Protecting and Growing Personal Wealth

This unit guides students through practical strategies to protect assets, recognize and avoid fraud, and seize appropriate investment and retirement opportunities—especially in challenging economic times. Students will synthesize estate planning basics, identity-theft prevention, behavioral finance insights, and spending controls to produce actionable plans for long-term financial security.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze investment opportunities during economic downturns and recommend asset-allocation adjustments for a given client profile that balance risk, diversification, and time horizon
• Demonstrate mastery of basic estate-planning tools by creating a clear will/trust checklist and explaining beneficiary designation, powers of attorney, and the steps to transfer assets
• Evaluate personal and client exposure to identity theft and fraud by using diagnostic checklists and propose specific prevention and response strategies, including credit monitoring and reporting procedures
• Apply behavioral finance principles to develop a practical retirement, spending, and gifting plan that incorporates emergency savings, discretionary-spending rules, and communication strategies with trusted advisors