Careful, which is a service that was built to protect the daily finances of older adults and support coordination with their family caregivers, and so I write a lot about how to avoid scams and fraud, how to protect your finances as you age, and so it's something that's very near and dear to my heart.
Speaker 2:Thanks for being here, kathy.
Speaker 3:Hi everyone. I am an elder lawyer by trade, but I spend a lot of my time speaking in corporations, mostly about the work and caregiving issue and how that's critical to us, acknowledging that we have a lot of family caregivers out there who are needing a work-life balance, help at work. In order to be able to do this, I myself have been a caregiver for eight different family members and friends over the last 30 years, and so this fraud question and abuse question comes up. More than people know and, of course, I'm sure Cameron will tell you once you start the conversation all of a sudden you hear more stories and more stories and more stories right about how it's affected families. So I think it's important to keep educating people about how it's out there, what they can do about it and maybe just some knowledge of how it can come to their front door.
Speaker 2:Definitely.
Speaker 5:Neil yeah, I'm a. I'm a been a life insurance person here in California for 42 years. I met Tony about 13 years ago. Tony, we were both members of the California State Department of Insurance Curriculum Board where we reviewed and set the standards for educational guidelines in California set the standards for educational guidelines in California. I spent most of my early career as an independent life, disability and health insurance agent and did that with a brief stint at a company where I was a team leader on what's called impaired risk underwriting and came back outside. It's a lot more fun to work for yourself. I'm sure everyone here can agree.
Speaker 5:Stepped back from selling insurance in about 10 years ago and became interested in elder financial abuse and so I began doing expert witness, expert testimony in the area of insurance and annuity fraud especially. My area of specialty really is commercial enterprises that are focused upon the serial abuse of elders. So I worked a lot with a couple of the nonprofits in this area doing presentations on trust mill scams, on reverse mortgage and cross-selling of annuities I worked with. I did a lot of testimony for DAs. I've testified in criminal court in San Diego. I've testified in also in San Mateo County. I worked with about five or six counties around here with their specialists or DAs on elder financial abuse matters, and so my real area of interest and expertise is that, in addition to that, I was able to get involved in a lot of the legislation that has been done in California protecting seniors from, in particular, annuity fraud.
Speaker 5:I was part of a team that reviewed and drafted AB689, which eventually turned into the annuity suitability guidelines for the state of California. I worked with the state assemblymen on a bill that would mandate a 60-day race period for seniors and also a mandatory third-party notification so that if a senior missed out on their payment on a policy, somebody else would get notification that the policy hadn't been paid. We also worked a lot on changing how annuities were treated under Medi-Cal and also look back periods. The latest thing I got involved with was a group out of San Francisco, a nonprofit there, where we worked on veterans aid and attendance scams and trying to get the word out with that, working with the Veterans Administration and trying to educate people on particularly seniors on how to avoid those. In addition, I do a lot of expert consulting now where I work with litigating attorneys. I work with some public attorneys helping to try to bring down these and especially the people who are doing this as a business practice, who are serially abusing hundreds of people.
Speaker 5:So that's me.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Thanks everyone, Just to share myself is.
Speaker 2:My background is I've done some litigation, consulting Neil and I actually, I think, worked together on some cases, but I did a lot of work with best practices in the insurance industry and for insurance agents and you know this topic just became very important to me because we don't talk about it and the things that I saw out there. You know I also worked with some nonprofits. Unfortunately, there's some great plan giving officers if there's any plan giving officers listening to this episode is this is something you can really do to make a difference at your nonprofit is to be aware of elder financial abuse. So hopefully this episode will be useful to financial advisors, insurance agents, trust officers you know cross spectrum plan giving officers, you know, to be able to spot what's going on with elder financial abuse, because you can step in and you can make a difference. So you know, let's start off by defining elder financial abuse. Who'd like to take that on? What is elder financial abuse?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, I'll just tell you from experience, right In my world, the law world, where I see it is often based on the misuse or abuse of the power of attorney right that somebody has given to who they thought was a trusted financial person, or in fact they changed that power of attorney to someone who is not a trusted financial person. But because that document is so important in elder law work, we can't really be without it. But it is certainly open for abuse because it is also a very, very strong and powerful document, right? So that's where it happens from the legal side is it's often abuse of or use of that document in an inappropriate way.
Speaker 4:So that's one definition I would say, likely be abuse by someone who's known to the victim a family member, a friend, a caregiver which is usually well, not usually. It is the most common form of elder financial abuse. Most of the perpetrators are known by victims, but you also have the stranger perpetrators, the scammers who are out there, who are calling up people or sending them text messages or sending them emails and getting them to hand over money or hand over their personal information, and so that's another type of elder financial abuse. That's what we see in the headlines all the time. You know, a woman lost all of her life savings to a scammer who convinced them they were with the fraud department of their bank and they had to empty out their bank account because it had been hacked and they had to hand over the money for safekeeping. I mean, you look at any major news publication and you're going to see a headline any given week about someone who's lost their savings to a scammer. And so it can happen by by strangers or by people you know.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately, neil. You want to add in anything?
Speaker 5:Yeah, I totally agree with what you guys are saying, cameron. I know that kind of retail level scam and the known perpetrator. That is the most common kind. I spent a couple of years working with something called the Forensic Center over in San Francisco and it's a private public partnership of adult protective services, district attorney, police, social workers. About Cameron, which is that a family member, a known person taking advantage, and a lot of times you know the absence of any kind of a legal document that allows somebody to come in and try to make things right. So that's one kind. I've seen a lot of that. My area is more. There are two other kinds that I kind of identify People who make small-time operators, who make a business practice out of taking advantage of seniors and fleecing them their money.
Speaker 5:And they typically will do this by yeah, either the text messages, the phone calls. In the old days it used to be the senior seminars They'd all go to Red Lobster and they'd get the insurance guy in there and he would talk about how they're going to lose all the money and all that and then they would sell them a trust and then the insurance agent would get a hold of the trust using the assets in the trust would then sell them annuities by converting all the assets, the trust, into annuities, and so that's kind of the serial operator. That's pretty big time here. And then there are the third part. The third type of predator are the insurance companies, which historically there have been instances where insurance companies have actually set this whole system up, where they work with what's called a field management organization to guarantee shelf space for their products. In exchange, they either look the other way or they encourage these individuals to do trust mill presentations and sell their products.
Speaker 5:So those are the three my experience, and maybe you guys have an idea on this my experience is that major financial institutions, major companies, don't talk much about the institutional financial elder reviews. They talk a lot about the individual financial elder reviews. Is that your experience? You guys? Absolutely, I would say.
Speaker 3:In fact, they talk a lot about the individual financial elder abuse. Is that your experience, you guys? Absolutely, I would say. In fact, it's a God. Forgive me, but it's a way to shift blame. That's exactly what it is, because if I shift the focus to even strangers calling you on the phone and telling you to go to gift cards at Target right and send them, if we keep shifting the story to the individual scammers who nobody knows or even you know, your uncle, who you made power of attorney, something like that then we skip over and I would say that is probably dramatically done.
Speaker 3:We skip over the institutionalized financial abuse of elders. It's funny to me, neil, that you mentioned that. You know the dinners where they make a trust and then they you know they use the funds and the trust, because my biggest for many years was they charge them two, three $4,000 to create a trust and nobody ever funds the trust. Nobody puts anything in the trust. It's a leather notebook with a bunch of pieces of paper, that's all it is. Also, you know another kind of scam, for want of a better word.
Speaker 5:Or they don't transfer the assets into the trust.
Speaker 3:That's what I mean. That's what you're talking about. I'm sorry. Yeah, exactly, it's a switch over here. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2:Neil, would you mind defining a trust mill?
Speaker 5:Yeah, what a trust mill is is obviously I'm a big believer in trusts, so let's start with that. The trust mill is a scheme whereby typically it's going to be an insurance agent. It's a methodology where an insurance agent uses the creation of a trust as a pretext for selling annuities, and typically they're going to be indexed annuities. Tony and I've had lots of conversations about indexed annuities, anyway. So what they'll do is they'll contact seniors. They can do it any number of ways, like Cameron, you were mentioning it text message, phone call. Senior seminars used to be very prevalent and those were done with the sponsorship of some major insurance companies. You get a group of seniors together and you have the insurance agent there who's going to scare them and they're going to use. They're going to say you know, you're going to lose all your money, your kids aren't going to go to college, you're not going to be able to take that cruise. You wanted All this stuff because the government's going to get you. They're going to get all your money, you know. And so you need to set up trust. And oh, by the way, this guy over here, he's an attorney, he can do the trust for you, and the attorney and the insurance agent are working in collusion with each other, and the trust creation with each other and the trust creation of the trust itself is a pretext. They really don't care about it. Like you said, kathy, they don't fund them.
Speaker 5:What they want to know is they want to get a list of assets. Once they have the assets, then they turn it over to the insurance agent, who then comes and says well, we have to come over to your house and we have to sign the trust. And I'm a notary. A lot of insurance agents who are notaries out here, there were out here in California. So I'm a notary, I'm going to come over and I'm going to sign the trust documents with you.
Speaker 5:A senior says well, of course, come on over. What the insurance agent has done is gone through the assets and the intent of the signing of the documents, which only pays 15 bucks, a signature right, is not to sign the documents, it's to sell them annuities. And so what they'll do is they'll come in and say an agent will come in and say wow, you've got $200,000 in a passbook savings account. You know you should put that into an annuity. And so they use the creation of the trust and the disclosure of the assets as a pretext for selling life insurance, and oftentimes, in the cases I get involved with, they've taken every penny the senior has and put them into a really expensive annuity with really high surrender charges where they can't get to it and the senior ends up becoming impoverished because of this.
Speaker 5:So that's kind of the long version of what a trust note is.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I know in California I had a colleague who was an estate planning attorney, who was active with the state bar, and they were really trying to go after this. But it's really hard to hit this stuff. It's like whack-a-mole.
Speaker 5:Yeah, one thing we were able to we were one thing we were able to do in california was we were able to get um, uh, passed into law that insurance agents cannot deliver trusts. It's against the law in california for an insurance agent to deliver a trust. That was one of the big pieces of legislation that we all worked on to try to get passed. Now attorneys can do that. If an attorney is an insurance agent, then they can do it. It makes sense. You're drafting the document, you can have it signed, but insurance agents were precluded from that. So there was a bunch of legislation that was done here in California back over the last 10 years that have helped protect seniors against that. No cross-selling of reverse mortgages and annuities. There was a ton of that when I first started doing this in about 2010. But the big law that we got passed was the insurance agents not being able to deliver trust, because it was just epidemic here.
Speaker 3:Sorry if I'm rude.
Speaker 2:It's disgusting. It's disgusting. That's crazy.
Speaker 4:You go, you attend this seminar, you get the mailer and you think these are financial professionals, these are people you can trust to help you make the right decisions to protect your money. And then you go into these meetings and you leave, like you said, Nia, with all your money tied up and a product that you didn't need in the first place, and then you can't get to it. But these people are telling you that they are experts, they're the financial experts. And how do you know like how would really the average person know that they're being sold into something that they don't need? That's going to hurt them financially.
Speaker 3:So for me, that begs the question what can we tell our elders to do on a regular basis and their caregivers, right? And their caregivers whether that's just me taking my mom to the doctor's office or grocery shopping, but she lives by herself in her house right? What can we put out there on a regular basis as a list of things that you should be looking for, that you can use as tools to protect your loved ones, right? Because that's really what we're saying. There's scammers everywhere. There's, there's people everywhere who are doing whatever they can, especially to get elders money and, and, quite frankly, elders as a, as a, as a demographic, are very trusting people because they grew up in a world of trust. People didn't do this kind of thing to their knowledge or, or you know, in their past. Plus, they also are the first real generation with probably wealth, like their parents probably didn't have this kind of wealth, even even they didn't have a couple hundred thousand dollars in investments or just a savings account their mothers or their grandmothers, so. So we have to alert them, but we also have to alert their caregivers, right, and give them some real tools and, quite frankly, I think, make them very aware of the fact that you have to be on this all the time, even if you're a long distance caregiver.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, let's jump in. Is you know? Let's talk about it. What are some actual prevention tips? What would y'all recommend to people?
Speaker 3:So I feel like Cameron would have some good stuff. Yeah, that's up to you, Cameron.
Speaker 4:What Kathy said about communicating is really important. Adult children, family members, need to be communicating regularly with their aging loved ones, and for a lot of people that's really difficult. Because you, if you grew up in a family where you didn't talk about money, how do you now tell mom and dad, hey, let's talk about your money. There are people who are trying to take it from you. You know you don't want to, you don't want to scare them, but at the same time, you want them to be aware and you might be afraid to have the conversation and so but I tell people this all the time that talking about scams and fraud is actually a really way, easy way to start having those money conversations with parents, because any of us can become a victim. We're all targeted by these scammers. We might not all be targeted by people who are trying to sell us annuities. You know, we're not in a situation where we have a caregiver coming into our home every day who might try to get that power of attorney document rewritten so that their name is on it. But everyone's targeted by scammers, and so that's an easy way to start having a conversation with mom and dad or your grandparents, you know, is to say hey, I just got this call from someone claiming to be with the IRS. Have you gotten this call? Let me tell you about it. Talk to them about scams that are circulating. Talk to them about the red flags. Government agency is never going to call you up. The IRS is not going to call you up. The IRS is not going to call you. They communicate by mail. They're certainly not going to ask you to pay your taxes with cryptocurrency, and social security is not going to ask you to go get a gift card because, for whatever reason, your account has been disabled and you've got to now pay with some sort of gift card to get your social security benefits again, you know. So warning them of those red flags is a great way to start having these conversations, and then you can get into the ways they can protect themselves.
Speaker 4:Hey, let's check your credit reports. We can go to annualcreditreportcom to get free copies of your credit reports to see if there are any fraudulent accounts that have been opened in your name. Someone might have stolen your personal information and they've got accounts and they're racking up debt in your name and you don't even realize it. Or let's make sure you freeze all of your credit reports so that if someone does get your personal information, they can't open accounts in your name. Let's get you to meet with an elder law or state planning attorney so that you can draft these very important legal documents that name someone to make financial decisions for you and name someone to make health care decisions for you, so that you're deciding who makes those decisions.
Speaker 4:Because if you don't have these documents in place, something happens to you and you can't have these documents in place. Something happens to you and you can't make decisions on your own. You don't want someone you don't trust stepping up and trying to take control of your finances. So let's make sure these documents are in place now while you can make the decision. So you know, starting that conversation by talking about scams and fraud and then launching into more conversations about how your parents or your aging loved ones can protect themselves.
Speaker 3:I'm going to take it even a step further to say that if you, if you haven't gotten, she's right. These are the conversations nobody wants to have. If you have not yet had this conversation, even about your documents, take your parents with you and go get your own documents and tell them this isn't for you, it's for me. I want you to hear everything that lawyer says talking to me about what I'm going to do, and then, if you like it, we'll do you, but it's a way to get reluctant people into the room with an expert who can give them some ideas about how you know those documents, why they're important, et cetera. Okay, and then you have those in place.
Speaker 3:The other thing that Cameron said, which I think is so, so critical, is you have got to keep in touch with your elder loved one. If they're around the street, fine. If you talk to your mom every day, great, but you have to ask what's going on. Who did you talk to? You know, and honestly I do not object to you practicing with them. Mom, listen to this. I'm going to tell you the conversation that I read about today.
Speaker 2:Let's do it like it's you.
Speaker 3:Hello, mrs Smith. You know I heard that your social security account is in trouble. I work for the Social Security Administration and I need you to go to Target and get six gift cards. Mom, what are you going to do? You're going to hang up and you're going to call me every single time. You're going to hang up and you're going to call me. You have to make a concrete plan about how they can protect you. You're going to a meeting at Red Lobster with these insurance guys. I'm going with you if you live close by. If not, I want you to take your friends. I'm going with you If you live close by. If not, I want you to take your friends. I want everyone to go If you insist on going. And before you do anything, you call me and we'll talk about what they said. Like you have to be that invasive I don't know what the word is, but I'd say proactive.
Speaker 3:Thanks, neil, you're nice, you're a nice guy and the other thing is know their banker, know their banker Because these people go to the bank. When my mom died, those people at the bank were so sad because she was there all the time. It happened to be my bank too, so I also knew her banker because they were my banker. It worked out that way. So I knew her banker because they were my banker. It worked out that way. So I knew her banker right. But if my mom would go, would go there and take five thousand dollars out, they probably would ask her what, what's going on, marianne? What's happening?
Speaker 4:yeah, I want the bank to know you too, because if someone else shows up yes, then a red flag is going to be raised for them and they can say this. This isn't Kathy, yeah, this isn't your daughter Kathy.
Speaker 3:Who's this?
Speaker 5:person who wants you to withdraw cash Right. I think what you both said is just extremely, extremely important. I think. I'm the only senior on this webinar, so I think you're mistaken, I think why you think we? Have such great cameras is because, they do great things.
Speaker 5:I would tell you that that is the most. The communication is the most important thing, and inserting yourself somehow or another into the process is extremely important, and we did that both with my mom, with my in-laws, and we have a couple of friends who are older now, who are not as sharp as they used to be, but especially. But you know, for example, like my wife and I went away for three or four days and we called our kids and we said here are all of our estate documents. They're sitting on top of the dining table, so you know if we don't make it back, you look through them, but they know what's in there, they know what we're doing. But, more importantly, you know, with our folks, as I did take, we took care of what five people altogether. It's like, no, you have to talk to us. No, you can't. You know, let's go to the attorney with. Let's go to the bank together, let's go to the attorney together. Therefore, I want to hear the questions, I want to know, because seniors are extremely vulnerable and the important thing to remember is these scammers they're a lot better at ripping people off than seniors are at being ripped off, because they do it for a living and so they're pros, you know.
Speaker 5:I have a second to tell a quick story. So Prescott Cole, who is a senior staff attorney at a local non-profit where they're they're kind of in the vanguard of elder financial abuse prevention, up here, he and I were asked by a congresswoman to do a presentation. We have a scam presentation. We do where we say this is a presentation, it's a complete scam. Everything we say is going to be a lie. We want you to know what it's like. We're going to tell. So we go up, we do this 20 minute presentation about a trust mill. It's a, it's a trust mill. And so at the end of it, prescott says okay, now would the authorities come and arrest us.
Speaker 5:This is what we said, this is what we did. These are all lies here. They are one by one by one, and we think we're feeling really proud of ourselves. Until we got off stage. We walk off stage and at our table are 20 seniors who are saying things to us like oh, I need to talk to you. You know, my husband just left me $2 million and I need your help. They didn't know it was a scam. They thought it was real. I did it for the Napa County DA and half the people in there are like, oh, that sounds pretty good, I'm like no. Oh, that sounds pretty good, I'm like no. So it just outlined to me, it underlines to me what you, aaron and Kathy, are saying, which is you have to communicate, you have to be in the middle of it, whether you like it or not.
Speaker 3:You have to be, because the other side of this coin which I really want to bring up and it's probably a whole other class, tony is there are good things about annuities, reverse mortgages. You know there are tools in a toolbox that some people really do need and trust that they can and have to use right. And so the problem is distilling the situation with your family to make sure that you are getting and using the proper tools for whatever your goals are Right. And and so the pendulum swings all the time and sometimes, unfortunately, people, people, family members especially Cameron is what I'm thinking who are actually doing good good end up being accused of doing fraud or abuse when they're not doing that at all. Say, they're trying to get someone on Medicaid right and so they inappropriately don't do the correct look back period thing, whatever right. And so we as professionals in this area, continue to walk a fine line of these are the scams, these how they work, but everybody who's doing financial advice is not a horrible person and is not trying to steal your money.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and I think that's the danger, and that's the sad thing is that people who are doing good work are painted with that same kind of broad brush. I mean, you know, I'm an insurance agent. I mean, you know, can you?
Speaker 3:you know, I'm a lawyer.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I know. So you know it's like, oh my goodness you know, but it makes it. It makes it hard for good people to do good business because of the bad.
Speaker 2:Well, let's talk about that for a minute. So you know there are a lot of financial planners who check out this podcast and members of the insurance industry. How can you, as an advisor, help your clients and distinguish yourself?
Speaker 3:I wanted to ask Neil, and even Cameron, how do you in your, in your spheres, prepare your people or tell your people you know to be aware of scams or to look for you know the bad thing about a financial advisor or something? I'm not talking about the typical, you know crypto, whatever. I'm talking about the real, true financial advisor conundrum.
Speaker 4:I'm talking about the real, true financial advisor conundrum and I tell people, if you want to work with a financial advisor, you want to look for a fee only, fiduciary, someone who's not a salesperson, someone who is not getting paid on commission only, because if they're only getting a commission, they have an incentive to sell you things and then you might be sold products that you don't need. And so, looking for that someone with that certified financial planner, that CFP designation, that's a good place to start. You know asking them how do you make your money? Are you a fiduciary? Are you required to work in my best interest as your client? And if you're going to work with an insurance agent, I encourage people to work with an independent broker, someone who is going to look at products from a variety of companies they're not just working with one insurance company so that they can find what's best for you again, as opposed to just selling the products from one company so that they can make a commission.
Speaker 5:Yeah, that's great. I think also if you are an insurance agent or a broker. Oh, the other thing I thought of check their licensing. If somebody contacts you, first of all make sure they have their license number on any correspondence they give you. In California it's against the law not to disclose your license number. Check their licensing, check their disciplinary history. From the broker's side, if you're inviting somebody to come and revamp their finances, let's call it that. Tell them you want their kids there. Tell them that you want to make sure everybody you know. Tell them that you know you want to make sure everybody knows what you're doing. And and uh, cause a lot of. What these, these, uh, these uh predators are good at is isolating the senior. And all of a sudden you sit in there and your mom has a different lawyer, has a different accountant, has a different insurance agent and they won't talk to you. So that again it comes back to that communication. But yeah, I think that's really true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for me the core is for people to be curious and to really ask questions. But one thing I've seen a lot is, you know websites will look like the person is doing one thing, but then you find out that they're really doing something else. They're advertising themselves as a financial planner, but when you look at what they're doing, they're selling annuities. So that's a real good baseline. So if you're a financial planner and your client is working with somebody else and they're talking about annuities, is that person really being upfront with what they're doing? I mean, that's a pretty clear red flag. And that gets back to what you're talking about, neil, is you know Google the person? You know Google them and see. Google their name and complaints. See what comes up. You know that's a really good way to do it. It's just to be curious and to trust your gut. Oftentimes I've seen in some of these cases, you know where I'll talk to somebody who's been a victim later on and they'll say well, you know, I kind of had a bad feeling about this. And then it gets back to what the three of you have been talking about is they didn't talk to anybody about it, they didn't follow their gut. So sometimes you know that's not an easy thing to do. But, you know, follow your instincts and then ask the question. Don't just leave it there with your instincts. Be curious.
Speaker 2:The other thing I've seen financial predators do is to pressure people with time. It's? You know you have to do this right now. Oh, I want to talk to my kids about time. Is you know you have to do this right now. Oh, I want to talk to my kids about? Oh, you know you don't have time to bother your kids. They're going to be busy, you know. So that's that's a red flag for me. So this has been an awesome conversation. So, you know, let's close out, you know, with your quick number one takeaway or tip, what you really want people to know to help them be aware of elder financial abuse.
Speaker 5:I would just say really quickly that it's communication, that proactive communication between generations and disclosure of what you're doing and don't trust you. Don't no hurry, don't trust anything. You don't know, get help.
Speaker 3:I would say really just to add to that, in your family, make sure you have trusted people and make sure you make it abundantly clear especially if you have elder parents or an elder that you're dealing with, that they always, always, always contact you before they make any financial decisions, especially if they're being contacted by strangers. But just in general, let you know that if it's a new world for you to have your kid along with you, then so be it. But this is how we're going to protect you. Take your trusted people with you wherever you go, whether it's just by phone or just by communication. It's really critical.
Speaker 4:And if you are the adult child, pay attention to changes in your parents' behavior. If you know, mom and dad have always been able to pay the bills and now they're complaining that they're having a hard time making ends meet, that could be a sign that they've been taken advantage of by a scammer. If they're talking about a new love interest, ask questions when did you meet this person? Have you actually met in person? Pay attention to those changes in behavior because it could signal that something is going on and that you need to get involved in that quickly to protect your parents if there is exploitation going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's awesome advice and that gets to communication, paying attention, asking questions, being curious, being connected so that's awesome, and advisors can also do that with their clients. Is you know? Is your client you know? Are they moving assets to another financial planner? That's a sign. Are they moving their bank accounts? Those are all signs. So this has been awesome to and about your resources, cameron, I want you to go first, because what you're doing with Careful and with your book, I think is really important for people to be aware of.
Speaker 4:Sure. So the website for Careful is GetCareful, with two L's GetCarefulcom, and that'll provide information about what the Careful service is. And we actually do partner with financial institutions and wealth managers to provide our service for their customers and clients, and we have lots of articles on the site that are targeted to consumers older adults and their caregivers to help protect their finances. And then you can find me personally at CameronHuddlestoncom.
Speaker 2:Awesome, and just a shout out to your book. What's your book about?
Speaker 4:Oh, it's Mom and Dad. We Need to Talk how to have Essential Conversations with your Parents About their Finances.
Speaker 2:Yep, which is perfect for what we've been talking about. Kathy, you've got a couple of books too, you know.
Speaker 3:You can reach me at kathysikorskycom and my books are. The first one is who moved my teeth If you're familiar with who moved my cheese, it was a very big business book back in the 80s and 90s about how to adapt to change, and who Moved my Teeth is the same thing, but how to adapt to change with our aging and our parents aging, both legally and practically. My second book is 12 Conversations and each chapter is a conversation with somebody important about these issues. And each chapter is a conversation with somebody important about these issues your doctor, your lawyer, your elders, your mom, your dad and they're different chapters because mom and dad are two different people, right, your siblings, your work, who you can talk to about work, about the caregiving issues that you're addressing, and it's to help give you the impetus to have these hard conversations.
Speaker 2:Fantastic and Neil.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I typically mostly what I do now is consulting expert work. But you can go to my website, which is, oddly enough, I picked a really creative website, neilgrangercom Oddly enough, I picked a really creative website, neilgrangercom you can kind of read. You can read about what I've done and what I'm doing. I'm still active in certain arenas and I do still do consulting expert work. I no longer do testimony and you know, I have a book but I got it at the library, so I don't know if that's really very interesting to anyone.
Speaker 5:So, contact information's there If you'd like to contact me, you know I'm happy to answer any questions or anything.
Speaker 2:Fantastic and as always for everybody uh, watching and listening there'll be links to everybody's website and books and things, so you don't have to go back and listen and watch again. So that'll all be in the show notes and thank you everyone for joining us today. I really appreciate all of you being here today.
Speaker 3:Thanks for a really important conversation, Tony.
Speaker 5:It was really great to talk with all of you.
Speaker 4:Thank you, Tony.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and thank you everyone for tuning in to this episode of the Get Ready Money podcast. If you learned something today to change the way you think about money, please be sure to subscribe and tell a friend. Until next time, let's change the way we think about money. Thank you, you, you, you.
