Recently a gentleman who writes about the history of the governors of South Dakota got curious about what the latest internet sensation — ChatGPT — might say about the oldest and youngest governors of South Dakota. Tony Venhuizen of the SoDak Governors blog published what he got back from ChatGPT regarding South Dakota’s youngest governor, […]
Someone posted recently on a financial discussion forum asking about what people thought were best practices for paying their household bills. The responses were all over the place. The wide variety of methods for handling this common task was actually quite impressive. Technology has given people so many different ways to monitor and manage their […]
In his new bestselling book titled The Power of Regret, author Daniel Pink explores what he calls our “most misunderstood emotion” and how it can be the pathway to our best life. Apparently there are a lot of different kinds of regret. Pink writes about one woman who deeply regretted not spending more time as […]
Right now, bankers nationwide are seeing a surge of the “You can’t trust your bank” scam. It’s everywhere. The other day on the Bogleheads.org forums, a gentleman posted about a family friend who fell for that scam. He was asking if there was any way to help the victim get their money back. (There wasn’t.) […]
For a while now, people have been encouraged to be practically obsessed with their credit score. Getting a high score. Keeping it high. Monitoring it on a regular basis. Even signing up for add-on credit score boosting services that want access to more and more of your personal information for the possibility of maybe manipulating […]
People expect that the money they keep in a bank will be safe. That is certainly a reasonable expectation. Bad news and frightening news always seem to get the most attention. But the good news — the reassuring news — is that today, in 2023, the American banking system is very strong and American banks […]
So much that gets reported these days seems to be clickbait … or nonsense. Take the “great resignation,” for one. Supposedly large numbers of people are resigning from their jobs because they’re tired of working, or something like that. It’s supposed to be a big, important trend. It gets a lot of media and social […]
The following article appears in the Canton Citizen’s 2023 Financial Fitness Guide. See this week’s edition for information and tips from local professionals on a wide range of financial topics, including asset protection, real estate, tax preparation, and much more. *** It was another tragic story about a local person who was talked into letting […]
A fellow local banker and I got talking about how local banks can often help borrowers who get into mortgage repayment difficulty if only the borrowers will come in and talk to us. That’s true. Many struggling borrowers do come in. Some don’t. But ignoring problems usually makes things worse. Or things can get dramatically […]
A fellow banker recently told me about a gentleman who stopped by his local bank to tell them he’d just realized that a person he thought he was doing business with was actually a scammer. As it so happens, the man was in shock. He was angry at the scammer and very upset with himself. […]
