The Coronavirus pandemic has required everyone to adapt to a new reality, and the financial planning profession is no different. Some firms, like ours, have been working with remote clients for years and have lots of virtual meeting experience. Others may be scrambling to catch up, but the new normal has been a learning experience for all of us. For us, it’s clear that to serve clients successfully in a virtual environment, we need to focus on four essential competencies.

We might call them heroes - but most of them would be embarrassed.   They think they are just doing their job. Some appear to be fearless, but most are very aware of the risk they are taking and exercise what cautions are available to them.   At the end of the day they are exhausted, but they rest and do it again the next day. Some are seeing death everyday but keep on giving it their all to try to prevent it. Some don’t make it themselves. Many can’t see their families and friends because they are considered high risk. But they will just keep doing their job for as long as it takes.

You can’t praise these people enough, even though they usually won’t acknowledge they are any different than anyone else. A few Fullen Financial employees have family much closer to the pandemic than we wish they were. We also have many clients themselves, or their family members, directly involved in the effort to keep the pandemic at bay and trying to lessen the suffering.

We wanted to post some brief stories of who these people really are. If you are fortunate enough to have no one personally at risk I encourage you to read these.   It can be humbling to see how small we are. We will start with three individuals very close to Fullen Financial employees.

The coronavirus pandemic, like prior disasters and times of social upheaval, provides scammers with a vulnerable population looking for help and, unfortunately these criminals will take advantage of every opportunity. We are also online a lot more now without the benefit of sophisticated corporate firewalls and hungry for information and updates. What are some of the more “popular” scams right now? They vary from sale of non-existent PPE, to work from home scams, to get rich investment schemes such as investing in a cure for COVID-19. These scams can take the form of emails, phone calls, solicitations through social media to people knocking on your front door.

There are ways to protect yourself.

Research points out a trait of successful people: they use what is available to them, i.e. when given lemons, make lemonade. In the middle of a stressful situation, it is often hard to focus, but many of us have something now that we have often found lacking in the past - time.  So, if you are one of those individuals with some extra time, this is a good opportunity to get your financial house in order. We have provided a "to do" list to address some of those tasks:

It is with a great deal of regret that we have decided to cancel our 2020 annual Backyard Bash. A combination of factors would make the party difficult to operate, from the inability to serve food buffet style, to maintaining social distancing.  Additionally, many individuals have told us that while they really enjoy the event that they would not, out of an abundance of caution, participate this year.  Most important of all, we would feel like we let people down if even one of our clients became sick and our annual party was found to be the vehicle that allowed that to happen.

We remain optimistic that our 2021 Backyard Bash will be back, and we look forward to this.  We enjoy seeing you and we will miss you.