Transcript
CFPB FinEx Webinar:  New Resources for Older Americans
Thursday, May 20, 2021
Presenters:  Erin Scheithe, Older Americans Content and Outreach Specialist, CFPB; and Lisa Schifferle, Senior Policy Analyst, Office for Older Americans, CFPB
Facilitator:  Heather Brown, Ed.D., CFPB FinEx Lead

>>Susan Funk:  Hello, and thank you for joining us today.  My name is Susan Funk, and I'm from the CFPB Events Team.  I will go over some logistics before we begin.

If you are having any issues with your audio, please click on the three dots at the bottom middle of your screen.  There you have the option of having the WebEx platform dial your phone number and receiving your audio through your phone.  If you need closed captioning, the closed captioning link is available by opening the chat box at the bottom right-hand corner of your screen by clicking the closed captioning link.  During this event, if you have any technical issues, please send me a message through the chat box by selecting "host."  The presenters will be answering Q&A at the end of the presentation.  So please feel free to put any questions you may have in the chat box, and I will now turn it over to Ms. Heather Brown.

>>Dr. Heather Brown:  Thank you very much, Susan.  I appreciate that.  Welcome, everybody.  We're very happy to have you join us for this webinar on "New Resources for Older Americans."  This is the last, I believe, in a month-long series of webinars that were offered by our Office of Older Americans in celebration of Older Americans Month.  My name is Heather Brown, and I will be your facilitator for this webinar.  I'm also the lead for the CFPB Financial Education Exchange.

This webinar is being offered to financial practitioners that are subscribers in our CFPB FinEx program.  If you're a financial practitioner and are not on our list, in a few minutes, I will show you the web page where you can sign up so you can receive emails on webinars, research tools, and other resources that we produce for financial practitioners. 

But, first, I'd like to introduce you to our speakers for today.  We're going to have two wonderful speakers, first starting with Erin Scheithe who joined the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in January of 2017 . She's a content and outreach specialist in the Office of Older Americans.  The majority of Erin's career has been working in financial education.  She's worked both for the American Bankers Association Foundation and North Carolina Bankers Association to develop programs to teach children and parents the basics of financial literacy.  She also worked in AARP's Education and Outreach Department, developing resources on financial security issues for the 50-plus population.  Erin obtained both a bachelor's degree in English and a master's degree in educational psychology from the University of Virginia.

And also have back with us again also Lisa Schifferle.  Lisa Schifferle is a senior policy analyst in the CFPB's Office for Older Americans.  She leads the Managing Someone Else's Money program and supports the office's work to combat elder financial exploitation.  Lisa's career in consumer protection spans more than 20 years.  Before the CFPB, she worked as an attorney at the Federal Trade Commission, where she led trainings on scam prevention, served as the FTC's identity theft coordinator, and litigated fraud and data security cases.  You may remember she has spoken with us before on some of those issues when she was working at FTC.  Before that, she was at Maryland's Legal Aid Bureau where she represented low-income clients and bankruptcy housing, public benefits, and employment cases.  Lisa received her BA from Yale College and her JD from the University of Virginia School of Law.

And I also want to make sure that I acknowledge and thank Susan Funk for all of her work getting us prepared and also helping to co-facilitate as we move through our program.

I'm going to run through some preliminary slides quickly, and then I'm going to hand it off to our speakers for the day.  First, I'd like to cover the disclaimer.  This presentation is being made by a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau representative on behalf of the Bureau.  It does not constitute legal interpretation, guidance, or advice of the Bureau.  Any opinions or views stated by the presenters are the presenters' own and may not represent the Bureau's views.  The inclusion of links and references to third-party sites does not necessarily reflect the Bureau's endorsement of those third-party sites, the views expressed on 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.  There may be other possible entities or resources that are not listed that may also serve your needs.

The mission of the Bureau is that we are a 21st century agency that works to help consumer financial markets work by making rules more effective, by consistently and fairly enforcing those rules, and by empowering consumers to take more control over their economic lives.  And in the Office of Education where my program is, we focus on the educational component, which is educating consumers to take control of their finances.

Also, I wanted to just highlight to you the page.  We actually have a new page for Resources for Financial Practitioners that was just developed by our design and development and IT team and our products team, and we thank them for that.  Just so that you know, I know many of you have indicated in past surveys that you use our Web page multiple times a day.  If you're looking for us, you'll go to consumerfinance.gov, as usual, select Consumer Education and then select Resources for Practitioners.  You can follow the link that's in the top left corner of the slide, and you can navigate to the page that you see.  If it looks a little different, don't be surprised.

I just wanted to provide the final key links for you related to everything that we do at CFPB and the FinEx program.  The first link is to our Coronavirus Pandemic page, which we still update regularly, and it also has a robust housing and rental portal that you might want to take a look at as some of those changes are about to come about for many of those that you serve.

You can order free bulk copies of all of our publications by clicking on the second link, and that is our publishing house, and they'll have them shipped directly to you in bulk or in single or however you'd like to receive them, and also, most of the things there, you can download off of our website, so you can access them both ways.

The third bullet is the email box for the FinEx program.  So, if you have any questions about this program or anything else or want to get a copy of the slides or join and you can't find the link on the page to sign up, please feel free to sign up through our box.

And then our LinkedIn group is still active in getting postings.  You're able to join that group and then post information you have on workshops you're offering and other things that you'd like to share with practitioners.

And the final bullet there is just the Web page that I showed you previously.

Okay.  And with that, I think we ready to begin our presentation for the day.  I will hand it off to both Lisa and Erin, who will be bouncing back and forth and sharing some different topics throughout the presentation, and we are starting with Erin.

>>Erin Scheithe:  Actually, we're starting with Lisa.

>>Dr. Brown:  Okay.  Thank you.  Lisa, we're starting with Lisa.

>>Lisa Schifferle:  Thank you.

>>Dr. Brown:  Erin, I gave you the ball, so would you mind passing it to Lisa?  I apologize for that.

>>Ms. Schifferle:  Okay.  Thank you, Heather.  My name is Lisa Schifferle, and I'm here with my colleague, Erin Scheithe, and we both work in the Office for Older Americans at the CFPB.  And we'd like to welcome you to the CFPB's Older Americans Month presentation.

This year, as you may have heard,  the theme of Older Americans Month is communities of strength.  So it's based on the idea that older adults have built resilience and strength over their lives.  So during Older Americans Month, we celebrate the strength of older adults with a special emphasis on the power of connection and engagement in building strong communities.

In this presentation, we're going to share some of our CFPB resources that we hope will help you make your communities stronger.  So I'm going to start by telling you a little bit about the Office for Older Americans, and in the Office for Older Americans, where Erin and I work, we engage in research, policy, and educational initiatives to help protect older consumers from financial harm, and we also create tools and resources which help older people make sound financial decisions as they age.  In addition, we help stakeholders, like a lot of you, by providing tools to support long-term financial security for older adults.  We offer a variety of resources that you can use or view online or download or order in bulk, all for free.  You can find them all at consumerfinance.gov/olderamericans, and if you want to order them, you can go straight to consumerfinance.gov/order.

So Erin and I are going to share some of those resources with you today so you can have an idea of the resources that we have to help older Americans and people who work with older Americans.  Let me start by telling you about one of our flagship programs, and that's called "Money Smart for Older Adults."  It's an awareness program we developed with the FDIC, and it focuses on preventing elder financial exploitation.  It offers over 2 hours of content on a whole variety of different scams and types of theft targeting older people, and it uses claim language and provides action steps on how to recognize and avoid these scams.  So it's really a train the trainer-type module, and if you want to offer the training, it's plug-and-play.  We have an instructor guide that scripts the presentation.  There is a slide deck and a participant resource guide, and one of the nice things about the resource guide is that it's designed specifically for older adults and their caregivers, and it's very readable in 14-point font.  We also have these guides available in bulk at no charge in both English and in Spanish.

So what you'll get if you order these Money Smart products are the Instructor Guide, which has a presentation planning guide, activities.  It has a summary and Post-Its and an evaluation form, and then there is the Resource Guide, which you can hand out to participants, which has information on activities to help them learn the material.  It has a glossary of key terms, and you can also use it as a stand-alone handout for distribution to older people.  Finally, there's the PowerPoint, which you can use to give the presentation.  So we hope you will think about using Money Smart for Older Adults to teach people in your community about how to avoid a whole variety of different scams.

Now I'm going to turn it over to Erin to talk about the Elder Fraud Prevention and Response Networks.

>>Ms. Scheithe:  Thanks, Lisa.  I'm going to take the ball from you.  Okay.

>>Ms. Schifferle:  I think the ball went to Heather instead of Erin by mistake.  If you can pass it?

>>Ms. Scheithe:  There we go.  Okay.  I've got it now.  Thank you.

All right.  So I want to talk a little bit about our Elder Fraud Prevention and Response Networks.  So what do we mean by that?  The way we're going to define it today for this presentation is that a network is a collaboration effort or a partnership that works to detect, prevent, and/or respond to elder financial exploitation.  It's not a one-time meeting or event, although it may start that way, but rather a continued partnership among members.

As some of you may know, especially if you work in this space, the problem of elder financial exploitation really requires a collaborative community response.  No one piece of the puzzle will solve everything.  There are so many constantly changing forms of exploitation, and it really effects many community stakeholders from law enforcement to long-term care facilities, financial institutions, and social service organizations. 
The CFPB's Office for Older Americans studied the benefits of community networks nationwide that bring together key partners, like we talked about, law enforcement, financial institutions, adult protective services, other community stakeholders, and together, they come together to brainstorm and come up with other ways to help detect, respond, and prevent elder financial exploitation.

In 2016, the CFPB released a report based on our study.  That report is called "Fighting Elder Financial Exploitation Through Community Networks."  We started an outreach initiative to help communities in several different States build new networks and help existing networks grow, either in size or in scope or just to give them a little boost to enhance their impact.  And as a result of these nine or so convenings, maybe closer to a dozen now, we in the Office for Older Americans developed a model for identifying potential networks, coordinating with key stakeholders, facilitating meetings, and building support to help create and again enhance local elder fraud prevention and response networks.

In 2019, we released a report that really highlighted this model, and that was titled "Convening Communities to Build Elder Fraud Prevention and Response Networks."  Financial institutions, law enforcement, social services, legal aid organizations, and other key stakeholders are really essential network members, and all have a unique role and unique capabilities to help prevent, recognize, and response to financial exploitation of older adults.

If you are on this call and you're someone who is one of the stakeholders or you'd like to be, if you're interested in either joining an existing network in your area or maybe helping to start a new network, check out our Network Development Guide.  The link is here on the page.  I'll put it in the chat as well.

This what the website looks like.  Throughout several years, we worked with community networks.  During that time, stakeholders shared with us that they needed almost a manual of how to create one of these networks or how to sustain or enhance one of these networks, and they shared that they would really benefit from just that detailed instruction, something to refer back to.  They shared they're already working full-time jobs.  Of course, everyone is so busy, and so they could really use ready-made resources, templates almost, to plan, produce, and host network retreats.  They also said they needed resources and guidance to help establish and then maintain the network after that initial meeting.  Of course, we all know how that goes.  You kind of get started and get really excited and then things can peter out because folks have so much on their plates.

But to meet this need that we heard, we released the Network Development Guide in 2020.  In fact, it's almost a year old.  We released it right around World Elder Abuse Awareness Day last year.  The guide contains resources for planning a network retreat, hosting and facilitating a retreat, reconvening, and establishing the network, and then expanding the capabilities and other resources.  And I'll just note that this came out during a time when people weren't convening in person, and so people have had to pivot a little bit.  And we had successfully had some of these convenings in a virtual way.  So it is possible, and we look forward to sharing more information about that in the future as well.

I will share a few other resources for preventing scams and elder financial exploitation.  The first is—not to be biased, but this is my all-time favorite program.  It could be because many of these were developed with me as the project lead, but I promise all of our resources are as good.  But I am going to play a favorite and tell you about our free fraud prevention placements, handouts, and activity sheets.  These were designed to be really simple, basic, eye-catching graphics, simple plain-language text, to let older adults, anyone who falls into the umbrella of people who could be scammer, and by the way—spoiler alert—that's everyone.  So we created these really eye-catching graphics and these placemats originally with the idea that maybe older adults would see the placemat at their place when they went for a Meals on Wheels meal or other kind of congregate meal sites.

But we quickly learned that many of you who are not meal service providers were ordering them, anyway, and so we created bookmarks, table tents, posters, and activity sheets to complement the placemat resources.  We even have a mini lesson, a companion resource.  We have two with tips and information that can really reinforce the messages that are on those placemats, bookmarks, handouts, and these are all available to download or order in bulk as well.  And they're all available in English and Spanish.  So I encourage you to check these out at consumerfinance.gov/placemats.

And I just want to mention too that, again, we've been operating in a virtual world.  We're about to really spread our wings and get back out into the public, maybe cautiously, and so this is a good opportunity.  Scams have increased during the pandemic for sure, and so we created some resources that are able to be printed from any printer at home in case you're not going into your office quite yet.

We also have a guide for assisted living communities and nursing homes that can help staff identify warning signs that may indicate financial exploitation.  Other types of professionals and even family caregivers, honestly, can also read this guide to learn more about how to prevent financial exploitation of residents, and this guide called "Protecting Residents from Financial Exploitation" includes information such as what is elder financial exploitation, how do I understand the laws that are associated, what are some warning signs that may indicate financial exploitation is occurring, and then we have a model response protocol with information on how assisted living community employees can recognize, record, and report possible incidences of elder financial exploitation.  There's a lot of talk about prevention and how to deter financial exploitation from occurring as well as some information on different frauds and scams that affect older people, and you can find this on our website as well.  Just like the other resources, this one is available for free download.  So check that one out.

Next, this is a little bit different.  This is an online tool, an interactive tool called "Planning for Retirement," and this is a tool you can find on our website, consumerfinance.gov/retirement.  Then tool includes easy-to-use, interactive steps, really basic information to help people figure out about how much Social Security retirement benefit they may expect to receive at different points once they become eligible to claim these benefits.  Many of you know the earliest age to claim Social Security benefits, retirement benefits, is 62 years old, and our tool shows you if you claim at that age, how much you might expect to receive, if you claim at your full retirement age, which it will tell you what that is, how much you might expect, and then how much you can expect to receive if you delay claiming until age 68, 69, 70.  We did create this with the support of the Social Security Administration, and it's available in Spanish as well, so check that one out.

Next, I'm going to share the ball back with Lisa for our next part.

>>Ms. Schifferle:  Thank you, Erin.  So I'm going to tell you all about the resources that we have to help financial caregivers, and when we talk about financial caregivers, we really just mean anyone who is managing money for a loved one.  Right now, we know there are millions of Americans who are, in fact, managing money or property for a loved one who is unable to do so, and with the coronavirus pandemic, more of us have been called upon to act as financial caregivers.

I want to let you know about some guides that we have that are available to help you if you are a financial caregiver.  They also can help people start conversations with loved ones about planning for caregiving needs.  So, even if you're not a caregiver now, you may be one in the future, or you may need care yourself.  So, really, these guides are good for all of us, and caregiving is something none of us want to talk about or think about.  But it's important not only for the older people in our lives but also for ourselves, and these guides give us a good way to start those conversations about financial caregiving.

Here's what they look like.  They're called the "Managing Someone Else's Money Guides." We have four different guides  to help family members and friends who are financial caregivers, and you can find them at consumerfinance.gov/msem, like "Managing Someone Else's Money."  What the guides do is they help financial caregivers understand their duties.  So they provide tips and resources to help people protecting, investing, and managing money for a loved one.  They also have information on identifying benefits that the care recipient might be eligible for like disability, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans benefits, and a lot more.  And they describe warning signs of financial exploitation and how to watch out for a variety of different consumer scams, and finally, they provide information on where to get help.  We worked on these very closely with the American Bar Association, Commission on Law and Aging to prepare these guides.  So we do hope you will check them out.

There are four different guides.  Depending on the type of caregiver you are, there's one for agents under power of attorney, one for guardians which is sometimes called "conservators," one for trustees, and one for government benefits fiduciaries.  So I'm going to show you and tell you a little bit about each of these guides.

The first guide that we have is our power of attorney guide.  If you're not familiar with the power of attorney, it's a legal document, and in it, someone who you called a principal gives someone else, who you call the agent, legal authority to make decisions about their money or property.  Often people may make powers of attorney so someone can handle their money or property if they become sick or injured and can no longer manage their finances in the future.  Some states call these "durable power of attorney."  Some just call them "power of attorney."  But the important thing to note is a lot of people ask why should I get a power of attorney.  They really give you control to name who you want to manage your finances when you're not able to do so.  They also make it easier for your loved ones if you do become unable to manage your finances, and you can structure them to retain control until you are no longer able.  So people shouldn't be hesitant to get them based on thinking they're giving up control.  They really provide you with control in the future.

Another thing to note about them is there are two types of power of attorney, and the guide goes into this in more detail.  There's a health care power of attorney, which makes decisions about health care, and there's the financial power of attorney, which makes the financial decisions.  And that's what our guide focuses on, but I just want to point this out because many people don't realize that you need both types, and that's a good thing to know about.

We also have a guide about government fiduciaries, and basically, these are people who manage someone's income benefits from a government agency.  The Social Security Administration calls these people "representative payees."  So if you're managing someone's Social Security benefits, you're a representative payee.  If you're managing someone's veterans' benefits, then the VA calls you a "VA fiduciary."  The big thing to know about these types of fiduciaries or financial caregivers is that you only manage that person's government benefits.  You don't have authority to manage any other benefits, property, or money for the individual.  So, if you do want that authority for the other benefits, then you need to get another type of document like power of attorney.  This can also often be a confusing relationship.  You may not be able to expect others to understand what a VA fiduciary does or what a representative payees does.  That's another reason to get these guides.  You can use them to show to people in order to explain what your authority is and what it is not.

The next guide we have is for people who are guardians of property, and a guardian is someone who the court names to manage money or property for someone else once the court finds that that person can no longer manage them alone.  Some States us the term "conservator" rather than "guardian," but either way, these guardians or conservators, they may be needed most often when there is an accident or a sudden illness and the person has no power of attorney.

To give you an example, my grandmother in her 70s was hit by a truck while she was driving and immediately into a coma, and she did not have a power of attorney, unfortunately.  So our family had to go to court in order to name my uncle as guardian.  So it's a much more cumbersome process for family members and more costly.  So that's just a story I tell to remind people about the importance of getting a power of attorney, but if you don't have one, the guardianship can provide important legal authority when needed.  You just have to go through a court process rather than the power of attorney, which is just a legal document.

The last type of guide we have is for trustees.  All these guides go into far more detail about each of these, but basically, when we're talking about trustees, we're referring to a revokable living trust, which is a legal document, and the thing to know about these is you can just put some property into the trust, like you could put your car in or your house in or $10,000 in, and that is what the person, what the trustee has to manage.  It's not all your property or money.  It's just what's in the trust.  The trust also specifies who gets the money or property after the person who created it does.  So those are some important things to know about the trust, but there is a lot more about that and about the other types of fiduciaries in each of these guides.  So I do encourage you to check them out.

We also have two publications for people kind of earlier in the financial caregiving process who are still planning.  One is called 'Planning for Diminished Capacity and Illness," and this is something that we worked on with Federal partners at the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC.  It's a consumer advisory and investor bulletin on planning for the future when you might not be able to manage your money or property.  Sometimes that's referred to as diminished capacity, and basically, the advisory has advice on planning for your financial future, getting your documents in order, and watching out for financial exploitation.  This is a great tool.  Even if age-related decline seems far in the distant future, it's still useful for us.  It can help you help your parents or other loved ones, and it also stresses the importance of talking with older adults about advanced planning before it's too late.  So I encourage you to check this out and work together across generations to help older Americans have a safe and secure financial future.

And now if Erin has a favorite product, the next slide has what I'm going to claim as my favorite product, which is considering a financial caregiver, which is a brand-new product that we just released as part of Older Americans Month.  It's part of the "Managing Someone Else's Money" series, and what we did in this piece is to help people who are earlier in the caregiving process.  Maybe you're just starting to notice that either you or a loved one might need help with managing your finances, but you're not sure what your options are.  This new short publication lets you know your options in very simple, plain language.  It covers informal caring options like convenience accounts or adding a trusted contact person to your account.  It also covers the formal caregiving options we discussed like power of attorney, guardian, trustee, or government fiduciary.  Finally, it gives you a list of really good questions to ask and to help you consider who is the best person to choose as your financial caregiver, which is really critical because so much elder financial exploitation happens because of the caregiver that you choose not  necessarily being the most appropriate one.

So we hope you will check out this publication and the rest that we talked about.  Again, you can find all our publications at consumerfinance.gov/olderamericans.

And now I will hand it back to Erin to talk to you about our reverse mortgage materials.

>>Ms. Scheithe:  Thanks, Lisa.  I am excited to talk about reverse mortgages.

For those of you who don't know, a reverse mortgage is also known as a home equity conversion mortgage, and it is a special product that is only for homeowners age 62 and older.  It's a really complicated product, and so I'm very pleased that we have several resources that may be able to help you if you are hoping to learn about them, if you are nearing that age of 62, and you are maybe interested in looking into them for yourself.

We have two different parts of our resources.  The first couple of resources are for before you get a reverse mortgage, before you sign on the dotted line, before you agree to that loan, because a reverse mortgage is a loan product.  So we call those "pre-origination."

We have a Know Before You Owe 2-minute video, which is a really great primer.  It's an animated video primer on what a reverse mortgage is, and I would recommend that everybody check that one out.

We have a brief guide called "Considering a Reserve Mortgage," which is just a couple of pages that will talk a little bit more in depth about that product, and then finally, we have about a 20-or-so-page guide that we called a "Reverse Mortgage Discussion Guide," which really lays out all of the different aspects of this product, what it means for borrowers.

Then our post-origination—so once a borrower has a reverse mortgage, we have a couple of resources for those folks as well, a couple of new resources.  The first is "You have a Reverse Mortgage: Know Your Rights and Responsibilities," and this is again a booklet guide, probably about 20 pages, that talks about what your rights and responsibilities are as a reverse mortgage borrower.  If you sign on the dotted line, you need to have that with you so that you can refer back to it.

We have a guide for reverse mortgage boos who have been sit by a natural disaster, like the hurricanes that happened in Puerto Rico a couple years ago, and then we also have a housing hub with a lot of COVID-19-specific resources for you.

Those are the resources here.  These are our guides.  I'm not going to go into it again.  We just heard it, but the resources are available on consumerfinance.gov/reversemortgage.

The "Considering a Reverse Mortgage Guide" again is a short, plain-language guide.  The discussion guide is a lot more in depth, and I should mention that when you apply for a reverse mortgage,  you're required to speak to a housing counselor before you make everything official.  This reverse mortgage discussion guide is a tool that housing counselors can actually use to walk an older homeowner through all the different aspects of the reverse mortgage, including what happens to the loan if you pass away or if you have to go into a managed care facility.

That "Reverse Mortgage Rights and Responsibilities" is our newest resource in this suite and talks about how to pay off your loan as well as what your heirs might need to go and where to go for help if you need it.

I mentioned the Reverse Mortgage Natural Disaster guide.  This actually came about because of the hurricanes in Puerto Rico a couple years ago. People who had a reverse mortgage said, "Oh, my gosh, I don't know what to do at this point, and so we created this guide.

Finally, this is just a screenshot of our Reverse Mortgage Resource page.  This is where you land when you go to consumerfinance.gov/reversemortgage.  The very first thing on that page is kind of a graphic illustration of what a reverse mortgage is and the video.  I cannot recommend the video enough.

And I'll pass it back over to Lisa.

>>Ms. Schifferle:  Thank you, Erin.  So I'm going to talk a bit about some of our COVID-19-related resources.  You heard about one of them from Heather at the beginning, but we know right now that even though it finally feels like there's a light at the end of the tunnel health-wise in terms of the pandemic, the financial impact of the pandemic is still going to be with us for quite a while.  

We have a central hub on consumerfinance.gov/coronavirus, which has resources to help people protect and manage their finances during the pandemic.  We actually have these resources available in English and Spanish plus Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Tagalog, and it has a whole variety of different topics, including information about how consumers can financially protect themselves, credit and debt management, student loan repayment, mortgage relief options, scam prevention, and online and mobile banking tips.  There's also information for financial caregivers, and that's the people managing someone else's money that we just talked about.  The site also has a bunch of short videos which are great, and like Erin said, I would really encourage you to check out the videos.  They're very user friendly and explain some complicated legal issues in very plain language for people.

In addition to the consumerfinance.gov/coronavirus page, we have a special housing site, which is consumerfinance.gov/housing.  This one is designed for people who are struggling to pay their mortgage or rent.  We launched it along with other Federal agencies, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Federal Home Finance Agency, and we know that if you are behind on your mortgage or rent that you are not alone.  Many people are in this position right now.  So this page is designed to help people for homeowners with federally backed mortgages.  It has information about the Federal foreclosure moratoria through June 30th.  It also has information about forbearance options, and for renters, it has information and the latest up-to-date updates about the CDC eviction prevention moratorium and what the status of it is.

Now, in addition to those housing resources, we have a variety of other coronavirus-related resources that are specifically for older adults or people who are working with older people.  One of them is our tips for financial caregivers.  If you're unable to be with someone whose money you're managing, maybe due to virus-prevention tactics like social distancing and quarantines, this goes over how to use video chat or phone and also refers people to the Managing Someone Else's Money guides as well as Money Smart for Older Adults and that Nursing Home and Assisted Living Residence guide that Erin mentioned.

We also have online and mobile banking tips, tips for people who are new to online banking.  We know a lot of older adults may have started doing online banking during the pandemic, and it allows them to handle their finances from the comfort of homes.  This article has information on tips for people who are new to online or mobile banking.

Finally, we have one called "Planning Your Finances for an Uncertain Future," and we know that, like I said in the beginning, the virus has changed many people's financial circumstances, sometimes very quickly.  So what this is designed to do is to see whether you and people you care about have plans in place if you become unable to manage your finances.  The blog offers tools to help you answer that question.  That's actually a questionnaire that you and your partner can do to see if you're both able to handle the finances equally well.  There are also tips on creating a plan for your virtual assets.  We also have a lot of information on scams related to online shopping, FEMA, funeral expense-related scams, unemployment-related scams, vaccine scams, and a lot more.  So I would encourage you to check that all out at consumerfinance.gov/coronavirus.

And I will pass it back to Erin to talk about how you can use some of our resources.

>>Ms. Scheithe:  Thanks, Lisa.  Okay.  One of the things that we do at the CFPB is we offer resources to those stakeholders, financial education practitioners, intermediaries, financial institutions, et cetera, and we want to make sure we share with people how you might use them.  Let's say you are attending this presentation, and none of those titles applies to you, but you want to help.  You want to know how you can use our resources in your community, whether it's your neighborhood, your church group, maybe a book club, something like that, so giving you a couple of ideas.

You can increase your own self-awareness and the awareness of others by sharing our resources with family, friends, neighbors, congregations, et cetera.  Any group that you gather together with, feel free to share our resources with them.  You can also join an older adult financial fraud prevention network.  The first program I think that I discussed definitely let us know or check in with law enforcement or financial institution in your community if you are interested in volunteering.  Again, distribute our information and our resources in your community, and you can help create a community of strength during Older Americans Month.

One other thing that I will note is just about anyone can use our resources.  You can also copy and paste things from our website.  If you see a blog entry like the ones that Lisa just mentioned that you'd like to share with friends and family or that you'd like to post on your bank's website, feel free to do that.  Because we're the Federal Government, we like to share our resources.

Again, this is a theme month.  This month is Older Americans Month.  Our theme, again, is communities of strength.  So this could be a really great way to, in the last couple of weeks of May, share and create communities of strength in your area.  You can also train yourself and others to present the Money Smart for Older Adults program, or you could establish an outreach effort to support independence and reduce isolation of older people in your community.  So you could visit a local seniors center or offer maybe the Money Smart for Older Adults program there.  Working together, we can really create a community of strength, no matter where we are, even if right now that's a little bit online.

Our website again is consumerfinance.gov/older Americans.  Our email address is olderamericans@cfpb.gov, and I would encourage you to share your ideas and your thoughts with us through that email address.  The Reverse Mortgage Disaster guide came about because someone shared an idea with us through that email address.  If you peruse our website and see something that you think should be there that isn't, shoot us an email and let us know.  We would be happy to accept ideas.  We'll take a look at our complaints and other trends, and we could possibly create something that your idea.  Definitely keep us informed of what's going on in your community, and we look forward to seeing you on a future webinar. 

If you have any questions, we certainly have a little bit of time.  We could take some of those.   Susan or Heather, are there any questions from any of our attendees?

>>Dr. Brown:  There's no questions at this time, but we'd like to encourage everyone.  We have some time to answer questions, and you've got two excellent resources here that have wonderful information, truly experts on the topic.  So feel free to add some.

But I actually did have a question of my own that came up.  I've heard that a lot of seniors that end up in bankruptcy or having other types of serious financial distress, it comes from their own families from giving too much money out or doing too much, and I was wondering if that's still the case.  It's been a while since I've seen that statistic, and if it is, if you have any questions for anyone that might be in a position where they see something going on with family that they're concerned about with that person and how they might deal with it.

>>Ms. Schifferle:  Sure.  I can start by speaking to that.  I mean, first of all, I was actually just speaking with an expert on elder financial exploitation yesterday, and she was saying that—this is someone who prosecutes elder financial exploitation cases.  She was saying that most of the cases she has involve people who have a family member, a younger adult, child usually, who has either a gambling addiction or drug addiction, and that's the person who has been named as power of attorney for the older adult.  And they're basically draining the older adult of all their assets in order to support their gambling or drug addiction.  

So that's one of the many reasons why we created that Considering a Financial Caregiver piece is it gives people tools to ask those hard questions about who is a good financial caregiver and who would be appropriate and to be very realistic about if the person you're thinking of has a gambling or drug addiction or has filed bankruptcy before, maybe they're not the best person to act as your agent under power of attorney.  So just to think about questions like those, the Considering a Financial Caregiver gives you tools to do that.

And if there is somebody who is aware of elder financial exploitation, you can report it to adult protective services.  Of course, if you think the person is in immediate danger, then call the police at 911, but if it's less of an imminent danger, imminent physical danger, then you could report it to adult protective services.

>>Dr. Brown:  Thank you.  Great answer and very helpful.

There's two additional questions that have come in.  I'd say the first one, we probably would give to you, Erin, and the second one to you, Lisa.  The first one is, what credentials are needed to present the course information that you talked about?  I think they're talking about Money Smart for Older adults. 

And the second question that would go to you, Lisa, after Erin is done is, what is the biggest scam threat for older Americans?

>>Ms. Scheithe:  Thanks, Heather.  So, in response to the question about what kind of credentials do you need to deliver the Money Smart for Older Adults training, the answer is none, just a willingness to stand up in front of a group or get on a Zoom call or something like that and share the presentation.

The instructor guide is actually word for word.  You can follow it like a script, honestly, and the PowerPoint slides show—when you see the instructor guide, the script is on one side and the PowerPoint slides show up on the other.  So you can follow along really easily there, and it's a lot of content.  It's several hours of content, as Lisa mentioned at the very beginning, and so I would suggest putting that into bite-size chunks where maybe you do a 30-minute session at first to introduce the idea and the topic and then have people come back over a series of weeks to learn the rest of the information, but no credentials needed.

Lisa, I'll turn it to you for that other question.

>>Ms. Schifferle:  Sure.  So the other question had to do with whether some of the top scams affecting old adults.  It would depend on how you measure it, but two big ones are romance scams and tech support scams.  Romance scams are the biggest dollar loss for older adult, if you look at that PC Consumer Sentinel data.

And what we're talking about with romance scams is basically when someone cultivates a relationship or supposed relationship, usually online, and they say that they love you, and then they ask for money either for a medical emergency or for travel, and you send the money.  And then it's gone, and the person was not even a real person usually, or they were a real person, but they are making up a persona to try to lure you in.  This is something that really preyed on people's loneliness and social isolation across all age groups, but the statistics do suggest that older Americans lose a lot of money to romance scams.

The other big one, which isn't necessarily as big of a dollar loss, but is more prevalent is the tech support scam, and this is where you get a popup on your screen that says you have a virus.  And it either tells you to click on a link or it tells you to call an 800 number, and then if you call the number, they ask you to remote into your computer.  Then once they remote in, they can take all your information if you put your taxes on there, if you put other financial information.  They can get into your computer and get everything.  So it can be very devastating.  Sometimes they just ask you to pay $300 for supposed tech support services for viruses they say that they found, which aren't really there, so you're out the $300.  An even bigger danger is that they can remote in and get all your personal information.  So those are two of the biggest scams generally, and then scammers are always changing their tactics.

One that we've heard about recently is the FEMA funeral expense scam where the Federal Emergency Management Agency is offering funeral expense money for people who have lost a loved one due to COVID.  There is a legitimate program for that, but unfortunately, scammers are preying on that and calling people pretending to be FEMA to get your personal information.  So it's important to make sure to call FEMA at their correct number, which we have on our website, and the FTC has blogs as well.  So that's one of the more recent scams, but really the tech support and romance scams are two big ones that have been hurting older adults before, during, and probably after the pandemic.

>>Dr. Brown:  Thank you very much, Lisa.  We have questions rolling in now.  So I'm going to let you all choose who gets to answer one.  The next one asks:  "How does one report elder abuse or financial exploitation?  Is there a best website or phone line to report these issues?"

>>Ms. Schifferle:  Usually, you're going to report it to adult protective services in your jurisdiction, but if you don't have that number, you can go to the elder care locator at eldercare.acl.gov.  That has a whole host of information, including not only how to locate APS but also how to locate area agencies on aging in order to get resources in your jurisdiction.

>>Dr. Brown:  Wonderful!  Thank you.  Let's see.  There's another one that agreed with the idea that somebody else posted of having a webinar on reverse mortgages.  So it looks like I'll be having you all back again.  You're going to be my most popular speaker soon.

Let's see.  Somebody else asked if you could please share any recommendation for older adults who are aiming at going back to the workforce after not having worked for about 20 years.

>>Ms. Scheithe:  That's a tough one.  One thing that I'll note that kind of goes along with what we've discussed today is make sure that you're not falling for an unemployment or a work-from-home type of scam.  So if you are contacted by someone who says, "I saw your résumé.  You can work from home and make a bunch of money," definitely look into it before you sign anything or before you sign up for anything.  So, definitely, make sure that you're—if it sounds too good to be true, it is—is always kind of the standard rule.

But our retirement calculator that I mentioned earlier in the presentation actually has a section where it asks you if you're still planning to work, and if you are planning to work and claim your Social Security benefits at the same time, they may temporarily reduce your benefits based on how much you earn.  So, definitely, check in with the Social Security Administration if you are already claiming your retirement benefits to make sure that you won't hit that threshold where they would start taking some of your benefit, holding it back.  You would get it back eventually, but they would hold it back while you're earning a heavier living or a more substantial living from a part-time job or maybe a full-time job.  So that would be my thought is just to go into it really making sure that it makes sense for you to take on another job.

>>Dr. Brown:  Great.  Thank you.

>>Ms. Schifferle:  One other tip people could keep in mind—and I think the work-at-home scam one is a really important one.  Another tip is to check your credit before you start applying for jobs and make sure your credit is okay, and if there are any errors on your credit report, to fix those before you apply for a job.  This is something that we're starting to tell people across all age groups but especially if you've had a gap in employment for maybe 20 years.  It's especially good to check your credit and make sure your credit is clean before you apply for jobs because many employers now do check your credit too.  So you don't want to be denied a job because of something on your credit that you could have cleared up had you checked it, say, a month or so before you took the interview.

>>Dr. Brown:  Great advice.  And I think there also are some senior employment firms that focus on seniors, and I'd definitely look for the ones that are nonprofit with well-known names and use those for referrals as well.  So that's something else you might think of.

Let's see.  We also had someone that commented that Money Smart for Older Americans is a great resources.  They've used it several times to teach from.  It's all-inclusive and no need to re-create the will.  So I think that was encouragement for the person that asked about credentials.  One thing I also wanted to share with that person is they can always—if they run into a question that they cannot answer, they can do the same thing we do which is say we will research it with our colleagues and get back to them with an answer, and you can email us at one of the boxes that you've already written down from this and get some help as well.

We do have, it looks like, one last question.  Do we have any financial education resources at the CFPB that are targeted to low- and moderate-income older adults?

>>Ms. Scheithe:  That's a really great question.  Some of you may know about the Your Money, Your Goals resources.  That is a program that is a sister office to us, the Office of Community Affairs.  While there is no specific section for older adults, many of the resources in that program would apply to older adults.  In fact, they have a couple of really, really great booklets on credit and keeping track of your bills, developing emergency savings, paying down debt.  So they have a couple of really great products that you can again order for free in bulk that you could share with older adults just as well as with anyone else who is having issues financially.

We are definitely equal opportunity in the Office for Older Americans.  So, if you see our resources, they are intended really for all income levels.

>>Dr. Brown:  That's great.  Thank you both, Erin and Lisa, for this wonderful presentation.

Oh, did I get one more question?  I'm sorry.  Just really quick.  I want to make sure I didn't miss anyone's question.  It says Americans are protected through next year from foreclosure, right?  Depending on the State, and some are ending in the end of June is my understanding.  Lisa?

>>Ms. Schifferle:  Yeah.  Some are ending as early as June 30th of this year.  So you should check consumerfinance.gov/housing and check with your State laws.  It's going to vary depending on what State you're in, but consumerfinance.gov/housing has all the Federal protections and then links to help you find out about State protections.

>>Dr. Brown:  Okay, great.  All right.  So that will be our last question for the day, and again, thanking Erin and Lisa for a wonderful session.  Please feel free to email them if you have further questions or need information or support on trying to get a workshop going.  I also want to thank Susan Funk again as our events manager.  I think Tracy was on the line at one point.  I didn't thank her, and I apologize.  It looks like she's dropped off, but Susan can let her know.  So I appreciate everyone that came.  We had a nice crowd today, and I hope you all have a great rest of your day and a good weekend.  Take care.  That concludes our webinar.

[End of recorded session.]