Happy Friday, everyone.

Today I need to remind you about emails you may receive offering retirement planning consultations. These emails are sent throughout the year.

Current Threat

• Retirement Planning (phishing email)
• There are more emails being sent from various potential retirement planning consultants.
• The sender varies greatly.
• The subject will vary but will likely mention a free retirement consultation.
• The content will imply the consulting company is associated with UT and may contain your job title, department, or other information that would make you think a UT department is involved, but it is not.
• This information can be obtained from various locations such as the departmental website or even social media.
• The company may or may not be a legitimate retirement consulting company, but they are NOT affiliated in any way with UT’s Office of Payroll, Benefits and Retirement.
• The motive behind many of these free “consultations” is to ask you to provide your personal information, including birthdate and Social Security number, which can be used to steal your identity.
• A very recent consulting company claimed to help you with your retirement planning, but their main focus is selling insurance and have been reported as being a pyramid scheme-like entity.
• Please visit Retire Ready Tennessee to learn more about UT’s retirement plans.
• Empower Retirement is the only retirement consulting company affiliated with UT.
• You can choose to pay for a non-UT consultant of your own choosing, but please do your research first.
• And remember that if someone reaches out to you about personal/financial matters instead of you reaching out to them first, it is best to completely ignore them.
• If you have been a victim of one of these scammers, please report it to the Federal Trade Commission at https://reportfraud.ftc.gov.

Thank you for all you do. I am here to help you any time you have questions or concerns.

Sandy

Important Note: Thank you so much for sharing these e-newsletters with family, friends, clients, students, and anyone else who may benefit from the information. I would like to stress that you should keep your students in mind, as non-employee students will not get this information without someone sharing. If anyone else has an email group for students who are not employees of your department, please let me know what that address is and I can include it. I do this as a blind copy so student names and addresses will not show up!