In February, CAPTRUST’s Cathy Seeber spoke to Financial Advisor magazine about substance use disorder. In the article, titled “Advisor Helps Clients Break Financial Drain Of Addiction”, Seeber shares that she, too, is the mother of a former heroin and alcohol addict.
The article calls out that, according to the National Institutes of Health, living in poverty is a risk factor for abuse of opioids and other substances. But Seeber wants readers to know that addiction doesn’t discriminate.
With growing numbers of high-net-worth families afflicted by the opioid epidemic, Seeber goes on to say, “It’s easier for wealthy individuals to continue to access legal opioids, and they’re better able to hide their addiction because it’s not as physically obvious as heroin, a less expensive substitute.”
Seeber comments how important it is to learn to recognize the signs, ask the right questions, and listen patiently if you suspect someone you care about has a problem with addiction.
To view the article in its entirety, please click here.
About CAPTRUST
CAPTRUST Financial Advisors is an independent investment research and fee-based advisory firm specializing in providing investment advisory services to retirement plan fiduciaries, endowments and foundations, executives, and high-net-worth individuals. Headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, the firm represents more than $313 billion in client assets with 38 offices located across the U.S.
When it comes to spending and investment policies, it’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario for nonprofits. How a nonprofit chooses to invest portfolio assets and the amount of grants it plans to award are complimentary decisions, so it’s basically impossible to say which of these decisions comes first.
What we can say with certainty is that endowments and foundations need both an investment policy that documents how portfolio assets are deployed and a spending policy that outlines how much of the portfolio is earmarked for grants. We also know that stakeholders who do not tie spending to investments create significant potential for a decline in portfolio assets and the financial means to award grants in the future.
It should, therefore, come as no surprise that organizations that craft incompatible spending and investment policies may jeopardize a nonprofit’s future and may violate their fiduciary duties under the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act (UPMIFA). In fact, UPMIFA specifically indicates that organizations must factor in the investment policy of the institution and the expected total return from income and the appreciation of investments when determining spending rates.
Successfully fulfilling the mission of a nonprofit depends on careful control and planning around both spending policy and investment strategy.
The Role of a Spending Policy
An organization’s spending policy is a tool that guides the charitable spending and investment trade-off. Spending rules are ultimately designed to advance the mission of an organization and its multiple goals. “A nonprofit institution’s spending approach should be unique to the goals, financials, and risk profile of the organization; it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach,” says CAPTRUST Senior Manager James Stenstrom.
“Our experience has shown us that having clearly defined spending rules instills a higher level of accountability into the budgeting and financial oversight process,” says Stenstrom.
Developing an appropriate spending policy is one of the more challenging steps in the nonprofit planning process. “The institution’s spending policy is usually one of the most important investment strategy inputs,” says Stenstrom. Interestingly, as shown in Figure One, 12 percent of CAPTRUST’s 2018 Endowment and Foundation Survey respondents do not have a formal documented spending policy.
Figure One: Endowments and Foundations with a Documented Spending Policy
Source: CAPTRUST’s 2018 Endowment and Foundation Survey results.
However, a poorly understood or implemented spending policy may be worse than not having one at all. It is important to have an established spending policy in good order and accessible to key decision makers. Furthermore, decisions about implementing a spending policy should be formally documented so context is maintained as stakeholders change over time.
A formal spending policy is an important component of any audit trail. It provides the context necessary to understand drivers of past success or failure. Lastly, a formal policy accompanied by documented compliance may be the best defense against the potential for declined ability to award grants for future generations.
The Big Balance
For key decision makers, balancing current and future spending can involve difficult, even painful, trade-offs. Officials must balance the expected life of the programs to be funded against the desired life of the organization and the intent of the original charitable gift. This involves the management of three broad trade-offs: spending, investment risk, and investment return.
There are no easy answers.
“Nonprofits must carefully orchestrate the trade-offs between sustainability and predictability in the present and the future. The more a spending policy varies with fluctuations in asset values, the more sustainable—but less predictable—it is,” says CAPTRUST’s Stenstrom.
A high rate of spending requires a relatively aggressive and riskier portfolio or more fundraising to support that spending. Conversely, committees that prefer more conservative investment approaches may need to reduce spending. Stenstrom explains that the spending rate should be coordinated with overall average portfolio returns to ensure spending and investment returns are well balanced.
“Spending more than generated returns on an ongoing basis is a recipe for a decline in assets, regardless of other features of the spending rule,” says Stenstrom. “The perpetual struggle is to decide how much of the available assets should go to those worthy causes currently knocking at the door and what should be invested for future needs.”
When endowments and foundations invest too aggressively, their portfolios may be decimated by both spending and portfolio declines. But if they invest too conservatively, their portfolios may not provide enough growth to keep up with inflation. High levels of spending may require aggressive investment strategies, but these strategies may lead to greater uncertainty in returns, making a spending policy less sustainable.
Given these uncertainties, it’s in the best interest of nonprofits to carefully coordinate overall fund goals with spending and investment decisions. Further, it is critical that decision makers understand the impact that spending decisions can have on their investment portfolio.
Different Types of Spending Policies
An endowment or foundation’s spending policy might be based on current asset value, trailing-average asset value, past spending, income from assets, portfolio returns, or some combination of these. But the right spending policy plays a significant role in an institutions’ ability to achieve its objectives.
A well-thought-out spending policy should balance the current and future needs of the organization while creating a practical and predictable level of spending. A sound policy must also consider the organization’s other sources of funds, such as fundraising, grants, and government support, and how they correlate to the financial markets and spending needs. And finally, a good spending policy maintains the original donor’s intent where applicable.
Evaluating strategies across multiyear market scenarios allows more flexibility in the types of spending policies that can be considered and provides the ability to emphasize different goals over different investment horizons.
“Most often, we see moving-average-based spending policies—where an organization spends a fixed percentage of its portfolio’s average market value over a set time period,” says CAPTRUST Senior Director Grant Verhaeghe. “12 or 20 quarters are commonly used periods.”
But while moving average policies tend to strike a good balance between preserving portfolios and sustaining future spending, we see nonprofits using a variety of spending policy types as shown in Figure Two.
Figure Two: Spending Policy Usage Among Nonprofits
Source: CAPTRUST’s 2018 Endowment and Foundation Survey results.
There is no way to conclude if one policy is superior to any other policy on a general basis, since each has its merits in different situations.
A thorough review of a nonprofit’s goals, objectives, and needs is a staple in both the initial and ongoing part of establishing your nonprofits spending policy. As the decisions made around spending help drive asset allocation and investment manager selection decisions, establishing these rules can be one of the most important and pressing choices a nonprofit board, spending, or investment committee will make.
In the late 1960s, Eddie Joseph was a high school honor student, slated to graduate early and begin college. That path took a detour. A long one. Impassioned to resolve the social, economic, and political wrongs he saw in his Bronx community and the nation, 15-year-old Eddie was drawn to the ideology of the Black Panther Party, which was just gaining a national presence.
He remembers riding the subway to the Panther office in Harlem with two friends to offer his services, enraged by the recent assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was ready to fight, even kill if necessary, to serve the cause.
At the Panther office, a leader called the earnest teen up front. As Joseph stood by his side, the leader pulled open a desk drawer and reached far into it. Joseph’s heart pounded. He was prepared to be handed a gun—the power for social change.
Instead, he was handed a stack of books, such as The Autobiography of Malcolm X and The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon’s 1961 work on the cultural foundations of social movements. Taken aback, Joseph said, “Excuse me, brother, I thought you were going to arm me.” The Panther’s reply: “Excuse me, young brother, I just did.”
By 16, Eddie—now called Jamal—learned that the militant group the FBI declared to be “the greatest threat to America” was a multifaceted entity. The Party’s 10-point program called for fair housing, education, justice, and peace. They put those ideals into action with free breakfasts for school children. Free medical clinics for those who could otherwise not afford health care. Neighborhood patrols to protect citizens threatened by street violence and police brutality. The guns were just there to establish authority and prevent law enforcement obstruction to the primary mission: liberation.
“Freedom and liberation are really abstract concepts,” says Joseph a half century later, speaking with a temperate grace that belies the radical fervor of his younger self. What it means depends on where you are on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. “To a person who is hungry, freedom is a meal. To someone who is homeless and cold, liberation is a safe, warm, dry place to sleep. To a person who is sick, political power is a doctor, nurse, and medicine. So, in a day in the Panther Party, you probably saw or touched a gun 5 percent of the time, but spent 95 percent of the time working in the community.”
The Panthers Joseph saw organizing free services in their communities stood in striking contrast to the menacing, gun-toting criminals he saw on television. He saw that true empowerment is not the product of violence but of empathy.
Joseph has carried with him a lifelong lesson from the late Afeni Shakur, a fellow Panther and big sister figure. “She said, ‘You know Jamal, the real goal of the Panther Party is not to have every person in Harlem or the black community become a member of the Black Panther Party. The goal of the Panther Party is to lead by example and show the people the possibilities of struggle for emancipation and liberation—to lead by possibility and to make ourselves obsolete.’”
“Imagine that pearl of wisdom on a 15-year-old kid,” Joseph says. “If you think you’re going to be a Panther, know that real leadership and service is to make yourself obsolete because the people are empowered because they get it, and they get it for them.”
If violence did not top the Black Panther Party’s tenets, it was undeniably part of the implementation. By 16, Joseph’s devotion to the cause landed him in prison on infamous Rikers Island, charged with a bombing conspiracy as part of the Panther 21 in one of the most emblematic criminal cases of the 60s. When exonerated, he became the youngest spokesperson and leader in the Panthers’ New York chapter. In one of his more renowned oratories, he urged Vietnam war protestors to burn down the Columbia University campus.
He later landed back in prison, sentenced to 12 years in Leavenworth for harboring a fugitive in an armed robbery. Despite the dangers and despair of life in a federal penitentiary, Joseph credits this time for resetting his life’s compass.
“An older prisoner, Mr. Cody, gave me life-changing advice,” Joseph recalls. “He said, ‘Young blood, let me tell you some-thing. You can serve this here time, or you can let this here time serve you.” As Malcolm X said, ‘The penitentiary has been the university for many a black man.’”
While in prison, Joseph earned college degrees with honors in psychology and sociology, wrote poetry and his first play, and founded a groundbreaking theater company that brought together prisoners formerly divided by race, culture, and violence.
Joseph didn’t start out with the idea to develop a theater company. Some inmates—most notably Mr. Cody—challenged him to do a play for Black History Month. “I couldn’t find anything in the library, so I wrote a play and had black brothers rehearsing,” Joseph recalls. Parole by Death was based on the true story of a young prisoner stabbed to death two weeks before his parole date.
“Then some Latinos showed up to a rehearsal,” Joseph says. “We thought something must be really upsetting them. One came up and said, ‘I’ve got to talk to you.’ I thought, oh damn, it’s me. He said, ‘I’ve been watching this for about 10 minutes, and that guy, he’s not feeling his character.’ So I rewrote the play to include Latino characters. Then some white brothers showed up and wanted to be in the play, so we ended up having this multicultural experience.”
“These were groups that stood in different areas of the yard in the voluntary segregation that happens in prison. You stay in your own section of the yard. I thought, this is amazing.” This cultural bridge epitomized the Black Panther Party’s slogan of “power to all the people” across racial lines. There were just 12 to 15 men in the play, but more than 2,000 in the audience giving them a standing ovation, a profoundly unifying moment.
“I saw men change, not only in how they communicated with each other, but in starting to realize that they could act, they could write, they could sing. They wrote letters home, poetry. I saw the transformative and healing power of the arts, and I started thinking this was the work that I wanted to do.”
“I was still a prisoner, but I’d found a new kind of freedom.”
Released from prison on Christmas Eve 1987, Joseph returned to a Harlem that looked like the aftermath of a World War II bombing raid—block after block of devastation and decay, punctuated by nightly gunfire at the height of the crack epidemic. He had a family to consider: his wife, Joyce Walker, an actress and model who was the first African-American woman on the cover of Seventeenmagazine, and his young son, Jamal Jr. It would have been so easy to leave. Go somewhere safe.
Instead he stayed and tapped the social activism that had drawn him to the Panthers decades earlier. He immersed himself in projects and making ends meet. On his résumé he listed his Black Panther affiliation and time in prison under “Other Experience.” His candor and street cred earned him a role at the Harlem campus of Touro College, where he worked seven years as a counselor, professor, and director of student activities.
From there, he accepted an invitation to teach a semester of screenwriting at Columbia University, which led to another, then a steady climb up the academic ranks to full professor and a five-year term as chair of the film school. As the first African-American head of any department in the school of the arts, Joseph worked to increase diversity of thought and perspective, both in the faculty and student body.
In the midst of his ascent at Columbia, Joseph’s life took another turn. A 16-year-old neighbor was killed at a party. The boy had confronted a young gunslinger who had disrespected his sister. The youth shot him.
“When Andre’s mother received the news, her apartment was too small to contain her grief,” Joseph recalls. “She ran out into the street and wailed.” Joseph was still mourning the death of his godson, Afeni Shakur’s son, Tupac, who had been killed in Las Vegas a year earlier.
The what-ifs haunted him. Was there more he could have said or done for Tupac? For Andre? “I was helping run a youth program in Manhattan. Why not in Harlem, where I live, I thought? If Andre, or the boy who shot him, were in a creative arts workshop instead of out partying or doing drugs on the street, then maybe Andre would still be alive. These pointless deaths had to stop. I knew I had to do something. And I knew what my weapons would be.”
Joseph approached Voza Rivers, executive producer of Harlem’s New Heritage Theatre, with a vision to bring arts to Harlem youth, to create a refuge from the streets and help kids make sense of their world.
The IMPACT Repertory Theatre began in a community center basement with nine students—including Joseph’s three children. Within a year, 75 kids had joined. Since then, more than 2,000 young people have been part of IMPACT in New York. Of those who stayed with IMPACT through high school, 75 percent have gone on to college. Thousands more have participated in IMPACT-led workshops in New York, Philadelphia, and Atlanta.
The repertory company performs in front of more than 25,000 people a year at venues ranging from the United Nations headquarters to New York City Hall, hospitals, public schools, and, yes, penitentiaries.
More than a performing arts troupe, IMPACT is based on a mission statement of SOS—safe space, outstanding effort, and service to family, friends, and community. Prospective members go through an intensive 12-week boot camp where they learn the fundamentals of leadership, service, and public speaking—and forge indelible connections.
IMPACT members visit nursing homes, clean up city blocks, and organize food and clothing drives. They serve meals, participate in sharing circles with elders, register voters, and fundraise for charity. “We teach young people that they can be socially active and make a difference,” Joseph says. “There’s no start date for activism, and there’s no expiration date for your dreams.”
Young people audition for the program, but it’s not a pass-or-fail proposition. It’s a chance to find each one’s best niche. Will this person dance, sing, write, or work as a stage manager behind the scenes? “We know we can’t get every kid on stage, but we sure want to get every kid to college,” says Joseph. “If we can teach not only creativity but community and commitment, then we will help them become better people. If they become better singers, dancers, or writers, that’s great, we’re cool, but if you’re a mediocre singer, dancer, or writer but you become a better person, then we’ve done our job, and you will see us jumping for joy.”
The kids write or co-write their own material and choreography, and Joseph is very vested in them. He gets choked up and a little teary-eyed watching them perform, whether in the borrowed rehearsal space or on stage at the 2008 Academy Awards, telecast to a billion viewers. “The kids say, ‘Are you okay Uncle Jamal?’ I say, ‘I have some allergies.’ I’m good at allergies.”
Alumni from the program come back to share their stories. Now in their 20s and 30s, they are educators and social workers, professionals in medicine, law, and arts management. Many have graduate degrees. Two are PhD candidates.
Count Joseph’s own children in that number. Eldest son Jamal, 36, has a Master of Fine Arts in film from Columbia. Middle son Jad, 30, a Brown University graduate and activist, is passionate about restorative justice and campaigns for progressive candidates. Daughter Jindai, 27, a Columbia University grad, is director of operations and creative producer at a Harlem-based advertising and marketing firm as well as a talented musician. All three were IMPACT kids.
In addition to creating IMPACT and inspiring a generation of Columbia students to tell their stories in film, Joseph is a wellspring of creativity. He published Tupac Shakur Legacy, a biography of his godson, and the autobiographical Panther Baby. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song in 2008 for a song he co-wrote for the film August Rush.
He is co-founder and faculty advisor of FOCUS—Filmmakers of Color United in Spirit—which promotes diversity and inclusion in community work, mentoring, and storytelling through film.
He is working on Peace Warriors, a musical about anti-bullying and anti-violence that has original monologues, poetry, music, and dance by IMPACT members. A documentary on a Harlem-based civil rights lawyer is in the works. So is a television series based on Panther Baby.
Joseph’s critically acclaimed 2017 film, Chapter & Verse, tells the story of a reformed gang leader who struggles to adapt to a changed Harlem after serving an eight-year prison sentence. “I’m very proud of the film as a filmmaker because I was able to artistically make a film that people appreciate.”
Chapter & Verse represented the perfect confluence of Joseph’s worlds. It showcases the talents of present and former Columbia students and IMPACT kids in front of and behind the camera. Joseph is shooting film, not bullets, in Harlem to tell a story that personally resonates—how to find hope and relearn the joys of life and living, “despite an outwardly bedeviled society.”
Now Joseph is raising funds for his next dream—a space in Harlem so IMPACT can have a permanent home and expand offerings with its own dance space, theater space, recording studio, and multimedia center to create digitally enhanced stage experiences. It’s a natural extension of the community-based social activism he learned decades ago as a Panther. “We knew back then that we had bright minds questioning the world,” he says. “Now I want to create a space for the best and the brightest minds of this generation.”
Even with his career and community successes, Joseph can hardly believe he has been at Columbia University for 20 years. He came in thinking he was going to teach one course for one semester. He was stunned to be asked back for a second semester.
“I’m reminded of the irony of this turn of events whenever I walk by the large statue of Alma Mater that stands in front of the Low Library in the middle of the Columbia campus,” Joseph says. “She looks down at me with a look that says, So it’s Professor Joseph now, huh? I remember when you were a young Panther, and all you wanted to do was burn this damn place down or die trying. Well, we both survived, and here we are. Maybe there’s a future after all.”
Just about everything in the sprawling 91-year-old Dutch colonial in Bexley, Ohio, is, in fact, there by design—and part of an experiment in four-generation living Lisa Cini and her family launched in 2014.
Cini, who specializes in designing senior living facilities, used her talents to create an unglamorous but functional 4,300-square-foot home for herself, her husband, and their then-teenaged children to share with her parents and her maternal grandmother, then 92.
Cini’s grandmother, Gerline Lilly, passed away recently from Alzheimer’s disease at age 96. “She lived a phenomenal life and at the end, got to live with my kids, and my mom and dad, and us,” Cini says. “We’ve all benefited.”
Cini describes the experiment in her book Hive: The Simple Guide to Multigenerational Living. It’s an experiment that, in one form or another, more of us are trying.
A record 64 million Americans—20 percent of the population—lived in multigenerational homes in 2016, according to the Pew Research Center. The count includes young adults living with their parents, elders living with their grown children, and grandparents living with grandchildren.
Such households are, of course, common around the world. They are part of our history, too. In 1940, more than two-thirds of people over age 85 lived with extended families, as did one-third of adults ages 25 to 29, according to Pew.
But those numbers plunged after World War II, as a housing and economic boom normalized the nuclear family home. Young adults were expected to set up their own households as quickly as possible, and elders were expected to live independently or among their peers, in senior communities, assisted living facilities, and the like. By 1980, just 12 percent of Americans lived in multigenerational homes.
But during the Great Recession a decade ago, multigenerational living surged back. And it shows no sign of receding now, despite the improved economy, experts say.
In many cases, “people may have come together by need, but they’ve stayed together by choice,” says Donna Butts, executive director of Generations United, an advocacy group that works to strengthen intergenerational connections.
Along the way, she says, attitudes toward such families have changed. Stories about beleaguered baby boomers unable to rid themselves of boomerang kids and needy elders have increasingly given way to more positive narratives, she says, about families choosing to live with and care for one another.
For people who choose the multigenerational lifestyle, “it’s not a sign of weakness,” Butts says. “It’s really a sign of strength for people to admit they enjoy being together. For many families, it’s really a wonderful thing.”
Cini says there may still be some stigma—or fear of stigma—attached to setting up a multigenerational home.
“After I did this, people would come up and say, ‘I want to do this too,’ but it was almost like a dirty little secret,” she says. In the case of people taking in aging parents, she says, “part of it was that they didn’t want people to think they couldn’t afford to put their parents somewhere else.”
And, for many families, financial considerations do still play a role in decisions to double or triple up—even if they are doing it in gleaming new homes or smartly repurposed or remodeled digs, some experts say.
In the San Francisco area, young adults are coming back to live with their parents not because they cannot find jobs, but because their perfectly respectable jobs do not pay enough to cover the high costs of housing there, says Fran Halperin, a Bay Area architect specializing in accessibility and aging in place.
For some, “there’s a lack of confidence that the economy will stay good. I hear a lot of people referring to the next recession,” says Joanne Theunissen, chair of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). Theunissen builds and remodels homes in and around Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
That kind of thinking, she says, leads clients to think about how to get the most from their homes—which means thinking about their extended families’ needs in the future.
“I’m building a house right now for a single woman with a daughter,” she says. “Her daughter is in college. Her parents live in Ohio. But she wants a suite for her parents to come and live in in the next few years and another room for her daughter when she comes home.”
The multigenerational living trend has created a market for new homes built expressly for shared lives. Lennar, the nation’s largest homebuilder, has for the past several years offered a line of what it calls Next Gen® homes—homes designed with attached one-bedroom units that have their own entrances, kitchenettes, and parking but can open into the main house.
Promotional videos at the builder’s website show the sorts of families the homes might attract. There’s a family with a grandmother and another with a developmentally disabled adult daughter, each living semi-independently in their attached suites.
Of course, not everyone plans ahead for multigenerational living.
“Often, there’s some kind of family crisis. Grandma falls and breaks a hip or junior loses his job and has to move back in with the family,” says Northern California remodeler Michael Litchfield, author of In-Laws, Outlaws, and Granny Flats: Your Guide to Turning One House into Two Homes.
Such renovations are the solutions that many families seek if they have the resources. Those resources include not only money, but a house and lot that can accommodate added rooms, ideally with their own entrances, cooking and bathing facilities, and outdoor spaces, Litchfield says.
Another essential: local zoning laws and planning officials that will permit your plans to become reality. That’s far from a given. Many neighborhoods built for single-family living are hostile to changes that might bring in too many people and cars, Litchfield says.
That is changing, though, in many communities trying to address housing shortages. New laws in California, for example, give cities more flexibility to promote the building of so-called “accessory dwelling units.”
Adding such a unit can be a smart financial move, especially in communities that allow them to be used as rentals, says Halperin, the Bay Area architect.
“I personally think they are great for resale. There are so many potential uses. If you don’t have elderly adults or adult children, you might want to rent it out or Airbnb it,” she says—though she notes neighbors often complain about such uses, even when laws allow them.
Another idea: Some people envision moving into their own in-law suites or cottages after their elders or grown children are gone—and renting out their larger home, Halperin and Litchfield say. That, they say, can allow people to travel but keep a base of operations in their old stomping grounds.
Cini says she does not know what comes next for her family. For now, her grandmother’s first-floor suite stands empty. Her parents, Libby and John Miller, still taking the stairs at 78 and 80, are comfy in their second-floor suite. In fact, Cini thinks the stairs have helped keep her parents young. So has the stimulation of living in a bustling household, where that dorm-style family room, with its multiple sofas, is often full of friends and family, she says.
“They are in better shape than they were five years ago,” Cini says. She notes that her father still works at a furniture dealership, and her mother, with the help of the entire household, was able to be her own mother’s primary caregiver in the older woman’s final years.
“There have also been enormous payoffs for my kids,” Cini says, including lessons in empathy and caregiving.
The two young people, Jacob and Adellina, now in their early 20s, have just graduated from college. Both are exploring options. If they end up living at home, Cini says she will be thrilled. If they end up far away, that will be fine, too, she says—but might mean it will soon be time to move on from what she calls “our minivan house.”
Maybe, she says, she and her husband, Greg, 52, will buy a smaller duplex with her parents—and they will all retire and travel together.
“No matter what, my parents are going to be close to me,” she says. “Flexibility has to be key. You can’t get caught up in doing it one way, because you just don’t know what life holds.”
Kim Hunter once owned a popular Korean restaurant in a trendy area of downtown Raleigh before making the decision to close and take her food to the streets. She enjoyed owning a successful restaurant, but she wanted more flexibility. Her stationary restaurant found itself susceptible to a constantly evolving downtown, and with this comes traffic changes, construction, and parking challenges. Hunter now avoids these rapid disruptions with her mobile eatery, Umma Foods.
Many chefs like Hunter are deciding to forego traditional brick-and-mortar establishments in favor of a traveling restaurant—with far less overhead and restraints. With this shift in dining options, hungry customers are taking advantage of the convenience, variety, and novelty of food trucks to experiment with foods from around the world.
“Having a food truck allows more flexibility, both in my personal life and in where we can connect with customers. We aren’t constrained to a particular location,” Hunter says.
Hunter often finds herself parked in one of the many Triangle breweries, such as Trophy Brewing and Bond Brothers Beer Company. She’s also been booked to park her truck and cater weddings, birthdays, and corporate parties. With her mobile kitchen, she’s able to introduce her international cuisine to a larger area of the city.
One of the perks to operating in such a small space with few staff is the connection between chef and customer.
“On the truck, I am directly involved in every interaction—from greeting the guest, talking with them about the menu, taking their order, and cooking it. I enjoy that level of interaction,” Hunter says.
The food truck evolution has changed the way people eat out. So much so that it no longer appears to be a trend. Those seeking a quick and convenient international experience, instead of spending hours at a traditional restaurant, are finding themselves drawn to experimenting with different cuisines at food trucks.
“Enjoying food is about the experience. And people are interested in finding unique experiences and trying new cuisine. Food trucks come from the idea of international street food and, when done well, food trucks give people that sense of being on a street or festival in a town in a faraway place,” Hunter explains.
While food trucks might not create the same ambiance people get with a sit-down restaurant, Hunter says there are ways to create a unique and special atmosphere. Her Umma Foods truck brings a Korean vibe into the experience through the signage and menu, customer service, plating, the locations or setting where the truck is parked, and, of course the food itself.
Jeff Clement has been a food truck enthusiast for years. He enjoys waiting among fellow foodie comrades in long lines to try a new and popular food truck. He’s particularly interested in foods with an international flair. Clement enjoyed chasing after food trucks so much that when it came time for him to retire from the advertising agency world, he decided to join his friend—and food truck owner—this past summer to travel throughout St. Paul feeding hungry Minnesotans.
“What I like best about international trucks and doing international foods as specials is it creates a perfect environment and intersection where consumers can try new foods with limited risk or commitment,” Clement explains.
When Clement helped his friend on the food truck, Signature on Wheels, his goal was to enjoy and immerse himself in his passion for cooking and introduce people to the delicious foods he’s tasted while traveling the world with his family. Some of his favorite dishes to prepare were peri peri chicken from South Africa, Goan shrimp and tandoori cauliflower from India, Korean barbeque beef tacos, and Croatian lamb kabobs.
While Clement might be retired from advertising, the practice is still ingrained in the way he thinks. Not only did he help create interesting foreign specials for Signature on Wheels, he branded them World Food Adventures. He even created a Facebook page and the website worldfoodadventures.com, with the goal of eventually expanding to partnerships with other food trucks.
If you can’t find a food truck offering a variety of cultural cuisines, like Signature on Wheels, attending a food truck festival or event where multiple trucks are parked allows for even more freedom to experiment, with minimal risk and cost to the customer. If you’re with a large group, it can sometimes be a challenge choosing a restaurant to please everyone; a festival could cut down on conflict. Also, if you don’t like what you’ve just eaten, you can move along to a different truck without the regret of putting all your hopes into one dish and having to leave hungry.
The risks chefs face when trying to decide on menu options might become less risky when operating out of a food truck because they have a direct and immediate connection with the customer. They can see how they’re interacting with their food, and depending on the reaction, they’re able to adjust their menus accordingly.
Cooking from a food truck can also offer a level of satisfaction they might have missed out on, if stuck in a busy kitchen without a visual of their customers. Chefs wouldn’t have to rely on an intermediary, such as a waitress or waiter’s observation.
Dining at a food truck lends itself to comingling with strangers while waiting in line, versus if you were at a traditional restaurant. And since there’s no hostess to provide separate seating, you could find yourself sitting family style at a picnic table or side by side on a street curb, among new friends, enjoying a shared international cuisine experience.
The thrill of the hunt is part of the attraction to food trucks. Discovering where your favorite trucks are going to be parked next adds an additional element of excitement to the dining experience. It can also take you to new locations you might never have journeyed to.
Social media has played a large part in the popularity of the food truck revolution. After all, following a food truck via Facebook or Instagram and the actual act of eating at a food truck are inherently more of a community experience.
On the ride home from a meeting with their financial advisor, Sophie tells her husband Rob that she’s been thinking a lot more about how their money is invested. “Getting a good return is nice, but I also want us to make sure we consider the bigger picture.”
Sophie starts by explaining to Rob that she doesn’t want to invest in companies with a reputation for being careless—whether it’s with employees, the environment, or with her personal data. “I want to make sure we’re not enabling the wrong organizations.”
“What do you mean?” said Rob.
“I think how we invest matters—or at least it should,” she said. “I’d like to go to sleep at night, knowing we’re not invested in companies that do objectionable things, like pollute the environment, exploit workers, or kill animals. Don’t you agree?”
Rob thinks Sophie’s suggestions sound like nice ideas but wonders if it makes financial sense. “It would be nice to know that the companies we own a piece of are doing the right thing—or at least aren’t doing the wrong thing. But we also need to make sure we are getting a good return.”
Talking about personal finances, including how to best invest your wealth as a couple, can be challenging. In fact, almost half of Americans would rather discuss religion, politics, or dying than personal finance with a loved one. Like Sophie and Rob, you may find it difficult to discuss and resolve financial differences and the many questions that need to be answered when jointly investing.
How do you make investment decisions together? Do you solely look at financial return on investments, or do you also factor in nonfinancial returns such as your core values, the environment, and responsible corporations? And when there is a difference in mind-sets, how do you design a portfolio that respects and appreciates both of your goals and objectives?
Finding the answers to these questions may not be easy, but they are a key part of the financial planning process. So make a commitment to engage in this important dialogue with your partner. In doing so, you will increase the financial harmony in your home, improve your relationship, and help your advisor develop a strategy and plan that meets both your needs. The following are a few tips for talking with your partner about values, investments, and making decisions together.
Begin by focusing on what you two have in common, not your differences. By first highlighting areas of agreement, you set the stage for acting as a team in deciding when, where, and how to invest. Begin the dialogue by asking your partner to name two or three core values and how these principles are honored when making monetary decisions. Listen carefully to the response before sharing your thoughts or reactions. The goal of this part of the conversation is mutual understanding and finding shared values that you might use in the context of investing. For example, Rob and Sophie both value friendly environmental practices and gender parity. They got stuck on where they differ—how much to factor these values into their portfolio—and lost sight of how much they agree on core issues.
When it comes to how people invest and think of wealth, gender often comes into play. Gender differences are based on research, and there are always exceptions to these findings, but appreciating your partner’s gender lens can be helpful in understanding his or her investment selection criteria. Ask your partner for their definition of wealth and how they evaluate risk. Notice any variations in your viewpoints that may be influenced by your genders.
Sophie, like a large percentage of women investors, views wealth more holistically. She wants to invest her money in a socially and environ-mentally responsible way. Financial performance is important, but not the only factor in her decision-making process. Rob’s perspective is indicative of the more traditional male investor. He values financial performance over other investment objectives. Neither of these gender lenses is wrong or faulty; they are just different.
It is common for partners to define investment success using different criteria. Different risk profiles, money personalities, and experience with investing all factor into the equation. Ask your partner to tell you about his or her biggest financial success and what they learned from the experience. Then inquire about his or her greatest financial mistake and what lessons he or she learned from this experience. Remember to suspend any judgment and simply listen to his or her responses.
Once you have each had a chance to explain your history and definitions of success, create a joint statement that spells out the types of success you want to include when evaluating your portfolio. Sophie and Rob did this exercise and discovered that together, their definition of success was more robust and factored in both values and performance.
It is rare that two partners or spouses agree on all aspects of investments. Stop trying to convince your partner that your way is the best way to proceed. Instead, take a deep breath and ask for more data. Your diversity is not a sign of weakness; it is actually your superpower. For instance, Sophie takes longer to make an investment decision, takes calculated risks with her money, and is very philanthropic. Rob is aggressive in his approach and, therefore, tends to tolerate more risk. If they capitalize on these differences, they will create a diverse portfolio that is likely to perform better in the long run.
It is not always easy to communicate about finances, but it is a valuable skill that brings with it positive rewards. For Sophie and Rob, what started off as a financial conflict ended in a meaningful money talk about core values, risk and rewards, and the purpose of wealth in their lives—all worthwhile topics no matter how they decide to invest in the future.
Gloria Gladd, 63, has been active her whole life but has never loved solo exercise. She shudders remembering a free visit to one gym that looked like “a graveyard of equipment” for lonely treadmillers and weight lifters.
Instead, she goes five or six times a week to a Fitology club in State College, Pennsylvania, where she might join a group spin class one day, an intense whole body group workout the next, and a group weight-lifting session the day after that.
She’s always trying new things, Gladd says, and working out with others makes that easier. She remembers the day she got new spin shoes and struggled to attach them to her bike: “Three people jumped off their bikes to help me,” she says.
Gladd likes the idea that if she doesn’t show up for classes, people will ask where she’s been. “There are a lot of regulars, so there’s a lot of accountability,” says the just-retired medical office assistant.
Gladd has discovered something well supported by research. When we exercise alone, we can get a good workout—but when we exercise in a group, many of us get an added boost.
“We are greatly influenced by the company we keep,” and when our exercise mates push us to do one more squat or sweat for five more minutes, that can be a very good thing, says Cedric Bryant, president and chief science officer of the American Council on Exercise (ACE).
A group can drive us to work out harder—perhaps because we want to measure up or do our part for the team. It’s an example of the well-known Köhler effect, seen in everything from business to mountain climbing. When working on a task with others, many of us will put in extra effort.The effect is named after German industrial psychologist Otto Köhler, who first demonstrated it in experiments with rowing teams in the 1920s. But working harder is not the only benefit of working out in a group. Studies have suggested that:
That’s right. A recent study of nearly 8,600 people in Denmark found that all varieties of exercise, as expected, were associated with longer lifespans. But the biggest boosts—ranging from five to 10 years of extra life—were seen in people who choose activities that are typically social, rather than solo, with tennis, badminton, and soccer players outliving runners, swimmers, and cyclers (and exercisers of any sort outliving couch potatoes).
The study did not prove that exercising in pairs or groups made the difference in longevity, but it did account for income, education, age, and other factors that might skew results. The findings held up even when the researchers looked only at college graduates, reducing the odds that the results merely reflect the advantages of those who play certain sports, says study co-author James O’Keefe.
“I really think the social aspect of it may be the most important part,” says O’Keefe, who is director of preventive cardiology at the Mid America Heart Institute at Saint Luke’s Health System in Kansas City. To get the most out of exercise, including the most fun, he says, “we need to embrace our identities as very social creatures.” In other words, O’Keefe says, we need to “play with our friends.”
If you have ever been to an exercise class where everyone walks in, takes a spot, and then wordlessly follows along with an instructor—then you’ve been to a class with a low level of what researchers call groupness.
On the other hand, if you’ve been to a class where participants set goals together, work as teams, cheer one another on, and bond in other ways, you’ve been to a class with a high level of groupness—and probably better results, researchers say.“
What the recent research has shown is that the higher the level of groupness, the higher the level of exertion, enjoyment, and satisfaction. And the higher the intention to do it again,” says Jinger Gottschall, an associate professor of kinesiology at Pennsylvania State University. Gottschall also founded the Fitology club in State College and is a scientific advisor to ACE, the exercise council.
Gladd, who has taken fitness classes from Gottschall, describes the ideal “group vibe” this way: “It’s like being at a sporting event, but you’re participating in it.”
The bonding in a group class can begin even before anyone starts sweating, says John Ford, a New York City personal trainer who works with individuals, couples, and small groups. In a cohesive group, people might be “touching, high-fiving, giving pats on the shoulder” as they greet one another, triggering the release of “feel-good hormones” that can give people more energy and make exercise more enjoyable, he says.
And the bonds can last beyond class, Ford says. That’s why he offers corporate team-building sessions where co-workers might crawl, lunge, and shuffle through a relay competition and perform push-ups in waves—seeing how long they can keep the fun going.
And, Ford emphasizes, the group activity should be fun and conducted in a way that no one gets hurt, physically or otherwise. If not, it can be counterproductive, souring people on exercise. In a country where just one in five adults meets recently updated physical activity guidelines, no one wants that.
JC Cassis, a 35-year-old musician and podcast producer who lives in Brooklyn, spends much of each day working alone in her house. At some point, she very much needs to get out and see people, and a trip to a nearby gym for some Pilates, yoga, or high-intensity interval training is a way to combine exercise and social contact, she says.
“I’m definitely an extrovert, so the actual human contact is non-negotiable for me. This is the way I’m wired,” she says. “I love seeing the same people over and over again.”
But not everyone likes to exercise in a crowd—and that’s just fine, Gottschall says. “Some people like to go for meditative walks in the woods by themselves,” she says. “And I know some moms who are like, ‘I just want to go for a jog by myself—it’s my me time.’”
“People who have had bad experiences with group exercise in the past—who felt humiliated in high school gym classes or sports settings, for example, can lack the confidence to try again,” Ford says. “But finding a trainer or a group with a positive, supportive vibe can make all the difference,” he says.
Among other ideas for people who are shy, short on time, or living in areas with limited options: virtual exercise partners and online classes.
There are now apps that connect real runners, bikers, and others with online buddies who can share stats and compete. Researchers also are working to improve digital “exergames” to make them more like working out with supportive friends (ideally, friends who motivate you by being just a little fitter or faster than you are). And some exercise studios now offer live streaming classes along with recorded classes on demand. “There really is something for everyone,” Gottschall says.
Whether it’s a once-a-year or once-in-a-lifetime family trip, vacations with multiple generations of family members become interwoven into family folklore, creating a treasured legacy that endures, even after family members pass on and new ones are born.
Many families are embracing a new style of American family vacation, one that includes three or more generations traveling together. These days, grandparents, siblings, uncles, aunts, and cousins are often geographically scattered and leading busy lives, so family trips can be a great way to create special memories and allow different generations to create a lasting bond over a shared experience.
In fact, multigenerational family vacations have been the top travel trend for more than five years, according to Virtuoso, an upscale travel agency network. Their popularity makes sense since they provide a way to fulfill many—or all—of what the agency identified as consumers’ top five motivations for travel—exploring new destinations, checking off bucket list dreams, seeking authentic experiences, relaxing, and reconnecting with loved ones.
Video chats and texts can’t fully replace actual face time with family members—leading many families to plan multigenerational vacations. According to a 2016 survey from the NYU School of Professional Studies and the Family Travel Association, 60 percent of families have taken a vacation that includes a child, parent, and grandparent. Of those who haven’t done so, 26 percent are considering such a trip in the future.
Baby boomers’ active lifestyles are another contributor to the multigenerational travel trend. This generation has reinvented retirement—and grandparenting—to suit their own tastes. Many retirees are physically fit and have cultivated a taste for adventure, so if they want to share bucket list experiences with family members, that might mean renting a European villa, hiking mountain peaks, or exploring the Great Barrier Reef.
Not surprisingly, the travel industry has responded with a slew of specialized offerings for multigenerational and grandparent travel. Organizations like Smithsonian Journeys, Tauck Bridges Family Adventures, and Road Scholar take the work out of extended family vacations with their creative packages and itineraries. Road Scholar, for example, offers unique educational trips designed for grandparent-kid teams, like exploring the hot springs of Costa Rica, seeing the French art and architecture of Lyon and Provence, and snorkeling and riding a submarine in Hawaii.
Boomers who have traveled extensively during their lifetimes can now take advantage of curated trips to guide younger generations to see the world, while deepening relationships with their grandkids. Of course, the larger the group, the more complicated travel logistics become, which is why multigenerational vacations often evolve as families grow and change.
Ideally, vacation plans need to have flexibility built in, so that everyone gets to engage or disengage as much as they want.
Working adults may need to allot quiet time with Wi-Fi and a laptop or join the family trip for fewer days, depending on job requirements. Older family members sometimes need special dietary accommodations or have varying levels of interest in physically challenging activities, like water sports. New babies’ sleep schedules might require the group to adjust dinner reservations to an earlier hour or book a beach house with a deluxe kitchen rather than a European tour.
Spending time with extended family is paramount for Raleigh-based CAPTRUST Financial Advisor Kevin Monroe. He and his wife, Rasheeda, typically take their two sons—Marcus, 11, and Derek, 8—on vacations with large groups of relatives each spring and summer.
A favorite spot for the Monroes is the Nantahala River in North Carolina, where they hike and go white-water rafting.
“Then, as my in-laws got older, they couldn’t go anymore,” he says. “They couldn’t ride the currents but still relished seeing their family and being outdoors.” So, the Monroe family had to find a new approach that would work for young and old.
The family adapted. They sought out campsites that were easily accessible by car, with comfortable facilities where Rasheeda’s parents could relax nearby—while the younger generations paddled the river.
“Depending on the age of the grandparents, you might be limited in what you can do,” says Monroe. But with some creativity, everyone can be together and make precious memories that last a lifetime.
Kevin and Rasheeda celebrated their 10th anniversary by renewing their wedding vows, taking the opportunity to plan a huge family vacation in Jamaica. They chose their all-inclusive beach resort for sentimental reasons, since the couple had honeymooned there.
But from Monroe’s financial advisor perspective, it was also a practical choice for taking care of the group’s needs.
“Everything is on-site and planned for you. You wake up and go to the pool. Walk up to the bar for a drink. Go kayaking and jet-skiing without having to go rent all the equipment. Plus, you are not allowed to tip, and there’s a lot less pressure,” he says.
It’s also nice to have just one bill. It limits hassle when dividing up the cost, especially if just a few family members are footing the bill. With multigenerational family vacations, 61 percent of the time the cost is split between parents and grandparents, according to the NYU/FTA survey. “Maybe the grandparents and siblings give money to you, then you pay for everyone. That way, you can pitch in to cover any shortfalls,” says Monroe.
The Monroe family’s next trip will be in March, with a group of 14 relatives headed to Disney World. It’s especially meaningful since they will be joined by Kevin’s parents, James and Rita Monroe.
While multigenerational family vacations can be expensive and challenging to plan, their sentimental value is beyond measure. Through time together, family members get the rare opportunity to share discoveries with loved ones, capture photos that will long be treasured, and imprint younger generations with family memories that will remain in hearts and minds for a lifetime.
It begins so early. As tiny children, when we’re forced apart from our mothers. Then there are the rejections on the playground, the losses of jobs, the collapse of marriages. By the time we are adults, most of us are experts on experiencing grief.
“Grief is just mixed into the stuff of life,” says Jack Hileman, a licensed marriage and family therapist and a retired pastor in North Carolina. Even smaller events like a child who says, “I never want to talk to you again” or reaching the end of an exceptional book can be painful and cause us distress. “It’s really about separation and having to let go of a certain time in your life or a connection and having to move on.”
But our lived experience of grief often seems inadequate when we lose a person we love. The suffering we feel at such an irreversible separation can send us into a dark cocoon of our own spinning. Or send us spiraling outward into social media to see our feelings reflected back to us as comments and likes.
When we experience grief, it often feels like an affliction-and an unfair one at that. But Hileman says grief is also the beginning of potential growth toward something positive: meaningful connections that can enrich our lives.
Grief can affect our minds and bodies in very real ways—from body aches, fatigue, and upset stomachs to lethargy, crying, loss of libido, and a lack of interest in participating in our usual activities. Its mental toll is undeniable. Hileman describes grief as “an internal psychological process we go through in a time of loss; a keen mental suffering.”
It is a common myth that we can avoid loss or avoid feeling the emotional, mental, and physical effects of it, according to Hileman. But almost as pervasive is the myth that we can isolate ourselves within that loss from other people.
“Avoidance and isolation. Those two myths are functionally predominant,” Hileman says. “Often the biggest psychological driver in all human activity is the avoidance of loss. And so that takes over. How do I not feel this? Or how do I make myself feel this when I don’t want to? They are flip sides to the same coin.”
Hileman remembers one client whose father had passed away after expressing a wish that his ashes be spread in a favorite vacation spot out west. The man wanted to take his dad’s ashes to his final resting place all alone, without other family members. A few relatives had divided up the man’s ashes so each could carry out his or her own ritual. They were literally isolating themselves to engage in private grieving experiences.
Instead of grieving alone, Hileman says we need to start mourning. “Mourning is the sharing of grief in a communal setting—or with those whom we trust or with whom we want to attach or connect,” says Hileman. “Mourning is actually the healing of the separateness that we feel at the time of loss.”
We simply cannot avoid loss and the grief that sometimes follows. But Hileman says the key to healing from it is connecting.
He’s seen the deep-seated urge to do so within his own family. At a reunion a few years ago, Hileman looked around to notice a bunch of people had suddenly disappeared. Hileman’s grandmother and her four living children had retreated to a corner and drawn close together to share the story surrounding the sudden death of a fifth sibling who had passed away in 1961. They still felt that need to connect and share his memory even after so many years had passed.
Hileman encourages his patients to engage in something similar. In all of his grief therapy, he helps the individual or family take an action that feels like a connection to the person they’ve lost.
For the man who was planning his solo trip west to scatter his father’s ashes, for example, Hileman suggested he include more people in planning and taking the journey. By responding as a connected, loving group of people, Hileman believed they each would find more solace and be able to move forward.
Hileman believes connecting with people who care about us is the most crucial element to overcoming grief. And although it can be an extremely challenging first step, we cannot just feel something; we need to do something.
“That’s where some people get sidelined into complex grief—it’s that they’re so focused on the feeling that’s pulling them down,” Hileman says. “They stop doing on purpose to assuage the feeling. And the opposite is really the appropriate response. The less you feel like doing, the more you need to do something.”
Hileman remembers one woman struggling with grief after the passing of her mother, a gentle and nurturing person. He encouraged the woman to write down her memories of her mother, and then move on by doing something with another person who would benefit from feeling the kind of love she was missing. The woman began journaling about her mom and started volunteering in a soup kitchen with people who had not felt the same gentleness and provision she’d felt from her mother. “It became kind of an integration of all that she felt into what she did in a positive way, and connected her with other people,” Hileman says.
For better or for worse, we are not often alone with any emotion these days, including grief. In today’s world of digital connections, we find unending opportunities to engage, involve, commiserate, and remember in very public ways.
Sharing grief on social media “creates instant access to a support network and a virtual memory that is never more than a click away,” wrote Harriet Allner in a 2014 article following the highly public death of Robin Williams. “Sharing allows us to enter into a community of loss, to search and find solace, to show solidarity, or provide it for those closer to the epicenter of grief,” she wrote.
The evolution of our experience from personal into public has been a dramatic shift, Hileman says. “Even Pinterest is a place for people to post, memorialize, and grieve,” he points out. “That kind of thing would have been unheard of even 10 years ago.”
But that kind of sharing can sometimes come at a cost, Hileman cautions. We risk having negative online interactions with those whose experience of grieving has been quite different, those who cannot understand what we’re going through, or those whose proffered comforts come up woefully short.
So Hileman advises people dealing with grief turn to a surprising source for advice on coping: themselves. “I would encourage people to reflect on the kinds of things they’ve heard and felt in funerals or in situations of loss that have really touched them and helped them think differently about what just happened.” What calmed your stomach down? What helped you relax? Focus on things or thoughts that previously helped you stop obsessing about a loss.
Then, find someone else who’s felt the same way, and reach out. “Respect your own feelings about what you need, and then look around with new eyes about who acts that way, who talks that way, who have I seen doing that?” Hileman suggests. “Tell people who’ve dealt with grief that they’ve inspired you, and you’d like to learn and connect.” It’s likely they want to share and connect, too.
In this issue, we offer a few insights about protecting yourself and your data from cybercriminals and how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act may impact your tax filing for 2018.
Q: Someone I know got scammed by a thief posing as an IRS agent. What can I do to protect myself against that kind of scam?
A: You’re right to be concerned about scammers with fraudulent intentions. In fact, in 2018, the IRS noted a 60 percent increase in email schemes that seek to steal money or tax data from unsuspecting victims. More than 2,000 tax-related scam incidents were reported to the Internal Revenue Service from January through October, compared to approximately 1,200 incidents in all of 2017, according to a recent Forbes article.
Typically, these scams are conducted via phone, email, texts, and through websites that appear legitimate but contain phony login pages. It could be a call on your home phone claiming to be from the IRS or IRS tax partners in the community, an email asking you to pay back taxes, or someone posing as your company’s payroll provider asking you for W-2 information.
In a recent malware scam, thieves sent emails with subject lines like “IRS Important Notice” and “IRS Taxpayer Notice.” Scammers demanded payment or threatened to seize recipients’ tax refund.
The more you know about how to protect yourself, the better chance you have to not be a victim. Here are a few ways you can guard yourself from tax-related scams.
Recognize what the IRS does not do. The IRS does not initiate contact requesting personal or financial information by email or other electronic communication, such as text messages or social media, according to the IRS’s Taxpayer Guide to Identity Theft. Also, the IRS won’t demand credit- or debit-card numbers over the phone or threaten to have you arrested by local police.
Learn to spot phishing emails and other scams. Phishing is an attempt to fool you into revealing personal or confidential information the scammer can use illicitly. Phishing often comes in the form of an unsolicited email or a fake website that poses as a legitimate site to get you to disclose your personal or financial information. Do not click on links or download attachments from unknown or suspicious emails. Keep a radar up for thieves posing as legitimate organizations such as your bank, credit card companies, and even the IRS.
Be careful with public Wi-Fi. Public Wi-Fi access might be convenient, but you should understand that public Wi-Fi connections are unsecured, and when you use one, your data is vulnerable to others using the same public network. It’s best to avoid websites that could expose your passwords or financial information to cyberthieves on public Wi-Fi connections. If you have another option, like using cellular data, consider that instead.
Use your common sense. Always use security software with firewall and antivirus protections. Use strong passwords. Don’t routinely carry Social Security cards, and make sure your tax records are secure. Lastly, verify that you’re on legitimate websites before sharing your data; if you must access a particular site, avoid any links that you’re not sure about, and navigate directly to the site instead.
Q: How will changes from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act affect me when I file my 2018 income taxes?
A: The net result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed in December 2017 is a simplification of the tax code for many Americans. And when you file your 2018 income taxes this April, you’ll primarily feel the difference through changes to the deductions that are available. Many tax deductions were kept intact, but others were modified, and some were eliminated. The result should be positive for most taxpayers but may be a little confusing.
The biggest overall change for most individual taxpayers will be the increase in the standard deduction, which will nearly double from $6,350 to $12,000 for single filers and $12,700 to $24,000 for married individuals. As a result, more than 90 percent of tax filers are expected to utilize the standard deduction rather than itemizing their deductions—up from 72 percent in past years.
The additional standard deduction for the elderly remains available as well. In 2017, the tax rules allowed individual tax filers over age 65 to claim an additional standard deduction of $1,550, and married couples over the age of 65 could increase their standard deduction by $2,500. The new rules increase this higher standard deduction for people over age 65 to $1,600 per individual and $2,600 per couple.
Offsetting the increase in the standard deduction are several changes for taxpayers who have itemized deductions in the past.
Meanwhile, several deductions became friendlier, including cash contributions to public charities, which are now deductible up to 60 percent of AGI, and medical expenses, which are now deductible if they exceed 7.5 percent of your AGI.
Despite the elimination or reduction of most deductions, most taxpayers will come out ahead due to the higher standard deduction, tax rate cuts, and other changes. That said, the changes to the U.S. tax system resulting from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are too sweeping to fully capture in a short article like this. If you have questions or if you need help, you should seek the advice of a skilled tax advisor.