August 22, 2025 • 38 mins
BA Fam, this week’s BA QA Mandi is joined by her girl, Yanely Espinal aka Miss Be Helpful and author of Mind Your Money — to answer a listener question that so many of us can relate to: How do you financially support aging parents when there’s little to no retirement savings in place?
Yanely shares the systems she and her eight siblings built to cover their parents’ expenses, including:
- Setting up a joint family fund to automate bill payments.
- Creating a fair way for siblings to contribute different amounts without judgment.
- Why a high-yield savings account beats investment accounts for immediate needs.
- Balancing financial support with maintaining their parents’ dignity and independence.
- How to set allowance boundaries when one parent struggles with gambling.
- Tips for protecting elderly parents from scams and keeping finances transparent among siblings.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What suggestions would you give to someone in their seventies
without a retirement plan.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Unfortunately, once you are in your seventies, you have an
immediate need for this money, so your timeline is like,
it is immediate. It's not even like a short term,
long term question. It's an immediacy. So because it's an immediacy,
we can't even really consider investment accounts because the money
can grow or it cannot grow, or it can you
(00:26):
can lose value, Like investments are a little bit more
risky then if you park the money in a high
yield savings account where it's just sitting in cash.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Hey ba fan, welcome to the BAQA. I am your host,
Mandy Money. I am enjoyed by my girl, Yea Nelly
Spinale aka Must be Hopeful aka the author of Mind
Your Money. If you haven't copped her book, then what
are you even waiting for? That's right, if you're watching
on YouTube, you can see the cover right there. Just
go get it. What are you waiting for? But before
(01:00):
we get into today's question, let me do my cute
little disclaimer so that we don't get served any fun
little lawsuits, because who has money for legal fees? Not me,
daycare is expensive, so get your salt shaker out because
I am not your financial planner. Yeah, Nelly's not your
financial planner, not your investment advisor. We have no course
in this race. We are just two beautiful, smart, intelligent
(01:23):
women with some ideas and some advice and some personal experience,
particularly yeah Nelly. And the reason my girl is here
today is because today's question was directed directly toward jan
Nelly based on a conversation we had. We were both
trying to figure out when didn't we talk about this?
But we do a lot of shows, but a listener,
jan Ellie, had a question about how you have been
(01:46):
helping your parents with their finances and you were game
to come answer it. But before we get into it,
because I'm nosy, can you just refresh for my memory
NBA fan memory? Like what is your family dynamic? I
know you have a bunch of siblings, but like, what's
your dynamic in the family? Are you just the CFO
(02:06):
of the household?
Speaker 3 (02:08):
I sort of am.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
So I'm the youngest girl, but I'm probably the only
one that really really nerds out when it comes to
like financial literacy and personal finance stuff. So there are
older siblings that kind of make big important decisions. But
when it comes down to like the administrative and management
of the actual money, moving things and paying bills and
making sure we have enough and things like that, it
(02:30):
usually does follow on me to do that, like administrative stuff,
so big big decisions. Of course, some of my older
siblings wait in. But yeah, definitely the month to month
and week to week things that come with money, Like,
it's usually me that's just handling it. And I created
the system that we all basically use now to save
up together as a family, and also to manage auto
pay for all the bills for my parents and also
(02:51):
to administer their allowance because we have them on an
allowance thing, which we could talk about.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Oh okay, so you're like, this is a full conservatorship.
It sound a lot so Mommy and cannot be trusted.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Bobby can't be trusted. Mommy can. But the thing is,
I'm gonna be honest.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
I love my dad, but he's a dick as a
gambling But I love him, but he has a gambling problem.
And we all know this, and he knows this, and
so he's been trying. He's working on it. But you know,
I think that there's definitely a piece of like a
little bit of like a lack of trust when it
comes to my dad, not so much my mom.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
But I wouldn't say.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Necessarily that it's a conservatives ship because what it's more
of is like I wanted to lift the weight off
of them completely now that they're older. You know, my
mom is close to seventy, my dad's already seventy five.
I want I don't want them to have to even
look at a financial statement. I don't want them to
have to pay a bill. I don't want them to
worry about anything. And so for me, it was more
(03:44):
so like what can we do, What can we put
in place for them so that they have money that
they need or want for whatever they need or want,
But they never have to pay mortgage, You never have
to buy you know, pay for groceries and have to
pay for things.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
It all just kind of magically gets.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Done for them, and then they have their little allowance
to spend on whatever their heart's desire.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
How lucky for them that they have, you, right, I
recently had to put a boundary in place with my family.
I was like, I can't with my dad particularly, I'm
like I don't have the bandwidth to be the go
to person for big questions. I just felt it felt
like an immense amount of pressure and like, and I'm
not even gonna lie a little bit of annoyance on
(04:22):
my side, like why do I have to be that?
Why didn't anybody ever teach me? Why do I have
to teach them? Where's the grown up? Why do I
have to be adult? I mean, I am legitimately an
adult now where.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
You got two kids? Would you know?
Speaker 1 (04:36):
It's not it's not a nice feeling to admit that
you have. But I'm just trying to be honest. Tell
me how you how you? I mean, does it just
come naturally to You're just like, Oh, this is what
I want to do. I'm good at this. I you know,
this is why I want to spend my time and
my energy.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
You know what.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I don't know if it's a first generation daughter of
immigrants type of guilt or or what it is that
it feels more like a responsible like it feels like
how dare I not?
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Like they have they sacrificed everything they knew and.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Every you know, worked unforgiving jobs like backbreaking labor on
my dad's part, My mom like, you know, pretty much
sacrificed her having really any kind of hobby. I mean,
she raised nine kids. She really couldn't make time for
anything but child wearing. And I just feel like now
they're at this age where it's like, man, they just
want to like rest and chill and they have their little.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Hobbies and things.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
My mom like devotes all her time into the church,
and my dad loves to like take trips to visit
his siblings and then you know, do his little gambling.
He does his little bets on whatever sports are going
on at the time, or he'll go to a casino
every now and then.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
But you know, I feel like they.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Now are at a point where I just feel like
I would feel so bad if they still had to
continue on after decades of sacrificing working and trying to
pay bills and surviving and everything paycheck to paycheck and
you know, and managing government assistants and all the things
they navigated even though they didn't freak they don't even
know English, like they truly don't. They had to kind
(06:03):
of really figure things out. And so I feel like
it is the while we can't like fully retire them
to the point that we would like to Like I
would love for them to just have a paid off
house and just travel every time they want to go
to dr and things like that.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
We're not at that level. Our family's not there.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
But what we can do, what is within like, you know, realistically,
really nice to have, is that they don't have to
worry about finances. And it doesn't mean we pay for
everything and they keep everything that they get. Because they
both have a Social Security income, I actually collect everything
so and then everything comes into one account where it's
all pulled in, and then I manage ensuring that from
(06:41):
that pool, which includes their social Security income as well
as all of the contributions from their children that we
pour in every month, all of that gets divvied out
to pay the mortgage, the electric built, the water built,
the gas built, the internet build everything, all their cell
phone bills, any bill that has to get paid. Everything
is on auto pay every single month, so none of
us have to really worry about anything. I just occasionally
log in and make sure everything looks good and you
(07:03):
know that were not being charged fees that we're not
supposed to be charged, or that everything's kind of you know,
squared away.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
But for the most part, Like I.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Just don't really want them to have to experience any
additional stress that they don't have to. I just want
them to be grandparents, been their grandma and grandpa era.
I want them to be able to go to DC
Maryland visit my sister and brother. I want them to
be able to come to Miami and visit me. I
want them to go to dr and visit their their
siblings that they still have over there, and not have
to worry about like am I gonna be able to
afford this trip? Or am I gonna do Am I
(07:32):
gonna make the rent if I or the bills if
I don't do this, or I just don't want them
to have to worry about that.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
And the fact that we have.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
So many in my family, like there's nine children, they
had nine children, So it just made sense to me
in my mind. I was like, it just makes sense,
Like why would we not do this when there's nine
of us and two of them and they've already put
so much sacrifice all these years, Like the least we
can do is create a situation where they don't have
to think about a damn bill ever again.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
And they just so it sounds like, y'all each contribute
a certain amount each month, and so is that left
up to each person or did y'all decide like across
the board we're going to do this.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
That was the first kind of big I think step,
which if anybody out there is listening, is like, oh,
I need to do this with my family. Here's the
first big step, and I highly recommend you handle it
like with a little bit of grace, because I at
first was like very adamant that we each had to
put in a certain amount of money, and I was like, look,
everybody has to do this, much like, this is the
only way we're going to be able to actually hit
at least I wanted at the time. I wanted to
(08:30):
just have twenty k to thirty k just cash in
a savings account for medical emergencies, for any kind of travel,
for anything that went wrong with the roof or the
league or the pipe or whatever. I just always wanted
to have that cash buffer. And so I was like,
in order to hit this, everybody needs to put in
this number. And immediately I kind of got some pushback because,
like some of my siblings at the meeting, nobody said
anything because we all did this like this was like
(08:52):
but right before COVID we all did it in person meeting,
and then we had to start doing zoom meetings. So
it's kind of hard to read people on zoom. You know,
people be playing it off unless they have like they
can't hide their face. But so I got a side
text from one of my sisters who's like, girl, you're
doing too much. You're pushing like maybe you can afford
that every month, but some of us we got multiple kids.
We have to pay for daycare, we have to pay
for you know, we have debt, We have all this situation.
(09:13):
We have a husband, our wives are the other people's families.
You know, you don't have children, you're not married, you're
not in a situation where you're paying debts or you're
paying You're in a great situation to be young, unmarried,
have high income and not have children. But and so
then I kind of felt bad and I was like,
damn you right, like, let's not put all this pressure
that we all have to put a certain number. And
so then I came back to everyone, I said sorry everybody,
(09:35):
like I was just trying to go hard and I
had this number in my head and I was just
trying to go ham and let's do it in a
way where it's fair to everyone. You just put whatever
number you can afford. Run your budget, and if you
need help from me, I'm happy to overlook your budget
with you.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
But just crunch your own numbers, look at what you
have to.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Pay for, and then try to cut out like what
you can right realistically, Like don't be giving me twenty
five dollars a month. That's not I mean, please do something,
you know, cut what you you have to cut so
you can put something. I was hoping it will be
a couple hundred each, and that is actually what ended
up happening. Everybody just kind of chose a number that
worked for them. Some put more than others. But we
(10:11):
are still we were still able to during COVID, we
were able to hit twenty k, and that was my
big goal and so that we don't have to worry
about anything with the house.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
And then we continued to keep.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Adding every month no matter what. And then once my
parents qualified for Social Security income, my mom had to
be sixty five because no, my mom didn't have to
wait till sixty five because she was getting spousal Social
Security income versus my dad had to wait because he
was actually collecting the actual Social Security So it worked
out where they both get their check. It's not a
ton of money, but we add that to the account,
(10:41):
plus everybody's contributions. We pay everything that has to get paid,
and then the extra I split between their allowance which
they get paid every week, and just adding it to
the savings.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
So we could just keep putting cash in reserves.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Because at the end of the day, I already know
that they're not the most active elderly people that I know,
So there are gonna be some health issues soon. I
know there's going to be medical bills. I know they're
going to have to, you know, pay for therapy or
whatever whatever, and so I'm like, I already know. I'm
anticipating some of that chunk of that money is going
to probably go to medical costs pretty soon.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Well, they're very lucky to have an organized group of
nine and at least one ringleader. You need one person
to just like herd the cats, and especially when you
you know you have siblings who have their lives are
getting more complex than people are. Yeah, hey, ba fam,
we got to take a quick break, pay some bills
and we'll be right back. All right, BA fam, We're back.
(11:36):
I will. Let's actually get into the BA listener's question,
and I think you touched on some of the answer
that she was looking for, but I do want to
read her question. So this came from listener Candace. Candace said, Hey,
Manny and Yanelly, and your last Brown Table episode, Yanellie
shared how she set up an investment account with her
siblings as an emergency fund for her parents. I'd love
(11:58):
to know more about that, either from her or what
you might recommend if I wanted to start something similar
for my mom. She has no real savings, so I'm
thinking about ways my siblings and I can start preparing
for how to best support her as she continues to age.
What kind of investment account? She keeps saying investment account interesting?
What kind of investment account might be best? How did we start?
(12:19):
How much is good to start? What suggestions would you
give to someone in their seventies without a retirement plan? Ps?
I love the show. I'm so grateful for your platform
and how you use it to keep us informed and inspired.
I hope you'll consider my question for a future Oh
so polite. Thank you, Candace and.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Is Oh, I'm so happy you sent this question because
I bet you there were people wondering and who like
maybe just didn't you know ask, So Candace put this
out there. I'm sure other people could benefit. Girl, We
got to talk about that. Investment. Investment. Investment came up
a lot. Candace said her par moms in her seventies.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Are seventies, no real savings.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yeah, So unfortunately, once you are in your seventies, you
have an mediate need for this money. So your timeline
is like, it is immediate. It's not even like a
short term, long term question. It's an immediacy. So because
it's an immediacy, we can't even really consider investment accounts
because the money can grow or it cannot grow, or
(13:17):
it can you can lose value, Like investments are a
little bit more risky. Then if you park the money
in a high yield savings account where it's just sitting
in cash and it's not in bonds or funds or.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Stocks or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Even a CD, because you got to tire money up
in a even have to be a really short CD.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
It would have to be a short CD six months
a year, in which case, when you look at these six.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Months in twelve month CDs.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Oftentimes, when we're in a high rate environment like we
are in mid twenty twenty five, we're in a high
interest rate environment because the Federal Reserve has not lowered
interest rates since back in like November of twenty twenty four.
Everyone's waiting, just wait, wait, waiting till the day that
they lower these rates. And because they have not lowered
the rates, people like me have been able to bet
fit from these high rates because the interest on a
(14:02):
high yield saving these account is freaking high four percent
five percent. So we've been milking that, collecting that four
percent five percent for the past couple of years while
interest rates have been really high. And that's been really
nice for us because we chose not to invest this
money since we know that my parents really pretty much
need it now like monthly to pay all the things
that they have to cover. So I would not recommend
(14:23):
investing for a seventy year old. That being said, my
mom she babysits my nieces and nephews or well, hasn't
really been as much lately because now they go to aftercare.
But when they were a little younger, my mom was
the basically their main babysitter. So what my sister would
do is my sister would pay my mom to babysit
her kids, and we worked it out in a way
where she would babysit, she would pay my mom exactly
(14:46):
a certain amount, so that by the end of the year,
my mom collected six thousand dollars. Why six thousand, because
that's how much you could put into a roth array
and so at that time, this was a couple of
years ago, what we did was every time once my
mom turned fifty, once you're fifty years old or older,
you can put an extra one thousand dollars catchup contribution.
So in this case, my sister was essentially saying, hey,
(15:09):
Mom's not going to be able to use this money
because she's, you know, essentially not able to access the
roth iray money until later. And we really wanted to grow,
so why don't we just write that money.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
Off into the future.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
So the beneficiary on my mom's roth diarrat eventually one
day is going to inherit all of that money that
my mom earned from babysitting. Because my mom didn't really
need earnings because we were already covering all of her
living expenses. And giving her an allowance every week. And
so we worked it out in that way where my
mom was like, yeah, cool, Like, look, I'm happy to
(15:44):
just leave it to the beneficiary, but if I need something,
if I want to go shopping and buy a dress,
I need to.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Be able to have my money. And we're like, absolutely, mom.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
So what we did was we set up the roth
aray for her, but she listed my Star as a beneficiary,
so her daughter, and that's sort of like growing, growing, growing,
and we already know it's going to be inherited tax
free by my mom's heir, by my mom's beneficiary.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
So that's kind of something that we have just in
the works over there.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
But in terms of this, I thought about like a trust.
I've known, I've heard of like using a trust as
a beneficiary, but I know that's a tiny bit more complicated,
but I just wondered.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Yeah, it's a tiny bit more complicated just in terms
of like who you want to inherit it. If my
mom wanted to make sure there were multiple people inheriting it,
then I probably would have done a trust so that
the trust pays out the beneficiaries based on like pace schedule,
and agreed upon terms that my mom would be happy with.
But because it's money that my sister pretty much was
paying my mom for the babysitting, it was very easy
(16:37):
to just be like, oh, okay, this one person is
just going to be listed as the beneficiary, and that
kind of makes it simple because it's just the one
account with one beneficiary named. But it would if my
mom was trying to leave that money for multiple for
like her grandkids or for multiple kids. I do think
that it would have made more sense to put in
a trust and have like set terms for the payout
(16:58):
from the trust to each person.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Trust much. But it's her favorite grand baby, it's.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Her, It's just the one.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
But in terms of the savings, what I will say,
we set up the savings account where two siblings are
the account holders, and I would recommend two or three people.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Why because if it was just.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
My name on the savings account, come on, now, you
putting all your trust in me. Granted I'm like a
public persona who has a book and a YouTube channel.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
They probably okay, that's.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
How you might have a bad year. No one knows.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
You never know, and I might be like, I would
really love to go to Kanko for my birthday.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
They don't got to know how I'm taking the money out.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
So I personally would never put all of the ownership
and all of the access in just one person. I
don't care how trust forth there. I don't care if
it's me, I don't think I would never allow them
to just put me. So I have myself, my sister,
and I recently told my brother he should be at
it as well, just in case. It's better to have more.
So everyone can log in with their own user names
(17:57):
and pass words, take a look at the money coming
in and out, make sure that it's just bills being paid.
There's no shady business. I think that's really important. So
if anybody listening.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Wants to do it is really important. Do you ever
run into any like power struggles with so many siblings?
Did anyone else feel a type of way like well
I can also help, or I should also help, and
how did you if that happened? Like how did you?
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Honestly, I'm very grateful that my older siblings they were
all like, what a relief, Jennelie's going to manage this.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
We don't got to deal with this shit like we
don't like because they have kids and houses and all
kinds of things.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
So I think a lot of the older siblings were
like relieved that I was willing to step up and say, look,
I'll manage it and I'll set things up.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
But the reality is, I got to say it was
a lot of work up front, but once you put.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Things in place and automate them, you're not really doing much.
I mean, you're just kind of checking in. You know,
I would recommend at least quarterly, but like twice a
year minimum, But you're just checking in to make sure
everything is like about bore, everything looks right, if there's
anything that looks sketchy, if there's a fee that was charging,
what is this fee?
Speaker 3 (19:04):
What's going on here? Then you could clarify.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
But I'm not really doing it. Am not clicking any
buttons or pressing send or pay. Everything is automated. So
my parents social Security income gets automated into the savings account,
their joint savings which has all essentially all of the
money that they get from income is pulled there automatically.
There's a transfer from that account into the family savings account,
(19:28):
where we all sell money or whatever. Sometimes my siblings
use ell sometimes one of them uses PayPal whatever it is.
They all send the money into one account, and then
every month that account automates the payment to the mortgage,
automates the payment to the bills, and so it's pretty
much a lot of just like transferring, automated payments set
up already so that then pretty much whatever is left
(19:51):
I automated. Every Friday, it pays out to two different
checking accounts, which are my mom's checking account and my
dad's checking account. And I'm also listed as an account
holder on each of their accounts so that I can
easily move money in and out if they have a
trip and I got to add petty cash for travel
whatever it is. And they each have the debit card
for their own personal checking accounts, so it's automated every Friday.
(20:13):
They know they and like it's a point where sometimes,
like my dad would call me and he's like did
He's like, I went to the ATM and I couldn't
get cash out. Did you make sure my allow was
hit on Friday? I don't know, it doesn't seem like
it's there. And I'm like, Dad, it's there, Like whatever's
wrong with the ATM?
Speaker 3 (20:26):
And so it's like it's the point where.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
So how did y'all come to an agreement on how
much the allowance was.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
So we just had a conversation with them. We're like,
be real with us, like how much you think you need.
My mom was like, honestly, I don't need that much,
Like I'll give twenty thirty bucks on Sundays when I
go to church and if I need to buy a
Metro card. They both live in New York City, so
if they want to hop on this train or take
an uber. And then my mom was like, every now
and then if I go shopping, if you know, I
don't really shop that much. And my dad was like,
(20:52):
I'm gonna be real with y'all. I need a couple
hundred each week because I do like to go, you know,
get a Metro car to go to my siblings' places,
or you know, if I do a bet here or there,
fifty bucks, forty bucks. So I told him, I was like,
realistically that I don't feel comfortable giving you too much
because I already know that money's literally going to waste,
like you're just gambling it away. We could be using
that money to pay down the mortgage, to pay your bills,
(21:15):
to pay, you know, to keep the water electricity on.
So there was a little bit of a conversation I
had to have with my dad just to like expectation
set because again I don't care what he does with
his allowance. I did tell them, I don't care what
you do. Once you get your allowance, that's your money.
You do whatever you want with it. We're not gonna
clock you. What did you do with your money? But
at the end of the day, a realistic number that
(21:35):
a lot of us did not feel comfortable giving my dad,
like flast six hundred, seven hundred dollars a week to
go blow it on gambling.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
So we had to.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Tell him that, and I came to an agreement with
him where I said to him, if there's ever anything
that's really important that you need to cover, use the
debit card to pay for it, because then I can
see I can trust, but verify I can verify that
it actually indeed did go to groceries or running errands
or whatever, you know, printing or whatever things you needed
(22:02):
to pay, rather than him going to the ATM machine
taking out the cash and then later on telling me, oh,
you know, I had to go and buy an extra
chicken because your aunt was coming over for dinner.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Can you reimburse me for that chicken?
Speaker 2 (22:12):
And I'm like, how do I know you bought chicken?
Because you took the cash out the ATM. Dad like,
so we had to have a heart to heart with
him where I told him, Look, this is what we're
gonna do. If you take out cash, I am going
to assume you're gambling it. So if you know you're
gonna buy something that's for the family or something you
want to get reimbursed for, please just use the debit
card so there's some type of documented history of where
the purchase was made. And then I wait, that way
(22:34):
I can verify you know, we're not giving you too
much to go, yeah, gamble. I don't want to enable
him to like waste all his money gambling. That's like
the main thing that concerns me with my dad.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
And your mom, Like, I mean, that puts her in
a vulnerable position without you guys. You know that if
he were to, yeah, God forbid, lose all the money
or all the savings that y'all had set aside for them.
I think that's the most compassionate, compassionate and also protective
thing that you could do for both of your parents.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
My biggest thing is I don't want them to lose
their dignity. I don't want any human being on this
earth who is in a situation where they need they
need help financially to feel like they don't have dignity.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
It sucks. I have felt that way. I don't want
anyone to feel that way.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
I already feel like my mom and dad spent many
years feeling like that because they want government assistants as immigrants.
I don't want to make him lose his dignity, but
I also want him to understand, like where's the fine line, Like, bro,
I'm not going to give you seven hundred dollars a
week to go throw one hundred dollars a day to
go throw away playing numbers or lottery tickets or whatever
it is he likes to do.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
So it's about.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Girl.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
And then the thing is when they're working forties, fifties,
sixties and they're still working, they don't have a lot
of free time.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
To like go do this. But he's re tiger.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
He fully wakes up, goes for his walk, makes his shake,
and then he's like, what am I gonna do today?
Speaker 3 (23:58):
And his hobby is dad.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
So it's like so it's like I feel like it
got worse now because he has all this free time.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
We garden? Can we volunteer with the youth?
Speaker 3 (24:08):
I don't know. Come on, girl, I've been trying to
come with him.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
I've been trying convincing him. I'm like, go to the
there's a bunch of events nearby. And there's like a
community center near where he lives in Bushwick where there's
they have a community events where they do like she
is you a nice hobby girl?
Speaker 3 (24:20):
He could do a lot of things. The problem is
he's just stuck in his ways. You know.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
They say he can't trandiction.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
That that part too, which I'm fully aware of, and
I try to talk to him about it. So funny
thing last month he called me and he was like,
You're gonna be so proud of me. I've gone three
weeks straight without betting anything, no betting on numbers, no
lottery nothing. I was like, we whiz okay, look at you,
three whole wheezs.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
He's like, my dad, what he really means is like
three days, like he's rounding up.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
So he told me it was three weeks and I
called my mom and she was like, no, it's true.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
I haven't. Haven't earn him on the phone with the book.
You haven't.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
He hasn't really been doing any of that. He's you know,
been going to church with me and stuff. So I
think he's, you know, try to prove to himself that
he's not an addict, because that's I think what he
was afraid of, like, you know, people being like, oh,
you're addicted to it, and he doesn't like that.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
He doesn't want to acknowledge that.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
So he wanted to prove that it wasn't true that
he could go a month or two months without playing.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
So, I mean, look, that is Dad. I love him.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
I understand his flaws, I think, Jill, I think the
biggest thing for me, the top priority was I don't
want them to have stress or worries about any bills
or financial things. And I also don't want to take
away their dignity. I want them to feel like they
could do whatever they want with their money. They're grown
ass adults. I don't want to feel like I'm mommy.
Now you're the kid, and I tell you what to
do with money. I don't want them to feel like
they have to call me and beg me for money.
(25:38):
I wanted to create a situation that was fair financially
reasonable for us to manage and also maintain their dignity.
And I think we've caught into a point where we
have a nice balance of all those things.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Hey, ba fam, We're going to take a quick break,
pay some bills, and we'll be right back. All right,
ba fam, We're back. So takeaways for Candace, I mean,
so many gems, but not an investment account. Let's do
hy yo savings get yours? She does say her siblings,
So it sounds like they could have a family meeting
and decide how much they can contribute and start with
(26:12):
some kind of savings goal. How did you settle on
the twenty to thirty k? And for someone in thee
her mom's also in her seventies, what's a good way
to come up with that like whole savings goal before
you you know, just to like make that nest egg
and then y'all can keep contributing after that.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
I would say, look at their income that they were
generating before they fully retired, and try to get three
to six months of that income, of that monthly income
at least as just a cash savings emergency fund. But
then the next step is what is the absolute worst
case scenario? For me, it was the roof needs to
(26:50):
be repaired or redone completely. And so because they're you know,
my dad and my mom are homeowners, so I was like,
that home. The worst thing that could happen is they
are now are fully responsible for paying something on that
house that they can't afford. So I just did some research.
How much would it cost to redo that entire roof
if insurance pitches in and whatever whatever comes down to
like twenty something thousand. So I was like, we have
(27:12):
to have, aside from just a cash buffer in a
savings for whatever they need day to day petty cash,
we need to have an additional twenty k in case
something goes wrong with the house. We can cover it
anything with the water, with the HVAC, with plumbing, with
the roof. I just want to be able to just
pay it and I don't want them to stress. So
that was kind of my way of thinking of it.
(27:33):
I also thought to myself, like, worst case scenario is
a medical issue, but they both thankfully have Medicare, so
it wasn't as bad because I know Medicare covers pretty much.
I mean Medicare covers like eighty percent of everything that
they need or no. Medicaid covers eighty percent of their
needs and the remaining twenty percents covered by Medicare, so
(27:54):
they essentially only they never ever really have to come
out of pocket when they have issues with they have
to go to the dock. Thank goodness, because my mom
had a really big scare last year where she fainted
randomly out of know where. She was in the bathroom
and she just fainted and my brothers didn't even know
she fainted because she was in the bathroom. And after
some time they were like, dang, Mom's been in the
(28:14):
bathroom for a minute. So they went over and like
knock on the door and we're like my mom, mom,
and she wasn't responding, so they freaked out. They went
got a kitchen knife, busted the door open, and sure
enough Mom was on the floor and they were like panicking,
and they brought her to the hospital.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
Thank goodness. She was in the hospital for like three
or four days. It was an issue of so many things.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
She is anemic, she had a dehydration, she doesn't strick
enough water.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
There were so many things.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
She was secretly doing a religious fast that she didn't
tell anyone that she wasn't eating for three days, but
all of that combined into her being so weak she fainted. Now,
thank goodness, even though she was in the hospital for
four days and she was okay and everything was good.
We also didn't have to worry about the financial issue
of the burden of it the medical bills because she
(28:59):
had Medicare at Medicaid and it covered everything. So like
that to me made me feel like better about not
having to worry about medical bills and expenses and focus
more so on an emergency. Worst case scenario would be
the house.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
So that was a test of the insurance. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Yeah, So I would say that to Candice, like, if
you want to come up with a buffer, start with
three to six months of replacing their earned income from
before retirement. But then also push it a step further
and just go to the darkest place. It's called negative visualization.
I talk about this in my book Negative Visualization. Visualize
the most horrible negative sty the worst positive possible negative
situation that could happen that would cost so much that
(29:37):
you just like, what would it be given the details
of their life.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
Right. If there are renters, then obviously a.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Roof leak wouldn't be their issue. But if their homeowners,
well you know you're on that's on you. So just
imagine what could be the worst case scenario. How much
would that estimate be to cover that cost? And that
should be the next goal after the just the typical
regular emergency savings fund.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Okay, gotcha? Yeah, and at that age too, it's a
if you're fortunate enough to be getting Social Security, it's
a fixed income, so a lot of older people it's
like how to what and if you don't have investments
to supplement that, it can be really hard to live
on whatever you get from Social Security. I don't know
why they call it social security because ain't nothing secure.
But I think the average benefits like twelve hundred a
(30:19):
month or something maybe less, Like you're not talking about
a lot of money, so not at all, especially when you.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Have a lot of the still the same bills that
you had when you were generating your regular income.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Those bills don't just go away because you don't get.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
A discount on your mortgage just cause although that would
be maybe we should run for office and put that
in place.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Right, a discount for your electricity bill, for your gas bill,
for you watch all those things because at a certain point,
like the income is just not there, it's.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Just not coming in.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Absolutely, Well, I think talking with your siblings, and you
also mentioned that you've added a couple of your siblings
to the account as well so they can get access
to it. Just in general, getting all the account and
like logins and all the financial records for your parents
is such a pain in the ass, but very helpful.
Like my dad always jokes that we have we have,
(31:07):
we have everything on him that we could, like we
can steal his identity. It's true. I can tell you.
You know, if you're calling my dad, you're not talking
to him, you're talking to one of us. If you're
emailing him, you're emailing us.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Like that's good because the number of scams that are
being used against seniors is at an all time high.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
So we really do have to switch on that part
of your brain that's like, Okay, I am the protector
now it's not. It's no longer than protecting me, Like
we need to be looking out for them, and that's
a hundred.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Percent especially scarier now with AI and all this tech
like they can they can mimic your voice, Mandy and
call him and say Dad, I need to and he
thinks he's talking to you because they re routed the
number to look like it's coming from your phone number,
and they use an AI voice generator to sound like you.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
So now we have to be extra.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
Vision negative visualization. Y Ellie, are stressing me out.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
I'm not saying I'm gonna have it. I'm saying it could.
Because of technology.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
We got to protective girl, we have dad.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
You saw that movie with that with that blondecheck Rose
something where she steals older people's homes. It's like she's
wearing a yellow pant power suit. I don't know what
the evil Oh, it's so evil. It's sadistic.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Yeah, and that's the thing people have, No they have
no shame. They don't care.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
I have a good friend here in Miami. She has
a nonprofit that where she helps incarcerated families stay in
touch with people when they're incarcerated because so their families
write letters and they, you know, help families deal with incarceration,
not just the incarcerated person, but also their family. And anyway,
it's a beautiful nonprofit. But when she was in prison herself,
she was there for like eighteen months, and one of
(32:38):
the things that happened to her was she was in
a cell with this woman who went to prison for
stealing money from older people, and this woman told her everything.
She was like, yeah, I was like essentially saphoning money
for like over a decade from this older lady.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
She was super wealthy. She had no idea. I would
just take a little by little by little.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
She wouldn't noticed, and eventually her kids kind of had
a hunch that something was if you was fishy, was
going on and they stepped in and investigated and figured
out what I was doing, and that's why she ended
up in prison. And it's like, imagine how many situations
like that so we have. I know, it seems a little,
i don't know, a little deranged and to be like, no,
you have to be overprotective. But I just really do
(33:17):
feel like when it comes to our parents and grandparents
we have at this point in this day and age,
with AI and tech and everything available now, we gotta
be overprotective.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
And I hate to say it, but they're very lucky
to have you a trustworthy daughter not all the kids
in the family are always trustworthy and you are like family,
you know, isn't it still that identity? Theft typically comes within,
like your family, easy access all that. So I like
the idea of having multiple eyeballs on it. And I mean,
you have to develop trust with your siblings and know
(33:48):
which ones can't be trusted and you love them, but
you know, like you said, you know their flaws and
all of that. I think that that's not the nicest feelings,
right I know my son right now, I mean like
he can't be trusted. He went to my mom's house
and purchased he's there right now. He purchased a whole
set of wooden trucks on Amazon. I was like that
(34:08):
that that is that's fraud for you. It's an elder scam.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
Oh my mom, he got that one click by he said,
click click click.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Oh he's only five, homeboy can read now he's dangerous.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Oh bye now, yes, smam, buy it right now.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
I have all the apps on my phone with us
require face to unlock.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Yes, yes, purchase to anything.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
You gotta watch out. He can't be k trust none.
None of them young kids know what you.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
Need to tell him. Is now you owe grandma this
money and you have to work. You have to work.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
You have to cancel the order.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Oh good, good good.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
You got to scare him straight. You got to be like,
how are you going to make two hundred dollars? Let's
now we have to talk about it. What are you
going to do because now you have to earn two
hundred dollars to pay for this, because Grandma's had to
pay for the money.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Got to come from somewhere. He I bet you he'll stop.
I bet you he'll stop.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
I know. I should get his uncle to like come
in his cop car and just like with a badge.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Oh this is illegal.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
No, you don't got to go that far, baby, not yet.
Maybe when he's like thirteen, but five years old. Now,
just scare them, stray go. You gotta pay for it.
You bought it, you gotta pay. You buy it, you pay.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
You gotta sell some toys from your room. Let's go sell.
Let's go sell your bike. Are you gonna raise this money?
Speaker 3 (35:19):
And figure it out?
Speaker 2 (35:20):
You got to take the trash out. You gott to
mop the floors, you gotta clean your room. You gotta
start working and this out.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
They earn this path, the toilet seem all of it.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
No, but one thing I will add I think in
terms of like managing it, there is one thing that
I do that is a little bit time consuming, a manual.
I do it like every few months, which is I
have a spreadsheet in Google docs or Google Sheets, and
I shared it with all my siblings so they all
have the link. Everybody can access it, and it has
multiple tabs along the bottoms for each year so that
we've been doing this so they can see. What I
(35:49):
do is like I actually just document everybody's contributions, who
paid when, how much we funded, how much we added
to the account, how much the balances, and what our
goals are. So everything is kind of like in the sheet,
just as a high level overview, because I know everybody's
not going to be able to log into the account
and see everything that happened, so I just kind of
I want to document everything in case anybody ever, you know,
(36:09):
wants to kind of see, hey, what happened last year?
How much did we say or what did we hit
or it. Sometimes my siblings will say, like, like I
had one sister who was like, oh, I need to
pause contributions for a little while and then I'll kick
back in. But she's like, you know, in the process
of getting a house, all the cond stuff going on,
So if that happens, like again, I just document it
in the dock. I'm just like, okay, pause contributions for
these four months, pick back up over here, like so
(36:31):
that it's all.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
There and everybody just kind of knows.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
It's not necessarily to like put all the business out there,
but more so for accountability, for everyone to know that
this stuff is recorded somewhere and we can always go
back and see what happened when, and that.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
Way they know, you know, there's a place to go
to look at it.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Because when you have like legit investment accounts that are
managed by wealth managers or what have you, they will
send you quarterly statements and they will send you an
overview and a highlight of what happened and the fis
that you were charged and when money moved in and out,
and so I just kind of think it's important to
have one home base where everyone can.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Go to take a look.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
So that is just a spreadsheet and I just manually
updated it like every couple months.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Well, girl inspire me to be a better daughter. Let
me go kick my dad a couple bucks, buy yourself
something nice. Thank you Jan Nelly for taking that question.
Thank you Candace for sending in your question. Ba Fam.
We are always happy to get your questions. You can
DM me at Brand and Bishon Podcast on IG or
(37:28):
you can email me directly Brandabission Podcast at gmail dot com.
We'll see y'all next Friday for another Baqa Hi Bye,
okay va fam. Thank you so much for listening to
this week's show. I want to shout out to our
production team, Courtney, our editor, Carla, our fearless leader for
idea to launch productions. I want to shout out my
(37:49):
assistant Lauda Escalante and Cameron McNair for helping me put
the show together. It is not a one person project,
as much as I have tried to make it so
these past ten years. I need help, y'all, and thank
goodness I've been able to put this team around me
to support me on this journey and to y'all be
a fam. I love you so so so so much.
(38:12):
Please rate, review, subscribe, make sure you sign up to
the newsletter to get all the latest updates on upcoming episodes.
Our ten year anniversary celebrations to come, and until next time,
talk to you. Soon bea bye.
What suggestions would you give to someone in their seventies
without a retirement plan.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Unfortunately, once you are in your seventies, you have an
immediate need for this money, so your timeline is like,
it is immediate. It's not even like a short term,
long term question. It's an immediacy. So because it's an immediacy,
we can't even really consider investment accounts because the money
can grow or it cannot grow, or it can you
(00:26):
can lose value, Like investments are a little bit more
risky then if you park the money in a high
yield savings account where it's just sitting in cash.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Hey ba fan, welcome to the BAQA. I am your host,
Mandy Money. I am enjoyed by my girl, Yea Nelly
Spinale aka Must be Hopeful aka the author of Mind
Your Money. If you haven't copped her book, then what
are you even waiting for? That's right, if you're watching
on YouTube, you can see the cover right there. Just
go get it. What are you waiting for? But before
(01:00):
we get into today's question, let me do my cute
little disclaimer so that we don't get served any fun
little lawsuits, because who has money for legal fees? Not me,
daycare is expensive, so get your salt shaker out because
I am not your financial planner. Yeah, Nelly's not your
financial planner, not your investment advisor. We have no course
in this race. We are just two beautiful, smart, intelligent
(01:23):
women with some ideas and some advice and some personal experience,
particularly yeah Nelly. And the reason my girl is here
today is because today's question was directed directly toward jan
Nelly based on a conversation we had. We were both
trying to figure out when didn't we talk about this?
But we do a lot of shows, but a listener,
jan Ellie, had a question about how you have been
(01:46):
helping your parents with their finances and you were game
to come answer it. But before we get into it,
because I'm nosy, can you just refresh for my memory
NBA fan memory? Like what is your family dynamic? I
know you have a bunch of siblings, but like, what's
your dynamic in the family? Are you just the CFO
(02:06):
of the household?
Speaker 3 (02:08):
I sort of am.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
So I'm the youngest girl, but I'm probably the only
one that really really nerds out when it comes to
like financial literacy and personal finance stuff. So there are
older siblings that kind of make big important decisions. But
when it comes down to like the administrative and management
of the actual money, moving things and paying bills and
making sure we have enough and things like that, it
(02:30):
usually does follow on me to do that, like administrative stuff,
so big big decisions. Of course, some of my older
siblings wait in. But yeah, definitely the month to month
and week to week things that come with money, Like,
it's usually me that's just handling it. And I created
the system that we all basically use now to save
up together as a family, and also to manage auto
pay for all the bills for my parents and also
(02:51):
to administer their allowance because we have them on an
allowance thing, which we could talk about.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Oh okay, so you're like, this is a full conservatorship.
It sound a lot so Mommy and cannot be trusted.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Bobby can't be trusted. Mommy can. But the thing is,
I'm gonna be honest.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
I love my dad, but he's a dick as a
gambling But I love him, but he has a gambling problem.
And we all know this, and he knows this, and
so he's been trying. He's working on it. But you know,
I think that there's definitely a piece of like a
little bit of like a lack of trust when it
comes to my dad, not so much my mom.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
But I wouldn't say.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Necessarily that it's a conservatives ship because what it's more
of is like I wanted to lift the weight off
of them completely now that they're older. You know, my
mom is close to seventy, my dad's already seventy five.
I want I don't want them to have to even
look at a financial statement. I don't want them to
have to pay a bill. I don't want them to
worry about anything. And so for me, it was more
(03:44):
so like what can we do, What can we put
in place for them so that they have money that
they need or want for whatever they need or want,
But they never have to pay mortgage, You never have
to buy you know, pay for groceries and have to
pay for things.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
It all just kind of magically gets.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Done for them, and then they have their little allowance
to spend on whatever their heart's desire.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
How lucky for them that they have, you, right, I
recently had to put a boundary in place with my family.
I was like, I can't with my dad particularly, I'm
like I don't have the bandwidth to be the go
to person for big questions. I just felt it felt
like an immense amount of pressure and like, and I'm
not even gonna lie a little bit of annoyance on
(04:22):
my side, like why do I have to be that?
Why didn't anybody ever teach me? Why do I have
to teach them? Where's the grown up? Why do I
have to be adult? I mean, I am legitimately an
adult now where.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
You got two kids? Would you know?
Speaker 1 (04:36):
It's not it's not a nice feeling to admit that
you have. But I'm just trying to be honest. Tell
me how you how you? I mean, does it just
come naturally to You're just like, Oh, this is what
I want to do. I'm good at this. I you know,
this is why I want to spend my time and
my energy.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
You know what.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
I don't know if it's a first generation daughter of
immigrants type of guilt or or what it is that
it feels more like a responsible like it feels like
how dare I not?
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Like they have they sacrificed everything they knew and.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Every you know, worked unforgiving jobs like backbreaking labor on
my dad's part, My mom like, you know, pretty much
sacrificed her having really any kind of hobby. I mean,
she raised nine kids. She really couldn't make time for
anything but child wearing. And I just feel like now
they're at this age where it's like, man, they just
want to like rest and chill and they have their little.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Hobbies and things.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
My mom like devotes all her time into the church,
and my dad loves to like take trips to visit
his siblings and then you know, do his little gambling.
He does his little bets on whatever sports are going
on at the time, or he'll go to a casino
every now and then.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
But you know, I feel like they.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Now are at a point where I just feel like
I would feel so bad if they still had to
continue on after decades of sacrificing working and trying to
pay bills and surviving and everything paycheck to paycheck and
you know, and managing government assistants and all the things
they navigated even though they didn't freak they don't even
know English, like they truly don't. They had to kind
(06:03):
of really figure things out. And so I feel like
it is the while we can't like fully retire them
to the point that we would like to Like I
would love for them to just have a paid off
house and just travel every time they want to go
to dr and things like that.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
We're not at that level. Our family's not there.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
But what we can do, what is within like, you know, realistically,
really nice to have, is that they don't have to
worry about finances. And it doesn't mean we pay for
everything and they keep everything that they get. Because they
both have a Social Security income, I actually collect everything
so and then everything comes into one account where it's
all pulled in, and then I manage ensuring that from
(06:41):
that pool, which includes their social Security income as well
as all of the contributions from their children that we
pour in every month, all of that gets divvied out
to pay the mortgage, the electric built, the water built,
the gas built, the internet build everything, all their cell
phone bills, any bill that has to get paid. Everything
is on auto pay every single month, so none of
us have to really worry about anything. I just occasionally
log in and make sure everything looks good and you
(07:03):
know that were not being charged fees that we're not
supposed to be charged, or that everything's kind of you know,
squared away.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
But for the most part, Like I.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Just don't really want them to have to experience any
additional stress that they don't have to. I just want
them to be grandparents, been their grandma and grandpa era.
I want them to be able to go to DC
Maryland visit my sister and brother. I want them to
be able to come to Miami and visit me. I
want them to go to dr and visit their their
siblings that they still have over there, and not have
to worry about like am I gonna be able to
afford this trip? Or am I gonna do Am I
(07:32):
gonna make the rent if I or the bills if
I don't do this, or I just don't want them
to have to worry about that.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
And the fact that we have.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
So many in my family, like there's nine children, they
had nine children, So it just made sense to me
in my mind. I was like, it just makes sense,
Like why would we not do this when there's nine
of us and two of them and they've already put
so much sacrifice all these years, Like the least we
can do is create a situation where they don't have
to think about a damn bill ever again.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
And they just so it sounds like, y'all each contribute
a certain amount each month, and so is that left
up to each person or did y'all decide like across
the board we're going to do this.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
That was the first kind of big I think step,
which if anybody out there is listening, is like, oh,
I need to do this with my family. Here's the
first big step, and I highly recommend you handle it
like with a little bit of grace, because I at
first was like very adamant that we each had to
put in a certain amount of money, and I was like, look,
everybody has to do this, much like, this is the
only way we're going to be able to actually hit
at least I wanted at the time. I wanted to
(08:30):
just have twenty k to thirty k just cash in
a savings account for medical emergencies, for any kind of travel,
for anything that went wrong with the roof or the
league or the pipe or whatever. I just always wanted
to have that cash buffer. And so I was like,
in order to hit this, everybody needs to put in
this number. And immediately I kind of got some pushback because,
like some of my siblings at the meeting, nobody said
anything because we all did this like this was like
(08:52):
but right before COVID we all did it in person meeting,
and then we had to start doing zoom meetings. So
it's kind of hard to read people on zoom. You know,
people be playing it off unless they have like they
can't hide their face. But so I got a side
text from one of my sisters who's like, girl, you're
doing too much. You're pushing like maybe you can afford
that every month, but some of us we got multiple kids.
We have to pay for daycare, we have to pay
for you know, we have debt, We have all this situation.
(09:13):
We have a husband, our wives are the other people's families.
You know, you don't have children, you're not married, you're
not in a situation where you're paying debts or you're
paying You're in a great situation to be young, unmarried,
have high income and not have children. But and so
then I kind of felt bad and I was like,
damn you right, like, let's not put all this pressure
that we all have to put a certain number. And
so then I came back to everyone, I said sorry everybody,
(09:35):
like I was just trying to go hard and I
had this number in my head and I was just
trying to go ham and let's do it in a
way where it's fair to everyone. You just put whatever
number you can afford. Run your budget, and if you
need help from me, I'm happy to overlook your budget
with you.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
But just crunch your own numbers, look at what you
have to.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Pay for, and then try to cut out like what
you can right realistically, Like don't be giving me twenty
five dollars a month. That's not I mean, please do something,
you know, cut what you you have to cut so
you can put something. I was hoping it will be
a couple hundred each, and that is actually what ended
up happening. Everybody just kind of chose a number that
worked for them. Some put more than others. But we
(10:11):
are still we were still able to during COVID, we
were able to hit twenty k, and that was my
big goal and so that we don't have to worry
about anything with the house.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
And then we continued to keep.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Adding every month no matter what. And then once my
parents qualified for Social Security income, my mom had to
be sixty five because no, my mom didn't have to
wait till sixty five because she was getting spousal Social
Security income versus my dad had to wait because he
was actually collecting the actual Social Security So it worked
out where they both get their check. It's not a
ton of money, but we add that to the account,
(10:41):
plus everybody's contributions. We pay everything that has to get paid,
and then the extra I split between their allowance which
they get paid every week, and just adding it to
the savings.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
So we could just keep putting cash in reserves.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Because at the end of the day, I already know
that they're not the most active elderly people that I know,
So there are gonna be some health issues soon. I
know there's going to be medical bills. I know they're
going to have to, you know, pay for therapy or
whatever whatever, and so I'm like, I already know. I'm
anticipating some of that chunk of that money is going
to probably go to medical costs pretty soon.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Well, they're very lucky to have an organized group of
nine and at least one ringleader. You need one person
to just like herd the cats, and especially when you
you know you have siblings who have their lives are
getting more complex than people are. Yeah, hey, ba fam,
we got to take a quick break, pay some bills
and we'll be right back. All right, BA fam, We're back.
(11:36):
I will. Let's actually get into the BA listener's question,
and I think you touched on some of the answer
that she was looking for, but I do want to
read her question. So this came from listener Candace. Candace said, Hey,
Manny and Yanelly, and your last Brown Table episode, Yanellie
shared how she set up an investment account with her
siblings as an emergency fund for her parents. I'd love
(11:58):
to know more about that, either from her or what
you might recommend if I wanted to start something similar
for my mom. She has no real savings, so I'm
thinking about ways my siblings and I can start preparing
for how to best support her as she continues to age.
What kind of investment account? She keeps saying investment account interesting?
What kind of investment account might be best? How did we start?
(12:19):
How much is good to start? What suggestions would you
give to someone in their seventies without a retirement plan? Ps?
I love the show. I'm so grateful for your platform
and how you use it to keep us informed and inspired.
I hope you'll consider my question for a future Oh
so polite. Thank you, Candace and.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Is Oh, I'm so happy you sent this question because
I bet you there were people wondering and who like
maybe just didn't you know ask, So Candace put this
out there. I'm sure other people could benefit. Girl, We
got to talk about that. Investment. Investment. Investment came up
a lot. Candace said her par moms in her seventies.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Are seventies, no real savings.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yeah, So unfortunately, once you are in your seventies, you
have an mediate need for this money. So your timeline
is like, it is immediate. It's not even like a
short term, long term question. It's an immediacy. So because
it's an immediacy, we can't even really consider investment accounts
because the money can grow or it cannot grow, or
(13:17):
it can you can lose value, Like investments are a
little bit more risky. Then if you park the money
in a high yield savings account where it's just sitting
in cash and it's not in bonds or funds or.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Stocks or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Even a CD, because you got to tire money up
in a even have to be a really short CD.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
It would have to be a short CD six months
a year, in which case, when you look at these six.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Months in twelve month CDs.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Oftentimes, when we're in a high rate environment like we
are in mid twenty twenty five, we're in a high
interest rate environment because the Federal Reserve has not lowered
interest rates since back in like November of twenty twenty four.
Everyone's waiting, just wait, wait, waiting till the day that
they lower these rates. And because they have not lowered
the rates, people like me have been able to bet
fit from these high rates because the interest on a
(14:02):
high yield saving these account is freaking high four percent
five percent. So we've been milking that, collecting that four
percent five percent for the past couple of years while
interest rates have been really high. And that's been really
nice for us because we chose not to invest this
money since we know that my parents really pretty much
need it now like monthly to pay all the things
that they have to cover. So I would not recommend
(14:23):
investing for a seventy year old. That being said, my
mom she babysits my nieces and nephews or well, hasn't
really been as much lately because now they go to aftercare.
But when they were a little younger, my mom was
the basically their main babysitter. So what my sister would
do is my sister would pay my mom to babysit
her kids, and we worked it out in a way
where she would babysit, she would pay my mom exactly
(14:46):
a certain amount, so that by the end of the year,
my mom collected six thousand dollars. Why six thousand, because
that's how much you could put into a roth array
and so at that time, this was a couple of
years ago, what we did was every time once my
mom turned fifty, once you're fifty years old or older,
you can put an extra one thousand dollars catchup contribution.
So in this case, my sister was essentially saying, hey,
(15:09):
Mom's not going to be able to use this money
because she's, you know, essentially not able to access the
roth iray money until later. And we really wanted to grow,
so why don't we just write that money.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
Off into the future.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
So the beneficiary on my mom's roth diarrat eventually one
day is going to inherit all of that money that
my mom earned from babysitting. Because my mom didn't really
need earnings because we were already covering all of her
living expenses. And giving her an allowance every week. And
so we worked it out in that way where my
mom was like, yeah, cool, Like, look, I'm happy to
(15:44):
just leave it to the beneficiary, but if I need something,
if I want to go shopping and buy a dress,
I need to.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Be able to have my money. And we're like, absolutely, mom.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
So what we did was we set up the roth
aray for her, but she listed my Star as a beneficiary,
so her daughter, and that's sort of like growing, growing, growing,
and we already know it's going to be inherited tax
free by my mom's heir, by my mom's beneficiary.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
So that's kind of something that we have just in
the works over there.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
But in terms of this, I thought about like a trust.
I've known, I've heard of like using a trust as
a beneficiary, but I know that's a tiny bit more complicated,
but I just wondered.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Yeah, it's a tiny bit more complicated just in terms
of like who you want to inherit it. If my
mom wanted to make sure there were multiple people inheriting it,
then I probably would have done a trust so that
the trust pays out the beneficiaries based on like pace schedule,
and agreed upon terms that my mom would be happy with.
But because it's money that my sister pretty much was
paying my mom for the babysitting, it was very easy
(16:37):
to just be like, oh, okay, this one person is
just going to be listed as the beneficiary, and that
kind of makes it simple because it's just the one
account with one beneficiary named. But it would if my
mom was trying to leave that money for multiple for
like her grandkids or for multiple kids. I do think
that it would have made more sense to put in
a trust and have like set terms for the payout
(16:58):
from the trust to each person.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Trust much. But it's her favorite grand baby, it's.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Her, It's just the one.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
But in terms of the savings, what I will say,
we set up the savings account where two siblings are
the account holders, and I would recommend two or three people.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Why because if it was just.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
My name on the savings account, come on, now, you
putting all your trust in me. Granted I'm like a
public persona who has a book and a YouTube channel.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
They probably okay, that's.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
How you might have a bad year. No one knows.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
You never know, and I might be like, I would
really love to go to Kanko for my birthday.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
They don't got to know how I'm taking the money out.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
So I personally would never put all of the ownership
and all of the access in just one person. I
don't care how trust forth there. I don't care if
it's me, I don't think I would never allow them
to just put me. So I have myself, my sister,
and I recently told my brother he should be at
it as well, just in case. It's better to have more.
So everyone can log in with their own user names
(17:57):
and pass words, take a look at the money coming
in and out, make sure that it's just bills being paid.
There's no shady business. I think that's really important. So
if anybody listening.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Wants to do it is really important. Do you ever
run into any like power struggles with so many siblings?
Did anyone else feel a type of way like well
I can also help, or I should also help, and
how did you if that happened? Like how did you?
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Honestly, I'm very grateful that my older siblings they were
all like, what a relief, Jennelie's going to manage this.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
We don't got to deal with this shit like we
don't like because they have kids and houses and all
kinds of things.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
So I think a lot of the older siblings were
like relieved that I was willing to step up and say, look,
I'll manage it and I'll set things up.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
But the reality is, I got to say it was
a lot of work up front, but once you put.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Things in place and automate them, you're not really doing much.
I mean, you're just kind of checking in. You know,
I would recommend at least quarterly, but like twice a
year minimum, But you're just checking in to make sure
everything is like about bore, everything looks right, if there's
anything that looks sketchy, if there's a fee that was charging,
what is this fee?
Speaker 3 (19:04):
What's going on here? Then you could clarify.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
But I'm not really doing it. Am not clicking any
buttons or pressing send or pay. Everything is automated. So
my parents social Security income gets automated into the savings account,
their joint savings which has all essentially all of the
money that they get from income is pulled there automatically.
There's a transfer from that account into the family savings account,
(19:28):
where we all sell money or whatever. Sometimes my siblings
use ell sometimes one of them uses PayPal whatever it is.
They all send the money into one account, and then
every month that account automates the payment to the mortgage,
automates the payment to the bills, and so it's pretty
much a lot of just like transferring, automated payments set
up already so that then pretty much whatever is left
(19:51):
I automated. Every Friday, it pays out to two different
checking accounts, which are my mom's checking account and my
dad's checking account. And I'm also listed as an account
holder on each of their accounts so that I can
easily move money in and out if they have a
trip and I got to add petty cash for travel
whatever it is. And they each have the debit card
for their own personal checking accounts, so it's automated every Friday.
(20:13):
They know they and like it's a point where sometimes,
like my dad would call me and he's like did
He's like, I went to the ATM and I couldn't
get cash out. Did you make sure my allow was
hit on Friday? I don't know, it doesn't seem like
it's there. And I'm like, Dad, it's there, Like whatever's
wrong with the ATM?
Speaker 3 (20:26):
And so it's like it's the point where.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
So how did y'all come to an agreement on how
much the allowance was.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
So we just had a conversation with them. We're like,
be real with us, like how much you think you need.
My mom was like, honestly, I don't need that much,
Like I'll give twenty thirty bucks on Sundays when I
go to church and if I need to buy a
Metro card. They both live in New York City, so
if they want to hop on this train or take
an uber. And then my mom was like, every now
and then if I go shopping, if you know, I
don't really shop that much. And my dad was like,
(20:52):
I'm gonna be real with y'all. I need a couple
hundred each week because I do like to go, you know,
get a Metro car to go to my siblings' places,
or you know, if I do a bet here or there,
fifty bucks, forty bucks. So I told him, I was like,
realistically that I don't feel comfortable giving you too much
because I already know that money's literally going to waste,
like you're just gambling it away. We could be using
that money to pay down the mortgage, to pay your bills,
(21:15):
to pay, you know, to keep the water electricity on.
So there was a little bit of a conversation I
had to have with my dad just to like expectation
set because again I don't care what he does with
his allowance. I did tell them, I don't care what
you do. Once you get your allowance, that's your money.
You do whatever you want with it. We're not gonna
clock you. What did you do with your money? But
at the end of the day, a realistic number that
(21:35):
a lot of us did not feel comfortable giving my dad,
like flast six hundred, seven hundred dollars a week to
go blow it on gambling.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
So we had to.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Tell him that, and I came to an agreement with
him where I said to him, if there's ever anything
that's really important that you need to cover, use the
debit card to pay for it, because then I can
see I can trust, but verify I can verify that
it actually indeed did go to groceries or running errands
or whatever, you know, printing or whatever things you needed
(22:02):
to pay, rather than him going to the ATM machine
taking out the cash and then later on telling me, oh,
you know, I had to go and buy an extra
chicken because your aunt was coming over for dinner.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Can you reimburse me for that chicken?
Speaker 2 (22:12):
And I'm like, how do I know you bought chicken?
Because you took the cash out the ATM. Dad like,
so we had to have a heart to heart with
him where I told him, Look, this is what we're
gonna do. If you take out cash, I am going
to assume you're gambling it. So if you know you're
gonna buy something that's for the family or something you
want to get reimbursed for, please just use the debit
card so there's some type of documented history of where
the purchase was made. And then I wait, that way
(22:34):
I can verify you know, we're not giving you too
much to go, yeah, gamble. I don't want to enable
him to like waste all his money gambling. That's like
the main thing that concerns me with my dad.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
And your mom, Like, I mean, that puts her in
a vulnerable position without you guys. You know that if
he were to, yeah, God forbid, lose all the money
or all the savings that y'all had set aside for them.
I think that's the most compassionate, compassionate and also protective
thing that you could do for both of your parents.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
My biggest thing is I don't want them to lose
their dignity. I don't want any human being on this
earth who is in a situation where they need they
need help financially to feel like they don't have dignity.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
It sucks. I have felt that way. I don't want
anyone to feel that way.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
I already feel like my mom and dad spent many
years feeling like that because they want government assistants as immigrants.
I don't want to make him lose his dignity, but
I also want him to understand, like where's the fine line, Like, bro,
I'm not going to give you seven hundred dollars a
week to go throw one hundred dollars a day to
go throw away playing numbers or lottery tickets or whatever
it is he likes to do.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
So it's about.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Girl.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
And then the thing is when they're working forties, fifties,
sixties and they're still working, they don't have a lot
of free time.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
To like go do this. But he's re tiger.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
He fully wakes up, goes for his walk, makes his shake,
and then he's like, what am I gonna do today?
Speaker 3 (23:58):
And his hobby is dad.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
So it's like so it's like I feel like it
got worse now because he has all this free time.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
We garden? Can we volunteer with the youth?
Speaker 3 (24:08):
I don't know. Come on, girl, I've been trying to
come with him.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
I've been trying convincing him. I'm like, go to the
there's a bunch of events nearby. And there's like a
community center near where he lives in Bushwick where there's
they have a community events where they do like she
is you a nice hobby girl?
Speaker 3 (24:20):
He could do a lot of things. The problem is
he's just stuck in his ways. You know.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
They say he can't trandiction.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
That that part too, which I'm fully aware of, and
I try to talk to him about it. So funny
thing last month he called me and he was like,
You're gonna be so proud of me. I've gone three
weeks straight without betting anything, no betting on numbers, no
lottery nothing. I was like, we whiz okay, look at you,
three whole wheezs.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
He's like, my dad, what he really means is like
three days, like he's rounding up.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
So he told me it was three weeks and I
called my mom and she was like, no, it's true.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
I haven't. Haven't earn him on the phone with the book.
You haven't.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
He hasn't really been doing any of that. He's you know,
been going to church with me and stuff. So I
think he's, you know, try to prove to himself that
he's not an addict, because that's I think what he
was afraid of, like, you know, people being like, oh,
you're addicted to it, and he doesn't like that.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
He doesn't want to acknowledge that.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
So he wanted to prove that it wasn't true that
he could go a month or two months without playing.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
So, I mean, look, that is Dad. I love him.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
I understand his flaws, I think, Jill, I think the
biggest thing for me, the top priority was I don't
want them to have stress or worries about any bills
or financial things. And I also don't want to take
away their dignity. I want them to feel like they
could do whatever they want with their money. They're grown
ass adults. I don't want to feel like I'm mommy.
Now you're the kid, and I tell you what to
do with money. I don't want them to feel like
they have to call me and beg me for money.
(25:38):
I wanted to create a situation that was fair financially
reasonable for us to manage and also maintain their dignity.
And I think we've caught into a point where we
have a nice balance of all those things.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Hey, ba fam, We're going to take a quick break,
pay some bills, and we'll be right back. All right,
ba fam, We're back. So takeaways for Candace, I mean,
so many gems, but not an investment account. Let's do
hy yo savings get yours? She does say her siblings,
So it sounds like they could have a family meeting
and decide how much they can contribute and start with
(26:12):
some kind of savings goal. How did you settle on
the twenty to thirty k? And for someone in thee
her mom's also in her seventies, what's a good way
to come up with that like whole savings goal before
you you know, just to like make that nest egg
and then y'all can keep contributing after that.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
I would say, look at their income that they were
generating before they fully retired, and try to get three
to six months of that income, of that monthly income
at least as just a cash savings emergency fund. But
then the next step is what is the absolute worst
case scenario? For me, it was the roof needs to
(26:50):
be repaired or redone completely. And so because they're you know,
my dad and my mom are homeowners, so I was like,
that home. The worst thing that could happen is they
are now are fully responsible for paying something on that
house that they can't afford. So I just did some research.
How much would it cost to redo that entire roof
if insurance pitches in and whatever whatever comes down to
like twenty something thousand. So I was like, we have
(27:12):
to have, aside from just a cash buffer in a
savings for whatever they need day to day petty cash,
we need to have an additional twenty k in case
something goes wrong with the house. We can cover it
anything with the water, with the HVAC, with plumbing, with
the roof. I just want to be able to just
pay it and I don't want them to stress. So
that was kind of my way of thinking of it.
(27:33):
I also thought to myself, like, worst case scenario is
a medical issue, but they both thankfully have Medicare, so
it wasn't as bad because I know Medicare covers pretty much.
I mean Medicare covers like eighty percent of everything that
they need or no. Medicaid covers eighty percent of their
needs and the remaining twenty percents covered by Medicare, so
(27:54):
they essentially only they never ever really have to come
out of pocket when they have issues with they have
to go to the dock. Thank goodness, because my mom
had a really big scare last year where she fainted
randomly out of know where. She was in the bathroom
and she just fainted and my brothers didn't even know
she fainted because she was in the bathroom. And after
some time they were like, dang, Mom's been in the
(28:14):
bathroom for a minute. So they went over and like
knock on the door and we're like my mom, mom,
and she wasn't responding, so they freaked out. They went
got a kitchen knife, busted the door open, and sure
enough Mom was on the floor and they were like panicking,
and they brought her to the hospital.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
Thank goodness. She was in the hospital for like three
or four days. It was an issue of so many things.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
She is anemic, she had a dehydration, she doesn't strick
enough water.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
There were so many things.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
She was secretly doing a religious fast that she didn't
tell anyone that she wasn't eating for three days, but
all of that combined into her being so weak she fainted. Now,
thank goodness, even though she was in the hospital for
four days and she was okay and everything was good.
We also didn't have to worry about the financial issue
of the burden of it the medical bills because she
(28:59):
had Medicare at Medicaid and it covered everything. So like
that to me made me feel like better about not
having to worry about medical bills and expenses and focus
more so on an emergency. Worst case scenario would be
the house.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
So that was a test of the insurance. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Yeah, So I would say that to Candice, like, if
you want to come up with a buffer, start with
three to six months of replacing their earned income from
before retirement. But then also push it a step further
and just go to the darkest place. It's called negative visualization.
I talk about this in my book Negative Visualization. Visualize
the most horrible negative sty the worst positive possible negative
situation that could happen that would cost so much that
(29:37):
you just like, what would it be given the details
of their life.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
Right. If there are renters, then obviously a.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Roof leak wouldn't be their issue. But if their homeowners,
well you know you're on that's on you. So just
imagine what could be the worst case scenario. How much
would that estimate be to cover that cost? And that
should be the next goal after the just the typical
regular emergency savings fund.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Okay, gotcha? Yeah, and at that age too, it's a
if you're fortunate enough to be getting Social Security, it's
a fixed income, so a lot of older people it's
like how to what and if you don't have investments
to supplement that, it can be really hard to live
on whatever you get from Social Security. I don't know
why they call it social security because ain't nothing secure.
But I think the average benefits like twelve hundred a
(30:19):
month or something maybe less, Like you're not talking about
a lot of money, so not at all, especially when you.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Have a lot of the still the same bills that
you had when you were generating your regular income.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Those bills don't just go away because you don't get.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
A discount on your mortgage just cause although that would
be maybe we should run for office and put that
in place.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Right, a discount for your electricity bill, for your gas bill,
for you watch all those things because at a certain point,
like the income is just not there, it's.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Just not coming in.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Absolutely, Well, I think talking with your siblings, and you
also mentioned that you've added a couple of your siblings
to the account as well so they can get access
to it. Just in general, getting all the account and
like logins and all the financial records for your parents
is such a pain in the ass, but very helpful.
Like my dad always jokes that we have we have,
(31:07):
we have everything on him that we could, like we
can steal his identity. It's true. I can tell you.
You know, if you're calling my dad, you're not talking
to him, you're talking to one of us. If you're
emailing him, you're emailing us.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Like that's good because the number of scams that are
being used against seniors is at an all time high.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
So we really do have to switch on that part
of your brain that's like, Okay, I am the protector
now it's not. It's no longer than protecting me, Like
we need to be looking out for them, and that's
a hundred.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Percent especially scarier now with AI and all this tech
like they can they can mimic your voice, Mandy and
call him and say Dad, I need to and he
thinks he's talking to you because they re routed the
number to look like it's coming from your phone number,
and they use an AI voice generator to sound like you.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
So now we have to be extra.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
Vision negative visualization. Y Ellie, are stressing me out.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
I'm not saying I'm gonna have it. I'm saying it could.
Because of technology.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
We got to protective girl, we have dad.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
You saw that movie with that with that blondecheck Rose
something where she steals older people's homes. It's like she's
wearing a yellow pant power suit. I don't know what
the evil Oh, it's so evil. It's sadistic.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Yeah, and that's the thing people have, No they have
no shame. They don't care.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
I have a good friend here in Miami. She has
a nonprofit that where she helps incarcerated families stay in
touch with people when they're incarcerated because so their families
write letters and they, you know, help families deal with incarceration,
not just the incarcerated person, but also their family. And anyway,
it's a beautiful nonprofit. But when she was in prison herself,
she was there for like eighteen months, and one of
(32:38):
the things that happened to her was she was in
a cell with this woman who went to prison for
stealing money from older people, and this woman told her everything.
She was like, yeah, I was like essentially saphoning money
for like over a decade from this older lady.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
She was super wealthy. She had no idea. I would
just take a little by little by little.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
She wouldn't noticed, and eventually her kids kind of had
a hunch that something was if you was fishy, was
going on and they stepped in and investigated and figured
out what I was doing, and that's why she ended
up in prison. And it's like, imagine how many situations
like that so we have. I know, it seems a little,
i don't know, a little deranged and to be like, no,
you have to be overprotective. But I just really do
(33:17):
feel like when it comes to our parents and grandparents
we have at this point in this day and age,
with AI and tech and everything available now, we gotta
be overprotective.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
And I hate to say it, but they're very lucky
to have you a trustworthy daughter not all the kids
in the family are always trustworthy and you are like family,
you know, isn't it still that identity? Theft typically comes within,
like your family, easy access all that. So I like
the idea of having multiple eyeballs on it. And I mean,
you have to develop trust with your siblings and know
(33:48):
which ones can't be trusted and you love them, but
you know, like you said, you know their flaws and
all of that. I think that that's not the nicest feelings,
right I know my son right now, I mean like
he can't be trusted. He went to my mom's house
and purchased he's there right now. He purchased a whole
set of wooden trucks on Amazon. I was like that
(34:08):
that that is that's fraud for you. It's an elder scam.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
Oh my mom, he got that one click by he said,
click click click.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Oh he's only five, homeboy can read now he's dangerous.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Oh bye now, yes, smam, buy it right now.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
I have all the apps on my phone with us
require face to unlock.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Yes, yes, purchase to anything.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
You gotta watch out. He can't be k trust none.
None of them young kids know what you.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
Need to tell him. Is now you owe grandma this
money and you have to work. You have to work.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
You have to cancel the order.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Oh good, good good.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
You got to scare him straight. You got to be like,
how are you going to make two hundred dollars? Let's
now we have to talk about it. What are you
going to do because now you have to earn two
hundred dollars to pay for this, because Grandma's had to
pay for the money.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Got to come from somewhere. He I bet you he'll stop.
I bet you he'll stop.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
I know. I should get his uncle to like come
in his cop car and just like with a badge.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
Oh this is illegal.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
No, you don't got to go that far, baby, not yet.
Maybe when he's like thirteen, but five years old. Now,
just scare them, stray go. You gotta pay for it.
You bought it, you gotta pay. You buy it, you pay.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
You gotta sell some toys from your room. Let's go sell.
Let's go sell your bike. Are you gonna raise this money?
Speaker 3 (35:19):
And figure it out?
Speaker 2 (35:20):
You got to take the trash out. You gott to
mop the floors, you gotta clean your room. You gotta
start working and this out.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
They earn this path, the toilet seem all of it.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
No, but one thing I will add I think in
terms of like managing it, there is one thing that
I do that is a little bit time consuming, a manual.
I do it like every few months, which is I
have a spreadsheet in Google docs or Google Sheets, and
I shared it with all my siblings so they all
have the link. Everybody can access it, and it has
multiple tabs along the bottoms for each year so that
we've been doing this so they can see. What I
(35:49):
do is like I actually just document everybody's contributions, who
paid when, how much we funded, how much we added
to the account, how much the balances, and what our
goals are. So everything is kind of like in the sheet,
just as a high level overview, because I know everybody's
not going to be able to log into the account
and see everything that happened, so I just kind of
I want to document everything in case anybody ever, you know,
(36:09):
wants to kind of see, hey, what happened last year?
How much did we say or what did we hit
or it. Sometimes my siblings will say, like, like I
had one sister who was like, oh, I need to
pause contributions for a little while and then I'll kick
back in. But she's like, you know, in the process
of getting a house, all the cond stuff going on,
So if that happens, like again, I just document it
in the dock. I'm just like, okay, pause contributions for
these four months, pick back up over here, like so
(36:31):
that it's all.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
There and everybody just kind of knows.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
It's not necessarily to like put all the business out there,
but more so for accountability, for everyone to know that
this stuff is recorded somewhere and we can always go
back and see what happened when, and that.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
Way they know, you know, there's a place to go
to look at it.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Because when you have like legit investment accounts that are
managed by wealth managers or what have you, they will
send you quarterly statements and they will send you an
overview and a highlight of what happened and the fis
that you were charged and when money moved in and out,
and so I just kind of think it's important to
have one home base where everyone can.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Go to take a look.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
So that is just a spreadsheet and I just manually
updated it like every couple months.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Well, girl inspire me to be a better daughter. Let
me go kick my dad a couple bucks, buy yourself
something nice. Thank you Jan Nelly for taking that question.
Thank you Candace for sending in your question. Ba Fam.
We are always happy to get your questions. You can
DM me at Brand and Bishon Podcast on IG or
(37:28):
you can email me directly Brandabission Podcast at gmail dot com.
We'll see y'all next Friday for another Baqa Hi Bye,
okay va fam. Thank you so much for listening to
this week's show. I want to shout out to our
production team, Courtney, our editor, Carla, our fearless leader for
idea to launch productions. I want to shout out my
(37:49):
assistant Lauda Escalante and Cameron McNair for helping me put
the show together. It is not a one person project,
as much as I have tried to make it so
these past ten years. I need help, y'all, and thank
goodness I've been able to put this team around me
to support me on this journey and to y'all be
a fam. I love you so so so so much.
(38:12):
Please rate, review, subscribe, make sure you sign up to
the newsletter to get all the latest updates on upcoming episodes.
Our ten year anniversary celebrations to come, and until next time,
talk to you. Soon bea bye.
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