hi, everyone. welcome to "on the money." i'm becky quick. preparing for the unexpected. how to protect your family's finances and future. our very own sharon epperson shares the lessons she learned. saying good-bye to passwords and thumb prints. the new technology heading our way, but it comes with a warning. millennials and money. why their attitude really matters and how it can affect everyone, no matter age or generation. and how losing a job helped one woman make her dreams come true. now she's cooking up something special with a booming business. "on the >> announcer: this is "on the money," your money, your life, your future. now, becky quick. we begin with an incredible story of resilience and foresight. for more than a year our friend and colleague sharon epperson

has been away from this show. she is here today with our cover story, and it's her story, about a life-changing event that came out of nowhere. >> reporter: reporting on how to manage, grow, and protect your money is what i do. >> the bottom line is you probably need to be saving more than you're saving right now. >> reporter: it's critical to plan for the unexpected. that i know. because it happened to me. the day started like many others. making sure my son and daughter got off to school and coordinating schedules with my husband. then i went to exercise before heading to the studio. some wei stretching. suddenly, i felt incredible pain. the worst headache of my life. the rest of the day became a blur. [ sirens ] of doctors, hospitals, emergency rooms. scans and images revealed bleeding in my brain. a bulge in the wall of a main artery there had burst. it was a ruptured brain

aneurysm. >> the doctors had told me that she could lose her life or the things that make life worth living. and of those two i don't know really which is worse. >> reporter: surgery was just the beginning. i spent two weeks in intensive care, followed by long days of rehabilitation. >> and ready for my recovery. >> reporter: relearning how to keep my balance and walk up stairs. from caregiver to being cared for, my recovery was more demanding than we ever expected. >> double you're immersed in this medical frenzy of making choices that could define your life and your family and your future. >> reporte and getting back up to speed on running my family's finances took time. thankfully i had planned ahead, something financial adviser stac fail to do. >> the number one reason for bankruptcy is actually medically related. so if you're not preparing, you could be putting yourself in a disastrous situation of having

to use credit card debt, even going into your retirement plan. >> reporter: emergency savings and disability insurance helped pay the bills while i was out of work, and is why preparing for the unexpected is something all of us need to do. >> make sure that you have at least three to six months of your living expenses. the next thing, look at your disability insurance. does that pay you enough that your financial situation would still be comfortable and secure? and finally, make sure your estate planning is updated. >> reporter: the steps i took before my brain injury allowed me to spend time with loved ones instead of worrying about money. my family and friends helped me get stronger, encouraged me to walk farther, and cheered me on as i reached another my recover. finishing my first ever 5k race. >> this is the first race she'd ever done, and the fact she prepared for it through illness,

that was an amazing moment. >> that moment completing the race was not only a personal achievement, i did it with my husband chris and our kids dylan and emmat the brain aneurysm foundation. and to raise awareness about this often fatal disease. and you can learn more about it at bafound.org. >> sharon, first of all, welcome back. it's the first time i've seen you in 13 months too and i can't believe the incredible journey and how amazing you look, and we're so happy to have you here. >> i'm so happy to be back. >> there are so many questions people have coming out of this. but are were there any signs, any warning signs or anything that clued new to what was going on? >> there were no warning signs. there were no risk factors. i don't have high blood pressure. i don't smoke. i was drinking spinach smoothies and working out three times a week. so i thought i was fine. i really didn't have anything i thought was wrong with me. i later learned that my grandfather died of a brain hemorrhage, my mother's oldest

sister died of a brain hemorrhage and my great grandfather died of a brain hemorrhage. you about i don't know what caused that. i don't know if they had brain aneurysms or not. and i never thought to check. >> how did you even know when you got a headache like that that it was a serious situation? because your actions probably saved you. anything like that in immediately got out of where i was exercising, contacted my husband, and he came to get me right away. so it is a second to second, minute to minute type of injury. and the fact that he got me so quickly and got me to care so quickly, to the hospital so quickly, was what saved my life. >> we see you just ran the 5k race for the first time. and by the way, you look incredible. any other changes you made along the way? >> well, my is stronger than ever. and meditation, devotion is a key part of my everyday routine. and financially i made some -- a big change, which was to make sure we both know where everything is. so we now have all of our financial information on one website. and so rather than me trying to

from a hospital bed tell him things to do or where things were, now there's one place we can go and we can look and we can see all of our accounts in one place and that's been helpful. >> what's the website? >> well, mint.com is a great one to use. >> sharon, i am so glad you're here. stay with us. we'll continue this conver folk mcclanahan is a physician and certified financial planner. her firm is called life planners. it's based in jacksonville, florida. thank you for being here. >> it's my pleasure. and i'm so honored to be here welcoming sharon back. you have been through an incredible journey. >> thank you so much, carolyn. thanks for being here. >> there are so many lessons we can take out of this but one of them has to be sharon's experience in dealing with disability insurance. it can be an incredibly important situation and it can be very tricky. how much should somebody have when it comes to disability insurance? >> that depends greatly on how much debt you have and what your cash flow needs are, but in general disability insurance can be obtained to protect 60% to 75% of your income. and you know, if you have

beaucoupes of savings you may not need as much but if you don't have a lot of savings it is imperative you must have disability insurance. >> cash is key when you're in a situation like this. sharon had talked about having three to six months worth of cash. is that the right goal to be going with? for people who are having a tough time trying to get to numbers like that. >> yeah. three to six months. three if you have a great stable job with good insurance protection. six if you don't have as much protecti d you may need even more if you have a lot of debt. you've just got to work on getting that debt down so you don't have to have as big an emergency fund. but six months is a good number to shoot for. >> there are so many things, just from planning and having a will you think about those things. a lost us understand how a will works if we die, what comes from that. but how does estate planning work when you're in recovery and going through some of this? >> there's so much more toes tait planning and it's so very important and i'm glad we had done it a long time ago and reviewed it more recently. the health care power of attorney was the most important

part of my journey at the beginning because i was unconscious and i was unable to make decisions after a couple of hours. >> did your husband -- >> my husband has my -- is the health care power of attorney and the successor, the person in case he's gone, is my sister. and so within hours she was there also. so i did have the key people that are part of my estate plan there for the emergency care and the ongoing care i received to be there with me making those decisions. >> what husbd hadn't been named that? would he be allowed to make those decisions anyway if you haven't already been named as the power? >> often that happens fo but if i was single and i didn't have a health care power of attorney there may have been another question of who that would be. and so it's just a very important thing to at least have a discussion about even if you don't have the documentation right now. it's a conversation to have right away. >> and carolyn, obviously people would start thinking this is great, i need to do this, but how much does it cost me to get into the business of estate planning and what are the ways i should go about that? >> the number one thing, you can do health care power of attorney free in any state. they're available on the website. just look for your state form.

the other important thing i want to stress with this is not only complete that document but share what your health care wishes are with your health care surrogates so they can make those right decisions for you. ever happens in your family everybody knows what to do. >> what are you talking about? i hear people saying this all the time. a do not resuscitate order? what are some hard guidelines? that's the thing that scares me a lot of people off from making choices. >> it's not just about end of any accident that can make you incapacitated for a while. the harder decisions are massive strokes that are not going to leave you who you are. if you have the right directives in pla to exist like that your wishes are more likely to be honored. >> carolyn, thank you so much for being here. and sharon, we are so happy to have you back. >> thank you so much. thank you so much. i'm so happy you're part of my team too for the brain aneurysm foundation because that was a great resource for me and i think education about your health and knowing your body, whatever condition you're in, is so important. don't wait. >> crucial.

sharon, thank you. and we're going to see a lot of you. >> absolutely. >> great to have you here. >> happy to be here. >> for more on the brain aneurysm foundation you can go to the website again. bafound.org. we'll be right back. >> announcer: the hit show "small business revolution main street" is back for season 2. >> this is one of our newer retail shops. >> amanda brinkman and her experts have landed in bristolburg, pennsylvania and they brought along entrepreneur robert hrs vek and a panel of experts. >> it's scar every episode willg with a new small business. >> you really build us up. >> and together we can now streaming on hulu and small business revolutio just like the people who own them, every business is different. but every one of those businesses will need legal help as they age and grow. whether it be help starting your business, vendor contracts or employment agreements. legalzoom's network of attorneys can help you every step of the way

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♪ apple's latest phone is raising some eyebrows. no, we're not talking about the $1,000 price tag. we're talking about facial recognition technology where the phone takes a 3-d scan of your face to unlock it or to authorize purchases from the app store. but could that be compromising security for convenience? joining us right now from san francisco is april glaser. she's a technolor with slate. and april, thanks for being here today. >> thanks so much for having me. >> apple says that face i.d. keeps facial recognition data that's stored locally on your phone, not on the company's servers, but as we see more companies start using biometric technology the thought comes to us, do we need to start worrying

about somebody collecting all that info into a data base and using it in some other way? >> there are certainly a lot of other facial recognition data bases out there and the largest is probably facebook's. 350 million photos are updated a day to facebook and they use all kinds of facial recognition software to detect who's in those photos. >> what are they doing with that data base? >> well, right now it seems like they're just kind of detecting who's in your photos. but certainly in a few years we could imagine a scenario where there's a camera that knows when you walk into a store and somehow that's married with your facebook activity. i mean, right now -- >> it would know to send me a coupon as i walk in the door or something? >> perhaps 37 or they know your emotion because you just posted. or they know you're having a good day because you shared something happy about your family. and then they'll be able to market to you perhaps based on that emotion. we do know that facebook is working on or has worked on technologies that can perceive your emotions based on your

face. >> we have given all this in away for free. we're getting services from them for free. we end up giving a lot of ourselves for free. and to this point it may not have been a huge issue but it does raise the question, are we compromising security for convenience at some point? >> the reason why we do it is because as soon as we click agree when we have to do like a terms of service or something like that, when we engage with new software or a new website, often we're giving away a lot more than just that one click, including the permission to use our face. right no seem that pervasive but in a few years it's not that far-fetched to imagine hypertargeted advertising based on your emotions or where you are in the world. not just where you are on the internet but having the offline activity track as well. >> it's something we think we can forget about it, oh, right now there's all these companies we think the leaders are doing good things with it but it does raise all e horrific issues do the road. is it too late, though, once we've already given away this

information? >> i think it's important for people to continue to raise these concerns i, particularly that having advertising hypertargeted to their every emotion as they walk through the world, it might not be something they want or might be manipulative in some way. there's also concerns about police use of this technology. right? right now police do need a warrant to unlock your phone or to compel you to hand over a password but it's still contested whether or not the for on a touch i.d. and something that's less coercive than forcing your finger on i.d. is just confiscating the phone and holding it up to your face. >> not that i've done anything i'm worried about you about you do have me thinking about these ha for joining us. >> tha great. >> up next, we're on the money. most millennials say they're not comfortable with stocks. but will that make for an uncomfortable retirement? and later, from getting fired to getting fired up about baking. how one woman turned her

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♪ the millennials have been called the recession generation. today they are between the ages of 20 and 37 and as a group they have some pretty different thoughts on money, work, and happiness. the research is part of a new wells fargo survey. kristi mitchem is wells far gof asset management ceo. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> the millennials were born in the 1980s and 1990s. we seem to spend an awful lot of time trying to get our arms around what this generation thinks. why is that? >> i think it's because they're so large. it's a generation that's 75 million strong. they'll make up 75% of the productive workforce by 2025. so it's important we understand them. >> we know that in your survey more than half of the millennials said that they will never be comfortable investing in the market. is that just because of what they grew up with? >> yeah. i think this is really clear this is a generation that came of age during a really difficult

time a the really internalized about. about 37% of millennials have no investments in the stock market toda in 5 say they never plan to do so. >> how does that match one, say, gen x or the baby boomers? >> gen x has a much higher degree of comfort with the stock market. and at the same time we studied the millennials we also studied the boomers and saw a big gap in confidence there. so the millennials are the special generation and i think it really presents a challenge for all of us to sort of help them overcome, what is a lot of financial anxiety and investment anxiety. >> this week in washington there was a lot of talk about what to do with 401(k) plans, with the tax reform and all the things that are happening. potentially lowering some of those limits of how much you can put in tax deferred. >> i think the policies are incredibly concerning. as you probably know, i spent much of my career trying to make changes in the 401(k) system that make it capable of actually reaching that aim of providing retirement security. tax, you know, deferred savings

is a critical component of that. and i think it's interesting that we're having this conversation today for me because i think for the first time i have a lot of confidence that the system can actually deliver what it was really designed to achieve. >> and we're talking about this at a time when pensions are being slashed, we're asking people that they should be taking care of more of their own retirement. >> it's just a definitive move in the wrong direction. >> i agree with you. when you look at'll the millennials, those who are positive about money and how to deal with it, what do they have in common? >> we s ry interesting indicator we're calling the positive financial indicator. and it was this battery of five questions that really signaled the millennial was engaged with their money. and when they answered affirmatively to all five of these questions, not only were they happier but they were also more com with the stock market. they were knew what they needed to know to be in charge of their finances. millennials don't connect money to happiness.

it's something they really want to push to decide but we found something important. it's not about the money you have. it's about engaging with what you have that's important. >> kristi, thank you so much for being here today. >> thank you. >> i appreciate it. up next on the money, a look at the news for the week ahead and a recipe for success. how one woman turned her bite-size cupcakes into big business. right now, though, take a look at how the stock market ended

♪ here are the stories coming up that may impact your money this week. on monday we'll be getting a look at personal income for the month of september. and you may be spending some of that income on candy and costumes. halloween will be here on tuesday, of course. we'll also be getting a read on real estate with the case schiller home price index. on wednesday it's the latest auto sales that will be released. and the federal open market committee two-day meetin with an announcement on interest rates. then on friday we'll see how much jobs were gained or lost for the month of september. things weren't always so sweet for melissa ben-ishay. nine years ago she was fired but with encouragement from her family and friends she turned her baking hobby into a business. today that business, baked by melissa, has sold over 100 million cupcakes. it employs 250 people, and it

has 13 retail locations. she's the author of the new book "cakes by melissa," and she is here with us on set today. it's great to see you. thank you, melissa. for having . >> this is an incredible story. what happened? you got fiefrd from what job and how did you decide okay, i'm going to bake? t media planner working on the tylenol account at deutsche advertising and i was fired because i wasn't passionate about the work i was doing. love to bake. had been known for my tie-dye cupcake. went home, baked four batches the night i was fired because i knew i needed to take control of my happiness. i september them in to work with my best friend's little sister at a pr firm. she loved them, put me in it up with her caterer. i started doing events as a caterer as baked by melissa less than a week after i was fired. you're kidding me. that is a perfect story. it never works out like that for people. it can't have been smooth have learned some lessons along the way. as an entrepreneur what kind of stumbles have you had and what can you tell people who are trying to do the same thing? >> i think the most important thing is to see every challenge as an opportunity. that's the attitude that started

baked by melissa. that's the attitude and culture we still have today. when you're finding yourself feeling frustrated it's an opportunity to find a solution to learn to grow and that's how i meet every single challenge. that's how my entire team does. and that's what makes it amazing to come to work ev i love, love attitude. i think i would have gone to a bar instead of home to bake. but you have -- >> you can only control your response. >> you're right. the rest of life is out of our hands. you've got all these retail locations. but what do you do next? >> we are at a very exciting point at baked by melissa. we are going to expand our retail footprint in new markets. we're looking at philadelphia. store in new york. we're selling our product online. you can go to bakedbymelissa.com and order cupcakes for delivery anywhere in the united states. >> this is a really tough time for retail. most people we talk to in retail are having a struggle. how do you kind of play those two? how much is business from online? how much is from the stores? and do you use any information

you find online to kind of decide where to open stores or oh, of course. our retail business is the firs melissa. once you experience our product in our store t to bakedbymelissa.com and order for delivery anywhere in the united states. it's really just about educating our customers walk our store. our e-xhert business is growing. and it's so exciting. we use our retail experience to kind of show what's possible. >> it is amazing. we'ring go to try one of these but i have to say i've tried them already because we get them from the mall here. our girls love them. i'm trying to decide -- i'm going to go with your tie-dye. >> i'm going to have brownie batter. >> mm. so moist. >> thank you. >> thank you for coming in today. this is a great way to end the show. >> thank you for having me. m quick.s the show for today. thank you so much for joining us. next week, hot holiday toys. the latest games and gadgets that kids will be asking for. each week keep it right here.

we're "on the money." have a great one, and we will see you next weeke

steve sweeney's negative headlines keep piling up. why are south jerseyans so angry at sweeney? sweeney repeatedly sided with chris christie to underfund south jersey schools, increase standardized testing like parcc, cut take-home pay for teachers, and broke his promise to fund the pensions of hundreds of thousands of new jerseyans- all while padding his own. steve sweeney says a lot of things. but the truth is, he's not on our side.

right now on nbc 10 news today, bracing for storms. we are tracking a system poised to bring us heavy rain. what you need to know to be prepared coming up in the first alert neighborhood forecast. the weather factor, the eagles are making adjustments to playing in today's stormy conditions. the fans will have to be ready for rain, too. this morning we are live at the linc. >> i noticed these people up top were trying to get out of the house. >> so he found a way to help them. you'll hear more from the philadelphia man who saved his neighbors from a burning row home. plenty to get to on this sunday. good morning. this is nbc 10 news today. i'm rosemary connors. it's 5:30. we have id