Sunshine is often the best disinfectant. That couldn’t be more true as we launched our fourth season of the Money Series last week. For our season opener, I am proud to have revisited a topic that I believe is one of the most important we’ve ever covered; the prevention of financial scams perpetrated against senior citizens.

The best defense against this scourge is education and awareness. Too often financial scams go unreported due to embarrassment and fear. According to some studies, only one out of 44 cases of elder financial exploitation get reported. In other words, what we read in the paper is just the tip of an iceberg.

Despite the unreported nature of these crimes, I can say with total confidence that our public officials have upped their game since the Money Series first presented on the topic back in 2016.

Today, senior organizations and government departments have marshaled significant resources to both train fraud prevention specialists and encourage the reporting of these crimes. For example, AARP launched their Fraud Watch Network with a hotline at (877) 908-3360. Their hotline is staffed by volunteers who work with victims to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission that supports further prevention efforts.

Right here in our backyard, Grand Traverse County’s efforts are also commendable. They have a scam alert system that broadcasts warnings, by phone and by email, to our region’s seniors and caregivers. Signing up for the alert is easy, just visit GrandTraverse.org and follow the link to the No Scam Zone.

For our kick-off at the Money Series, we covered five of the most common scams to avoid. I’ll highlight one of them here and invite you to watch the full video replay posted on MoneySeries.org.

The “family emergency” scam is near and dear to my heart as it affected my wife’s grandmother a few years ago. This scam preys off of an inherent desire of many seniors to help those in need. It usually begins with an urgent call from an imposter, often posing as a grandchild, who is supposedly in need of help after an accident or an arrest. The scammer’s aim is always to get your money, and do it quick!

The surefire way to prevent financial fraud targeting seniors is to keep our lines of communication wide open. This is a perfect example of it taking a village to care for one another. By encouraging our area’s growing population of seniors to develop and maintain a vibrant connection to our community, we can not only prevent financial abuse but also meet a whole host of other vital needs.

Now, I cannot think of a more compelling reason to support the effort to replace our inadequate Senior Center in Traverse City with an intentionally-designed facility right in the heart of our community! Our Senior Center network is a public asset like none other and their effort for a new building sincerely deserves our county-wide, public support.

Jason P. Tank, CFA is both the owner of Front Street Wealth Management, a purely fee-only advisory firm and the founder of the Money Series, a non-profit program committed to providing open-access to financial education, for all. Contact him at (231) 947-3775, by email at Jason@FrontStreet.com and at www.FrontStreet.com

As has been our family’s tradition for nearly two decades, we spent last weekend on Mackinac Island. It was certainly a very busy place to relax, thanks to the invasion of the Republicans, their famous dignitary, and his Secret Service detail.

Our main event is a family bike ride around the island. And, since we’ve always had a young child (or three or four) along for the ride, a stop at the half-way point for an ice cream cone is required. Denying them, for any reason, just doesn’t feel like an option!

This year’s ride struck me as especially relevant to today’s economic situation. Our whole weekend felt under threat of rain, but enough pockets of sun peeked through to keep us optimistic. It felt a bit like watching the global economy stumble while ours grinds forward.

Our weekend plans, similar to the way business leaders, consumers and central bankers feel today, were somewhat impacted by the weather forecast. Just like the Fed did last week with their second straight interest rate cut, we decided to plow ahead with our predetermined plans and mounted our bikes.

A debate has been going on for years about how the Fed and other global central bankers will deal with the next recession. In a world of super-low interest rates and super-large budget deficits, the fear is the traditional tools of interest rate cuts and fiscal stimulus will be unavailable next time around. All that would remain would be the unconventional tool of quantitative easing and, possibly, even the untested tool of negative interest rates.

While the forecast is still uncertain, the future is fast approaching and the debate is growing more intense. Like children with thoughts of ice cream dancing in their heads, investors don’t typically sit around waiting for rate cuts. They often act up and force the action. So, the Fed is now pedaling around the island, too, and investors have a strong hunch about where they are going to stop.

As we approached the halfway point, our youngest knew we’d stop. It’s what we always do. We placed our ice cream orders just as we heard the thunder in the distance. Moments after we took our first licks, the rest of our family didn’t even hesitate and hopped back on their bikes.

After our ice cream bliss, and as the dark clouds grew closer, we finally headed back. Of course, the rain arrived immediately, and the cold wind began to really hit us in the face. As the Fed likely feels today, we weren’t at all dressed appropriately. And, just as the Fed so obviously wants for investors, even if it’s not their mandated purpose, all I wanted was to be a hero for my kid!

Wet and cold and pedaling uncomfortably fast, it was then that my daughter delivered her piercing wisdom, “Hey Dad, sometimes ice cream isn’t worth it!” It really made me wonder if the Fed was listening.

Jason P. Tank, CFA is both the owner of Front Street Wealth Management, a purely fee-only advisory firm and the founder of the Money Series, a non-profit program committed to providing open-access to financial education, for all. Contact him at (231) 947-3775, by email at Jason@FrontStreet.com and at www.FrontStreet.com

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked. “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” “How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice. “You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

Just as Alice ventured deeper into Wonderland, investors across the world are now entering a period of implausible madness as it relates to negative interest rates.

What once seemed utterly foreign to savers has now become a reality of epic proportions. My first mention of negative interest rates in this column was made in late June. Back then, about $13 trillion of debt around the globe was priced to produce less-than-zero return. Yes, we’re talking about a guaranteed loss to investors. Now, less than a few months later, yet another $4 trillion has been piled onto the mountain of negative-yielding government debt.

And, just as the Cat informed Alice that she’s as crazy as the others, the US now appears to be moving ever-closer to the same bizarre financial conditions we see throughout Europe and Japan. In less than a year’s time, the 10-year US Treasury yield has plunged from near 3.25% to under 1.5%. Sudden downward moves in interest rates like this are truly rare, and when coupled with an inverted yield curve typically indicates major economic weakness is on the horizon. However, this time, and for now, the stock market has simultaneously and substantially risen in 2019. This conundrum is quite palpable for students of market history.

As I’ve dug more deeply into the rationale of investors’ mysterious acceptance of negative yields, the understanding I’ve sought has not yet emerged. As Alice experienced first-hand, when faced with something you know to be crazy, others will work very hard to convince you, and themselves, otherwise!

For example, here is a fun way to convince you that negative interest rates are not so nutty. Faced with a negative interest rate in their savings account, a rational person would simply refuse to accept the slow and steady confiscation of their wealth by their bank and would instead withdraw their cash in order to bury it in their back yard or hide it under their mattress.

Of course, to truly safeguard your pile of cash – or your preferred store of value, such as gold bars or gems – you would incur some ongoing expenses to keep it secure. That expense could take the form of guns, building a tall fence, installing an elaborate security system or even hiring private security guards. Using the power of this logic, why is it so odd to think that you’d willingly pay your bank to hold your money in safekeeping?

And so, as Alice aptly noted, it appears things may keep getting “Curiouser and curiouser!” until investors eventually wake up.

Jason P. Tank, CFA is both the owner of Front Street Wealth Management, a purely fee-only advisory firm and the founder of the Money Series, a non-profit program committed to providing open-access to financial education, for all. Contact him at (231) 947-3775, by email at Jason@FrontStreet.com and at www.FrontStreet.com

We certainly live in peculiar and complex times. Today’s column offers two money tips. One involves a huge consumer privacy breach and the other involves the inexplicable plunge in interest rates.

Remember the highly publicized Equifax privacy breach back in late 2017? Equifax failed to protect the personal data of nearly 150 million people. To put that into perspective, that represents about half of the population of the United States. For a credit bureau entrusted with personal data on almost every consumer around, it’s safe to say it was a big deal.

Now almost two years later, Equifax has reached a settlement with both the federal government and all 50 states. As part of the settlement, Equifax has agreed to provide multiple benefits to affected people.

The most attractive benefit of the settlement is the offer to provide – for free – up to 10 years of credit monitoring. This is equivalent to about $1,200 to $1,800 of value. The government forced Equifax to pay their competitor, Experian, to provide the monitoring service for the first four years. And, among other offered benefits, those affected by the breach will also qualify for free identity theft insurance protection of $1 million.

To find out if you are eligible, go to EquifaxBreachSettlement.com. It takes mere seconds to check and only a few more minutes to file a claim for your benefits.

Speaking of free money, this brings me to my second tip.

Have you noticed what has happened to interest rates lately? If you haven’t, now is the time to take notice of today’s rock bottom mortgage rates. It might make financial sense to consider refinancing. This is especially the case for those who bought their home around 2010, 2013 and even in late 2017 when mortgage rates were much higher.

Here’s an easy example of the possible merits of today’s refinancing opportunity. Imagine you originally took out a $200,000 mortgage back in 2010 with a 30-year fixed rate mortgage of 5%. In this case, your monthly principal and interest payment is about $1,075.

After diligently making the last 10 years of mortgage payments, you’d still owe about $165,000 with 20 years left to pay. That’s just the perverse math of a mortgage during the early years. Fortunately, the principal paydown really accelerates in the later years.

Now, with the very recent plunge in interest rates, today it’s possible you could be offered a new 20-year mortgage rate of close to 3.5%. At this lower level, you could reset your mortgage payment to around $950 per month and save about $1,500 per year.

Keep in mind that banks won’t refinance a mortgage for free. The closing costs need to be closely reviewed and evaluated against your expected savings. Of course, be sure to shop around. And, remember the longer you plan to stay in your home the more compelling a refinancing becomes.

Jason P. Tank, CFA is both the owner of Front Street Wealth Management, a purely fee-only advisory firm and the founder of the Money Series, a non-profit program committed to providing open-access to financial education, for all. Contact him at (231) 947-3775, by email at Jason@FrontStreet.com and at www.FrontStreet.com

It’s that time of year when students start to pack their bags and head back to college. I remember the feeling, even if only vaguely. What I don’t remember, however, is the cost of college being so prohibitive for so many. It’s become a financial epidemic.

I must admit, I was incredibly lucky to earn my degree without being saddled with debt. Today, about 50 million people owe a collective $1.5 trillion in student loans. To put this into perspective, approximately one in three between the ages of 25 and 35 are grappling with student debt. Predictably, student loan default rates are expected to rise as the problem has grown over the decades.

Student loan debt and the cost of college looks destined to be a top issue in the 2020 presidential campaign. Most Democratic contenders support some form of student debt relief, if not outright debt forgiveness. Similarly, the leading candidates are also in favor of more affordable, if not outright free, college.

Today, about 20 million people attend public colleges and universities. Very roughly, the average cost of tuition and books is around $8,000 to $10,000 per year. This brings our nation’s annual tuition bill to about $150 billion to $200 billion. After counting the tens of billions of dollars in tuition support already provided by federal grants and many state and local initiatives, the price tag of a national free college plan represents less than 5% of annual federal tax revenues.

Further, if the currently outstanding balance of $1.5 trillion in student debt were wiped away, the one-time cost would be equivalent to absorbing just 18 more months of our federal government’s deficit spending at the current rate.

However, even these estimates don’t paint an accurate financial picture. The negative economic impacts of the current student loan debt issue are meaningful and have been building over time. Statistics show that more young people now choose to delay marriage, delay starting a family and delay buying their first home. The ripple effects of the student debt crisis on economic growth have been consequential.

I suspect if one were to properly model the economic boost provided by both a student loan forgiveness plan and a free college plan, the overall cost would likely be far less than feared. According to the Census Bureau, over a full lifetime, people with a college degree earn about 1.6 times more than those with only a high school diploma. The lifetime boost in income tax receipts would lower the projected price tag of these plans, even after ignoring the clear benefits that result from a more highly-educated workforce and society.

As we listen over the coming months to politicians argue over the fiscal and political feasibility of their many plans, my hope as a voter is we rely on robust economic analysis when evaluating these proposals. And, perhaps more importantly, I hope we work to remember a time when college was far more financially accessible. Amazingly, it really wasn’t that long ago.

Jason P. Tank, CFA is both the owner of Front Street Wealth Management, a purely fee-only advisory firm and the founder of the Money Series, a non-profit program committed to providing open-access to financial education, for all. Contact him at (231) 947-3775, by email at Jason@FrontStreet.com and at www.FrontStreet.com