Comprehensive Financial Consultants

Medicare Open Enrollment begins October 15, and it's a limited window of opportunity for those needing to enroll or change their plan.

This week on 98-7 The Zone, David welcomes Josh Norris from Comprehensive Financial Consultants to discuss the various plans and benefits, Affordable Care Act (ACA) credits and other Medicare topics.

Tune in Thursday at 6:00 pm or Saturday morning at 9:00 am.

Have questions on ? Reach out to Josh directly - www.cfci.us/medicare

The open enrollment period for Medicare begins Thursday, October 15. The seven-week period is an opportunity for Medicare recipients to make changes to their coverage without penalty. These changes could include drug coverage plans, Medicare Advantage Plan benefits and supplement costs.

Josh Norris from our firm has opened his calendar to assist clients and community members with their Medicare questions and needs. Those conversations may be in-person, by telephone or held virtually.

For more information, and to request an appointment with Josh, visit www.cfci.us/medicare

This Saturday at 9am on 98-7 The Zone andYour Money with David Hays...

David welcomes Congresswoman Erin Houchin, who represents Indiana’s 9th Congressional District, including south-central and southeastern Indiana.

David and Congresswoman Houchin will discuss three topics that are frequently in the news and often come up in financial planning conversations: the national debt, Social Security and Trump Accounts, which were established for children born between 2025 and 2028. Tune in as they take a closer look at these issues and their potential impact on individuals, families and future generations.

October is Cybersecurity 💻 Awareness Month. Cybercrime 🕵️‍♀️affects both large corporations and private individuals. You’ve likely read about the significant data breaches in the business world. The cost of these crimes could increase by 175 percent from the last record, five years earlier.*

https://www.cfci.us/resource-center/investment/the-threat-of-identity-theft

What can you do to help protect your accounts against data breaches?

For most private individuals, the key idea is to:

• Know what to do if you’ve had a data breach

• Know what you can do that might help prevent a data breach

Total cybersecurity for your financial matters isn’t something that can be strategized in a single message like this, but we would like to offer you two suggestions to help you get started. Both can be done from home and represent reactive and preventative measures.

Credit Freeze. By reactive, we mean a step you can take after the fact. A credit freeze might react to identity theft or a data breach. It specifically restricts access to your credit report, which has information that could be used to open new lines of credit in your name. The freeze prevents this, but it will not prevent a criminal from, for instance, using an active credit card number if they’ve discovered it. For that reason, you still have to monitor for unauthorized transactions during the freeze.

While the freeze is in place, you can still get your free annual credit report. You also won’t have issues with credit background searches for job or renter’s applications, or when you buy insurance – the freeze doesn’t affect those areas of your credit history.

Password Manager. This is a preventative measure. Yes, we all know the poor soul who uses “Password” as their password. While you are probably not that far gone, the truth is that cybercrooks use many tricks to learn our passwords. A few people, against best practice, will use the same password across each account. A good security measure against that is password manager software – applications that allow us to keep all our numerous passwords encrypted in a vault and drop them into our browsers when requested. While yes, there are options to save these passwords, encrypted on most browsers, these security measures are limited. Password managers are focused solely on security and are more frequently updated than browser security features are; that attention might differ between a criminal obtaining access to your sensitive personal information or being blocked in the attempt.

While this is a very basic pair of tips, they are worth considering and may help prevent identity theft. There are, however, additional, more advanced choices for you to explore. Read up and take action!

* SentinelOne.com, March 28, 2025

This week on Your Money with David Hays, David welcomes Congresswoman Erin Houchin, who represents Indiana’s 9th Congressional District, including south-central and southeastern Indiana.

David and Congresswoman Houchin will discuss three topics that are frequently in the news and often come up in financial planning conversations: the national debt, Social Security and Trump Accounts, which were established for children born between 2025 and 2028. Tune in as they take a closer look at these issues and their potential impact on individuals, families and future generations.

Tune in Thursday evening at 6pm or Saturday morning at 9am to 98-7 The Zone!

If financial education is important to you, or someone you know, our last round of classes with Ivy Tech Center for Lifelong Learning begin next week! The two night, two-week classes will be held Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.

Doug Hughes leads the class, with discussion on retirement income, risk management, estate planning, retirement roadblocks and more.

Registration closes soon!

Tuesdays - https://shorturl.at/WCId2
Wednesdays - https://shorturl.at/59DSi

Ivy Tech Community College Bloomington

How Much is Too Much?

With just a few months left in 2026, it may be time to review your contributions this year and see where you stand.

Our article on contribution limits for 2026 - https://www.cfci.us/resource-center/retirement/new-retirement-contribution-limits - has details on Roth IRAs, workplace retirement accounts and more.

If you have questions, please let us know!

This Saturday on "Your Money with David Hays"... The Wall Street Journal 📰had an article about grantor-retained annuity trusts, or GRATs, and how the IRS is looking into this method of transferring wealth.

Also this week... If you've listened to the show since the early days (starting around 2002), you may recall David discussing 📊demographics - the statistical characteristics of 🙋‍♂️🙋 people. This week David is revisiting the subject - diving into consumer 🛒spending and 💵 savings - and how those characteristics and habits have changed over the past twenty years.

Tune in to 98-7 The Zone Saturday morning at 9:00 am.

Before September ends, and College Savings Month wraps up, we have a few other things to share with you:

• Our "Saving for College" calculator - https://www.cfci.us/resource-center/investment/college-savings
• An article on "The Cost of Procrastination" - https://www.cfci.us/resource-center/retirement/the-cost-of-procrastination - and why it's important to start sooner than later for your financial goals.
• What if your kids decide against college? It does happen - so what do you do if you've been saving for 18 years? https://www.cfci.us/resource-center/money/what-if-your-kids-decide-against-college
• Once a child reaches the "age of maturity" (typically 18 years old), he or she is an adult. That means a parent or guardian's role and access to personal information. It's a good idea to consider an estate plan - https://www.cfci.us/resource-center/estate/four-reasons-millenials-need-an-estate-strategy - as well as a power of attorney and medical power of attorney - https://www.cfci.us/resource-center/estate/critical-estate-documents

If you would like to discuss any of the above, or you know someone who might benefit from a conversation about college savings, contact us today to schedule a meeting.

It's 9:25 am on 9/25/2026 -- unofficially the first Day.

What's your favorite Dolly Parton song? 🎶🎤🎵