July 7, 2025 • 49 mins
Shanta has an authentic talk with Authors Pam Baker & Cameron Zabko, about probate, wills, estate planning and the emotional and mental support needs to prepare for a loved one passing on.
Pam & Cameron Authored a book titled: Where's The Keys To The Safe; HOW TO AVOID PROBATE PITFALLS and MAXIMIZE FAMILY FINANCES
Pam, Before stepping into her new role, Pam spent years leading philanthropic efforts. When two of her children were
diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, she and Jon rallied friends and family to help raise millions for the Cystic Fibrosis
Foundation. She’s a natural problem solver, a relentless optimist, and someone who believes in bringing people
together to support one another through life’s hardest moments.
Cameron, As a CFP® professional with a bachelor of business administration in finance from the University of Georgia’s Terry
College of Business, Cameron has spent years helping families and business owners create estate and financial
plans, manage wealth, and prepare for the unexpected. His insights have been featured in NerdWallet and industry
periodicals, and he has advised clients through complex financial situations, including business succession
planning, multigenerational wealth transfers, and high–net worth estate strategies. Before founding Westhollow
Wealth, he played a key role at a leading wealth management firm, where he guided over 100 clients through critical
financial decisions and helped facilitate the transition and sale of his uncle’s firm after his passing.
Contact:
Facebook: pam.r.baker.5
Website: lastinglegacyconsulting.com
LinkedIn: czabko
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Connect with the host:
Instagram: @AuthenticTalks2.0
Email: AuthenticShanta@gmail.com
Website: www.AuthenticTalks2.com
Facebook: AuthenticTalks2
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/authentic-talks-2-0-with-shanta--4116672/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, hey, hey, welcome back to Authentic Talks. My name
is Chante Generally, and I am your host. I am
beyond thrilled about today's conversation. This one is special. Not
only are we diving into a deeply human story, but
we're talking about something too many people avoid until it's
too late. Before we dive in with introductions for today's episode,
(00:24):
I do want to take a moment to welcome each
and every last one of you. Let's take this one
a little bit further. If you are able to leave
a review, that would really be awesome. Reviews can be
left on Apple podcasts as well as Podchaser. Thank you
so much in advance for leaving that review. One thing
many of us know that have lost a loved one
(00:47):
is that the depth of a loved one can be devastating,
but the financial aftermath.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Shouldn't make it worse.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yes, too many families find themselves overwhelmed by probate, missing paperwork,
and financial confusion when a loved one passes. If you're
financially tied to someone a spouse, a parent, child, or
a business partner, are you truly ready for what happens
when they're gone? I am joined today by two amazing people. First,
(01:20):
Pam Baker, who is the founder and CEO of Widows
Who Whined, which is a community and app designed to
help women find connection, support, and the best friends they
ever knew they needed. Her mission is simple to help
women rebuild a life filled with laughter, friendship and joy
(01:42):
even after an unimaginable loss. And I'm also joined by
her nephew, Cameron Zebko, a certified financial planner. He is
a wealth advisor and the founder of West Hollow Wealth
man Management, where he helps families, business owners, and individuals
(02:05):
take control of their financial future through holistic financial planning.
You guys, together, they wrote this amazing book to help
guide you on what steps to take to ensure you're
ready in not leaving your family having to scramble after
you're gone.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
The book they wrote.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Where's the Keys to the Safe, is also helpful for
anyone who is wondering what steps they need to take
and they're in the.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Now what phase.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Together, Cameron and Pam have written a book that is
eye opening as it is necessary, Where's the Keys to
the Safe? And I cannot wait to unpack it with them,
So get ready for a raw, real and incredible insightful
talk about love, loss, legacy, and how to protect your
(02:58):
future before the unthinking happens. Let's dive on in. Please
welcome Pam and Cameron too. Authentic Talks two point zero.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Authentic Talks is all about authentic conversations. This show is
all about growth, love, respect, success, mind, body and spirit.
If you're looking to grow and become your authentic self,
then this is the podcast for you.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
And I am your host. Chante. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
Hi Pam, Hi Cameron, Welcome to the show. I'm really
excited to have both of you on as a guest
today and I'm really excited about the topic that we're
going to be talking about. You both bring a different
perspective to this and congratulations on your new book, which
we're going to talk about today as well. Pam, can
(03:49):
I have you introduce yourself to our listeners before we
dive in.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
Thank you so much for having us. We're really excited
to share with you and be on your show. We're
super fans of Authentic Talk. I'm I live in Atlanta,
Georgia and have four kids their ages sixteen to twenty six,
so semi adulting, not all the way there, but that's
me a nutshell.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Welcome.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
I'm excited to have you Cameron. The mic is yours
Gaverrin Zapko.
Speaker 6 (04:16):
I'm a certified financial planner and I'm also Pam's nephew.
That's how we got together to write this book.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Well, welcome to the show. Let's go ahead and dive
on in. Pam, can you talk.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
With us a little bit about what happened in twenty
twenty one?
Speaker 5 (04:31):
Sure, and I'll back it up a tiny bit into
twenty eighteen. My husband we started dating when I was
eighteen years old, he was twenty. We were together for
thirty something years, married for twenty four years. In twenty eighteen,
he was diagnosed with giliobustomal and aggressive brain cancer. He
was given about twelve to fourteen months to live. He
(04:53):
fought a very valiant fight and we did everything we
could to prolong his life, and he.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Lived really, really quite well for two years.
Speaker 5 (05:01):
And then in twenty twenty one everything started just taking
a turn for the worst. In November of twenty twenty one,
he passed away. He was also a certified financial planner.
Cameron actually worked for my husband's company.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
He had his own business, and you.
Speaker 5 (05:15):
Know when you get a diagnosis like that, you hold
on to hope that you could be the one that
gets to beat it. And we held onto that hope,
but also knew that it wasn't a great sentence to
get when we got that diagnosis. It was one of
those things that you sort of I think you're planning for,
but it still knocks you sideways when it does show up.
Speaker 4 (05:37):
When he was diagnosed, what did those days look like
for you, guys? Did you instantly go into let's start planning. No,
that's what's so hard. I talked about this just the
other day with someone. It's really hard when you have
someone who, even though they have a horrific diagnosis with
very little chance of survival, having that talk feels like
(06:00):
if you're giving them the message that you don't have.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Hope for them.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
I don't know why I hung on to hope, which
makes sense.
Speaker 5 (06:06):
Yeah, it feels like you've given up, like, oh, we
got a plan for this, because so let's make a
plan and we'll get into this with the book. But
that's one of the reasons why we wrote this book.
You know, you've got to do all that stuff before
tragedy hits, before you get hit. By a car going
to work or you get a diagnosis. Having those conversations
beforehand is a lot easier and there's a lot less
(06:28):
emotion involved. And I will say we felt pretty strongly
we had a good I mean, he was a financial planner,
for goodness sake, he was a very successful financial planner
and a whole team, and we had a lawyer and
we had a CBA. We thought we had things tied
up pretty tight, and I found out very quickly after
he passed that we actually did not have things tied
up very tightly. So Cameron worked for him. So that
(06:51):
was convenient because I had my right hand man right there.
Cameron's just like my own son too. It was very
convenient to have someone so close in the family be
there to.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Go through all those steps with me.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
Wow. Well, that's good that he was there. So we're
definitely going to come back so we can talk more
about the story, Cameron. She mentioned that you work with
her husband and that you are a great support, and
I want to I want to talk about Pam's story,
But before we dive in with talking about that, I
know that, like there's some things that most people need
(07:26):
to have planned out. Can we talk about that if
you know that you're going to have a loved one,
that this is something that is inevitable.
Speaker 6 (07:37):
And Pam always says, we have to become more comfortable
with talking about death because everybody dies. But it's not
just if you have someone that you have the diagnosis
so they're getting older. It's really everybody. If you have
some kind of financial tie to anyone, you should have
your ducks in a row so that if something does
happen to you, that you know you're not maybe a
mess behind to your loved ones. So everyone always goes
(07:59):
to the will the kind of the first thing people
think about. They put a lot of emphasis on the
will and they think that's the end all be all
for most people, the will is not enough. Your will
is more like a catch all for anything that you
didn't pass on through the use of other tools like
a trust or beneficiary designations. And it's not the best
way to pass assets because it will have to go
(08:21):
through probates. We're in Georgia, and probate is not bad
in Georgia. It's not that long a process, it's not
that complicated, but there are states that probate takes a
lot longer.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
Well, even if you have a will in place, you
still have to go through probate.
Speaker 6 (08:37):
So the only way around probate is to pass your
assets through things like a trust or through beneficiary designations,
because those will go outside of the will. If you
pass away without a will or anything in place, then
your whole state needs to be probated at that point.
We don't like probate for a couple reasons. Like I said,
it could be lengthy. That's the biggest one, says to
(08:58):
your loved ones are waiting for their inheritance to pay
bills or you know, pay the mortgage, pay the car payment.
That can be financially devastating to somebody, put them into debt,
take their credit all that. It's also public, so if
you have relatives that you want excluded from your estate,
they're going to be able to see what's been passed
(09:20):
to your beneficiaries and cause issues for them later on
down the road. So they can contest the will, they
can show up at court. And it also opens you
up to creditors. If there's some person that's trying to
have a lawsuit against your beneficiaries, they're going to know
exactly how much money passed to them through the probate process.
So if those are concerns for you, then you want
(09:41):
to make sure you're implementing other tools like I said,
like a trust, like beneficiary designations on top of the will.
The will, like I said, is really just to catch
all the last line of defense. If we missed anything,
they'll go through the will, so.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
Just to clarify. Probate is a court proceeding.
Speaker 6 (09:58):
So typically if you have a will, you'll hire an
attorney to go through the probate process and they'll submit
the will to the court, do all the required paperwork.
The judge is going to read the will, read any
other documentation, and ultimately it's the judges and the court's
decision what happens to your assets. So they're going to
follow what you have written, but it's also up to
(10:20):
some interpretation. If you want a more air tight plan
with no questions and you don't really want to judge
making the final decision on your assets, that's where we're
looking at other tools, like I said, like a trust
and not necessarily passing everything to the will.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
If you want to set up a trust, do you
have to go through a financial planner like yourself.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
In order to do that.
Speaker 6 (10:40):
I think that's usually a good place to start. I'm
not an attorney. I don't draft documents. But the trouble
that a lot of people run into is they'll go
to an estate planning attorney and they'll walk out with
a trust and they have no idea what it does,
they don't use it properly, and they don't really know
what they paid for or how to use it, how
to implement that tool. So if you can start with
an unbiased third party like a financial advisor or anyone
(11:03):
that has good business sense or estate planning sense that's
not selling you a trust like an attorney is, they
can help walk you through how to set up that plan.
Then you can take that to the attorney and say
this is what I want implemented. That way, both sides
understand what the thoughts were behind the state plan, what
the intended target is on what these documents are aiming
(11:25):
to accomplish. For the most part of people walk into
the state planning attorney and get an off the shelf
document that they've used for hundreds of other people, and
it's not necessarily tailored to their exact situation.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
More cookie cutter version.
Speaker 6 (11:40):
Yeah, and that's a lot of the book is referencing
that sort of thing where you need to be your
own advocate and you need to know enough about the
state planning process, your finances, your taxes so that you
can be that advocate for yourself. It's not necessarily that
they're maliciously trying to trick you. They don't know exactly
what you want, and you don't know how express what
(12:00):
you want, so you're getting what's worked in the past
for other people, and that's not always the best case
scenario for yourself.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
Got it, So, Pam, can you tell me how the
idea of where's the Key to the Safe?
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Come from the name of it.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
Whenever I read the name of the book Where's the
Key to the Safe? I had a visual and I
pictured someone literally looking around for a key, and then
my brain went to bigger things like I need to
unlock some answers. So my brain was just going all
over the place with it. I love the title of
the book.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
It can mean I'm so glad your brain went there,
because that's exactly why it's named that. I did not
know where the key to the safe was in our
house when I finally found it. I didn't know how
to open it.
Speaker 5 (12:49):
And I remembered so vividly John telling me my husband's
name was John. So I'm always saying you need to
figure out how to open this safe.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
I was like, no, I don't. I have you to
do it. It's a weird safe.
Speaker 5 (12:59):
So it takes a key in its got to turn,
but it's like the opposite you got to turn it
the opposite way that you know, your old fashioned locker.
It's counterintuitive. So Cameron and I literally youtubed videos on
how to unlock this freaking safe and finally got into it.
So I didn't even know where the key to the
safe was, which is pretty basic information when your husband
is dying and you know that for three years, didn't
(13:21):
know where the will was either, by the way, and
so yeah, that's why we named it that unlocking the
Key to your financial future. By following these steps in
the book, you are literally being given the key to
protecting your assets, to avoiding probate. I mean, that's the
whole theme of it. So your brain went exactly.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
Where it should have. That's so perfect. You did a
great job naming that, thank you. Yeah, because I literally
could picture that in my head could also imagine a
lot went through because I'm a visual person. So after
your husband passed away, what was it that you noticed
about society and the way that we treat widows. What
(14:00):
came up for you?
Speaker 5 (14:03):
Well, you know, everybody shows up right away with their
kesseroles and their food and all the things. And after
a few weeks, everybody goes back to living your lives,
which is just a normal part of when somebody dies.
The difference with widows is I call it an antiquated
view of what widows look like. People still kind of
lump us into the forgotten little old lady sitting on
(14:23):
the front porch, wrapped dinner blanket at the end of
her life. But so many of us are in the
middle of our lives and our story doesn't stop just
because our husband's story stopped, and there's so much more
going on. There's all these multi layered weirdnesses that there
is no system to support widows. In my opinion, there's
grief groups, that's it, and you can sit in your grief,
(14:46):
and if you come out of your grief too soon,
people are like, Ooh, I guess she's over her husband.
There are a lot of complicated emotions that go along
with it.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
I want to hear to walk us through what it
was like. At what point did you really know that
he's going to transition over? Was it kind of like
you knew that he had a health issue.
Speaker 5 (15:06):
But I think we held on to a glimmer of
hope for the first two years. Like I said, he
was doing really well, and then he would go through
battles mentally, he'd slump into a little depression and beat
the cheerleader and lift him back up. He ultimately had
a seizure while he was driving one day and got
into a really terrible accident. Broken legs, punctured lungs, fructured ribs,
(15:29):
all in that.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
After that, he wasn't able to drive anymore.
Speaker 5 (15:34):
He was a race car driver, like he loved that
was his hobby, Like he was an instructor for Portion
and BMW and he just loved he loved driving. So
he wasn't able to drive anymore. It was one of
the last things the disease took from him. He couldn't
fight his way back mentally, his fight was gone, So
we all kind of knew it took a lot of
lifting of his emotions a lot more than it took before.
(15:57):
That was the beginning of the end, and just got
worse and worse, And as the tumor grew and there
weren't a lot of options left, he exhausted his clinical
trial options and exhausted his you know, you could do
chemo and radiation twice, and he used up those those weapons,
those tools in the toolbox. It wasn't a whole lot left.
I'd say September twenty twenty is when we knew that.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
We were toward the end.
Speaker 5 (16:23):
But definitely by like August of twenty twenty one, my
girlfriend as a photographer and we did what I knew
was gonna be our final family photo shoot. We knew
when we were taking steps that it was coming, like
this was going to be the last one of this
and that and you know, so then we knew by
the summer really of twenty twenty one that each thing
(16:45):
was our last.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
Sometimes you don't know what to say. I had just
talked to someone about this, I've had several conversations, but
for some reason, when it's right in front of me,
everything goes out the window. I wanted to say sorry
for your loss, but then I was like, no, they said,
don't say that, you're supposed to say this, and then
my brain was all over the place about it's a
proper way to address that. I'm glad that you're able
(17:09):
to help other people through your story of what happened
with you and that it birth a book that is
not only helping people with the emotional side, but also
helping them with what to do, because that's something most
people do not think of. It's the last thing that
you're focused on. You're mostly focused on your healing process,
(17:29):
and it's like not too often that people are wanting
to talk about that side. And I love what Cameron
shared about what you have said to him, which is
that this is a conversation that we have to get
used to talking about, and death is an uncomfortable conversation.
It really is, because it's something that most of us
don't want to think about.
Speaker 5 (17:50):
It's so true, and it's so crazy. Everybody dies, you
don't know when it's going to happen. There has to
be a way to normalize the conversation. Doing this kind
of planning of time is easier when you can talk
about it without being triggered with emotions or worried about
how somebody's going to react when you're trying to make
all these decisions while you're agreeing it's impossible. We haven't
(18:12):
talked about this yet, but when you were asking me
about what I did and what I found out there
for support, I didn't find any support. Ultimately, in February
twenty twenty three, I created a group called Widows Who
Whine Wise. I wanted to create a social group for
widows because that's the loneliest thing. You're lonely because you're
not the third wheel or the fifth wheel, or when
you're with your single friends, they're all complaining about their
(18:34):
men or their exes or whatever, and there's no space
for us to be out in normal So I created
this social group and it's grown, like the first one
had fourteen people and now there's over three hundred and
fifty women in Atlanta in it. And so I've heard
these stories over and over again.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
You don't know what to say. And the problem is
you could say that same thing, I'm so.
Speaker 5 (18:52):
Sorry for your loss to ten different people, and ten
different people will have a different reaction. That might make
somebody so annoyed, But that may be the perfect thing
to say, and that's what's crazy about grief and loss
is it's so individual that nobody really knows what the right.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Thing to say is.
Speaker 5 (19:09):
I'll tell you what I don't like, and I make
fun of this all the time. I get resounding feelings
of affirmation with this. Every time I bring it up
to anybody. It's the head to like, how are you
so don't do that?
Speaker 4 (19:21):
Yeah, how do you think I'm doing? I am getting
through the best that I can. Like, what do you
say to that? It's like, Oh, do you really.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Want to know?
Speaker 7 (19:30):
I know?
Speaker 5 (19:31):
Or are you just asking me because you're actually also
grief and you want me.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
To take care of you? Honestly? Wow, it's a weird world.
Speaker 5 (19:39):
But you know, honestly, I don't have a lot of
memories of the first year after John died. I have
four kids, so I was really focused on them and
Cameron and Hallie, his sister, you know, she and Camera's
mom lived with me. They moved in after John passed away,
so we have our little co parenting situation.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
He was their father figure too. It's all the loss.
Speaker 5 (20:02):
And the focus goes there. I really don't have any memories.
My point is, when you're trying to make big financial
decisions while grieving. When your brain is not functioning, it's
nearly impossible. There's so much room for things to go
wrong that you really want to do all this ahead
of time so you're not trying to do it then,
and then you can just be with your family and
be with your luck once and honor the person you've
(20:23):
lost instead of trying to scramble and figure out how
to do all this stuff and an avoid probate when
you're probably it's too late, you're already.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
That totally makes sense.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
We have to talk about the roadblocks you've faced and
how you and Cameron came together to write the book.
But before we move on, I have to ask you
what have you seen in the group that you created
as far as transformation? How's it going? Are people opening
up and sharing their experiences?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Incredible?
Speaker 5 (20:50):
Actually, it's grown so much and I have so many stories.
Almost every single day and certainly every time we get together.
I organize one social thing a month, and you know
what it can. Cameron's done a financial planning one on
one for us, and we've done you know, so some
of it we do I call it learning and libations.
We do some learning thing like home maintenance one oh
one and stuff like that, but mostly like we'll do
(21:10):
axe throwing or one time I rented a movie theater
out for all of us to go to the movies.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Just fun things. But now I tell.
Speaker 5 (21:17):
These women, this is your group. It's not my group,
it's our group. If you want to have something creative,
there's a book club. There's widows who dine, there's widows
who cornhole, there's widows who majong, widows who golf. Oh,
we have all kinds of offshoots of fun things. And
we have our widow group going to Costa Rica in October,
and I had a bunch of them over at my
lake house. We just do all kinds of fun stuff.
(21:38):
I've seen a lot of transformations and so many stories
from women who have been widowed for years and they
come to our group and it's the first time they
feel like they can breathe because they're with people who
get it, and they don't have to wear this mask.
They don't have to put on their guard to say, oh,
what are they going to say? Is this gonna be
weird or whatever. They just walk in and they're like, Oh,
I'm with my people. I can breathe, you know, and
(22:01):
just seeing women it's the loneliness. You know, women who
have said they just wander around their house like a
show of a person. And now they have these groups
and they're vibrant and traveling and doing really cool things.
So I hear it all the time. These women are like,
you saved my life. You've literally threw me a lifeline and.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Saved my life.
Speaker 5 (22:18):
And the whole thing is just finding joy and it's
okay to be happy again. They would want us to
know that, but how do you get there? What do
you do when you don't have people to show you how?
It's really really cool. It's been my greatest joy. And
all the joy that they say that this group has
brought them, it's brought me so much too.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
So it's been pretty amazing. I'd love that.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
I absolutely love it. So you have to tell me
you had a will in place at the time, and
then even though you had a will in place, you
found that there was still some challenges.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
That you face. Can you share with us what were
those challenges?
Speaker 4 (22:54):
And then we'll go to camera to talk about how
he showed up for you and was able to help,
and then how we got to this place of writing
the book.
Speaker 5 (23:02):
There were a lot and I can just run down
a couple of things. First of all, I didn't know
where the will was, and we did find it, it
was so old that it was outdated. My youngest child
was not even on it. I feel like John would
never have not updated it, but their lawyer didn't have it,
so I will know what happened. That was a huge oversight,
titling of our properties, our accounts, of our vehicles. We
(23:26):
didn't have everything co owner, you know, so there were
a lot of struggles. Like I tried to sell my car.
It was my car, but I didn't know where the
title was. And if I went to the DMV and
found it, it was in John's name because he's on
the bought He bought it for me.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
It was my car, but my name wasn't on it.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
So like then that whole process when someone transitions over,
that's not enough to show a death certificate that they're
no longer here or yes, showing the certificate, that all
alongs the whole process of then, you know, just everything
was like that extra step to go take care of things.
So it was a lot of things. Oh my gosh,
(24:02):
Cameron went else.
Speaker 5 (24:03):
I know, there were like five million things that we
were like, Oh my god, how do we not know this?
Speaker 7 (24:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (24:08):
I think the first thing because, like Pam said, John
did pretty much all the finances, and Pam helped with
bill paying sometimes. For the most part, John understood the
cash flow. You understood how the money's coming into the house.
Er said, like the big expenses going out the door.
My biggest concern was getting Pam comfortable that she's not
(24:28):
going bankrupt and getting her to a place where she
wasn't freaking out all the time about money because she
no longer had an income coming in. John passed away,
his business got sold off, and so there's no there
was her money that she had was there to last
for the rest of her life. Making sure that we're
smart about it and what are we going to do
with the money, and just getting her to a place
(24:49):
where she felt like she didn't have to I don't
even know what you were doing at that point, but
everything you were.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Doing was like I was used to being able. I
never had to really think about it.
Speaker 5 (24:58):
John was very successful, like I said, so I would
buy what I want and did what I did, and
I didn't really have any concept of cash flow at all.
And I grew up without envy money, Like we had
no money when I was a kid. So I think
I just went back to that poverty mentality of like I'm.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Gonna lose it all. It's all gonna be gone.
Speaker 5 (25:14):
I have all these kids, and we have college, and
we have this, and well and what if the market crashes.
I went into full panic mode, like I could not
get in my mind how we were really going to
survive without more money coming in and what he made.
You know, I hadn't been to stay home mom for
twenty years. I was like, what am I How? I
can't like that? It just put me in It pushed
all my deep seated panic buttons for sure.
Speaker 6 (25:38):
Yeah, So that was step one getting her past that,
and then step two was we hadn't this outdated estate
plan because John's gone now. It took her a lot
of time to figure out, like she was saying, she
didn't really have a purpose, and she developed what was
wanted and then she came out of like that poverty mentality,
and then she started figuring out, like, you know, what
do I want to be doing with these assets to
(25:58):
preserve John's legacy? And so From there we were able
to create the new estate plan, and then she really
understood like how the money is invested in what we're
doing with it, and then how this estate plan wraps
into that. We just barely wrapped up the estate plan
because it's complicated one. Not everyone needs a complicated one
like this. It's more of a legacy based estate plan
instead of just like, here's your money to the kids,
(26:21):
you know. And so it's been over three years at
this point. It takes a while, and that's a big thing.
We always say, you don't have to do it all
at once. You can do it in steps, because a
lot of people delay doing any of it because they're like, oh, well,
I don't know who I want to be the guardian
of my kids, or I don't know who I want
to be my executor. But there is stuff in your
mind that you can answer right once the battle start
(26:42):
with those documents. First, right, is your executor the person
you know that takes care of your estate when you
pass away, if it's your guardian or your medical power attorney.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Your state that's like all of your property and the
things you own.
Speaker 6 (26:56):
So your state is pretty much anything that hasn't passed
through a betefit fishery designation. When you open up an
IRA or a bank account, you have an option to
name someone as the beneficiary of that account, so that
stuff passes outside of probate, it passes outside the will.
So that's also very important to make sure that that
matches your state plan because otherwise it will supersede your
(27:17):
state plan. So I've seen many times with clients they
have an ex spouse listed as their beneficiary on their
four to oh one K and if something happened to them,
the money would go in the x spouse, right, So
it's important to make sure everything's dialed in and compliments
each other. If your state plans as one thing, but
your beneficiary designation say a different thing, well they need
to match up. So yeah, it's I've seen a lot
(27:40):
where people delay and delay and delay because they can't
answer all the questions at once. But I just think
it's really important to answer what you can and get
done what you can because anything you're able to accomplish
and your state plan is going to help whoever you're
leaving behind. Eventually, if they persevere and keep going with it,
you'll have a complete estate plan. There's multiple ways to
do it. You can use an online service like turbottax,
(28:02):
where you know, answer some questions, then it spits out
in a state plan. That's really good as your self motivated.
If you're not self motivated, you're dragging your feet, and
a state planning attorney's probably the better rout because they're
your accountability buddy and they're going to make sure that
you're progressing and finishing the process. So lots of ways
to accomplish all the things that you need in a
state plan. It's just kind of taking out matches your
(28:25):
personality and what matches you know, your ambitional well, I
guess to make sure that it happens and stop dragging
your feet about it just because you feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 5 (28:34):
And I think it's important to remind people that states
are for super wealthy people. I think people think like,
I don't need a state plan because I'm not a
millionaire or I don't have a lot of assets, but
a state plan is just smart to have in place
for almost everybody.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
I love that you brought that up because I do
believe that a lot of people think that way, that
that's for your elon musk or when they have like
millions or so. I love that that was a good
ad because any type of home that you have, it's
good to have it in there.
Speaker 6 (29:04):
Yeah, and these online services now, I mean you can
walk out with an estate plan for a married couple
like three hundred bucks. Right, it's not expensive. So as
long as that winds your goals and you can accomplish
what you want to accomplish there, it's a very low
cost option just to do it with an online servis.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Wow. That's good to know.
Speaker 4 (29:23):
So tell me about the book, Like, after you were
able to walk through all the different steps and get
everything in order, how did the book come about? Were
you guys just like let's do this or who had
the idea?
Speaker 5 (29:37):
Very early on, my thought was, oh my god, if
I had three years to plan for my husband's stead.
He's a financial advisor, he had a whole team at
his office, we had a lawyer, we had a CPA.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
If this is this difficult.
Speaker 5 (29:51):
For me, then how does the everyday person who doesn't
have that whole team, and also they just die suddenly,
part attach cor accident, unexpectedly.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
How in the world do they do it?
Speaker 5 (30:04):
And that's most people, I would say, So that's where
the seeds of the book started growing. So I was like, man,
people need to know about this. People got to know more.
This has got to be we need to tell people.
And I was like, oh, I'm going to write a book.
And so I was like I can do this, and
you know, I started tinkering with it. But then I
was like, I can tell my story, but I don't
(30:24):
have the professional perspective on it.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
So then I went to camer and I'm like, hey.
Speaker 5 (30:30):
I think I need to write this book at this mine,
can you can come do this with me?
Speaker 2 (30:35):
And I don't know. He says, I don't know. I
bamboozled him and made him do it with her.
Speaker 6 (30:40):
So she started asking if we were going to write
a book, what topics were we talking about? And then
I turned into a book. From there, it took us
a long time. Pam did me classical about how to
write a book, and then we eventually started writing it.
We'd stop, we'd stall. It's hard to sit down and
force yourself to write. Oh yeah, it's like studying. If
(31:00):
you're not in the right headspace to do it, nothing happens. Yeah,
you have bursts of productivity and then other times you
just sit in your computer for forty five minutes. You're like, well, tonight,
it's not going to be a writing night. So we
started writing in a state planning book. And then we
realize that even if we write the best estate planning
book ever, that if it's a someone like Pam picking
(31:23):
up the book that didn't have you know, the financial background,
a lot of this isn't going to make sense to them.
And so it quickly turned it into like financial planning
one oh one as like the base knowledge that you need,
So that's the first half of the book, and then
getting into the estate planning topics on the back end
so that you understand the big picture of why this
(31:43):
is important because you have the base knowledge on the
front end. So we took a lot of stories from
Pam's widows of our group about stuff that they had
go wrong. We took, you know, stuff that we saw
in Pam's planning that went wrong, and combine to those
and then I addeds basic financial literacy items that a
lot of people well don't know, things like car insurance,
ame insurance and making sure that you're being a good consumer.
(32:05):
You're not getting I don't want to say scammed, but
you know they'd better ways to be spending your money
and just being, like I said, a good consumer and
being good with your money. I think there's something in
those books for everybody, regardless if you have an a
state plan or you're fresh out of college and you're
trying to start on a good financial footing. It's kind
of the whole gamut. Every now and then we say, oh,
that would be really good to write about in our
(32:26):
second book, but there's no official reaction. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (32:30):
No, Well, And it's funny because when John died, I
read a lot of financial planning books. I was like,
I'm not going to get taken advantage of in this
whole thing thing. Though we had a CPA and lawyer.
John had the relationships with them and I didn't know them.
I was trying to arm myself with knowledge. The books
were so boring and clinical. John't always try to get
me in, and I'm like, this is your job, this
(32:52):
is finance.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
I have a psychology degree the other way.
Speaker 5 (32:55):
So every book I read was horrible and boring. It
was like work to get through. That's why the cover
is very pretty. Everything about it is meant to be
esthetically pleasing, warm, inviting. The way we write is very conversational.
I wanted it to feel like you're sitting down having
a top of coffee with your girlfriend, and every chapter
(33:16):
we'd cover something different. But every chapter starts with Pam
and I give a little anecdotal story about that topic,
and then Cam comes in with the professional perspectives. Even
on the professional stuff, he writes in a style that's
very easy to understand and conversational, so that it really
feels doable. You're not in there with your eyes glazing
(33:37):
over it.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
It's like you're having a couple.
Speaker 5 (33:40):
I was really happy with the way it turned out.
Cameron's Fred Sydney did some illustrations for us to make
it really just that much easier. You know, all the
different types of learning styles and everything, just to have
them included. And then we did a workbook that goes
along with it, so you can literally go chapter by chapter.
Philadels at the end if you fill out that work book,
(34:00):
that you also just take to your state planning lawyer
and be like, there's my stuff.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Nice, it's good stuff. The book cover is attractive. You
hit a home run with that.
Speaker 4 (34:11):
It looks good. The title of the book makes you
want to know more.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
And open it up. You guys did a great job.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
I love that you work together to help other people
and share it so much knowing they should do this
now they don't have to be in the same situation
where someone is sick or ill. You know, we're going
through like an end of life type situation, something that
people can do. Now, how old would you recommend someone be, Like,
is there an age like do you have to be
(34:39):
like forty?
Speaker 6 (34:40):
Or I would always I always say if you have
any sort of financial obligation or tie to anybody, you
should get your estate planning in order. So like, if
you're let's say nineteen years old, you don't have any kids,
Let's say you have like an investment account, Well, you
should still put beneficiary is on that account, right, have
them go to your parents, your siblings, just to make
(35:00):
their lives ea year.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Right.
Speaker 6 (35:02):
You don't necessarily need like a full blown estate plan
at that point, but you can do what you can
to make it easier for others if something were to
happen to you. Now, if you have financial obligations where
people are depending on you to earn an income to
pay the bills, that's where you need to get more serious.
About your estate plan and looking at life insurance, making
(35:24):
sure that everything's buttoned up, and making sure that those
who leave behind are able to survive without your earning
ability down the raid. Same thing if you're an aging parent,
right and you have adult shouldering, they have their own
lives to go on. They're going to be grieving when
you pass away, So how can you make their lives
they as possible. They might not be financially dependent on
you anymore, but their life is going to be uprooted
(35:47):
for a year or two three years, so however long
it takes them to settle your state. And then you
also want to limit any kind of infighting between family members, siblings,
and so I always say good a state plan takes
all the decisions out of the business of death that
you've already made those decisions, or the people that you're
leaving behind, all they have to do is execute that
(36:07):
estate plan, and so that eliminates a lot of the
infighting and eliminates any ambiguity, yes, and then eliminates any
sort of issues in the probate process as well. So
you've already made this as decisions, You've taken the drama
out of it, and it's even better if you have
the time to explain why you designed your estate plan
to them, which is what I always recommend as well
(36:28):
they understand.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Write a letter about why they did it.
Speaker 6 (36:31):
Yes, we always suggest doing a family love letter. And
you can lay out in there whatever you want that's
whatever is not in your will. It can be life
lesson you learned things that you want to make sure
they know about the family. You tell them that I
laid out my estate plan sure these reasons and this
is why maybe this person got this thing, and it's
(36:53):
whatever you want to put in there. Also making sure
that you put like what you want your end of
life ceremonies to look like, because that's all information that's
not going to be in your will, it's not going
to be in your trust. It's another step in the
estate planning process. It's not a formal document. You don't
need an attorney to do that. It's just what every
information that you want to pass on to the next generation.
Speaker 5 (37:15):
But important those end of life celebrations. Oftentimes, in my case,
I knew exactly what John wanted and not everybody in
the family was on the same page with that, and
we didn't write it down so it did lead you know,
some issues with feelings or you know, compromises that were
what he would have wanted necessarily, and so you know
(37:37):
that was one thing and we're like, oh, why didn't
we write that down?
Speaker 2 (37:39):
So writing it down, there's no ambiguity. It's like, this
is what he wanted, let's do it.
Speaker 4 (37:45):
Family members on his side that came out like where
they were not happy with things are wanted some of
his like hey, I want that car, I deserved.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
The house or all of that. Fortunately we did not
have that.
Speaker 5 (37:58):
We did have the issues with the celebration of life,
but it all worked out. It made for awkward times
when you really just all want to be loving on
each other and honoring him, not bickering over something silly.
Speaker 6 (38:10):
Guest makes people very weird. Everyone processes the differently. Some
people get super greedy, and if you start thinking about
personalities within the family, some people are pushovers. They let
the other person do whatever they want, and then that
breeds resentment forever because they didn't say enough for themselves.
Someone will come in and try to take whatever they
want out of the estate. If you don't what's stout
(38:30):
specific guidance to go to specific people. That's really worth
the family infighting and the drama stems Truman. It might
not be right off the bat, but it's five, ten,
fifteen years down the road when this resentment had been
brewing and brewing. So that's what I said, if you
can take those decisions down in their hands, you've already
made those decisions for them. That's in a lot of it.
Speaker 5 (38:51):
Yeah, why I just heard that story. One of the
women that came this weekend, she's a widow, but when
her parents died, she said the same thing. Her siblings
came in and took everything. The only thing that left
her with was an old safe from the eighteen hundreds
because it weighed like three hundred pounds and they couldn't
move it.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
They took everything.
Speaker 5 (39:06):
It's her siblings, but there's still definitely some unhappy feelings
about that.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
My husband shared a story with me that when his
mother passed away, she had ten kids, but she had
left money to a specific brother and he didn't want
to help to pay for any of the costs of anything,
and they were like, you're getting the money, you shouldn't
use it to help pay for her funeral costs. Because
(39:31):
they weren't trying to collect and do all these things.
Every time he thinks of his mother's funeral, he remembers
that different things do happen.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
They're good today, but it didn't need to happen. You
do all this stuff. A lot of times. We hear
people say this all the time, like I'll be dead,
what do I care? Well, yeah, yeah, I've heard that.
Speaker 5 (39:48):
I really want your kids to be fighting with each other,
arguing over who gets the necklace, the ring in the house.
And when some person get the house and they can't
afford to keep it up. Then what there's so much
of that gift you can give anybody is just have
this all done for them. You don't have to risk
damaging any relationships, you don't have to risk anybody questioning anything.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
It's just done. Just do it, you know.
Speaker 4 (40:11):
So from grief to financial clarity and then estate planning
without all the chaos and all of the overwhelm, this
book is going to bring everyone.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
That's the goal. Where's the keys to the safe? That's right?
Speaker 4 (40:26):
If you guys have got to pick this book up.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
I think that.
Speaker 4 (40:28):
Books really do make a great gift. And I know
I say it all the time, and I might sound like, okay, but.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
I really do mean it.
Speaker 4 (40:35):
They do make great gifts, especially when it's a different
type of book. This is a book that you can
get information from that could really help you to get
things done. When you're thinking about that gift to give
to a loved one, we are thinking about, Okay, she
has everything, what else could I get her? Try giving
a book? Because a book where there's great information, where's
(40:58):
the keys to the safe?
Speaker 2 (41:00):
I love it. I love it.
Speaker 4 (41:02):
I'm so grateful that you guys came on to share
your story, and I'm glad that you have the support
that you need and that together you guys created a masterpiece.
I love that you birth something out of your grief
that's going to help other people.
Speaker 5 (41:16):
I'm going to give you a little tip because I
heard this from somebody and I was like, that's brilliant.
Someone was asking a young adult twenty something who had
lost her father. They said to her, so, you lost
your dad, how's that going for you? And I was like, oh,
I like that, how's that.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Going for you? It's not like how are you?
Speaker 5 (41:35):
Or I'm sorry, where you're like every time somebody says
I'm sorry for your last I'm like, oh, thank you.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
I know puts everybody in that.
Speaker 5 (41:44):
Yeah, it's a conversation stopper instead of a conversation starter.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
How's that going from that?
Speaker 5 (41:51):
When I've heard it, I haven't used it on anyone myself,
but when I heard that, I was like, I am
going to remember that.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Because that seems good. Yeah, And it's like you said.
Speaker 4 (42:01):
You can say the same thing to ten different people
and they're all going to have a different response. How's
that going for you? It depends on how close it is.
You don't want to ask that on a second day
after some time has gone by. So your kids are
now adults. I have a sixteen year old. He's the youngest.
He was nine when his dad got diagnosed. I always say,
(42:22):
I mean, they all say he's my favorite, which is true.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
You guys are all my favorite.
Speaker 4 (42:26):
But in the year that you were born, you are
my favorite person that was born in the year, and
then you're my favorite person that was born sixteen years ago.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
You're my favorite that was born twenty years ago.
Speaker 5 (42:36):
Like that, You don't do it quite that way because
they all say it, Yes, he's your favorite.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
He's the baby.
Speaker 5 (42:42):
But light husband was such a great coach and he
was such a great dad. Duncan was so young that
once I was diagnosed, he went straight into a brain
surgery within two weeks ago. Everything John's health and just
keeping him unhealthy. So I always feel bad for Duncan
because he got the shaft. He definitely didn't get the
full benefit of having John Baker as his dad. But
(43:02):
he is turning into the most like him, which is interesting.
He's looking the most like him.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
It's cool. Just ask how is he now. I think
he's put.
Speaker 5 (43:11):
Him in play therapy from the beginning, and he did
it for years until he finally was.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
Like I think I'm good.
Speaker 5 (43:17):
Now I'm like, okay, you're good. One of the benefits
of knowing he recorded birthday messages for them for like
six or seven years out alledge graduation messages in high school,
like different messages, and so each year they get their
little birthday message hold him and I give them to them.
It's a little video message, and you know, he always
(43:37):
shares a favorite memory or something. But I love it
and it's so awesome and they treasure them so much.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
But now I know we're getting to the end of them.
Speaker 5 (43:44):
I think he did like six years worth, and I'm
like or but there's such special gifts, you know, they
look forward to.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
They're like, where's my message? Where's my message? With so
like you guys pretty much had it together.
Speaker 7 (43:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (43:56):
I know that this book is definitely going to be
helpful to people because if you've still had some challenges, imagine,
like Cameron said, the person that's starting at ground zero,
and I love that you have those messages and stuff.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
I would keep that forever. Oh yeah, for.
Speaker 4 (44:10):
Sure, that's good stuff. Thank you guys so much for
coming on today. And before we end our episode, I
do want to turn to both of you, and I
guess we can start with you, Pam or Cameron, whoever.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Wants to go first.
Speaker 4 (44:25):
What is it that you would like to leave our
listeners with today?
Speaker 2 (44:31):
What do you want to say?
Speaker 6 (44:31):
I kind of said it earlier, but don't wait just
because you don't think you have all your ducks in
a row to do this, And don't think that just
because you don't have a million dollars that you don't
need in a state plan. Don't procrastinate and get your
documents in order, whether that's a will in basic documentation
or meeting with professionals that can advise you. On more
(44:52):
complicated things like trusts and those kind of tools.
Speaker 7 (44:55):
Out right, thank you, there's good stuff, and I'll reiterate
that it's really the best gift that you can give anyone,
even if it's uncomfortable and awkward.
Speaker 5 (45:06):
But I do want to leave a message that's specific
to widowhood too. In this whole idea of the antiquated
version of the widow, people are always like, what is
the best thing I can do what a widows need?
And I would say the number one thing you can
do for widows is, instead of treating them like it's
the end of their story, support them in their rebirth,
support them in their new chapter, support them in this
(45:27):
new journey that they're taking, Support them in their journey
back to joy, because honestly, pretty much every woman will
be a widow at some point. Most women will, because
men tend to die sooner, we're all going to be there.
So let's support that status of womanhood. Widows have been
(45:48):
through so know that they're kind of a badass, and
support them in that we're not like the weak, little
pitied soul that's tucked away rebirth and journey back to
joy and support them in whatever way.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
That that they need in that journey in that next chapter.
Speaker 4 (46:05):
I love that you're thinking about, like you guys covered
all the corners here, you know, covered it all. I
normally ask you where can they find your book? And
I had you do your wrap up before I ask that,
But I have to come back to that and say
where can they find the book?
Speaker 5 (46:20):
So it's on Amazon. The thing you have to be
very careful with because Amazon is weird. We've even hit
the best seller rank on different levels of their state planning.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
But until you have.
Speaker 5 (46:31):
Like one hundred reviews written and we have like fifty
something you don't hit, you don't get in their algorithm.
You have to specifically put where's the key to the stake,
not where is.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
The key to the safe?
Speaker 5 (46:41):
Then the book will come up and there's the ebook, paperback,
card cover, and then you have to put.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
Where's the key to the safe workbook? Because Amazon it
doesn't bring them up together. You have to put the workbook.
So to get both of them, you have to use
both of those.
Speaker 5 (46:57):
But it's pretty much anywhere you can give books, but
Amazon is obviously the go to place for most people.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
So that's how you get it. And that's say a review,
because then we'll get to that hundred and we'll.
Speaker 4 (47:08):
Be right on that's good stuff and pull the information
for Cameron and Pam will be in the show notes.
You guys, thank you both so much for hanging out
with me today. I really appreciate it and I love
what I get to do. I get to talk to
the best. This show has the absolute best guess of
(47:30):
all time and.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Read it energy, so you bring out the goodness for sure.
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
Wow, what a journey this conversation has taken us on.
I just want to take a moment to thank Pam
and Cameron not only for being here today, but for
their vulnerability, their wisdom, and for turning pain into purpose.
And this Cameron has ated or gave us information regarding
the fact that you don't have to be a billionaire
(48:00):
a try millionaire to plant. And although Pam planned, she
still ran into some obstacles.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
So it's so important for you to take a look review.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
These things before it's too late, before you're gone, before
you put the burden on your family members, plan it out.
This is an amazing book that's available where all books
are sold, and you can pick this book up on Amazon.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
You guys, and I.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
Do want to say Pam, your story is one of
deep love and deeper resilience. And Cameron, your insight around
the emotional side of the financial planning was a wake
up call in the best way together. Your book Where's
the Keys to the Safe is more than just a guide,
(48:49):
It's a lifeline. To all of you tuning in today.
I hope today's episode encourages you to have the conversations
you've been putting off, to plan, to prepare, and most
of all, to connect with people you love while you
still can, because, as Pam so powerfully reminded us, your
(49:12):
story does an end when someone you love is gone. You, guys,
talk about the hard stuff and as always, stay true,
stay open, stay authentic, and until next time, take care
of yourselves and each other. Thank you all so much
for tuning in. I'm chante with Authentic Talks two point
(49:34):
zero
Hey, hey, hey, welcome back to Authentic Talks. My name
is Chante Generally, and I am your host. I am
beyond thrilled about today's conversation. This one is special. Not
only are we diving into a deeply human story, but
we're talking about something too many people avoid until it's
too late. Before we dive in with introductions for today's episode,
(00:24):
I do want to take a moment to welcome each
and every last one of you. Let's take this one
a little bit further. If you are able to leave
a review, that would really be awesome. Reviews can be
left on Apple podcasts as well as Podchaser. Thank you
so much in advance for leaving that review. One thing
many of us know that have lost a loved one
(00:47):
is that the depth of a loved one can be devastating,
but the financial aftermath.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Shouldn't make it worse.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yes, too many families find themselves overwhelmed by probate, missing paperwork,
and financial confusion when a loved one passes. If you're
financially tied to someone a spouse, a parent, child, or
a business partner, are you truly ready for what happens
when they're gone? I am joined today by two amazing people. First,
(01:20):
Pam Baker, who is the founder and CEO of Widows
Who Whined, which is a community and app designed to
help women find connection, support, and the best friends they
ever knew they needed. Her mission is simple to help
women rebuild a life filled with laughter, friendship and joy
(01:42):
even after an unimaginable loss. And I'm also joined by
her nephew, Cameron Zebko, a certified financial planner. He is
a wealth advisor and the founder of West Hollow Wealth
man Management, where he helps families, business owners, and individuals
(02:05):
take control of their financial future through holistic financial planning.
You guys, together, they wrote this amazing book to help
guide you on what steps to take to ensure you're
ready in not leaving your family having to scramble after
you're gone.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
The book they wrote.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Where's the Keys to the Safe, is also helpful for
anyone who is wondering what steps they need to take
and they're in the.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Now what phase.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Together, Cameron and Pam have written a book that is
eye opening as it is necessary, Where's the Keys to
the Safe? And I cannot wait to unpack it with them,
So get ready for a raw, real and incredible insightful
talk about love, loss, legacy, and how to protect your
(02:58):
future before the unthinking happens. Let's dive on in. Please
welcome Pam and Cameron too. Authentic Talks two point zero.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Authentic Talks is all about authentic conversations. This show is
all about growth, love, respect, success, mind, body and spirit.
If you're looking to grow and become your authentic self,
then this is the podcast for you.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
And I am your host. Chante. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
Hi Pam, Hi Cameron, Welcome to the show. I'm really
excited to have both of you on as a guest
today and I'm really excited about the topic that we're
going to be talking about. You both bring a different
perspective to this and congratulations on your new book, which
we're going to talk about today as well. Pam, can
(03:49):
I have you introduce yourself to our listeners before we
dive in.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
Thank you so much for having us. We're really excited
to share with you and be on your show. We're
super fans of Authentic Talk. I'm I live in Atlanta,
Georgia and have four kids their ages sixteen to twenty six,
so semi adulting, not all the way there, but that's
me a nutshell.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Welcome.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
I'm excited to have you Cameron. The mic is yours
Gaverrin Zapko.
Speaker 6 (04:16):
I'm a certified financial planner and I'm also Pam's nephew.
That's how we got together to write this book.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Well, welcome to the show. Let's go ahead and dive
on in. Pam, can you talk.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
With us a little bit about what happened in twenty
twenty one?
Speaker 5 (04:31):
Sure, and I'll back it up a tiny bit into
twenty eighteen. My husband we started dating when I was
eighteen years old, he was twenty. We were together for
thirty something years, married for twenty four years. In twenty eighteen,
he was diagnosed with giliobustomal and aggressive brain cancer. He
was given about twelve to fourteen months to live. He
(04:53):
fought a very valiant fight and we did everything we
could to prolong his life, and he.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Lived really, really quite well for two years.
Speaker 5 (05:01):
And then in twenty twenty one everything started just taking
a turn for the worst. In November of twenty twenty one,
he passed away. He was also a certified financial planner.
Cameron actually worked for my husband's company.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
He had his own business, and you.
Speaker 5 (05:15):
Know when you get a diagnosis like that, you hold
on to hope that you could be the one that
gets to beat it. And we held onto that hope,
but also knew that it wasn't a great sentence to
get when we got that diagnosis. It was one of
those things that you sort of I think you're planning for,
but it still knocks you sideways when it does show up.
Speaker 4 (05:37):
When he was diagnosed, what did those days look like
for you, guys? Did you instantly go into let's start planning. No,
that's what's so hard. I talked about this just the
other day with someone. It's really hard when you have
someone who, even though they have a horrific diagnosis with
very little chance of survival, having that talk feels like
(06:00):
if you're giving them the message that you don't have.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Hope for them.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
I don't know why I hung on to hope, which
makes sense.
Speaker 5 (06:06):
Yeah, it feels like you've given up, like, oh, we
got a plan for this, because so let's make a
plan and we'll get into this with the book. But
that's one of the reasons why we wrote this book.
You know, you've got to do all that stuff before
tragedy hits, before you get hit. By a car going
to work or you get a diagnosis. Having those conversations
beforehand is a lot easier and there's a lot less
(06:28):
emotion involved. And I will say we felt pretty strongly
we had a good I mean, he was a financial planner,
for goodness sake, he was a very successful financial planner
and a whole team, and we had a lawyer and
we had a CBA. We thought we had things tied
up pretty tight, and I found out very quickly after
he passed that we actually did not have things tied
up very tightly. So Cameron worked for him. So that
(06:51):
was convenient because I had my right hand man right there.
Cameron's just like my own son too. It was very
convenient to have someone so close in the family be
there to.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Go through all those steps with me.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
Wow. Well, that's good that he was there. So we're
definitely going to come back so we can talk more
about the story, Cameron. She mentioned that you work with
her husband and that you are a great support, and
I want to I want to talk about Pam's story,
But before we dive in with talking about that, I
know that, like there's some things that most people need
(07:26):
to have planned out. Can we talk about that if
you know that you're going to have a loved one,
that this is something that is inevitable.
Speaker 6 (07:37):
And Pam always says, we have to become more comfortable
with talking about death because everybody dies. But it's not
just if you have someone that you have the diagnosis
so they're getting older. It's really everybody. If you have
some kind of financial tie to anyone, you should have
your ducks in a row so that if something does
happen to you, that you know you're not maybe a
mess behind to your loved ones. So everyone always goes
(07:59):
to the will the kind of the first thing people
think about. They put a lot of emphasis on the
will and they think that's the end all be all
for most people, the will is not enough. Your will
is more like a catch all for anything that you
didn't pass on through the use of other tools like
a trust or beneficiary designations. And it's not the best
way to pass assets because it will have to go
(08:21):
through probates. We're in Georgia, and probate is not bad
in Georgia. It's not that long a process, it's not
that complicated, but there are states that probate takes a
lot longer.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
Well, even if you have a will in place, you
still have to go through probate.
Speaker 6 (08:37):
So the only way around probate is to pass your
assets through things like a trust or through beneficiary designations,
because those will go outside of the will. If you
pass away without a will or anything in place, then
your whole state needs to be probated at that point.
We don't like probate for a couple reasons. Like I said,
it could be lengthy. That's the biggest one, says to
(08:58):
your loved ones are waiting for their inheritance to pay
bills or you know, pay the mortgage, pay the car payment.
That can be financially devastating to somebody, put them into debt,
take their credit all that. It's also public, so if
you have relatives that you want excluded from your estate,
they're going to be able to see what's been passed
(09:20):
to your beneficiaries and cause issues for them later on
down the road. So they can contest the will, they
can show up at court. And it also opens you
up to creditors. If there's some person that's trying to
have a lawsuit against your beneficiaries, they're going to know
exactly how much money passed to them through the probate process.
So if those are concerns for you, then you want
(09:41):
to make sure you're implementing other tools like I said,
like a trust, like beneficiary designations on top of the will.
The will, like I said, is really just to catch
all the last line of defense. If we missed anything,
they'll go through the will, so.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
Just to clarify. Probate is a court proceeding.
Speaker 6 (09:58):
So typically if you have a will, you'll hire an
attorney to go through the probate process and they'll submit
the will to the court, do all the required paperwork.
The judge is going to read the will, read any
other documentation, and ultimately it's the judges and the court's
decision what happens to your assets. So they're going to
follow what you have written, but it's also up to
(10:20):
some interpretation. If you want a more air tight plan
with no questions and you don't really want to judge
making the final decision on your assets, that's where we're
looking at other tools, like I said, like a trust
and not necessarily passing everything to the will.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
If you want to set up a trust, do you
have to go through a financial planner like yourself.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
In order to do that.
Speaker 6 (10:40):
I think that's usually a good place to start. I'm
not an attorney. I don't draft documents. But the trouble
that a lot of people run into is they'll go
to an estate planning attorney and they'll walk out with
a trust and they have no idea what it does,
they don't use it properly, and they don't really know
what they paid for or how to use it, how
to implement that tool. So if you can start with
an unbiased third party like a financial advisor or anyone
(11:03):
that has good business sense or estate planning sense that's
not selling you a trust like an attorney is, they
can help walk you through how to set up that plan.
Then you can take that to the attorney and say
this is what I want implemented. That way, both sides
understand what the thoughts were behind the state plan, what
the intended target is on what these documents are aiming
(11:25):
to accomplish. For the most part of people walk into
the state planning attorney and get an off the shelf
document that they've used for hundreds of other people, and
it's not necessarily tailored to their exact situation.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
More cookie cutter version.
Speaker 6 (11:40):
Yeah, and that's a lot of the book is referencing
that sort of thing where you need to be your
own advocate and you need to know enough about the
state planning process, your finances, your taxes so that you
can be that advocate for yourself. It's not necessarily that
they're maliciously trying to trick you. They don't know exactly
what you want, and you don't know how express what
(12:00):
you want, so you're getting what's worked in the past
for other people, and that's not always the best case
scenario for yourself.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
Got it, So, Pam, can you tell me how the
idea of where's the Key to the Safe?
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Come from the name of it.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
Whenever I read the name of the book Where's the
Key to the Safe? I had a visual and I
pictured someone literally looking around for a key, and then
my brain went to bigger things like I need to
unlock some answers. So my brain was just going all
over the place with it. I love the title of
the book.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
It can mean I'm so glad your brain went there,
because that's exactly why it's named that. I did not
know where the key to the safe was in our
house when I finally found it. I didn't know how
to open it.
Speaker 5 (12:49):
And I remembered so vividly John telling me my husband's
name was John. So I'm always saying you need to
figure out how to open this safe.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
I was like, no, I don't. I have you to
do it. It's a weird safe.
Speaker 5 (12:59):
So it takes a key in its got to turn,
but it's like the opposite you got to turn it
the opposite way that you know, your old fashioned locker.
It's counterintuitive. So Cameron and I literally youtubed videos on
how to unlock this freaking safe and finally got into it.
So I didn't even know where the key to the
safe was, which is pretty basic information when your husband
is dying and you know that for three years, didn't
(13:21):
know where the will was either, by the way, and
so yeah, that's why we named it that unlocking the
Key to your financial future. By following these steps in
the book, you are literally being given the key to
protecting your assets, to avoiding probate. I mean, that's the
whole theme of it. So your brain went exactly.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
Where it should have. That's so perfect. You did a
great job naming that, thank you. Yeah, because I literally
could picture that in my head could also imagine a
lot went through because I'm a visual person. So after
your husband passed away, what was it that you noticed
about society and the way that we treat widows. What
(14:00):
came up for you?
Speaker 5 (14:03):
Well, you know, everybody shows up right away with their
kesseroles and their food and all the things. And after
a few weeks, everybody goes back to living your lives,
which is just a normal part of when somebody dies.
The difference with widows is I call it an antiquated
view of what widows look like. People still kind of
lump us into the forgotten little old lady sitting on
(14:23):
the front porch, wrapped dinner blanket at the end of
her life. But so many of us are in the
middle of our lives and our story doesn't stop just
because our husband's story stopped, and there's so much more
going on. There's all these multi layered weirdnesses that there
is no system to support widows. In my opinion, there's
grief groups, that's it, and you can sit in your grief,
(14:46):
and if you come out of your grief too soon,
people are like, Ooh, I guess she's over her husband.
There are a lot of complicated emotions that go along
with it.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
I want to hear to walk us through what it
was like. At what point did you really know that
he's going to transition over? Was it kind of like
you knew that he had a health issue.
Speaker 5 (15:06):
But I think we held on to a glimmer of
hope for the first two years. Like I said, he
was doing really well, and then he would go through
battles mentally, he'd slump into a little depression and beat
the cheerleader and lift him back up. He ultimately had
a seizure while he was driving one day and got
into a really terrible accident. Broken legs, punctured lungs, fructured ribs,
(15:29):
all in that.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
After that, he wasn't able to drive anymore.
Speaker 5 (15:34):
He was a race car driver, like he loved that
was his hobby, Like he was an instructor for Portion
and BMW and he just loved he loved driving. So
he wasn't able to drive anymore. It was one of
the last things the disease took from him. He couldn't
fight his way back mentally, his fight was gone, So
we all kind of knew it took a lot of
lifting of his emotions a lot more than it took before.
(15:57):
That was the beginning of the end, and just got
worse and worse, And as the tumor grew and there
weren't a lot of options left, he exhausted his clinical
trial options and exhausted his you know, you could do
chemo and radiation twice, and he used up those those weapons,
those tools in the toolbox. It wasn't a whole lot left.
I'd say September twenty twenty is when we knew that.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
We were toward the end.
Speaker 5 (16:23):
But definitely by like August of twenty twenty one, my
girlfriend as a photographer and we did what I knew
was gonna be our final family photo shoot. We knew
when we were taking steps that it was coming, like
this was going to be the last one of this
and that and you know, so then we knew by
the summer really of twenty twenty one that each thing
(16:45):
was our last.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
Sometimes you don't know what to say. I had just
talked to someone about this, I've had several conversations, but
for some reason, when it's right in front of me,
everything goes out the window. I wanted to say sorry
for your loss, but then I was like, no, they said,
don't say that, you're supposed to say this, and then
my brain was all over the place about it's a
proper way to address that. I'm glad that you're able
(17:09):
to help other people through your story of what happened
with you and that it birth a book that is
not only helping people with the emotional side, but also
helping them with what to do, because that's something most
people do not think of. It's the last thing that
you're focused on. You're mostly focused on your healing process,
(17:29):
and it's like not too often that people are wanting
to talk about that side. And I love what Cameron
shared about what you have said to him, which is
that this is a conversation that we have to get
used to talking about, and death is an uncomfortable conversation.
It really is, because it's something that most of us
don't want to think about.
Speaker 5 (17:50):
It's so true, and it's so crazy. Everybody dies, you
don't know when it's going to happen. There has to
be a way to normalize the conversation. Doing this kind
of planning of time is easier when you can talk
about it without being triggered with emotions or worried about
how somebody's going to react when you're trying to make
all these decisions while you're agreeing it's impossible. We haven't
(18:12):
talked about this yet, but when you were asking me
about what I did and what I found out there
for support, I didn't find any support. Ultimately, in February
twenty twenty three, I created a group called Widows Who
Whine Wise. I wanted to create a social group for
widows because that's the loneliest thing. You're lonely because you're
not the third wheel or the fifth wheel, or when
you're with your single friends, they're all complaining about their
(18:34):
men or their exes or whatever, and there's no space
for us to be out in normal So I created
this social group and it's grown, like the first one
had fourteen people and now there's over three hundred and
fifty women in Atlanta in it. And so I've heard
these stories over and over again.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
You don't know what to say. And the problem is
you could say that same thing, I'm so.
Speaker 5 (18:52):
Sorry for your loss to ten different people, and ten
different people will have a different reaction. That might make
somebody so annoyed, But that may be the perfect thing
to say, and that's what's crazy about grief and loss
is it's so individual that nobody really knows what the right.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Thing to say is.
Speaker 5 (19:09):
I'll tell you what I don't like, and I make
fun of this all the time. I get resounding feelings
of affirmation with this. Every time I bring it up
to anybody. It's the head to like, how are you
so don't do that?
Speaker 4 (19:21):
Yeah, how do you think I'm doing? I am getting
through the best that I can. Like, what do you
say to that? It's like, Oh, do you really.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Want to know?
Speaker 7 (19:30):
I know?
Speaker 5 (19:31):
Or are you just asking me because you're actually also
grief and you want me.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
To take care of you? Honestly? Wow, it's a weird world.
Speaker 5 (19:39):
But you know, honestly, I don't have a lot of
memories of the first year after John died. I have
four kids, so I was really focused on them and
Cameron and Hallie, his sister, you know, she and Camera's
mom lived with me. They moved in after John passed away,
so we have our little co parenting situation.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
He was their father figure too. It's all the loss.
Speaker 5 (20:02):
And the focus goes there. I really don't have any memories.
My point is, when you're trying to make big financial
decisions while grieving. When your brain is not functioning, it's
nearly impossible. There's so much room for things to go
wrong that you really want to do all this ahead
of time so you're not trying to do it then,
and then you can just be with your family and
be with your luck once and honor the person you've
(20:23):
lost instead of trying to scramble and figure out how
to do all this stuff and an avoid probate when
you're probably it's too late, you're already.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
That totally makes sense.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
We have to talk about the roadblocks you've faced and
how you and Cameron came together to write the book.
But before we move on, I have to ask you
what have you seen in the group that you created
as far as transformation? How's it going? Are people opening
up and sharing their experiences?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Incredible?
Speaker 5 (20:50):
Actually, it's grown so much and I have so many stories.
Almost every single day and certainly every time we get together.
I organize one social thing a month, and you know
what it can. Cameron's done a financial planning one on
one for us, and we've done you know, so some
of it we do I call it learning and libations.
We do some learning thing like home maintenance one oh
one and stuff like that, but mostly like we'll do
(21:10):
axe throwing or one time I rented a movie theater
out for all of us to go to the movies.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Just fun things. But now I tell.
Speaker 5 (21:17):
These women, this is your group. It's not my group,
it's our group. If you want to have something creative,
there's a book club. There's widows who dine, there's widows
who cornhole, there's widows who majong, widows who golf. Oh,
we have all kinds of offshoots of fun things. And
we have our widow group going to Costa Rica in October,
and I had a bunch of them over at my
lake house. We just do all kinds of fun stuff.
(21:38):
I've seen a lot of transformations and so many stories
from women who have been widowed for years and they
come to our group and it's the first time they
feel like they can breathe because they're with people who
get it, and they don't have to wear this mask.
They don't have to put on their guard to say, oh,
what are they going to say? Is this gonna be
weird or whatever. They just walk in and they're like, Oh,
I'm with my people. I can breathe, you know, and
(22:01):
just seeing women it's the loneliness. You know, women who
have said they just wander around their house like a
show of a person. And now they have these groups
and they're vibrant and traveling and doing really cool things.
So I hear it all the time. These women are like,
you saved my life. You've literally threw me a lifeline and.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Saved my life.
Speaker 5 (22:18):
And the whole thing is just finding joy and it's
okay to be happy again. They would want us to
know that, but how do you get there? What do
you do when you don't have people to show you how?
It's really really cool. It's been my greatest joy. And
all the joy that they say that this group has
brought them, it's brought me so much too.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
So it's been pretty amazing. I'd love that.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
I absolutely love it. So you have to tell me
you had a will in place at the time, and
then even though you had a will in place, you
found that there was still some challenges.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
That you face. Can you share with us what were
those challenges?
Speaker 4 (22:54):
And then we'll go to camera to talk about how
he showed up for you and was able to help,
and then how we got to this place of writing
the book.
Speaker 5 (23:02):
There were a lot and I can just run down
a couple of things. First of all, I didn't know
where the will was, and we did find it, it
was so old that it was outdated. My youngest child
was not even on it. I feel like John would
never have not updated it, but their lawyer didn't have it,
so I will know what happened. That was a huge oversight,
titling of our properties, our accounts, of our vehicles. We
(23:26):
didn't have everything co owner, you know, so there were
a lot of struggles. Like I tried to sell my car.
It was my car, but I didn't know where the
title was. And if I went to the DMV and
found it, it was in John's name because he's on
the bought He bought it for me.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
It was my car, but my name wasn't on it.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
So like then that whole process when someone transitions over,
that's not enough to show a death certificate that they're
no longer here or yes, showing the certificate, that all
alongs the whole process of then, you know, just everything
was like that extra step to go take care of things.
So it was a lot of things. Oh my gosh,
(24:02):
Cameron went else.
Speaker 5 (24:03):
I know, there were like five million things that we
were like, Oh my god, how do we not know this?
Speaker 7 (24:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (24:08):
I think the first thing because, like Pam said, John
did pretty much all the finances, and Pam helped with
bill paying sometimes. For the most part, John understood the
cash flow. You understood how the money's coming into the house.
Er said, like the big expenses going out the door.
My biggest concern was getting Pam comfortable that she's not
(24:28):
going bankrupt and getting her to a place where she
wasn't freaking out all the time about money because she
no longer had an income coming in. John passed away,
his business got sold off, and so there's no there
was her money that she had was there to last
for the rest of her life. Making sure that we're
smart about it and what are we going to do
with the money, and just getting her to a place
(24:49):
where she felt like she didn't have to I don't
even know what you were doing at that point, but
everything you were.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Doing was like I was used to being able. I
never had to really think about it.
Speaker 5 (24:58):
John was very successful, like I said, so I would
buy what I want and did what I did, and
I didn't really have any concept of cash flow at all.
And I grew up without envy money, Like we had
no money when I was a kid. So I think
I just went back to that poverty mentality of like I'm.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Gonna lose it all. It's all gonna be gone.
Speaker 5 (25:14):
I have all these kids, and we have college, and
we have this, and well and what if the market crashes.
I went into full panic mode, like I could not
get in my mind how we were really going to
survive without more money coming in and what he made.
You know, I hadn't been to stay home mom for
twenty years. I was like, what am I How? I
can't like that? It just put me in It pushed
all my deep seated panic buttons for sure.
Speaker 6 (25:38):
Yeah, So that was step one getting her past that,
and then step two was we hadn't this outdated estate
plan because John's gone now. It took her a lot
of time to figure out, like she was saying, she
didn't really have a purpose, and she developed what was
wanted and then she came out of like that poverty mentality,
and then she started figuring out, like, you know, what
do I want to be doing with these assets to
(25:58):
preserve John's legacy? And so From there we were able
to create the new estate plan, and then she really
understood like how the money is invested in what we're
doing with it, and then how this estate plan wraps
into that. We just barely wrapped up the estate plan
because it's complicated one. Not everyone needs a complicated one
like this. It's more of a legacy based estate plan
instead of just like, here's your money to the kids,
(26:21):
you know. And so it's been over three years at
this point. It takes a while, and that's a big thing.
We always say, you don't have to do it all
at once. You can do it in steps, because a
lot of people delay doing any of it because they're like, oh, well,
I don't know who I want to be the guardian
of my kids, or I don't know who I want
to be my executor. But there is stuff in your
mind that you can answer right once the battle start
(26:42):
with those documents. First, right, is your executor the person
you know that takes care of your estate when you
pass away, if it's your guardian or your medical power attorney.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Your state that's like all of your property and the
things you own.
Speaker 6 (26:56):
So your state is pretty much anything that hasn't passed
through a betefit fishery designation. When you open up an
IRA or a bank account, you have an option to
name someone as the beneficiary of that account, so that
stuff passes outside of probate, it passes outside the will.
So that's also very important to make sure that that
matches your state plan because otherwise it will supersede your
(27:17):
state plan. So I've seen many times with clients they
have an ex spouse listed as their beneficiary on their
four to oh one K and if something happened to them,
the money would go in the x spouse, right, So
it's important to make sure everything's dialed in and compliments
each other. If your state plans as one thing, but
your beneficiary designation say a different thing, well they need
to match up. So yeah, it's I've seen a lot
(27:40):
where people delay and delay and delay because they can't
answer all the questions at once. But I just think
it's really important to answer what you can and get
done what you can because anything you're able to accomplish
and your state plan is going to help whoever you're
leaving behind. Eventually, if they persevere and keep going with it,
you'll have a complete estate plan. There's multiple ways to
do it. You can use an online service like turbottax,
(28:02):
where you know, answer some questions, then it spits out
in a state plan. That's really good as your self motivated.
If you're not self motivated, you're dragging your feet, and
a state planning attorney's probably the better rout because they're
your accountability buddy and they're going to make sure that
you're progressing and finishing the process. So lots of ways
to accomplish all the things that you need in a
state plan. It's just kind of taking out matches your
(28:25):
personality and what matches you know, your ambitional well, I
guess to make sure that it happens and stop dragging
your feet about it just because you feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 5 (28:34):
And I think it's important to remind people that states
are for super wealthy people. I think people think like,
I don't need a state plan because I'm not a
millionaire or I don't have a lot of assets, but
a state plan is just smart to have in place
for almost everybody.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
I love that you brought that up because I do
believe that a lot of people think that way, that
that's for your elon musk or when they have like
millions or so. I love that that was a good
ad because any type of home that you have, it's
good to have it in there.
Speaker 6 (29:04):
Yeah, and these online services now, I mean you can
walk out with an estate plan for a married couple
like three hundred bucks. Right, it's not expensive. So as
long as that winds your goals and you can accomplish
what you want to accomplish there, it's a very low
cost option just to do it with an online servis.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Wow. That's good to know.
Speaker 4 (29:23):
So tell me about the book, Like, after you were
able to walk through all the different steps and get
everything in order, how did the book come about? Were
you guys just like let's do this or who had
the idea?
Speaker 5 (29:37):
Very early on, my thought was, oh my god, if
I had three years to plan for my husband's stead.
He's a financial advisor, he had a whole team at
his office, we had a lawyer, we had a CPA.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
If this is this difficult.
Speaker 5 (29:51):
For me, then how does the everyday person who doesn't
have that whole team, and also they just die suddenly,
part attach cor accident, unexpectedly.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
How in the world do they do it?
Speaker 5 (30:04):
And that's most people, I would say, So that's where
the seeds of the book started growing. So I was like, man,
people need to know about this. People got to know more.
This has got to be we need to tell people.
And I was like, oh, I'm going to write a book.
And so I was like I can do this, and
you know, I started tinkering with it. But then I
was like, I can tell my story, but I don't
(30:24):
have the professional perspective on it.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
So then I went to camer and I'm like, hey.
Speaker 5 (30:30):
I think I need to write this book at this mine,
can you can come do this with me?
Speaker 2 (30:35):
And I don't know. He says, I don't know. I
bamboozled him and made him do it with her.
Speaker 6 (30:40):
So she started asking if we were going to write
a book, what topics were we talking about? And then
I turned into a book. From there, it took us
a long time. Pam did me classical about how to
write a book, and then we eventually started writing it.
We'd stop, we'd stall. It's hard to sit down and
force yourself to write. Oh yeah, it's like studying. If
(31:00):
you're not in the right headspace to do it, nothing happens. Yeah,
you have bursts of productivity and then other times you
just sit in your computer for forty five minutes. You're like, well, tonight,
it's not going to be a writing night. So we
started writing in a state planning book. And then we
realize that even if we write the best estate planning
book ever, that if it's a someone like Pam picking
(31:23):
up the book that didn't have you know, the financial background,
a lot of this isn't going to make sense to them.
And so it quickly turned it into like financial planning
one oh one as like the base knowledge that you need,
So that's the first half of the book, and then
getting into the estate planning topics on the back end
so that you understand the big picture of why this
(31:43):
is important because you have the base knowledge on the
front end. So we took a lot of stories from
Pam's widows of our group about stuff that they had
go wrong. We took, you know, stuff that we saw
in Pam's planning that went wrong, and combine to those
and then I addeds basic financial literacy items that a
lot of people well don't know, things like car insurance,
ame insurance and making sure that you're being a good consumer.
(32:05):
You're not getting I don't want to say scammed, but
you know they'd better ways to be spending your money
and just being, like I said, a good consumer and
being good with your money. I think there's something in
those books for everybody, regardless if you have an a
state plan or you're fresh out of college and you're
trying to start on a good financial footing. It's kind
of the whole gamut. Every now and then we say, oh,
that would be really good to write about in our
(32:26):
second book, but there's no official reaction. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (32:30):
No, Well, And it's funny because when John died, I
read a lot of financial planning books. I was like,
I'm not going to get taken advantage of in this
whole thing thing. Though we had a CPA and lawyer.
John had the relationships with them and I didn't know them.
I was trying to arm myself with knowledge. The books
were so boring and clinical. John't always try to get
me in, and I'm like, this is your job, this
(32:52):
is finance.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
I have a psychology degree the other way.
Speaker 5 (32:55):
So every book I read was horrible and boring. It
was like work to get through. That's why the cover
is very pretty. Everything about it is meant to be
esthetically pleasing, warm, inviting. The way we write is very conversational.
I wanted it to feel like you're sitting down having
a top of coffee with your girlfriend, and every chapter
(33:16):
we'd cover something different. But every chapter starts with Pam
and I give a little anecdotal story about that topic,
and then Cam comes in with the professional perspectives. Even
on the professional stuff, he writes in a style that's
very easy to understand and conversational, so that it really
feels doable. You're not in there with your eyes glazing
(33:37):
over it.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
It's like you're having a couple.
Speaker 5 (33:40):
I was really happy with the way it turned out.
Cameron's Fred Sydney did some illustrations for us to make
it really just that much easier. You know, all the
different types of learning styles and everything, just to have
them included. And then we did a workbook that goes
along with it, so you can literally go chapter by chapter.
Philadels at the end if you fill out that work book,
(34:00):
that you also just take to your state planning lawyer
and be like, there's my stuff.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Nice, it's good stuff. The book cover is attractive. You
hit a home run with that.
Speaker 4 (34:11):
It looks good. The title of the book makes you
want to know more.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
And open it up. You guys did a great job.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
I love that you work together to help other people
and share it so much knowing they should do this
now they don't have to be in the same situation
where someone is sick or ill. You know, we're going
through like an end of life type situation, something that
people can do. Now, how old would you recommend someone be, Like,
is there an age like do you have to be
(34:39):
like forty?
Speaker 6 (34:40):
Or I would always I always say if you have
any sort of financial obligation or tie to anybody, you
should get your estate planning in order. So like, if
you're let's say nineteen years old, you don't have any kids,
Let's say you have like an investment account, Well, you
should still put beneficiary is on that account, right, have
them go to your parents, your siblings, just to make
(35:00):
their lives ea year.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Right.
Speaker 6 (35:02):
You don't necessarily need like a full blown estate plan
at that point, but you can do what you can
to make it easier for others if something were to
happen to you. Now, if you have financial obligations where
people are depending on you to earn an income to
pay the bills, that's where you need to get more serious.
About your estate plan and looking at life insurance, making
(35:24):
sure that everything's buttoned up, and making sure that those
who leave behind are able to survive without your earning
ability down the raid. Same thing if you're an aging parent,
right and you have adult shouldering, they have their own
lives to go on. They're going to be grieving when
you pass away, So how can you make their lives
they as possible. They might not be financially dependent on
you anymore, but their life is going to be uprooted
(35:47):
for a year or two three years, so however long
it takes them to settle your state. And then you
also want to limit any kind of infighting between family members, siblings,
and so I always say good a state plan takes
all the decisions out of the business of death that
you've already made those decisions, or the people that you're
leaving behind, all they have to do is execute that
(36:07):
estate plan, and so that eliminates a lot of the
infighting and eliminates any ambiguity, yes, and then eliminates any
sort of issues in the probate process as well. So
you've already made this as decisions, You've taken the drama
out of it, and it's even better if you have
the time to explain why you designed your estate plan
to them, which is what I always recommend as well
(36:28):
they understand.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Write a letter about why they did it.
Speaker 6 (36:31):
Yes, we always suggest doing a family love letter. And
you can lay out in there whatever you want that's
whatever is not in your will. It can be life
lesson you learned things that you want to make sure
they know about the family. You tell them that I
laid out my estate plan sure these reasons and this
is why maybe this person got this thing, and it's
(36:53):
whatever you want to put in there. Also making sure
that you put like what you want your end of
life ceremonies to look like, because that's all information that's
not going to be in your will, it's not going
to be in your trust. It's another step in the
estate planning process. It's not a formal document. You don't
need an attorney to do that. It's just what every
information that you want to pass on to the next generation.
Speaker 5 (37:15):
But important those end of life celebrations. Oftentimes, in my case,
I knew exactly what John wanted and not everybody in
the family was on the same page with that, and
we didn't write it down so it did lead you know,
some issues with feelings or you know, compromises that were
what he would have wanted necessarily, and so you know
(37:37):
that was one thing and we're like, oh, why didn't
we write that down?
Speaker 2 (37:39):
So writing it down, there's no ambiguity. It's like, this
is what he wanted, let's do it.
Speaker 4 (37:45):
Family members on his side that came out like where
they were not happy with things are wanted some of
his like hey, I want that car, I deserved.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
The house or all of that. Fortunately we did not
have that.
Speaker 5 (37:58):
We did have the issues with the celebration of life,
but it all worked out. It made for awkward times
when you really just all want to be loving on
each other and honoring him, not bickering over something silly.
Speaker 6 (38:10):
Guest makes people very weird. Everyone processes the differently. Some
people get super greedy, and if you start thinking about
personalities within the family, some people are pushovers. They let
the other person do whatever they want, and then that
breeds resentment forever because they didn't say enough for themselves.
Someone will come in and try to take whatever they
want out of the estate. If you don't what's stout
(38:30):
specific guidance to go to specific people. That's really worth
the family infighting and the drama stems Truman. It might
not be right off the bat, but it's five, ten,
fifteen years down the road when this resentment had been
brewing and brewing. So that's what I said, if you
can take those decisions down in their hands, you've already
made those decisions for them. That's in a lot of it.
Speaker 5 (38:51):
Yeah, why I just heard that story. One of the
women that came this weekend, she's a widow, but when
her parents died, she said the same thing. Her siblings
came in and took everything. The only thing that left
her with was an old safe from the eighteen hundreds
because it weighed like three hundred pounds and they couldn't
move it.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
They took everything.
Speaker 5 (39:06):
It's her siblings, but there's still definitely some unhappy feelings
about that.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
My husband shared a story with me that when his
mother passed away, she had ten kids, but she had
left money to a specific brother and he didn't want
to help to pay for any of the costs of anything,
and they were like, you're getting the money, you shouldn't
use it to help pay for her funeral costs. Because
(39:31):
they weren't trying to collect and do all these things.
Every time he thinks of his mother's funeral, he remembers
that different things do happen.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
They're good today, but it didn't need to happen. You
do all this stuff. A lot of times. We hear
people say this all the time, like I'll be dead,
what do I care? Well, yeah, yeah, I've heard that.
Speaker 5 (39:48):
I really want your kids to be fighting with each other,
arguing over who gets the necklace, the ring in the house.
And when some person get the house and they can't
afford to keep it up. Then what there's so much
of that gift you can give anybody is just have
this all done for them. You don't have to risk
damaging any relationships, you don't have to risk anybody questioning anything.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
It's just done. Just do it, you know.
Speaker 4 (40:11):
So from grief to financial clarity and then estate planning
without all the chaos and all of the overwhelm, this
book is going to bring everyone.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
That's the goal. Where's the keys to the safe? That's right?
Speaker 4 (40:26):
If you guys have got to pick this book up.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
I think that.
Speaker 4 (40:28):
Books really do make a great gift. And I know
I say it all the time, and I might sound like, okay, but.
Speaker 2 (40:34):
I really do mean it.
Speaker 4 (40:35):
They do make great gifts, especially when it's a different
type of book. This is a book that you can
get information from that could really help you to get
things done. When you're thinking about that gift to give
to a loved one, we are thinking about, Okay, she
has everything, what else could I get her? Try giving
a book? Because a book where there's great information, where's
(40:58):
the keys to the safe?
Speaker 2 (41:00):
I love it. I love it.
Speaker 4 (41:02):
I'm so grateful that you guys came on to share
your story, and I'm glad that you have the support
that you need and that together you guys created a masterpiece.
I love that you birth something out of your grief
that's going to help other people.
Speaker 5 (41:16):
I'm going to give you a little tip because I
heard this from somebody and I was like, that's brilliant.
Someone was asking a young adult twenty something who had
lost her father. They said to her, so, you lost
your dad, how's that going for you? And I was like, oh,
I like that, how's that.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Going for you? It's not like how are you?
Speaker 5 (41:35):
Or I'm sorry, where you're like every time somebody says
I'm sorry for your last I'm like, oh, thank you.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
I know puts everybody in that.
Speaker 5 (41:44):
Yeah, it's a conversation stopper instead of a conversation starter.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
How's that going from that?
Speaker 5 (41:51):
When I've heard it, I haven't used it on anyone myself,
but when I heard that, I was like, I am
going to remember that.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Because that seems good. Yeah, And it's like you said.
Speaker 4 (42:01):
You can say the same thing to ten different people
and they're all going to have a different response. How's
that going for you? It depends on how close it is.
You don't want to ask that on a second day
after some time has gone by. So your kids are
now adults. I have a sixteen year old. He's the youngest.
He was nine when his dad got diagnosed. I always say,
(42:22):
I mean, they all say he's my favorite, which is true.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
You guys are all my favorite.
Speaker 4 (42:26):
But in the year that you were born, you are
my favorite person that was born in the year, and
then you're my favorite person that was born sixteen years ago.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
You're my favorite that was born twenty years ago.
Speaker 5 (42:36):
Like that, You don't do it quite that way because
they all say it, Yes, he's your favorite.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
He's the baby.
Speaker 5 (42:42):
But light husband was such a great coach and he
was such a great dad. Duncan was so young that
once I was diagnosed, he went straight into a brain
surgery within two weeks ago. Everything John's health and just
keeping him unhealthy. So I always feel bad for Duncan
because he got the shaft. He definitely didn't get the
full benefit of having John Baker as his dad. But
(43:02):
he is turning into the most like him, which is interesting.
He's looking the most like him.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
It's cool. Just ask how is he now. I think
he's put.
Speaker 5 (43:11):
Him in play therapy from the beginning, and he did
it for years until he finally was.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
Like I think I'm good.
Speaker 5 (43:17):
Now I'm like, okay, you're good. One of the benefits
of knowing he recorded birthday messages for them for like
six or seven years out alledge graduation messages in high school,
like different messages, and so each year they get their
little birthday message hold him and I give them to them.
It's a little video message, and you know, he always
(43:37):
shares a favorite memory or something. But I love it
and it's so awesome and they treasure them so much.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
But now I know we're getting to the end of them.
Speaker 5 (43:44):
I think he did like six years worth, and I'm
like or but there's such special gifts, you know, they
look forward to.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
They're like, where's my message? Where's my message? With so
like you guys pretty much had it together.
Speaker 7 (43:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (43:56):
I know that this book is definitely going to be
helpful to people because if you've still had some challenges, imagine,
like Cameron said, the person that's starting at ground zero,
and I love that you have those messages and stuff.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
I would keep that forever. Oh yeah, for.
Speaker 4 (44:10):
Sure, that's good stuff. Thank you guys so much for
coming on today. And before we end our episode, I
do want to turn to both of you, and I
guess we can start with you, Pam or Cameron, whoever.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Wants to go first.
Speaker 4 (44:25):
What is it that you would like to leave our
listeners with today?
Speaker 2 (44:31):
What do you want to say?
Speaker 6 (44:31):
I kind of said it earlier, but don't wait just
because you don't think you have all your ducks in
a row to do this, And don't think that just
because you don't have a million dollars that you don't
need in a state plan. Don't procrastinate and get your
documents in order, whether that's a will in basic documentation
or meeting with professionals that can advise you. On more
(44:52):
complicated things like trusts and those kind of tools.
Speaker 7 (44:55):
Out right, thank you, there's good stuff, and I'll reiterate
that it's really the best gift that you can give anyone,
even if it's uncomfortable and awkward.
Speaker 5 (45:06):
But I do want to leave a message that's specific
to widowhood too. In this whole idea of the antiquated
version of the widow, people are always like, what is
the best thing I can do what a widows need?
And I would say the number one thing you can
do for widows is, instead of treating them like it's
the end of their story, support them in their rebirth,
support them in their new chapter, support them in this
(45:27):
new journey that they're taking, Support them in their journey
back to joy, because honestly, pretty much every woman will
be a widow at some point. Most women will, because
men tend to die sooner, we're all going to be there.
So let's support that status of womanhood. Widows have been
(45:48):
through so know that they're kind of a badass, and
support them in that we're not like the weak, little
pitied soul that's tucked away rebirth and journey back to
joy and support them in whatever way.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
That that they need in that journey in that next chapter.
Speaker 4 (46:05):
I love that you're thinking about, like you guys covered
all the corners here, you know, covered it all. I
normally ask you where can they find your book? And
I had you do your wrap up before I ask that,
But I have to come back to that and say
where can they find the book?
Speaker 5 (46:20):
So it's on Amazon. The thing you have to be
very careful with because Amazon is weird. We've even hit
the best seller rank on different levels of their state planning.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
But until you have.
Speaker 5 (46:31):
Like one hundred reviews written and we have like fifty
something you don't hit, you don't get in their algorithm.
You have to specifically put where's the key to the stake,
not where is.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
The key to the safe?
Speaker 5 (46:41):
Then the book will come up and there's the ebook, paperback,
card cover, and then you have to put.
Speaker 2 (46:46):
Where's the key to the safe workbook? Because Amazon it
doesn't bring them up together. You have to put the workbook.
So to get both of them, you have to use
both of those.
Speaker 5 (46:57):
But it's pretty much anywhere you can give books, but
Amazon is obviously the go to place for most people.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
So that's how you get it. And that's say a review,
because then we'll get to that hundred and we'll.
Speaker 4 (47:08):
Be right on that's good stuff and pull the information
for Cameron and Pam will be in the show notes.
You guys, thank you both so much for hanging out
with me today. I really appreciate it and I love
what I get to do. I get to talk to
the best. This show has the absolute best guess of
(47:30):
all time and.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Read it energy, so you bring out the goodness for sure.
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
Wow, what a journey this conversation has taken us on.
I just want to take a moment to thank Pam
and Cameron not only for being here today, but for
their vulnerability, their wisdom, and for turning pain into purpose.
And this Cameron has ated or gave us information regarding
the fact that you don't have to be a billionaire
(48:00):
a try millionaire to plant. And although Pam planned, she
still ran into some obstacles.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
So it's so important for you to take a look review.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
These things before it's too late, before you're gone, before
you put the burden on your family members, plan it out.
This is an amazing book that's available where all books
are sold, and you can pick this book up on Amazon.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
You guys, and I.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
Do want to say Pam, your story is one of
deep love and deeper resilience. And Cameron, your insight around
the emotional side of the financial planning was a wake
up call in the best way together. Your book Where's
the Keys to the Safe is more than just a guide,
(48:49):
It's a lifeline. To all of you tuning in today.
I hope today's episode encourages you to have the conversations
you've been putting off, to plan, to prepare, and most
of all, to connect with people you love while you
still can, because, as Pam so powerfully reminded us, your
(49:12):
story does an end when someone you love is gone. You, guys,
talk about the hard stuff and as always, stay true,
stay open, stay authentic, and until next time, take care
of yourselves and each other. Thank you all so much
for tuning in. I'm chante with Authentic Talks two point
(49:34):
zero
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