Financial wellness and aging are the focus of a new web page created by a coalition of organizations concerned about seniors being exploited financially, the group announced Friday.
The website provides financial advisors and the public with resources and education on why elderly people are frequently targets for financial exploitation and fraud, and presents ways these crimes can be combated. It can be found on the Age-Friendly New York City website.
The New York Academy of Medicine, Global Coalition on Aging, AARP New York and Bank of America Merrill Lynch have created the page, which draws information from a symposium, Financial Wellness for Longer Lives: New Approaches to Working and Saving, sponsored by these organizations in January, as well as from other resources.
“There is a complex, multidirectional relationship between financial, physical and mental health,” said Dr. Judith A. Salerno, president of the New York Academy of Medicine.
“It is clear that 21st-century longevity brings about new challenges and opportunities that government, non-profits and businesses alike must address together to ensure that today’s seniors—as well as tomorrow’s—can live their most productive, fulfilling and happiest lives possible,” added Michael W. Hodin, CEO of the Global Coalition on Aging. “Financial wellness is a critical component toward achieving this goal, and it can only be realized by shattering outdated assumptions about retirement and adopting new models for working and saving aligned to the realities of healthy and active aging.”
Innovative financial planning tools are needed to promote lifelong financial wellness, the group said in a statement.
“Discussions at the Financial Wellness symposium underscored how the financial industry plays a leadership role in protecting seniors’ net worth, self-worth and lives,” said Philip C. Marshall, founder of BeyondBrooke.org and member of the symposium planning committee. Marshall, whose grandmother, New York philanthropist and socialite Brooke Astor, was exploited by her son and Marshall’s father, has said financial advisors need to take the lead in fighting elder financial abuse because they can detect the signs early.