Preparing for Loss (of Spouse) Without Losing Financial Control

Video Chapters & Transcript:

Howdy folks. Welcome to yet another edition of Smarter Money Matters with your wealth doctor Jeff Camarda. Joined by our super CFPs Lou and Anna. Thank you so much for joining us. Today is the bittersweet topic of what happens uh to the financial management dynamic uh in a in a family of the couple when one of the spouses dies. typically the male and we’re using a recent Wall Street Journal article entitled her husband died unexpectedly. She spent a year untangling their finances and this is something that really isn’t talked about nearly enough but a very very common problem. We’re going to have a lot of you know stories I think to tell you. Um but you know as you know we get new clients and as many of you know we’re active nationally and serve clients across the country. Um, almost always the the relationship is forged with us by the husband. You know, sometimes the the the wife is is on the phone, sometimes not. Uh, but it it tends to be a guy thing, which I don’t think is really um necessarily a good thing. Um so we’ll we’ll talk about the story of uh of this lady who at 75 her husband passed away and he had uh as is common in most families been the primary decision maker and runner of the finances and immediately it says she felt overwhelmed. She spent hours pouring over a convoluted spreadsheet that her husband kept and found communications with several other adviserss um that she really couldn’t figure out what was going on and even how much you can afford to spend without depleting their finances. Now, is that something that I guess in your practices l I’ll start with you um that you find that most of the relationship is is with the with the husband? Yes, I especially with the older generation I would say. Um, talking talking about me. Um, I think that’s just I don’t know, you know, if that was something that was handed down from generation to generation or something, but usually it’s the husband is the the the kind of the finance person, financial specialist in the household and um and and kind of the you know the wife takes the secondary role if at all. Yeah. And it’s something that we really you commit clients that are watching and then clients of other advisors. I encourage you know you uh you couples to both be engaged in the process. You know a lot of folks hire us um the male hires us as a backup for when they can’t or don’t want to run it anymore. And I said well that’s a great idea. I’ll call him Joe. a job, but you might want to get your wife Mary on the Zoom with us. So, she has a the degree of comfort and knows who she are if that ever happens, you know, but that that she’s going to be dealing with directly. So, there’s a bit of a relationship and it’s also really important in terms of getting the best results with the planning, right? Absolutely. you know, that’s half the equation and and this and the the wife often cares about different things or maybe more conservative as is typical, maybe more estate planning and beneficiary focused. So, you really will get a better result. So, please come to clients and find some of other advisors, you know, get both of you to spend at least some time talking to your financial advisor so you know you know what’s going on and and they can better serve you. And for myself personally, sorry to cut you off, but for myself personally in in in my, you know, meetings with clients and and conversations, I always encourage that. I always encourage even if even if the wife is not financially savvy and and you know, just if she doesn’t want feel she is, which is, you know, frequently the case. I think it may be a confidence. Absolutely. But, you know, even if if she doesn’t want to speak in a meeting, just, you know, be there, listen, just kind of lurk off camera. Well, it doesn’t matter. I mean, I have clients that do that. I’ll have I’ll have, you know, they’ll have the wife in the background. But I still want her to hear a conversation so she at least knows who, you know, if something happens to the husband, who to reach out to, who know how how kind of to have an idea of what’s going on. But more than that, I encourage you and I encourage you guys to engage and and even, you know, nudge a little bit. And this is important stuff that, you know, you both should be aware of in order to make the best decisions for your family. You both have input. You probably have different views. Absolutely. Um, any stories that you have, Anna, or something that you’d like to chime in on? I mean, I’d say it’s interesting, right? Typically, the man is the one that handles maybe the investment side of the family’s household, but sometimes the wife who feels that she’s not financially maybe, you know, able to speak financially about investments when we get into questions about what’s your spending, what do you spend on this, she’ll be able to rattle it right off. She knows all the grandkids information for beneficiary forms. And it’s so that’s why I think it’s important to have both, you know, spouses in the conversation because they both are bringing different things to the table. Even if she doesn’t feel or, you know, one spouse doesn’t feel like they’re financially savvy enough to be part of it or they they’re confused, I’d rather we spend the time to make sure they understand it because they’re bringing valuable input. Yeah. Or you get into things like estate planning and protecting the kids against divorce from their spouses or protecting the grandchildren. And there’s a lot typically women have a high degree of interest in in protecting the family and the kids more so that so it’s really is it’s very synergistic if you can both get involved and financial planning is not just it’s not just what you know investments is that’s important right wealth management is important but it’s only the tip of the iceberg. so much more like Anna was just kind of alluding to that goes into financial planning in our conversations with with clients in addition to just money and investments. Yeah. And this is a widespread problem. And I said, think about you know the additional burden if uh you know your spouse dies or your husband dies um and beyond the grief and the confusion and all of the everything the stress that’s going on which is a pretty stressful time. Trying to figure out you know this this this new area of finances and how to deal with financial advisors and tax people and lawyers really you know adds a lot of gasoline to the fire. better better better better to be comfortable in conversing with that you know in advance so it doesn’t you know add to your stress and maybe set you up for some some unfortunate and dangerous decisions or mistakes. Um so the u and problem obviously disproportionately affects women. There was a recent study that of uh a fairly large sample size. So only half only half of the women uh said before the while their husband was still alive said they felt prepared to manage their finances after their spouse’s death only half which is a big number right absolutely um so uh um and this is interesting the story about in a journal Alice understood that when her husband was alive she would be in a vulnerable position if he were to die before her once or twice a year she would panic and ask him to walk her through their finances But after a few minutes, impatient male, though her husband was, she would zone out and he would lose patience. The spreadsheets he created were a mess of account numbers. Believe we see these all the time and annotations that only he could understand. The couple always figured they could discuss poorly. So, but time ran out, you know, and that that typically is also the case that a lot of the information, the financial wealth DNA is in a husband’s head and he dies. trying to figure out the symbols on the treasure back and be impossible. It turns into a Easter egg hunt almost. You’re out there trying to trying to, you know, find information that maybe who know and there may be accounts that are lost and you’ll never have a fight, you know, because the the proper beneficiary designation was or so much better to have the road map when you’re both when you’re both in in in the in the front seat of the car. Do you guys have anything else you’d like to share? I mean, I would say I’ve had some clients um you know, to kind of mitigate this these concerns, right, with you know, finding the quoteunquote treasure map and not being able to figure out like where assets are. Um you know, couples have, you know, that I’ve worked with I’ I’ve heard them, you know, tell me what they do is like once a year at least go through kind of say who their people are. if they have an estate planning attorney, a tax person, a financial adviser, and have like a one or two page list of who those people are, what’s there, and then, you know, maybe give it to their trustee or their executive or their spouse so that if something does happen to, you know, the financially minded spouse, somebody can at least help who’s in the family, steer them in the right direction. That’s a great idea you know and that also you know in that vein information on digital assets and account numbers and usernames and passwords you know particularly for the financial assets but gee whiz even for your family photographs to make sure that you’re able to you understand what you have and how to get there. Sometimes if you lose you know you lose those credentials it’s it’s a nightmarish and impossible to get back in. Yeah. Absolutely. And this is something we talked about last week in our in our previous episode, but getting your kids involved early in this financial planning, you know, process and and getting them involved and having them actually having them as part of your meetings with your financial advisor, I I think can be, you know, also be very very important to uh for them to know what’s there, for them to know how to handle it if something happens to the parents. That’s exactly right. you know, in a lot of this um is uh you know, back back to the story uh she had trouble the the the surviving uh wife did understanding the jargon of investing was confused by such terms as ETFs and index funds and she said it’s mostly because they have no interest in learning about investing and a lot of people don’t and you don’t really need to but you don’t the important thing is to have command of your finances, your resources, your ability to produce income and uh um and just kind of understanding how to manage your financial advisor, you know, if you have one. You know, they they’ll do most of the work. You don’t need to know what an ETF is. If you don’t want to, we’re happy to explain it to you. Um and as we go into uh um the new year, something I encourage all of you in in, you know, January and February, our manding calendar that we go through the course of the year, and I really encourage you to get involved and take advantage of these fine financial planners to let them help you. But both spouses please in the first quarter we go through and update. This is your financial position. These are all your accounts. This is what you have with Kamarta. This is what you have in a bank or elsewhere. What’s your estate plan look like? You know, we update like a kind of like an annual checkup, you know, like a a medical chart about all this stuff. And this is a great time for the other non-financial spouse to really kind of get their bearings and learn about what your situation is. So, please take advantage of of that uh that opportunity which Lou and and Ann and their team will be offering you in in the weeks going forward. Another thing is that Alice um was very worried that she’d be scammed given her lack of knowledge and that’s a real big danger, right? I mean, you we even see what our clients being hit all the time with, you know, outrageously priced annuities or there was that crypto scam that I think on one of your clients unfortunately fell victim to a couple of them. There’s a lot of bad guys in the investment uh and uh in wealth management business regulation in my view is is is very uh um inadequate. Training is not required. You know, it’s just really easy to get sold the bill of goods. And the old adage, if it sounds too convict to be true, it probably is. But she’s rightfully concerned about that. So what do you do? You can’t be a deer in the headlights and just say, “Oh, well, ignore it.” You have to find a way to move forward. And if you haven’t built a solid relationship and plan with your preferred financial advisor or your husband’s financial advisor, you need to know how to find one that you can trust going forward. And do you have any comments? And I’m sure you do, Luke. Yeah, I mean that that’s again speaks to the value and importance of having that solid relationship and establishing a relationship early uh with your financial advisor and you know if that’s going to be your your person going forward hopefully that’s someone that you can trust and and you know depend on and believe you know what they tell you is actually the right thing to do and you know they’re looking out for your best interest. So yeah and you know commander wealth is is really um the very prolific creator of wealth education resource. We have a lot of webinars out there and reports and so forth. Um, and there’s one I wrote a book a couple of years ago and there’s a chapter, you know, on which I think I called, you know, how to find financial advisor you can trust. Um, that we we produce a report out of. So, that probably is a really good place for those of you that don’t know how to screen advisors and and what you should look for, what you should look to avoid. Uh, so if that’s something you’d like, I’m sure that Nathan can add a link somewhere in the video. So, we’d be happy to send you a digital copy of that. Um, any um any final thoughts there speaking, you know, from the the other side of the gender bench there, Anna? Yeah, I mean, take the time, like you’re saying, when you’re having these meetings, right, or you know, your spouse is meeting with their financial advisor, with your financial adviser, go to the meeting. uh they should, you know, be willing to answer your questions, make sure you understand what’s going on, and that’s going to make, you know, an eventual transition a lot easier. Um, I’d also say too, you know, for, you know, just knowing knowing who to go to is important, right? And and even if you don’t want to be involved in every meeting, right? just know who the professionals are that kind of help you run your financial life and help you run your family’s financial life so that you can access them if needed if something happens. Good point. Good point. Yeah. Abs. Absolutely. Yeah. Well said. You know, and one one other thing you might consider doing, you know, if uh when you finally do drag yourself to that meeting, Mrs. soon to be surviving spouse um is ask your wife, okay, tell me what happens if something happens to him. You know, what are the steps? How are you going to, you know, how are we going to transition this? Say he has a stroke or he doesn’t want to do it anymore or god forbid he dies. You know, what is it that we need to clean up? Am I on accounts? Am I the beneficiary? Do we have to actually make any changes now? Are the things that he needs to do while he’s still able, you know, to sign a document? You know, what is the path forward if for the day when I’ll probably have to be running all this stuff myself? In fact, that’s something that we may want to do a webinar on. I think that’s a pretty critical, you know, important topic that we can develop some some information on. So, you know, as we go through this, you know, that, you know, it’s important to remember, which, you know, is is obvious to us because, you know, we studied a bit of actal science, but women tend to lead longer but sicker lives, better mortality, worse morbidity, you know. So, that’s something the way the bet is, even if you’re the same age, um that the guys probably go first, you know, it’s just, you know, just uh it’s just the way the odds are stack. Any any final questions or stories that you guys have? Well, I know Anna had a interesting story this morning. It actually goes the other way. Her husband was a survivor, right? And uh she you care to share that with with our audience? Yeah, it’s it’s not necessarily fully financially related, but um my mom was telling me about a couple friends that she has and um the wife was actually sick for a little bit. She did on no joke all the grocery shopping. This her husband had not been to the grocery store in over 30 years and he had to go and figure it out. Um and it was shocking for him the first time. So again, when you’re in a relationship this long for for decades, it’s easy to kind of fall into roles, but it’s good that everyone kind of knows what’s going on across the board. It’s got to be doing it’s kind of, you know, shocking to realize that the supermarket may be as bewildering to the male as the female, right? Yes. I’m afraid to go back. It’s been 20 years for me. And on that note, anything else? Super CFPs. I think we have it pretty much summed up. Um, yeah, that’s that’s it for today, folks. Thanks once again for watching yet another edition of Smarter Money Matters. It really does with your super CFPs Lou and Anna and of course me your wealth Dr. Jeff Camarda. Until next time, thank you so much for watching and share us with your friends. This is important stuff. If this is one you want to pass around to your pals, bye-bye.