Transcript
CFPB FinEx Webinar:  Managing Someone Else's Money
Thursday, November 12, 2020
Presenters:  Lisa Schifferle, CFPB; and Terri Stocki, Advantage Credit Counseling Service
Facilitator:  Heather Brown, Ed.D., CFPB FinEx Lead

≫Dr. Heather Brown:  Okay, great.  Appreciate the introduction.  We're going to move forward with our preliminary slides, and I'm going to introduce the speakers to you all.  And then we'll hear from both of our speakers for today.

I'd like to welcome everybody to our November FinEx—CFPB FinEx webinar entitled "Managing Someone's Else's Money.  We have today with us Lisa Schifferle.  You may recognize her name because she's done many webinars for us in the past, although she's somewhat new to CFPB right now.  She's currently a senior policy analyst for the Office of Older Americans, but she has spoken for us for multiple webinars, and Ms. Schifferle previously worked for the Federal Trade Commission as an attorney in the Federal Trade Commission's Division of Consumer and Business Education.  She also served as the FTC's Identify Theft program manager, and she'll be speaking on that topic in next month's session.  At the FTC, she regularly presented on scams, identity theft, and cybersecurity.  She also has litigated data security, privacy, and fraud cases.  Before arriving at the FTC, Ms. Schifferle spent 8 years at the Maryland Legal Aid Bureau as a staff attorney and supervising attorney.  She received her B.A. summa cum laude from Yale College and J.D. from the University of Virginia Law School.  We welcome Lisa Schifferle as a speaker, and we're also welcoming her to the Bureau.  And we're glad that we were able to get her excellent resources to join us.

We also have a stakeholder that is going to present to you about the work that's being done in the front lines.  Our stakeholder today is Terri Stocki.  She's a certified counselor and educator.  She worked for Advantage Credit Counseling Service in Pittson, Pennsylvania, but I believe she provided services throughout the East Coast and maybe beyond that as well.  She'll talk to us more about that.  I appreciate having her, and I welcome her.  And she's been very flexible with the schedule changes.  So we appreciate her flexibility and coming to us and presenting the information on what's going on with Advantage Credit Counseling Service.

My name is Heather Brown.  I am the CFPB FinEx program lead, and I am looking forward to hosting you all today.  Before we get started, I have to go through a disclaimer, and I'm just going to read through it quickly and then go through some preliminary slides.

This presentation is being made by Consumer Financial Protection Bureau representatives on behalf of the Bureau.  It does not constitute legal interpretation, guidance, or advice of the Bureau.  Any opinions or views stated by the presenter are the presenter's own and may not represent the Bureau's views.  

The inclusion of links or references to third-party sites does not necessarily reflect the Bureau's endorsement of the third party, the views expressed from the third-party site, or products or services offered on the third-party site.  The Bureau has not vetted these third parties, their content, or any products or services they may offer, and there may be other possible entities or resources that are not listed that may also serve your needs.

This document is used in support of a live discussion.  As such, it does not necessarily express the entirety of that discussion nor the relative emphasis of the topics therein.

We also frequently get questions about where or how people can get copies of the slide deck if they want a copy, and if you send an email, I'll give you the email in a second to cfpb_finex@cfpb.gov.  I'll show it to you in a little bit at the end of my introductory presentation.  You can request the slides for this event.

About the Bureau, our mission is to regulate the offering and provision of consumer financial products and services under the Federal consumer financial laws and educate and empower consumers to make better informed financial decisions, and that is the CFPB's website.  Everything that we talk about, all the resources that we show you on this webinar and others, all publications and articles, you can get to or order through that website.  So we encourage you to visit that many times and hopefully bookmark it.

We also have a wonderful coronavirus pandemic source of information on a web page where not only do we talk about our focus of protecting yourself financially from the coronavirus.  We have links to other agencies like CDC and Housing and Urban Development so that you can get additional information related to things that you might need to support you with issues that you're facing around housing as well as just understanding how to keep you and your business and the employees at your businesses as well as your customers and consumers safe.  So we encourage you to visit that regularly.  We do update things weekly on there and with new articles, blogs, information as things come out.  So we encourage you to use this as a one-stop shop for information on the coronavirus pandemic and how you can protect your finances and stay safe during this difficult time.

Also, this is a screenshot of the Adult Ed Practitioner web page, and the link is below it.  In the very top, you'll see you can get translations of this web page by clicking above, and the languages that are there, you can just click on the button for the language you want.  And you can get content in your language.  The top right also has the consumer complaint line that you can call.  If you have a customer or a client or anybody or even yourself and you've tried to resolve an issue with a financial institution and not had success in doing so, you can go in and file a complaint on line with CFPB, and you can also dial in to file the complaint.  And those complaints are dealt with by sending a request to the organization that's named in your complaint, and they have to respond to us within a couple of weeks and get back to us.  Sometimes they just get back saying they are looking into it, but it tends to get things moving and also keep a record of those.  And we do have a database.  If you look in our Data and Research section, you can find a database of all consumer complaints if you want to do research for a conference or maybe if you're doing education, if you're faculty at a university, whatever it is that you need to show about what's going on with finances and what individuals are bringing up in our complaint database.  All that information is there and public information, and you can download the database, and you can attach it to whatever tool you're using to do an analysis.  So I think you'll find that useful as well as practitioners.

In the middle of the right column, it's to find us.  So, if you got this email from somewhere other than a direct email from CFPB, somebody referred you to this webinar, please feel free to put your email in this box and sign up so that you can be on our mailing list.

At the very bottom on the right, it's almost cut off, but you can see it says "Join Financial Education Discussion Group."  If you go to this web page and click that, you can sign up to be in our LinkedIn page.  When I get your request, I will admit you to the group, and you can post announcements and start discussions and just interact with other practitioners through that tool.

Here are all the key links that I provided you, and the third link is the cfpb_finex@cfpb.gov.  Any questions you have about this session today, if you would like to get a copy of the slide deck or anything else that you want to know, feel free to send your email to that box, and I will answer it as quickly as I can.   And the next link under that is the LinkedIn group that we talked about and then our General Adult Ed web page. 

I skipped over, but I should have pointed out that the second link is how to order free bulk copies of all of our brochures.   Today Ms.  Schifferle is going to speak to you about some of the brochures available for managing other people's money, and you can go to this website, which is a vendor that sends out publications for us, and you can order bulk copies for classes or to keep in your office to give to clients or just one copy if that's what you want, although it's probably easier to download one copy.  And most of our publications that are also offered here are also downloadable somewhere on our website.

With that, I am going to pass the controls over to our speaker, and, Lisa, you should have received it now.

>>Ms. Lisa Schifferle:  Yes.  Thanks so much, Heather.  Hello, everyone.  My name is Lisa Schifferle, and I am now a senior policy analyst at the CFPB's Office of Older Americans, and thank you all for coming to this webinar today on the important topic of financial caregiving.

Right now, as you may know, there are millions of Americans who are managing money or property for a loved one who is unable to do so, and with the coronavirus pandemic, there may be more of us that are called upon to act as financial caregivers.  

So today I'm going to tell you about some resources that the CFPB has to support financial caregivers and practitioners like you who are working with financial caregivers.  These are resources that can help you have conversations with clients or with loved ones about planning for caregiving needs.

Now, Heather already told you a little bit about the Bureau and our main goals and mission, but let me tell you a little bit more.  The CFPB, as she said, regulates consumer financial products and services, and we also educate and empower consumers to make better-informed financial decisions.  So today we are here as part of the education portion of the mission, and I am, as you heard, part of the Office for Older Americans, and in that office, we develop resources to help protect older consumers from financial harm and also to help older consumers make sound financial decisions as they age.  We also help stakeholders like you by providing tools to support long-term financial security for older adults.  So today I am going to focus on the CFPB's "Managing Someone Else's Money" guide and other tools for financial caregivers.

Now, before I get into the tools themselves, let's just talk a little bit about financial caregiving and if you've been a financial caregiver, and some of you may have been a financial caregiver in a personal capacity in addition to advising people in your professional capacity.  So whether it's personal or professional, you know that managing money or property for a loved one can be very overwhelming for someone who's new to it, and as you can see from the two quotes on these slides, whether someone comes and is financially savvy or not, they still may need help when managing someone else's finances rather than their own. 

So, to help these financial caregivers, the CFPB created these four easy-to-understand guides that we call the "Managing Someone Else's Money" guides, and you can find them at this website here, consumerfinance.gov/msem.  We also have an introductory video there that you see on the screen that you can play to introduce you to the topic of financial caregiving and the guides, and what the guides do is they help financial caregivers understand their duties.  They provide tips and resources to help caregivers protect, invest, and manage money for loved ones.  They also include information on identifying benefits that the care recipient might be eligible for, like disability benefits or Medicare or SNAP, and they describe warning signs of financial exploitation, how to watch out for scams, and also provide information on where to get help.  And it's important to know that CFPB contracted and worked very closely with the American Bar Association Commission on Law and Aging to prepare these guides.

So I'm going to tell you and show you a little bit more about these guides and each of them and some of the information contained in them.  This is a picture of each of the guides.  There are different guides, depending on the type of fiduciary that someone is serving as.  We have one for agents under a power of attorney, one for guardians which in some states are referred to as "conservators," one for trustees, and one for government benefit fiduciaries.  So what I'm going to do today is talk about some of the duties that are common to all of these financial caregivers or fiduciaries and then explain some of the differences between the different types of fiduciaries.

So, first, what is a fiduciary?  You all probably know since you're in the field.  It's just a legal term for a financial caregiver or anyone who manages money or property for someone else.  The four types of fiduciaries we're going to talk about today are the power of attorney, which is someone who's named in a legal document to manage someone else's finances.  There's also a government benefits fiduciary.  This is when the Social Security Administration or Department of Veterans Affairs or Veterans Administration names somebody to manage the benefits that their agency gives out if the beneficiary is not able to manage them themselves.  There's also a guide for guardians and conservators who are named by a court and then a guide for trustees.  Now, trustees may be named in a legal document or in a court, but our guides focus on those types of trustees who are named in a legal document.  And we'll go into each of those in a little more detail too.

But, first, let me tell you about some of the duties of a fiduciary, regardless of which type of fiduciary you are, and here are the four main ones that we identified in the guides.  The first is to act only in the person's best interest; in other words, to avoid conflicts of interest.  The second is to manage the money and property carefully.  That includes compiling an inventory of money, property, and debts.  The third is to keep the money and property separate.  So the guides talk about how to title bank accounts and how to sign checks on behalf of the person the fiduciary serves, and finally, to keep good records, including receipts and notes even for small expenses. 

So let's talk about those duties in a little more detail.  First, act in the best interest.  This is really the key to being a fiduciary.  As I said, that means avoid conflicts of interest.  The guides talk about—they give a scenario, and the scenario in one of the guides surrounds Roberto.  So I'm just going to use the name Roberto for our purposes in terms of the purpose who is getting care.  So a conflict of interest might happen if you make a decision as a fiduciary about Roberto's money that may benefit someone else besides Roberto.  So, as a fiduciary, you have a strict duty to avoid those conflicts of interest or even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Now, sometimes people have good intentions, but they do things that they shouldn't, sometimes even inadvertently.  So the guides try to give people a few examples of possible conflicts of interest that people might not necessarily anticipate; for instance, involving cars.  Some people get confused about this.  Say you used Roberto's money to buy a car and you use it to drive him to appointments, medical appointments, but most of the time, you drive the car just for your own needs.  This is something that likely would be a conflict of interest.  Also, sometimes people may do business with families.  Say Roberto needs repair work in his apartment, and you as the fiduciary hire your daughter and pay her from Roberto's money to do the repairs.  This might be a conflict of interest, even though the work was needed, because it appears you may have put your own personal interest or your daughter's personal interest in conflict with Roberto's interest.  So those are just some of the examples of conflict of interest that the guide discusses.

Another part of this principle is not borrowing, loaning, or giving Roberto's money to yourself or to others.  Gifts might be allowed in certain circumstances, but it's really important to first check with the court or government agency and also with State law and the terms of any legal document or court order before doing any gifting or loaning from Roberto's money, and generally, just try to stay away from that.  And that's a lot safer.

Also, it's important to get approval before paying yourself for your services.  In some types of fiduciary relationships, you might be able to get paid, and some, you cannot.  But before you pay yourself for your services, you need to check with a court or government agency or, again, with State law and the legal document before making any payment.  So that's the first duty.

The second duty that the guides discuss are managing money and property carefully.  This involves making a list of money, property, and debts.  That list might include things like checking and savings accounts, cash, pensions, rental income, real estate, cars, jewelry, insurance, stocks and bonds, any other items of value.  Then it's important to protect that money and property.  It might be needed to put some valuable items in safe deposit boxes to change locks on property or to make sure the person's home or other property is insured, and also, it's good to make sure that bank accounts earn interest, if possible, or have low fees or no fees.  And, of course, it's important to review those bank and other financial statements promptly as a fiduciary, pay bills on time, and oftentimes people forget about paying taxes as part of their fiduciary role.  So it's important to think about that and see if that is included in your fiduciary duties, depending on the type of fiduciary you are.  Finally to check for benefits eligibility that may help the individuals, and the eldercare site, right there, eldercare.acl.gov, or BenefitsCheckUp.org are great resources in order to find out whether the person may be eligible for additional benefits that may help them.

Now, the third duty that I wanted to talk about and that's discussed in the guides is keeping money and property separate, and we emphasize that separate means separate.  So you shouldn't deposit Roberto's money into your own account or someone else's bank account.  There are some exceptions.  Like, the VA fiduciary program makes an exception to this rule of you're a fiduciary for your spouse, but otherwise, you shouldn't start depositing the person's money into your account just to make it easier for yourself because, again, that can lead to conflicts of interest.  Also, avoid joint accounts.  There may be some exceptions, again, if you're managing money for a spouse and you already had a joint account set up, but if you're managing money for someone else, sometimes people think the easy route is to open a joint account with them.  But that has a lot of potential pitfalls too, including the fact that there's joint liability and there's also successor liability upon death.  So just opening a joint account may not do what is intended.  So it's very important not to just open a joint account to try to make things easier.  The guides explain how to properly title accounts and sign checks, depending on the type of fiduciary you are.  Finally and relatedly, know how to title the property and how to sign documents, and that's going to vary depending on the type of fiduciary you are.  So that's why we have the four different guides that explain how property should be titled and how you should sign for each type of fiduciary, and again, for all of these, it's important to check State laws as well.

The fourth duty is to keep good records.  Keep a detailed list of everything you receive and spend.  The records should include the amounts of checks written or deposited, dates, reasons, names of people or companies involved, and other important information.  Also, keep receipts for everything, even small expenses.  Some people also recommend taking photographs of those receipts in case the receipts get faded over time, and it's probably best to avoid paying in cash if you can because that's harder to document.  And if you do pay in cash, then that's all the more important of the good recordkeeping and good notetaking.  So those are the four basic duties that the guides go over.

Next, I am going to talk to you about some of the differences between the different types of fiduciaries.  The first and most prevalent type of fiduciary is a power of attorney, and as I said, that's based on a legal document, and in it, someone, known as the principal, gives someone else, known as the agent, legal authority to make decisions about their money or property.  Often people make powers of attorney so that someone else can handle their money if they become sick or injured and can no longer manage their own finances.  In some States, they call it a "durable power of attorney," but a few things to note about the power of attorney is that it doesn't necessarily have to be activated immediately.  It can be set up so that it becomes active once you are no longer able to manage your finances.  Some people are reluctant to make a power of attorney or sign the document because they don't want to give over control yet, but it is a very good planning tool to give over and can be crafted so that the control doesn't go over until you are no longer able to manage your finances but that you have it there in place in case of the need for it in the future.  It also gives you control on who you pick to manage your finances as opposed to if you don't have a power of attorney in place, as you will hear later, and a bad accident happens or something, then you may end up having the court decide through a guardianship procedure who is going to be your power of attorney.  So power of attorney is really a very helpful planning document.

Also important to note that health care power of attorney is different from the financial power of attorney.  Sometimes people think, oh, I have the power of attorney, and it's really just health care.  They don't realize they don't have a financial one too.  So that's an important thing to remind people about when you are advising them.

Now, there's some additional power of attorney duties beyond those four basic duties that I explained for all fiduciaries.  First, it's important to read the power of attorney and do what it says.  That includes understanding when it becomes effective and doing only what you're allowed to do based on the document and not doing what it says you're not allowed to do.  Also, as much as possible, involve the person in the decisions about their money and property if they have the capacity to be involved in those decisions.  Finally, keep the title of the property in their own name.  This is so other people can see right away the money and property is theirs and not yours.  It goes back to that principle of keeping things separate.

Now, the next type of fiduciary I want to talk about is the government benefits fiduciary.  As I mentioned before, a government agency may appoint someone to manage income benefits for a person who's getting benefits but needs help managing those benefits.  The Social Security Administration calls that person a "representative payee," whereas the VA calls that person a "VA fiduciary."  The important thing to know about either of these government fiduciaries is they only have authority to manage the benefits checks of the agency that made the appointment.  So, if the beneficiary has other money or property that they can't manage, the fiduciary has to have some other outside legal authority to manage anything other than the benefits checks.  So, if they want to manage something else, they'll need a power of attorney or guardianship or some other legal authority; otherwise, this government benefits fiduciary just applies to the benefits checks.

Now, this is really just to emphasize that principle again because it's one that people oftentimes don't understand, which is that if you are a VA fiduciary or 17-a-Estradiol rep payee, you only have authority to manage those benefits from the agency, and on a flip side, if you're Roberto's agent under power of attorney or under a trust or if you're guardian, you don't have legal authority to manage his Federal benefits checks.  You still can be appointed representative payee or VA fiduciary by the agency paying the benefits, but just by virtue of being power of attorney doesn't give you necessarily control over those benefits.  Again, it's important to understand that a lot of people may not understand a lot of these fiduciary rules but especially these government fiduciary roles.  So these guides can be helpful to people in the role to share and help educate other people about the limits of their role and the extent of their role.

Also, if you are a VA fiduciary or SSA rep payee, there are some additional duties, especially since these are government benefits that are often designed for people who have very limited means.  So there's a greater emphasis in making sure that, first, the person's day-to-day needs for food, clothing, and shelter are met before you start spending any of their money on things like magazine subscriptions, cable TV, recreational activities.  First, make sure all the other basic needs are met before those other extra niceties are paid for.   Also important to pay bills on time and protect unspent funds.  Especially with the government fiduciary, if there's money left over, which is pretty unlikely, but if there is, you have to save it in a federally protected to State-insured interest-bearing account or U.S. savings bond, and the interest always belongs to Roberto.  Also important to consider Roberto's dependents and to protect that money from creditors' claims.  For these government benefits, the law protects Roberto's benefits, and creditors are not allowed to legally take his Social Security or VA funds.  So it's certain very limited exceptions.  If Roberto owes a debt to the Federal Government or for child or spousal support, then they may be able to get the benefits, but otherwise, if they owe money on their car or something else, that's money that can be protected from creditors.  So it's important to know that when managing those government benefits, and again, not to overlook taxes and not to sign any contracts or leases on Roberto's behalf.

Now, our guide also has information on how to title an account if you are a VA fiduciary, and this guide explains it.  But, basically, for bank accounts, it should be either the name of the beneficiary by your name as the fiduciary or your name as the fiduciary for the name of the beneficiary.  In other words, if I were managing my mother's VA benefits, it would be "Mom by Lisa Fiduciary" or "Lisa Fiduciary for Mom."  You don't have to worry about all that because it's all in the guide, but this is just to give you an idea of the types of things and resources that are there for people who are using the guide.

Also, for these government fiduciaries, there are extra reporting requirements.  You have to make annual reports on time.  You can get those reports through the Social Security and VA websites in terms of the forms that you need to use for reportings.  You also have extra duties to keep the agency informed about Roberto.  So you have to notify the agency about changes in Roberto's situation that might affect the amount of his benefits or how they're received.  For example, you should let them know if Roberto moves or changes contact information, has a change in income, will be out of the country for a certain amount of days, or no longer qualifies for benefits or also if he passes away.  Also, keep the agency informed about yourself, and let the agency know if you move or are no longer able to be Roberto's payee, or if you as a fiduciary are convicted of a felony or face criminal charges for a felony, you're supposed to notify them as well.  So those are some of the special additional duties of those government fiduciaries.

Next, I want to talk about guardians, or as I said, in some States, these are called "conservators."  A guardian of property is someone who the court names to manage money and property for someone else when the court finds that person can no longer manage their money or property themselves.  Like I said, some States call this a "conservator" rather than a "guardian."  Either way, these may be needed when an accident or a sudden illness happens and the person has no power of attorney in place.  Sometimes a guardian of a property is also appointed as guardian of the person.  So that means the guardian can make health care and other personal decisions as well as financial decisions.

Now, here are some special duties of a guardian beyond those four duties that all fiduciaries have.  The first is to read the court order.  Also, the court will likely require you to pay a bond.  So that's good to know as well, and you'll have to file an inventory and accounting with the court.

Now let's talk a little bit about what a trustee is.  As I mentioned, a trustee could be named either by a court or in a legal document.  Our guides focus on the ones that are named in a legal document.  Some are named in a revocable living trust to give someone else legal authority to make decisions about money or property in the trust if they can't make decisions themselves.  So the trust also specifies who gets the money or property after the person who created it dies, and the person who makes the decisions about the money is called the "trustee."  So that is the basics of the trust, and the trust also has—a trustee also has some special duties in addition to those four duties I described earlier.

Again, it's important to read the document, the trust document, and do what it says.  For a trust, the key thing is that you are only able to manage the money or property that's placed in the trust.  So somebody may have a whole lot of property and may just place their house in trust or their car in trust or $10,000 in trust.  If you're a trustee, you only have authority to manage whatever is in the trust, not all of their belongings.  So that's a key part of the trustee.  So it's very important to read the document and do what it says and understand the limits of your authority as a fiduciary, and also, again, understand when your duty as a trustee becomes effective.  It could become effective right away or when the person can no longer make their own decisions.  Again, you only have authority over the property actually transferred into the trust.  So it's important to look at what documents are covered by the trust or what property is covered by the trust.  Finally, don't pay yourself for the time you spend acting as trustee unless the trust or State law allows it.  You'll also have to show that your fee is reasonable if you are allowed to pay yourself.

Now, everything I've talked about has been based on our national "Managing Someone Else's Money" guide, which again are available at consumerfinance.gov/msem.  We also have State-specific guides because many of this guidance does vary based on State law, and we have State-specific guides for the six States mentioned there:  Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Oregon, and Virginia.  We also have professionals who have used our tips and templates to create their own guides in the additional States of Alabama, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, and Texas.  Now, if you all are in a State that's not listed there and you would like to create one for your State, we very much welcome that, and I'll have my contact information at the end.  You can reach out to me to discuss further how to do that.  We have a template online that makes it very easy to create your own State guide.

Here's where you can find all these guides, both the national guides and the State-specific guides.  As Heather mentioned at the beginning, you can get these in bulk, in English and in Spanish for free through our Pueblo distribution site there.  You can order large quantities there for free.  You can also download them or review them at consumerfinance.gov/msem, and then again, for questions about the guides or if you would like to either co-brand the guides or help create State guides, you can email us at olderamericans@cfpb.gov.

Now, what I've talked about so far has been talking about the roles of the caregiver, and that's a big part of preventing elder financial exploitation.  It's making sure that caregivers understand their duties and don't inadvertently exploit the person they're caring for, but there's other parts of financial exploitation, and as the caregiver, part of your duty is to watch out for the signs of financial exploitation and try to protect the person from scams.  So the guides also talk about some of those warning signs, how to protect the person, some of the common scams, and what you can do if you do expect financial abuse or exploitation.  So I'm just going to talk a little bit about that now.

Some of the warning signs of financial exploitation—you all have probably seen these if you are financial practitioners—is if there's money or property missing or sudden changes in spending or savings, there can be other sudden changes like trying to wire large amounts of money, suddenly using the ATM a lot, not able to pay bills that are usually paid.  Maybe the person stops receiving bank statements or bills because someone else has directed them to themselves, or if someone starts putting a name on bank accounts or other accounts that you don't recognize or starts making new gifts to friends or family members, a new best friend, or even changes beneficiaries of a will or life insurance or retirement funds, also if the person seems scared of an individual or seems like that individual is not letting them talk freely, those are some potential warning signs of financial exploitation.

So a few ways to try to protect the individual you're carrying for from scams, one is to put their number on the Do Not Call Registry, which we know is not foolproof, but it does help screen out some of those scam calls and also helps people realize that if they're still getting those calls asking for money after they're on Do Not Call, then it probably is a scam.  Also, if you're a financial caregiver, don't share numbers or passwords for Robert's accounts because then you are potentially subjecting him to the threat of identity theft, and also, it's important to watch out to make sure that you're not scammed yourself and look for signs that Roberto may have been scammed.

Here are some common examples of scams that may affect older adults.  You've probably heard of a lot of these.  There's the grandparent scam where somebody calls and pretends to be a grandchild in need, either they got in a car accident or they're stuck in jail and they need money wired right away or put on gift cards.  There's fake charity scams, IRS imposters, a whole variety of telemarketing scams, as well as lottery and sweepstake scams, and then identity theft to theft by caregivers.  So those are all things to keep an eye out for.

If you do discover what you think is elder financial exploitation or elder abuse, it is important to contact Adult Protective Services, and you can find their contact information at eldercare.acl.gov or by calling 1-800-677-1116.

Now, that covers the information in our Managing Someone Else's Money guides, but I wanted to tell you a little bit about some of the other resources we have that may be helpful to you as financial practitioners or as financial caregivers.  One is "Money Smart for Older Adults."  This is a great scam prevention series.  It covers common issues facing older adults and common scams that they may be faced with.  It's an awareness program that we developed with the FDIC, and it focuses on preventing elder financial exploitation.  It covers actually over 2 hours of content on scams and types of theft targeting older people, and for those who want to offer this training, it's really plug-and-play.  We provide an instructor guide that scripts the presentation.  There's a slide deck and a participant resource guide.  The resource guide is for older adults and their caregivers, and it's very readable.  It's in large-print font, and then the instructor guide would be for you all as financial practitioners and educators to lead the curriculum.  Again, this is available in English and in Spanish, and you can get it from our Pueblo distribution site in bulk if you would like or in just smaller copies if you don't want quite as many.

Another resource we have is "Protecting Residents from Financial Exploitation."  If you have a loved one or if you have a client living in assisted living or a nursing facility, we have a manual that helps identify warning signs that may indicate financial exploitation in those facilities.  The guide was designed for staff at these facilities, but they're also great resources for family caregivers and other practitioners to use.

Now, Heather mentioned at the beginning our coronavirus-related hub, but it really is a great source of information on up-to-date guidance on coronavirus-related scams and also housing assistance and care-related assistance.  For anyone who is facing eviction or foreclosure now due to the pandemic, there are a lot of great resources as consumerfinance.gov/coronavirus that I would encourage you to check out and have them check out.

Last but not least, we have our fraud prevention placemats and handouts.  These were originally created for meal delivery programs, but they became so popular that we started creating them as activities and also as posters.  They're easy to print or share online.  The latest one is on disaster scams, and then we had one in October on online safety in older adults.  So these are great resources that again can be ordered in bulk for free at our bulk order site. 

Again, if you want to contact us, I'll stay at the end of the presentation for questions, but you can also email us after the fact at olderamericans@cfpb.gov, or you can email me directly at lisa.schifferle@cfpb.gov.  And you can find all the resources that I mentioned on the Older Americans page, consumerfinance.gov/olderamericans.

So now I will turn it over to Terri for her presentation, and then at the end, I'll come back if people have questions.  So, Terri, I am passing it over to you.

>>Ms. Terri Stocki:  Okay.  Thank you very much.  Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for having me here today.  My name is Terri Stocki, and I am with Advantage Credit Counseling Service.  I'm going to go through each of these slides and tell you a little bit about our agency.

Okay.  So we were established in 1968.  We are a nonprofit 501(c)(3) credit counseling and financial education organization.  We are accredited by the Council on Accreditation.  We hold an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau.  We are also a member of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, which is the umbrella association for credit counseling agencies nationwide that promotes the highest member standards for credit counseling.  Advantage CCS has also been a designated certified comprehensive housing counseling agency by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

We do have five offices in Pennsylvania.  Our main office is in Pittsburgh, and we also have offices in Altoona, Greensburg, the Harrisburg area and Lemoyne, and in Pittston.  We also offer credit counseling in 39 States, and we also offer bankruptcy counseling in 44 States across the country.  So we do cover quite a large area.

Our services can be conducted several ways.  People can go on our website at www.advantageccs.org, by telephone, remote counseling.  Unfortunately, right now, we are not offering in-person counseling due to the pandemic.  So all of our services are done over the phone or remotely.  Also, everything is by appointment.

Contacting Advantage CCS, we have a very informative website at www.advantageccs.org, by telephone at our toll-free number, 888-511-2227.  We have office hours Monday through Thursday from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. and on Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and this is Eastern time.

And we can also be found on all social media outlets, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn.  We pretty much cover them all.

So a little bit about our services, we do offer a variety of services to help the consumer, and among them are free budget counseling.  We offer individual counseling and help people establish a budget and a monthly spending plan.  We help people set reasonable financial goals and develop an action plan to help our clients achieve them.  For people facing a lot of credit card debt, we have a program called Debt Management, where people can consolidate their date into one easy payment to enable them to become debt-free within 5 years or less.  Not everybody needs 5 years.  Everybody's situation is a little bit different.  People receive an interest rate concession to possibly lower their monthly payment.  There are minimal fees for this service.  Those fees will vary depending on the State where they live.

We also offer a credit report review service, where we can obtain the client's credit report and review it with them, make recommendations to repay the debt.  We can advise the client on resolving any errors and teach the client how to understand how to read the credit report.  There is a one-time fee associated with this program.

Housing counseling.  ACCS is a certified HUD counseling agency.  We offer housing counseling for Pennsylvania residents only, but we offer housing counseling programs ranging from delinquency/default counseling, first-time homebuyer education, and reverse mortgage counseling for seniors.

We also offer foreclosure prevention, which processes applications for Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency's HEMAP program, which stands for Homeowners Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program.  The homeowner must be referred to HEMAP by their mortgage lender.  If someone is at least 2 months past due on their mortgage, typically they receive a Act 91 notice, which is a formal notice of foreclosure on the home.  So, at that point, they would give us a call, and we could set up an appointment with one of our housing counselors to try and help save their home.

We also offer a variety of financial education programs at various community shelters and organizations.  Sometimes even classrooms, we can do some of those virtually as well, and we do offer pre- and post-bankruptcy counseling and education.  ACCS is authorized by the U.S. Trustee's Office to provide the mandatory budget counseling and personal financial management education for bankruptcy filers.

We also assist small business owners.  We have a coaching program.  It's a six-session program for small business owners to help them grow their business.  We also provide small business educational modules to assist small business owners.

And we also have some nice tools to help people with their budgeting and credit management.  We do have an online Budget Advisor, which you see on the screen here, and how it works, you do sign up for it, and you just input some basic information, such as the household income, your housing expenses, food, clothing, transportation costs, insurance and medical costs, any other miscellaneous expenses.  It really gets into a lot of detail.  If you're putting money aside for savings and retirement, your creditor information, other assets and liabilities, it offers a budget summary.  It gives you a custom action plan in a PDF format and a proposed budget option.  So it's a really nice tool to play around with and see where you're at financially.

The free Budget Builder, you receive a personal budget analysis.  It kind of helps you create "what if" budget scenarios.  You might find expenses you may not have even thought about.  It gives you a custom printable Action Plan report, and it helps you save money and free up cash once you see where your money is going, and the information is secure and confidential.

We also have a Goal Tracker to help you with your financial goals, and it gives you reminders and alerts for deadlines, helps you track savings for multiple goals, review the progress and helps with monthly graphs.  No need to link any personal bank accounts.  It's 100 percent safe and confidential, very simple, visual, and practical.

And at this point, if anybody has any questions, I'd be happy to answer them, and you have my contact information, my direct phone number and email address.  We also have monthly newsletters.  So, if you would like to subscribe, we have provided the link there as well.  Thank you very much, and I'd be happy to answer any questions for anybody.

I could turn this over to—okay.  What is the second budgeting tool?  There is a Budget Builder tool like the online Budget Advisor where you're going to enter all of your information, but that's also accessible from our website.

>>Dr. Brown:  Thank you so much, Terri.

>>Ms. Stocki:  Oh, you're very welcome.

>>Dr. Brown:  I appreciate that, and thank you also to Lisa Shifferle for a wonderful presentation, lots of good information you all both provided, and I'm certain that many of the things you talked about can be used, especially given the times we're in now.

I would like to just address a question I received about joining LinkedIn.  In order to join LinkedIn, you must go to our website, consumerfinance.gov.  Go to the practitioner link and Adult Ed page and sign up.  Basically, you go into—you can just click in to LinkedIn there and request to be added to it.  I can't guarantee that I'll be able to capture all the emails and everything that transferred over.  So the best way and the quickest way to get that done is to actually go to the cfpb_finex@cfpb.gov email box to do it.

I think we had question about the slide deck, and if you email the box, we will provide you a copy of the slides.  I'm trying to get back to the page that had all of that in there so that it will be left up.  There you go.  So the third email address, cfpb_finex@cfpb.gov, I can get you a copy of the slides, and right under that, it tells you the link to go to LinkedIn and request to be added to the discussion group.  I think those were the main questions I saw.  We can take questions now.  So, if you want to raise a hand, if you have a specific question, we can open the lines and give you a chance to answer the questions.  We do have a few minutes left.

Tracey, are you able to see if anyone has a hand up?

≫Ms. Tracey Wade:  Hi, Heather.  It looks like we have one that I can see.  Let me—Rachel, though I cannot see the entire last name, but I'll unmute the line, and then, Rachel, you can ask your question.

≫Attendee:  Hello.  Are you able to hear me?

≫Ms. Wade:  Yes.

≫Attendee:  Oh, great.  I was just asking whether you had a contact for the VA to request a fiduciary because I've had several clients who needed a fiduciary to manage their VA benefits, but I've been pretty unsuccessful in getting them through the right channels.  It seems like there's the benefit side of the VA, and then there's the fiduciary side, and it's not really clear even to the VA how they get a fiduciary involved.

>>Ms. Schifferle:  Sure.  Hi.  This is Lisa.  I'll take that question.  If you want to email me after the presentation at lisa.shifferle@cfpb.gov, I'll try to connect you with—we've been working with social workers from the VA recently and just did a webinar series with them.  So I can try to connect you with them, and hopefully, they could get you to the right person who could help.  So, again, it's Lisa—L-i-s-a—dot—Shifferle—s-c-h-i-f-f-e-r-l-e—@cfpb.gov.

>>Dr. Brown:  Thank you, Lisa.  Appreciate you answering that.  I just popped your email address in the chat as well.  Do you see any other questions, Tracey?

≫Ms. Wade:  I do.  Let me take a look.  I have a question from Sarah Schmeltzer [phonetic].  I'll unmute Sarah's line now.  Sarah, I think that you may be unmuted, and if you dialed in by telephone, you can unmute your telephone line.

[No audible response.]

>>Ms. Wade:  It looks like maybe Sarah is having an issue with her audio, but her question is in the chat box.  Do you want me to read it out?

>>Dr. Brown:  Yes, please.  I think I've gotten too far down to find the question.  

>>Ms. Wade:  Sure.  It says, "I am interested in going into this type of business to support my local community, but I also need to survive with making some sort of reasonable income without taking advantage of this population.

>>Dr. Brown:  So it sounds like she's interested in information about getting started with maybe a nonprofit or some sort of a personal finance coaching business, and what I can refer to is that we do have a lot of resources on our web page.  Somebody else had asked about whether they could reuse our slides, and yes, you can.  You can reuse this deck that we send and any deck that you can find.  We do have an archive of old webinars, and we're hoping to start getting back to rebuilding that in the future.  And so anything on our website is public information, the brochures, the booklets.  You can take them and use them as you like.  You can download them.  The only thing that we ask is if you alter them, if you take our logo off,  then you can put your logo on it, but you're welcome to make it your own.  And that's the goal that we have here.  So we have resources to set you up to get going, but certainly, I've been a small business owner myself, and the startup can be difficult.

So you might want to reach out to some local community development organizations where you might work part-time and let them know what you're trying to do, and they can tell you maybe that gaps that they need filled that they don't have someone to handle.  And maybe you can start out by doing some consulting with them on a part-time basis as well as maybe having a part-time job.  I know that sometimes small 501(c)(3)'s can be very resourceful in trying to get the staff they needed and be flexible in helping them to reach their own career goals, and of course, you can always reach out to the SBA for small business startup information by going to sba.gov.  But we also have information generally on coaching and just a lot of information that you could actually take to set up a practice, frankly.  You'd probably find everything you need to get going, and there's no cost, and you can take this information and use it for free.  So you certainly have the resources to get started there, and you may have to work a little part-time to make some income while you're doing it, but hopefully, if you do well, then you'll take off and then move into something that will finance you.  So I wish you the best of luck, and if you have trouble finding, locating resources, please feel free to email me at that cfpb_finex@cfpb.gov.

Are there any last questions before we get ready to wrap up?  Tracey, do you see anything else open?

>>Ms. Wade:  It looks like there is another question from Edward White.  Let me see if I can assist with the meeting.  Edward, it looks like you're unmuted.  Are you able to speak?

>>Attendee:  Yes.  Hi.  I just joined.  I really didn't have a question, except if I could get the slides of today's presentation.

>>Dr. Brown:  Okay.  Edward, if you would kindly send your email to that cfpb_finex@cfpb.gov, which is the third, in the third paragraph or bullet item on this slide, then we can provide the slides to you.  That's no problem.  Thank you.

>>Attendee:  Okay.  Thank you.

>>Dr. Brown:  Sure.  Any other questions, Tracey?

>>Ms. Wade:  Yes, Heather.  It looks like we have a question from Steven Lee, and, Steven, your line is unmuted.

>>Attendee:  Okay, great.  Can you hear me?

>>Dr. Brown:  Yes.

>>Attendee:  Okay, fantastic.  This is more of a comment.  I don't know where—I think Sarah is the one that asked about the reasonable income and not taking advantage of the vulnerable population and whatnot.  I understood that question to mean more she wanted to become sort of a fiduciary and do this type of work, maybe not so much as a nonprofit.

Sarah, I don't know where you live, but in California, I believe we're still the only State to license professional fiduciaries.  So there's an entire profession in California where people professionally perform as trustees, powers of attorney, agents, and we call them "conservatorships," unless the ward is under 18.  Then it's a guardianship.  But, anyway, I just wanted to throw that out there because I kind of understood the question differently.  I don't know if that's what she meant, and I don't know where she lives either.  But if you live in California, there's an entire profession surrounding this, and I don't know of any other State that does that, but we license our fiduciaries.

>>Dr. Brown:  Thank you, Steven, for sharing.

>>Attendee:  Yeah, no problem.

>>Dr. Brown:  Thank you for sharing that, and whether or not that's exactly what she meant, if it is, that will be helpful to her, and if it wasn't, I'm sure that that answer will be helpful to many others.  

Additional questions?

>>Ms. Wade:  There is a comment in the Q&A box.  I'll try to read that out.  Okay.  How should someone document activities that were done prior to becoming aware of their fiduciary responsibilities?

>>Dr. Brown:  That sounds like one for Lisa.

>>Ms. Schifferle:  Yes.  That is a good question.  As best you can, basically.  If you had things that you needed to document from before your fiduciary duties and weren't keeping as good a records as maybe you should have been now that you are a fiduciary, then you'll have to go back and create them as best you can in terms of re-creating everything that you have.  Sometimes once you're named a fiduciary—I'm not sure exactly what the question is getting at.  So sometimes once you're named a fiduciary, you'll need to sit down with the person you're caring for and make sure you know what all of their assets are and what all of their bills are so that you can make sure that you can do the fiduciary role properly.  So it's a good idea, once you know you're in that role, to sit down with them if they are able to and still cognizant enough to tell you what their accounts are and what their bills are so that you can manage them properly.  

So I'm not sure—if the person wants to clarify the question further, if that's not what they're getting at, I'm happy to answer further.

>>Dr. Brown:  Okay.  Well, it sounds like maybe I'll—if there's one more question?  Thank you for the positive feedback, everyone.  If there's one more question, we'll take it, and then we'll go ahead and wrap up, and any other questions, you can send to either myself or Lisa.  Both of our emails are in the chat and—or even direct it to Advantage if you have a question for Terri, and we will wrap up from there.  Is there one last question that's in queue, Tracey?

>>Ms. Wade:  Yes.  There's another question in the chat box from Vicky Claussen [phonetic].  Are professional fiduciaries a growing field for us single baby boomers who are aging?  I find just a few certified in my State of California.

>>Dr. Brown:  Lisa, is that something you can handle?

>>Ms. Schifferle:  I really don't know the trends in terms of professional fiduciaries and whether it's a growing field or not.  I mean, certainly, the demographics of the U.S. population, we may need to—that it could be a growing field.  There are going to be increasing numbers of older adults who are going to need fiduciaries.  So I could see how it could be a growing field.  It sounds like the person who talked before about what's going on in California and professional fiduciaries there may have more knowledge if he wants to add anything.

>>Attendee:  This is Steven Lee.  Yes.  I think we have about a thousand fiduciaries, professional fiduciaries in California.  We have our own—in the State, we have our own Professional Fiduciary Bureau, which handles all of the licensing and also disciplinary matters, and then we also have a trade organization called PFAC, or the Professional Fiduciary Association of California.  But part of the exam that people have to take to become a professional fiduciary, I believe half of that is made up—or it's created by the National Guardianship Association.  So I think half the exam is that, and the other half is California-specific stuff.

>>Dr. Brown:  Thank you so much, Steven, for that information, and if you want to leave an email or if you have a web address for either of those organizations in the chat, others on the call might be interested, and I appreciate you sharing the information you have on what's going on in California regarding fiduciaries.

Okay.  Well, I think that would be the last question that we'll take, and if you have additional questions that you want to email us, we'll get back to you through email.  And we look forward to having you at future webinars.  Again, if you're not getting your announcements directly, please go to our web page at the bottom of this slide, and sign up to the FinEx subscriber list, and you'll just get a couple of emails a month.  And we also email when there's important things happening, deadlines on filing for EIP and other forbearance deadlines.  We've been trying to stay ahead of that and provide useful information there.  So I encourage those of you that aren't directly getting information from us to please sign up so that you can.  Also, Older Americans have a subscriber list also.  So you can also email them or visit their web page and sign up to get on their list, if that's of interest to you.

Well, thank you all for joining, and we look forward to having you at future webinars and appreciate all the engaged questions that we've received.  Have a wonderful rest of your day and a great weekend, and thank you to our speakers and to Tracey and Isabel from the events team for making sure everything went smoothly.  Take care.  Have a great day, everybody.

[End of recorded session.]