The Laws of your Money with Ann-Margaret Episode 24

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The following is a paid podcast. iHeartRadio's hosting of this
podcast constitutes neither an endorsement of the products offered or
the ideas expressed. The following program is sponsored by New
York Priority Medical Care. Now it's time for the Laws
of Your Money, a weekly call in show with legal

(00:20):
tips to help you protect your money. Here's your host
and Margaret Caroza.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, and welcome to the Laws of your Money. This
is a show dedicated to protecting you from legal and
financial mayhem. I believe that legal protections are the single
most important element of personal finance, because what does it

(00:46):
matter how brilliantly I invest in, how diligently I save
if there is a greater than forty percent chance of
losing assets to a long term illness and expensive divorce taxes.
This could be capital gains taxes, estate taxes, not to

(01:08):
mention ordinary lawsuits. We all know that we're living in
a very litigious society, but it comes as a surprise
to many that we are more likely to be involved
in a court battle with a former loved one than
with a stranger. I believe we all need some legal protections.

(01:35):
Welcome to the program. Everyone, my name is Anne Margaret Carosa.
I'm an asset protection attorney, and I'm joined today by
my esteemed colleague and co host, the Reverend Paul Sladgas. Welcome, Paul.
You're having a good weekend, I.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
Hope, Yes, important weekend right Memorial Day.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Yes. I fight all of you to join our conversation
by calling eight hundred three to one zero seven to ten. Today,
I am thrilled to have a very special guest join
our discussion, a nationally renowned financial expert. Viewers of NBC's

(02:24):
Today Show know her from her twenty five years as
its financial editor. Among her many current projects, she's a
columnist for AARP and the host of the podcast Her Money.
It is my great pleasure to welcome to the program,

(02:47):
Gene Chatski.

Speaker 4 (02:51):
Hi. How are you Hi?

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Gene, thank you so much for joining us on this
holiday weekend. It's really a thrill to have you.

Speaker 4 (03:02):
Thank you so much for the invitation.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Absolutely Okay, So my question for you, I'm a big
fan of yours. I have read your books, I listened
to your podcast, I subscribe to your newsletter, and I'm
wondering what spurred your initial interest in personal finance? You know,

(03:26):
was there a little gene one time with a lemonade
stand and taking her earnings to the bank. You know,
how did this manifest for you.

Speaker 4 (03:38):
That that would be a much better story than the
one I actually have?

Speaker 2 (03:42):
No.

Speaker 4 (03:42):
I think my interest came from the fact that shortly
out of college, my finances were a bit of a mess,
and I was working for Working Woman magazine as the
assistant to the business editor. I got the opportunity to
start reporting on personal finance and figured out how to

(04:06):
how to straighten out my own life and help others
along the way.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
And I think maybe that is why the advice you
give is done in such a non judgmental fashion.

Speaker 4 (04:22):
I feel like we do people such a disservice because
we don't teach this stuff in school. We should be.
We should be teaching it all along the way. It's
such an important life skill, and so this expectation that
we're all of a sudden going to know how to
manage these things, it's it's a little ridiculous, and people

(04:44):
need help absolutely.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
You know, I shared a little bit last week. We
had a gen Z personal finance person on the show
with us, and you know, after college, I was a
train rap when it came to credit cards, it was
I don't know, like crack cocaine. I just couldn't get

(05:07):
enough once I had a little purchasing power, so that
you know, it didn't end up very well. But Jeane,
what do you think the biggest mistakes you see out
there when it comes to personal finance.

Speaker 4 (05:24):
I think the biggest is just not paying attention. We
know that people just don't have a sense of what's
coming in, what's going out, and where it's going, and
as a result, they get they get out over their
skis and take on credit card debt, like you're talking about,

(05:49):
spend impulsively when they can't afford to spend impulsively. If
we all would become a little bit more conscious of
the flows of our money, we would start to move
things in the right direction.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
So really great advice. And do you have any tips
specifically for women who are starting over? This may be
after a contentious divorce where we took a big haircut financially.
What are your tips to help women back on their feet.

Speaker 4 (06:29):
It's important to figure out the parameters of your new life.
So you were and I've been divorced, so I've been
there and done that. We're used to living on a
certain income in a certain way, with a certain amount

(06:49):
of resources to back us up. When you get divorced
or your widowed and things change, you got to take
a step back and reset the paradigm, reset the boundaries
in which you're going to use whatever limited resources you have. Right,

(07:14):
money is always a limited resource, but at this point
you have to recalibrate goals. What's the expectation for retirement,
When are you going to get there, what are your
responsibilities if you have children for helping put those kids
through school? How are you going to get there? And

(07:36):
if we hold on to tightly to our old life,
as women sometimes tend to do, particularly when it comes
to the house, it can be a big mistake because
a house is a liability as much as it is
an asset, and it can set us back in terms
of being able to accomplish these other things.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
Now, really really great advice. Yes, And let's talk a
little bit about money and children. You know, what advice
do you have for parents who are besieged by requests
for you know, one hundred and fifteen dollars sneakers and

(08:19):
you know it's sometimes harder. No, I would say it's
always harder to say no to a child than to
say no to ourselves. So maybe I'm trying to save
and I'm doing the right thing by not going to Bloomingdale's,
But when the kids ask me for X, Y and Z,
it's easier to cave, it can be.

Speaker 4 (08:45):
I think it's it's easier to cave in part because
we shield our kids from the realities of our financial lives.
And it's okay too without frightening your children and clue
them into the fact that there's only so much money
to go around, and we all have to make choices.

(09:08):
And so if they're choosing that they want the sneakers,
maybe they're choosing that they don't want something else. And
that's a fine thing to be able to do. In fact,
it's something that you should do before your kids has
up to school or to an independent life, because otherwise

(09:31):
they're going to think that money is an unlimited resource
and they're going to get in trouble when they're on
their own.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
Absolutely, it's not always easy to say no, but I
think it's one of the most important things that we
can do as parents. In my life, I think maybe
I went too far in the direction of saying no,
And I had two angry sons telling me on more

(09:59):
than one occasion where the only kids in school who've
never been to Disney World, and I don't have this
and I don't have that, So maybe I went too far.
And Paul, I don't know if I shared this vignette
with you. We're at a family party and a cousin
asked my older son, he must have been eight, what

(10:20):
he wanted to be when he grows up. They said,
your mom's a lawyer, your dad's a doctor. Are you
going to go into either one of those professions? And
he said absolutely not. That's why we're poor, because doctors
and lawyers are poor. I mean, that was his experience.
He thought he thought he was poor because we just

(10:43):
said no to everything. So, yeah, Paul, were you very
indulgent as a parent.

Speaker 3 (10:52):
I'd say yes, I say, my daughter whatever. But she
didn't ask for much she was I don't know. She
grew up in a way that and she still never
has and later on in life she doesn't want to
take from me.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
Well that's admirable, Jean. Have you ever heard of the
marshmallow experiment?

Speaker 4 (11:18):
Not only have I heard of it, but my daughter
has nine best friends from summer camp, and one of
them is the granddaughter of Walter Michelle, who did the
marshmallow experiment.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
My goodness, I refer to this marshmallow experiment all the time.
It goes to do you want to summarize the experiment, Jeane.

Speaker 4 (11:48):
Yeah, it goes to delayed gratification. So kids were put
in a room and offered a marshmallow or if they
were able to wait, I think they were offered too.
And they tracked these kids through time, and those who

(12:13):
were able to delay gratification had much more success in
adult life. They did better on their SATs, they did
better in school, they had they had less trouble with
drugs and alcohol. I mean, it was a really interesting
and continues to be a really interesting experiment.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
So I think we can help our kids with delayed
gratification by saying no to them when they're asking for things.
And again it's not easy but super important.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
Well I can think of.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
Yeah, I think delayed gratification carries over into you know,
in my going to stop for frozen yogurt on my
way home from the show today, you know, which is
delayed gratification. You don't have to have everything and do
everything now. Gene, I want to talk a little bit

(13:13):
about your current venture. You are the co founder of
Investing Fix. Tell us a little bit about that.

Speaker 4 (13:23):
Oh, thanks for asking about it. Yes, Investing Fixes an
investing club for women. It's twice a month on alternate
Monday nights, although this this week it'll be on Tuesday
because it's the holiday. And it is a virtual investment
club where Karen Feinerman from CNBC, who's a professional investor,

(13:48):
and I are teaching investing two hundreds of women. It is.
Every class is structured with a person no finance lesson.
Then we look at a couple of different investments and
the women who have been participating. We've been doing it
now for a couple of years. We run a model

(14:10):
portfolio that the members vote on what to put in it.
It's been consistently beating the market wow. And a lot
of the members buy the buy the choices for their
own portfolios that say they're learning how to uh, how
to have the conversation about investing, how to get more

(14:33):
comfortable and more confident with investing. And the first month
of Investing Fix is always free. So if you're interested
in trying it out. The website is Investing Fixed with
two x's dot com and join us in fact, join
us on Tuesday if you're so inclined.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
And after the free month, how much is it per month?

Speaker 4 (15:01):
It's thirty nine dollars a month.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
That really for world class investment and finance advice. You know,
we can come up with one hundred different ways that
we can chop thirty nine dollars out of our you know,
monthly spending that we're wasting. We can start to hand

(15:25):
wash some clothes rather than go to the dry cleaner,
cut back on one happy hour per month, right and yeah,
have live access to you and Karen. You know they
say that we become like the five people that we
spend a lot of time with. You know where else

(15:48):
could we spend time with world class financial experts. So
I think that's amazing that you're doing this, Gene, and
I'm gonna thank you. I'm going to definitely spread the
word with my clients. You know, we pay to learn things.
We pay for piano lessons. I am right now paying

(16:12):
for French lessons and Paul, you know why that is? Jean,
Paul and I have a mutual friend who tricked me
via Ai and told me that he was fluent in French.
So I lived there for a year and a half
a million years ago, and my French is so terribly

(16:32):
rusty now, and he really shamed me that his French
was so good. So I am knee deep into these
French lessons now and learned that he was just tricking me.
It was Ai generated. Yeah, so anyways, here I am.

Speaker 4 (16:51):
With the French lessons. Yeah, that's great.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
Well, I just want to encourage everyone to visit Gene
at her Money and what's the actual website.

Speaker 4 (17:06):
Her money dot com is our is our website for
personal finance content if you're if you're looking to learn
something about your money, and then for the investing classes
investing Fix with two x's dot com.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
Well, Gene, thank you so much for joining the program and.

Speaker 4 (17:26):
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
I will be seeing you on an Investing Fix session.
Take care, Jeane, Bye bye bye.

Speaker 3 (17:35):
Thke you.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
Wow, she knows your stuff, super great content.

Speaker 3 (17:41):
She knows your stuff. You know that. Yesterday there was
an article in the Times about long term care and
since we're we're talking about preparing yourself for being smart
about your moneies, and it had some some concerns besides
the expense. Just are you preparing to do long term care?
What should you do?

Speaker 2 (18:02):
Yeah? You know what, this is a topic that I
think a lot of us have our heads in the
sand about. But we're as a society largely unprepared for
the aging baby boomers. I mean the numbers that are
coming down the pike, and an estimated forty percent of

(18:26):
us will need some type of long term care. Medicare
and the Medicare supplement only cover the first one hundred days.
After that, If we don't have long term care insurance,
the rubber meets the road. I think the figure used
in that article said ten thousand dollars is the national

(18:50):
average cost of long term care in our area. In
New York City and Long Island, that figure is fifteen thousand.
So we really need to sit down with someone talk
about long term care insurance, protect our assets so that

(19:11):
a catastrophically expensive long term care stay does not result
in the loss of my home. And the President's budget
bill just past the House of Representatives. It's now in
the Senate for them to debate it. There are some

(19:32):
changes that are expected, but it contains a lot of
cuts to the Medicaid program. Now, Medicaid nationwide is the
payer of last resort. And the proponents of cutting Medicaid,

(19:53):
they're saying that they're ferreting out fraud, waste, and abuse,
and definitely there is fraud, wat and abuse in the program.
But some of them want to cut out the ability
of middle income families accessing the benefits of Medicaid. And

(20:14):
people do that by creating trusts for their home and
other assets, and federal law says that the home and
other assets must be in this trust for five years
prior to them being invisible. In a long term care context,

(20:35):
I think we can expect that waiting period to increase.
There has been a bill pending in Congress that would
change the so called look back period from five years
to seven years. We know it used to be three
years until two thousand and six when it went to
five years. So the handwriting is on the wall, and

(20:58):
it would be a mistake to think that we can
just not deal with the situation, not think about the situation,
and at the eleventh hour, some elder law attorney such
as myself can help your mother quickly get onto the
medicaid program. I don't think that's going to be the

(21:19):
reality in ten years or even five years, So it
would be a terrific idea for those of you interested
in protecting your homes to think about doing that with
a properly drawn asset protection trust sooner rather than later,

(21:42):
does it?

Speaker 3 (21:43):
Kind of will also do that or no?

Speaker 2 (21:45):
So the will at essence whax up my stuff upon
my death right. We should all have a will, but
I believe the goal should be not to have to
use it because a will goes to probate, and the
probate process is a minimum of seven months. And you

(22:10):
know your kids can't sell the house. Who is going
to pony up the money for utility so the pipes
don't burst. If you're in a condo or a co
op dealing with monthly maintenance fees to the association, you
definitely want to avoid probate and we can best do

(22:33):
that with a properly drawn trust. Okay, yeah, before we
go into our last little segment, I do want to
take a little time out. And it is Memorial Day weekend,
and I hope that everyone is having a fun time,

(22:56):
a safe time with loved ones and friends. But you
know it's incumbent upon all of us to take a
little pause, and we owe it to those who we've
lost to always remember their sacrifice. You know, today's more

(23:18):
this weekend rather tomorrow. It's more than a day for
barbecues and linen sales at Macy's. It's a time to
reflect and appreciate those who made the ultimate sacrifice and
their loved ones. You know, I tell the story about

(23:39):
my great grandmother in World War Two, sending off three
sons and her nephew who she raised since the Great Depression.
She sent four young men to answer our nation's call,
as did many of her neighbors on two hundredth Street
in Bayside, And every day there were hearts in their

(24:03):
throats as the male carrier came. And on one day
she answered the door to the Western Union man. It
wasn't the mail carrier who brought the news. It was
Western Union from the War Department, and she didn't know
which one. And she learned that she would never again

(24:27):
see her nineteen year old redheaded Frank Clabby. So to
all of the gold Star mothers, the gold Star families,
I salute what you've done for our country and for veterans.
You know, it's not Veterans Day, but every veteran within

(24:49):
the sound of my voice, you did something that I
can't imagine. You left your home, you left your family,
not knowing what was to be. So I salute your courage,
your bravery that we are all living in a free nation.

(25:10):
Thank you, and happy Memorial Day.

Speaker 3 (25:15):
I second triple and quadruple that, and pray that we
have more peace on earth.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
Now, Paul, your next important project that is the perfect
lead in International Peace Day. Tell us a little bit
about that and what you're doing.

Speaker 3 (25:34):
Well. This will be our twenty third annual event. We
take over Times Square forty six to forty seventh Street
for strengthen the message of the International Day of Peace.
It's the United Nations declared day. One hundred and ninety
three countries agree to it. Really, the bottom line is
to take a moment of silence for peace, actually a ceasefire,

(25:54):
and do nice random acts of kindness and peace. So
we're very, very focused on this. We believe it can
be done. We're in conversations with the City of New
York to pause the city for a moment of silence.
It's September nineteenth, a whole weekend is the weekday and

(26:15):
the twentieth we have Times Square and twenty first is
the declared day. So we're preparing and hopefully we can
get the schools that take a moment of silence and
some of the departments here and the whole wide world.
It's a world holiday and they estimate that actually two
billion people are involved with it in some way.

Speaker 4 (26:34):
So.

Speaker 3 (26:36):
Let's get closer to utopia.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
That's quite well, you're helping us in that direction. How
can people get involved and support your efforts?

Speaker 3 (26:47):
They can go to our website. I'll give the shorter
one Peace dayparty dot org or a nonprofit and would
love for you to come and volunteer, want to be
a donor, you want to join us in some way.
The more people we get involved, the more piece will
be on.

Speaker 2 (27:06):
Her really great, great stuff. Paul, you know, I'm so
thrilled that we had gene Chatsky with us. I think
she had such wonderful, very relatable advice as always, and
you know, personal finance and legal protections are inextricably intertwined.

(27:31):
Money alone does not solve money problems. We need to
develop some money skills, and that involves saying no to
ourselves and maybe we can soften it by saying not now. Right.
So I'm in Bloomingdale's, I see this beautiful blouse, and

(27:53):
I'll say to myself, not now. I'll go home, and
if that thing is still calling my name in a
couple of weeks, I'll go back and hope it's still there.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
Should be a family decisions, right, this topic should really
come up and maybe even at a dining table.

Speaker 2 (28:10):
Yeah, I love it, I really love it. So sit down,
what should we spend You know, we have X dollars
saved up for the summer. What should we spend it on?
Should it be you know, some a pool for the backyard.
Should it be a vacation? Should we buy mountain bikes

(28:32):
and a bike rack and start to explore the parks
by us? You know, a family, a group decision making
is probably the most important thing that we can do
for our children and for the marriage as well.

Speaker 3 (28:51):
Sure, yeah, you're your team.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
Absolutely, So with that, we're just about out of time.
I incur bridge all of you to visit me on
Instagram at my lawyer ann and during the week at
my asset protection attorney dot com. Have a great day everyone.

Speaker 1 (29:36):
The proceeding was a paid podcast. iHeartRadio's hosting of this
podcast constitutes neither an endorsement of the products offered or
the ideas expressed.