Free Lecture》Financial anxiety under AI stock market crash: Don’t let your elders lose the second half of their life

Recently, U.S. technology and semiconductor stock prices have been affected by the U.S. midterm elections and have fluctuated violently; diagram. (File photo)

U.S. technology stocks and the semiconductor market have been experiencing violent fluctuations recently, putting stock prices of companies such as TSMC under pressure. The AI ​​wave brings growth imagination and reminds us that the risks of technology investment will eventually fall on every family. Among them, the most easily overlooked are the elders who lack stable income after retirement.

For young people, investment losses may be compensated by work income and time; but for many elderly people, their life savings are future living expenses, medical expenses and long-term care reserves. Faced with rising prices and longer lifespans, what the elders really fear is not necessarily not being able to get rich, but "will their money run out sooner than their lives?"

Please read on...

This anxiety may also become a weakness that fraud groups exploit. Fake investment groups, fake financial experts, and promises of guaranteed profits often package the insecurity of retirement into the promise of "stable passive income." What is even more alarming is that some legal but highly complex financial products may also cover up the risk of principal loss, insufficient liquidity and the simultaneous decline of the underlying assets due to high interest rates.

It must be clear: legal investment does not mean fraud, but legal products may not be suitable for every retiree.

For seniors without continuous salary, investment suitability should not only look at the risk questionnaire, but also consider necessary living expenses, emergency reserves and the ability to truly bear losses.

The government and financial institutions should expose worst-case scenarios in age-friendly language and establish reasonable cooling-off periods and abnormal transaction care mechanisms; community bases can combine fraud prevention and financial management education to help elders identify fake groups, fake experts and unreasonable promises of high rewards. Family members should be less blaming and more supportive: checking the market repeatedly and worrying about losing money. Sometimes it is not greed, but fear that they will have no money after getting sick, and may even be a drag on their children.

For retired seniors to invest, the government and financial institutions should expose the worst-case scenarios in senior-friendly language; community bases can combine fraud prevention and financial management education to help seniors identify false information. (Drawing by this newspaper)

To measure the happiness of an aging society, we should not only look at the average life span, but also whether the elders can spend the second half of their lives with peace of mind and dignity. The economic growth created by AI is worth looking forward to, but preventing the elderly from risking their pensions is a more important advancement in financial governance.

(The author is the vice chairman of the Home Health Care Public Welfare Association, a legal person, and the deputy secretary-general of the Taiwan Geriatric Medical and Animal Care Association)