A varied audience attended the 12th Consumer Issues Conference last week at the University of Wyoming.
The theme for this year’s conference was financial protection.
“It was a great turnout. Each of the rooms had a really mixed audience from across the community, campus, and state,” Cole Ehmke said. Ehmke is an Extension Specialist in Personal Finance at UW and helped plan the conference.
Almost all of the speakers series were mostly full, but one of the more popular speaker series was Matthew Wilson’s discussion, “Emerging Payment and Money Management Options: Convenient but Dangerous?” according to Ehmke.
Wilson is an associate professor at the UW College of Law. His talk centered on money management options for business and consumers.
Lori Stiegel’s two series, “Elder Abuse: Causing Physical and Financial Devastation” and “Elder Financial Exploitation” also were well-attended. Stiegel is a senior attorney for the American Bar Association Commission on Law and Aging. Her talks focused on both financial and physical abuse of the elderly.
Other popular series were Richard Alderman’s, “Know Your Rights — It’s All About the Money” and “Consumer Arbitration/Debt Collection Issues.”
Alderman is an associate dean for the University of Houston.
“Know Your Rights” provided listeners with information about consumer finance law to help make sure consumers are getting what they pay for. “Consumer Arbitration” gave listeners insight on how to stay out of court if they are dealing with a debt collector because they cannot pay their loans.
The planning committee will tentatively begin planning for next year’s conference in the next few weeks, but will most likely not set anything in stone until early next year.
A topic for next year’s conference has not been decided upon, but some topics that are being considered are transportation and caregiving.
“Caregiving is being considered because it’s a difficult topic. Whether you’re caring for an older or ill parent or you’re dealing with an older child who is going into a guardianship, it can be difficult,” Ehmke said. “Some people have no idea how confusing the law can be.”
Ehmke says a lot more also goes into transportation than people think, which is why also it is being considered.
“Buying a car can be a real crap shoot, and we want to make consumers aware of what goes into it. We’re also thinking about transportation around the community as well as flying,” Ehmke said. “Flying can be a pain and we want to better inform consumers about these things.”
