Madison Financial Planning Group

10/31/2026

Not every monster wears a costume this month. Some show up as a text pretending to be your bank. 👻

Three cybersecurity myths worth burying this October:

🎃 "Some of my accounts are too small to bother with." False. Most attacks aren’t personal. Automated bots test thousands of accounts at a time, looking for a weak spot.

🎃 "Only older adults fall for scams." Absolutely false. FTC data has consistently shown adults in their 20s are reporting fraud, too.

🎃 "I'd know a phishing email if I saw one." Maybe once. AI-generated phishing has erased the classic tells: broken grammar, misspellings, and awkward phrasing.

This time of year, it's worth taking a moment to look past the obvious scares and pay attention to the sneakier ones, too.

10/29/2026

What do retirees wish they had done differently?

A recent study from Nationwide highlighted some common retirement regrets:

🎯 Starting too late.

More than 25% of recent retirees wish they had begun saving earlier. Time and compounding can be powerful advantages.

🎯 Not increasing savings as income grew.

Thirteen percent said they wish they had contributed more to retirement savings throughout their working years.

🎯 Claiming Social Security too early.

More than a third of boomers plan to claim benefits at 62, even though waiting can significantly increase monthly benefits for those who can afford to do so. Benefits can increase by about 8% per year for delaying beyond full retirement age, up to age 70.

Across the research, three things seem to matter most:

1: Starting early

2: Getting an outside perspective rather than relying on instinct alone

3: Treating retirement as something that unfolds over decades rather than a single date on the calendar

A retirement strategy isn't built in the year you retire. It's built through the decisions you make along the way.

10/28/2026

💳 Carrying a credit card balance is becoming more common among Gen Z, even as other generations are moving in the opposite direction.

A Deloitte and ConsumerSignals survey found that the share of adults ages 18 to 29 carrying a balance from month to month rose more than 19% between late 2023 and mid-2026. Over that same period, the share declined among every other adult generation.

And with average credit card interest rates around 21% in August, those balances can become expensive.

For younger adults juggling housing costs, student loans, and everyday expenses, there's another challenge: deciding how to balance paying off debt with saving for the future.

High-interest debt can make it harder to build emergency savings or contribute toward long-term goals. But factors such as interest rates, available savings, and workplace retirement benefits can all influence which financial priorities deserve attention.

The important takeaway? A credit card balance isn't just about what you owe today. It's also about how interest may affect what you have available tomorrow.

Deloitte finds the share of Gen Z borrowers carrying credit card balances rose nearly 20% from Q3 2023 to Q2 2026.

10/26/2026

How many years before you are ready to be "retired"?

It's one of the most important numbers yet.

TIAA's 2026 longevity literacy research found that workers who expect a shorter retirement save less consistently than those who expect a longer one.

That makes sense, but it also means the people who assume their retirement will be short are the same ones who may be building portfolios with shorter time horizons.

Once someone has already reached 65, the numbers shift.

According to Social Security Administration data:

📌 A 65-year-old man has roughly a 24 percent chance of living past 90

📌 A 65-year-old woman's chances are higher, closer to 35 percent

📌 For a 65-year-old married couple, there is about a 50 percent chance that at least one spouse lives past 90

The practical implication is not "assume you will live to 100."

It's that a retirement income strategy built around the "average lifespan" often assumes a person will die on schedule. Most people do not.

If retirement is on your horizon, the question to ask is, "What happens to my income strategy if I live to 95?"

10/22/2026

Trust & Will's 2026 Estate Planning Report found that 56 percent of adults don't have core documents in place, including:

📝 A will: who gets what, and who is in charge of making it happen

🏥 A healthcare directive (or living will): what you want if you cannot speak for yourself

✍️ Two powers of attorney, one for medical decisions and one for financial decisions, each naming a specific person

📄 A letter of instruction: the practical map to where accounts live, who your professionals are, and what your kids or pets need

The friction is that estate work forces a family to sit with mortality, name specific people for specific roles, and make decisions that feel too permanent to rush.

Without something in writing, though, families are left improvising during one of the most difficult moments of their lives.

Most say they fully intend to get to it, but too many put it off until it's too late.

Don't put it off. Talk to a financial professional who can help.

10/19/2026

What happens to your cash flow when the paycheck stops?

That's one of the biggest financial transitions people face in retirement.

As National Retirement Security Week (October 19-25) approaches, it's a good reminder that retirement planning isn't just about accumulating assets. It's also about creating a plan to turn those assets into income.

If retirement is on the horizon, focus on the decisions that soon become real: income sources, Social Security timing, taxes, and spending needs.

A thoughtful strategy today can help make the transition from saver to retiree a lot smoother. Working with a financial professional can help you evaluate those decisions before they become real-world challenges. If retirement is on the horizon, we’d be happy to help you think through the next chapter.

10/16/2026

Fidelity's 2025 wealth transfer study found that roughly 67 percent of parents age 55 and older have never told their adult children what they will inherit, or whether they will inherit anything at all.

About 33 percent would prefer the kids are kept in the dark about the amount.

Their reasons should feel familiar:
✔️ Worry that a specific number will dampen a child's drive
✔️ Discomfort talking about money at all

The same study found:
Most adult children say they are ready to handle whatever they inherit and would rather shape things while their parents are still around to explain the "why" behind decisions.

Families who have inheritance strategies share some similar habits:
💬 Kids know who the financial professionals are and how to reach them
💬 Everyone knows where the estate documents are
💬 They try to manage any surprises well ahead of time

So, do you tell your children or not?

There's no single right answer here.

Sharing exact numbers isn't necessary, but most families find that a broad discussion can help with priorities and expectations.

Sometimes the hardest part is simply getting the conversation started, which is why we offer family meetings to help align expectations, answer questions, and encourage thoughtful dialogue between generations. If this is top of mind for you, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

10/14/2026

A mother in California picked up the phone and heard her daughter's voice, panicked, saying she'd been kidnapped and needed money immediately.

What she'd heard wasn't her daughter. It was an AI-generated clone of her voice.

In a 2025 study, scientists found that when people heard a cloned voice, they correctly identified the voice as AI-generated only about 60 percent of the time.

The FBI attributed more than $890 million in 2025 losses to AI-enabled fraud, and voice cloning is one of the main drivers behind that number.

It is not only older adults being targeted. Younger family members get these calls too, often framed as a sibling or friend in trouble. Older adults just tend to lose the most per incident.

Two ways to protect your family.

🔐 Agree on a private code word or question with the people a scammer is most likely to impersonate (kids, parents, spouse)

📞 If a call like this comes in and you have not set up a code word yet, hang up, then call the real person back

When in doubt, slow down and verify.

10/13/2026

A surprise $90 deposit is landing for some Medicare enrollees this week. For roughly 40 million others, nothing is coming.

The payments are going to people in traditional Medicare Part B, which covers doctor visits, outpatient care, and preventive screenings. Medicare Advantage enrollees, people who pay income-related premiums, and those who already receive premium assistance are not eligible. Most deposits arrive through the Social Security Administration, while some beneficiaries will get a paper check later in October labeled “Medicare Improvement Fund Payment.”

📌 The standard Part B premium is $202.90 in 2026 and is expected to reach $209.50 in 2027.

That context matters. Some analysts note the $90 helps but won’t fully offset rising premiums, and healthcare costs remain a top financial concern across age groups.

For now, the payment is a welcome bit of relief. The bigger question is how coverage costs keep pace over time.

Millions of seniors are getting $90 direct deposits from Social Security this week, prompting questions about the source of the money.

10/07/2026

There's a reason so many women business owners half-joke that their real title is "everything."

More women than ever are starting and running businesses, and they're doing it at a faster clip than the market overall.

Census data show women now own more than 14 million businesses nationwide, a number that's grown 26 percent since 2012, compared with 19 percent growth for businesses as a whole.

A lot of that growth is happening online, where women-owned businesses tend to be more digitally integrated than those owned by men.

It also means millions of women are managing key decisions from scratch:

💼 How income gets paid (salary, distributions, or owner draws) and what that means at budget time

💼 Which retirement vehicle fits, and how much room there is to contribute

💼 How healthcare, disability, and other insurance get sourced without an employer default

💼 How the business gets valued, and what a sale or transition would actually look like

💼 How personal finances stay untangled from the business's finances

Wearing a tall stack of hats doesn't make entrepreneurship harder than it's worth. Plenty of women running these businesses would say the trade-offs are part of the deal. But it does mean the hats keep stacking up, one on top of the other.

This month is a good time to tip our own hats to the women doing it all at once.