Your Guide to Aging Parents and What is an RIA? with Kim Curtis

Money is looking for you. Money is looking for your ideas, your vision, your values so that it can become something. Because otherwise it's just energy. It's just nothing.

Welcome to the Next Level Income show where it's our goal to take your income, your investments and your life to the next level. I'm your host, Chris Larson. If you haven't yet, get a copy of our book for free at our website, Next Level Income.com. that's www.nextlevelincome.com. just click on the book link and I'll even send you a copy if you put your address in. On today's show, we have Kim Curtis. Kim is a nationally recognized wealth management advisor and speaker and she is the president and CEO of Wealth Legacy Institute. Kim is also the best selling author of Money Keys to Smart Investing and Retirement Secrets. And she has been profiled on NBC, cbs, abc, Fox and has been in the Wall Street Journal. And today she joins us on the next Low Income Show. Kim, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, I'm excited you're coming to us from one of my favorite cities in the country here, Denver, Colorado, where I was sharing with you. My wife and I spent a lot of time out there. We love to visit the area, been all over the state. I'd love for you to share a little bit about how you got to, how you got to Denver, what your background is and what you are doing right now.

Yeah. The Mile High City and I don't know the election results, whether psychedelics passed or not. So I'll have to check on that. Maybe in a state of flux. Anyway. Yeah, I moved to Denver, Colorado to go to law school and stayed. How can I not stay with the skiing and the biking and the outdoor lifestyle?

It's amazing. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah. No, I mean the city, it's changed. It's improved so much in so many ways. It's grown so much. Yeah, it's a phenomenal city. And yeah, you went out there for law school but now you're a financial advisor, I guess. Share with us a little bit about that transition and how your law background, which, I don't know, lawyers get a bad rap in a lot of different ways, probably for good reason sometimes. But tell us how your law background has benefited you and your new role as well as the clients that you help today.

Yeah, lawyers and financial advisors. Someone didn't give me the memo. You know my area, I never practice law. The area of expertise is negotiation, mediation and arbitration. And I ended up with a national dispute resolution and was there for seven years. So what happened is they moved me to Salt Lake City to open up a Salt Lake City office. But what happened is I moved up and became more of a spokesperson and no longer was in the heart of the matter of doing settlement conferences or mediations. I was talking to lawyers and, and practitioners or realtors of how to put clauses and contracts. Why, at the time, that seemed like a really good idea. So when, by the time I hit 30 and I was reporting to the president in New York City, so I was the youngest regional vice president in the country. And I thought, what's next? Like, how do I get back into the heart of the matter? And I. I took a quiz, and that quiz was, what is my next profession? So to speak. I had a friend that was in HR who had access to all these different psychographic skill set quizzes and financial planning.

How about that?

I know. So what the good news about that is that my negotiation mediation skills come in very handy. I'm working with a couple in terms of holding that container in the room, talking about very difficult conversations regarding money.

Yeah, it is amazing. I shared a very, very small glimpse into kind of our family's picture with that, and it's very challenging. It's a very contentious issue sometimes. We've had guests on the show talking about how to manage the transition. Actually, a particular guest, David York, I'm thinking of, is in Salt Lake City, and he works with families sometimes worth a billion or more, that are dealing with that transition down to their children. And I really want to talk about some of the. Some of the topics that you really specialize in that I think the audience is going to like to hear with respect to, you know, kind of handling that generational transfer and, and how we can do better with that. But your specific designation now, Kim, is Ria. And I think a lot of people, you don't really understand the different types of financial advisors out there, but one of the big reasons I wanted to have you on is because you have a specific designation, and in particular, you are a fiduciary for your clients. Do you mind sharing with the audience kind of what that is, how you're different and, you know, how that, in my opinion, is a big benefit for who you work with.

Yeah, thank you, Chris, for asking that question. I actually started out in the brokerage world, and one day I decided to read the back of a client's investment disclosure statement. I'm embarrassed to say that with my legal background, but I finally read it and it was eight pages, two to a page. So tiny, tiny, tiny print. And all of the conflicts of interest and fees that came up. And a tear actually came down my cheek when I realized, wow, I am really not a fiduciary. Of course everyone wants to do their best work. But when I understood that it's is when I realized I had to create a firm that put clients first, not last. In the brokerage world. The clients truly are not on the front of that. And so that's when I created Wealth Legacy Institute. And that was 15 years ago, which is a registered investment advisory firm. Just we are a fiduciary. That word gets bandied about. But putting a client's best interest all the time where versus sometimes in the brokerage world, it's that sometimes they have their foot in one side and the other and the level, level of care is from a legal perspective. So it's really hard because 90% of the financial advice, quote unquote out there is from people in sales.

Yeah.

And only that remaining 10% is fiduciary, like you mentioned. And it's a registered investment advisory firm. It's the firm, not the advisor.

Yeah. And I think that again, that's something that a lot of people listening, they might, it might raise their eyebrows. They might say, wait a minute, like I thought all financial advisors are what are supposed to do what's in the best interest for their clients. But as I found when I was doing my mba, I was like, oh, this is a great career I want to go into become a financial advisor. And as I did my research, I was like, wait a minute, I'm just a glorified salesperson when it comes to this stuff. I'm selling these financial products. And what I learned was the strategy that I built for my own portfolio wasn't what I was going to be doing for my clients. And I thought, well, shoot, I can't really do this. And, and this was date myself a little bit. But this was, you know, over 20 years, almost 25 years ago now. And there I would, I would say that there's a significantly less fiduciaries in RIAs at that time.

Particularly, yes. RIA firms, a lot less at that time, 20 years ago. I think you're seeing a lot more brokers leaving and going into the RIA space. We have something and Chris, we could talk about it or put it in the notes. A fiduciary oath that if you're interviewing advisors to have them sign this fiduciary oath that they're Your fiduciary in all transactions, in all conversations, and if they don't sign it, walk away. But any advisor that's affiliated. Yeah. With a brokerage firm, they are not your fiduciary.

Yeah. And that's what's interesting is this, is this kind of really came to. Came to light. So we do a lot of real estate syndications and, you know, we got a lot of investors that reach out and every once in a while we have a financial advisor that reaches out and says, hey, I have. I have a client. I think this might be a good fit for. I would say, well, that's interesting. Why, why are you, why are you doing this? Because it's not. Maybe, maybe you're not allowed to do it. And I came to ask that question because actually had a financial advisor call me and say, hey, not only can I not invest. I'm sorry. Not only can I not recommend these types of quote unquote, alternative investments, I always get a chuckle that real estate and, you know, the things that, you know, like insurance have been around before, the stock market and the IRS and all these things are called alternatives. Right.

Sure.

And there are alternatives to what's commonplace today, which is fine, but I just chuckle about that. But he told me, Kim, he said, not only can I not recommend this to any of my clients, but I am forbidden from investing in this myself.

Yeah, that's really unfortunate. And for the end user, the client, that they're not getting the best options available out there for them.

Yeah. So I was, I was really, I was surprised to hear that. But then what I came to find out was that was actually commonplace for, for kind of the traditional. So, yeah, so again, as Kim, as Kim just mentioned, we're going to, we're going to put a link. I'll get that from. You can. The fiduciary oath. We'll put that show notes. I appreciate you going through that because I think that's, that's really important. I was able to find a fiduciary for my stepfather when he was looking for a financial advisor because I knew that that would be a benefit to him. And I think this is, you know, this is something kind of from a selfish perspective as I went through your website, which again, we'll talk about more a little bit more at the end of the podcast here. Financial literacypress.com you have some phenomenal resources up here. And one of the things that I really jumped to was a guide to aging parents. And the reason, as I've been doing demographic research over the last decade. I believe that this decade is going to be the decade of housing affordability issues which we're seeing right now. And I've been talking about this for years, but I believe that in the next five years, we're going to start to transition into this period where we're going to have a real crisis with senior housing because we have so many baby boomers turning 65 every day. And a lot of the listeners, Kim, they. They're trying to get their financial house in order, but there's going to be this massive transfer of wealth. How do you help your clients when it comes to, you know, their parents or maybe even your clients that, that are the aging parents? How do you. How do you help them deal with this situation?

You know, it's. It's interesting, Chris, because I put together that aging parent checklist this year when I dealt with my mom. I lost my mom this year and my older sister. And I. Thank you. Thanks. I'm in the business, and I still missed key points that were critical in the successful transition of an aging parent and all the things that we had to go through to get to when she finally did transition. And so I put the guide so no one else makes the same mistake that my sister and I did. And of course, there's the easy pieces, you know, the legality piece of it and the financial piece of that. But when you go more granular, it's like putting together. Putting together a playlist of your parents favorite music so when they communicate anymore to you that you could have music playing that they really love. And so that that aging parent guide checklist is really powerful on taking you through looking at the house. What do you need to change as their capacities change in terms of walking or having a wheelchair or a cane or various other things. And so it really walks you through all of those things so you can prepare yourself as your parent or loved one ages and becomes less mobile and other things. Yeah, thanks for asking about that.

Oh, absolutely. And look, you know, I lost my father when I was five, you know, and I kind of. I saw some things that. That weren't in place. It was really challenging. It was really challenging for my mother. So I think, you know, whether you're a young parent and you need to set up an estate plan, which we've talked about on the show, or you have a parent that's aging and has these issues, I think in my opinion, these are things that they're a lot easier to do, kind of looking forward than kind of in the moment where you have a lot of emotions. What are some lessons that you've kind of learned along the way from either personally or dealing with clients that have done this? What are the most important things that they should really focus on and that they're going to see in this guide?

Well, what's really important particularly is oftentimes we have kids that are, you know, we're taking care of and it's our parent at the same time, and we may not live near our parent. And so it's kind of that sandwich generation that has to deal with both on either side and then, and then actually get yourself physically to the place of where your parent is, which is really tough when there's no one boots on the ground near your parent. But one of the things, just as a financial advisor, is not to put first of all in our will. Make sure we get a will. But where is it? And if there is a safe deposit box for older parents that still have those, close it out. It is a hard thing to deal with. And make sure that no legal documents are in that safe deposit box, which is what historically people used to do, put their legal documents in their safe box.

That's what we used to do.

And then you can't get to it until you get certified that you are the executor of that. So close out the safe deposit box. Make sure all beneficiaries are on all the assets. Get a list of the. The assets. Make sure neighbors that live nearby that you have all of their phone numbers and addresses. I think one of the biggest things that my sister and I did is we put together a contact list of mom's active in her church and who are the key people in the church and who's her doctor and when does she get her hair done? And so all of those things that everyone into the house knew, all the contacts of everything and could reach my sister and I. And so that list was so valuable later.

Yeah.

Because, you know, when we put it together, we actually, hey, mom, tell, tell, who's this person you know in your, in your book? And you know, how do you know them? So it took care of a different things.

Yeah, yeah. We, we didn't know. This is a funny look. We didn't know where my grandfather buried like a bucket of silver, so we had to go find that at his farm. True story. He buried a bucket of silver silver coins.

Which is, which is, which is not a surprise. You hear that as more of a joke or a myth, but it is true. And always check under the mattress.

Yeah. Well, you know, you have, you know, he was a depression era baby, you know, so things were a little different. But in another funny thing about my grandfather, he was a very conservative when it, especially when it came to money. German. And he got, he was also very big planner, good with his money. He was an engineer. So he got long term care insurance and unfortunately he ended up having Alzheimer's. His last few years, you know, he was in a memory care unit. But Kim, do you know he died the last month that his long term care provided payments like he knew it. He couldn't communicate, he couldn't do all that. But it was. Yep. So we came to find that out. I thought, I kind of, I kind of chuckled because I think he knew that deep down. He's like, oh no. He's like, I can't do this, I can't do this. Just out of principle.

Yeah, I believe they know.

Yeah, yeah. I mean it's, there's, there's, I believe that as well. Yeah. So I just mentioned long term care insurance. Where do you see that fall into your clients, you know, financial picture? Is that something essential in your mind that's needed for people as they get older?

It should be. However, the industry is in such disarray in terms of the products that they're producing that it's not like it used to be and it's in transit. So a lot of people self insure themselves. I honestly don't know if I would recommend long term care insurance at this state for the amount pay for what you can get out of it. Ten years ago, seven years ago, absolutely. But what's happening is the cost of.

Benefit today, kind of like college, probably the cost of benefit has changed drastically, is that what you're saying?

Huge change. And they have caps.

Right.

So when you realize that say the cap is a million.

Okay.

Think of how quickly with health care and needs that you would hit that cap. So there are other ways to mitigate that. That doesn't put you into a policy that could increase rates by bands of people.

Oh, interesting. Okay.

So I hope that the industry gets ahead of itself and really recovers because it's something we all need because we don't do a good job of taking care of our seniors. But there are other strategies out there that we end up doing during this time that seem more helpful.

Interesting. What are some of those strategies? If you could share.

Yeah. So. Well, first of all, before anyone retires in our firm, if they own their home, we have to make sure that they have a home equity Line of credit that's just a given at all points in time that they have and as much as you can get based on the value of your home so that you always have that flexibility and you don't spend it, but you have that peace of mind. So when you think of aging and you have that line of credit available, that's one thing. You could go through that and then you could also reverse mortgage. Their industry is in transition a little bit too, but they're, they're becoming more, less shady on those reverse mortgages in terms of the cost and the hidden things available. But those are just two things. Home equity line of credit is really the big easy peasy one. And then of course life insurance policies that were purchased long ago that have cash value in there that oftentimes when you have a high income earner cash value life insurance that you can pump off, you can't have a lot of cash value and a low death benefit. It's a quarter that works.

Used to back in the 80s and.

That was ran at 10% 12 rate of return assumption. Oh my goodness. But for high income earners, we used to call them private pensions back in the day. But you would pump money into a cash value life insurance policy that's a variable policy that allows you to then use that in retirement as an income stream. And that's another strategy that you have to, you have to manage it, but it's tax free income later, you get a death benefit later. There's lots of variables there that allows for high income earners to do really well in that space.

Yeah, no, it's fantastic. It's something that my wife and I have been doing for more than a decade now, before our first son was born. Yeah. And it's amazing. Go ahead.

The key is a life insurance company that has very low cost, no surrender charges because that's another place that your cost could get eaten up inside of the policy if it's not a real low cost type of and reputable carrier.

Absolutely. No, it's, it's so important and it's structured the right way. And then like you said, especially for high income earners, the ability to create that cash value in there and ultimately take that, take that money as is a tax free benefit if you, if you do it properly is pretty amazing.

Lots of tax free benefits in that one.

Yeah.

All the way along. So that's another, that's another instead of a long term care policy.

Wonderful. Well, good. Well it sounds like, sounds like we're on the right track there. So okay, so we talked about those that. That have, you know, they have parents. We're talking about some of the strategies there. Kim, let's say that you have, you know, you're one of those people, and you look down and you say, ah, my children, they need a. They need a little bit of coaching. You know, they don't need to coach me. I need to coach them a little bit. What are some tips that you can give to people that are looking to. Because we have a little checklist for teaching your kids tips, you know, that are on the younger side. You go to nextlevelincome.com kids. But let's say you have adult kids that are. Maybe they're millennials, Right. And they're struggling to buy a house. They're starting a family. What are some of the pitfalls where some of the challenges that you're seeing in your clients and some of the helpful ideas that you can give to those types of people?

You know, it's interesting and in the nature of my work, I don't know if you've ever heard of this, Chris, but they call it shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations. It's a parable.

Absolutely. Yeah. Talk about. Well, here in Asheville. Sorry to interrupt you. Yeah, no, we have the Biltmore. Right. And unfortunately, the Vanderbilts are. Are that prototypical story of that specific saying. Unfortunately, where you had.

Yes.

What? I forget how it was. I think it was approximately $2 billion in today's dollars that Cornelius left his children. And by the time, about 100 years later, when the family got together for a family reunion, the saying is that we don't know the exact numbers, but that there wasn't a millionaire among them.

Not a surprise. It is a universal parable that has been researched in the nature of wealth. And it could be rice paddy to rice paddy, clogs to clogs. And you have someone that's creative and has a great idea, and they build a business, and they work hard to create that business. And then the next generation takes their wealth from that business and moves to the city and joins the opera board. The third generation, the family is fractured and the wealth is gone. And what's happening in that parable is that to have success, money, and, you know, we want. Oh, we want our children to do as well as we did or to own a home or to do these things. The problem with that is that each generation has its own first new generation. So they can't be. I'm Gen 3 of the Wealth Creator. You know, they have to be their own creator, their own vision.

Love it.

Ideas.

Writing that one down.

And so when we think of how do we take care of our children, it's a disservice to take their idea, their creation, their ability to find out what their passion and interest is. And so, you know, we. And what I say a lot is how you do money is how you do life. And if your head is in the sand on money, it's in the head. Your head is in the sand on other parts of life. So if you think about money and where you what is your money mindset and how do you make sure your children have a money mindset? You have to talk about it.

Yes.

We tend to talk about sex more than we do money. And yet money is the thread that navigates our human existence. It's the thread of global exchange that allows us to do business. And so to be able to talk about that at your table, with your children, with allowance for chores, not to be a member of the family, to show how giving is important and what that means. All of the values that are, whatever your family values are, are the ones that needs to be talked about in the context of money.

Yeah.

Because is not dirty. Are you kidding me? Money is looking for you. Money is looking for your ideas, your vision, your values so that it can become something. Because otherwise it's just energy. It's just nothing.

That's so good. That's so good. I love that every generation has to be their own first generation. That's such a powerful saying. And I forget, is it Warren Buffett who says, you know, I want my children to have enough money to do anything but not too much money so that they do nothing?

And that is his. And it's consistent with the proverb. And he is very aware of that proverb.

Yes. It's amazing. It's amazing. Amazing advice there, Kim. So as I went through your fantastic website, I'd like you to share with the audience the best way to connect with you, the best way to get some of your resources. You've written multiple books. Maybe you can give us a quick overview of some of those books and how the audience can get access to those, as well as more information on you and your firm.

Love to. Thank you. So the first book was Money Secrets Keys to Smart Investing. It won four awards, it was a bestseller, and it is actually a really quick read. It's only about 120 pages. And at the end of each chapter is questions that you should ask yourself or advisor should be asking you. So it Kind of gives you, it pulls back the curtain on the billion dollar financial services industry to reveal why smart people make bad mistakes. It is an excellent book. It gives you kind of armor so that when you go and look for a financial practitioner, like you are in control. I love the book. It's a great book. The second book is Retirement Secrets. So what happened is probably within a matter of a few months I had three different clients say, do you have a book for retire? Not a financial book, but like a lifestyle book of like, how do you navigate retirement? Like what's the next next? And of course I'm a researcher and so I, I read all these different books and it was like, wow, there's really no book that really acknowledges. There was one that I thought was close, but it was written terribly. So I basically took some of the concept of that book and created Retirement Secrets Keys to Retiring Happy, Healthy and Free. And it has a lot of client stories, a lot of examples in there and it's really about kind of when you step off, what's your next. Next. And I'll just give one secret of that and that is instead of working, your new job is work out like you need to, you need, you need to work out just like a job to keep your body strong and healthy.

Love that.

And that's kind of one little tip that if you kind of made that transition of when you do step off, but yet you focus on your health through exercise and fitness. That's a little tip. But there's lots of good things in there.

It's really, it's amazing. It's amazing. Tip. We have actually my personal doctors coming up on the next podcast episode.

Cool.

And we're going to be sharing some terrific tips. So if you're listening to this in real time, get ready for that as well. And that'll be a terrific transition here. Kim, you didn't know that was coming up, but yeah, talk about how you can not only increase your financial wellbeing, but also your personal well being and your health band, Health span. Because look, let's face it, all the money in the world, it's no good if you don't have the health or the time to use it.

So, so, so true. If I, Chris, could just say one thing. When you think of a kind of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs and at the base it's like security. At the top it's, it's altruistic, you know, meeting. But in our firm, the bottom is managing money. Then it's achievement of goals. So you got to have a financial plan that's attached to it because otherwise when you have money without a goal, it's like archery without a target.

Oh, yeah.

But on top of that, there are four categories. On top of that is lifestyle, which is why this book, Retirement Secrets was important. Because when you put money with a plan, you all of a sudden have peace of mind. You have a track to run on, you know what you're doing so that you space to actually live the life that's important to you. The pinnacle of that is impact or legacy. So it hit exactly with what you said in terms of why are we here? Well, we're here to work our way up this pyramid so we can do what we love so that we could have dreams and visions and create businesses that serve the better good of the world. And that's what it's all about, is getting your money down as a foundation, not up chaos. No. And it's achievable. So I hope all of your listeners realize that if they have a frenetic money that they got to get a financial diet together so they could get up to the pyramid. Top of the pyramid. Impact.

Yes. I love it. I can say it better. I am, I am not going to add anything to that because I think that was just perfect. And it's what we try to do here at Next level Income is provide those resources. And you've done a wonderful job of helping our audience today do that. If you don't mind sharing one more time, where's the best place to find all these resources that we discussed and how can our listeners get in touch with you?

Yes. On financialliteracypress.com is where you can find those resources that you mentioned. And wealthlegacyinstitute.com the name of our advisory firm.

Perfect. We'll put all that in the show Notes, Kim. We'll also put the fiduciary oath that we talked about earlier in the show. Kim, again, Kim Curtis, thank you so much for being on the show and sharing all this wisdom with our audience today.

Thank you, Chris.

Hey, Chris, here again. I hope you found this episode valuable. Now I have one more thing to give to you. We have a page for my coaching clients where you can get a free copy of my book as well as much more from previous guests on the show. Just check out nextlevelincome.com SL coaching to get a free copy of my book, audiobook and much more. I'll send you a copy of my book and cover all the shipping costs as a thank you for listening to the podcast. Also, please like share and take just 90 seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts.