Money Smart for Older Adults Spanish – webinar transcript
Moderator: Jenefer Duane
March 21, 2019

>> Welcome and thank you for standing by.

At this time, all participants are in a listening only mode until the question and answer session of today's conference. At that time, you may press Star 1 on your phone to ask a question.

I would like to inform all parties that today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Jenefer Duane. Thank you. You may begin.

>> Jenefer Duane: Thank you, Lorraine.

Bienvenidos!, and welcome to this webinar on the newest edition of Money Smart for Older Adults in Spanish.

First, before I begin today's presentation, I need to share this disclaimer that any opinions or views stated by the presenters are the presenter's own views and may not represent the CFPB or FDIC's views.

Here's our agenda today. We will begin with a few introductions, the background on the issue of elder financial exploitation, and the Money Smart for Older Adults curriculum. We will then discuss the Spanish Money Smart for Older Adults features, some key implementation tips, and complimentary resources. We will take Q and A at the end of the program.

I'd like to introduce your presenters. With me here is David Ramos, who is with the Division of Depositor and Consumer Protection at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, known more commonly as the FDIC.

Then also with me is my colleague Hector Ortiz, from the Office for Older Americans at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

So let's start just a brief overview of the FDIC.

The FDIC stands, as I said, for Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.  The FDIC's primary mission is preserving and promoting the public confidence in the US financial system by insuring deposits in banks and thrift institutions for at least $250,000.  Also by identifying, monitoring, and addressing the risks to the deposit insurance fund, and by limiting the effect on the economy and the financial system when a bank or a thrift institution fails.

The FDIC is an independent agency of the federal government created in 1933, and in response to the thousands of bank failures that occurred in the 1920s and early 1930.

Since the start of the FDIC insurance on January 1 of 1934, no depositor has lost a single cent of FDIC insured fund as a result of a failure.

The standard insurance amount is $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, for each account ownership category.

The FDIC directly examines and supervisors about 4,000 banks and savings banks for operational safety and soundness and complaints with consumer protection laws, more than half of the institutions in the banking system.

To protect insured depositors, the FDIC responds immediately when a bank or thrift institution fails.

About us, the CFPB, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau regulates the offering of provision of consumer financial products and services under the federal consumer financial laws, and educates and empowers consumers to make better informed financial decisions, and our Office for Older Americans.

The Bureau’s Office for Older Americans works to improve financial security for older consumers.  The office creates resources to help older adults, those that serve them, and their financial caregivers.

We lead initiatives to help protect older people from financial harm.

We create tools and resources that support sound financial decision making and safeguard later in life economic security, and we offer a wide variety of resources that you can use or view online.  You can download them or order them in bulk, and they are all free.

You can visit us at consumerfinance.gov/olderamericans.

Because of our focus on financial education. The Office for Older Americans saw an opportunity to work with the FDIC to create a specific Money Smart curriculum to help older adults prevent financial exploitation and prepare for some common challenges older adults face as they age.

Okay, and we released Money Smart for Older Adults in 2013.

We have had a great deal of support and interest and distribution over the years, and we're very pleased and very grateful - pleased to announce and grateful to the American Society on Aging for having just recently awarded both of our agencies jointly the Gloria Cavanaugh Award for Excellence in Training and Education for older adults. And at about exactly the same time, we also crossed the $1 million mark in distribution of MSOA materials, Money Smart for Older Adults and materials in both Spanish and English.

So we thank you all, those of you who are already using Money Smart for Older Adults for your support over the years and the great work you have done that made this award possible.

Moving forward, I would like to share some of the slides of Money Smart for Older Adults.  These slides are in English.  We will go into more of the features of the Spanish presentation a little later.

I want to show you just a quickie snapshot.  We're just gonna do the overview on elder financial exploitation.  So we'll talk about this.

First of all, I just want to mention that studies show that financial exploitation is the most common form of elder abuse and estimates of annual losses to older adults have ranged from 2.9 billion to 36.5 billion dollars.

So first of all, we'll ask, what is elder financial exploitation?

Generally we define elder financial exploitation as the illegal or improper use of an older person's property or assets.

These are actions by an individual that result in depriving an older person a rightful access to, or use of, their benefits, their resources, belongings, or their assets and that is as a direct result of the actions of an individual or organization.

Here are some examples of elder financial exploitation.

First, we'll talk a little bit about an agent under a power of attorney or a person in another type of fiduciary relationships, such as a representative payee or a trustee.

These people are known as financial caregivers.  They are often legally appointed to administer someone else's money.  Typically someone with diminished capacity may not be capable of managing their money for other reasons.  So a fiduciary can be appointed by the court, or perhaps who the appointed or named by the older person themselves as a under a power of attorney or other legal instruments.

The theft of money or property is most often perpetrated by a family member -- we see it down here on the lower left-hand corner -- family members, caregivers, and in-home helpers.

We also have investment fraud and scams is very common.  This is where a person will invest their funds trust and investment advisor or a financial advisor to help them to secure their funding in investment accounts, and the investment advisor may defraud them, or it could be a scam that comes into them over the phone or in some other manner.

Lottery and sweepstakes scams are rampant.  They've been around for as long as I've been working in the field, at least at least 20 years, probably longer, and they remain very prevalent out there as ways that that seniors are scammed.

We have grandparents and imposter scam.  These are very pervasive. This is where a person will call, sometimes they're known as person in need scam.  This is where a person, a scammer, will call an older person and pretend to be a grandchild or possibly a person of authority, such as a law enforcement officer, and they have a claim that the grandchild has had an accident or has been arrested or some other thing has happened and the grandparent is being asked for money and usually in a big hurry and often under the veil of secrecy to help the grandchild either get out of jail or to assist them with a hospital situation or otherwise.

The scammer will often actually put on a voice and pretend to be the grandchild or will pretend to be, as I said, a person in authority who has knowledge of this situation with a grandchild, which actually has not happened.

Another topic we cover is tax and debt collection scam. 	This is actually fairly new content.  It's part of an update that was done in early 2018 to the curriculum from the first edition in 2013.  

Also charity scams are new content as well.  So there's a very robust section on charity scam, and then the telemarketing mail offer or sales person scams, as well that's a significant section.

I should mention that the tax and debt collection scams and the charity scams are also often telephone scam.  It's the most common way that those are perpetrated.

Another way that older people are being scammed very frequently is through telephone scams concerning computer and Internet scams. A lot of folks have sort of a belief that older people are not really using the internet and that may have been true more so say 10 or 15 years ago, but nowadays that is not the case.  Older people are one of the fastest growing segments of the population using the Internet, and they often of course, could be doing this in isolation, or with the onset of mild cognitive impairment, or other potential risk factors that could make them more vulnerable, possibly not more vulnerable than the rest of us, but certainly vulnerable to computer scams and other types of Internet scams.

Identity theft is another common target for older people.  Obviously, identity theft can target people of any age, but there are certain types of identity theft that are very specific to older people, and so we cover this as well in the curriculum.

Reverse mortgage fraud is another area that we cover in the curriculum.  It is also - I should say all of these are accompanied by wonderful resources that talk about what is a reverse mortgage.  So you start - you can start there, but you have the heads up about the types of reverse mortgage fraud.

Also contractor frauds, home improvement scams, another very significant way that older people are predated on, I should say, are scammed.

We should mention that the reverse mortgage fraud and the contractor fraud are both pieces of curriculum that are specifically for people who are homeowners, older people who are homeowners.  .

So as you can see, frauds and scams take all forms.  This is actually not even an exhaustive list.  It is just a heads up at a way to get people thinking and looking around them and understanding that there are fraudsters and scammers, even their own family members or caregivers, all around and they need to be aware.

So who could be the abusers?  Who are they potentially? We put them into two different categories.  The first category is people the older person knows.

As we have mentioned, it is believed that it was most often family members and caregivers, persons that the older person trust and that may be close to their lives, or they may have a dependent relationship on in order to remain independent at home.  Friends, neighbors and acquaintances, agents under a power of attorney, which I mentioned earlier, but also trustees, guardians, conservators, etc.

Even financial professionals sadly.  We most often see this in the financial -the investment advisor area, but also other financial professionals.  Sometimes insiders in financial institutions and others, CPAs, etc.  People that have access to the information and the older person finances.

The other area that we talk about are strangers.  These are the other category of abuser.  People who come in on the phone, through the mail, there on the Internet, there home repair folks who may show up at an older person's front door, particularly in disaster areas after a storm, you'll often see sort of predatory fraudulent home repair contractors descending into an area and offering their services there fraudulent services to anybody who will take them, but they certainly target older people.

Not just a disaster areas, but oftentimes just driving down a street and seeing an older person outside watering their lawn or getting their mail and they'll approach them and tell them that they can see a problem with their roof or some other - or they can fix their driveway or some other line to get the person's attention and get them alarmed and then get them to turn over money for fraudulent repairs, etc., very robust section in the program about this.

Medicare scam operators, we actually partnered with the Senior Medicare Patrol to put some great content in here about Medicare scams, etc. and how those affect older people and how they can keep their eyes open who to report to.

Then there's just a myriad other out there that will take advantage of older people.  Again, this is just a sort of a small selection, sadly, of the number of different types of scams and the types of people that will seek to defraud an older person.

So who is at risk of elder financial exploitation?

There is a myth out there among a lot of older people that only people who have cognitive impairment or who are financially illiterate or who are in some way just compromised around their finances are the only people who can be a victim of financial exploitation, and some older people feel that only people who have a lot of money will be exploited.

They will say in a session - in a presentation, "This would never happened to me because I don't have anything," and that is absolutely untrue.  Elder financial exploitation crosses all social, educational, and economic boundaries.

We have often shared with audiences along the way, and I have certainly in my years doing this work, that if a person with a small amount of resources who only perhaps has - their social security is all they have and somebody comes along and takes $10 or $20 out of their wallet a week, that may be absolutely what breaks them and takes their ability to live independently.

That can be in the difference between being able to purchase necessary items like medicines or who knows what, just home - whatever you need to stay independent.  Because the person who's making only a few hundred dollars a month is barely making it, whereas a person who has copious or even a moderate amount of resources, they may be able to bounce back from a loss.  It certainly would violate their trust and break their, perhaps, their relationships with family members, but they may be able to recover from a  case of elder exploitation.

So what I often say is a little bit is a lot for a person that doesn't have much and can actually make all the difference between their ability to live independently or not.

So why are older adults at risk? Well, because they have the money.

Most older people have regular income.  Many have accumulated assets over the years, either equity in their homes or savings or they have pension funds.

A lot of the older generations are very trusting and polite.  They will open the door, invite people in, talk to people on the phone.

Some may be socially isolated and lonely, not having much contact because they are home alone and there's a nice voice on the phone, or somebody at the door, or a new friend, or someone in their life that makes them feel good and makes them smile and they invite them in, and that can be very risky for older people, particularly if they have any sort of mild cognitive impairment or any significant cognitive impairment.

Another risk factor is that older people can often be vulnerable due to grief from a loss. Growing older is, you know, often associated with quite a lot of loss, and that can be the loss of a family member.  It could be the loss of a spouse, it could be the loss of a pet, but grief can do a lot to make an older person very vulnerable and also quite dependent on others.

One of the most important risk factors I think is that older people can be reluctant to report exploitation by a family member, caregiver, or someone they depend on. So they will - these folks know that and will often go ahead and abuse or exploit somebody because they know that they will not be reported and, also, they are very - they can be very dependent on support from the family member or caregiver to remain independent. 

All right, so - and more reasons they can be receiving care from the person with who may have financial or other issues.  They may fear retaliation by the exploiter, which also is a risk factor for why some people don't leave poor elder financial exploitation that they witness because they're afraid that the abuser will retaliate against the elder.

Older people can be unfamiliar with managing their financial matters.  Bankers often will nod their heads in agreement that they see situations where an older woman may come into the bank and her husband has passed away and she has never written a check.  She has never managed, she's never paid a bill, and she has no idea what assets she has.

Older people can be cognitively impaired, as I have mentioned several times, which can diminish their ability to make financial decisions and it most definitely can seriously affect their ability to detect a fraud or a scam.

So who is at risk? Transitioning over to our topic for the day, those with limited English proficiency.

A 2012 study found that 17% of Hispanic seniors are victims of elder financial exploitation and limited English proficiency is a factor that contributes to their vulnerability.  Language barriers, nearly 1.8 million people who are older Hispanics have limited English language proficiency and speak only Spanish at home, and the largest group are Mexican Americans who account for 50% of this group.

So why older people do not report exploitation?

I just want to sort of go a little sideways here and say this is a really great - all of these are really great questions in the sample slides to ask your audience when you are presenting.

This is a very sort of hot topic to ask older people in front of - who may be standing in front of you in a class or a presentation is, why don't older people report exploitation and let them raise their hands to call out the answers.  Most definitely, almost always, you'll have several call out the shame or the embarrassment.

Also loyalty to the family member or caregiver, the fear of retaliation which we already mentioned, the dependence on the abuser, they're afraid that if they if they report the abuser -- the family member or the caregiver -- that the person - that they will be blamed somehow for the abuse.

If they report that they have been scammed on the phone, they'll somehow be declared incompetent and they will essentially lose their ability to live at home.

So there are either dependent on the abuser or they fear retaliation and that ties in.

Denial that the abuse is happening.  No, they really want to believe that they won that lottery or that the ship has come in as it's been told to them by the scammer.

They may blame themselves for why the - person for being abused, especially if it is an adult child who is living at home and doesn't have a job and is taking advantage of them, they may blame themselves.

Then lack of awareness, which could be because of cognitive impairment or it could be because the exploiter or the abuser has changed their address and they are not seeing what is going on in their lives.  They have lost their view of their financial statements, etc.

So who can help?

Adult Protective Services is your first stop for reporting elder financial exploitation.

I strongly encourage inviting Adult Protective Services to present with you or to be a part of your presentation should you have them, if they have time.

Adult Protective Services can be frightening to older people.  They are sometimes afraid that calling in authorities like this will result in them being placed in a nursing home, and I can assure you that APS that is the farthest from their minds.  What they want to do is protect the older person, keep them safe and independent at home for as long as possible.

There'll be a little more discussion downline here about collaborating with APS, Adult Protective Services, but the best contact, the one-stop shop for finding Adult Protective Services and other resources for older adults is to go to eldercare.gov or call 1-800-677-1116.

I think we're going to need to give you an update on that link at the end.  I believe that it is eldercare@acl.gov, eldercare.acl.gov, but we will update that.

Local police, of course, if you fear that a person is in danger or that a crime has been committed, call the police.  They often collaborate, almost always, with Adult Protective Services.  We need to hold offenders accountable and elders needs to be protected from danger, and when crimes had been committed, the police need to be contacted.

So with that, I will turn the presentation over to David.

>> David Ramos: Okay.  Well, thank you Jenefer.

We're going to go to the next slide please.

Again, my name is David Ramos with the Division of Depositor and Consumer Protection at the FDIC.

As Jenefer mentioned, Money Smart was developed jointly by the FDIC and the bureau.  It is meant to be an instructor led training, but we will share with you many other ways you can share the content beyond the traditional classroom setting.

The program seeks to raise awareness on how to prevent elder financial exploitation, encourage planning, and inform financial decision making. We think education that teaches skills such as how to identify red flags, when and how to act when you see something suspicious, and how to plan ahead for financial well-being are critical to an individual success.  This is the underlying principle of the Money Smart programs from children to older adults.

You will see that the content of Money Smart is directed at teaching older adults do following to recognize and reduce the risk of elder financial exploitation and guard against identity theft, plan for unexpected loss of the ability to manage their finances, prepare financially for disasters, find other helpful resources on managing money, and reporting financial exploitation.

One objective is to make older people and their family members comfortable with the idea of talking about these issues.  We tried to remove the taboo and ultimately reporting these financial scams.

Remember, reporting and early intervention are vital to preventing loss and recovering loss when possible.

I want to spend some time discussing what the program covers.

There are five topics we cover in the module which are common types of financial exploitation, scams that target homeowners, scams targeting, veterans, planning for unexpected life events, how to be financial repaired for disasters.

We recognize that scams are constantly changing.  That is why this new version of Money Smart in Spanish includes new content on debt collection scams and impostor scams like Jenefer mention.

Ultimately, the program will never be able to cover all possible forms of scam.  That is why it is important to teach skills that can be applied to multiple situations.

Remember, each of these segments can be taught collectively or independently of one another based on the interest of your audience.

There are three components of the Money Smart program.

>> David Ramos: The Instructor Guide, which is a fully scripted guide that enables volunteers and professionals from many disciplines to begin teaching the module right away.

The Resource Guide (which) is designed to support classroom by providing key takeaways and can also be distributed to older persons and others on its own in a PowerPoint presentation that supplements classroom instruction.

Please make note that the Instructor Guide and the Resource Guide are in 14-point font, making it easier to read, which means that the Instructor Guide and supporting material are older adult friendly documents.

For the first time, we are making the entire module available in Spanish.  As you can see on your screen, this includes the Instructor Guide.

So now the three resources are available in Spanish and English, and like we mentioned earlier, the curriculum has the added benefit of being available in 14 fonts for easier reading.

A few notes about the Resource Guide.  The guide is a very comprehensive booklet.  Think of it as the “textbook.”

It contains the following, information and activities to help learn the material, tools and instructions to complete the activities, a glossary of the terms, resources on managing money, and reporting financial exploitation.

It also serves as a standalone handout for distribution to older people, caregivers and others.

The Resource Guide can be shared at conferences or at a variety of events.  There is no need to limit to the classroom setting.

Ideas of where the resource can be shared will be local libraries, Meals on Wheels program offices, senior housing, senior centers, and within the Latino community, local churches are trusted places and centers of influence and we can share the guides with the respective leaders of these congregations.

We would like to remind you Money Smart for Older Adults is designed to provide you with information and tips to help prevent common frauds, scams, and other types of elder financial exploitation in your community.  This is the reason we are stressing sharing the Resource Guide beyond your classroom.

The Instructor Guide includes a presentation planning guide.  This is really meant for you to decide how to break up the training.

The entire Money Smart will require more than three hours to be delivered.  Most people break it into specific trainings, or an entire course delivered in multiple days.  That is why we provide an overview of the module so that you can plan your training.

The guide also includes tips for presenting and all of the content that is included in the resource guide that you hand out to the participants.

Here you have a snapshot of it.  As you can see, one new teacher of the Instructor Guide is that it shows the power point slide that goes with each content area and a specific section of the resource guide that is connected to it.

Okay, I'm now going to discuss a few key features of the Spanish version.

One of these features is that the Spanish Money Smart for Older Adults curriculum, it is entirety was developed to be, as much as possible, a mirror version of the English version.

The ultimate goal of this was to make it useful for bilingual trainers and audiences, but also, we know many older adults live in bilingual households.  So being able to have these two resources with the same design instruction in both languages helps both the older adults to share with others, and others to help the older adults.

One challenge that we did improve on was – a challenge that we face in translation is that often some concepts are better known in English than formal Spanish.  So we included both terms.  You will see many of these throughout the documents, as you see on your screen.

And lastly, a big issue for resource guides (in general) that are translated, that is, we refer people to find more information on certain websites or publications but often we see other publications send people to places that are only available in English, which causes a problem. So when possible and available we direct consumers to Spanish language resources.  To some of the three features we discussed, the first is the Spanish curriculum in its entirety was developed to be a mirror version of the English version. Throughout the curriculum you will find the use of bilingual terminology for critical financial concepts, and thirdly, we provide consumers Spanish language resources when possible.

Now, my colleague, Hector Ortiz, will be discussing a few implementation tips and resources that can be used to support your training.

>> Hector Ortiz: Thank you, David.

It has been an honor to be part of this project, and to help develop Money Smart for Older Adults program both with Jenefer and the FDIC, and working with David.

In these next few slides I'll be covering some tips for presenting Money Smart for Older Adults and engaging stakeholders, and gathering the feedback from participants that will make your program a better one, and will also help us improve Money Smart over time.

Many of these tips can be found in this Instructor Guide, but they also cover information that we've, typically, as the technical assistance center and developers of the program, provided to trainers when they reach out to us for ideas on how to implement Money Smart in their community.

As an instructor or trainer, one of your primary responsibilities is to raise awareness of this issue of elder financial exploitation, encourage and empower participants to report financial exploitation to the authorities, and to take action to protect themselves. But you're also responsible for another very important thing and that is facilitating a safe environment for discussion.

So given the sensitive nature of this topic, one of the skillssets that we remind instructors about is to know when some of those conversations may need to be taken out of the group discussion into a private setting.

Now some key speaker tips - a set of speaker tips that we provide in our Instructor Guide are just reminders of things that are pretty obvious to many of us who speak publicly, but are always a good reminder given some of the accessibility challenges of the population, and those include: (1) speaking clearly and slowly, projecting your voice, using a microphone if you can, (2) and as Jenefer - provided an example today, starting the slides by asking a question and soliciting engagement.

By doing so, not only you get individuals to engage throughout the presentation and make them more interested in the topic, but you may also gather ideas for new content for your other presentations.  Also, this allows people to provide local stories and real-life examples that drive that message home.

We always recommend to compliment participants for interesting and insightful comments, as well as repeating the participant questions so that everyone can hear.  Again, you'll find these tipsand others in the Instructor Guide.

As you review the context of content of Money Smart, you'll see that it can be delivered in many venues and that you can make the content relevant to a variety of audiences.

We, and organizations that we have partnered with and have ordered Money Smart, are presenting the curriculum in a variety of settings.  Those settings include senior housing, senior organizations such as senior centers, libraries, assisted living centers, volunteer income tax assistant clients, faith-based organizations including local churches, retirement groups and clubs, and a variety of key clubs and civic groups.

Again, the content is really designed to be tailored in a way that is relevant to those audiences, but one thing to be always mindful is the issue of accessibility, the time, and the audience. When we mentioned some of the speaker tips, specifically, thinking about the older audience, which is more likely to face hearing and visual impairments.

The good thing about many of these settings is that they're typically accessible and they're frequented by older adults.

In the cases of the Spanish speaking community, there's also - another unique accessibility issue, and that is, variations in Spanish.  So be mindful again of what audience you're targeting.  There's a difference between Spanish from Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Cuba.

Similarly that financial literacy and financial product engagement in those countries, and those communities, maybe different, and some (financial) terms, for instance, may be less known among those communities, such as annuities, reverse mortgages, and they may need to be explained to the audience.

So it's not just about delivering the content.  If you become a Money Smart lead you will find out very quickly that Money Smart can be used to create and strengthen your partnerships in your community.
You can train local service providers, again, your library and others, to serve as trainers of Money Smart.  In that way, you become a train the trainer.

You can also develop partnerships with financial institutions and other key stakeholders that respond to financial exploitation, that is the local police and Adult Protective Services.

One example again is you can involve financial institution staff to sponsor an event and deliver this information in collaboration with the Adult Protective Services and the senior services provider.

By engaging in Adult Protective Services and law enforcement in particular, you are gaining an additional value.  When they co-present, they can introduce their agency, they can share local stories, but they can also meet privately with participants after the event.

Both APS and law enforcement share with you a very common goal.  That is, prevention and increasing reporting.  So you can jointly set outreach goals for number of presentations and participants to reach.  You may be also track increasing reporting as part of your awareness.

There are also other creative ways to engage.

Many of you may be familiar with the concept of networks.  That is another way to describe community coalitions, partnerships that fight fraud and financial exploitation.  Most networks are actually forming around education, and Money Smart is a good vehicle to form one network in your community. But you may find that your community has already a network and you can partner with them around Money Smart, but you may also find that your community network is not conducting financial education.

In fact, many of the networks that are focused on financial issues are multidisciplinary teams that are specifically tasked with resolving and discussing cases of financial exploitation, and if they don't have an education arm, you can serve as such through Money Smart.

The one value that you will bring for sure, is your focus on the Spanish speaking community, this will help you address an area of need in this space in many cities and counties, and even among very strong networks. There's an absence of this cultural competence and access to the Spanish speaking seniors.

The best place to start to find a network in your community will be through your area agency on aging or your Adult Protective Services.

Lastly, evaluating your work is key to get funds.

We know from research that most people do this because they're committed, and because they have the time to do so.  In fact, many of them are volunteers.

We often hear that this is a very low-cost effort, but we also know from the research that a little small amount of funding really supports this effort.  It helps to pay for audiovisual, refreshments. And those really enhance participation and the quality of the training.

So Money Smart has both a participant evaluation form, that includes a pre/post knowledge test, and it also includes a training assessment form, and you can use this form or you can use portions of these forms to gather the feedback, especially to compare the pre and post knowledge.

This could be very helpful for you to find that funding, and provide some evidence of outcomes to funders, stakeholders, who may be interested in that collaboration.

We provide technical assistance here at the CFPB around the use of Money Smart.  So if you're interested in gathering this type of feedback, we are happy to provide you with that support.

You don't have to limit yourself to the evaluation forms that appear at the end of the module.  In fact, many of the activities that are throughout the training themselves are great ways to evaluate your work.

You can use, for instance, some of the knowledge questions,and some of the activities in the module as a way to compare those who took the training with those clients who did not take the training.

You can also create your own measures. And I always say that the best measure comes usually in the form of success stories from people who have participated in the program, have successfully protected themselves, or protected someone else, or have become trainers.

Next.

Now I would like to share with you some resources from the FDIC and the CFPB that could be great supportive and complimentary resources to your Money Smart efforts.  We'll also share with you more details about where to find an orders and resources.

One of the things that many of you will be looking at for idea from how to present Money Smart, the FDIC created a guide to presenting Money Smart for Adults.

So this guide is not specific to the older adults.  It has a few important sections that could be very useful to you.  One of it is includes tools for trainings, options for introductory activities -- so some of those ice breakers -- but also some specific ideas of how to present the content to specific audiences, specifically individuals with disability.

Perhaps one of the most extensive sections of the Money Smart training relates to the financial abuse by caregivers, including those who have a fiduciary responsibility. Jenefer said that those are people who are managing the older adult's money on their power of attorney or guardians, trustees.

We have created a set of guides to help these financial caregivers for handling the finances of a family member who's incapacitated.  This guides goes into more detail on the duties of those fiduciaries and they include tips on protecting the assets from fraud and scams.

They're available, the four of them, in Spanish.  In Spanish they're called,Cómo Administrar el Dinero de Otras Personas .  So Managing Someone Else's Money.

Another topic that it's covering Money Smart is reverse mortgages, as Jenefer mentioned.

Though the content of Money Smart focuses specifically on the use of our reverse mortgage as a way to financially exploit an older adult.  Often, we get a lot of questions about this product,how it works, and so one good complimentary resource for this section is a four-page guide that we created called Considering a Reverse Mortgage which is available in Spanish.

The guide explains a reverse mortgage.  It lists some important questions that people should be asking about this product, but also it explains the alternatives to a reverse mortgage as well as the different ways that people can get the loan, that is their payout options.

Another important complimentary resource, relates to the section of investment fraud.  One of the topics that is covered in Money Smart is the use of titles and designations to indicate that a financial advisor has particular expertise on older adults and older adults related issues.  That could include retirement, pensions, and we have a guide for these topics that can supplement this portion of the training.

The guide is called, Know Your Financial Adviser.  It is available in Spanish, and this four-page guide, what is does is it lists all the key questions that people should be asking to an advisor, and an advisor here generally means anyone who could be providing financial advice.  Not specifically one category of financial planning professional.  But some of the key questions, and this could be for any one - the CPA, CFP - anyone who's providing advice, is what type of title in certification do you have? Did it require college level course work? If I have a complaint, where can I file a complaint with you? Do you know how the person is being paid?  Is it a fee?  Is it a commission, and do you know if that person is required to work in your best interest?

As we mentioned earlier, one common venue for Money Smart for Older Adults are congregate meal sites often provided in senior centers.  In other words, places where the food is a common part.

In recognition of this, we created a set of placemats that includes some educational content, include tips about different variety of topics that range from Medicare, ID fraud, romance scams, IRS scams.  If you're offering Money Smart trainings as part of a launch or another meal, we encourage you to order this placemat.  They're an excellent complimentary resource and it's free of cost to you. You can get these materials in a variety of forms.

I'm going to go through right now some details about how to order the Money Smart specific materials, that could be digital copies but also paper copies from the CFPB and the FDIC. 

Those are long links, so we don't expect you to be typing them. 	We will be following up this webinar with these links and these sources so that it's easier for you to find them.

 You can download the Resource Guide both in English and Spanish at the CFPB website.

To download the entire module, that is available through the FDIC website. There you can get both the English and Spanish materials all together and you get to choose the components that you want to add, and that includes the Power Point that you'll be using for presentations.

And lastly, a place to make single or bulk order of hard copies of both the Spanish and English materials, free of charge to you, and that is the Government Publishing Office and that's the GPO. You have the link there.  We will be following up with you with that information. 

We want you to stay in touch.

You will find the complimentary resources that I discussed and other resources by visiting the consumerfinance.gov/olderamericans. You will find information about how to order the materials in bulk. It will also allow you to join our mailing list for news and updates

You can contact us at olderamericans@CFPB.gov.  This could be a good way for you to reach out to us if you have technical assistance, and if you want any feedback on the way you're planning to present.

We just want to hear from you, and this relationship will help us develop the next version of Money Smart in the future.

Well I want to thank all of you today for joining and being part of this effort to fight elder financial abuse, and for your interest in protecting the financial well-being of older Hispanics. END