As you probably know, interest rates are extremely low due right now due to the Fed’s actions in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
And that of course has drastically lowered the amount of interest that most retirees are drawing on their interest-bearing retirement accounts.
Millions of retirees live at least partially off the interest earned from those types of accounts, and a great percentage of them depend on earned interest for the bulk of their retirement income.
To be sure, many retirees are hurting hurting financially right now.
Unfortunately, the desperation shared by many of our retirees has made them a prime target for scammers.
A wide variety of scams are always being targeted at seniors, but right now the big one seems to be the numerous High Yield Investment Program scams that have recently popped up on social media and the Internet at large.
In a nutshell, these scams offer ridiculously high yields on their “investments” if the retiree will simply buy into the plan.
Of course the “plans” offered vary quite a bit, but they typically demand an up-front lump sum payment in exchange for the promise of sky-high returns.
The rates promised sure can be enticing for someone who has seen their monthly income drop by 50% or more.
The problem is these “High Yield Investment Programs” aren’t investment programs at all. The vast majority of them are nothing more than scams.
Any money the retirees decide to “invest” is never seen again, and of course the promised “returns” on those “investments” never materialize.
Even worse, the scammers almost always end up with the victims’ bank account and/or credit card info which is then used to clean out their accounts or max out their credit cards.
Bottom line: If you’re a retiree (or anyone else for that matter) and you receive an email, a text or an instant message hawking one of these “high yield investment” offers, you can safely assume that it’s a scam.
And the same thing goes for posts and ads on social media and other websites “guaranteeing” sky-high rates of return on your investments.
Legitimate investment typically boast about the amount of money you could potentially earn if you invest with them, but they NEVER guarantee that you’ll earn sky-high profits.
In fact, they never guarantee that you’ll earn any profits at all. They simply tell you that the potential for high earnings exists.
And of course it does, but investing is a risky business by nature and there are never any guarantees. Always remember that.
There are indeed legitimate ways to supplement retirement income. In fact, I wrote about one of them right here.
Just don’t fall for the hype delivered in the scam messages and fraudulent advertisements you see on the Internet.