April 15, 2025 • 43 mins
On the latest episode of The Get Ready Money Podcast, I spoke with Chris Heye, Founder of Whealthcare Planning and Whealthcare Solutions about changing the way we think about money and health.
In this episode we discussed:
- You can’t separate great health from wealth.
- Why it’s important to have productive conversations on health related events.
- Have conversations with other family members.
- Our capacity to make good decisions declines with age.
- Poor financial decision making is an early sign of cognitive decline.
- Working on your self-awareness.
Connect with Chris Heye, PhD:
Resources mentioned:
- Is Joe Biden Too Old To Be President? Is Donald Trump? (LinkedIn)
- The Cognitive Impairment Probability Calculator (here)
- The Decision-Making Fitness Check-Up Assessment (here)
- The Power of Compound Interest - The Get Ready Money Podcast episode (here)
Chris Heye, PhD is the Founder of Whealthcare Planning LLC and Whealthcare Solutions, Inc. He is a technology entrepreneur, writer, researcher, speaker, and product innovator with a passion for crafting solutions to the challenges and opportunities that reside at the intersection of personal finance, health, and longevity. Chris is also a published author and frequent industry conference speaker, excelling in both internal and external communications and guiding teams and clients through change and innovation. He has a unique ability to translate complex concepts and problems into actionable plans and products. Extensive experience aligning activities, strategies, and messaging across product development, marketing, and sales teams.
The Get Ready Money Podcast and its guests do not provide investment advice. All content is for educational purposes. Guest opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Get Ready Money Podcast and Tony Steuer.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Are you looking to get ready, be prepared and
transform your financial future?
Then you've come to the rightplace.
This is the Get Ready MoneyPodcast with Tony Stewart, where
Tony has insightfulconversations with financial
experts who are changing the waywe think about money.
Catch up on the latestfinancial trends and hear
(00:27):
practical advice from Tony andhis expert guests so you can
build healthy habits that work,Be empowered with tips for
implementing small changes thatcan have a big impact on your
financial future.
So sit back and get ready tohear from today's guest.
So sit back and get ready tohear from today's guest.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Welcome to the Get Ready Money podcast changing the
way we think about money.
I'm pleased to be joined todayby Chris Hay.
Chris is the founder ofWealthcare Planning and
Wealthcare Solutions.
In this episode, we'll bediscussing Chris's insights on
how we change the way we thinkabout money and wealth care.
Chris, welcome to the Get ReadyMoney podcast.
Thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Hey, tony, it's great to be here.
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yeah, excited to have this conversation.
I know we've talked in the pastso you know for the audience
you know.
Tell us a little bit aboutyourself.
What is your origin story?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Yeah, so my origin story has a lot to do with what
happened in my family.
I unfortunately have a familyhistory of dementia.
My mother suffered fromdementia and eventually died of
dementia.
Her mother, my grandmother haddementia, her sister had
dementia and during my mother'sfinal years of life I was the
(01:46):
primary caretaker for her.
I have siblings who helped aton, but towards the end we
moved her.
When she started memory care Ilive, I was the closest one
there and I was the one who hadsort of the most.
It's funny because I actuallyhave sisters who did more on the
financial side, actually didmore on the healthcare side.
So I would be.
(02:07):
I was the one who wasinteracting with their
healthcare providers, you know,taking her doctor's appointments
, interacting with the staff atthe memory unit, taking her out
to dinner.
So I spent a lot of time inmemory units and just at times
it can be depressing, but it wasincredible learning experience
for me.
And this was after my dadactually died of prostate cancer
(02:31):
.
He had pretty serious prostatecancer in his early 60s and he
died when he was 70, which nowseems you know pretty young and
my dad was the primary incomeearner and kind of the chief
financial officer was theprimary income earner and kind
of the chief financial officerand he was a college professor,
kind of an absent-minded collegeprofessor.
(02:51):
He was really good at investing, as it turned out, but he was
like a pack rat, it's just thefinancial stuff was all over the
place and it was classic.
And then when he died we werelike literally my siblings,
especially one of them, spentmonths figuring out where all
this stuff was.
So I guess, in short, I have.
(03:11):
I have a lot of experience,first time experience with how
these health related risks canaffect financial management,
because I've been.
I've been through it with mydad, I've been through it with
my mom, been through it withsome you know family and other
family and friends, and sothat's really shaped my
(03:31):
worldview on financialmanagement and you know where I
come from now is that,especially as we get older, you
know you can't really separatehealth from wealth.
That you know health andhealthcare decisions are going
to affect your personal financesand financial decisions can
have a significant impact onboth your mental and physical
(03:52):
health.
So that's been my area of focusand I think, especially as the
population ages, these issuesare only going to get become
more important and theinteraction between health and
wealth are only going to becomemore important and the
interaction between health andwealth is only going to grow.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah, I completely agree and I'm so sorry to hear
about that with your family, andcaregiving is so difficult for
people who watch and listen tothe shows.
They've heard from so manyadvisors themselves who've ended
up as caregivers.
So many of us will end up as aninformal caregiver or needing
(04:31):
informal caregiving.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
So we all, we're all going to be both caregivers, and
I think it was a RosalindCarter had the comment either
everybody's either going to be acaretaker, has been a caretaker
or will need caretaking.
It's just.
It's just the fact of lifethese days.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Definitely definitely , and you know that goes to the
importance of an aging plan.
But let's jump into.
You know your specialty, whichis wealth care.
What is wealth care?
Speaker 3 (04:59):
So what I started about 10 years ago, actually
getting interested in this areaand trying to figure out ways
how I could develop theseeducational tools and resources
that would help older adults andtheir families more effectively
(05:20):
plan for these health-relatedfinancial risks, and I actually
did a trial at Mass GeneralHospital.
Another important piece of thisis a good friend of mine is the
head of geriatric psychiatry atMass General Hospital, dr Tony
Weiner, and we did a study thattried to look at the
relationships between agingcognitive impairment for sound
financial decision making, andat the time a lot of people were
(05:56):
focused on memory, and I thinkmemory becomes kind of a
euphemism for cognitiveimpairment.
And so, anyway, we found thatthere are these other factors
related to what doctors callexecutive function that seem to
be very impactful for soundfinancial decision making.
(06:16):
So just ability to plan, toorganize, to connect the dots,
all that seems to be, you know,very important for good decision
making, and so I just kept sortof drilling down in that area.
And then so we've developedthis assessments, which you can
we can talk about that later ifyou want, but the assessment is
(06:36):
now available for free on one ofmy websites and I encourage
anybody who has concerns about afamily member, the ability to
make some financial decisions totake that assessment.
So I've got some new productscoming out which we can talk
about later, but basically thehigh level goal is to help
educate both financialprofessionals and the clients
(06:58):
they work with on how to moreeffectively plan for these
health related financial risks,including that kind of a
subspecialty in there, includinghow to deal with dementia and
other mental and behavioralillnesses that can severely
impact decision-making.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yeah, and I think this is so important and I had
some experience when I was doingsome litigation consulting is
seeing this come up in elderfinancial abuse cases where
there were signs of decline orchanges.
I think I read a paper and youcan definitely sure talk to this
is that sometimes elderlypeople will take on more risk,
(07:40):
sometimes surprisingly, thanthey have historically no that
happens a lot, I think, withpeople surprisingly than they
have historically.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
No, that happens a lot, I think, with people.
Again, when people think aboutAlzheimer's and some of these
other cognitive illnesses, theythink about what I would call
kind of like the cognitive sideof things, especially like the
memory loss.
But there's also these moresort of behavioral issues that
are sometimes a little moresubtle and a little harder to
(08:07):
detect, but they can have verysignificant negative
consequences for decision-making.
Things like excessiverisk-taking, impulsivity so lack
of impulse control,overconfidence.
These factors have been shownin studies even to have some
(08:31):
really, really bad effects ondecision making, especially
overconfidence.
I mean we've seen this over andover as people, as people to
get older, I mean the studieshave shown that people's
capacity to make good decisionstends to decline.
Right, you know, it goes up andthen, like a lot of things,
later in life, we're not as goodat running, we're not as good,
(08:53):
as you know, shooting basketballhoops, we're maybe not as good
as some other things, but wetend to lose these capabilities
and one study suggested we startlosing these capabilities in
our 50s already.
The problem is a lot of people,even while they're losing these
capabilities, they don't wantto recognize that they are.
So you get this gap betweenactual capacity and perceived
(09:18):
capacity and that can get youdangerous.
The other thing that and thiscame up in the trial.
Getting back to your point aboutrisk-taking, there is this
difficulty A lot of adults, whenthey get older, it gets harder
and harder to connect the dots,and I saw this with my mother,
you know really clearly.
With my mother I would ask herquestions like would you like to
(09:38):
do X?
Figure out if you wanted to doX.
You kind of have to go through.
Well, if I do X, I got to do Afirst, then B, then C, and she
just couldn't do it.
You know, just having to be ableto plan, you know, at any point
in the future was hard.
So that can happen with olderadults.
So you just, you don't, you'rejust not as aware of the
(10:05):
consequences of your actions.
For you know these are generalstatements, obviously, and that
can lead to excessive risktaking, which is why you know,
and I have concerns aboutespecially some of these risk
tolerance questionnaires Forolder adults.
You know they can be, you know,worse than useless Because,
again, older adults can't makethose connections, so they may
take these assessments and comeup as being very risk loving,
(10:28):
where, in fact, they just don'tunderstand the risk.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yeah, that's a really good point is I hadn't thought
about it from that perspective.
But yeah, if they are becomingmore risk tolerant when actually
they need to be taking lessrisk, you know that does become
more of a dangerous tool.
So you know, what can you know?
Do you have a couple simpletips for advisors to kind of
maybe be looking for to see iftheir clients risk profile I
(10:58):
mean, is that just it, is theirrisk profile changing from
what's been?
Speaker 3 (11:02):
historically, it can change over time.
Yes, and again, it's possiblethat people do become more
risk-taking as they get olderand they can also become more
impulsive as they get older,because one thing we found in
this study is that it doesappear that this ability to
(11:22):
control impulses is importantfor good financial decision
making.
So, as some people get olderand again I've seen this with
some older adults with cognitiveissues you know that your
executive function is your kindof your governor.
It's what tells you to saydon't say anything inappropriate
, you know.
You know, you know think beforeyou speak and for certain
(11:46):
population of older adults, thatthose governors start to come
off.
So, basically, what happensthat the heck make you more
impulsive and that can be reallydetrimental to, you know, sound
financial decision making.
So, as far as the advisors goes,yes, there are some things to
look for.
I mean, I think, just ingeneral, there's a lot of good
(12:07):
reasons just to stay in touchwith your clients, right,
especially older clients.
You know, stay in touch withthem frequently because and I
saw this with my mother and I'veseen this with other older
adults these declines indecision making capacity tend
not to be linear.
They tend to be morediscontinuous, like somebody's
good for a while, and I'd seethis with my mother and then I
(12:30):
didn't see her for a week, andthen I'd come back and go, wow,
mom, just seems different today,and then let's see if and
sometimes I'd come back the nextday and she'd see, fine, but it
did seem like, okay, she justsort of permanently dropped,
permanently dropped, permanentlydropped, permanently dropped.
So advisors want to be in touchand there's a lot of good, you
know, a lot of sound evidencesuggesting that just good
communication is critical tokeeping your clients anyway, you
(12:54):
know.
And also, of course, you wantto get to know the spouse, you
want to get to know the kids,because this you know,
especially if it's a male client, you know, usually, frequently,
not always, but frequently thewoman is kind of the chief
medical officer in the familyand the spouse, the female
spouse, may be the one who saysI'm a little worried about Dave,
(13:16):
he's been forgetting stuff,he's been getting confused.
So you want to stay on top ofall that no-transcript, all
(13:55):
things to look out for.
And again, you don't need to bea doctor, you just need to be
someone who's you know, who'shad some interest in their
client and is paying attentionto what they're saying and how
they are appearing.
So I think those are allimportant things for a financial
(14:15):
advisor to be professionals, tobe aware of.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Yeah, and I think you said something that's super
important is because, okay, soan advisor spotted a potential
decline or change in a client'sbehavior.
Cognition is you have to havesomebody to be able to talk to
about it.
You're not a mandatory reporter, so you may not report it to
Adult Protective Services, whichwould be a huge step.
(14:41):
Which would be a huge step, but, as you point out, if you have
a relationship with a spouse orif you have a relationship with
the kids, then that is aconversation to have.
But you know, a question thatcomes up for me, though, is
confidentiality.
Do you have any advice foradvisors on how to reach out to
somebody?
Speaker 3 (15:02):
There's a couple of things.
One is I know some advisorshave and I have a copy of this,
but they'll have some sort ofletter or some sort of agreement
that they asked their clientsto sign, and it can be very
simple.
It basically says if I suspectthat you are having difficulty
making sound financial decisionsbecause of some sort of
(15:24):
cognitive disorder, what wouldyou like me to do?
You know, contact you, contactyour spouse, contact the kids.
Get your permission first, youknow.
So I think it's good and allthis should be done.
It's always good to beproactive and we can talk more
about that, but it's always goodto do this in advance.
So do this when your clientdon't.
(15:45):
You know it's better to do thiswhen your clients in their
fifties and sixties rather thanwhen they're eighties, right,
and and you want to make surethat when you're talking to your
clients it's like I'm notsingling you out, I do this with
everybody, and so do it early,do it with everybody and have
some sort of agreement inwriting.
Ideally that specifies what theadvisor, what you would like
(16:12):
the advisor to do in the eventthat he or she suspects you're
having difficulty makingfinancial decisions.
So I think that that's the bestthing you know to be done.
And then, and then you knowsort of have the written
agreement and then you know ifyou have some other verbal
agreement with a spouse, withthe kids, that's great.
Because one thing that'sincreasingly evident now is that
(16:33):
poor financial decision-makingis an early sign of cognitive
decline.
It's really one of the firstskills to go.
There's been a few studies now.
I mean there's studies thatsuggest there've been two major
studies looking at things like,you know, credit card errors and
credit scores and other typesof decisions.
(16:58):
Some of those poor decisionsstart showing up, you know,
three, four, five, six yearsbefore an official diagnosis of
dementia.
So again, getting back to this,the clinical study is that you
know, one of the first thingsthat goes, or what they can go,
is these executive functions,and when the executive function
(17:19):
goes, that can have, you know,just wreak havoc on financial
decision making.
So the advisors are reallythey're kind of on the front
lines in a lot of ways.
They may see signs of cognitivedecline before their doctors
you know the client's doctors.
So you know, for better orworse, they're in a really, you
(17:42):
know again, frontline positionon these issues and it's even
more reason to have some sort ofagreement with the clients
before these things even occur.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Well, that's great advice, and I think one thing
you talked about is startingearly, and cognitive decline can
start at an earlier age.
I mean, we may associate itwith later ages, but it can
start in the 50s and 60sSometimes it's rare and we
(18:17):
started by mid 60s.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
He was already pretty out of it.
You know it was so sad, reallygreat, great guy and I mean he.
There's no way he should havebeen making.
And I don't think he was, Ithink his, his wife was, was was
very aware, but it was.
He was in the 60s, not 70s, not80s.
And even you know, like I said,even there's a major study that
(18:41):
suggests financialdecision-making capacity for
most people peaks around age 53.
So you know, it's earlier thana lot of us want to think.
You want to think it's 63 or 73.
And again, that's average.
But it really suggests thateven families in their 50s
(19:03):
should really start thinking,start preparing for basically
the inevitable health risks.
Maybe not dementia foreverybody, but some cognitive
decline is pretty muchinevitable for all of us and a
major health event is 100%inevitable for all of us.
So it's going to happen.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Wow.
So I definitely don't want togo down this road, but it
immediately made me think of ourfederal legislature in the age
of all the people running theUnited States of America, the
United States of America.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
It's hard.
I've written about this and itwas actually probably my most
viewed post ever on LinkedIn.
When I did this was right aboutwhen, just before Biden
resigned, or resigned justbefore he decided not to run for
office, I wrote a paper aboutthis, because there's sort of
(20:02):
you know, there's, on the onehand, you don't want to be
ageist, right, I mean I thinkthat we do have a big problem
with ageism in this country.
I think, you know, especiallywhen it comes to employing older
adults, I mean, ageism is kindof one of the last prejudices.
You know there's a bunch ofthings that you would never say
having to do with someone'sethnicity or race, but it's
(20:25):
still, you know, in some circlesstill okay, yeah, that old guy,
he's crazy, you know.
That's still kind of, you know,unfortunately a little bit too
okay.
But anyway, again, one of my,you know, most popular posts was
, I kind of drilled down on thisissue, because we do kind of
look at Nancy Pelosi and youlook at Biden.
(20:45):
You, I mean you look at, saywhat you want about Nancy Pelosi
, but she doesn't seem likeshe's lost it.
Or Mitt Romney, I mean he's inhis 70s now.
(21:08):
These people haven't lost muchoff their fastball Again.
There's, on the other hand, youknow, do we really want to have
a country that's run almostexclusively by people you know
well past their prime years ofdecision making?
Speaker 2 (21:34):
So it's an issue that it's going to be increasingly
important for us to be able toaddress Fantastic and for people
watching and listening.
Chris, I think I have the link,but I'll double check with you
to make sure I have a link tothat post so I can include it in
the show notes no-transcript.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Fantastic.
So before we jump into the getready questions, let's talk
about AI, because Wealthcare wasat doing graduate work at MIT
in the 1990s and I had someexposure to the guys back then.
It was all guys doing AIresearch and they were super
smart.
You know there's a cognitivescientist and you know
(22:36):
philosophers and and I was.
It was really interesting butbut you know, I was did a little
bit of programming and and andI just I just it's like, yeah,
this is great, but where are thepractical applications?
You know?
And and they were like, oh, it'sgoing to change the world and I
was like, yeah, maybe someday.
And so it's funny because formost of the last 20 or 30 years,
(23:01):
whatever that is I've been abit of an AI skeptic, in that I
know that there's things that AIis affecting my life in ways
that I don't even recognize.
And then along came ChatGPT andI started I was an early
(23:21):
adopter using ChatGPT and thenit came to the point where, you
know, chatgpt enabled you to,you know, basically train your
own models, and then I kind ofhad that holy bleep moment.
So since then the last you know, really I guess now a couple of
(23:48):
years I've been just fascinatedand very interested in the
promise and the capabilities ofthese large language models.
So the way I'm using AI ismostly what I've been doing is
I've been training.
I'm training a couple ofdifferent models because I have
a lot of educational contentthat I've developed or I've
developed in concert with otherfinancial planners.
Or, you know, again, I workwith, you know, head of
(24:10):
geriatric psychiatry at MassGeneral Hospital, dr Tony Weiner
.
Dr Ned Halliwell is anotherperson that I've worked with.
So I have a lot of contentaround the sort of the
intersection of health andwealth.
So I've been using that totrain my own model, because I do
think that these sort ofpersonal assistance agents are
(24:33):
going to become increased.
They're going to in the nextfew years we're going to see
many, many more of these andtheir capabilities are only
going to get better.
I mean, I've seen ChatGPT getmuch better just in the last
year or so.
So we are now.
So I've got a couple modelsthat I've trained and I'm going
(24:54):
to be and I'm training more now,and so what I'm going to be
doing is sort of drilling down.
What I'm trying to do isdevelop some capabilities where
these models are kind of keepthem kind of narrow but very
deep.
So I've done a lot of trainingon this intersection of health
(25:15):
and wealth.
Two areas now that I'm reallyinterested in is the related
areas or wealth transfer.
So I'm developing somecapabilities around that,
because if you look at thesesurveys of financial advisor
clients, sort of the thing thatthey want most that they're not
getting from their advisors iswealth transfer, planning, state
(25:37):
planning, wealth transfer.
Going through that process andyou know, it seems like every
two weeks the volume of expectedvolume of wealth transfer goes
up, and it was 70 trillion, it's80 trillion Now it's like 100
trillion.
So that's one area that I'mworking now and I've been, I've
(25:57):
kind of been through that.
I've been it's kind of beenthrough that twice.
My dad died and I transferredthe money from my dad to my mom
and then my mom died and we, youknow, figure out the transfer
to the kids and you know thereare a lot of different pieces.
There are a lot of kind of nottraditional financial planning
pieces around estate planning,just around like financial
organization, end of lifeplanning, you know, areas that
(26:27):
advisors don't always have a lotof expertise in.
So working on that, the otherarea that I want to use these
models for is to help reallyboth financial professionals and
their clients, but mostlyfinancial professionals have
more productive conversations inthese areas.
Because, again, more productiveconversations in these areas?
Because, again we alluded tothis earlier, this stuff is kind
(26:49):
of hard and I get that a lot offinancial professionals don't
feel comfortable talking totheir clients about
health-related events,especially dementia, but again
they kind of have to and I thinknot only do they have kind of
an no-transcript hey, I beat theS&P by 2.1% last year that's
(27:35):
going to pale in comparison tohelping take care of their
spouse who's got dementia, andit's also, I mean, there's a lot
of reasons to do that.
But the one major obstacle nowis that advisors just don't know
how to initiate and sustainthose types of conversations.
(27:58):
So I'm working on now trainingsome.
I've already got some trainingon how to have more productive
conversations and so I've gotsome guidelines.
I've got some, you know scriptslike basically say, you know how
to start the conversation, butalso I want to be able to
develop the capability for thesemodels even to enable the
(28:22):
advisor to even practice, have apractice conversation using
these models.
So those are two areas where Ithink that, again, I think that
these large language models likeChatGPT, with training, can
really help, because really, Imean you can just and I even
have some now if you go on mywebsite, you can access one of
(28:44):
these models you can just sayyou know my mother has dementia,
what should I do?
And they can get very personalOkay, my mother has dementia and
she's living alone and you knowI'm, you know this far away and
you know blah, blah, blah, andthey, and, and.
So these models are reallycapable.
You know, if you give themenough information, they can
really provide highlypersonalized advice, and that, I
(29:10):
think, is really going to beinvaluable for many, many
financial advice clients movingforward.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Yeah, I think I think so as well, as I think the one
question is we probably don'twant to talk too much about
hallucinations and some of thechallenges with AI, but I think
that's just a growth bump.
But I think I do want to stresssomething to advisors from more
of a stick perspective is youdo take on some liability if you
(29:39):
miss some very obvious signswith your clients that things
are going on, and that can openyou up to litigation risk, sure.
So it's important to payattention to these signs and not
overlook them.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
No, I've met with a very senior, I've met with folks
at FINRA and the SEC andbasically they said, ignoring
signs of dementia does not makeyou less liable.
So unfortunately there is andthere was just some Wells Fargo
advisors just got in troublebecause of this and you know
(30:15):
there's legal and no one wantsto get involved in a dispute
involving elderly abuse.
I mean that's just, they'reawful in so many ways and
they're bad for business.
So there definitely is a stickcomponent.
You know, I try to, you know,point that out.
(30:35):
But also I really do thinkthere's a major carrot component
because I really do think andwe've been seeing this for a
while now, you know, financialadvice is getting much more
holistic.
Right, you know the days of,you know, advisors being, you
know, only portfolio managers.
Those are, those are going ifthose are going, if they're not
(30:56):
gone going if they're not gone,I mean, as many people want you
know, if you're getting to lookat these surveys people want
wealth transfer advice andfinancial planning as much, or
at least as much as portfoliomanagement, in some cases almost
more.
And you know, and so, andadvice, and again AI, like I
(31:16):
mean there's some tools now thatI mean that are designed to do
portfolio analysis.
Some of these models have beentrained to do investment and I
just think, at a high level, aiis going to free up time for
financial advisors, right?
I mean, you've already gotapplications that can take
(31:38):
extensive notes from meetingsand summarize them and they can,
you know, write emails and sendemails and they can, you know,
do portfolio.
You know different types ofportfolio management.
They're only going to getbetter at managing.
You know, rebalancingportfolios and doing tax loss
harvesting.
All that's going to just getbetter and better and better.
And so the way I look at it isthat's going to free up time for
(32:02):
advisors to focus on a bunch ofthese more holistic, you know
sort of maybe slightly lesstechnical issues about you know,
managing health-related risks,watching out for dementia and
just getting to know theirclients better.
And I think those are going tobe the successful advisors.
And, again, I think AI is goingto be a major driver of these
(32:27):
results, and I think theadvisors who are going to
succeed in the future are goingto be the ones who can seriously
leverage AI in all thesedifferent ways.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
AI in all these different ways?
Yeah, 100%.
And it doesn't mean thatthere's a loss of the need for
the expertise for the advisor,because the expertise that you
have, maybe as a certifiedfinancial planner can also be
applied to making sure thateverything is flowing correctly.
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
No, absolutely, and I think that the good ones are
going to be able to use AI toget even better at those chores
as well, and again, that's whattheir clients tell is going to
come to expect to be able tohave that comprehensive,
holistic financial management.
That's going to become thebaseline.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
That's going to become the baseline 100%, 100%.
Well, chris, I'm going toswitch over to our Get Ready
Money questions, which I askevery guest.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Great, these are more quickfire questions.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Yeah, the first one is what basic money concept do
you wish people knew?
Speaker 3 (33:34):
You know, I guess there's kind of two.
One is again having greatawareness around the
relationship between health andwealth, but also, I think, for
younger people, I just think themiracle of compound interest
rates, the miracle ofcompounding, just think about
that early and often, because itis kind of a miracle when you
(33:58):
look at the results over time.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
That is by far the most popular answer on the show
and for people watching andlistening.
There is an episode of thispodcast that is dedicated just
to compound interest.
As always, I'll put a link toit in the show notes, so if you
want to go deep on compoundinterest, you can listen to us
talk about it for an hour.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Got that out there.
It's kind of a no-brainer.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Yep.
For me, I think it's the basicmoney concept.
I wish everybody knew.
So, Chris, what's one simplething people can do each year to
set themselves up for financialsuccess?
Speaker 3 (34:38):
Well, again, I think it's always.
You know it's good to beproactive.
Human beings by nature are notusually not very good at long
term planning.
When you think of you know ourhistory, let's say that species
have been around well thepension, say, 250,000 years for
249,000 plus.
You know, life expectancy waslike 30.
(35:00):
You know, and then a couplehundred years ago got to maybe
40.
So we just didn't think aboutplanning, we were thinking about
survival and there's no suchthing as retirement.
You know not many people, youjust retirement's kind of a new
thing, so what we need.
Know not many people.
You just there was retirement'skind of a new thing, so what we
(35:23):
need to.
It's hard, but you know youneed to get yourself in kind of
a longer term mindset and thinkabout where you want to be.
And I could have done muchbetter at this, I think in a lot
of ways personally, but I thinkyou know, try to think five, 10
, 20 years ahead and thenleverage that miracle of
(35:44):
compounding to set yourself up.
Because it's funny, because yousee these surveys now of
younger people they want toretire in their 50s.
I'm like great.
So how are you going to affordthose next 30 years?
So that's something that Iguess you know.
That'd be advice on sort of anannual basis to think about.
(36:07):
That Say, okay, if I reallywant to retire early, how am I
going to build that nest?
Speaker 2 (36:14):
egg.
There's so many other issues wecould talk about there, but you
know some of the people Ifollow in the FIRE community
financial independents retireearly.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
A lot of them have gone back to working, you know,
at least part time.
You know that they found thatis, you know, for many reasons,
that it was hard to just stopworking.
You know, in their 50s or 40s,I think we're going to see a lot
more of that and I think, bothfor financial reasons, a lot of
people, I mean I think we'regoing to see a lot more of that
and I think, both for financialreasons, a lot of people, I mean
.
I think you know one thing wedon't want to lose track of,
sure that there's a lot ofpeople.
I mean, if you look atstatistics on, you know things
like medical debt and retirementsavings in this country that's
a big problem.
(36:55):
So a lot of people are going tohave to work.
I mean, there's going to bepeople who have to work in order
to live the lifestyle that theywant, and then there's a lot of
people, probably like you andme, who want to work, who want
to, or at least want to, keep,you know, stay active, stay
active.
You know, intellectually, maybe, stay active, as you know,
(37:17):
being continuing to be part of agreater conversation.
You know, in your case, youwant, as you know, being
continuing to be part of agreater conversation.
You know, in your case, youwant to.
You know you want to be part ofthis, this, this greater
discussion about financialmanagement, and that's probably
not going to go away for a longtime.
So I think that that'ssomething else that we're going
to see is going to be veryimpactful and going to it's
(37:38):
going to be a major sort ofsocial issue that we're going to
need to do a better job ofcoping with.
Is this how to ensure that wehave this you know, productive
life that people want to live,you know well, past traditional
age of retirement?
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Yeah, 100%, All right .
So the next question is what isone habit that people can
change when it comes to theirmoney?
Speaker 3 (38:03):
I think that I think there's a, there's a few.
I think that you know there are.
Again, money is not money formost people.
So I think I would say, at ahigh level is trying to better
understand your relationshipwith money.
Level is trying to betterunderstand your relationship
with money.
So I think, for some people,money is self-esteem, like.
(38:24):
This is probably a subset ofpeople who you know, think that
you know, who correlate theirself-esteem with their bank
account, and there's people Ithink I would put myself in this
category.
For me, money can be anxiety,and so I think you know money
can be anxiety and so I thinkyou know.
If I would have a suggestion isto you know, do this, do this
(38:46):
on your own, do this with atherapist, do this with friends
is try to understand youremotional relationship with
money and figure out how that isA impacting your overall you
know well-being and how thatmight be also impacting your
ability to manage your financessuccessfully.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Yeah, that is so important and I think you know
there.
You know, as we've been talkingabout, there is a greater
recognition of that.
So, chris, to wrap up, what isyour number one tip on changing
the way we think about money?
Speaker 3 (39:17):
I think you know I've alluded to a few of these
already.
I think you know coming to agreater understanding of what
money and an emotional levelmeans to you.
And then I think the otherthing is sort of related is to I
think all of us could, you know, work on your self-awareness,
(39:39):
so understand what yourstrengths are, what your
weaknesses are.
This gets back a little bit tothe comments I made about
overconfidence and, especiallyas you get older, understand
that you may not be as good atmanaging money as you used to be
, and then that's okay and it'sokay to get help and at some
(40:02):
level, get help.
And then, like we did this withmy mom and she didn't have to
worry about money, just didn'thave to worry about it, because
one sister was paying the bills,the other sister was managing
the finances, managing theinvestments, and she didn't have
to worry about it.
So, if you can get help, builda team is something I always
(40:23):
talk about is building a team.
Get that team together and,especially as you get older, get
back, relax a little bit, letgo, let go of control.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
You'll be happier.
Let it go.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
And your money will probably be safer.
You'll actually in some wayshave more control if you let go
now than than if you don't andthen something bad happens later
.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
Definitely.
And I think the most importantthing I'd like to stress from
what you said is that it's okayto ask for help.
I think so many of us are likeyou know that asking for help
can be very difficult, but it'sokay to ask for help.
So, chris, where can peoplelearn more about you?
Pick up the assessments andcheck out.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
Sure, so you could go on LinkedIn.
I do.
I do a lot of, I publish a lotof articles on LinkedIn.
So go to LinkedIn.
Subscribe to my newsletter.
It's called the Wealth CareWire.
Subscribe to that and you'llget updates.
Check out, if you want to lookat my columns, the Journal of
Financial Planning Every fewweeks I have a column, and then
(41:29):
probably I've got a couple ofwebsites.
Probably the best website to goto now is WealthBot.
So wealth with an H.
Wealthbotcom.
There's access to theassessment that's based on the
clinical study Mass GeneralHospital.
You can access that.
You can access one of my AImodels.
(41:50):
You look in the corner of theweb page.
There's a little chat box.
You can access that, and thenthere's also a listing of all my
public or not Many of mypublications is also available.
So WealthBotcom, but follow meon LinkedIn.
There's going to be more.
Like I said, there's going tobe more products AI based
products coming pretty soon thenext couple of months, I hope to
(42:14):
have one that's focusing moreon wealth transfer and one
that's focusing more on havingbetter conversations.
So, again, there's a little bitof that now, but there's going
to be more coming.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
That's awesome and for everybody watching and
listening.
As always, there will be linksto all of these resources in the
show notes so you can check outwhat Chris is up to.
So, chris, thanks again forjoining us today on the Get
Ready Money podcast.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Thanks for having me, Tony.
It was great to be here.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Yeah, and this was a fantastic conversation and, as
always, thank you everyone fortuning in to this episode of the
Get Ready Money podcast.
If you learned something todayto change the way you think
about money, please be sure tosubscribe and to tell a friend.
Until next time let's changethe way we think about money.
You.
Are you looking to get ready, be prepared and
transform your financial future?
Then you've come to the rightplace.
This is the Get Ready MoneyPodcast with Tony Stewart, where
Tony has insightfulconversations with financial
experts who are changing the waywe think about money.
Catch up on the latestfinancial trends and hear
(00:27):
practical advice from Tony andhis expert guests so you can
build healthy habits that work,Be empowered with tips for
implementing small changes thatcan have a big impact on your
financial future.
So sit back and get ready tohear from today's guest.
So sit back and get ready tohear from today's guest.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Welcome to the Get Ready Money podcast changing the
way we think about money.
I'm pleased to be joined todayby Chris Hay.
Chris is the founder ofWealthcare Planning and
Wealthcare Solutions.
In this episode, we'll bediscussing Chris's insights on
how we change the way we thinkabout money and wealth care.
Chris, welcome to the Get ReadyMoney podcast.
Thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Hey, tony, it's great to be here.
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yeah, excited to have this conversation.
I know we've talked in the pastso you know for the audience
you know.
Tell us a little bit aboutyourself.
What is your origin story?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Yeah, so my origin story has a lot to do with what
happened in my family.
I unfortunately have a familyhistory of dementia.
My mother suffered fromdementia and eventually died of
dementia.
Her mother, my grandmother haddementia, her sister had
dementia and during my mother'sfinal years of life I was the
(01:46):
primary caretaker for her.
I have siblings who helped aton, but towards the end we
moved her.
When she started memory care Ilive, I was the closest one
there and I was the one who hadsort of the most.
It's funny because I actuallyhave sisters who did more on the
financial side, actually didmore on the healthcare side.
So I would be.
(02:07):
I was the one who wasinteracting with their
healthcare providers, you know,taking her doctor's appointments
, interacting with the staff atthe memory unit, taking her out
to dinner.
So I spent a lot of time inmemory units and just at times
it can be depressing, but it wasincredible learning experience
for me.
And this was after my dadactually died of prostate cancer
(02:31):
.
He had pretty serious prostatecancer in his early 60s and he
died when he was 70, which nowseems you know pretty young and
my dad was the primary incomeearner and kind of the chief
financial officer was theprimary income earner and kind
of the chief financial officerand he was a college professor,
kind of an absent-minded collegeprofessor.
(02:51):
He was really good at investing, as it turned out, but he was
like a pack rat, it's just thefinancial stuff was all over the
place and it was classic.
And then when he died we werelike literally my siblings,
especially one of them, spentmonths figuring out where all
this stuff was.
So I guess, in short, I have.
(03:11):
I have a lot of experience,first time experience with how
these health related risks canaffect financial management,
because I've been.
I've been through it with mydad, I've been through it with
my mom, been through it withsome you know family and other
family and friends, and sothat's really shaped my
(03:31):
worldview on financialmanagement and you know where I
come from now is that,especially as we get older, you
know you can't really separatehealth from wealth.
That you know health andhealthcare decisions are going
to affect your personal financesand financial decisions can
have a significant impact onboth your mental and physical
(03:52):
health.
So that's been my area of focusand I think, especially as the
population ages, these issuesare only going to get become
more important and theinteraction between health and
wealth are only going to becomemore important and the
interaction between health andwealth is only going to grow.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah, I completely agree and I'm so sorry to hear
about that with your family, andcaregiving is so difficult for
people who watch and listen tothe shows.
They've heard from so manyadvisors themselves who've ended
up as caregivers.
So many of us will end up as aninformal caregiver or needing
(04:31):
informal caregiving.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
So we all, we're all going to be both caregivers, and
I think it was a RosalindCarter had the comment either
everybody's either going to be acaretaker, has been a caretaker
or will need caretaking.
It's just.
It's just the fact of lifethese days.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Definitely definitely , and you know that goes to the
importance of an aging plan.
But let's jump into.
You know your specialty, whichis wealth care.
What is wealth care?
Speaker 3 (04:59):
So what I started about 10 years ago, actually
getting interested in this areaand trying to figure out ways
how I could develop theseeducational tools and resources
that would help older adults andtheir families more effectively
(05:20):
plan for these health-relatedfinancial risks, and I actually
did a trial at Mass GeneralHospital.
Another important piece of thisis a good friend of mine is the
head of geriatric psychiatry atMass General Hospital, dr Tony
Weiner, and we did a study thattried to look at the
relationships between agingcognitive impairment for sound
financial decision making, andat the time a lot of people were
(05:56):
focused on memory, and I thinkmemory becomes kind of a
euphemism for cognitiveimpairment.
And so, anyway, we found thatthere are these other factors
related to what doctors callexecutive function that seem to
be very impactful for soundfinancial decision making.
(06:16):
So just ability to plan, toorganize, to connect the dots,
all that seems to be, you know,very important for good decision
making, and so I just kept sortof drilling down in that area.
And then so we've developedthis assessments, which you can
we can talk about that later ifyou want, but the assessment is
(06:36):
now available for free on one ofmy websites and I encourage
anybody who has concerns about afamily member, the ability to
make some financial decisions totake that assessment.
So I've got some new productscoming out which we can talk
about later, but basically thehigh level goal is to help
educate both financialprofessionals and the clients
(06:58):
they work with on how to moreeffectively plan for these
health related financial risks,including that kind of a
subspecialty in there, includinghow to deal with dementia and
other mental and behavioralillnesses that can severely
impact decision-making.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yeah, and I think this is so important and I had
some experience when I was doingsome litigation consulting is
seeing this come up in elderfinancial abuse cases where
there were signs of decline orchanges.
I think I read a paper and youcan definitely sure talk to this
is that sometimes elderlypeople will take on more risk,
(07:40):
sometimes surprisingly, thanthey have historically no that
happens a lot, I think, withpeople surprisingly than they
have historically.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
No, that happens a lot, I think, with people.
Again, when people think aboutAlzheimer's and some of these
other cognitive illnesses, theythink about what I would call
kind of like the cognitive sideof things, especially like the
memory loss.
But there's also these moresort of behavioral issues that
are sometimes a little moresubtle and a little harder to
(08:07):
detect, but they can have verysignificant negative
consequences for decision-making.
Things like excessiverisk-taking, impulsivity so lack
of impulse control,overconfidence.
These factors have been shownin studies even to have some
(08:31):
really, really bad effects ondecision making, especially
overconfidence.
I mean we've seen this over andover as people, as people to
get older, I mean the studieshave shown that people's
capacity to make good decisionstends to decline.
Right, you know, it goes up andthen, like a lot of things,
later in life, we're not as goodat running, we're not as good,
(08:53):
as you know, shooting basketballhoops, we're maybe not as good
as some other things, but wetend to lose these capabilities
and one study suggested we startlosing these capabilities in
our 50s already.
The problem is a lot of people,even while they're losing these
capabilities, they don't wantto recognize that they are.
So you get this gap betweenactual capacity and perceived
(09:18):
capacity and that can get youdangerous.
The other thing that and thiscame up in the trial.
Getting back to your point aboutrisk-taking, there is this
difficulty A lot of adults, whenthey get older, it gets harder
and harder to connect the dots,and I saw this with my mother,
you know really clearly.
With my mother I would ask herquestions like would you like to
(09:38):
do X?
Figure out if you wanted to doX.
You kind of have to go through.
Well, if I do X, I got to do Afirst, then B, then C, and she
just couldn't do it.
You know, just having to be ableto plan, you know, at any point
in the future was hard.
So that can happen with olderadults.
So you just, you don't, you'rejust not as aware of the
(10:05):
consequences of your actions.
For you know these are generalstatements, obviously, and that
can lead to excessive risktaking, which is why you know,
and I have concerns aboutespecially some of these risk
tolerance questionnaires Forolder adults.
You know they can be, you know,worse than useless Because,
again, older adults can't makethose connections, so they may
take these assessments and comeup as being very risk loving,
(10:28):
where, in fact, they just don'tunderstand the risk.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yeah, that's a really good point is I hadn't thought
about it from that perspective.
But yeah, if they are becomingmore risk tolerant when actually
they need to be taking lessrisk, you know that does become
more of a dangerous tool.
So you know, what can you know?
Do you have a couple simpletips for advisors to kind of
maybe be looking for to see iftheir clients risk profile I
(10:58):
mean, is that just it, is theirrisk profile changing from
what's been?
Speaker 3 (11:02):
historically, it can change over time.
Yes, and again, it's possiblethat people do become more
risk-taking as they get olderand they can also become more
impulsive as they get older,because one thing we found in
this study is that it doesappear that this ability to
(11:22):
control impulses is importantfor good financial decision
making.
So, as some people get olderand again I've seen this with
some older adults with cognitiveissues you know that your
executive function is your kindof your governor.
It's what tells you to saydon't say anything inappropriate
, you know.
You know, you know think beforeyou speak and for certain
(11:46):
population of older adults, thatthose governors start to come
off.
So, basically, what happensthat the heck make you more
impulsive and that can be reallydetrimental to, you know, sound
financial decision making.
So, as far as the advisors goes,yes, there are some things to
look for.
I mean, I think, just ingeneral, there's a lot of good
(12:07):
reasons just to stay in touchwith your clients, right,
especially older clients.
You know, stay in touch withthem frequently because and I
saw this with my mother and I'veseen this with other older
adults these declines indecision making capacity tend
not to be linear.
They tend to be morediscontinuous, like somebody's
good for a while, and I'd seethis with my mother and then I
(12:30):
didn't see her for a week, andthen I'd come back and go, wow,
mom, just seems different today,and then let's see if and
sometimes I'd come back the nextday and she'd see, fine, but it
did seem like, okay, she justsort of permanently dropped,
permanently dropped, permanentlydropped, permanently dropped.
So advisors want to be in touchand there's a lot of good, you
know, a lot of sound evidencesuggesting that just good
communication is critical tokeeping your clients anyway, you
(12:54):
know.
And also, of course, you wantto get to know the spouse, you
want to get to know the kids,because this you know,
especially if it's a male client, you know, usually, frequently,
not always, but frequently thewoman is kind of the chief
medical officer in the familyand the spouse, the female
spouse, may be the one who saysI'm a little worried about Dave,
(13:16):
he's been forgetting stuff,he's been getting confused.
So you want to stay on top ofall that no-transcript, all
(13:55):
things to look out for.
And again, you don't need to bea doctor, you just need to be
someone who's you know, who'shad some interest in their
client and is paying attentionto what they're saying and how
they are appearing.
So I think those are allimportant things for a financial
(14:15):
advisor to be professionals, tobe aware of.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Yeah, and I think you said something that's super
important is because, okay, soan advisor spotted a potential
decline or change in a client'sbehavior.
Cognition is you have to havesomebody to be able to talk to
about it.
You're not a mandatory reporter, so you may not report it to
Adult Protective Services, whichwould be a huge step.
(14:41):
Which would be a huge step, but, as you point out, if you have
a relationship with a spouse orif you have a relationship with
the kids, then that is aconversation to have.
But you know, a question thatcomes up for me, though, is
confidentiality.
Do you have any advice foradvisors on how to reach out to
somebody?
Speaker 3 (15:02):
There's a couple of things.
One is I know some advisorshave and I have a copy of this,
but they'll have some sort ofletter or some sort of agreement
that they asked their clientsto sign, and it can be very
simple.
It basically says if I suspectthat you are having difficulty
making sound financial decisionsbecause of some sort of
(15:24):
cognitive disorder, what wouldyou like me to do?
You know, contact you, contactyour spouse, contact the kids.
Get your permission first, youknow.
So I think it's good and allthis should be done.
It's always good to beproactive and we can talk more
about that, but it's always goodto do this in advance.
So do this when your clientdon't.
(15:45):
You know it's better to do thiswhen your clients in their
fifties and sixties rather thanwhen they're eighties, right,
and and you want to make surethat when you're talking to your
clients it's like I'm notsingling you out, I do this with
everybody, and so do it early,do it with everybody and have
some sort of agreement inwriting.
Ideally that specifies what theadvisor, what you would like
(16:12):
the advisor to do in the eventthat he or she suspects you're
having difficulty makingfinancial decisions.
So I think that that's the bestthing you know to be done.
And then, and then you knowsort of have the written
agreement and then you know ifyou have some other verbal
agreement with a spouse, withthe kids, that's great.
Because one thing that'sincreasingly evident now is that
(16:33):
poor financial decision-makingis an early sign of cognitive
decline.
It's really one of the firstskills to go.
There's been a few studies now.
I mean there's studies thatsuggest there've been two major
studies looking at things like,you know, credit card errors and
credit scores and other typesof decisions.
(16:58):
Some of those poor decisionsstart showing up, you know,
three, four, five, six yearsbefore an official diagnosis of
dementia.
So again, getting back to this,the clinical study is that you
know, one of the first thingsthat goes, or what they can go,
is these executive functions,and when the executive function
(17:19):
goes, that can have, you know,just wreak havoc on financial
decision making.
So the advisors are reallythey're kind of on the front
lines in a lot of ways.
They may see signs of cognitivedecline before their doctors
you know the client's doctors.
So you know, for better orworse, they're in a really, you
(17:42):
know again, frontline positionon these issues and it's even
more reason to have some sort ofagreement with the clients
before these things even occur.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Well, that's great advice, and I think one thing
you talked about is startingearly, and cognitive decline can
start at an earlier age.
I mean, we may associate itwith later ages, but it can
start in the 50s and 60sSometimes it's rare and we
(18:17):
started by mid 60s.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
He was already pretty out of it.
You know it was so sad, reallygreat, great guy and I mean he.
There's no way he should havebeen making.
And I don't think he was, Ithink his, his wife was, was was
very aware, but it was.
He was in the 60s, not 70s, not80s.
And even you know, like I said,even there's a major study that
(18:41):
suggests financialdecision-making capacity for
most people peaks around age 53.
So you know, it's earlier thana lot of us want to think.
You want to think it's 63 or 73.
And again, that's average.
But it really suggests thateven families in their 50s
(19:03):
should really start thinking,start preparing for basically
the inevitable health risks.
Maybe not dementia foreverybody, but some cognitive
decline is pretty muchinevitable for all of us and a
major health event is 100%inevitable for all of us.
So it's going to happen.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Wow.
So I definitely don't want togo down this road, but it
immediately made me think of ourfederal legislature in the age
of all the people running theUnited States of America, the
United States of America.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
It's hard.
I've written about this and itwas actually probably my most
viewed post ever on LinkedIn.
When I did this was right aboutwhen, just before Biden
resigned, or resigned justbefore he decided not to run for
office, I wrote a paper aboutthis, because there's sort of
(20:02):
you know, there's, on the onehand, you don't want to be
ageist, right, I mean I thinkthat we do have a big problem
with ageism in this country.
I think, you know, especiallywhen it comes to employing older
adults, I mean, ageism is kindof one of the last prejudices.
You know there's a bunch ofthings that you would never say
having to do with someone'sethnicity or race, but it's
(20:25):
still, you know, in some circlesstill okay, yeah, that old guy,
he's crazy, you know.
That's still kind of, you know,unfortunately a little bit too
okay.
But anyway, again, one of my,you know, most popular posts was
, I kind of drilled down on thisissue, because we do kind of
look at Nancy Pelosi and youlook at Biden.
(20:45):
You, I mean you look at, saywhat you want about Nancy Pelosi
, but she doesn't seem likeshe's lost it.
Or Mitt Romney, I mean he's inhis 70s now.
(21:08):
These people haven't lost muchoff their fastball Again.
There's, on the other hand, youknow, do we really want to have
a country that's run almostexclusively by people you know
well past their prime years ofdecision making?
Speaker 2 (21:34):
So it's an issue that it's going to be increasingly
important for us to be able toaddress Fantastic and for people
watching and listening.
Chris, I think I have the link,but I'll double check with you
to make sure I have a link tothat post so I can include it in
the show notes no-transcript.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Fantastic.
So before we jump into the getready questions, let's talk
about AI, because Wealthcare wasat doing graduate work at MIT
in the 1990s and I had someexposure to the guys back then.
It was all guys doing AIresearch and they were super
smart.
You know there's a cognitivescientist and you know
(22:36):
philosophers and and I was.
It was really interesting butbut you know, I was did a little
bit of programming and and andI just I just it's like, yeah,
this is great, but where are thepractical applications?
You know?
And and they were like, oh, it'sgoing to change the world and I
was like, yeah, maybe someday.
And so it's funny because formost of the last 20 or 30 years,
(23:01):
whatever that is I've been abit of an AI skeptic, in that I
know that there's things that AIis affecting my life in ways
that I don't even recognize.
And then along came ChatGPT andI started I was an early
(23:21):
adopter using ChatGPT and thenit came to the point where, you
know, chatgpt enabled you to,you know, basically train your
own models, and then I kind ofhad that holy bleep moment.
So since then the last you know, really I guess now a couple of
(23:48):
years I've been just fascinatedand very interested in the
promise and the capabilities ofthese large language models.
So the way I'm using AI ismostly what I've been doing is
I've been training.
I'm training a couple ofdifferent models because I have
a lot of educational contentthat I've developed or I've
developed in concert with otherfinancial planners.
Or, you know, again, I workwith, you know, head of
(24:10):
geriatric psychiatry at MassGeneral Hospital, dr Tony Weiner
.
Dr Ned Halliwell is anotherperson that I've worked with.
So I have a lot of contentaround the sort of the
intersection of health andwealth.
So I've been using that totrain my own model, because I do
think that these sort ofpersonal assistance agents are
(24:33):
going to become increased.
They're going to in the nextfew years we're going to see
many, many more of these andtheir capabilities are only
going to get better.
I mean, I've seen ChatGPT getmuch better just in the last
year or so.
So we are now.
So I've got a couple modelsthat I've trained and I'm going
(24:54):
to be and I'm training more now,and so what I'm going to be
doing is sort of drilling down.
What I'm trying to do isdevelop some capabilities where
these models are kind of keepthem kind of narrow but very
deep.
So I've done a lot of trainingon this intersection of health
(25:15):
and wealth.
Two areas now that I'm reallyinterested in is the related
areas or wealth transfer.
So I'm developing somecapabilities around that,
because if you look at thesesurveys of financial advisor
clients, sort of the thing thatthey want most that they're not
getting from their advisors iswealth transfer, planning, state
(25:37):
planning, wealth transfer.
Going through that process andyou know, it seems like every
two weeks the volume of expectedvolume of wealth transfer goes
up, and it was 70 trillion, it's80 trillion Now it's like 100
trillion.
So that's one area that I'mworking now and I've been, I've
(25:57):
kind of been through that.
I've been it's kind of beenthrough that twice.
My dad died and I transferredthe money from my dad to my mom
and then my mom died and we, youknow, figure out the transfer
to the kids and you know thereare a lot of different pieces.
There are a lot of kind of nottraditional financial planning
pieces around estate planning,just around like financial
organization, end of lifeplanning, you know, areas that
(26:27):
advisors don't always have a lotof expertise in.
So working on that, the otherarea that I want to use these
models for is to help reallyboth financial professionals and
their clients, but mostlyfinancial professionals have
more productive conversations inthese areas.
Because, again, more productiveconversations in these areas?
Because, again we alluded tothis earlier, this stuff is kind
(26:49):
of hard and I get that a lot offinancial professionals don't
feel comfortable talking totheir clients about
health-related events,especially dementia, but again
they kind of have to and I thinknot only do they have kind of
an no-transcript hey, I beat theS&P by 2.1% last year that's
(27:35):
going to pale in comparison tohelping take care of their
spouse who's got dementia, andit's also, I mean, there's a lot
of reasons to do that.
But the one major obstacle nowis that advisors just don't know
how to initiate and sustainthose types of conversations.
(27:58):
So I'm working on now trainingsome.
I've already got some trainingon how to have more productive
conversations and so I've gotsome guidelines.
I've got some, you know scriptslike basically say, you know how
to start the conversation, butalso I want to be able to
develop the capability for thesemodels even to enable the
(28:22):
advisor to even practice, have apractice conversation using
these models.
So those are two areas where Ithink that, again, I think that
these large language models likeChatGPT, with training, can
really help, because really, Imean you can just and I even
have some now if you go on mywebsite, you can access one of
(28:44):
these models you can just sayyou know my mother has dementia,
what should I do?
And they can get very personalOkay, my mother has dementia and
she's living alone and you knowI'm, you know this far away and
you know blah, blah, blah, andthey, and, and.
So these models are reallycapable.
You know, if you give themenough information, they can
really provide highlypersonalized advice, and that, I
(29:10):
think, is really going to beinvaluable for many, many
financial advice clients movingforward.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Yeah, I think I think so as well, as I think the one
question is we probably don'twant to talk too much about
hallucinations and some of thechallenges with AI, but I think
that's just a growth bump.
But I think I do want to stresssomething to advisors from more
of a stick perspective is youdo take on some liability if you
(29:39):
miss some very obvious signswith your clients that things
are going on, and that can openyou up to litigation risk, sure.
So it's important to payattention to these signs and not
overlook them.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
No, I've met with a very senior, I've met with folks
at FINRA and the SEC andbasically they said, ignoring
signs of dementia does not makeyou less liable.
So unfortunately there is andthere was just some Wells Fargo
advisors just got in troublebecause of this and you know
(30:15):
there's legal and no one wantsto get involved in a dispute
involving elderly abuse.
I mean that's just, they'reawful in so many ways and
they're bad for business.
So there definitely is a stickcomponent.
You know, I try to, you know,point that out.
(30:35):
But also I really do thinkthere's a major carrot component
because I really do think andwe've been seeing this for a
while now, you know, financialadvice is getting much more
holistic.
Right, you know the days of,you know, advisors being, you
know, only portfolio managers.
Those are, those are going ifthose are going, if they're not
(30:56):
gone going if they're not gone,I mean, as many people want you
know, if you're getting to lookat these surveys people want
wealth transfer advice andfinancial planning as much, or
at least as much as portfoliomanagement, in some cases almost
more.
And you know, and so, andadvice, and again AI, like I
(31:16):
mean there's some tools now thatI mean that are designed to do
portfolio analysis.
Some of these models have beentrained to do investment and I
just think, at a high level, aiis going to free up time for
financial advisors, right?
I mean, you've already gotapplications that can take
(31:38):
extensive notes from meetingsand summarize them and they can,
you know, write emails and sendemails and they can, you know,
do portfolio.
You know different types ofportfolio management.
They're only going to getbetter at managing.
You know, rebalancingportfolios and doing tax loss
harvesting.
All that's going to just getbetter and better and better.
And so the way I look at it isthat's going to free up time for
(32:02):
advisors to focus on a bunch ofthese more holistic, you know
sort of maybe slightly lesstechnical issues about you know,
managing health-related risks,watching out for dementia and
just getting to know theirclients better.
And I think those are going tobe the successful advisors.
And, again, I think AI is goingto be a major driver of these
(32:27):
results, and I think theadvisors who are going to
succeed in the future are goingto be the ones who can seriously
leverage AI in all thesedifferent ways.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
AI in all these different ways?
Yeah, 100%.
And it doesn't mean thatthere's a loss of the need for
the expertise for the advisor,because the expertise that you
have, maybe as a certifiedfinancial planner can also be
applied to making sure thateverything is flowing correctly.
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
No, absolutely, and I think that the good ones are
going to be able to use AI toget even better at those chores
as well, and again, that's whattheir clients tell is going to
come to expect to be able tohave that comprehensive,
holistic financial management.
That's going to become thebaseline.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
That's going to become the baseline 100%, 100%.
Well, chris, I'm going toswitch over to our Get Ready
Money questions, which I askevery guest.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Great, these are more quickfire questions.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Yeah, the first one is what basic money concept do
you wish people knew?
Speaker 3 (33:34):
You know, I guess there's kind of two.
One is again having greatawareness around the
relationship between health andwealth, but also, I think, for
younger people, I just think themiracle of compound interest
rates, the miracle ofcompounding, just think about
that early and often, because itis kind of a miracle when you
(33:58):
look at the results over time.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
That is by far the most popular answer on the show
and for people watching andlistening.
There is an episode of thispodcast that is dedicated just
to compound interest.
As always, I'll put a link toit in the show notes, so if you
want to go deep on compoundinterest, you can listen to us
talk about it for an hour.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Got that out there.
It's kind of a no-brainer.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Yep.
For me, I think it's the basicmoney concept.
I wish everybody knew.
So, Chris, what's one simplething people can do each year to
set themselves up for financialsuccess?
Speaker 3 (34:38):
Well, again, I think it's always.
You know it's good to beproactive.
Human beings by nature are notusually not very good at long
term planning.
When you think of you know ourhistory, let's say that species
have been around well thepension, say, 250,000 years for
249,000 plus.
You know, life expectancy waslike 30.
(35:00):
You know, and then a couplehundred years ago got to maybe
40.
So we just didn't think aboutplanning, we were thinking about
survival and there's no suchthing as retirement.
You know not many people, youjust retirement's kind of a new
thing, so what we need.
Know not many people.
You just there was retirement'skind of a new thing, so what we
(35:23):
need to.
It's hard, but you know youneed to get yourself in kind of
a longer term mindset and thinkabout where you want to be.
And I could have done muchbetter at this, I think in a lot
of ways personally, but I thinkyou know, try to think five, 10
, 20 years ahead and thenleverage that miracle of
(35:44):
compounding to set yourself up.
Because it's funny, because yousee these surveys now of
younger people they want toretire in their 50s.
I'm like great.
So how are you going to affordthose next 30 years?
So that's something that Iguess you know.
That'd be advice on sort of anannual basis to think about.
(36:07):
That Say, okay, if I reallywant to retire early, how am I
going to build that nest?
Speaker 2 (36:14):
egg.
There's so many other issues wecould talk about there, but you
know some of the people Ifollow in the FIRE community
financial independents retireearly.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
A lot of them have gone back to working, you know,
at least part time.
You know that they found thatis, you know, for many reasons,
that it was hard to just stopworking.
You know, in their 50s or 40s,I think we're going to see a lot
more of that and I think, bothfor financial reasons, a lot of
people, I mean I think we'regoing to see a lot more of that
and I think, both for financialreasons, a lot of people, I mean
.
I think you know one thing wedon't want to lose track of,
sure that there's a lot ofpeople.
I mean, if you look atstatistics on, you know things
like medical debt and retirementsavings in this country that's
a big problem.
(36:55):
So a lot of people are going tohave to work.
I mean, there's going to bepeople who have to work in order
to live the lifestyle that theywant, and then there's a lot of
people, probably like you andme, who want to work, who want
to, or at least want to, keep,you know, stay active, stay
active.
You know, intellectually, maybe, stay active, as you know,
(37:17):
being continuing to be part of agreater conversation.
You know, in your case, youwant, as you know, being
continuing to be part of agreater conversation.
You know, in your case, youwant to.
You know you want to be part ofthis, this, this greater
discussion about financialmanagement, and that's probably
not going to go away for a longtime.
So I think that that'ssomething else that we're going
to see is going to be veryimpactful and going to it's
(37:38):
going to be a major sort ofsocial issue that we're going to
need to do a better job ofcoping with.
Is this how to ensure that wehave this you know, productive
life that people want to live,you know well, past traditional
age of retirement?
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Yeah, 100%, All right .
So the next question is what isone habit that people can
change when it comes to theirmoney?
Speaker 3 (38:03):
I think that I think there's a, there's a few.
I think that you know there are.
Again, money is not money formost people.
So I think I would say, at ahigh level is trying to better
understand your relationshipwith money.
Level is trying to betterunderstand your relationship
with money.
So I think, for some people,money is self-esteem, like.
(38:24):
This is probably a subset ofpeople who you know, think that
you know, who correlate theirself-esteem with their bank
account, and there's people Ithink I would put myself in this
category.
For me, money can be anxiety,and so I think you know money
can be anxiety and so I thinkyou know.
If I would have a suggestion isto you know, do this, do this
(38:46):
on your own, do this with atherapist, do this with friends
is try to understand youremotional relationship with
money and figure out how that isA impacting your overall you
know well-being and how thatmight be also impacting your
ability to manage your financessuccessfully.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Yeah, that is so important and I think you know
there.
You know, as we've been talkingabout, there is a greater
recognition of that.
So, chris, to wrap up, what isyour number one tip on changing
the way we think about money?
Speaker 3 (39:17):
I think you know I've alluded to a few of these
already.
I think you know coming to agreater understanding of what
money and an emotional levelmeans to you.
And then I think the otherthing is sort of related is to I
think all of us could, you know, work on your self-awareness,
(39:39):
so understand what yourstrengths are, what your
weaknesses are.
This gets back a little bit tothe comments I made about
overconfidence and, especiallyas you get older, understand
that you may not be as good atmanaging money as you used to be
, and then that's okay and it'sokay to get help and at some
(40:02):
level, get help.
And then, like we did this withmy mom and she didn't have to
worry about money, just didn'thave to worry about it, because
one sister was paying the bills,the other sister was managing
the finances, managing theinvestments, and she didn't have
to worry about it.
So, if you can get help, builda team is something I always
(40:23):
talk about is building a team.
Get that team together and,especially as you get older, get
back, relax a little bit, letgo, let go of control.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
You'll be happier.
Let it go.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
And your money will probably be safer.
You'll actually in some wayshave more control if you let go
now than than if you don't andthen something bad happens later
.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
Definitely.
And I think the most importantthing I'd like to stress from
what you said is that it's okayto ask for help.
I think so many of us are likeyou know that asking for help
can be very difficult, but it'sokay to ask for help.
So, chris, where can peoplelearn more about you?
Pick up the assessments andcheck out.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
Sure, so you could go on LinkedIn.
I do.
I do a lot of, I publish a lotof articles on LinkedIn.
So go to LinkedIn.
Subscribe to my newsletter.
It's called the Wealth CareWire.
Subscribe to that and you'llget updates.
Check out, if you want to lookat my columns, the Journal of
Financial Planning Every fewweeks I have a column, and then
(41:29):
probably I've got a couple ofwebsites.
Probably the best website to goto now is WealthBot.
So wealth with an H.
Wealthbotcom.
There's access to theassessment that's based on the
clinical study Mass GeneralHospital.
You can access that.
You can access one of my AImodels.
(41:50):
You look in the corner of theweb page.
There's a little chat box.
You can access that, and thenthere's also a listing of all my
public or not Many of mypublications is also available.
So WealthBotcom, but follow meon LinkedIn.
There's going to be more.
Like I said, there's going tobe more products AI based
products coming pretty soon thenext couple of months, I hope to
(42:14):
have one that's focusing moreon wealth transfer and one
that's focusing more on havingbetter conversations.
So, again, there's a little bitof that now, but there's going
to be more coming.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
That's awesome and for everybody watching and
listening.
As always, there will be linksto all of these resources in the
show notes so you can check outwhat Chris is up to.
So, chris, thanks again forjoining us today on the Get
Ready Money podcast.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Thanks for having me, Tony.
It was great to be here.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Yeah, and this was a fantastic conversation and, as
always, thank you everyone fortuning in to this episode of the
Get Ready Money podcast.
If you learned something todayto change the way you think
about money, please be sure tosubscribe and to tell a friend.
Until next time let's changethe way we think about money.
You.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.