October 25, 2023 • 57 mins
Dying without the proper documents in place can cost your loved ones a ton of money! The latest research shows that probate can easily take a 3% to 7% bite out of your estate. And this is a topic that’s been on our minds for months since episode 704, when we had our wives on the podcast. We realized that the ladies might have a general idea of what to do if one of us died, but for the most part they would be rudderless since both of us handle the bulk of our finances in both of our families. That’s why we’re pumped to talk with Chanel Reynolds who has been on a mission for the past decade, to help folks do what she wished she’d done, before life takes a detour. Chanel founded GetYourShitTogther.org and she authored the book “What Matters Most”, both dedicated to help folks to prepare to face the inevitable reality of death. We discuss digital hygiene and staying organized with your accounts and passwords, key estate planning documents, using online software vs hiring an attorney, beneficiaries and transfer on death deeds, how to effectively approach conversations with family, funeral preparations, and much more!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Had of Money. I'm Joel and I am Matt,
and today we're talking preparing for the Unthinkable with Chanelle Reynolds. Yeah,
(00:27):
so this is a topic that's been on our minds,
like literally for months, because this past summer we recorded
an episode with our Wives that was episode seven oh four,
by the way, if you want to go back and listen,
and a listener had asked about our communication with our
wives and how involved they were with our finances, because
it's you know, it's really fun to dream work towards
the different big financial goals that we have, and then
(00:48):
of course the day to day discussions, right like what
was the water bill that month? How much money's left
in the entertainment category.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Those are the kind of convos that happened pretty automatically
as well. But given the fact that Joel and I
were both money nerds, it's no surprise that both of
us handle the bulk of our families finances. The logistics,
and that question did spotlight the fact that if something
terrible happened to one of us, that it might be
difficult for our wives to figure out how to take
(01:16):
the reins unless we made a plan for it and
so that's why we are honored to be talking with
Chanelle Reynolds, who has quite literally been on a mission
for the past decade to help folks do what she
wished that she had done before life takes a detour,
so we keep it clean here on the podcast. I'll
say that Chanelle founded get Your Shizz Together dot com,
(01:39):
she authored the book What Matters Most, and both are
dedicated to help folks face the inevitable reality of death. Chanelle,
thank you so much for taking the time to talk
with us today.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Thanks for having me here, of course.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Yeah, all right, So Chanel, the first question we ask
anybody who comes on the show, Matt and I. We
like to splurge. We spend more money than some people
think is reasonable on craft beer. But hey, we're doing
the right thing on the flip side of the equation.
We're saving and investing wisely and on purpose. We're fundling
a lot of money in that direction for our future selves.
What is it that you maybe spore John in the
(02:14):
here and now that some people might think is a
little outrageous.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
I love it. I'm I'm torn between saying fancy cheese,
which you know, growing up in the Midwest, we didn't
always have fancy cheese, and so now if I'm at
the store and there's like something perfectly adequate, but then
there's something that's smaller than four times as much, I'm like,
I want that one. It probably smells, yeah, like the
(02:40):
dirty feet of angels, but I love it.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
The more the more cavities and crystallized salts that there
are in any hard cheese, the more I'm drawn to it.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Yeah, exactly exactly that. Or or a pair of boots
like my winter leather boots, if there's a nice well
sale even it's hard to say now.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Interesting both of those are somehow related to feet stinky.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
I had never put that together before.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Give me a thing to that well. Thank you, Thank
you for sharing that. And we do want to spend
some time talking about your story in your book. It's
less of like a workbook where you're being super practical,
and it's just an incredible narrative where you're sharing your
story with the reader, but also walking folks who might
be entering into a situation like that through just the
(03:32):
headspace of kind of what to expect. Honestly, we hate
to bring up what must be the worst day of
your life but can you tell us a little bit
about the accident that changed everything for you?
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well it was, you know, about a
dozen years ago when my late husband Jose and I
had a growing family and younger kids, and our son
was just about to get he was just about to
go into kindergarten actual and we'd done the thing that many,
(04:03):
you know, younger growing families do is, you know, childcare
costs were super expensive. We bought up bought a home that,
you know, a bit of a stretch home that we
were going to be in for a while. And so
for those handful of years where we were stretching and
you know, many costs were high, we we hadn't done
(04:26):
some of the basic things that we knew of these
like small incremental decisions of like buying the stinky cheese,
let's say. And what happened was I was over at
a friend's house with my son and went to get
my phone out of my purse to take a picture,
and notice there are all these calls from numbers I
didn't recognize, and my husband had been in an accident,
(04:49):
he had been taken to the hospital, and the tone
of voice on the voicemail and the lack of information
I was getting told me that something was very, very wrong.
So I made it to the hospital. He was in
the er. He had already been there for a couple
(05:10):
of hours, and people are trying to find me. He
had one hundred machines hooked up to him and tubes everywhere,
and the er doc said that he had a fifty
to fifty chance, and so that seemed better to me
than what I had feared most. And then he said, actually,
should I need you to listen? If he doesn't die
(05:32):
at any second, The paramedics thought he was going to
be a doa. If he's stable enough to get into surgery,
there's maybe a fifty to fifty chance he can make
it off the table alive. And that's when I realized
that no matter what happened, whether he lived or died,
and there was a fifty to fifty chance apparently of
either that his life, my life, our lives were changed forever.
(05:56):
And after a week he did. My late husband was
a stubborn man, so he defied the odds as long
as any body could. And after a week in the
er and the ICU, all of the tests came back
that his injuries were unrecoverable, and I made the decision
(06:20):
that I knew he would want because we'd had some
but not all, of these conversations and plans in place
to remove what was then medical intervention rather than life support.
And during that week in the hospital trying to just
figure out what was going on and trying to take
care of our son and stepdaughter, became clear to me
(06:45):
that there were these hundreds of questions that came up,
simple things like do you have your health insurance card?
To what are the phone numbers to some of his
family members, to do you have your affairs in order?
And when the social worker asked me if we had
affairs in order, it's just a phrase. Seems silly still
to me. I kind of giggled, but then was very
(07:05):
happy to say, yes, we did our wills and all
of our stuff. And then a few moments later, as
I was walking back into his room, I realized that
we did get all of our wills done and they
were sitting in my inbox and had been for a
few months waiting to be finalized and signed. So some
(07:27):
of the things that we had done, like having some
but not enough life insurance, really did kind of offer
that life boat for you know, as a bridge from
the life we had to whatever the heck my life
was going to be now. And some of the things
we didn't do, like knowing passwords to phones. It took
(07:49):
me dozens of hours to try to access something or
get a phone turned back on. And you know, to
this day, I still don't know if he bought bitcoin
in two thousand and nine because I can't find the information.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
So you talked about having some of those conversations already
with your late husband about kind of what to do
if you're severely injured. You talked about life insurance, talked
about getting most of the way done on your wills.
Where would you rate yourself on like a financial preparedness spectrum?
Because you thought when she asked a question, oh yeah,
(08:25):
I'm good, we've done the stuff. But you realize after
the fact, what you think, There's a lot of stuff
I didn't realize needed to be done.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Yeah, exactly. So you know, there's milestones that happen in
our lives where somebody responsible or reliable or pediatrician or
parents tell us Okay, now it's time to get your
wills done, or now it's time to get life insurance,
and so we've done some of those long term i'd say,
(08:52):
kind of generic things. So the fifty percent of the
stuff i'd say was was primarily more like for that long,
faraway future inevitable, you know, surrounded by our grandchildren on
a lake in our you know, deathbed, laughing at jokes
or something. But we hadn't really and that's even that's
(09:14):
a challenging thing to do. You know, fifty percent of
us adults don't have wills done, don't have advanced care
directives or living wills done, and without some urgency or
a trigger in some case, or an accident, we don't
know how much it hurts until we see it or
(09:36):
we live through it in some ways. So the parts
that surprised me, i'd say, and I would not give
us one hundred percent marks on having everything done in advance,
but what we had done made such a difference. Some
of the things like, you know, an emergency fund. We
know that it can be hard just to get through
(09:58):
the month paying the bills that we have, much less
saving for an emergency, but having an emergency fund really
does and did offer some kind of cushioned just to
be able to figure out what's going on, or you know,
let's say in somebody's situation, by a plane ticket to
go visit a family member, that kind of thing. But
(10:20):
you know, like the what if stuff, What if something happens,
what would I want or need for the next twenty
four to forty eight hours, What would I want or
need for a few weeks? Or what if that what
if thing is? What's happening now? How prepared am I
and passwords, phone numbers, emergency contact plans, Having like an
(10:41):
extra key outside of the house so someone could go
feed the dog, so the dog wouldn't eat the couch.
You know, just some of these things keep life moving
somewhat forward. When a big bomb gets dropped in your life,
whether it's a disastrous accident like in my case, or
(11:03):
you know, a diagnosis or illness in the family, some
of these things we know we'll find us one day
or another totally.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
I mean, you mentioned the emergency fund, and what that
is is it's margin. It's financial margin in your life.
But I like a lot of the things that you're
talking about are about creating wiggle room and margin just
within your actual life, like not even when it comes
to the finances, like you talking about the key thing.
I'm just like, oh, yeah, that's just smart. It seems wise,
(11:32):
it seems prudent. But oftentimes, like you said, we're always
thinking of the best potential outcomes for our lives. I
noticed in your Twitter profile, I think I saw optimist
in there, which is we Oftentimes when we are more optimistic,
we don't necessarily think that, oh, these are necessary precautions
that we should take. It's almost a matter of waking
(11:54):
up to the reality that this might definitely happen.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Absolutely, I am a serial optimist. Even even during like
the lowest lowest lows, I'm still grateful that I have
today and making these small incremental choices, you know, And
I definitely understand like the buy the coffee type of philosophy,
like we want we should be able to enjoy what
(12:18):
we're doing and have some joy in our lives and
balancing those with our financial priorities. And so we've done
okay in the past with our financial priorities. Not perfect.
And what I learned from that experience is when you
don't have those things that you wish you could turn to,
(12:40):
like you can't buy life insurance after you're dead, it's
hard to build up an emergency fund while you're in
the middle of an emergency and you need a little
bit of flexibility and breathing room.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Talk to me about how you guys divvied up kind
of the financial responsibilities in the household. The reality is
in relationships, it's like a ninety ten sort of split, right,
And I guess would you recommend that people split those
a little more evenly, or at least let their partner
in more on kind of the realities of what the
household financial management looks like, so that they're not completely
(13:16):
out to lunch when or if, you know, the worst
thing happens to their partner's spouse.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Yeah. Absolutely. You know, my late husband and I had,
you know, different strengths. He was kind of the tech
guy and the password guy, and I was happy to
let him do that. I was much better at other things.
And so, you know, having transparency and communication I think
(13:42):
is really huge shared responsibility, shared energy going into your finances.
You know, someone might really enjoy the cooking of the meals,
someone else might really enjoy getting free heyat in the spreadsheets,
and you know, optimizing and moving things around. So I
think that's great and I wouldn't necessarily suggest someone who
(14:06):
can't stand to look at a spreadsheet or or a
financial statement all of a sudden take on fifty percent,
because it has to be fifty to fifty, but.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
With tooth picks in their eyes.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
And but communication and transparency, so you know, there's been
a number of ways people have been able to share information,
whether it's a checklist or a spreadsheet. There are much better,
more usable, easier to share password managers or online fault
(14:36):
So my partner and I now we have what we
call our monthly CFO meeting, and we sit down for
an hour and we talk about what you had mentioned earlier,
how much was the water bill? But also what are
our financial priorities do? I have all of the information,
(14:57):
and we update our shared password manager. So if something
were to happen, and let's say it's a four hour
close call and I needed to be gone for a
weekend and my partner would want to pay a bill
or access something, they know where that is and I
would know where their other information is. So now sexy
(15:19):
future bonding intimate conversation is talking about like life insurance
beneficiaries in my household. To be totally honest, and it
really is an opportunity to talk about wanting your partner
to be okay no matter what, want you wanting to
be okay, no matter what, building a loving future for
(15:43):
however long that future is for you together or your family,
and then whoever whoever moves forward in that future. Because women,
in particular, eight out of ten women and hetero relationships
are going to live longer than their male partners or husbands.
(16:03):
And so I think it's really important that we have
these conversations, not just hey, babe, what's the Netflix password today?
Speaker 1 (16:13):
That's the most important thing.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Well, sometimes it is. If there's a new show coming
out and you got to see it, you're like, it's the.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Finale, funny clamoring for the David Beckham.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
See whatever that is that could be that could actually
be a financial life raft. Right there is sharing the password,
but to the future as well. So you know some
of those mundane admin you know, family household stuff. You know,
my son knows he's the legacy contact for some of
my digital files, and he also likes to crack jokes
(16:51):
on Mother's Day that he knows how much my life
insurance policy is and like you can't kill me and
still be a beneficiary. But there's a level of transparency
and communication which which for me takes a lot of
that fear and a lot of that worry, and for
(17:11):
a lot of people the wonder, like the wondering what
would happen if something happened? I know or I know
nineteen answers out of twenty and it's incredibly wildly reassuring
to me.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Sure, well, I like how you're kind of diving into
simple practical matters and you know, we're talking a lot
about passwords, but how do you go about doing that?
Like where do you write down the login info for
just all your different online accounts, whether you are talking
about Netflix or Hulu or a retirement account, because that's
a really important part not only identifying which accounts exist,
(17:45):
but also how to go about logging in. How is
it that you're able to keep that safe but also
accessible to those that you want to have it?
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Yeah, definitely. I think there's two questions to ask yourself
about what is going to make a successful digital hygiene
kind of plan for you and what's going to have
a successful way to manage and share or hand off
your digital assets. One of them is what system do
(18:14):
you already use that maybe works, and what's a system
that you're actually going to maintain, and then who is
it that you are wanting to share this information with. So,
for example, with my parents, I had purchased one of
the more expensive kind of concierge organized much easier to
(18:38):
use online vaults and storage, and they wouldn't use it.
They wouldn't use it. They wouldn't use it, like, can
I send someone to your house to set it up
for you? They can bring some pie it just the
answer was yes, of course, honey, this sounds great, and
they never used it. So if I'm trying to communicate
(19:00):
information to my parents or a generation of people, or
somebody who thinks password managers aren't safe no matter what,
or they're just not going to use it, I have
my own password manager and there's a number of them,
you know. Some of the ones that have been highest
on review lists are Bitwarden and one password. I had
(19:22):
used last Pass for a number of years until there
were security breaches recently and the communication around them I
didn't like, so I decided to move. I'm not affiliated
with any one of them. There are you know, there's
your Google Drive or there's an Excel spreadsheet. People who
are good at and want to take care of, you know,
(19:44):
they have their own system. You can create a safe
or safer way to track your most important, most important
passwords and accounts, and if you are going to hand
them off to somebody who is not computer savvy or
won't log into the password manager to get the email
that says you know, you're the legacy contact and then
(20:06):
they accept it. In some cases, I just have a
folder and it's in my little waterproof, fireproof case. And
every year or so when I see family, I hand
off to my you know mom, now the updated folder
with the spreadsheet, and my brother and my partner are
(20:29):
my digital powers of attorney. And so that makes me,
it makes me feel reassured that if something were to
happen and I didn't log into my password manager account
after a certain amount of time, they would get an
email and they would be able to access the files
(20:49):
that I've given them access to, so nothing will get lost.
Right like when it comes to your analog or your
digital stuff in your house for when you need somebody
to come in and help you or pay bills or
find something. There's absolutely things you don't want to get lost.
(21:10):
You don't want your four O one K drifting off
into the ether somewhere and nobody ever knows where it
is and nobody ever gets it. And they are more
gazillions of dollars out there that are unclaimed. My impression
of the many insurance companies that are out there is
(21:31):
they're not probably prioritizing finding people who haven't filed claims
to get the money back from them. So we want
our friends and family to find the things we want
them to find, and also maybe not find everything. Right.
There might be a special box somewhere of who knows,
like really embarrassing journals when you wrote poetry, or some
(21:53):
more consenting adult type things that you might not want
your mother or your children to find. So you might
want to have a plan for who comes and takes
care of what, not just your digital files, but also
like who you want to have your you know, Elvis
impersonator outfit collection too.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
How did you know Matt's Stark's secret?
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Yeah, you know, I wasn't going to out him, but
it seems like you just did.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Yeah, sorry, Matt. Well, yeah, it's one thing to have
the insurance policy. It's another thing to communicate effectively to
your loved ones. Then it exists, so they can you know,
tap those funds when or if the need arises. And
you know, we've got more questions were going to get
to h with. You want to talk about wills, life insurance,
powers of attorney, beneficiaries, A bunch of questions on those fronts.
(22:41):
We'll get to that and more right after this.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
All right, we are back from the break talking with
Chanelle Reynolds, and we've kind of talked about I guess
thinking through I guess how it is you're going to
kind of line up some of that information, who it
is that you want to leave some of that information too.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Let's talk more about the legal side of things. Let's
talk about the state planning documents, specifically, how can folks
go about planning in the first place? Yeah, can you
maybe provide a good overview of some of the legal
documents that need to be in place?
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Definitely so, in my opinion and the opinion of many
other financial and attorneys who deal with the state planning,
anybody who's eighteen or older should have some basic documents
in place, and it doesn't have to be expensive, and
it doesn't have to take more than you know, maybe
a couple of hours. So it's just an important thing
(23:42):
to start working into the speck of your life. The
same way we go to the dentist and we you know,
replace our furnace filters and we get mammograms. It's just
part of the maintenance. So if we kind of take
the scary way and just make it maybe like a
boring tax I feel like it might be easier for
us to do. In general, one of the things that
(24:06):
any attorney who you would talk to about estate planning,
any question you ask, generally, the first response back is
it depends, and it does. It depends on a number
of things, like which state you live in. You know,
there are many as we you know here in the
news and know from maybe personal experience, laws vary from
(24:29):
state to state, and that's true also when it comes
to estate planning and probate. So that's what happens if
you die without a will, which you should not want, and.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
That's when the state ends up making decisions for you
that when you could have made those decisions ahead.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Of time exactly exactly. And so for some people, if
you're married and you live in a community property state
like let's say Washington State is and something happens, generally
the legally married spouse gets everything, and so for some
people that could be like a Okay, that's a pretty
good backup plan. That's what I would have wanted anyway.
(25:06):
So the cost of doing nothing is lower than perhaps
somebody who's still legally married, strange from their partner, who
and they have a really bad relationship with their family
and the last people on earth they would want talking
to doctors, being in a hospital room, or getting any
of their stuff or assets is their legal spouse or
(25:29):
anyone in their family. And so it can be devastating.
You know, we've heard stories about you know, people not
being let in the room and terrible, terrible arguments. But
most foundational state planning packets have three documents. One is
(25:50):
your will and that's who gets your stuff after you die,
and other important decisions like guardianship, who you would want
to be a guardian for your children, your pets, or
I worked with somebody who had a really extensive plant
a collection, and so there was like there was a
guardianship plan for the for the plants. I'm like, that's brilliant.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Yeah, so now it's.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Right. So now it's kids, pets, or plants, and and
you name somebody as your executor who is basically the
project manager of that will, and they have a legal
financial fiduciary responsibility to follow the instructions in your will
and audit your estate, pay legitimate debts, and then distribute
(26:37):
the assets like you said, like I want, of course
Matt to have my Elvis impersonator outfits, and Joel gets
my Abba vinyl collection.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Yeah, everybody knows that definitely.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
And so so that's one important document. One is the
power of attorney, and that's somebody who speaks for you
or can help you out pay bills, help organize your
life when you're not necessarily at an end of life situation.
So that could be it's often comes in handy, or
it can be a really hopeful document if you have
(27:13):
aging family member or parent. There are dementia provisions. Over
the last few years people brought out and activated and
used their power of attorney document. Let's say, if you
had COVID and you were very ill or intubated in
a hospital for a few weeks or a month, that
can be really handy, so paperwork in life can still
(27:35):
move forward. The third document is called an advanced care
directive or a living will, and those are your wishes
and instructions that you give in advance as directly as
possible about the kind of care you do and don't
want at the end of your life. So an example
(27:56):
would be someone goes into hospice, you have a medical advocate,
someone who can communicate with family or doctors or whoever,
and say, you know, Chanelle and I talked about this.
I have her piece of paper right here, I'm the
person named. And she absolutely didn't want Abba playing. She
absolutely wanted led Zeppelin playing, So turn the radio station
(28:19):
to the Zeppelin radio station, and or Chanelle had said,
this is these are her quality of life priorities where
she's at right now. I know she would not want
to do an invasive surgery with little chance of actually
getting better, and her final days would be in pain
rather than more present. And she wants fewer days, but
(28:43):
better ones rather than lots of bad days.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Which is even more important. I mean as advances in
technology and medicine continue, that's something like there are more
and more options.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Available to focus. Patrie Bush is usually to extend life
no matter what, regardless of the quality of life.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Yeah, I think that's really import and really stands out
to me.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Yeah, exactly. Well, and I'll say, you know, and this
was a dozen years ago, that week that my late
husband spent in the er and the ICU, and we
didn't know, but the difference between do everything possible to
keep him alive until I get to the hospital to
those first few days where I'm like, please, please, please
let him live no matter what. Those last few days
(29:26):
there was a very big shift that happened, and I
was scared that he would have to be stuck like this,
and he was. He never regained consciousness, He could never
participate in the world in any way at all. It
was way past his quality of life. His injuries were unrecoverable.
And after a week in the er and the ICU,
(29:50):
and this is, you know, twelve years ago or more,
it costs like three hundred and fifty thousand dollars or more,
I believe it for that week in the hospital. And
had we not had healthcare, had you know, they're not
been all of these other things in place, that medical debt,
(30:11):
that amount of like you know, the bills. I started
measuring them not in in numbers of pages, but inches
there was like four or five inches of those like
you know, those medical statements that you get, and I
had to get like two binders because it wouldn't fit
in one binder. So quality of life is important. And
I certainly don't want to say, you know, cost equals care,
(30:33):
but it is really really, really really expensive. And if
you know somebody doesn't want something, it's really important to
have that information from them. So advance care directive you
give your directions in advance to people about your care.
And each of those documents, often people will name their
(30:56):
spouse or their you know, their primary person as the
main person, the power of attorney, the executor of the will,
and the medical advocate. And that's great, and that's a
great option. You should always list a backup in case
that person, let's say, is you know, in the Grand
Canyon and off the grid for two weeks and you
don't know where they are. You need a backup. And
(31:21):
I have worked with and talked with many people who
are like, I absolutely don't want my partner to have
to handle all the finances. I'm going to hire somebody
or I'm going to ask my good friend who's an
accountant to help with that and you know, with transparency
and communication. But I will say, during those months after
(31:44):
my husband died, I had a young kid who I
was trying to get to school on time. There were
some days if I could like get up and find
pants and get my son to school on time and
make one phone call, I was killing it. So it's
a overwhelmed amount of stuff to do. And you can
spread that overwhelming amount of stuff to do. You can
(32:06):
spread that love around to people who might be better
at being a financial power of attorney.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Yeah. And one of the things you say is that
doing this stuff, not having done this stuff ahead of time,
it makes a hard time harder. And so the things
that we can do on the front end and help
to alleviate some of those pain points on the back end.
And you also say something about like it eliminates hundreds
of hours of work that a few hours on the
front end can really alleviate like many, many, many dozens
(32:34):
of hours on the back end. Talk to me too
about maybe where lawyers fit into this, or where online
services fit in. So, for instance, getting life insurance that's
often something you can do online pretty easily, or wills
if you have a simpler kind of family situation, you
might be able to do that from a DIY perspective
(32:55):
at a site like trust and Will or free will
or something like that, in which case is a lawyer
nes to And when do people? Are people able to
do it themselves online?
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Yeah? Definitely. So there are more and more online options.
They offer state by state templates, and they kind of
wizard you through the process like a turbo tax, but
for your will. And for a lot of folks who
don't have property out of state, who don't have more
(33:24):
than a few million dollars in assets, and with home
prices being crazy, if your aunt is going to give
you her house and she bought a beautiful place in
the Bay Area one hundred years ago, you probably that's
probably going to be worth more. If you don't have complicated,
let's say, like a blended family situation or an overly
(33:47):
litigious family member, if you don't have international citizenship, most
many people using an online template is just fine for them.
I would say that one of the things that happens
is we really really want to make these perfect documents.
(34:10):
We want to have thought of every possible scenario, every
possible edge case, and that can sometimes get us restuck
in the process of getting it done. So for me,
I think it's most important to think about what's most
important to you. Is it that your legal spouse is
the one who is still on paper, is the one
(34:33):
who's going to talk for you and get all of
your assets, update a few of your documents, and name
somebody else as your medical advocate. Are you a solo
parent and your biggest concern is guardianship of your children?
Fill out a guardianship paper. You can do these things
(34:54):
kind of bit by bit. You don't have you know,
you can eat the elephant off your chest to bite
at a time. And for those folks who spending the
thousand couple thousand dollars to work with an attorney, you
may not know what you don't know, and this is
the attorney's job. You can talk to a few They
(35:15):
usually offer free consultations for you know, twenty thirty minutes,
and ask them how they charge and what they charge,
and you know you're going to probably get a much better,
much more comprehensive plan if you talk to an attorney,
if you're not going to, if you don't need to,
if you had a bad experience with an attorney and
(35:35):
you just won't. And those online options can cost anywhere
from free for a very very basic simple will to
a few hundred dollars. And you can also get now
some basic trust packages. And that's for folks who if
we want to talk about like beneficiary designations and handing
(35:57):
off assets. One of the reasons why we do all
of this stuff is because I think most importantly it
saves our family and friends those couple hundred extra hours
of anguish trying to figure out where stuff is, who
gets what. You know, like your weird neighbor Bob won't
(36:18):
come over and steal the lawnmower, or if it does,
you can go back and get it because you're like Bob,
you're screwed. It's not yours. So it can make that
really really hard time maybe just a bit softer for
family members. Also, when it comes to like money transfer,
all of your assets that go through a will, it
(36:40):
takes you know, it can take on average about a
year and hundreds of hours. And also you know some
of your assets are subject to federal inheritance tax, a
state tax, different things. So a trust or naming beneficiaries
on all of your financial account is one way to
(37:02):
simplify your estate dramatically, so the stuff left in like
in your will, is going to be an easier process.
It's you know, the Elvis costumes and the ABA vinyl
and not necessarily who gets the million dollar life insurance policy?
And then people start fighting over the house.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Well, talk to me real quick about beneficiaries, because don't
those typically supersede what your will states, right, So you
might think you're covered by putting the right thing in
the will, But let's say you're four to one K, Well,
you never updated the beneficiary from ten years ago when
you left all your money your best friend, and guess
what now you're married and you want your partner to
have that money. So yeah, how important is it to
go in there and update the beneficiaries in the back
(37:46):
end of those retirement accounts?
Speaker 3 (37:47):
So important? Right, Like in the case you just mentioned,
you want your spouse, not maybe your best friend who
tried to date your spouse, you know, to get the
money and absolutely right. So if you listed somebody twenty
years ago on a four to oh one K that
you started and then totally forgot about, and then next
week spend a gazillion dollars on like the best will
(38:10):
in the entire world, but forgot about that that person
you named twenty years ago is the one who will
get it. So yes, transfer on death, payable on death.
They trump the will, They beat the will. And nearly
every financial account we all have has the option or
(38:30):
the you can have a beneficiary designation. You're a four
oh one K, you're checking, you're saving your investments often
you know, stocks, pretty much anything you have. And then
the other things that people can sometimes forget about is
your life insurance policy. That is a transfer or payable
(38:50):
on death account. It is immediately transferred to the person
who's named as a beneficiary, and in about two thirds
of states there's also as on death deed option, and
the process for that is, you know, essentially going to
a county office and writing up some paperwork. That isn't
(39:12):
quite as easy as going to your online account and
updating your beneficiaries on your you know, your credit union
account online, which takes about five minutes. It's a little
bit more of a process. But for many, many people,
we have a life insurance policy, we have whatever savings
we have, and for many folks, our homes are the
biggest assets we have, and it isn't the perfect solution
(39:35):
for everyone, and there may or may not be tax implications.
But if but for many people they don't know that
they can do a transfer on death deed, and then
that house would be transferred to somebody else, and then
you know, and that's not even really talking about joint
accounts and how joint accounts are often treated differently when
it comes to after somebody dies as well.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Yeah, and you're talking about how the vary from state
to state, and we're talking about wills here. I was
surprised to learn in your book too, you talk about
I think they're called holographic wills, which I did not know.
This was the thing that literally, if you write it
out in your own handwriting, it's completely legal.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (40:14):
In something like half of half of states in the country.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
Yeah, and in some states. I haven't actually looked that
up in the last year or two. But a written
will still is legally binding. You still need to have
generally two witnesses see you sign the will and they
sign it with you. Those holographic or those written wills
are often less contested and I think more originally created
(40:41):
an allowance for when it comes to people at war
time or on hospital beds, So I wouldn't if you
spent you know, a ton of money coming up with
like a really bomb proof state plan in one of
those like leather bound things, and then somebody shows up like,
oh no, they wrote this on this post it note
and they said I should have it all like that
(41:02):
may not actually be as water tight as you might think,
but but yeah, and you know, also I always get
in trouble when I say this, but you are not
legally required to have your will notarized for it to
be legally binding. Is it a good idea? Yes? Do
attorneys say you should do it? Yes? Do I think
you should do it? Yes? You can hire a mobile
(41:25):
notary to come to your office or a coffee shop.
It helps make it even that much more secure. But
for a lot of folks, you know, choosing a guardian
can be a big hard blocker because it's hard to
do and executing that will, you know, like you and
your partner or you can't get to the bank with
(41:46):
the notary, and so that I think is one of
the reasons. Why Well that that's me making excuses. I'll say,
you know, it's a hurdle.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
It is indeed to be something that keeps you from
where the perfection is the enemy of the good enough.
And I like a lot of what you're saying here
is just truly about getting the ball rolling. And I
think more of our listeners in particular could are benefiting
from hearing this conversation because they're thinking, Man, I don't
have to have it perfect. It doesn't need to be
perfectly buttoned up. Don't let that be the enemy a
good where it's never gonna ever change. It's like, this
(42:16):
is something that we can revisit. Like you said, this
is something as long as you get the ball rolling,
that can go a really long ways. But we've got
a few more questions for you here, Chanelle, in particular,
just kind of navigating some of the relational waters. Sometimes
they can get murky. We'll get to those right after this.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
All right, let's keep going, Matt, we are talking with
Chanelle Reynolds. Were talking about preparing for the unthinkable, planning
for on certain life events, things that we hope don't
come to pass. But the reality is we're not promised tomorrow.
And so, Chanelle, I guess when you were talking earlier,
it made me think about not just preparing for my self,
(43:00):
for my family, my wife, my kids. But they made
me think about my parents, and they are in their
upper sixties, and I don't know where any of their
stuff is. Like, I know a few things because we've
talked about and I've helped them with some of their
retirement planning and stuff like that, so I know kind
of roughly where they stand on some of these things.
But if if something were to incapacitate one of them,
(43:21):
like I think, I would be up the creek. I
wouldn't know where to go. So do you have any
tips for talking to a loved one, a parent specifically
about some of these things and how to you're talking
about your parents trying to lead a horse to water, right,
how do you actually help make sure that your parents
are prepared and so that you're intern prepared when when
(43:42):
or if something happens to them.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
Yeah. Absolutely, it's such a good question. And you know,
depending on your family, people can meet with different levels
of enthusiasm we'll call it, when bringing up the subject
with their parents and for personal reas religious reasons, cultural reasons,
emotional reasons, childhood trauma reasons. Who knows, like it can
(44:05):
be a really uncomfortable topic. So one thing. There are
a few suggestions I have. One is if you start
with you, that can be a good place. For example,
for about five years after my late husband died, I
would pretty much run around and put anyone like an
a half Nelson and try to shame them to getting
(44:26):
their estate plans together. And was that really motivating and
successful plan? Now? It wasn't. When I would say to
my close friends or my close family members, or my
parents and my brother, hey I updated all of my
documents again, that creates an opportunity to say, hey, this
(44:49):
just reminds me, I don't know where your current documents are.
I don't know exactly what you'd want or how I
can make sure I know what you want, so I
can make sure you get that. Yeah, and so like that.
That can be a great way to turn it into
like a gift and a sharing rather than an obligation.
(45:09):
You know, going up to your parents as I probably
did however long ago, and saying, so, you guys are
getting older, do you have your wills done? Like that
may be the best way to do it. Also, the
same guilt route, the shame guilt route, you know, it
might work in other families. And then one thing too,
is that it can be it's often not just one
(45:32):
conversation some people. You know, if you bring up the
topic of like, hey, let's talk about you know, your
end of life or your funeral plans. Do you want
to be you know, recomposed? Do you want to be cremated?
I know we've got the family plot somewhere. More more
often than people might expect, the conversation blossoms quickly and openly,
(45:56):
and it can be such a huge reassurance. Sometimes people
aren't immediately interested in having that conversation, so you know,
come at it from a few different entry points. Is
it like I want to be able to advocate for you?
Is it tell me some stories about what's most important
to you. One of the things that often happens when
(46:19):
parents or somebody is getting to the point where they
may not be able to live independently or in the
home that they're in right now. Often the first question
I get, or where people get the frustration energy centers
is on what do I do with all the stuff?
(46:39):
And sometimes like they're like, well, I got to go
into the garage or I got to go in to
the basement and start throwing out all my parents' stuff,
and it's going to be really hard because my mom
or my dad is going to take the stuff out
of the truck and put it back inside. So rather
than starting with the detritus of our lives and our stuff,
I think it's so fascinating and so helpful to ask
(47:02):
what are the most important things to you? And so
if you had not one minute and not ten hours,
but if you had an hour in your house to
grab safely anything before the aliens arrive or a fire starts,
what would you get and take with you what's most
important to you in an hour? And then those are
(47:24):
the things that you know are the most important, And
then you can say, oh, so great, so tell me
more about how we can make sure your sister gets
this thing. So like starting with the important stuff rather
than starting with the fear or the worry or the
you know, boxes of national geographics from the seventies that
are in the attic can be a really good way
(47:47):
to start the conversation too.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
I love that it makes it more relational as well, right,
because then it's something that sparks conversation in stories from
the past that they then get to share with you.
My father in law, he's actually over time he's been
sending my kids letters with little notes, and literally yesterday
he sent he included track and field metal that he
(48:10):
won in high school that he shared with one of
my daughters specifically, and this is something he's been carrying
around for fifty years, right, and so it's obviously meant
something to him. And so the ability to kind of
share that with my daughter and kind of talk through
this was It makes the relationship that you have now
with that parent who is aging even richer, which I love.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
And I love that this is.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
Kind of the approach I think you're taking where you're
either just starting with you, you're asking some of these
questions knowing that this isn't a singular conversation that you're
going to have, but that it's something that might evolve
over time. And I think the same thing can be true.
And you know, we talked about living wills, healthcare directives,
that kind of thing too. But even when it comes
to funeral plans, because I think oftentimes it's just one
(48:57):
of those morbid topics and folks don't really want to
spend time talking about that at all, but that can
having brought that up can provide so much relief to
those who have to make some pretty heavy decisions afterwards.
Speaker 3 (49:09):
Right absolutely. So, you know, I think back to when
I had spent that week in the hospital, we'd removed
medical support. The only thing in my head at that
moment was you know, going home and having to tell
my son that his dad's body died, and I didn't
even know how to say that or like how the
(49:30):
words would come out of my mouth. And then leaving
the hospital, I had no idea that I would have
to pick a funeral home right away. I had no
idea that you had about you know, twenty four or
forty eight hours before the body now you know, I
had to get moved to somewhere, And at that point
(49:50):
it had been a week for me in the hospital.
Other people have spent you know, years managing a diagnosis
or months in hospice, and we hadn't really thought about
what happens after you die. I knew he didn't want
to be buried and wanted to be cremated. I had
some of the information, but I was not ready or
prepared or even had any idea that funeral plans, death care,
(50:14):
and after death plans are like right now, it's like,
oh okay, there are more options too than we realized that.
You know, in a number of states there is a
recomposition body recomposting or composting process that's legal in a
few states, and more and more are signing on. There's aquamation,
(50:36):
so talking about what's important and you know, whether that's
being buried in your Elvis impersonator outfit or whether that's
you know, having somebody bring your body home or be
home for a day. There are a number of things
you can do. You just have more options, which is
which is really great. And you know, somebody could say
(50:56):
I had no idea that I didn't just get to
pick animation or burial, and now you've got a beautiful
plot buried under a tree. You never know.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
Yeah, that is interesting to because I always think of
it as literally the two options, do you want to
be cremated or do you want to be buried? But yeah,
it's the options seem to have expanded these days, so
those those conversations are important to have too. Chanel, thank
you so much for joining us on the show today.
Where can our listeners find out more about you, what
you're up to and even have like checklists and resources
(51:30):
on your website to help people kind of start to
have these conversations and do the things that need to
be done to be fully prepared.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
Right, definitely. Yeah, you can go to Chanelle Reynolds dot com,
which has got all of the information about get your
stuff together, and I have free checklists, you can get
the book, and I also offer classes and workshops. Once
the pandemic hit and we were all home, all lot
(51:57):
of my classes and workshops and talks moved on line
and now I can do classes with you know, groups
of people from all over the country, which is really fun.
So yeah, check out my website or send me a
note through the website and I'd be happy to chat
with anyone as well.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
Love it. Chanelle, thank you so much for talking with
us today.
Speaker 3 (52:15):
Thank you so much. It's such a great conversation. Really
appreciate it. Joel and Matt, thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (52:19):
All right, Matt, that was a that's a great combo
with Chanelle and just such an important conversation. Oh my god, right, crucial,
and it's to me. It gives me the information that
I need to actually get the ball rolling, but also
kind of the swift kick to the pants that it's
going to take for me to actually get some of
these things done too.
Speaker 2 (52:36):
Yeah, well, what's interesting. We kind of chatted with her
quickly after we hung up there, but one of the
things she didn't include in her story was the fact
was how her husband died and the fact like he
was biking, he was bicycling, And it's one of the
things that drew us to her story. This is something
that we do all the time, and so we're often
drawn towards the urgent and not necessarily the things that
(52:57):
are really important to have in place. Until you're faced
with us story like this, we can see yourself in
that situation. And I mean literally we like we're the
same age as she and her husband about a decade ago.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Right, Okay. One of the things she said, too, right
if we wrapped away, was how much you could save
by doing the right thing on the on the front end, right.
So having the will right it avoids some of those
potential legal costs, some of the costs you might the
court costs of the lawyer fees. So if you are frugal,
the right thing to do is to actually get some
(53:30):
of these things done. You might say, oh, I don't
want to pay the one hundred and eighty dollars to
get the will made, but that one hundred and eighty
dollars could save you thousands or tens of thousands of
dollars on the back end. So even though she didn't
actually say that, like during the podcast, you said it
right after we like when we were just chatting afterwards.
Well that's the financial argument. Yeah, And I'm like, all right,
That's my big takeaway from this conversation with Chanel was
(53:52):
just like, hey, guess what, Like, if you care about
the money you have worked your butt off to save
and invest, and you want to protect that inherentants for
future generations, for your spouse, for the people that you
that you love, and you want to inherit the things
that you've amasked in the case of the most unfortunate
event ever happening, then you're gonna want to plan ahead.
(54:12):
You're gonna want to get these things done even though
they cost money, exactly, and you want to do them
ahead of time.
Speaker 2 (54:16):
And I loved she kind of an analogy when we
were talking about emergency funds, and she was saying, it's
hard to scrape together an emergency fund when you're in
the middle of an emergency, and the same thing applies
when it comes to a lot of this end of
life stuff. But that's not my official big take a
lay when she was talking about digital hygiene and one
of the parameters that she put around how it is
(54:38):
that you should approach keeping up with your information and
passing along logins and accounts was going with systems that
you a already have in place or b that you
know are going to be successful because you can try
to take this giant bite out of something that you
think is, well, this is we got to do it
this way because this is how you're supposed to do it,
this is how it's going to be perfect. But the
fact is it needs to be something that you're actually
(55:00):
going to keep up with that's going to work for
whoever the intended audience is going to be.
Speaker 1 (55:05):
It's like the same thing with working out, like do
the workout routine that you know you can stick that
you're gonna stick with, not the one that's the most
ambitious exactly.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
So that was my big, big takeaway, and I think
that that can make this seem much more approachable to
a lot of folks out there.
Speaker 1 (55:17):
Agreed, but all right, let's get back to our beer.
You And by the way, she does have a lot
of info on her website that will yet you checklists,
literal great recommendations and so if you're like, all right,
I need someone to kind of hold my hand through this,
Chanelle is the right person to help you do that totally.
But yeah, yeah, let's get back to the beer. So
this one your time. It's called meg Levon American Imperial Red.
It's home brewed by our listener, Greg lives around the corner. Greg.
(55:39):
He's been telling me that he makes beer for a
long time and finally we're getting to try it. So
what are your thoughts on this one?
Speaker 4 (55:44):
This was so good.
Speaker 2 (55:45):
Yeah, I'll be honest, a lot of times when folks
are like, you gotta try my homebrew.
Speaker 1 (55:49):
It's okay, it tastes like arsenic sauce sometimes, all right, all.
Speaker 2 (55:51):
Right, but this being an Imperial Red, there is so
much stink and flavor in this thing. I mean, it's
it's really impressive. You've got such a strong backbone with
this being an imperial right, So no matter what, there's
gonna be a lot of flavors packed in there. But
you don't have too many reds and so just the
I would say, the floral notes that he's able to
kind of coax out of out of the malts in
(56:11):
order to make this red phenomenal. It's like an under
so good, underutilized style, and so it's fun.
Speaker 1 (56:17):
It's always fun to try something that's a little off
the wall, little little unique, and so Greg did a
great job with this beer. It's like roasty super impressed.
Oh yeah, it's some roasty, toasty, roasty notes where yeah,
it's piny, it's like caramel with a little bit of
citrus twist. And so it this kind of incredibly well balanced. Yes,
I would pay top dollar for this seriously greatly good beer.
(56:37):
Greg gave it to us for free, so big thanks
to Gregg. B We owe you a beer, Yes we do,
we do. And do I know who you are? I
don't know well last name. Thanks Thanks for letting us
try your beer on today's episode. This was Yeah, but Matt,
that's going to do it for this episode again. We'll
put links to all the important stuff in the show
notes up on our website at howtomoney dot com.
Speaker 2 (56:55):
That's right, buddy, So until next time, best Friends Out
and best Friends Out
Speaker 1 (57:13):
Cope sh
Welcome to Had of Money. I'm Joel and I am Matt,
and today we're talking preparing for the Unthinkable with Chanelle Reynolds. Yeah,
(00:27):
so this is a topic that's been on our minds,
like literally for months, because this past summer we recorded
an episode with our Wives that was episode seven oh four,
by the way, if you want to go back and listen,
and a listener had asked about our communication with our
wives and how involved they were with our finances, because
it's you know, it's really fun to dream work towards
the different big financial goals that we have, and then
(00:48):
of course the day to day discussions, right like what
was the water bill that month? How much money's left
in the entertainment category.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Those are the kind of convos that happened pretty automatically
as well. But given the fact that Joel and I
were both money nerds, it's no surprise that both of
us handle the bulk of our families finances. The logistics,
and that question did spotlight the fact that if something
terrible happened to one of us, that it might be
difficult for our wives to figure out how to take
(01:16):
the reins unless we made a plan for it and
so that's why we are honored to be talking with
Chanelle Reynolds, who has quite literally been on a mission
for the past decade to help folks do what she
wished that she had done before life takes a detour,
so we keep it clean here on the podcast. I'll
say that Chanelle founded get Your Shizz Together dot com,
(01:39):
she authored the book What Matters Most, and both are
dedicated to help folks face the inevitable reality of death. Chanelle,
thank you so much for taking the time to talk
with us today.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Thanks for having me here, of course.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Yeah, all right, So Chanel, the first question we ask
anybody who comes on the show, Matt and I. We
like to splurge. We spend more money than some people
think is reasonable on craft beer. But hey, we're doing
the right thing on the flip side of the equation.
We're saving and investing wisely and on purpose. We're fundling
a lot of money in that direction for our future selves.
What is it that you maybe spore John in the
(02:14):
here and now that some people might think is a
little outrageous.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
I love it. I'm I'm torn between saying fancy cheese,
which you know, growing up in the Midwest, we didn't
always have fancy cheese, and so now if I'm at
the store and there's like something perfectly adequate, but then
there's something that's smaller than four times as much, I'm like,
I want that one. It probably smells, yeah, like the
(02:40):
dirty feet of angels, but I love it.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
The more the more cavities and crystallized salts that there
are in any hard cheese, the more I'm drawn to it.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Yeah, exactly exactly that. Or or a pair of boots
like my winter leather boots, if there's a nice well
sale even it's hard to say now.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Interesting both of those are somehow related to feet stinky.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
I had never put that together before.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Give me a thing to that well. Thank you, Thank
you for sharing that. And we do want to spend
some time talking about your story in your book. It's
less of like a workbook where you're being super practical,
and it's just an incredible narrative where you're sharing your
story with the reader, but also walking folks who might
be entering into a situation like that through just the
(03:32):
headspace of kind of what to expect. Honestly, we hate
to bring up what must be the worst day of
your life but can you tell us a little bit
about the accident that changed everything for you?
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well it was, you know, about a
dozen years ago when my late husband Jose and I
had a growing family and younger kids, and our son
was just about to get he was just about to
go into kindergarten actual and we'd done the thing that many,
(04:03):
you know, younger growing families do is, you know, childcare
costs were super expensive. We bought up bought a home that,
you know, a bit of a stretch home that we
were going to be in for a while. And so
for those handful of years where we were stretching and
you know, many costs were high, we we hadn't done
(04:26):
some of the basic things that we knew of these
like small incremental decisions of like buying the stinky cheese,
let's say. And what happened was I was over at
a friend's house with my son and went to get
my phone out of my purse to take a picture,
and notice there are all these calls from numbers I
didn't recognize, and my husband had been in an accident,
(04:49):
he had been taken to the hospital, and the tone
of voice on the voicemail and the lack of information
I was getting told me that something was very, very wrong.
So I made it to the hospital. He was in
the er. He had already been there for a couple
(05:10):
of hours, and people are trying to find me. He
had one hundred machines hooked up to him and tubes everywhere,
and the er doc said that he had a fifty
to fifty chance, and so that seemed better to me
than what I had feared most. And then he said, actually,
should I need you to listen? If he doesn't die
(05:32):
at any second, The paramedics thought he was going to
be a doa. If he's stable enough to get into surgery,
there's maybe a fifty to fifty chance he can make
it off the table alive. And that's when I realized
that no matter what happened, whether he lived or died,
and there was a fifty to fifty chance apparently of
either that his life, my life, our lives were changed forever.
(05:56):
And after a week he did. My late husband was
a stubborn man, so he defied the odds as long
as any body could. And after a week in the
er and the ICU, all of the tests came back
that his injuries were unrecoverable, and I made the decision
(06:20):
that I knew he would want because we'd had some
but not all, of these conversations and plans in place
to remove what was then medical intervention rather than life support.
And during that week in the hospital trying to just
figure out what was going on and trying to take
care of our son and stepdaughter, became clear to me
(06:45):
that there were these hundreds of questions that came up,
simple things like do you have your health insurance card?
To what are the phone numbers to some of his
family members, to do you have your affairs in order?
And when the social worker asked me if we had
affairs in order, it's just a phrase. Seems silly still
to me. I kind of giggled, but then was very
(07:05):
happy to say, yes, we did our wills and all
of our stuff. And then a few moments later, as
I was walking back into his room, I realized that
we did get all of our wills done and they
were sitting in my inbox and had been for a
few months waiting to be finalized and signed. So some
(07:27):
of the things that we had done, like having some
but not enough life insurance, really did kind of offer
that life boat for you know, as a bridge from
the life we had to whatever the heck my life
was going to be now. And some of the things
we didn't do, like knowing passwords to phones. It took
(07:49):
me dozens of hours to try to access something or
get a phone turned back on. And you know, to
this day, I still don't know if he bought bitcoin
in two thousand and nine because I can't find the information.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
So you talked about having some of those conversations already
with your late husband about kind of what to do
if you're severely injured. You talked about life insurance, talked
about getting most of the way done on your wills.
Where would you rate yourself on like a financial preparedness spectrum?
Because you thought when she asked a question, oh yeah,
(08:25):
I'm good, we've done the stuff. But you realize after
the fact, what you think, There's a lot of stuff
I didn't realize needed to be done.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Yeah, exactly. So you know, there's milestones that happen in
our lives where somebody responsible or reliable or pediatrician or
parents tell us Okay, now it's time to get your
wills done, or now it's time to get life insurance,
and so we've done some of those long term i'd say,
(08:52):
kind of generic things. So the fifty percent of the
stuff i'd say was was primarily more like for that long,
faraway future inevitable, you know, surrounded by our grandchildren on
a lake in our you know, deathbed, laughing at jokes
or something. But we hadn't really and that's even that's
(09:14):
a challenging thing to do. You know, fifty percent of
us adults don't have wills done, don't have advanced care
directives or living wills done, and without some urgency or
a trigger in some case, or an accident, we don't
know how much it hurts until we see it or
(09:36):
we live through it in some ways. So the parts
that surprised me, i'd say, and I would not give
us one hundred percent marks on having everything done in advance,
but what we had done made such a difference. Some
of the things like, you know, an emergency fund. We
know that it can be hard just to get through
(09:58):
the month paying the bills that we have, much less
saving for an emergency, but having an emergency fund really
does and did offer some kind of cushioned just to
be able to figure out what's going on, or you know,
let's say in somebody's situation, by a plane ticket to
go visit a family member, that kind of thing. But
(10:20):
you know, like the what if stuff, What if something happens,
what would I want or need for the next twenty
four to forty eight hours, What would I want or
need for a few weeks? Or what if that what
if thing is? What's happening now? How prepared am I
and passwords, phone numbers, emergency contact plans, Having like an
(10:41):
extra key outside of the house so someone could go
feed the dog, so the dog wouldn't eat the couch.
You know, just some of these things keep life moving
somewhat forward. When a big bomb gets dropped in your life,
whether it's a disastrous accident like in my case, or
(11:03):
you know, a diagnosis or illness in the family, some
of these things we know we'll find us one day
or another totally.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
I mean, you mentioned the emergency fund, and what that
is is it's margin. It's financial margin in your life.
But I like a lot of the things that you're
talking about are about creating wiggle room and margin just
within your actual life, like not even when it comes
to the finances, like you talking about the key thing.
I'm just like, oh, yeah, that's just smart. It seems wise,
(11:32):
it seems prudent. But oftentimes, like you said, we're always
thinking of the best potential outcomes for our lives. I
noticed in your Twitter profile, I think I saw optimist
in there, which is we Oftentimes when we are more optimistic,
we don't necessarily think that, oh, these are necessary precautions
that we should take. It's almost a matter of waking
(11:54):
up to the reality that this might definitely happen.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Absolutely, I am a serial optimist. Even even during like
the lowest lowest lows, I'm still grateful that I have
today and making these small incremental choices, you know, And
I definitely understand like the buy the coffee type of philosophy,
like we want we should be able to enjoy what
(12:18):
we're doing and have some joy in our lives and
balancing those with our financial priorities. And so we've done
okay in the past with our financial priorities. Not perfect.
And what I learned from that experience is when you
don't have those things that you wish you could turn to,
(12:40):
like you can't buy life insurance after you're dead, it's
hard to build up an emergency fund while you're in
the middle of an emergency and you need a little
bit of flexibility and breathing room.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Talk to me about how you guys divvied up kind
of the financial responsibilities in the household. The reality is
in relationships, it's like a ninety ten sort of split, right,
And I guess would you recommend that people split those
a little more evenly, or at least let their partner
in more on kind of the realities of what the
household financial management looks like, so that they're not completely
(13:16):
out to lunch when or if, you know, the worst
thing happens to their partner's spouse.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Yeah. Absolutely. You know, my late husband and I had,
you know, different strengths. He was kind of the tech
guy and the password guy, and I was happy to
let him do that. I was much better at other things.
And so, you know, having transparency and communication I think
(13:42):
is really huge shared responsibility, shared energy going into your finances.
You know, someone might really enjoy the cooking of the meals,
someone else might really enjoy getting free heyat in the spreadsheets,
and you know, optimizing and moving things around. So I
think that's great and I wouldn't necessarily suggest someone who
(14:06):
can't stand to look at a spreadsheet or or a
financial statement all of a sudden take on fifty percent,
because it has to be fifty to fifty, but.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
With tooth picks in their eyes.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
And but communication and transparency, so you know, there's been
a number of ways people have been able to share information,
whether it's a checklist or a spreadsheet. There are much better,
more usable, easier to share password managers or online fault
(14:36):
So my partner and I now we have what we
call our monthly CFO meeting, and we sit down for
an hour and we talk about what you had mentioned earlier,
how much was the water bill? But also what are
our financial priorities do? I have all of the information,
(14:57):
and we update our shared password manager. So if something
were to happen, and let's say it's a four hour
close call and I needed to be gone for a
weekend and my partner would want to pay a bill
or access something, they know where that is and I
would know where their other information is. So now sexy
(15:19):
future bonding intimate conversation is talking about like life insurance
beneficiaries in my household. To be totally honest, and it
really is an opportunity to talk about wanting your partner
to be okay no matter what, want you wanting to
be okay, no matter what, building a loving future for
(15:43):
however long that future is for you together or your family,
and then whoever whoever moves forward in that future. Because women,
in particular, eight out of ten women and hetero relationships
are going to live longer than their male partners or husbands.
(16:03):
And so I think it's really important that we have
these conversations, not just hey, babe, what's the Netflix password today?
Speaker 1 (16:13):
That's the most important thing.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Well, sometimes it is. If there's a new show coming
out and you got to see it, you're like, it's the.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Finale, funny clamoring for the David Beckham.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
See whatever that is that could be that could actually
be a financial life raft. Right there is sharing the password,
but to the future as well. So you know some
of those mundane admin you know, family household stuff. You know,
my son knows he's the legacy contact for some of
my digital files, and he also likes to crack jokes
(16:51):
on Mother's Day that he knows how much my life
insurance policy is and like you can't kill me and
still be a beneficiary. But there's a level of transparency
and communication which which for me takes a lot of
that fear and a lot of that worry, and for
(17:11):
a lot of people the wonder, like the wondering what
would happen if something happened? I know or I know
nineteen answers out of twenty and it's incredibly wildly reassuring
to me.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Sure, well, I like how you're kind of diving into
simple practical matters and you know, we're talking a lot
about passwords, but how do you go about doing that?
Like where do you write down the login info for
just all your different online accounts, whether you are talking
about Netflix or Hulu or a retirement account, because that's
a really important part not only identifying which accounts exist,
(17:45):
but also how to go about logging in. How is
it that you're able to keep that safe but also
accessible to those that you want to have it?
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Yeah, definitely. I think there's two questions to ask yourself
about what is going to make a successful digital hygiene
kind of plan for you and what's going to have
a successful way to manage and share or hand off
your digital assets. One of them is what system do
(18:14):
you already use that maybe works, and what's a system
that you're actually going to maintain, and then who is
it that you are wanting to share this information with. So,
for example, with my parents, I had purchased one of
the more expensive kind of concierge organized much easier to
(18:38):
use online vaults and storage, and they wouldn't use it.
They wouldn't use it. They wouldn't use it, like, can
I send someone to your house to set it up
for you? They can bring some pie it just the
answer was yes, of course, honey, this sounds great, and
they never used it. So if I'm trying to communicate
(19:00):
information to my parents or a generation of people, or
somebody who thinks password managers aren't safe no matter what,
or they're just not going to use it, I have
my own password manager and there's a number of them,
you know. Some of the ones that have been highest
on review lists are Bitwarden and one password. I had
(19:22):
used last Pass for a number of years until there
were security breaches recently and the communication around them I
didn't like, so I decided to move. I'm not affiliated
with any one of them. There are you know, there's
your Google Drive or there's an Excel spreadsheet. People who
are good at and want to take care of, you know,
(19:44):
they have their own system. You can create a safe
or safer way to track your most important, most important
passwords and accounts, and if you are going to hand
them off to somebody who is not computer savvy or
won't log into the password manager to get the email
that says you know, you're the legacy contact and then
(20:06):
they accept it. In some cases, I just have a
folder and it's in my little waterproof, fireproof case. And
every year or so when I see family, I hand
off to my you know mom, now the updated folder
with the spreadsheet, and my brother and my partner are
(20:29):
my digital powers of attorney. And so that makes me,
it makes me feel reassured that if something were to
happen and I didn't log into my password manager account
after a certain amount of time, they would get an
email and they would be able to access the files
(20:49):
that I've given them access to, so nothing will get lost.
Right like when it comes to your analog or your
digital stuff in your house for when you need somebody
to come in and help you or pay bills or
find something. There's absolutely things you don't want to get lost.
(21:10):
You don't want your four O one K drifting off
into the ether somewhere and nobody ever knows where it
is and nobody ever gets it. And they are more
gazillions of dollars out there that are unclaimed. My impression
of the many insurance companies that are out there is
(21:31):
they're not probably prioritizing finding people who haven't filed claims
to get the money back from them. So we want
our friends and family to find the things we want
them to find, and also maybe not find everything. Right.
There might be a special box somewhere of who knows,
like really embarrassing journals when you wrote poetry, or some
(21:53):
more consenting adult type things that you might not want
your mother or your children to find. So you might
want to have a plan for who comes and takes
care of what, not just your digital files, but also
like who you want to have your you know, Elvis
impersonator outfit collection too.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
How did you know Matt's Stark's secret?
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Yeah, you know, I wasn't going to out him, but
it seems like you just did.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Yeah, sorry, Matt. Well, yeah, it's one thing to have
the insurance policy. It's another thing to communicate effectively to
your loved ones. Then it exists, so they can you know,
tap those funds when or if the need arises. And
you know, we've got more questions were going to get
to h with. You want to talk about wills, life insurance,
powers of attorney, beneficiaries, A bunch of questions on those fronts.
(22:41):
We'll get to that and more right after this.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
All right, we are back from the break talking with
Chanelle Reynolds, and we've kind of talked about I guess
thinking through I guess how it is you're going to
kind of line up some of that information, who it
is that you want to leave some of that information too.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Let's talk more about the legal side of things. Let's
talk about the state planning documents, specifically, how can folks
go about planning in the first place? Yeah, can you
maybe provide a good overview of some of the legal
documents that need to be in place?
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Definitely so, in my opinion and the opinion of many
other financial and attorneys who deal with the state planning,
anybody who's eighteen or older should have some basic documents
in place, and it doesn't have to be expensive, and
it doesn't have to take more than you know, maybe
a couple of hours. So it's just an important thing
(23:42):
to start working into the speck of your life. The
same way we go to the dentist and we you know,
replace our furnace filters and we get mammograms. It's just
part of the maintenance. So if we kind of take
the scary way and just make it maybe like a
boring tax I feel like it might be easier for
us to do. In general, one of the things that
(24:06):
any attorney who you would talk to about estate planning,
any question you ask, generally, the first response back is
it depends, and it does. It depends on a number
of things, like which state you live in. You know,
there are many as we you know here in the
news and know from maybe personal experience, laws vary from
(24:29):
state to state, and that's true also when it comes
to estate planning and probate. So that's what happens if
you die without a will, which you should not want, and.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
That's when the state ends up making decisions for you
that when you could have made those decisions ahead.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Of time exactly exactly. And so for some people, if
you're married and you live in a community property state
like let's say Washington State is and something happens, generally
the legally married spouse gets everything, and so for some
people that could be like a Okay, that's a pretty
good backup plan. That's what I would have wanted anyway.
(25:06):
So the cost of doing nothing is lower than perhaps
somebody who's still legally married, strange from their partner, who
and they have a really bad relationship with their family
and the last people on earth they would want talking
to doctors, being in a hospital room, or getting any
of their stuff or assets is their legal spouse or
(25:29):
anyone in their family. And so it can be devastating.
You know, we've heard stories about you know, people not
being let in the room and terrible, terrible arguments. But
most foundational state planning packets have three documents. One is
(25:50):
your will and that's who gets your stuff after you die,
and other important decisions like guardianship, who you would want
to be a guardian for your children, your pets, or
I worked with somebody who had a really extensive plant
a collection, and so there was like there was a
guardianship plan for the for the plants. I'm like, that's brilliant.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Yeah, so now it's.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Right. So now it's kids, pets, or plants, and and
you name somebody as your executor who is basically the
project manager of that will, and they have a legal
financial fiduciary responsibility to follow the instructions in your will
and audit your estate, pay legitimate debts, and then distribute
(26:37):
the assets like you said, like I want, of course
Matt to have my Elvis impersonator outfits, and Joel gets
my Abba vinyl collection.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Yeah, everybody knows that definitely.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
And so so that's one important document. One is the
power of attorney, and that's somebody who speaks for you
or can help you out pay bills, help organize your
life when you're not necessarily at an end of life situation.
So that could be it's often comes in handy, or
it can be a really hopeful document if you have
(27:13):
aging family member or parent. There are dementia provisions. Over
the last few years people brought out and activated and
used their power of attorney document. Let's say, if you
had COVID and you were very ill or intubated in
a hospital for a few weeks or a month, that
can be really handy, so paperwork in life can still
(27:35):
move forward. The third document is called an advanced care
directive or a living will, and those are your wishes
and instructions that you give in advance as directly as
possible about the kind of care you do and don't
want at the end of your life. So an example
(27:56):
would be someone goes into hospice, you have a medical advocate,
someone who can communicate with family or doctors or whoever,
and say, you know, Chanelle and I talked about this.
I have her piece of paper right here, I'm the
person named. And she absolutely didn't want Abba playing. She
absolutely wanted led Zeppelin playing, So turn the radio station
(28:19):
to the Zeppelin radio station, and or Chanelle had said,
this is these are her quality of life priorities where
she's at right now. I know she would not want
to do an invasive surgery with little chance of actually
getting better, and her final days would be in pain
rather than more present. And she wants fewer days, but
(28:43):
better ones rather than lots of bad days.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Which is even more important. I mean as advances in
technology and medicine continue, that's something like there are more
and more options.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Available to focus. Patrie Bush is usually to extend life
no matter what, regardless of the quality of life.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Yeah, I think that's really import and really stands out
to me.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Yeah, exactly. Well, and I'll say, you know, and this
was a dozen years ago, that week that my late
husband spent in the er and the ICU, and we
didn't know, but the difference between do everything possible to
keep him alive until I get to the hospital to
those first few days where I'm like, please, please, please
let him live no matter what. Those last few days
(29:26):
there was a very big shift that happened, and I
was scared that he would have to be stuck like this,
and he was. He never regained consciousness, He could never
participate in the world in any way at all. It
was way past his quality of life. His injuries were unrecoverable.
And after a week in the er and the ICU,
(29:50):
and this is, you know, twelve years ago or more,
it costs like three hundred and fifty thousand dollars or more,
I believe it for that week in the hospital. And
had we not had healthcare, had you know, they're not
been all of these other things in place, that medical debt,
(30:11):
that amount of like you know, the bills. I started
measuring them not in in numbers of pages, but inches
there was like four or five inches of those like
you know, those medical statements that you get, and I
had to get like two binders because it wouldn't fit
in one binder. So quality of life is important. And
I certainly don't want to say, you know, cost equals care,
(30:33):
but it is really really, really really expensive. And if
you know somebody doesn't want something, it's really important to
have that information from them. So advance care directive you
give your directions in advance to people about your care.
And each of those documents, often people will name their
(30:56):
spouse or their you know, their primary person as the
main person, the power of attorney, the executor of the will,
and the medical advocate. And that's great, and that's a
great option. You should always list a backup in case
that person, let's say, is you know, in the Grand
Canyon and off the grid for two weeks and you
don't know where they are. You need a backup. And
(31:21):
I have worked with and talked with many people who
are like, I absolutely don't want my partner to have
to handle all the finances. I'm going to hire somebody
or I'm going to ask my good friend who's an
accountant to help with that and you know, with transparency
and communication. But I will say, during those months after
(31:44):
my husband died, I had a young kid who I
was trying to get to school on time. There were
some days if I could like get up and find
pants and get my son to school on time and
make one phone call, I was killing it. So it's
a overwhelmed amount of stuff to do. And you can
spread that overwhelming amount of stuff to do. You can
(32:06):
spread that love around to people who might be better
at being a financial power of attorney.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Yeah. And one of the things you say is that
doing this stuff, not having done this stuff ahead of time,
it makes a hard time harder. And so the things
that we can do on the front end and help
to alleviate some of those pain points on the back end.
And you also say something about like it eliminates hundreds
of hours of work that a few hours on the
front end can really alleviate like many, many, many dozens
(32:34):
of hours on the back end. Talk to me too
about maybe where lawyers fit into this, or where online
services fit in. So, for instance, getting life insurance that's
often something you can do online pretty easily, or wills
if you have a simpler kind of family situation, you
might be able to do that from a DIY perspective
(32:55):
at a site like trust and Will or free will
or something like that, in which case is a lawyer
nes to And when do people? Are people able to
do it themselves online?
Speaker 3 (33:03):
Yeah? Definitely. So there are more and more online options.
They offer state by state templates, and they kind of
wizard you through the process like a turbo tax, but
for your will. And for a lot of folks who
don't have property out of state, who don't have more
(33:24):
than a few million dollars in assets, and with home
prices being crazy, if your aunt is going to give
you her house and she bought a beautiful place in
the Bay Area one hundred years ago, you probably that's
probably going to be worth more. If you don't have complicated,
let's say, like a blended family situation or an overly
(33:47):
litigious family member, if you don't have international citizenship, most
many people using an online template is just fine for them.
I would say that one of the things that happens
is we really really want to make these perfect documents.
(34:10):
We want to have thought of every possible scenario, every
possible edge case, and that can sometimes get us restuck
in the process of getting it done. So for me,
I think it's most important to think about what's most
important to you. Is it that your legal spouse is
the one who is still on paper, is the one
(34:33):
who's going to talk for you and get all of
your assets, update a few of your documents, and name
somebody else as your medical advocate. Are you a solo
parent and your biggest concern is guardianship of your children?
Fill out a guardianship paper. You can do these things
(34:54):
kind of bit by bit. You don't have you know,
you can eat the elephant off your chest to bite
at a time. And for those folks who spending the
thousand couple thousand dollars to work with an attorney, you
may not know what you don't know, and this is
the attorney's job. You can talk to a few They
(35:15):
usually offer free consultations for you know, twenty thirty minutes,
and ask them how they charge and what they charge,
and you know you're going to probably get a much better,
much more comprehensive plan if you talk to an attorney,
if you're not going to, if you don't need to,
if you had a bad experience with an attorney and
(35:35):
you just won't. And those online options can cost anywhere
from free for a very very basic simple will to
a few hundred dollars. And you can also get now
some basic trust packages. And that's for folks who if
we want to talk about like beneficiary designations and handing
(35:57):
off assets. One of the reasons why we do all
of this stuff is because I think most importantly it
saves our family and friends those couple hundred extra hours
of anguish trying to figure out where stuff is, who
gets what. You know, like your weird neighbor Bob won't
(36:18):
come over and steal the lawnmower, or if it does,
you can go back and get it because you're like Bob,
you're screwed. It's not yours. So it can make that
really really hard time maybe just a bit softer for
family members. Also, when it comes to like money transfer,
all of your assets that go through a will, it
(36:40):
takes you know, it can take on average about a
year and hundreds of hours. And also you know some
of your assets are subject to federal inheritance tax, a
state tax, different things. So a trust or naming beneficiaries
on all of your financial account is one way to
(37:02):
simplify your estate dramatically, so the stuff left in like
in your will, is going to be an easier process.
It's you know, the Elvis costumes and the ABA vinyl
and not necessarily who gets the million dollar life insurance policy?
And then people start fighting over the house.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Well, talk to me real quick about beneficiaries, because don't
those typically supersede what your will states, right, So you
might think you're covered by putting the right thing in
the will, But let's say you're four to one K, Well,
you never updated the beneficiary from ten years ago when
you left all your money your best friend, and guess
what now you're married and you want your partner to
have that money. So yeah, how important is it to
go in there and update the beneficiaries in the back
(37:46):
end of those retirement accounts?
Speaker 3 (37:47):
So important? Right, Like in the case you just mentioned,
you want your spouse, not maybe your best friend who
tried to date your spouse, you know, to get the
money and absolutely right. So if you listed somebody twenty
years ago on a four to oh one K that
you started and then totally forgot about, and then next
week spend a gazillion dollars on like the best will
(38:10):
in the entire world, but forgot about that that person
you named twenty years ago is the one who will
get it. So yes, transfer on death, payable on death.
They trump the will, They beat the will. And nearly
every financial account we all have has the option or
(38:30):
the you can have a beneficiary designation. You're a four
oh one K, you're checking, you're saving your investments often
you know, stocks, pretty much anything you have. And then
the other things that people can sometimes forget about is
your life insurance policy. That is a transfer or payable
(38:50):
on death account. It is immediately transferred to the person
who's named as a beneficiary, and in about two thirds
of states there's also as on death deed option, and
the process for that is, you know, essentially going to
a county office and writing up some paperwork. That isn't
(39:12):
quite as easy as going to your online account and
updating your beneficiaries on your you know, your credit union
account online, which takes about five minutes. It's a little
bit more of a process. But for many, many people,
we have a life insurance policy, we have whatever savings
we have, and for many folks, our homes are the
biggest assets we have, and it isn't the perfect solution
(39:35):
for everyone, and there may or may not be tax implications.
But if but for many people they don't know that
they can do a transfer on death deed, and then
that house would be transferred to somebody else, and then
you know, and that's not even really talking about joint
accounts and how joint accounts are often treated differently when
it comes to after somebody dies as well.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Yeah, and you're talking about how the vary from state
to state, and we're talking about wills here. I was
surprised to learn in your book too, you talk about
I think they're called holographic wills, which I did not know.
This was the thing that literally, if you write it
out in your own handwriting, it's completely legal.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (40:14):
In something like half of half of states in the country.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
Yeah, and in some states. I haven't actually looked that
up in the last year or two. But a written
will still is legally binding. You still need to have
generally two witnesses see you sign the will and they
sign it with you. Those holographic or those written wills
are often less contested and I think more originally created
(40:41):
an allowance for when it comes to people at war
time or on hospital beds, So I wouldn't if you
spent you know, a ton of money coming up with
like a really bomb proof state plan in one of
those like leather bound things, and then somebody shows up like,
oh no, they wrote this on this post it note
and they said I should have it all like that
(41:02):
may not actually be as water tight as you might think,
but but yeah, and you know, also I always get
in trouble when I say this, but you are not
legally required to have your will notarized for it to
be legally binding. Is it a good idea? Yes? Do
attorneys say you should do it? Yes? Do I think
you should do it? Yes? You can hire a mobile
(41:25):
notary to come to your office or a coffee shop.
It helps make it even that much more secure. But
for a lot of folks, you know, choosing a guardian
can be a big hard blocker because it's hard to
do and executing that will, you know, like you and
your partner or you can't get to the bank with
(41:46):
the notary, and so that I think is one of
the reasons. Why Well that that's me making excuses. I'll say,
you know, it's a hurdle.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
It is indeed to be something that keeps you from
where the perfection is the enemy of the good enough.
And I like a lot of what you're saying here
is just truly about getting the ball rolling. And I
think more of our listeners in particular could are benefiting
from hearing this conversation because they're thinking, Man, I don't
have to have it perfect. It doesn't need to be
perfectly buttoned up. Don't let that be the enemy a
good where it's never gonna ever change. It's like, this
(42:16):
is something that we can revisit. Like you said, this
is something as long as you get the ball rolling,
that can go a really long ways. But we've got
a few more questions for you here, Chanelle, in particular,
just kind of navigating some of the relational waters. Sometimes
they can get murky. We'll get to those right after this.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
All right, let's keep going, Matt, we are talking with
Chanelle Reynolds. Were talking about preparing for the unthinkable, planning
for on certain life events, things that we hope don't
come to pass. But the reality is we're not promised tomorrow.
And so, Chanelle, I guess when you were talking earlier,
it made me think about not just preparing for my self,
(43:00):
for my family, my wife, my kids. But they made
me think about my parents, and they are in their
upper sixties, and I don't know where any of their
stuff is. Like, I know a few things because we've
talked about and I've helped them with some of their
retirement planning and stuff like that, so I know kind
of roughly where they stand on some of these things.
But if if something were to incapacitate one of them,
(43:21):
like I think, I would be up the creek. I
wouldn't know where to go. So do you have any
tips for talking to a loved one, a parent specifically
about some of these things and how to you're talking
about your parents trying to lead a horse to water, right,
how do you actually help make sure that your parents
are prepared and so that you're intern prepared when when
(43:42):
or if something happens to them.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
Yeah. Absolutely, it's such a good question. And you know,
depending on your family, people can meet with different levels
of enthusiasm we'll call it, when bringing up the subject
with their parents and for personal reas religious reasons, cultural reasons,
emotional reasons, childhood trauma reasons. Who knows, like it can
(44:05):
be a really uncomfortable topic. So one thing. There are
a few suggestions I have. One is if you start
with you, that can be a good place. For example,
for about five years after my late husband died, I
would pretty much run around and put anyone like an
a half Nelson and try to shame them to getting
(44:26):
their estate plans together. And was that really motivating and
successful plan? Now? It wasn't. When I would say to
my close friends or my close family members, or my
parents and my brother, hey I updated all of my
documents again, that creates an opportunity to say, hey, this
(44:49):
just reminds me, I don't know where your current documents are.
I don't know exactly what you'd want or how I
can make sure I know what you want, so I
can make sure you get that. Yeah, and so like that.
That can be a great way to turn it into
like a gift and a sharing rather than an obligation.
(45:09):
You know, going up to your parents as I probably
did however long ago, and saying, so, you guys are
getting older, do you have your wills done? Like that
may be the best way to do it. Also, the
same guilt route, the shame guilt route, you know, it
might work in other families. And then one thing too,
is that it can be it's often not just one
(45:32):
conversation some people. You know, if you bring up the
topic of like, hey, let's talk about you know, your
end of life or your funeral plans. Do you want
to be you know, recomposed? Do you want to be cremated?
I know we've got the family plot somewhere. More more
often than people might expect, the conversation blossoms quickly and openly,
(45:56):
and it can be such a huge reassurance. Sometimes people
aren't immediately interested in having that conversation, so you know,
come at it from a few different entry points. Is
it like I want to be able to advocate for you?
Is it tell me some stories about what's most important
to you. One of the things that often happens when
(46:19):
parents or somebody is getting to the point where they
may not be able to live independently or in the
home that they're in right now. Often the first question
I get, or where people get the frustration energy centers
is on what do I do with all the stuff?
(46:39):
And sometimes like they're like, well, I got to go
into the garage or I got to go in to
the basement and start throwing out all my parents' stuff,
and it's going to be really hard because my mom
or my dad is going to take the stuff out
of the truck and put it back inside. So rather
than starting with the detritus of our lives and our stuff,
I think it's so fascinating and so helpful to ask
(47:02):
what are the most important things to you? And so
if you had not one minute and not ten hours,
but if you had an hour in your house to
grab safely anything before the aliens arrive or a fire starts,
what would you get and take with you what's most
important to you in an hour? And then those are
(47:24):
the things that you know are the most important, And
then you can say, oh, so great, so tell me
more about how we can make sure your sister gets
this thing. So like starting with the important stuff rather
than starting with the fear or the worry or the
you know, boxes of national geographics from the seventies that
are in the attic can be a really good way
(47:47):
to start the conversation too.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
I love that it makes it more relational as well, right,
because then it's something that sparks conversation in stories from
the past that they then get to share with you.
My father in law, he's actually over time he's been
sending my kids letters with little notes, and literally yesterday
he sent he included track and field metal that he
(48:10):
won in high school that he shared with one of
my daughters specifically, and this is something he's been carrying
around for fifty years, right, and so it's obviously meant
something to him. And so the ability to kind of
share that with my daughter and kind of talk through
this was It makes the relationship that you have now
with that parent who is aging even richer, which I love.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
And I love that this is.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
Kind of the approach I think you're taking where you're
either just starting with you, you're asking some of these
questions knowing that this isn't a singular conversation that you're
going to have, but that it's something that might evolve
over time. And I think the same thing can be true.
And you know, we talked about living wills, healthcare directives,
that kind of thing too. But even when it comes
to funeral plans, because I think oftentimes it's just one
(48:57):
of those morbid topics and folks don't really want to
spend time talking about that at all, but that can
having brought that up can provide so much relief to
those who have to make some pretty heavy decisions afterwards.
Speaker 3 (49:09):
Right absolutely. So, you know, I think back to when
I had spent that week in the hospital, we'd removed
medical support. The only thing in my head at that
moment was you know, going home and having to tell
my son that his dad's body died, and I didn't
even know how to say that or like how the
(49:30):
words would come out of my mouth. And then leaving
the hospital, I had no idea that I would have
to pick a funeral home right away. I had no
idea that you had about you know, twenty four or
forty eight hours before the body now you know, I
had to get moved to somewhere, And at that point
(49:50):
it had been a week for me in the hospital.
Other people have spent you know, years managing a diagnosis
or months in hospice, and we hadn't really thought about
what happens after you die. I knew he didn't want
to be buried and wanted to be cremated. I had
some of the information, but I was not ready or
prepared or even had any idea that funeral plans, death care,
(50:14):
and after death plans are like right now, it's like,
oh okay, there are more options too than we realized that.
You know, in a number of states there is a
recomposition body recomposting or composting process that's legal in a
few states, and more and more are signing on. There's aquamation,
(50:36):
so talking about what's important and you know, whether that's
being buried in your Elvis impersonator outfit or whether that's
you know, having somebody bring your body home or be
home for a day. There are a number of things
you can do. You just have more options, which is
which is really great. And you know, somebody could say
(50:56):
I had no idea that I didn't just get to
pick animation or burial, and now you've got a beautiful
plot buried under a tree. You never know.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
Yeah, that is interesting to because I always think of
it as literally the two options, do you want to
be cremated or do you want to be buried? But yeah,
it's the options seem to have expanded these days, so
those those conversations are important to have too. Chanel, thank
you so much for joining us on the show today.
Where can our listeners find out more about you, what
you're up to and even have like checklists and resources
(51:30):
on your website to help people kind of start to
have these conversations and do the things that need to
be done to be fully prepared.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
Right, definitely. Yeah, you can go to Chanelle Reynolds dot com,
which has got all of the information about get your
stuff together, and I have free checklists, you can get
the book, and I also offer classes and workshops. Once
the pandemic hit and we were all home, all lot
(51:57):
of my classes and workshops and talks moved on line
and now I can do classes with you know, groups
of people from all over the country, which is really fun.
So yeah, check out my website or send me a
note through the website and I'd be happy to chat
with anyone as well.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
Love it. Chanelle, thank you so much for talking with
us today.
Speaker 3 (52:15):
Thank you so much. It's such a great conversation. Really
appreciate it. Joel and Matt, thanks so much.
Speaker 1 (52:19):
All right, Matt, that was a that's a great combo
with Chanelle and just such an important conversation. Oh my god, right, crucial,
and it's to me. It gives me the information that
I need to actually get the ball rolling, but also
kind of the swift kick to the pants that it's
going to take for me to actually get some of
these things done too.
Speaker 2 (52:36):
Yeah, well, what's interesting. We kind of chatted with her
quickly after we hung up there, but one of the
things she didn't include in her story was the fact
was how her husband died and the fact like he
was biking, he was bicycling, And it's one of the
things that drew us to her story. This is something
that we do all the time, and so we're often
drawn towards the urgent and not necessarily the things that
(52:57):
are really important to have in place. Until you're faced
with us story like this, we can see yourself in
that situation. And I mean literally we like we're the
same age as she and her husband about a decade ago.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Right, Okay. One of the things she said, too, right
if we wrapped away, was how much you could save
by doing the right thing on the on the front end, right.
So having the will right it avoids some of those
potential legal costs, some of the costs you might the
court costs of the lawyer fees. So if you are frugal,
the right thing to do is to actually get some
(53:30):
of these things done. You might say, oh, I don't
want to pay the one hundred and eighty dollars to
get the will made, but that one hundred and eighty
dollars could save you thousands or tens of thousands of
dollars on the back end. So even though she didn't
actually say that, like during the podcast, you said it
right after we like when we were just chatting afterwards.
Well that's the financial argument. Yeah, And I'm like, all right,
That's my big takeaway from this conversation with Chanel was
(53:52):
just like, hey, guess what, Like, if you care about
the money you have worked your butt off to save
and invest, and you want to protect that inherentants for
future generations, for your spouse, for the people that you
that you love, and you want to inherit the things
that you've amasked in the case of the most unfortunate
event ever happening, then you're gonna want to plan ahead.
(54:12):
You're gonna want to get these things done even though
they cost money, exactly, and you want to do them
ahead of time.
Speaker 2 (54:16):
And I loved she kind of an analogy when we
were talking about emergency funds, and she was saying, it's
hard to scrape together an emergency fund when you're in
the middle of an emergency, and the same thing applies
when it comes to a lot of this end of
life stuff. But that's not my official big take a
lay when she was talking about digital hygiene and one
of the parameters that she put around how it is
(54:38):
that you should approach keeping up with your information and
passing along logins and accounts was going with systems that
you a already have in place or b that you
know are going to be successful because you can try
to take this giant bite out of something that you
think is, well, this is we got to do it
this way because this is how you're supposed to do it,
this is how it's going to be perfect. But the
fact is it needs to be something that you're actually
(55:00):
going to keep up with that's going to work for
whoever the intended audience is going to be.
Speaker 1 (55:05):
It's like the same thing with working out, like do
the workout routine that you know you can stick that
you're gonna stick with, not the one that's the most
ambitious exactly.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
So that was my big, big takeaway, and I think
that that can make this seem much more approachable to
a lot of folks out there.
Speaker 1 (55:17):
Agreed, but all right, let's get back to our beer.
You And by the way, she does have a lot
of info on her website that will yet you checklists,
literal great recommendations and so if you're like, all right,
I need someone to kind of hold my hand through this,
Chanelle is the right person to help you do that totally.
But yeah, yeah, let's get back to the beer. So
this one your time. It's called meg Levon American Imperial Red.
It's home brewed by our listener, Greg lives around the corner. Greg.
(55:39):
He's been telling me that he makes beer for a
long time and finally we're getting to try it. So
what are your thoughts on this one?
Speaker 4 (55:44):
This was so good.
Speaker 2 (55:45):
Yeah, I'll be honest, a lot of times when folks
are like, you gotta try my homebrew.
Speaker 1 (55:49):
It's okay, it tastes like arsenic sauce sometimes, all right, all.
Speaker 2 (55:51):
Right, but this being an Imperial Red, there is so
much stink and flavor in this thing. I mean, it's
it's really impressive. You've got such a strong backbone with
this being an imperial right, So no matter what, there's
gonna be a lot of flavors packed in there. But
you don't have too many reds and so just the
I would say, the floral notes that he's able to
kind of coax out of out of the malts in
(56:11):
order to make this red phenomenal. It's like an under
so good, underutilized style, and so it's fun.
Speaker 1 (56:17):
It's always fun to try something that's a little off
the wall, little little unique, and so Greg did a
great job with this beer. It's like roasty super impressed.
Oh yeah, it's some roasty, toasty, roasty notes where yeah,
it's piny, it's like caramel with a little bit of
citrus twist. And so it this kind of incredibly well balanced. Yes,
I would pay top dollar for this seriously greatly good beer.
(56:37):
Greg gave it to us for free, so big thanks
to Gregg. B We owe you a beer, Yes we do,
we do. And do I know who you are? I
don't know well last name. Thanks Thanks for letting us
try your beer on today's episode. This was Yeah, but Matt,
that's going to do it for this episode again. We'll
put links to all the important stuff in the show
notes up on our website at howtomoney dot com.
Speaker 2 (56:55):
That's right, buddy, So until next time, best Friends Out
and best Friends Out
Speaker 1 (57:13):
Cope sh
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Joel Larsgaard
Matthew Altmix
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