Cybersecurity Strategies You Can Implement Today
By Kathy Longo, CFP®, CAP®, CDFA
Wednesday, 21 July 2021
Living in the digital age certainly has its benefits. Things like online banking, automatic bill payment, and mobile wallet apps on our smartphones add ease and convenience to our lives. They also make our personal finances more accessible to us. Of course, having so much of our personal information on the internet also opens us up to scammers who try to take advantage of online consumer financial data.
Below, we'll discuss ten cybersecurity measures you can take to help keep your financial and personal information safe and secure.
By Kathy Longo, CFP®, CAP®, CDFA
Tuesday, 25 June 2019
When we are young, it seems we and our parents will live forever. We don’t tend to spend much time on the harsh realities of what living a long life entails. Now, a lot of people are getting firsthand experience with the challenges of caring for elderly parents.
10% of adults aged 60-70 are caretakers to an elderly parent and the number jumps to 12% for adults over 70.1
Caring for a parent is straining both emotionally and financially for a lot of people. There will often be a breaking point where the current arrangement is no longer tenable and the parent may need more care than the children can provide, perhaps forcing a move to a long-term care facility or hospital. This can be a difficult and challenging conversation for family members to have, especially dealing with siblings who all have different ideas of what is best. This article will cover 5 tips to foster positive conversations and hopefully leave everyone walking away feeling like they’ve made the best choice possible.
While many people often look at their social life with a very different lens than their financial life, you might be surprised to know how closely connected they really are.
By Kathy Longo, CFP®, CAP®, CDFA
Wednesday, 19 June 2019
This connection applies whether you are highly social or not social at all – if you prefer meeting friends for dinner or going on a sunrise bike ride alone. Your social nature is directly related to how and what you spend money on and what your true relationship with money is. In this article, we will explore this theory and help shed light on how, perhaps, some tweaks to your social habits may have a positive impact on your financial life.
Loneliness
Lack of social interaction can have a substantial negative impact on your physical health. According to the American Psychological Association, loneliness poses a greater threat to public health than obesity.[1] In a New York Times article, psychologists and psychological studies were reported to have found that loneliness can impair health by raising levels of stress hormones and inflammation, which in turn can increase the risk of heart disease, arthritis, Type 2 diabetes, dementia, and even suicide attempts. With any health problems comes a cost, therefore, maintaining a healthy and active social life (especially as you age) helps to maintain your physical and mental health which in turn protects you from unwanted healthcare expenses.
Try to find opportunities throughout your child’s life to teach them sound money habits. They’ll thank you for it later.
By Kathy Longo, CFP®, CAP®, CDFA
Friday, 31 May 2019
My daughter Grace (13) recently read my book, Flourish Financially. She said the lesson that stood out most to her was a part that explained the cost of delaying your retirement savings. She found it fascinating and a little scary to think that her financial decisions today (at age 13) could actually have an impact on her 65-year-old self. I showed her a tool in the financial planning software that I use for my clients to demonstrate the cost of delaying saving for retirement. We put in her age and an annual savings amount of $1,000 and a desired retirement age of 65. The calculator showed that if she began today she would have $806,563 saved by the age of 65. If she waited until she was 23 to begin saving the same amount, she would only have $350,170. The fact that $1,000 a year and ten years could mean almost half a million dollars blew her mind! While Grace happens to have a financial planner as a mom, the reality is that there are daily opportunities for each of us to teach good financial decision making, and you don’t have to write a book to do it.
Dear Maddy, THE REAL WORLD - It’s Not That Bad…
By Kathy Longo, CFP®, CAP®, CDFA
Monday, 06 May 2019
I am so excited for my oldest daughter, Maddy, to graduate from the University of Wisconsin, Madison with a corporate finance major and wealth management minor this May. Although she initially thought the financial planning profession would be incredibly boring, Maddy took a psychology course that introduced her to the interesting meaning behind money, plus took an aptitude test that indicated financial planning would be a great fit for her interests and skills. I am excited that she has her first wealth management job and an apartment. I kept telling her about my excitement to see her “launch”. When Maddy asked if I could please stop talking about launching as she was really sad about leaving college. I held back from sending her the cost of her auto insurance rates as I was excitedly ready to take her off our policy and that this was all part of her launching process.
