What Are Your Estate Planning Options

Travis Maus: 00:00:00

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Steve Campbell: 00:00:07

Welcome to Ditch the Suits podcast where we share insights nobody in the financial services industry wants you to know about. We're here to help you get the most from your money in life. So buckle up and welcome to Ditch the Suits.

Travis Maus: 00:00:20

All right, so we are wrapping up our four episode miniseries deep dive into estate planning with our resident senior wealth manager extraordinaire, Jess Blake, who is a certified trust fiduciary advisor. You like that, don't you?

Jessica Blake: 00:00:39

Yeah, it was like, whoo, fireworks just went off.

Travis Maus: 00:00:41

Nice piggity pow. I don't know if I used that right. Can I use that there?

Jessica Blake: 00:00:45

Oh, you can totally.

Travis Maus: 00:00:46

Okay, great. So Jess has been doing her four episode residency with me and Steve and we've been digging into all things about estate planning.

We started out talking more about Jess and her background so that you could get to know her better. Then we dug into a little bit more of the financial planning process and now we're in.

Last episode we were into the estate planning pretty deep and we're going to bring down home on this episode. We're going to talk a lot about estate planning and timing and I think we're going to wrap it up with a fun question to Jess.

We'll let you stew on this, Jess. And. And I think Steve's got a good question for you. Actually, you know what, we're not gonna tell you what the question is.

We're just gonna hit with you at the end and see what comes off the cuff. Keep it live and spicy. A little spicy. There you go. All right, so thank you, Jess, for being here again.

Steve Campbell: 00:01:42

And in the famous words of Michael Scott, she's in the building. This is Ditch the Soothes. I'm Steve Campbell, senior marketing director at Seed Planning Group and joined always by Travis Moss, our co host and CEO.

And Seed, for those that don't know, is a fee only financial planning firm.

So our life is all about helping people get the most of their money in life and ditch the suits as a platform for allowing us to share the things that we do on a day to day basis to empower you as a listener. And this has been an unbelievably great miniseries. Super impactful, lots of ideas, theory meeting, practical how to's.

And so if you missed any of the previous episodes leading up to this one, they are must listens. But Travis, why don't you go ahead then and bring this series home. Teeing up what we want to get into today.

Travis Maus: 00:02:28

Well, I wanted to lay out for listeners because I think that there's some misconceptions on this.

I think people think they have to be rich to do estate planning, or I think they think that they have to be of a more senior age to do estate planning. And I want to dispel that myth. So we're going to do our little mini myth buster today here.

But, Jess, at what age or in what situations should people be going on this journey to get their estate plan established?

Jessica Blake: 00:03:00

I believe very strongly that it does not matter. It what. First of all, you have to be of legal age over 18, so there's that. But young people should be doing estate planning as well.

Do you have a car? Do you have assets? Do you have anything? Just even. It. It's kind of like a. A morbid thing to think about. But what if you die young?

You know, like, just being able to have.

Travis Maus: 00:03:31

It happens.

Jessica Blake: 00:03:31

Yes. And I. No one thinks about that. Like you're in your 20s. You're like, man, I don't.

Like, I don't want to have to worry about saving or preparing for my funeral or anything like that. But from my standpoint, I've actually witnessed these things.

I've seen these things happen, and then it's left on other people to kind of have to pick up the pieces.

And in my opinion, if you have a car, you're a young person, even if you're single, like, you're not married, like you're going to have retail accounts, you've got to make sure that you have either beneficiaries on your accounts or that you have things in place to take care of your funeral expenses if you can, and making sure that you're taking care of those things. So I think that it's important to start young.

Travis Maus: 00:04:16

Yeah. I always like to say, as soon as you have anything that you care about. Yeah, right.

Or anybody that you care about, you know, whether it's a significant other, a child or sibling or a parent. This is one of the interesting things that will give some. Some. A suggestion to the parents who are listening.

So anybody who's got adult children who's listening. Estate planning can be a little bit expensive. It can cost.

Depending on where you live, it could cost anywhere from $300 to a couple thousand dollars for some relatively simple estate planning. Just depends on where you live and who you're working with.

A lot of young families may avoid getting that done because they're young and they got the life insurance and they got beneficiaries set up and all that kind of stuff.

And like, why do I need this if there are parents out There who have kids that are pretty well off or they're trying to figure out some other way to gift or something like that. Pay for them to go get professional estate planning done.

Ideally, pay for them to get a professional financial plan done and then pay for the estate planning. Because again, we talked about that last episode or two episodes ago.

You know, what comes first, the chicken or the egg, but help cover the cost so they can go get these things done. Because I've had clients who have lost children, and then it becomes. I mean, it's hard enough losing a child.

It's even harder trying to figure out what the heck the kids were doing and how to put the financial stuff back together and where everything is. And that kind of stu. Um, so. And there's different. Different family structures.

Some families are really good at communicating this stuff and some are horrible. So it's. It's obviously only going to work for certain families. But.

But certainly if you're in that situation and you can do it, that's one way that you could help your kids. That. Yeah, it's not funding a Roth or a vacation or something, but it's. It'll help a lot of people if something bad does happen.

So what happens, Jess, if somebody waits too long? So the genesis of this question is more along the lines of.

I've had clients before, literally sitting in front of me in their 80s that didn't want to be called anything that made them sound old because they didn't want to face their death. So. But they wanted to talk about estate planning, which is very difficult if you can't talk about dying.

And they ended up not doing planning because they just could not deal with the conversation. But is there a point where you're kind of. It's a little bit like, can you run out of time?

Jessica Blake: 00:06:44

Yes. And I've had to be part of some of those situations. When you become. What if you have a dementia? What if you become incapacitated?

What if you have done those things and you don't have a power of attorney put in place?

If you become incapacitated and do not have a power of attorney put in place, which is part of your estate planning, you do not have anyone who is going to be able to help you manage your finances. So you're not dead, but you're incapacitated, what happens is then you have to have family members petition the court for a guardianship.

It is expensive. There are a lot of filings that you've had to. Done. I've had to be a legal guardian for people before it is, you have to do annual accountings.

You're putting a very, very big burden on your family members by putting your head in the sand and not dealing with those things. So yeah, there is definitely a point of return where like you just need to be thinking about it because you don't know.

What if you get hit by a bus and you' in a coma there? I mean we always joke about these things like they're, they're so random.

Travis Maus: 00:07:50

This whole coma epidemic a couple of years ago or coma. Yeah, we had this whole COVID epidemic a couple years ago that was pretty bad.

Jessica Blake: 00:07:59

It is bad. And there, there are things that happen. And that's the whole point of like a lot of the stuff. It's, it's insurance policies essentially.

Like you're literally just making sure that you have things set up in a way to protect you should something happen to you. And I think that it happens more likely than, I mean it's becoming a lot more prevalent. Some of these things are going to happen at some point.

I mean, dementia's on the rise. I mean it's huge right now. I mean it's getting more and more, you know, of a, of a thing.

So it's definitely something you've gotta, gotta worry about and not wait too long.

Travis Maus: 00:08:31

You mentioned power of attorney. Can you, for our uninitiated listeners, can you explain what the power of attorney is and what that has to do? Because that's a pre death document.

Jessica Blake: 00:08:42

Yes, a power of attorney document is something that allow. It allows you to assign a person or people to act on your behalf should you become incapacitated or otherwise.

Depending on how you set it up, they're able to manage your financial affairs for you. Sometimes people want that before they come incapacitated.

So it's just kind of a legal document saying I'm giving you the ability to manage my financial affairs on my behalf. Within that document you are allowed to put in certain restrictions that you want on that document. So do they have the ability to do gifting?

Do they have the ability to do xyz? You can give control over what powers you're granting the people that you were assigning as power of attorney and, and.

Travis Maus: 00:09:31

How that power of attorney would be important regarding whether or not you wait too long to do your estate planning. Aside from being able to manage your assets if you become incapacitated.

If you have not completed your estate planning, you haven't maybe finished your beneficiaries deal with the charitable inclinations, you have updated your will any of those types of things. It will take somebody with a power of attorney to be able to do that for you if you become incapacitated.

Because no attorney can legally allow you to execute estate planning documents if you're under duress or if you're mentally incapacitated or something like that. Right.

It's that there's a whole disclosure that you sign that, say, at the time of the signing, and there's a witness and everything that says this person was of sound mind. Right?

Jessica Blake: 00:10:15

Correct.

Travis Maus: 00:10:16

So you can't wait till you have a stroke. And on the way to the. I literally had an attorney tell a client one time, well, the healthcare proxy is between you and your doctor.

You can't sign a healthcare proxy after you had a stroke. So you can't have a discussion with your doctor after you had a stroke about what to do with your health and who should be in charge of your health.

Right. That's gotta happen well beforehand. Same thing with the power of attorney.

If you have a stroke, if you get hit by a car, if you get dementia, you can't go get one now. And if you did have one, let's say you got one, you did have a power of attorney and you didn't do your estate planning.

So you said, look, I had a power of attorney, I had that document draft up. So. And I was procrastinating my estate planning just because I couldn't make these final decisions.

And then the person who's your power of attorney, you give them the authorities to change beneficiaries and set up trusts and stuff. You better hope that every single person in your family loves and gets along and agrees 100% with everything.

Because that is where most estates will end up, in probate court. Because what they will say is, well, dad didn't say that. He put you in charge and all of a sudden you came up with that. How do you know that?

That was his interest. How is it documented? Where is it documented? Well, he told me. He whispered in my ear, really, you might be telling the truth.

They're going to take you to court and nobody's going to get any money. Yep, that's how that's going to go. So the issue with waiting for estate planning is some plan is still better than no plan. I've had clients before.

I don't know. I haven't quite figured out exactly what I want to do. Fine. Let's think broad parameters then. Let's at least get the broad parameters set up.

Because if something does happen to you, and we waited too long. We can't do anything about it. You can't do anything about it.

And if your kids find an attorney will do something about it when you're incapacitated, the other kids will be suing the attorney or not the attorney. They'll just be suing each other. Attorneys never get sued?

Jessica Blake: 00:12:18

Oh, no. They make out.

Travis Maus: 00:12:19

Kids suing each other. Yes. It's like divorce court, right? Oh, yeah. Let's make some money.

Steve Campbell: 00:12:27

Jess, I did have a question for you in regards to POA. So if I'm completely off with this, POAs are also really important.

In our last episode, we talked about closing the loop and making sure documents are on file at institutions. So, like, step one is getting documents, which is great, but I think a lot of people don't close the loop.

If you have couples and each have their own IRA at a financial institution in their name and something happens to the spouse, a financial institution cannot do anything if there's not a POA on file for the other spouse because it is not their name on that account. Is that correct? Is that correct? So if you have a couple and we know that they love each other, but the husband doesn't wake up, something happens.

The wife cannot just call and say, dave needs money out of the account to pay these expenses.

And I don't know that a lot of people really understand that a power of attorney on file is what allow, when you have retirement or investment accounts in your name, for an opposing spouse to make decisions.

Jessica Blake: 00:13:22

Correct? Correct.

And that goes back to even for the financial planning aspect of things, when we're doing beneficiary reviews and we're doing just the planning in general to make sure that things are set up properly. That's one of the reasons, like, we want to make sure we have proper power of attorneys on file.

But if one of the one of the clients says, hey, I want to make sure that so and so has access to this individual account, then you talk through and try to understand, well, why was it an individual account to begin with? Should it be a joint account? Do you want? So we are able to talk through ownership and beneficiary aspects of it as well.

But you are absolutely correct that we want to make sure to have a power of attorney that is on record or there would need to be one provided for that spouse to be able to take money out of that account.

Steve Campbell: 00:14:10

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Travis Maus: 00:14:51

Expand on that too. And just to give people this is something that most people do not have never seen and can't imagine, but it's real.

A lot of investment firms will not accept the power of attorney unless the client sends it in themselves with some kind of affidavit or form saying this is my power of attorney.

What that means is that if you as the account holder, let's say for Fidelity or Vanguard or Charles Schwab or any other firm end up needing help and that company does not know who your power of attorney is, they may reject it. When you know your spouse or your brother in law or somebody like that sends the power of attorney and they may say, look, we didn't, we didn't.

We're not hearing this from them. We don't know if this is fraud or not. And they will, we've seen it. They will try to fight accepting that power of attorney.

What their preferred method is is that if you have a power of attorney, you send them a copy of the power of attorney in a form saying here's my power of attorney in case they ever call you, you can talk to them before that person actually comes into the picture and you no longer are capable of signing saying, and that's the problem. If the power of attorney calls in and says, well, mom's not capable of signing anymore, so here I am. Well now how's mom going to sign the affidavit?

Jessica Blake: 00:16:18

Yeah, and I've had that not that long ago occur where it's like she's incapacitated. She can't this form. And they're like, sorry, we got to have her sign the form. And we're like, what? It's crazy.

Travis Maus: 00:16:29

Yeah. One last thing. I power attorneys too.

I have seen attorneys in some states, the way that they do the power of attorneys, they list all the things that somebody can do instead of the things that somebody can't do.

So like in New York, they list all the things that basically you can opt out of allowing people to do and everything else Is assumed that the power of attorney can do it. In Pennsylvania, they basically just make a run on list of all the things that somebody can do for you.

It's very easy to misword something or leave something out that would be very important. Like let's say change beneficiaries or update beneficiaries.

Jessica Blake: 00:17:07

Yeah.

Travis Maus: 00:17:08

Oh, but they can create a trust. They can gift the money. Yeah, but it doesn't say they can change beneficiaries. So the financial company won't accept it.

So there's all kinds of weird stuff like that with beneficiary. Again, why you need to work with advisors.

And I was going to wait for this question a little bit long further down, but I'm going to pull that back to the, to the top now. Let's just very quickly. I know estate planning can be very expensive. Jess, you got to justify the cost of estate planning. Right.

g that should have cost like $: 1800

Okay, I'm going to get estate plan done so that they don't get ripped off, but that they still get quality advice.

Jessica Blake: 00:18:04

This comes back to what we do here is we have vetted attorneys that we work with that we know are going to give quality legal advice and quality legal documents. So a lot of it boils down to recommend working with someone who can give a good recommendation. A lot of it.

That's one of the bigger drivers for me, I think, is that you've got to make sure that you're getting advice. Don't take it from, you know, your friend from over here. Do to do. Oh yeah, use this guy, you know, go there.

I would very much recommend talking to a fiduciary who has connections, can give you very, very solid advice with attorneys that are reputable and can do the quality work that you need for your particular case. Because there are, there are attorneys that we use that are very, very reasonable in cost that do incredibly great quality of work.

We also work with attorneys who do more complex things that are much more expensive.

But sometimes it's wor it if you have a very, very large estate, and what I say, large estate, it's not necessarily all, I mean, monetary is a big part of it. But you have a lot of moving pieces. You might have a lot more complex things that are built into that.

Think about that if you do not utilize an attorney that's going to draft the documents properly, your whole estate is going to get drained in legal fees trying to get it ironed out when it's probated. So it's. Think about it as an investment in your future. You're basically paying up front to make that things go well and you save money down the road.

Travis Maus: 00:19:50

That brings me to another idea. Just the ongoing nature of estate planning. To me, it seems like.

And maybe it's just an education level, the more I learn, the more complicated it becomes. But it doesn't seem like estate planning is getting any easier.

Jessica Blake: 00:20:08

No, I think because there's a lot have. Okay, let's. Your favorite topic. Cryptocurrency. Like.

Travis Maus: 00:20:16

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Jessica Blake: 00:20:18

Like I. Things are getting more complex. Like, things are getting very, very complex with how you manage them, how you do it, who's involved.

Like family entities are changing in a lot of ways. Think about split families. So you have divorces, who. And then they might have kids of their own and kids from here.

So you're having to deal with complex family scenario situations and just assets that are unique. So you have to make sure that you're taking all of into account the taxability of everything involved. And.

Yeah, so it's definitely not getting easier.

Travis Maus: 00:20:53

States, different countries.

Jessica Blake: 00:20:56

Yes.

Travis Maus: 00:20:56

You know, kids moving around. You've got tax law, you've got.

I mean, the, the estate taxes are supposed to sunset, so we don't know exactly what's going to happen with that, but that changes that. And you have states that are indexed to those. Those levels. And so you got a lot of. It never gets easier, it only gets harder.

Jessica Blake: 00:21:15

Correct.

Travis Maus: 00:21:16

And you're. You're talking about regulation after somebody passes, you know, rules about how things are handled after somebody passes away.

There's not a lot of advocates for making that easier.

Jessica Blake: 00:21:26

No, there are not.

Travis Maus: 00:21:28

Because.

Steve Campbell: 00:21:29

Yeah.

Travis Maus: 00:21:30

All right, so let's fast forward then. We. We last episode, we talked a lot about putting an estate plan together and what that process looks like. Now let's talk about Afterlife. Right.

Somebody has passed away. They've gone on to what's next and the family is left behind and we're actually administering the estate.

I get people all the time that are very, very scared about this. They don't. They're like, what do I do? You know, like, like when so and so passes away, what do I do? Right, so just talk about the.

Somebody has passed away on Monday and it's Tuesday morning. What would be the advice you kind of give to the client? To kind of walk them through kind of what happens next Financially, having been.

Jessica Blake: 00:22:24

In that situation multiple times, the first thing I would say is if you're calling me the day after, call me in a week. So let's. You just need to manage things with a family.

I mean, God willing, you've had things kind of set up in a way that you, you're able to manage the, the funeral costs and things of that nature. So that's not like an imminent thing as far as the state administration.

If it is my goal, I always want to make sure whomever the executor is for the estate has the. We internally we have like the estate document locator or I really, really encourage people to make sure that they're.

They, the executor of their estate knows that they're the executor of the estate first and foremost. And secondly, do they have a list of all the things that need to be handled like property? They have, where are things located?

Ok, go back to cryptocurrency, where, where's the key, all of that type of stuff. But just making sure that you have a list and then if you have a financial professional.

So we're in a very unique situation here where we typically have the purview again we, we have the connections to most things that people, people have.

We know about the life insurance policies, we know about all of the accounts, we know about all of those different like, like points of what things and what people have.

If we have the ability to be able to make sure that our phone number is on that document for the executor to call, then they can reach out to us and then we can be like we got you, let's just work through this.

Then they would get in touch with the attorney, whoever was involved because I mean we would know who is the attorney that's going to have to kind of help you with this estate.

If you're actually probating an estate, you're typically going to need an attorney to be able to help you get everything kind of processed through surrogate's court, etc. If it's a small estate related thing, there's a different process but you can kind of, you know, navigate your way through that as well.

That's besides point.

But at least you have a person who can be the connector to be able to get you to all the different places and be able to help you just get your head wrapped around something that is the most ideal scenario.

Travis Maus: 00:24:48

Yeah, we, I have had to answer too many of these Phone calls. And the first thing that I say to people is, thank you for letting me know. Go be with your family.

Jessica Blake: 00:24:58

Yes.

Travis Maus: 00:24:59

There's nothing financially short of if the bank accounts are drained and you're really short on money. Yeah. Then there probably is. But if this is done right, you shouldn't be in that situation.

Jessica Blake: 00:25:10

Exactly.

Travis Maus: 00:25:11

And there is. There is nothing that we need to call by the end of the week. Right. There's just. There's laws to protect you. There's laws to protect your house.

There's all kinds of stuff there. You have time. So the biggest thing is, is you let the people know who can help you. This has happened. Okay. You need to go be with family now.

We'll get everything in motion where it needs to be. We'll help put that inventory together.

If you don't have it, we'll make the initial phone calls, if it's life insurance, to initiate death claims, that type of thing.

So will be a point of contact if you have family members that, you know, need to call on inheritances, you know, we'll even contact the attorney and let them know what happened so they can expect you. And you do need to talk to them sometime. Probably in the next week or so. You know, we'll need.

Nobody can do anything until you get a death certificate anyway.

Jessica Blake: 00:25:58

Exactly.

Travis Maus: 00:25:59

You know what I mean? So it all takes time, and it's all going to be okay. That's the biggest thing.

A lot of times people think that it's like, if the beneficiaries were done right, if the estate documents were done right, everything's going to be okay. If that stuff is screwed up, it's going to be a hard, stressful, let's say six months to a year, because that's. That's my experience.

Minimum six months to a year. If the stuff's not done right, a really, really stressful, emotional kind of hard time.

Jessica Blake: 00:26:34

Yep.

Travis Maus: 00:26:35

Dealing with the finances. If it's done right, a lot of the stress is already off the table. What I wanted to do was I wanted to give you a second, you and Steve.

He's got, I think, a pretty big question for you that I think we wanted to ask in the first episode we can get to. So I wanted to make sure that we circled back to that and really, really interested in your insight on this.

Steve Campbell: 00:27:01

Hey, guys, Steve Campbell with Digital Suits. Want to take one quick moment to make a big ask. If you haven't already, Travis and I would love for you to subscribe to this podcast.

But if you haven't also we would love for you to leave a five star rating and review. Your rating and review will let other podcasters note the show is worth their time.

So let's get right back to the episode and thanks for listening to Ditch the Suits podcast and, and Travis, I kind of have another question right before that one.

Travis Maus: 00:27:26

Oh, fire away though.

Steve Campbell: 00:27:27

I've been listening to you guys here for the last two episodes and it's fun being a fly on the wall experience. It seems like estate planning creates a false sense of security. You know, for people that say, I got my documents, I'm all set.

And I think one of your jobs and Travis's job as a planner to say, all right, let's triple check and make sure things are in there. And one of the things that you had alluded to in the last episode was the word options.

I just don't think that listeners of this show really understand the options that exist within holistic estate planning. It's not just a will, healthcare, proxy and power of attorney. And I'm good. It's all the things that people say are important to them.

And then how do you build that into estate planning? And so I get a sense that people sometimes in. Estate planning is the one outside of insurance.

Estate planning is the one hard tool in financial planning because it happens after you're not here.

Jessica Blake: 00:28:17

Yeah.

Steve Campbell: 00:28:17

Everything else, tax planning, investing, pension, Social Security, if you have an oopsie, you might have time to correct it. On this side of breath in your lungs, estate planning is something that you can't, you can't go back in undo.

And it's harder to maybe sell people on the value of spending time on it because you don't realize it today.

But I've seen both of you do an incredible job over the years with individuals and even in the trainings we do internally of how do you get to talk to people about something that is so extremely important, like tax planning, that most people just don't understand.

And so it is, it is great when you guys get in front of people and say, hey, over several meetings you've, you've said these people, these things are really important to you. These aren't anywhere in your state documents or your state plan and people just go, I didn't even know. Like, I didn't even know I could do that.

Or I had options to, to work through it. So I would even say it maybe as a question too, for somebody who did. Come in. All right, guys, you got me. My, my estate plan might have some issues.

How, how do you, as a Planner, walk somebody through, even if there's a cost associated with it. Not unwinding, but revisiting something that they feel in their mind they've already done because there are things that should be included to it.

So we're not talking about the person who's never created documents. They understand we're really behind the eight ball.

We're talking about people that say, I've done the thing, but now you're telling me that there's other pieces I need to have. That seems really expensive to me. How do you help as a planner, as a fiduciary, somebody understand the importance of not unwinding but editing.

Does that question make sense?

Jessica Blake: 00:29:55

It does. I have two examples that I have found to be very, very good use cases for, for that.

The first one is a supplemental needs trust and having some type of provision built into a will or having a standalone because you have somebody who comes in and they're like, I have an estate document done.

Well, then as you're doing planning and you're talking through it, you find out that this, this couple has a special needs child, someone who is on assistance. They actually are getting benefits from state government entities or something like that.

And then you're reading through all of their estate documents and then they've got like all this money that, that they, they've accumulated and there is not a single protection built into there.

So when they pass away, this child is going to inherit this money and then it's going to disqualify them for any type of benefit that they're already receiving. So for me, I'm looking at that.

And then you just have the conversation, you explain to them, here's the benefit of doing this, this is what you're able to do to protect your child so they can continue to get assets and receive them.

And then you have all this money that's kind of put in the supplemental needs trust that is for their benefit, that they can use for other things that are necessary. So that's come up multiple times. The other example that I'd be able to use is a credit shelter trust, which is something you can build in your will.

And you have these, you have family entities and high net worth individuals. So you have a husband pass away and then, and typically all of that money you would want to go to the spouse.

Well, if, depending on what the estate tax thresholds are at whatever given time, if that spouse inherits everything and it pushes them up into an estate tax bracket, they're going to be hammered with taxes. And so Then when you think about what is going to happen with the kids down the road, that's very largely impactful. What a credit shelter trust does.

It doesn't mean you have to use it. It gives the spouse the ability to discl anything that they would be inheriting, putting it in a credit shelter trust that is for their benefits.

So it has a separate ein. It has its own entity. So that spouse has the benefit to be able to kind of take income off of it, but they don't own it.

So then it stays within that trust. And then once that spouse passes away, the second spouse, it would then go to the heirs.

So I think that those are two good examples that I would use for use cases of redrafting wills is just being able to explain to people how you want to be able to protect money and how you want to be able to kind of protect your, your, your family down the road.

Steve Campbell: 00:32:35

So somebody says, steve, is working with a financial planner worth it. Just, just take the last two minutes of what you just said. It's the things that people don't know. Right? And so we've, we've.

We've had you now on for four episodes. So here is your senior wealth manager, Jess Blake. Piggity pow. Your big question that I think is.

Jessica Blake: 00:32:53

Going to be why I'm so nervous.

Steve Campbell: 00:32:54

Really revealing. What is one thing that you, Jess.

Jessica Blake: 00:32:59

Would change about our industry, the industry as a whole. Okay. This is also coming from a place of, like, I live in this world where, oh, gosh, I want everybody to work together.

I want everybody to work as a team. If I could change anything about this industry, it would be attorneys working hand in hand with planners, CPAs working hand in hand with planners.

Me having the ability to go to an insurance agent and saying, hey, I really have this. I have this client that needs this product and they need xyz. And they're like, great, I can help you out with that.

And then I trust that they're not going to upsell them or do anything really dirty for that client. Like, I just want this utopia where we're all working collectively so that we can all beat the system.

Maybe not to beat the system, but we all are doing the best things in each other's best interest and it's all just kind of copacetic. That's what I would love to change about the industry and not keep it siloed where you. Because even with attorneys now, right?

And that's why we internally, we have our preferred client or preferred attorneys that we use. Because I there are several of them that I know that I'm if I ever send them over to this attorney, that attorney is going to not do right by them.

They're going to be like, oh, no, you need this trust, and you need this trust and you need this trust. And just because they're trying to sell billable hours and that's crappy.

So I just want to be able to work together better in the industry as a whole and manage things better for clients and optimize things.

Steve Campbell: 00:34:43

Well, you've made it through these four episodes, Travis. And I want to say thank you to Jessica for coming on this show for these last four episodes. You did an incredible job.

And to you as the listener, thank you for stopping by Ditch the Suits.

As always, if you have questions, you can head over to ditch the suits.com that's ditch the suits dot com, but also, hey guys, let's show just some love. If if you've learned anything in these four episodes, drop a comment. Leave us a rating. Leave us a review on this podcast.

Let us know what's of interest to you, what you've learned through this estate planning series. But just thanks for being a guest on Ditch the Suits and all of you as listeners. Until next time, let's get the most from your money in life.