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  • Inside The AI Arms Race Between Fraudsters And Vis
  • The best side hustles let you work on your own schedule, from your laptop, without a steep learning curve. (Photo: d3sign via Getty Images)
  • Fourteen generations of the Beretta family sold firearms. Here’s why the head of the 15th is moving beyond, adding bullets, scopes and even clothing.
  • Are Small Businesses About To Lose A Financial Lifeline? Brandon Kochkodin Financing business concept Supporters of the CDFI Fund say every dollar put in generates eight dollars of economic impact. getty The Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI), a small but long-running program in the U.S. Treasury that helps finance small businesses in underserved communities, is on the chopping block. Again. On March 14, President Trump signed an executive order to cut or scale back seven federal programs, including the CDFI Fund. The order tells agencies to shrink operations as much as legally possible, keeping only what the law strictly requires. This isn’t Trump’s first attempt to curtail the CDFI. In his 2018 budget blueprint, he called for eliminating its grants entirely, arguing that private lenders had plenty of capital and didn’t need government help to serve these communities. That effort failed. Now, with the stroke of a pen, he’s taking another shot. What that means in practice isn’t yet clear. An executive order alone can only go so far, and Congress would have to step in to shut the program down entirely. But lobbyists for CDFI groups and members of the bipartisan congressional CDFI caucus aren’t waiting to find out. They’re already pushing back, warning that any move to weaken the fund could make life much harder for small businesses in underserved communities. The CDFI was created through the Riegle Community Development and Regulatory Improvement Act of 1994. Congress allocates money to the CDFI Fund, which then awards it as grants to lenders that focus on underserved communities. These lenders don’t have to pay the money back, but they do have to meet certain requirements, like keeping loan terms fair and proving they serve businesses that struggle to get financing elsewhere. The fund supports a range of programs, including small business lending, affordable housing development, and financial services for low-income communities. The idea is to blend public funding with private capital, encouraging banks and investors to put more money into areas traditional lenders often ignore. Supporters say it’s a cost-effective way to drive economic growth without creating another government-run lending program. Since its inception, the CDFI, according to its website, has awarded more than $8 billion to the 1,432 community development financial institutions (CDFIs), which comprises community development organizations and participating financial institutions. Additionally, it has allocated $81 billion in tax credits through the New Markets Tax Credit Program and guaranteed nearly $3 billion in bonds through the CDFI Bond Guarantee Program. For fiscal year 2025, it will have $324 million available for grants. Supporters such as the Opportunity Finance Network, a lobbying group for CDFIs, contend that outlay will ultimately drive more than $2.5 billion in economic activity with almost no loan defaults. That kind of return has made the program hard to argue against, drawing support from both sides of the aisle and stretching from Main Street to Wall Street. Small banks love it because it helps them grow their business by giving them money to make more loans. Big banks like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs have chipped in money too (just over $2 billion, according to the Milken Institute), touting it as part of their efforts to give back to underserved communities. Senators Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, and Mike Crapo, a Republican from Idaho, put out a joint statement on March 16 opposing the executive order. They lead the Senate’s Community Development Finance Caucus and say the CDFI Fund has been a success, claiming that it pulls in at least $8 in private funding for every $1 from the government. Hilda Kennedy, founder and president of AmPac Business Capital, a CDFI based in Ontario, California, sees the fund as a lifeline for small businesses that banks and traditional lenders overlook. Since 2018, AmPac has received $5.2 million in awards from the program, money she says has had a game-changing impact on the local community. She says the program flew under the radar for years, but the pandemic made its importance clear. When banks were overwhelmed and struggling to serve their customers, small businesses with 20 or fewer employees were left scrambling. It was CDFI lenders that stepped in and got the small businesses the financing they needed through the Paycheck Protection Program. But there’s more at stake, says Kennedy. Without the program, many small businesses wouldn’t just lose access to capital, they’d lose the hands-on support that CDFIs offer. “Quite frankly, banks and traditional lenders rely on CDFIs to provide that support to local small businesses,” says Kennedy. Bolstering Kennedy’s argument is a 2014 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland which examined whether the CDFI Fund effectively boosts lending in low-income communities. It found that for every dollar in grants awarded, 45 cents was loaned out in the first year, with that number growing to $1.60 within three years. The study also concluded that CDFI-supported lenders increased their overall lending by about 3% compared to similar institutions that did not receive funding. Researchers noted that this growth suggests the program successfully channels capital into underserved areas, reinforcing the argument that CDFIs help bridge gaps where traditional banks hesitate to lend. Not everyone thinks it’s so clear-cut. The lenders benefiting from the program have every reason to talk their book, and critics argue that handing out grants creates a moral hazard. Lenders may be incentivized to issue more loans just to attract more funding. Beyond that, proponents arguing for the program’s effectiveness rely on the idea of a multiplier effect, where each grant dollar supposedly generates far more in economic activity. That may be true, but the math is fuzzy. One 2019 study from researchers at Florida Gulf Coast University and West Virginia University found little evidence that CDFI funding significantly boosts small business activity. Researchers examined the program’s impact and concluded, “For the CDFI programme, we do not find any consistent evidence of an effect on new business activity.” However, they noted that the lack of measurable impact might be due to the relatively small size of the funding rather than a failure of the program itself. If the grants are too limited, they may not be enough to drive large-scale economic change. Joel Griffith, a policy advisor at Advancing American Freedom, a conservative think tank founded by former Vice President Mike Pence, sees the CDFI Fund as unnecessary. He argues that access to financing simply isn’t a major concern for most small business owners, citing polling data from the National Federation of Independent Business showing that hardly anyone lists it as a pressing issue. The vast majority of small business lending, he says, already happens through private banks or the Small Business Administration, making the CDFI Fund redundant. More than that, he worries the CDFI Fund is just another example of “cronyism,” funneling taxpayer dollars to politically connected lenders. What happens next is unclear. The Treasury Department, which oversees the CDFI Fund, has until March 21 to review its programs and cut those without statutory authorization. Griffith doesn’t expect the CDFI Fund to disappear anytime soon, whether he likes it or not. “There’s significant limitations to what the executive branch can do without Congress actually getting on board,” he says.
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  • What It Means To Be Wealthy In Greece The Acropolis of Athens, Greece The Acropolis and the Parthenon Temple, Athens Greece getty Greece is more than just a holiday destination—it's an incredible place to call home, especially for those seeking financial and lifestyle advantages. It has breathtaking islands, world-class beaches, and thriving cities. Still, beyond its natural beauty, Greece boasts attractive incentives for expats, including a flat tax scheme for ultra-high-net-worth individuals, a streamlined golden visa program, and a digital nomad visa for remote workers. Plus, the cost of living remains significantly lower than in a lot of Western Europe, making luxury living more accessible. Here's what it means to be wealthy in Greece. Being Wealthy in Greece Is All About the Landscape CNTraveler listed Greece as the 10th best country in the world in the Readers' Choice Awards 2024, citing "postcard-perfect Santorini, mythology-steeped Mykonos, and massive Crete, with its reemerging viticultural scene." TripAdvisor recently labeled the latter as having the best of the best beaches—Elafonissi in Crete, famed for its pink sand and crystal clear waters, which are as attractive to hikers as to water sport enthusiasts. Aerial View Of Elafonissi Beach On The Greek Island Of Crete Elafonissi beach on the Greek island of Crete—Trip Advisor's Best of The Best Beach Winner 2025 DeFodi Images via Getty Images A record number of visitors are seeking out Greece's more under-explored islands, such as Paros, and other favorites like Hydra, Ios, Tinos, and Zakynthos. And that's not forgetting Athens itself. Indeed, CNTraveler noted the Athens Riviera as one of the 25 best places to visit in Europe in 2025. Just 30 minutes from Athens city center, this 40-mile stretch of coastline is undergoing a resurgence, driven by the completion of Europe's most extensive coastal park, planned for the end of 2025, and a raft of the most fabulous hotel chains setting up home. So, what might it mean to live in Greece, and how would your salary and wealth stack up against the country's averages and the cost of living? Being Wealthy In Greece–Greece's Average Annual Salary As reported by Euronews, workers in Greece have an average annual salary of $18,600 (€17,707), which is lower than the EU average of around $30,000 (€28,217). As a comparison, Greece's average is much lower than the highest in European countries, in Switzerland, $90,000 (€85,582), in Iceland, $56,600 (€53,885), or in Norway, $48,100 (€45,798), for instance. The lowest average annual salary in the EU is in Bulgaria and Turkey, where both are around $9,500 (€9,000). Being Wealthy In Greece–Greece's Cost Of Living When taken globally, a comparison of the cost of living in Greece is lower than it is in many other countries such as the U.S., the U.K., and France: France: $1,200 per month for a single person, not including rent. U.S.: $1,166 per month for a single person, not including rent. Canada: $1023 per month for a single person, not including rent. Italy: $905 per month for a single person, not including rent. Greece: $832 per month for a single person, not including rent. Malta: $801 per month for a single person, not including rent. Spain: $731 per month for a single person, not including rent. Thailand: $650 per month for a single person, not including rent. Portugal: $592 per month for a single person, not including rent. Furthermore, when you factor in rent, it becomes clear that Greece offers more for your dollar per square meter. Accommodation is almost 40% cheaper to rent in Greece than in France, and the cost of living is nearly 21% cheaper. Being Wealthy In Greece–A Flat Tax For UHNWIs Greece has been gradually luring ultra-high-net-worth individuals, most notably with a flat tax of $105,000 per year (€100,000). This is on global income for individuals who transfer their tax residence to Greece, provided they invest in Greek assets with a minimum value of $525,150 (€500,000). Over the past ten years, the number of millionaires in Greece has increased by 14%, and there are now 64,700 millionaires in the country. There are 105 individuals with over 100 million dollars and eight billionaires. They mostly choose to live in Attica, Mykonos, and Crete. Being Wealthy In Greece—Getting A Golden Visa Greece has recently seen a rise in American applicants for golden visas, with monthly government figures increasing from 302 to 383 by November 2024. Greece has one of the fastest golden visa processes, granting residency within 60 days. Plus, it's an attractive scheme as residency holders don't need to live in Greece to maintain their visa status, there is an unlimited expiry date, and the residence applies to the whole family (married spouses, children under 21 years old, and parents of the principal applicant and spouse). After seven years, residents on this golden visa can also apply for citizenship. Now, as per Henley & Partners, it's possible to get a golden visa by investing in real estate in several ways, such as either investing $262,500 (€250,000) to restore a listed building, say, or $420,000 (€400,000) for a property of minimum 120 meters squared. This figure jumps to $840,000 (€800,000) for properties in Athens, Thessaloniki or islands with more than 3,100 residents. The government recently increased the amounts because there have been issues with golden visa schemes leading to a hike in real estate prices for locals, particularly in Spain, where the government recently ended its golden visa scheme. In Greece, you could also take part in other investment schemes to obtain a golden visa, such as investing $525,150 (€500,000) in a public limited real estate investment company that invests exclusively in Greece or purchasing the same amount of Greek government bonds with a remaining maturity of at least three years, through a Greek credit institution. Being Wealthy In Greece—Getting A Digital Nomad Visa Many EU countries offer visas for digital nomads working for foreign companies or freelancers; Greece is no exception. You can live in Greece for one year on a digital nomad visa, provided you meet the minimum monthly income requirement of $3,676 (€3,500) per month, and your clients are not in the country. It is also possible to extend the visa for one further year. It's clear then that Greece is an attractive proposition for expats, delivering an affordable lifestyle, sometimes through a digital nomad visa or a golden visa. Plus, what it means to be wealthy in Greece is significantly lower than in other European countries and the U.S.
  • This Fintech’s Visa Card Keeps Grandpa From Blowing His Nest Egg True Link Financial offers a debit card with spending controls expressly designed for people with dementia, other cognitive deficits or addiction issues. It also manages special needs trusts. In November 2020, Alana Peralez received the sort of emergency call she’d been dreading. Her then 84-year-old dad, a retired aerospace engineer who’d lived alone in his Arizona house since her mom died in 2006, had suffered a stroke. After months of rehab in a nursing home and then a group home, he still had problems with mobility and completing complex tasks. So in April of 2021, they agreed he should move into an assisted living apartment complex near his old neighborhood and friends–a good housing option for someone who needs help with certain daily activities, such as cooking, or managing medicines, but values his independence and doesn’t need skilled nursing or constant supervision. Peralez, a 42-year-old economic development specialist who lives with her husband and daughter in Los Angeles, was now managing her dad’s finances, as well as his care, from a distance. Even before his stroke, she’d worried he was starting to fall for scams and junk products pitched by telemarketers and door-to-door salesmen. Now she wanted something akin to assisted living for his spending. “He needs more help but he still wants some control of his life. He’s an adult,’’ she says. After some online research, her husband found the solution: a prepaid Visa debit card that allows a relative or other trusted administrator to monitor the cardholder’s transactions and set up dozens of individual spending controls limiting the size and nature of purchases and how and where they occur—for example, blocking certain charges from telemarketers or online. Attempted charges by known fraudsters are automatically blocked, while administrators can get alerts when unusual spending has been detected or transactions declined. Both the cardholder and the administrator have to consent to the arrangement, but the administrator doesn’t need to hold a financial power of attorney, since the card is funded with discrete deposits—not all of a holder’s assets. The unique card is offered by True Link Financial, a 12-year-old San Francisco-based financial technology company, which this past week was named to the Forbes Fintech 50 list for 2025–on the strength of its mission and recent growth and profitability. After scrambling to survive in its earlier years, True Link has been in the black for the past two years, netting $2 million on $30 million in revenue in 2024, says CEO and cofounder Kai Stinchcombe. Over the years, Khosla Ventures, QED Investors and Centana Growth Partners, among others, have poured $60 million into the startup. In its last fundraise, in January 2022, during the height of the fintech boom, True Link raised $12 million at a $144 million valuation. Since then, its revenue has doubled, Stinchcombe says, and it’s now able to fund growth internally. He and cofounder Claire McDonnell still own about 30 percent of the company, Forbes estimates. The 100-employee operation reached this point with just two tightly related core products: It currently oversees more than 150,000 individual debit cards for users with cognitive disabilities and for those recovering from (or in the throes of) addiction. True Link charges a $12 a month fee for an individual stand-alone True Link Visa Prepaid Card, with the card bringing in about two thirds of its revenue. The other third comes from True Link’s growing business as an SEC-registered investment advisor, managing nearly $1.5 billion in individual and pooled “special needs” trusts–these trusts are typically funded by families and designed to pay for extras for disabled individuals without jeopardizing their eligibility for Medicaid or certain other government benefits, such as Supplemental Security Income (SSI). True Link charges 1% of assets to manage trusts, which are held at Charles Schwab and allocated to low-cost ETFs. But what it’s really selling here is knowledge of what can and can’t be done with special needs trusts, plus a handy way to supervise and document how the money is spent through its debit cards. A 56-year-old television writer based in Los Angeles, who asked not to be named, says he took over managing his sister’s special needs trust in 2019, after finding out that his father had been embezzling from it for gambling. “Because of what my dad did, I wanted to do everything the right way,” he says. A lawyer advised him to use True Link and its prepaid card. A set amount–which he decides with his sister, who suffers from aphasia– is transferred to her debit card weekly. An added advantage: The consistency and structure has led her to become more financially responsible, he says. Stinchcombe, 42, is the son of two professors, both prominent sociologists. He double majored in history and computer science, but dropped out of a Ph.D. program in political science at Stanford to organize and run a network of progressive policy campus organizations. He then got involved in two other for-profit startups (a sales management platform and a redistricting analytics software company), before his grandmother’s Alzheimer’s set him on his current path. As a retired church school teacher living on a small pension, she’d long made lots of tiny donations, giving $10 each to three or four causes she supported each month. But now, with her short term memory gone, she became vulnerable to unethical charitable solicitors, sometimes getting calls from, and donating via credit card, to the same charity multiple times a day. She started to fall for other pitches, too—for example, spending $6,000 on a wildly overpriced hearing aid after receiving a mailing offering a free hearing checkup at the mall, Stinchcombe says. When Stinchcombe called his grandmother’s bank for help, he ran into what he says is still a standard bank response. “Either she's mentally competent, in which case she's responsible for the transactions she authorizes, or she's not mentally competent, in which case she can't authorize a transaction and we have to close the account.” So he went looking for a niche card issuer which would meet his family’s needs and found there simply wasn’t one. ”I couldn’t shake the idea that this was a solution that should exist,’’ he says. He began discussing the problem–and the potential opportunity–with McDonnell, a San Francisco friend who also had a grandmother with dementia, as well as a background in nonprofit consulting and experience building a wellness app. They were part of Y Combinator’s summer of 2013 incubator class and launched the card later that year. “Our first year target was 50 customers and we missed it,’’ says Stinchcombe. While many of the VCs they pitched were skeptical the idea could ever be profitable, the duo did attract some big name supporters (though not huge dollars) early on. For example, current Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, along with Alexis Ohanian, his then partner in Initialized Capital Management, invested in a $5 million seed round in 2015. Without bundles of cash for a consumer marketing push, Stinchcombe and McDonnell spread the word through social media, geriatric care managers and senior housing providers. In 2016, after a planned funding round fell through, Stinchcombe figured they’d be out of business in six months unless they learned to live within their means. Among other things, they put off the design of a better-looking website in favor of keeping their clunky but functional one. By 2017, the company had a positive cash flow from its debit card. That’s when QED cofounder Frank Rotman, who now sits on True Link’s board, led an $8 million round. He wasn’t particularly focused, he says, on whether it had a big potential market. “If you’re an early stage investor, what you’re looking for is a problem statement for which the company can be the solution,’’ he explains. There is certainly a problem–and a big one. Financial fraud against the elderly has been exploding. About seven million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s, the most common cause of dementia, and barring some medical breakthrough, that number will grow as Baby Boomers age. But there’s an even bigger potential market–those who have started to show signs of cognitive decline, even if they haven’t gotten (and may never get) a formal diagnosis. In fact, financial losses are often the first sign there’s a problem, experts say. A 2023 retrospective study found that in the eight years prior to a dementia diagnosis, the median wealth in the predementia group dropped to less than half that of control households: $104,000, compared to $217,000. Both lower pre-diagnosis income and reduced financial judgement contribute to this decline, researchers concluded at a conference sponsored last year by the MIT AgeLab and AARP. Truth is, it’s a fraught issue and solutions aren’t so obvious or readily accepted by elders. “Our customers are sort of, correctly, not early adopters,’’ Stinchcombe dryly observes. True Link’s founders themselves repeatedly adjusted course before arriving at their card’s current configuration. Early on, they switched from a credit card model to a pre-funded debit card. Why? “We didn’t want to decline anyone who had bad credit and we didn’t want to make money on interest because somebody forgot to pay their credit card bill,’’ Stinchcombe explains. (As a fintech, True Link relies on St, Paul, Minn.-based Sunrise Banks to actually issue the Visa cards.) Perhaps the most intriguing change: With a background of working with machine learning models, Stinchcomb at first believed the key to allowing the right spending would rest on building advanced algorithms. “The thing that we learned is that basically the problems are pretty easy to spot. It’s not this sort of advanced magical thing. It’s like, hey, limit (charitable) contributions to 50 bucks a month. You don’t need AI for that,’’ he says. “What you want is predictability. So let’s say your son is a recovering addict. You’re in a sober situation, you’re supposed to come right home after work. So any transaction after 5 P.M. should not be going on. And no cash, no bars or liquor stores.” An algorithm, with its mysterious workings, is less understandable, predictable and appealing to families than rules they can set and fine tune themselves. Early on, McDonnell, who served as president of True Link until October of 2023, handled customer service requests herself. That helped the two founders build understanding of the sorts of dilemmas families faced and what spending controls they might need. “Every individual is unique, but we probably have seen the same issue enough times to say (to families), `Here’s what you want to click,’’ says Stinchcombe. “Once you have Alzheimer’s you might end up with a hundred magazine subscriptions–that’s something we saw in a client. Or you might lose track of how many dietary supplements you’re buying on TV, or you might see a great deal for one garden gnome and end up with 200 garden gnomes…We have a client who was loaning a hundred dollars every day to his housekeeper, which is a totally reasonable thing to do, but not something you should do every day.” In 2018, the company introduced its investment arm, True Link Financial Advisors. There was a learning curve in that business, too. In 2022, without admitting liability, True Link agreed to pay $200,000 and Stinchcombe $20,000 in civil money penalties to settle a Securities & Exchange Commission finding that they caused violations of the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws. The case stemmed from True Link’s management of certain pooled special needs trusts for Synergy Settlement Services. The SEC alleged Synergy led individuals with disabilities into believing that their funds were being managed by a nonprofit, when they weren’t–a violation of federal rules for Medicaid and SSI benefits. True Link had deferred to Synergy on how agreements were structured and shouldn’t have, Stinchcombe tells Forbes. “It’s not a way that we would defer now,” he said. “Now we would be a little more inflexible… we feel like we have the expertise where we can say the right way to do this is our way.” (Synergy itself denied wrongdoing, but was recently ordered by a Federal judge in the Middle District of Florida to pay $400,000 in civil penalties and $44,000 for net profits gained as a result of the alleged conduct.) In July 2020, True Link completed its biggest fundraising round–a $35 million Series B at a $110 million valuation. “We spent our whole Series B on scaling up growth that didn’t work,” admits Stinchcombe, adding that the company hired too many salespeople in what turned out to be a mistaken belief that they would goose growth. “I wish we had spent the money slower and more carefully, and had been more patient to let customers find us at their own pace, rather than working so hard to chase them.” As for future plans, Stinchcombe’s so far unrealized ambition is to sell the debit card as a white label product to banks–a solution the banks could offer to families distraught about grandma’s out of control charitable charges or garden gnome purchases. “I don’t want to invite everybody to compete with us,’’ Stinchcombe says. “But ultimately, I think if the financial world understood how big a problem this is, there would be a lot more attention to this type of service.”
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