Financial Health

What will you do with your money when you retire? What if someone reached out to you for help; would you give them some of your savings to save them during a difficult time? Are they a loved one, someone you recently met and built an online relationship with or someone with a credible story that pulls on your heart strings? Unfortunately, more and more people are being manipulated to give away their savings in what’s being dubbed the Romance Scam. Seniors are most susceptible to these kinds of scams and are targeted for various reasons: sometimes because of their unfamiliarity with technology and sometimes because they are more isolated, to name only two.

Fraud and financial abuse are a hard reality faced by many older adults today. That is one of the reasons why the Canadian Bankers Association (CBA) created Your Money Seniors in 2014, in collaboration with the financial Consumer Agency of Canada (CAC). The program started on the heels of a successful sister program called Your Money Students (created in 1999) and has since continued to advance financial literacy and promote financial health.

Your Money Seniors is presented by bankers in the community volunteering their time and expertise. In the seminar, they cover how seniors can: protect against financial abuse, spot the signs of financial fraud and make the most of their money in retirement. Essentially answering Canadians questions about how to ensure their money lasts through retirement, how should older adults with diminished physical or cognitive capacities manage their financial affairs, and questions relating to Powers of Attorney.

According to Mathieu Labrèche, director of media strategy at the Canadian Bankers Association, “Financial literacy is an essential life skill – no matter your age – and it is a life-long learning experience. Seniors greatly benefit from financial literacy and education as they prepare for or are currently in retirement.” Indeed, since Canadians are living longer, people are spending more time in retirement which means that they need to prepare their finances for that period more rigorously. With the digitization of more and more bank services, older adults must be more vigilant in recognizing the red flags of financial abuse. That is why CBA offered more than 135 seminars across Canada in the last 5 years, reaching over 5000 seniors. In addition to the program, CBA’s website also promotes resources and shares information and knowledge through fact sheets and other information sources.

Concretely, the program is offered in both official languages, free of charge, to seniors and caregivers. Any organization or community association can request the seminar at any time, with a minimum of three weeks’ notice and with a minimum of ten participants. Your Money Seniors can be tailored to the needs of the association requesting the seminar. All modules are flexible and scalable to anyone’s needs. This means that the modules can be offered in 1 hour or could take a whole day; the volunteer banker can also concentrate more on one segment as requested by the participant or the organization. If this time still wasn’t enough, CBA offers follow-up sessions to further knowledge on one or more topic(s).

If are interested in scheduling a Your Money Seniors seminar in your community, give the CBA a call at 1-800-263-0231, ext. 260 or fill out a seminar request form.

Credits

Images

• mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

Video

• cdnbankers. (2015, Jun 4). Your Money Seniors. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/QHVG3j_5kIs