Make It Your Resolution To Figure Out Your Net Worth
At the beginning of a new year, people take stock and address the financial matters they’ve been avoiding. They look at investments, retirement savings or insurance, but often, they don’t start with the most fundamental step: figuring out their net worth.
Your net worth is a gauge of your overall financial health. If you have a positive net worth, you own more than you owe. If you have a negative net worth, you owe more than you own. A negative net worth is a signal that you need to reduce spending and pay off debt, and that might mean shifting habits or even careers.
Net worth asks a basic question, but many clients come to me not knowing the answer. If you don’t know where you are financially, it’s going to be difficult to find the best path forward. Thankfully, you can take charge of your financial situation in just three steps.
Step 1: Gather Your Financial Records
Many aspects of our financial lives are related, but unless you gather them intentionally, they’re never in the same spot. The first step in calculating your net worth is gathering the following documents:
• Investments and savings: This includes your checking accounts, savings accounts, certificates of deposit, savings bonds, employer retirement plans (401[k] and 403[b] are the most common), and other investment accounts like traditional and Roth IRAs, brokerage accounts and stock savings plans.
• Balance and payment records for debts: First, look at your mortgage. How much do you owe, and how many years do you have until it is paid off? What’s your interest rate, and how large is your payment? Then, collect your credit card statements. How much do you owe? What’s the interest rate, and what’s the minimum payment for each card? Finally, collect information on any loans you’ve taken, including auto loans, student loans, home renovation loans and other debts.
• Taxes and Social Security: Keep seven years of tax returns, but use the most recent for financial planning purposes. Be sure to also collect documents for other taxes you pay, including personal property taxes on autos, homes, land, etc.
Calculate your estimated Social Security payments. The Social Security Administration stopped mailing statements on a regular basis, so you need to create an account on SSA.gov to view your information. Even if you are years from being eligible to receive Social Security benefits, you should look at reported earnings records and make sure they’re accurate.
• Insurance policies: Gather both group policies and privately owned policies. These might include life insurance, long-term care insurance, disability coverage and annuities.
• Inventory of possessions: Create an inventory of your valuable possessions. This includes your home and other properties, cars, jewelry, electronics, and anything else that would be expensive to replace.
A word of warning: People often attribute value to things they think are worth a lot, when in actuality, they aren’t. Our emotional attachments to objects cause us to overvalue them. Keep in mind that certain assets have depreciating value, and value is contingent on demand.
Step 2: Calculate Your Net Worth
Take the data you gathered in step 1, and make a list of everything you own that has financial value. These are your assets. Add them up.
Make a list of everything you owe. Add it up.
Calculate your net worth by subtracting your debts from your assets. If the value of your calculation is negative, you owe more money than you could pay off if you sold all your financial assets.
If it’s positive, you still need to consider your ultimate goals. Looking at net worth from a retirement perspective, here’s a basic rule of thumb (though remember, every situation is different). Once you retire, you can distribute 4% of your positive net worth to yourself every year and not have to worry about running out of money. So if you’ve saved $1 million, you can spend $40,000 per year out of your investments.
Keeping that in mind, what’s your end game? Are you setting yourself up for a restrictive lifestyle in the future if you apply that 4% to your net worth? If you have $500,000, it only equates to $20,000 per year when you retire.
Step 3: Draw Up A Spending Plan
Once you’ve calculated your net worth, you’ll get an idea of how serious you should be about adjusting your spending and saving habits. Depending on your stage of life, you might have a higher tolerance for a lower net worth. Younger people are more likely to have a negative net worth because of student loans. If you are older, you might need to monitor your net worth more closely, since Social Security isn’t sufficient to support most people.
Net worth is one of the best indicators of your overall financial health. It gives you a full perspective of what you need to do to get into a better position, and it can help you formulate an action plan to maximize your spending, saving and investment choices.
Your ultimate goal is to have a net worth large enough to sustain unexpected financial stress, meet lifetime financial goals and support a comfortable retirement.
Know Where You Stand
The beginning of the year is a perfect time to get a solid grip on your finances. Like any New Year’s resolution, determining your net worth can seem daunting. In the end, though, it’s better to know where you stand.
Remember, this is a process, not a one-time event, and it’s normal to hit roadblocks along the way. Unexpected bills, job changes or changes in personal status (marriage, divorce, children) will impact your progress. The point is to be intentional about what you do with your money. Don’t leave your financial future to chance.
The information provided here is not investment, tax or financial advice. You should consult with a licensed professional for advice concerning your specific situation.
How to Make Decisions That Reflect Your Values
Understanding Yancey Strickler’s new vision for America means first accepting a notion that is somehow both obvious and unsettling: the superstructures guiding the actions of your day-to-day life are completely made up.
“What a piano looks like, why we drink orange juice for breakfast, the shape of the letters you read right now,” writes the co-founder and former CEO of Kickstarter in the beginning of his book This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World. “We can’t imagine the world without these things. We think of them as ‘how it is.’ But those are all concepts that were totally made up by someone just like you or me.”
These “hidden defaults,” Strickler points out, are “the customs, traditions, and social codes that form our tribes and nations.The rituals around births, weddings, and death. Why we wear one color and not another. They’re the narratives that we live within. The currents that pull us through life that are easy to miss.”
Instead of questioning the myths we opt into, Strickler argues, we just go on believing that how it is, is how it ought to be. The problem? There’s one American current in particular that is especially pernicious: the idea of financial maximization, which dictates “that in any decision, the rational choice is the one that makes the most money… It’s a hammer that turns all of life into a nail. There’s just one goal: to make as much money as possible.”
But—maybe you’ve noticed—financial maximization ain’t exactly working. It has created extreme economic inequality, contributed to the degradation of our climate, and helped generate political instability and incivility. And yet “we struggle to see how any other way of operating is possible,” Stickler writes. “We watch this car crash thinking we’re outside it. Other People are the cause of it and Other People will fix it and Other People will suffer the consequences if they don’t. Every single one of us has it in our minds that we’re separate from it all.”
Strickler’s book, then, is a call to action, to work towards a paradigm shift that would upend society’s guiding principle—from the singular value (namely, money) back towards the plural values, those ideals that give us morality, meaning, and purpose. (Kickstarter, for its part, became a public benefit corporation in 2015, which means that it’s legally committed to balance its profit with “producing a positive benefit for society”—Patagonia is another notable PBC.)
His solution for getting ourselves back to more values-based living is rooted in a philosophy he calls “Bentoism.” It involves using a decision-making tool that is a box divided into four quadrants (like a Bento box). Each quarter represents a different perspective, and when you are faced with making a decision, you think through the options using each section of the Bento before acting: the “Now Me” quarter is concerned with what you, in this exact moment, most wants, it is myopic and self-interested; “Now Us” considers how your immediate behavior will affect the needs of the family, friends, and community around you; “Future Me” represents the “person you want to be,” making sure how you’re acting is in accordance with your principles and beliefs; and “Future Us” takes the view from “the world you want your children to have, how things ought to be.”
Strickler believes that operating with this tools allows us to deepen our self-awareness and to manifest a life that isn’t just self-interested (acting selfishly) but self-coherent (“living in integrity with yourself”). His ultimate belief—lofty as it may be—is that if people start practicing Bentoism (and they already have, in workshops Strickler leads) then one day so too may companies and corporations. He knows all of this might sound radical, but, he’d argue it’s no more radical than a kid from Virginia who liked indie rock growing up to launch Kickstarter. “Me, an ordinary person from a farm in rural Virginia, made a ripple in the world,” he writes. “It showed me that things were way more fragile than I was taught to believe.”
What is it about that success that unsettled the view you had of the world?I just grew up believing in all the dominant stories about our world. I always had this view that the world was granite. It's been there forever. It can't go anywhere. As Kickstarter succeed, I was excited and felt validated by its initial success, but I also felt terrified by it. Over time, I felt excited and empowered. Like, “Oh wait, I have some sense that the way most people think the world works is not really the case.” Steve Jobs put this very well [when he said] the world was made by people no smarter than us. That emotion is very powerful because it informs your actions.
You realize you can make the rules.Yeah, totally. In the book, I write about this 30 years theory of change. Change is incremental and gradual. So Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion are these figures that are arising in this certain moment in the evolution of climate. They won't solve these things on their own. But they’ll be part of the puzzle that makes us forced to do this. They might end up feeling unsuccessful because it didn't happen from their direct actions, but you need precisely someone like Greta at this moment for us to be someplace else in 20 years from now. Maybe after I do my 10 years of pushing these ideas forward, then it's the next person that takes over. That gives me the space to not try to do everything right now.
Because if I let my desire for what I want the world to be takeover right now, then I'm just going to turn into Gary Vaynerchuk doing a million live streams, self-promoting, letting my “now me” take over, right? Being hyper self-promotional and achieving nothing that I want as a result, annoying the hell out of people. So, instead, by thinking, “okay, if in 10 years from, Bentoism needs to be in this place, then at the end of this year, it needs to be in this place,” suddenly you can breathe. I feel liberated by the idea of these longer time horizons.
You have that great chapter on the homogenization of radio where you lay out how corporations realize they could hoard channels and then save money by just playing the same song on all their channels, and, over time, that led to all of our pop songs sounding similarly. Is that really a problem with the system—or a problem with those of us engaging with the system?100% the system.
I ask because you always hear that the internet traffics in outrage and fear, right? But if we're wired for outrage and fear, isn’t that something that's wrong with us, and not the platform we're using?I take a more generous look at people. I just assume everyone's doing the best they can with what they know and that we live within systems and superstructures that teach us what's right and wrong. And that does it from such an early age. There’s racial bias in children that’s visible at the age of three if they haven't been exposed to enough diversity early on. That's not there— that's just learned.
I don't know how to interpret a multi-decade strategy of loosening regulations in an attempt to gain market power. I see how that happens inside organizations. There's this desire to grow. I think there are other strategies to pursue.
There's an image that flew around the web for a while, a few years ago. It was a picture of Craigslist and it was showing how all the categories of products that Craigslist offers—auto, apartments, short term rentals—all these services turned into autotrader.com, Airbnb, Uber. And in Silicon Valley, it’s treated as, “Look at how much Craigslist blew it. They could have owned all of these markets and instead they just did the same thing. This is the biggest fuck-up in tech history.”
But that is beautiful! That is Craigslist creating value in the world, not trying to protect it. Like if Craigslist tried to hold all those things for itself, they almost certainly wouldn't have succeeded. And I think the world would probably be worse off for one player trying to own all those things. Craigslist is just spitting out value in every direction. And it's not trying to keep it for itself. That’s graciousness. That's understanding what is important to you and what's not important to you. That's actually what we should all aspire to do.
What gives you hope maybe that we can strive towards a future where companies or corporations do orient themselves towards creating and spreading value, rather than hoarding it?Other than the church, corporations are the the place where values are most agreed upon as being real and rational. Now, there is a question about how sincere these beliefs are when you have Enron having “integrity” as its value. But every company and every CEO would say with a straight face that actually yes, the values we say we care about have a material impact on the output of what we do. That's a hard thing to get people to really buy into. But people really do. That is a great starting point.
Out of the 10 richest nations in the world, I think five or six have have had a populist uprising of some kind in the past five years or so. Events are showing us that we are not on a good path whether we want to realize that or not. And the fact that the stock markets is at an all time high at the same moment that 43% of Americans can't afford their bills, that climate crisis is going to reengineer our entire geography and life, that our political system and institutions are completely breaking down, that suicides are up and life expectancy is going down again—those are the kinds of anomalies that you can only tolerate as a society for so long.
We’ve been kicking the can down the road for a while and I'm sure we can for a bit longer. But I think the Business Roundtable's announcement earlier this year of changing the focus of corporate governance from shareholder maximization to growth for all stakeholders is a sign that even the 200 biggest companies in the world recognize that responsibility. They can see that if they don't self-regulate, states will do it. This trajectory we've been on has kind of gotten out of hand. In the Trump Era, it's so blatant. There's no pretending that power is to be used for any kind of egalitarian purpose. It's all just to cement your own economic gain. For real change to happen, you need a crisis first. Hopefully it's as gentle a crisis as possible.
I think that crises are those kinds of moments that let people change their mind without feeling like they're changing their mind—they allow new possibilities to just suddenly be on the table that would've been unthinkable before. And the idea of Bentoism is, can we have a positive view of where to go instead? When the crisis comes, there'll be a lot of energy about burning it to the ground. But we need that energy to be “Let's build something better” or “Let's build on what we have.” And that's where I think we lack imagination. That's where there are these political solutions, like the Green New Deal, that make all kinds of sense in a vacuum, but our political system will not allow them to move forward and that certain kind of way without other kinds of changes. There's a superstructure or supersystem reset that needs to happen. And to me that's in how we define value and how we define self interest.
The notion that we can just maximize for financial gain and allow that to solve everything? That's just not working. But if not that, then what?
Bentoism is about a shift away from self-interest to self-coherence. How do you explain the difference between the two?It starts with this idea that our footprint is bigger than just this “now me” box, right? It's also future me, now us, future us.
The Bento is a loving tool to balance our weakness. It's hard to think about the future. It's hard to always think about other people. We know those things are important. So we need help if we're going to do that. The Bento orders a lot of conflicting feelings we have. The consumer version of us buys and drives a car. But then there's this future version of us that's like, “No, save the environment.” We're often acting in conflict with ourselves. We live in a world of self-compromise. And I think a lot of that comes down to not really being aware of where we operate and of what matters to us.
So self-coherence is this notion of trying to act in such a way that really fulfills all of the spaces where you operate. That doesn't mean that you always get everything you want, but that you can make conscious choices rather than just feeling limited or like a prisoner to these other systems you live within, these roles that we inhabit in life. I think of self coherence as being the ultimate goal. It’s living in integrity with yourself. Living with self-coherence is like always being in a flow state. We experience those states: walking in the woods, going to a show, writing, doing drugs, whatever those things are for you.
But what is your flow state on a Tuesday at two o'clock in the afternoon? And I feel like the Bento doesn't say, “hey, you're going to be grooving to the ultimate.”
But you can direct your energy in a way that it really does light up all parts of you.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Originally Appeared on GQ
How to protect your organization against targeted phishing attacks
Companies should realize that any user could be a target and use threat data to build a security awareness training program, says Proofpoint.
Phishing emails are one of the most devious and deceptive means of cyberattack. Often sneaking past automated filters, such emails use social engineering to look real and legitimate enough to trick unsuspecting users into revealing sensitive information.
Beyond automated security tools, there are more people-centric strategies that businesses should adopt to protect themselves against phishing attacks, as described in the 2020 State of the Phish report released Wednesday by the security firm Proofpoint.
Based on a survey of working adults and IT professionals as well as other factors, Proofpoint's report defines phishing as any type of socially engineered emails. The intent could be to deploy malware, direct users to dangerous websites, or collect sensitive credentials.
SEE: Phishing attacks: A guide for IT pros (free PDF) (TechRepublic)
About 60% of the respondents said their organization faced fewer or about the same number of phishing attacks last year compared with 2018. That may seem like positive news. However, the trend is one that Proofpoint said it's seen for a while.
Specifically, it means that cybercriminals are focusing on quality over quantity by launching more targeted, personalized attacks instead of just bulk campaigns.
Some 55% of the respondents dealt with at least one successful phishing attack in 2019. Around 54% of those hit by an attack suffered data loss, 49% saw credentials or accounts compromised, 49% were infected by ransomware, 35% were victims of some type of malware infection, and 34% suffered some type of financial loss or wire transfer fraud.
Proofpoint
Organizations measure the costs of phishing attacks in a number of ways. The most common side effect was downtime hours for users, cited by more than half of the respondents. Other costs included remediation time for security teams, damage to reputation, business impacts due to loss of intellectual property, direct monetary losses, and compliance issues or fines.
Proofpoint
The ultimate goal of many phishing emails is ransomware. Some 33% of the organizations surveyed for the report were infected with ransomware in 2019 and opted to pay the ransom. Another 32% were infected but did not pay.
Among those that did pay the ransom, 22% never regained access to their data, 2% acquiesced to follow-up ransom demands and got back their data, but 7% were hit with additional ransom demands and never recovered their data.
Looking at attacks by a specific method of social engineering, 88% of organizations faced spear phishing attacks, 86% faced business email compromise (BEC), 86% social media-based attacks, 84% smishing (SMS/text phishing), 83% vishing (voice phishing), and 81% malicious USB drops.
To help your organization better defend itself against targeted phishing attacks, Proofpoint offers the following tips:
Commit to building a culture of security
If you want to truly make a change—meaning a mindset and behavior shift that has a positive, day-to-day impact on your organization—you must commit to bringing cybersecurity to the forefront.
Remember that anyone in your organization can be a target of a phishing scam and that anyone in your organization can help or hurt your security posture.
Everyone in your organization should know how they can be more cyber-secure. A broad, companywide security awareness training program will help you do that.
Some 78% of the organizations surveyed for the report said they found a reduction in their phishing susceptibility due to their security awareness training.
Answer the three Ws
You may be familiar with the "five Ws and H" that guide journalists, researchers, and investigators: who, what, where, when, why and how.
At a minimum, answer these three first: 1) Who in my organization is being targeted by attackers? The answer is not as simple as looking at the top tiers of your org chart; 2) What types of attacks are they facing? Knowing the lures and traps attackers are using can help you better position your defenses; and 3) How can I minimize risk if these attacks get through? The answer is to use the information you've gathered to deliver the right training to the right people at the right time.
This exercise helps you defend against your most pressing and timely threats. Assessing vulnerabilities at a more granular level and matching those up against your threat intelligence will let you pinpoint where perfect storms are brewing.
Make time for agility
When we get busy, we may want to take a "set it and forget it" approach to cybersecurity. That's understandable. But it doesn't work in an era of constantly shifting attack techniques and evolving threats.
Building a security culture takes continued effort and attention. Plan for regular training and reinforcement but be responsive to changes in the threat landscape (and your organization).
Attackers' targets change over time so the firm recommends identifying the employees most actively targeted by cyberattacks on a monthly, if not weekly, basis.
By pairing granular analysis with organization-wide training, the people being targeted will have a cybersecurity foundation you can build on with additional, targeted training.
Understanding general phishing trends is important. Having benchmarks to measure your users against them is valuable. But other organizations' data isn't as important as your organization's data. You must understand your own threat climate in order to change things in your environment.
"Effective security awareness training must focus on the issues and behaviors that matter most to an organization's mission," Joe Ferrara, senior vice president and general manager of Security Awareness Training for Proofpoint, said in a statement.
"We recommend taking a people-centric approach to cybersecurity by blending organization-wide awareness training initiatives with targeted, threat-driven education. The goal is to empower users to recognize and report attacks."
Proofpoint's data was based on survey results from 3,500 working adults and 600 IT security professionals from the US, UK, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, and Spain. Information also was derived from 50 million simulated phishing attacks sent by Proofpoint customers over 12 months and nine million suspicious emails reported by the end users of the company's customers.
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