Welcome to Retirement Unpacked with Al Smith, owner of Golden Eagle Financial. You want a retirement plan that alleviates your fears about the future, so you know your money will last. As a chartered financial consultant, Al Smith will help you find a balance between the risk and reward of the market and the safety of your retirement income. And now, here’s your host, Al Smith. Welcome to another program of Retirement Unpacked. I want to thank you for tuning in. I have some good information this afternoon. And also, I wanted to put out a big thank you out there for everyone who attended Western Welcome Week. It’s a great event in downtown Littleton, and they’ve been holding some form of that event for 96 years. They had parades with lots of bands. I think they had high school bands from the local high schools nearby. And it was a warm day, but they enjoyed it anyway. There were a lot of booths, a lot of activities. It was a good time enjoyed by all. I got to meet a lot of people. And we have the cash cube where the money was flying around, people grabbing it, and so forth. And we spun the wheel to see what people won. And I got to know a lot of people, most of whom were local. And if you would like to have a fresh look at where you are with respect to your retirement, whether that’s 30 years off, or whether you’ve been retired for 10 years already. I would be glad to provide a free consultation where I will listen to you really carefully what you want your retirement to look like, and see if there are some ways I can be of help. My number’s 3037441128. Now what I do is I help people accumulate well so that they’ll have enough retirement income as they make that transition from the workforce to retirement. And we try to have money growing in safe places because our money is subject to all kinds of different risks. And we try to emeliorate those risks to the best that we can. We can have some assets in places where they won’t be affected by market volatility. We can have some other places for assets where they will grow faster than inflation and grow well when the market grows. But there is a real risk to our financial resources that’s out there that I can’t be directly helpful for. I can provide information that I can definitely do. But what I’m talking about is scams. There is no shortage of bad people who would like to separate you from your life savings or a small amount of money or a medium amount of money or would like to obtain your identity so that they can purchase a car in your name, damage your credit, and all kinds of things. And the number of different varieties of the way they do this is really amazing. And this isn’t anything new ever since time began. There’s been people who wanted to lie to you or do whatever it takes in order to separate you from your money. And scammers have figured out countless ways to cheat you out of your money. We’ll first talk about some of those that are done over the phone. The phone has been around for many years and some people, and I’m not picking on older people here, but some older people have become accustomed to using the phone. They may not use the computer that much. And when someone calls and they sound friendly or something like that, they may be offering something and it may be something that really sounds attractive. But if you’re only experienced with them is with the phone call, it’s very difficult no matter how good whatever that offer is sounds, it may not be true. Some scammers will call people and they’ll actually threaten them. I heard of a story where someone used to get prescriptions online. And they were the calls to the person. I’m not sure how they got their number, but the call to the person said, you bought this prescription drug online, which was illegal. Now it’s being investigated by the DEA and there’s a court case that’s going on in downtown Denver in the big federal building and that this chunk of money had to be paid in order for you to avoid prosecution. And I don’t know how they are able to get some of the numbers of people who have had these transactions in the past, but this person told me that he did get a medication over the internet. And he didn’t have any inkling that it was not legal at the time, but the person calling it made it sound like he was in big trouble and this got the person really concerned. And my mother, who has since passed away a number of years ago contacted me and wanted me to check her investment account. She had an investment account through me. She said someone had contacted her telling her that it was someone from her bank. And so being a believing kind of person like she is, she ended up giving out some of her personal information to this caller. She was very concerned afterwards and was upset. She called her bank and so forth when she realized that it was a scam. So she had to change some of her accounts and move some things around. It turns out that none of her assets were stolen, but she felt very foolish that she was a very believing person and allowed this person to get her contact information. And essentially, if someone on a phone call wants to get additional contact information, that is a big red flag. For example, some of the things that people will do is just ask for information. And they may not ask for money, but the information they’re asking for is so that they can commit identity theft. And the way to recognize that it’s a scam is first of all, your bank is probably not going to call you if you have an investment account with Charles Schwabber fidelity or someone like that. Very unlikely, they would call you, especially if you haven’t made any kind of inquiry where you’re waiting for something. Some of these calls will promise some kind of a prize. Like you’ve been selected to win something, but before you can get that prize, you have to pay a certain amount of money or something like that. And the other thing is if some product is being offered and if it absolutely has to be done right then, that’s much more likely to be a scam. Also, scammers are going to be very likely that you pay in certain ways, wire transfer gift card, cryptocurrency, things of that nature. Government agencies don’t contact you, the Social Security Administration will not call you unless you have already made some kind of an inquiry and we’re waiting for calls, you know, for calls back. So that’s a real easy way to make certain that something is coming from a scammer because you won’t get calls from Social Security or from your bank or from your investment company unless you have already initiated something and you are anticipating something like that. Now, scammers sometimes even pretend to be law enforcement, like that one example I gave or someone had bought a prescription online. The scammers who are presenting themselves as law enforcement, they might even say you’ll be fined or arrested or deported if someone’s, for example, a green card or not a citizen or something right, like that. Unless you take care of this, whatever it is, this financial thing right away. And as I mentioned, government agencies, they will not call you. The other thing is if you have signed up on the no call list, then it’s illegal for people to contact you either personally or with a robocall. There’s something called the naturally national do not call registry. And if you have signed up for that, then people are not permitted to call you unless you’ve already made personal contact with them. Now, something else that has occasionally occurred are someone’s pretending to be a grandson or a granddaughter and a desperate need for money. And the grandmother actually thinks, well, gee, this sounds just like Kyle, my grandson, and it sounds like he’s in trouble. Where with AI, they have the ability to mimic other people’s voices. So what is highly suggested is that families have what’s called a safe word. And the safe word might be bullet point or the safe word might be Denver Broncos or something like that. And so if someone were trying to portray himself or herself as a relative who is in desperate need of money, the grandparent can ask, what is the safe word? And if that were truly a member of the family, he or she would know what the safe word is. Some of these scams are like credit repair scams. Some credit agencies and so forth sell their mailing list. And some of the phone calls that people get are because they’re on a mailing list for people who have in the past, you know, done certain negotiations with some of the credit companies and so forth. There are also charity scams. They like to pose as real charities and they may ask for donations for disaster relief or something like that. Some of the other things that can occur even door to door. Some contractors, for example, they may see someone’s home that looks like it needs a new siding or needs painting or something like that. And that person may not be an evil scammer. But if he is approaching someone who is perhaps a senior citizen or someone that doesn’t check things out really carefully, what that person might charge could be two or three times as high as what a more legitimate contractor may charge. So these phone scams are out there and I encourage everyone when you answer the phone, don’t provide any information to that caller and don’t believe them when they say they’re from a charity or the government or anything like that because there’s ways to determine if that’s a legitimate or not. I have some more scams after the break. Every day that you don’t have golden eagle financial managing your retirement, you’re losing money. As you move closer to retirement, Al Smith of Golden Eagle Financial can help you make up for lost time and ensure that your resources are performing well. Now is the time to reevaluate your flex spending account, life insurance, savings for it or anything else that you’re doing. As you prepare to retire on your terms, compound interest as you say for retirement is exponential. Every day you wait will cost you money. So you need to contact Al Smith of Golden Eagle Financial today to create your customized solution by going to the advertiser’s page at kalzradio.com. Investment advisory services offer through Rookstone Capital Management LLC, a registered investment advisor. BCM and Golden Eagle Financial Limited are independent of each other. Insurance products and services are not offered through BCM but are offered in soul through individually licensed and appointed agents. Welcome back to retirement unpacked. We’re talking about some mechanisms, some ill legal and highly evil mechanisms that will try to separate you from your money. Now Kalarado has wonderful outdoors with great things to do, hunting, mountain biking and a big one up in the mountains especially in the summertime is fishing. So I’m going to talk a little bit about fishing but the fishing I’m talking about isn’t spelled with an F, it’s spelled with a pH, phishing, phi, phi, and d, ing. And it’s not the kind of fishing in the mountains, not fly fishing for trout. It is fraudulent email and you may be thinking when you’re listening to this show that you take precautions and you would never be fooled by a scammer or anything like that. But if you do business with Comcast and you get an email from Comcast you’re probably going to open that especially if as you’re looking at the email it looks like your bill is overdue. Well I have Comcast and my bill comes automatically out of my business checking account and I was tried to, they tried to fish with an email for me and it made it sound like my bill was overdue. I contacted Comcast and I didn’t click on any links or give them any of my information but you can get emails that look extremely legitimate. I have gotten multiple emails that have a Costco logo. Those emails are not from Costco. Costco isn’t likely to send you an email unless there’s some business you have conducted with them and you are anticipating an email. They’re not just going to blast you with emails that you have won something because those are the ones that I’ve received and even though my email is as protections linked to it. In the entire wall the fishermen with the pH they manage to figure out how to get through. They want to get your sensitive information and if you open an email or open an attachment that is an opportunity for them to infect your computer with malware. That can get really ugly to say the least. Now some of the ways to know for sure if something is fishing if you’re getting an email from an entity that you may do business with but you were not expecting it it’s likely to be fishing. Don’t reply to any email that you’re unfamiliar with or click or open any attachments. Also it’s highly recommended that you have strong antivirus and a firewall. There’s a lot of those PC, Maddick, NordVPN. There are a lot of those that can make it much more difficult for people to take advantage of you through fishing. But it’s really common and the reason they’re able to scan people is because they will have the logo and everything of the company with whom you do business so when you see that email you think oh this is a fidelity or this is first bank or this is Costco and they have something I better open this. But unless you have already initiated some contact with that company it’s much more likely that that is fishing and that is a really common scam that’s taken place really often. But one of the major reasons that fishing takes place or even the phone calls is they want to get your identity if they can get your social security number and a little bit of other information it’s amazing how much they can do so there’s some really important things that you can do to protect yourself from identity theft which is one of the treasures that the scammer. That the scammers want to get is your identity a number of years ago I and my ex wife at the time went for lunch in a trendy kind of place it’s called Ray scenes it’s no longer there it’s at seventh in Sherman downtown it’s well known as a cool place for lunch so we went there for lunch one time. And when we’re paying the bill I gave the waiter who was little older than most of the wait staff I was used to and he went when he was out of sight and he came back with the bill and I signed and so forth and this was like on a Saturday lunch time and I got a call from my bank at about nine o’clock that night asking me if I had ordered some homecoming tickets to the University of North Carolina’s homecoming tickets. And I said no and so they locked up and froze my debit card and none of those charges counted but I was a a victim of identity theft and I’m blessed that my bank has a fraud department that looks out for things like this I’m sure they have some kind of computer software that looks and sees how I normally spend my money. Which doesn’t include homecoming tickets to places like University of North Carolina but in any event it’s very easy to get scammed they have wallets right now that have features that make it difficult for people to get your identity from your wallet and I would not recommend that you keep your social security card in your wallet. Because with these mechanisms that they have to get your information directly from your wallet your social security number is gold to an identity thief so most of us know our social security numbers by heart keep that somewhere where it’s not accessible to bad people some other things to avoid identity theft use different passwords limit your exposure on to social security number. And I’ve already mentioned it but be sure and have strong anti virus for your computer and your phone check your statements that you get from any financial sources that you have banks and deskmen accounts and so forth. Getting these pre-approved credit offers I know many people get credit offers from well known reputable companies but along with that information going to well known reputable companies it also goes out to scammers so you can go to the credit bureaus and say you want your name removed from these credit bureau marketing lists. Because all three of the big credit bureaus sell some of that information not your social security number or anything like that but enough information like an address that they the big companies can send you offers for you know you can get you know 6% $10,000 just sign here all the time people get those so you can have your name removed from those marketing offers you can also be sure to on a regular basis check your credit reports because some people who are identity thieves they will buy an automobile using your name your social security number And they will tell the financial entity that they may be that you have changed address so they’re sending the bill somewhere else or you’re not even aware without checking your credit report. And if a business wants personal information from you that you’re doing business with that you’ve chosen to do business with ask them why do you need this information because with the exception of financial services most companies aren’t going to need your social security number and so forth. Last one I’m going to talk about today is one of the scariest scams it’s the frozen computer screen. I have heard of circumstances where all of a sudden there’s a great big flash on the computer screen that says you’ve been hacked and in order to become unhacked so to speak so to speak you have to contact Microsoft windows and they give you a toll free number to call. And then once you call there’s someone that says well you have been hacked and you have to follow these procedures in order to get released from this frozen computer screen and so this person will walk you through it and he will say that he is a representative of Microsoft and so forth and he will have you go onto a website that will permit him to see everything on your computer screen. And after he does that he’s going to say we want to make sure that none of your banking has been hacked so let’s go open up your account or where you bank well once it gets to that point you know absolutely for certain it’s a scam I mean you probably should have known from the beginning that it’s a scam but they make it look very realistic because your computer screen is locked up and it says call this for windows. And that is a really ugly event that happens to people on a regular basis it’s a frozen computer screen and I checked into a little bit of that today and the web support through Microsoft the email is so long I’m not even going to give it over the air but if you were to go to Microsoft support they will let you know what to do if this happens and essentially what needs to be done as well. And so it’s a really good thing to have a computer screen that is going to be done as well as it’s going to be done as well as it’s going to be done as well as it’s going to be done as well as it’s going to be done as well. And so it’s going to be done as well as it’s going to be done as well as it’s going to be done as well. And so it’s going to be done as well as it’s going to be done as well as it’s going to be done as well. And so it hopefully it’s been helpful. God bless you. Thank you for listening. If you’d like a conversation with me call my office at 3037441128. And again, God bless you. Thank you for listening and let’s keep the folks in Israel in our prayers. Bye. Thank you for listening to Retirement Unpacked with your host Al Smith of Golden Eagle Financial. Set up a free consultation with Al today at klsiradio.com/money. Find your purpose in retirement with Golden Eagle Financial. Investment Advisory Services offered through Brookstone Capital Management LLC, a registered investment advisor. Vcm and Golden Eagle Financial Limited are independent of each other. Insurance products and services are not offered through Vcm but are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed agents. Avant de Prante.