The Influential Advisor

083: Fearless Finance: Building Confidence Through Financial Clarity with Laura Rehbein

• Paul G. McManus

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Episode Summary:

Laura Rehbein shares her journey from becoming head of household at age 12 in rural Michigan to building a successful financial advisory practice over nearly three decades. Her book "Fearless Finance" addresses the anxiety that highly educated, successful professionals feel about their finances despite their achievements. Laura reveals why knowledge replaces fear and how proper planning can help clients "face everything and rise" rather than "forget everything and run." She discusses practical strategies like productive pessimism, the bucket approach to retirement income, and often-overlooked risks that can derail investment plans.


About the Guest:

  • Laura Rehbein owns Impavid Wealth and has spent nearly 30 years in financial advising. Growing up in rural Michigan farming country, she became responsible for her household at age 12. She entered the financial industry after recognizing a need for more women advisors.


Key Concepts Explained:

Fearless vs. Reckless: Laura defines fearless as making informed decisions with knowledge and clarity, not reckless choices. Her approach focuses on empowering clients with understanding rather than eliminating all fear.

"Throw It in a Pile" Strategy: Laura encourages overwhelmed clients to gather all financial documents without organizing them perfectly. She compares this to hiring a personal stylist who sorts through your closet - sometimes you need an objective professional.

Productive Pessimism: This planning approach involves overestimating expenses, underestimating investment returns, and planning for longer lifespans. Rather than being negative, it creates a buffer that helps ensure money lasts throughout retirement.

"Bad Math": Laura's term for overly optimistic financial thinking, like believing you can retire by cutting out Starbucks or that a $100,000 inheritance solves all retirement needs. It occurs when people avoid doing real calculations.

Bucket Strategy: Laura structures retirement assets in three buckets: 12-24 months of expenses in cash, 3-6 years in medium-risk investments, and the remainder in growth investments. This provides short-term security while maintaining long-term growth potential.


Overlooked Financial Risks:

Sequence of Returns Risk: Two identical retirees can have vastly different outcomes depending on whether they retire at the beginning of a bull or bear market. Early losses can devastate portfolios even if long-term returns average out.

Healthcare and Long-Term Care: Laura shares stories of clients facing unexpected healthcare costs that required rapid plan adjustments, emphasizing the importance of addressing these risks proactively.


Modern Estate Planning Considerations:

Digital Assets: Beyond cryptocurrency and online accounts, this includes cloud-stored photos, social media profiles, and email accounts. Some platforms delete accounts upon notification of death, potentially losing family memories.

Pet Trusts: Laura emphasizes that verbal promises to care for pets often fail due to changing circumstances. Pet trusts provide funding and assign responsibility for animal care, preventing beloved pets from ending up in shelters.


Practical Takeaways:

Laura emphasizes that financial planning requires ongoing adjustments as life changes. Whether facing health crises, remarriage, or unexpected events, having a trusted advisor helps navigate transitions while keeping long-term goals on track.


Connect with Laura:

Email: impavidwealthadvisors@ampf.com | Book: "Fearless Finance"

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Speaker 1:

What if there was a way to eliminate the financial anxiety that keeps you awake at night? That's exactly what our guest promises in her new book, Fearless Finance by Laura Rabine. Drawing from her unique experience of becoming head of household at just 12 years old, Laura has spent 30 years proving that true financial fearlessness comes not from knowing it all, but from having clarity about what really matters. In today's interview, she explains why most people are doing what she describes as bad math with their retirement planning and how to create what she calls a retirement paycheck that actually works. Laura Rabine, how are you doing today? I'm fabulous. How are you so very excited to have this conversation with you today? Awesome. So we'll be talking mostly about your new book, Fearless Finance, and, as we do so, though, I'd just love to have our audience have a chance to get to know you. My understanding is that you became the head of your household at age 12. How did that shape your view of money and responsibility.

Speaker 2:

I did grow up in rural Michigan so I saw a lot of families that I was close to and peers in my school things like that that were struggling in various ways. It wasn't a wealthy part of the country, it was farming country, so I knew the struggles of my household, but I saw others and it truly puts the definition on money can't buy happiness but, again, it can put that roof over your head and food on your table and if you have that then you can build from there and so, having the fearlessness and having removing the anxiety over your financial situation, you can build the building blocks and it's just a little bit different background than what other people have experienced, just because of growing up where I grew up and in the circumstances that I did.

Speaker 1:

That's interesting. Here you are. You've been in the industry for several decades and you are the owner of Impavid Wealth. Looking back from that 12-year-old version of yourself to the current version of yourself, what does fearless mean to you, when it comes either to your own finances or how you help guide your clients and perhaps, by extension, your book that you just wrote?

Speaker 2:

Fearless to me isn't making reckless decisions about your situation. It's you, look at it. Knowledge replaces fear and it can empower you. Do you know that old saying about fear? It has two meanings Forget everything and run, face everything and rise. Here for clients that work with us at Impavel Wealth Advisors, we want people to have the knowledge and clarity over the situation where they can face everything and rise, and we want to give them the knowledge on where they stand in terms of what they want to see happen.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome.

Speaker 2:

When did you decide that financial advising was your calling?

Speaker 2:

I decided when I was living in Naples. I was in a career that I really just didn't like and wasn't happy with and needed to figure what was I going to do next. And living in Naples, florida, there were not a lot of large companies or big places that had lots of jobs and lots of opportunities, so it's like I had to create something myself, and back in the day, financial advisors would do their seminars and that's how they would get new clients, and they would put an ad in the Sunday paper come to my seminar and I'm retirement or whatever. Maybe I would see these ads, and almost all of them were older white men, and as I looked at them, I thought they're not smarter than me. Somebody has taught them, and if I can find somebody to teach me, I can help people build a foundation to be fearless about their finances, and I definitely saw that there was a need for females in the industry, and so that's truly how it all started. And almost 30 years later, here I am.

Speaker 1:

What led you to decide to write your book?

Speaker 2:

It has been something that's been on my mind for a number of years. I wasn't sure if I could do it, quite frankly, because if you think about it in my brain, writing a book as somebody who's not an author is almost like saying I want to run a marathon but I have to train and go through all that. To me it was the same type of hurdle, and so I wasn't quite sure I wanted to do it or I could do it, and so I figured why not take a stab at it? And the reason behind wanting to write it was the fact that over these decades, I can't tell you the number of times that I have sat across the table from highly educated, highly professional and successful people who are anxious about the future.

Speaker 2:

They have worries, they have concerns, but they feel like they should be an expert, and they don't want to admit that they have the concerns, the fears and the worries because they feel like they should be an expert. Why do they feel like they should be an expert and they don't want to admit that they have the concerns, the fears and the worries? Because they feel like they should be an expert. Why do they feel like this 24 seven? We're getting bombarded with snippets of things. The market is up, the market is down. Did you hear about Bitcoin? Did you hear about the latest cryptocurrency? What does any of that matter to your personal situation? But it makes you have the perception that I should know it all and I don't, and I wanted to create a book that had good strategies and ideas for somebody to be able to take that and then look at their own situation and apply it.

Speaker 1:

What's one of the biggest myths that the successful professionals, the people that you work with day to day, believe about their finances? That your book helps to bust that myth.

Speaker 2:

That they need to know it all or they should know it all, quite frankly, because of our constant bombardment of financial things at us that they don't need to know it all and it's okay to reach out to a professional.

Speaker 2:

If you think about it, if you get sick and you don't feel well, whatever it might be. You might go on the internet and Google WebMD and get some ideas. You're still going to go to the doctor If you don't know what you're doing on your taxes or if you have a tax question, you may look it up and get an idea of what you should do in that tax situation. You're still going to call your CPA and for some reason, sometimes with a financial landscape, people tend to think I can do it myself and usually they're in the lane of investments and that's what their sole focus is, and they miss all the other lanes of the financial highway that impacts their life and they don't realize it. So the myth is it's okay to reach out to a professional.

Speaker 1:

Curiosity. Do you find that it's harder for men or for women to reach out and ask for help?

Speaker 2:

I don't find one more than the other. What I do find people will come to me because they have a, typically the question do I have enough? And that's the question. They come and they don't realize what they don't know. So, as we are able to look at everything, they don't realize all of these other risks that are poking around in their situation that they're just unaware of because they're literally on the lane of investments and they've missed the other lanes of the financial highway. And so I find that, across genders, what are the other lanes? What if you get sick? Do you have enough to cover that? What if your spouse prematurely dies? Are you okay? What if you only have one income? What if you lose a job? What if someday you're like me, you don't have a spouse? Someday? What if you're incapacitated in your retirement? Who's going to step in and help you? It could all be a mess. You could have the best investments in the world and all these other things are out there, and if you've got speed bumps or potholes it can derail you.

Speaker 1:

What do you find is the biggest benefit that your typical client gets from working with?

Speaker 2:

you, as a financial planner, what I do and what my team does. If we sit down and listen to what the client's concerns are and it's usually do I have enough? Or I'm struggling, like my kids need to go to college? I've got parents to take care of. Do I have enough? As I listen to what's keeping them up at night, what's causing them the anxiety and what they need clarity around, I can also look at all the other different lanes on that financial highway and see what are the things that they need to be aware of and they don't know that I can help pull everything together and so, at the end of it, they feel truly much more empowered over their situation. And that's where the fearless comes in.

Speaker 1:

Are you going to?

Speaker 2:

eliminate all fear? No, but the more you know and the more knowledge you have, the more clarity you have around your situation, the more confident and fearless you'll be about your finances you have around your situation, the more confident and fearless you'll be about your finances.

Speaker 1:

In your book, you introduce the concept of what you call throw it in a pile, and the question I have is that I would imagine, for someone just getting started, right, I think there's a tendency to procrastinate, as, hey, I know I need to do this, I should do this, but now I feel overwhelmed. Tell us about your approach of throwing everything in a pile.

Speaker 2:

It serves two purposes. Exactly what you just said. If somebody realizes, hey, I need help or I need to get some guidance or advice, it can be daunting to have to gather a whole bunch of information and pull it together, and what I find is those individuals that I'm across the table from, those successful, professional, educated people feel like they have to have perfection before they walk in the door and so it stops them from walking in the door because it's not perfect. And the throw it in the pile is the concept of just gather it all together and I will help sort it out. It doesn't need to be perfect, just throw it in and I will tell people.

Speaker 2:

If you have something in your situation that you aren't sure if I need to look at or not, throw it in the pile, let me make the judge. And I've had people bring me stuff that they didn't know what it was and I'm like, hey, do you know? You have this account over here from 20 years ago from an old job, like I didn't know why I was getting this and had they been organized, they wouldn't have given it to me because they didn't know what it was. There's also this visual, or I look at it like taking an inventory of your closet and the analogy I use is think about your real closet and the clothes in your closet. If you're like a lot of people, you may have a suit in there that fit maybe 20 years ago and maybe you used it at some special event. It's way in the back drives of your closet A woman might have their prom dress from high school or things that it's just back there and your closet is stuffed full of stuff and the thought of going in there and cleaning it out and getting rid of things that don't serve you is overwhelming.

Speaker 2:

And several years back a friend of mine said oh, there's this personal stylist that she's fabulous, you need to hire whatever.

Speaker 2:

She comes to your house, came to my house clean out the closet. She goes in the closet, she starts digging around and she takes everything that she feels doesn't serve me and she throws it in a pile and every now and then I would squeak and I'd be like you can't take and she and her thing was go over there, put it on, stand in front of the mirror and you have to sell it to me and you literally are changing in front of this book and putting this thing on that you think you can't live without, and standing in front of the mirror and realizing she's right, and after a while I'd squeak and she'd go up here and I no, and I throw it on the pile. But when I was done, she had removed everything out of my closet that truly no longer served me. So I had the things left that were right for me and work, and it's the same thing I equate with the financial. Throw it in the pile. I can sort through it of what you need and what doesn't serve you anymore.

Speaker 1:

That is so true in so many different ways of life. I find when you have a different person who's just, objective and professional and doesn't have the emotional attachment that you might have in any aspect of life, you can go from this thing that I've been procrastinating on for years to a day later. It's done Exactly In your book. In Fearless Finance. You mention productive pessimism as a strategy, so help our listeners understand what productive pessimism is.

Speaker 2:

Sounds a little negative, right, not designed to be Productive. Pessimism is just the thought process of as you look at your situation and figure out how much you need for whatever. The future goal is Retirement. Let's just use retirement because we're all facing retirement, right? So how much do you need for retirement?

Speaker 2:

Being pessimistic is almost the same thing as being somewhat conservative. So overestimate what you think you might spend on certain things in retirement or your expenses. Maybe underestimate what you anticipate your rate of return on your investments to be. Overestimate life expectancy. When I run the numbers and show them the projections for clients sometimes I'll have a life expectancy my clients laugh at me. They're like I'm never going to live to that. That's great. I don't want your money to run out before you do the money to still be here, and so for me, that's the productive pessimism, just being a little skeptical. Overestimate what you're going to spend and underestimate how much you're going to grow at. So that way, worst case scenario, you will have more money than you needed. Hey, that's better than having the issue of running out.

Speaker 1:

I'm imagining it's human nature to do the opposite. It's human nature to overestimate what you're going to earn and underestimate how much you're going to spend.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and funny that you should mention that, because that also leads into the other thing that I talk about in the book, which is the being overly optimistic. And you do see it quite often my terminology is bad math. My significant other hates it. When I say bad math, he's all. Why do you say that? I'm like because it's true, and so I say bad math.

Speaker 2:

And bad math is not the fact that my clients don't know how to do math. They're highly intelligent, wildly successful. They clearly can do math. They don't want to and they don't want to know the answer and they don't want to look at it, for whatever reason. So have you ever heard people say things like I'll be fine in retirement, I'll just stop going to Starbucks and I'll just cut out a vacation? Bad math. Have you ever heard somebody say, hey, I just got an inheritance. My aunt on my father's side passed and she left me $100,000. I can retire. Bad math, because what you're not looking at is what the real math looks like and what happens when you put in inflation and medical costs and longevity and taxes and all these horrible things that none of us want to look at. And so the productive pessimism is the opposite side of the whole bad mathing, where people put their rose colored glasses on and they don't want to see what is reality because it's scary. It's scary sometimes and it's daunting.

Speaker 1:

So bad math? Is that something that you say often Because it seems catchy?

Speaker 2:

I don't know where I got it and it just, it's just, I'll be sitting. I remember sitting somewhere on beach with friends and there's a couple that one person, a couple, is much older. The spouse is much younger and he would like her to retire. And he was like she's got this and I've got this and this life insurance and this, whatever, and if something happens to him she'll have this life insurance policy. And I said I'm like bad math. She's 40, you have insurance premiums and health care costs and what. And everyone's my significant other's looking at me, like stop saying that. Like it's true, it's bad math because she's so young. And you think of the length of time and inflation and costs and just the sheer amount that you'll need 25 years down the road to pay for the things that you pay for today, for much less, because just all that inflation and the whole nine years.

Speaker 1:

So that leads me to my next question, which is let's talk a little about risk, and what are the most misunderstood types of financial risk that people overlook, I think most of the risks people tend to overlook, except market, and it goes back to we're constantly bombarded with tidbits about the market, but people sometimes overlook inflation risk, reinvestment risk.

Speaker 2:

When I talk about reinvestment risk, if somebody gets nervous about the market or they want to have too much in cash CDs. Overlook inflation risk, reinvestment risk. When I talk about reinvestment risk, if somebody gets nervous about the market or they want to have too much in cash CDs, bonds, and when all that matures and you reinvest it in similar things, what happened to interest rates? What is the reinvestment risk Sequence of returns? I never hear anybody talk about that. Why? Why would somebody even have that in their head? But when you head into retirement, the sequence of returns in your retirement assets has a huge impact on what your success or your not success is. People don't know about that.

Speaker 1:

And just for clarity, what is sequence of returns risk?

Speaker 2:

Sequence of returns is, if you look at, say, two people identical people, same expense need same assets for retirement, same age, same length of longevity. If one retires at the beginning of a down market and one retires at the beginning of a positive market, the one that retires at the beginning of the down market might run out of money and so that takes into account. If you're going to retire and the market tends to be not great today, that has an impact People don't necessarily think about. How will that impact me 20 years down the road?

Speaker 1:

The question on their mind is will I run out of money, which is a very basic version of that question, right?

Speaker 2:

Yes, and so the will I run out of money? They're just thinking of do I have enough accumulated so that way it will last year after year. But they don't know how to put together the pieces in there of what will impact that. Most people are only going to think of market returns in terms of what am I going to earn? And they're thinking like I earn this every year, not is it several down years? Is it several positive years? And how do I structure it? But they come with the basic do I have enough? And the fear and the worry and the anxiety comes from they don't know how to do the math and they don't have the software, quite frankly, that as an advisor I have that can do those projections to show them what reality might look like good or bad, I would imagine it.

Speaker 1:

also. You said that productive pessimism right, Because we just literally don't know. None of us have a crystal ball. We might have an idea of when we might retire, but we don't know what the market's going to be like at that moment in time. Did you find, just at the time of recording this, the past maybe month or two, we've had a little bit of volatility? What kind of conversations did that create for you?

Speaker 2:

Not as many as you would expect.

Speaker 2:

Okay, and interestingly enough, when the market becomes very volatile like this, friends, people around me, centers of influence, just everyone I know is, oh my gosh, you must be really busy.

Speaker 2:

Your phone must be ringing off the hook, not really. And I say that and you're like, oh really, why? Because our clients do financial planning. We know the numbers, we know what they need and then, as they transition into retirement, we've created, we recreate their paycheck so that way we know how to structure their assets and that goes into this whole bucket strategy that we have. So when in retirement, we have this bucket strategy of how we layer their assets, that they have enough cash to get them through anywhere from 18 to 36 months of a market downturn and not have to touch their assets, so they're not freaking out the way other people might be, because their investments are crafted in a way to match their timeline and what they need. Just going through that whole planning process, it goes back to that fearless, I'm not having people make reckless decisions. I'm helping to bring them clarity and have knowledge so they know what they have and why they have and how they have it, and so all these temporary gyrations won't make them lose their minds.

Speaker 1:

It sounds to me, fearlessness leads naturally to clarity and ultimately, I guess the word that comes to my mind is confidence.

Speaker 2:

Yes, very much and also part of the whole financial planning piece is that we want to provide the confidence, we want to provide the clarity. But also life changes and you have to have the ability or know where to go, aka call your advisor to help walk you through when life changes. And life could change in not a great way or life could change in a wonderful way. For example, a not so fun way. I had a couple that I worked with for decades where we've been planning and mapped their whole thing out the husband when we started talking about long-term care, the husband's I'm not going into one of those places and it was one of that whole old school attitude I'm just not doing it and refused to address the risk of long-term care. Fast forward decades down the road as both of their health declined, he ended up being bed bound in their condo in Naples. Their children are getting round the clock, care for both of them and we've managed the assets. So the last, but we're still trying to stretch them. And what happens? All of a sudden you take what you think is going to be the long-term plan and you have to shift it and change it quickly to adapt to the new scenario. The new scenario is now we need a lot more money, faster, because of the health care expenses, than we would have before, and so did their money last their lifetime? Yeah, it did. They ultimately had to move dad up north to be close to the daughter First class plane ticket, escorted by a nurse, the transport van, because he's literally in a bed, and that was like $15,000 to get him from Naples on a flight up there. And so were we able to shift and adjust their finances to meet those needs.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but if the daughters didn't know who to reach out to, meaning me, who knows what would have happened in terms of how to structure their assets? But it also goes on the positive side as well. I've had, unfortunately, knock on wood. Usually it's the man that dies first, historically speaking, not always and then you have the woman who's single. You've planned the retirement for both of them and what they need for both of them. So when it's just one, you have one social security. There might be shifts in pension incomes, there's shifts for her. But I've had women that were widowed and then all of a sudden they meet somebody else and get remarried and their husband's 10 years younger.

Speaker 2:

Fabulous, but now the numbers have to shift differently, because now I have a different timeline because of the age gap. So financial planning isn't like a do it once and you're done it's. Life constantly throws curveballs at us and it just has to roll with the punches and adapt and shift to make your money last.

Speaker 1:

I would imagine being in your position, working with hundreds of families, that you see these patterns happen all the time and just going back to the productive pessimism of none of us expect, none of us wants to think about the negatives that could happen, but probably happen very frequently to people. So you must have a very interesting perspective on that or point of view when it comes to it, because you just see the patterns happen.

Speaker 2:

Honestly, I feel like I've seen just about everything over the course of the years and I do have more and more people that come to me with the fear and the anxiety and the concerns and they do have concerns in the long-term care and in the healthcare environment for a number of reasons. They're currently taking care of a parent who's needing long-term care and in the health care environment for a number of reasons. They're currently taking care of a parent who's needing long-term care help. So they're seeing what happens and now they're like wait a minute, I need to look at my situation, I don't know what to do, and that's usually what happens. But people sometimes will come in with that on their mind because they're in the thick of it with family members.

Speaker 1:

In the book. You mentioned the concept of retirement paycheck. How can people start thinking differently about drawing down their savings?

Speaker 2:

Let's start that with looking at retirement. And I say that because a lot of times people will come to me and they think retirement is one day. It's one day and so in that one day you don't shift everything, like you don't take your investments and all of a sudden go and like just sell everything and all of a sudden make it super conservative. It's one day. You have the years leading up to retirement where you're accumulating your assets, you have the retirement day and then you have all the years following retirement and I help clients see we need to look at how to distribute money from your assets and make that last over your lifespan. And so creating that paycheck is a conversation I always have with clients, because they'll invariably come to me and go okay, laura, I'm going to be retired in a month. What do we do? Because I want my paycheck Money, you should ask. That's what the conversation is.

Speaker 2:

And so we'll take their investments and you segment them and figure out how much money do they need from their investments every month. Let's make it at five grand, let's just make up a figure. It means they need $60,000 a year, and so we will keep 12, 18, 24 months of that need in cash or cash equivalents, then you'll keep three to six years of money that they'll need in medium-term risk type investments. So they're not ultra conservative but they're not real growth oriented either. And then you take the rest of the money and make it growth oriented.

Speaker 2:

And so then I take the conservative bucket, the cash equivalents, and you just literally think of the faucet in your bathtub. You turn on the spigot and out drops the money you need every month into your bank account and as the bathtub gets empty you replenish it from the medium-term bucket into the bathtub and then from the growth you replenish the medium-term bucket from the long-term bucket and this way it helps clients have the money they need in the short run so they're not freaking out over market volatility and it keeps the amount of assets that they should have growth oriented in growth, because retirement is a day. You might have a 30 year retirement period. Some of your money needs to be invested for 30 years, but not all of it, and so having that structure gives clients the peace of mind of how is this going to work.

Speaker 1:

Here's a question for someone listening to this. How can they determine whether or not they've saved enough? How do you help people determine?

Speaker 2:

that the software that we have is very detailed, where we can run, literally illustrate those projections forward and take their current assets with a rate of return that fits their risk and then take their expenses with an inflation rate and their tax rate. We look at what the tax brackets are for them. We can build in anything else that's going on. If there is pension with survivor benefits and one person the person passes away and then spouse gets a survivor benefits, we can factor in all those changes in income and add in specific expenses like 10 years, I'm gonna buy a new car or whatever. Is it perfect? It's not perfect, it's never gonna be perfect, but it'll get you really close to what you probably should have. And there are a lot of online tools you can get access to things like that. They tend to be very simplistic, in my opinion, end up giving you bad math for no other reason, other than they're just too simplistic in people's situations.

Speaker 1:

They're always more complex than that I've been watching on youtube some financial podcasts and it seems that, at least the ones I watch, that the people typically will spend more money than they have now. Is that something that you come across, or is it thought? Or do the people that come to you, do they typically, or are they typically good savers?

Speaker 2:

Both. Like I said, I swear I've seen everything, and I have clients that are very diligent in understanding what they spend and what's coming up in unusual things, cause we all have unusual things. You have a hurricane, you've got a roof leak, you got to fix your screen, whatever.

Speaker 2:

But then I also have clients that oh, my son needs help, I need to give him $100,000. Oh, my daughter's getting a divorce, I need to buy her a new house. What, okay? But then they forget that they did that. And so when you look at how much they're spending and they'll swear I only spent X. No, you don't. You spent X plus Y because last year you gave money to the son the year before you bought a house for the daughter. The year before that you did this and you forget all those one-off things that you've done where you think you're spending a certain level but you're way over it. So we need to look at the new number of the way over it, because you're going to keep doing that. That's what gives you purpose and that's what you're going to do in life. We need to plan that in. But I have other people that are very like. They know what they spent.

Speaker 1:

It's just people fall into both areas Do you find as an advisor with some people who are probably great savers throughout their lives, do you ever get to the conversation where you have to encourage them to spend their money, spend more of their money? Does that come up very often?

Speaker 2:

It doesn't come up often, unfortunately, just because facing health care costs and those types of things right now, it's such an unknown for people that I want people to have more money than less money. But historically speaking, I have had times. I worked with a couple for quite a while and they had good pensions, they had saved a lot of money, they had one child and a grandson and they were not spending their money. They had one child and a grandson and they were not spending their money and I literally and they were like of the depression era generation type client, where they truly didn't spend money and I tried to get them to spend money. I'm like, what would give you joy? And the wife was like, oh, I always wanted one of those little Mercedes or whatever. And I'm like, then go buy one. Do you want me to go with you? I will go with you and we'll go buy a little Mercedes. Will that bring you joy? Oh, that would bring me joy.

Speaker 2:

I never could get her to buy the Mercedes that could put a dent in their money. No, and they were so completely frugal. They both passed. The son, inherited all of it and he was not as frugal as them, but he wasn't like he didn't spend money Crazy. He did travel, he lived a good life, but he didn't make bad decisions. And then he passed and then has gone on to the grandson, and so the grandparents had so much money that it is filtered all the way down, but I could not get them to spend. I really tried.

Speaker 1:

So another question, as it relates to the book digital assets and pet trusts why are these overlooked areas of estate planning that more people should think about? And I can tell you, I'm asking you this question as a proud pet parent, so I am personally invested in the answer here, as I'm happy to hear that you are.

Speaker 2:

I have volunteered in the pet rescue arena for decades and that is one of my pet projects, but in terms of digital assets and pet trusts, I feel that they're overlooked. Not because estate attorneys are bad or they don't know anything there's so many fabulous, awesome attorneys out there that my clients rely on. It's the fact that this stuff is newer on the scene, so it's not something people always think about and the attorney is protecting the investments in the stuff. When you think of digital assets, it's bigger than your cryptocurrency and online accounts. That is part of. It Could be a cryptocurrency account, it could be an online banking account, but digital assets are also the assets of stuff that is out there in the cloud.

Speaker 1:

Where are your?

Speaker 2:

pictures stored, Paul. Do you have them printed in albums?

Speaker 1:

I do not.

Speaker 2:

Nobody does. What about your social media? What happens to your Facebook account? What happens to your LinkedIn? I can tell you on my Facebook. There are at least five or six of my Facebook friends that, unfortunately, have passed away and their Facebook profile is out there. Did you know that you can put a legacy contact on your Facebook and they can take over it? Okay, same thing with LinkedIn.

Speaker 2:

You have to think about the digital assets, because what you don't want to do is just randomly leave a piece of paper with all these passwords in it and go okay, my daughter's going to handle it. I'm not the attorney, so don't take my advice on it, but it's not really legal. So what if your daughter and your son don't get along, or your daughter doesn't get along with your new wife and you pass away? I have had times where somebody has passed and a child has taken all of the family photos and won't give them to anybody. I have had times where somebody has gotten access to dad's email and, oh looky, here there's all the evidence of dad's affair. Probably should control who gets in the email.

Speaker 2:

So you have to think about that, because where do you want your family photos to go? Where do you want all of these things that you're collecting that truly are assets of your life. They just happen to be digital. You need to put somebody in charge of that stuff and people just don't think about it. If you look at the terms of service for various platforms and I don't know if it's changed or not, but, like, for instance, yahoo at one point and maybe still is if you pass away and you have a Yahoo email, if they get notification that you've passed away, your email's done, shut down, gone, history. So anything that you have in there that your family might need, your email's gone. You've got to think about that, that stuff. So digital assets, to me is an important thing for a client to talk to their attorneys about pet trusts. Talk about pet trust, because that's near to my heart.

Speaker 1:

Pet trusts are very near and dear to my heart. Just for the breaks for the listener, I do have children, they're just the four-legged type. So how do I look after my children after I'm gone?

Speaker 2:

a lot of attorneys will include pet trusts If you ask them. They don't. It's not always a given thing. All of my clients that have animals now or may have animals in the future. I will tell them to specifically talk to their attorney and have a pet trust drafted and you can put it in your existing documents. And what a pet trust does it will set aside whatever dollar amount that you want to set aside for the care of that animal and put somebody in charge.

Speaker 2:

Because what happens time and time again and I can tell you this from being in the rescue world people don't make plans for their pets. Both of my dogs I have two five-pound chihuahuas that are under my desk now. They're both rescues. My older rescue, levi, is 13 years old and at 10, he was one of four dogs that lived in a room with his bed-bound human. She died and had no plans for those four dogs. All four dogs ended up in the shelter. All four senior dogs ended up in a crowded shelter with a whole bunch of other animals that were also looking for a way out. So it just creates more of a burden on the shelters that are already bursting at the scene, and Levi found his way out and found his way to me, and we always joke that he came to Florida to retire because he's from Nebraska. But that's a whole nother story.

Speaker 2:

But what people will tell me over and over? My sister said she'll take them. My daughter said she'll take them. They might tell you that they will take them and they might have every intention to take them, but you don't know where they're going to be.

Speaker 2:

What if your daughter's married to somebody who is highly allergic to cats and they can't take your cat? What if your sister has health issues and she's moved to a long-term care facility that can't take your Doberman? You have to have plans, otherwise your pet is going to end up at the shelter with hundreds and hundreds of other pets. And if you put somebody in charge of the pet trust, they might not be able to take your animal, but they can find where the animal could go and live out the rest of their life and they have money to pay for the food and the vet care. So you're not taking your beloved animals, that your fur babies, and just randomly putting them in the shelter. That they're all struggling and they're all bursting at the gills right now. It's just, it's the smartest thing to do. And if you pass and you don't have the animals, then the pet trust won't take effect because there's no pet to care for.

Speaker 1:

So it doesn't matter.

Speaker 2:

if you've got your pet cat, your pet dog, your pet pot, belly bait or iguana, you have to figure out where you want that animal to go and who's going to be in charge of making sure they get somewhere for the care and not rely on promises from people, because people have good intentions but situations change.

Speaker 1:

A couple of final questions before we wrap up today. How can someone listening to this podcast do one of two things either get a copy of your book Fearless Finance, or simply reach out to you to learn more about your services.

Speaker 2:

The easiest way to do that is just send me a quick email to ImpavedWealthAdvisors at AMPFcom, ameriprisefinancialcom, so AMPF. That's it. Just shoot an email and my team will respond and get you the book or get you with me.

Speaker 1:

Final question what does true financial fearlessness look like to you in real life?

Speaker 2:

True financial fearlessness to me is having the tools to understand the numbers, spending the time to understand the risks that could be out there that could affect you in your life, and having the courage to look at it and address it, rather than put the rose-colored glasses on and be in your own version of bad math.

Speaker 1:

Thank you very much for your time today. I've enjoyed the conversation. You're welcome.