Whether it’s your health or your finances, simple steps for protecting what you value most can give you the peace of mind you need during these uncertain times. We’ve put together several ideas to help as you’re revisiting your financial strategy.
Build financial resilience
- Set aside savings. It’s always a good preventive measure to save, no matter the interest rates. To get started, try setting up a recurring, automatic money transfer—to yourself—from your checking to your savings account. This gives you the control to determine how much and how often, so you can start small and up the ante when you’re ready.
2. Keep a long term perspective. With market volatility and overall uncertainty, it helps to remember that saving and investing, especially for education and retirement, are oftentimes most successful as a long term strategy.
3. Make pre-tax contributions count. If you qualify for a Health Savings Account, you can save pre-tax dollars toward current or future healthcare expenses. Consider budgeting the maximum contribution allowed for 2020—after all, anything you don’t use this year stays with you for future medical expenses.
4. Getting a tax refund this spring? Take a look at this article for some fresh ideas on putting your tax refund to really good use. You’ll appreciate it in the long run.
5. Keep your wits about you. When we’re on high alert, it can actually be surprisingly easy to be duped. Cyber-criminals often take advantage of uncertain times, leading to an increase in scam activity. If you’re ever in doubt as to whether a call, email, or text is legitimate, simply hang up and call your financial institution to verify before sharing any personal information.
Please know we’re always keeping tabs on your account(s) with real-time fraud monitoring and alerts, but note that we’ll never call you to ask that you provide or verify your account numbers, username or password, secure access code, or full social security number. Also, be aware that any text alerts you receive from us will come from a special short code, and not a regular phone number.
We’re in this together
Preparing for the unknown can be difficult, but please remember we’re here for you. You can give us a call, day or night, at 800-860-8821 for answers to your questions. For the latest information on how we’re preparing and responding to COVID-19, please visit our Coronavirus Updates page.
