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| SUN LAKES LIFESTYLES | DECEMBER 2025 | 5 Community Awareness Program By Michele Walter If you missed our November program, you'll definitely want to watch it on Channel 97. You can visit our website to learn more about our presentation. Our presenters were from One Legacy. One Legacy saves and restores lives through organ, eye, and tissue donations, provides comfort to the families they serve, and inspires our communities to Donate Life. Visit the One Legacy website (onelegacy.org) to register as a donor and discover more about this incredible nonprofit organization. Be aware of new scams, including AI-powered scams using deepfakes and voice cloning, "pig butchering" scams that establish long-term trust before requesting investments, and various impersonation scams where criminals pose as government officials, lottery agents, or even family members. Scammers also employ advanced techniques for traditional scams such as employment fraud, tech support scams, and phishing attacks. Latest AI-powered scams to watch for: • Deepfakes: AI-generated videos that make it look like someone is doing or saying things they did not • Voice cloning: Scammers use AI to produce realistic audio recordings of trusted individuals to trick victims into authorizing transactions or revealing information • Pig butchering scams: Long-term romance or investment scams where fraudsters build trust over time before convincing victims to invest in fake cryptocurrencies or schemes • Impersonation scams: Government and law enforcement officials: Scammers pretend to be from the IRS, Social Security, or other agencies to demand immediate payment or personal details, often claiming unpaid taxes or benefit suspensions Be skeptical: If an offer seems too good to be true, it probably is. Verify identities: Always independently confirm the identity of anyone contacting you, especially if they claim to be from a government agency or a family emergency. Hang up on high-pressure tactics: If someone pressures you to act quickly or pay immediately, that's a red f lag. End the conversation and hang up. Remember, just because these scams seem legitimate doesn't mean they are real. It's up to you to keep yourself safe and be aware! IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING. ••-€ •‚ƒƒ By Sandra Gutknecht, Master Board Secretary DID YOU KNOW??? Did you know Sun Lakes has three "pots" of money from which it can provide services and maintain and enhance our beautiful community? e Operating Fund is like a checkbook. We collect monthly dues and from that we pay for the staff who work here, supplies, utilities like water electricity, trash collection, fix things that break and pay for our landscaping service with Artistic Maintenance and our security staff with Securitas. One measure of financial health of a company is a comparison of operating cash on hand vs the outstanding bills that need to be paid. That is called the Liquidity Ratio and should be between 1.5 and 3. That means we have two or three times as much cash on hand (usually along with Accounts Receivable) as bills we need to pay. That's generally good advice even for individuals, to have enough cash to last for a few months in case your income is disrupted. e Reserve Fund is strictly designated to pay for the major repair or replacement of large components of our assets. Examples are the air conditioning units on the clubhouses, the tennis courts, the machinery that is used to groom the golf courses. It is funded by a portion of our monthly dues (about 15 percent), from six-months of dues collected in the purchase of a home (called the Reserve Replenishment), and from interest earned by having it invested. This fund has a Reserve Study associated with it that lists all the assets owned by our community. Each item must be listed with its estimated lifespan, an estimate of cost to replace, and how old it is so that we know how much longer it should last. The Reserve Study is updated every year. Each year, a list of items to be repaired or replaced from the Reserves Study are budgeted for that fiscal year and the targeted amount of dollars to spend yearly from the Reserves Fund is projected for 30 years. This money cannot be used to pay for Operating Expenses. e Capital Improvement Fund is strictly designated to pay for new things that do not already exist. An example would be the Dog Park. Sun Lakes never had a dog park before, so we are not Repairing it or Replacing it. It is new, so the work to build it was paid for from the Capital Improvement Fund. There are no current sources for increasing the amount in this fund, except the interest earned from having it invested. The Capital Improvement Fund was created many years ago from a Special Assessment and a decision by prior Boards to contribute a portion of the monthly dues into the Fund, but eventually that was stopped. Hopefully this helps you read and understand our monthly financial reports and appreciate that the board and the management company must protect our assets and the financial health of our community.

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