Author - Celeste Mirassou

When I look at charts for the US stock market, it reminds me of some of the Mt. Tam trails that I hike. It seems as if the uphill will never end. And then, it does end, just as I turn a bend. The walking sticks come out of the daypacks of my hiking friends, and we catch our breath and become conscious of how much more treacherous the trail becomes as gravel scatters under our boots and rocks we use as stepping stones teeter. I wish all investors had their own investment walking stick equivalent. They don’t. They are, …

I am not a disaster expert. However, as a financial planner I do know something about protecting your assets and what to look for in insurance coverage. So the focus of this ezine will be on how to prepare for and how to recover from a natural disaster. I’m also including some resource links and suggestions for those recovering from the recent fires.

Recovery
Immediate – While those affected by recent fires are now beyond the initial steps I will repeat them: getting to safety; communicating your safety to friends and family; securing lodging, transportation and cash. Some fire victims …

By now, most Americans know that a data breach at Equifax exposed personal security information for some 143 million individuals. What is much harder to learn is whether your personal information was involved.

While the breach itself is bad news, what is particularly upsetting is that there was a significant delay in making the breach public knowledge. Further, Equifax could likely have prevented the breach by installing a patch when it was made available. This was not the first cyber security attack on antiquated software, or software based on open source code, nor the first time a major corporation and …