We all have enough to worry about and better things to deal with — the last thing you need is a shadowy hacker opening a new bank account or credit card in your name. Yet identity theft and financial fraud are on the rise. In one year alone during the COVID-19 pandemic, from 2019 to 2020, identity theft cases in the U.S. increased by a whopping 45%, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
Among the many surprises that the Covid pandemic brought into our lives was a split-second decision by thousands of U.S. households not only to uproot themselves and relocate to far flung areas of the country but to make the biggest purchase decision of their lives and buy a house. We’re still in the midst of the pandemic, but reports are already arriving of buyer’s remorse and people feeling “house poor” despite the historically low mortgage rates.
Has there ever been a more opportune moment than now to reconsider how we’re working, living and generally leading our lives? The first global pandemic in a century has shaken us out of workplaces, habits and relationships, giving many of us perhaps the best shot we’ll ever have at figuring out what we really want to be when we grow up.
A few weeks ago, Marin kayaker Cyril Derreumaux pushed off from Sausalito before dawn to paddle alone across 2,400 nautical miles of open ocean to Hawaii. He had prepared three years for the journey and expected it would take him seventy days.
With vaccinations rolling out across the country, the factory whistle is sounding. Employers such as Uber, Google, Chase, and Goldman Sachs are beginning to call employees back to the office, saying it’s time to resume pre-pandemic work patterns. Employees aren’t so sure. They gave up a lot to reorganize their lives this past year and, like the inhabitants of Plato’s famous cave, had their eyes opened to new possibilities. What happens next in this developing standoff could transform not just the traditional office, but the broader contours of our lives.
When the industrialist Andrew Carnegie was giving away his fortune last century to help establish the modern public library system in the United States, the critics were quick to pounce. They questioned his motives for giving and derided the amounts as too small, given his enormous wealth. As it turns out, the critics were onto something: articulating one’s purpose for charitable giving and financial capacity to do so are an excellent starting place for anyone determining how much they want to donate.
Charitable giving is a two-step process: you decide whether to make a donation, then decide how much to give. The first step is usually easy, but the second step can be a doozy. The challenge of figuring out how much to donate often stops people in their tracks and can prevent them from giving anything at all. So, how do you figure out the right amount to give?
They say that the eyes are a window to the soul, but there’s nothing like a financial windfall to provide a glimpse into our emotional undercurrents. The opportunity to invest new cash from a business sale, inheritance, or other source often makes even the most committed investor pull up short and ask, Is now really the best time to put more money into the market?
