Family Wealth Strategy: From One Generation to the Next | Dr. Megan McCoy (EP. 50)

Welcome to the Ideas by Mike podcast. This is Mike Milligan, your host. Today we have the privilege of welcoming Dr. Megan McCoy, an associate professor at Kansas State University in the Department of Personal Financial Planning, to the podcast. She specializes in the intersection of financial therapy, financial wellbeing, and couples dynamics around money. With over 40 peer-reviewed publications spanning mental health, Family science, financial counseling, and financial planning journals. Her research offers profound insights for individuals across all generations navigating their financial lives. We're gonna explore that specific topic today and walk through generations to see what they think about money from one of the top academic minds in the United States.

To help you rise and stay.

Leadership impact your life. Dr. McCoy, thanks for joining us today. I am so excited about talking about kind of this generational mindset around money that you've done so much research on this. And so I'm just going to dive in and let's talk about Gen Z because this is where my kids live. I have a son who's 28 years old, so right at the top of Gen Z, and I have a daughter who's a junior in college. All the way down. But your research found that what young people learn and don't learn about money from their families shape their financial wellbeing throughout their life course. So, for my kids, because people who listen to my podcast know I talk to my kids through my podcast. So, for my kids and for their friends who are listening, what practical steps can they take now to build financial confidence and how can they rewrite their family's money narrative?

Oh, gosh, I love this question so much because it's hinting at the fact that we all have money stories that are passed down. There's so many money stories from my childhood that I'm so proud of and have internalized and fought very hard to pass along to the next generation. There's some that came from financial stress and just what was going on, like macroeconomics at the time, that maybe I want to leave behind. And so I think being able to say what were the messages that were passed down through the generations, Which of these am I so proud of and want to continue? Which of these can I throw away and fight against? I think being able to name and differentiate gives a lot of power. And this is especially true for Gen Z, where information is just inundating. The shoulds and the coulds and the woods from social media and other information platforms are just causing us to be surrounded by too much information. So slowing it down and saying, what do I really believe in, is a huge first step.

How do you think AI is going to play— what role do you think AI is going to play in Gen Z's financial future?

Yes, I've been working on a project with a great colleague at UGA named Effie and my friend, Ashton Roland-Koons at K-State with me. We're looking at, if used correctly, can AI build confidence? Sometimes it mobilizes us when we don't have it, right? So what we're doing is in undergraduate classrooms, have them calculate some difficult financial questions. Do it themselves and then do it with ChatGPT and challenge ChatGPT, but also say, how much more confident am I with my own answer as with ChatGPT? Because what I worry about sometimes is that the research is showing that AI kind of makes us lazy. We're like, we don't have to think, we don't have to work on our grammar, we don't have to work on these calculations because AI can do it for us. So I'm worried about the potential for idiocracy to develop. But I think if you are immobilized by feeling, I don't know what to do next with my finances, I feel like ChatGPT could give you that confidence boost you need to ask someone who knows the right answer or to do the right next thing to get started in the right direction, at least.

Yeah, I saw a meme this morning that said, I want my AI to do my laundry and my dishes, right? Not my art and creative work. AI's doing everything I want to do.

Yes.

And the problem with AI, like, as I see it, AI is going to give you the most probable outcome. So, if you don't feed it the right information, you don't ask it the right questions, you don't go the extra mile with it, and then if you don't ask it, where did it get its answer from? Or what are the other possible answers that are there? You're going to get kind of this one-size-fits-all.

Right. I think AI is a beautiful language generator. It is guessing the next best word. So if you tend to make grammar mistakes and you put your messy thoughts into it to clean up the grammar, I think that's a wonderful use of AI. I think the problem is twofold. First of all, AI is just guessing at the next right word, not basing it always on sound research. The other thing I worry about is the new literature that shows that AI is kind of giving us exactly what we wanna hear. Right? So if you're struggling with your finances and asking AI, they may say, don't worry about your finances. Don't worry about paying that off. You're doing the best you can when maybe you could challenge yourself to spend a little less, or maybe you could challenge yourself to pick up a side gig. And so I'm just worried about this kind of cycle of getting too much to worry about from ChatGPT.

Right. So, the, the Gen Z or the AI generation, I think, is we're gonna call 'em one day. Your research has really talked about money scripts a lot. And I would tell our grandparent listeners, our baby boomer listeners, it's not too late to talk to your grandkids who are in Gen Z about money.

Yeah.

Tell them your stories, tell them your struggles, tell them what you accomplished, tell them what dollar cost averaging is and what the market did over your life, and let them relate that to where they are today. And we could have probably the most impact on this generation with money than any generation that's alive right now.

Absolutely. I mean, another thing to think about is that every generation is not only living longer, but they are healthier, more cognitive. They are like a 70-year-old now looks like a 50-year-old 30 years ago because of health advancements. And so, I think that this idea of Generationally passing along the narratives of your family is even more possible than ever before.

So, so we're going to go and talk about millennials, but I want to, I want to provide a shameless plug for you before we go on. Guys, if you are interested in deep research like some of the things we're talking about today, you can go to scholar.google.com and just look up Dr. Megan McCoy, Kansas State, and you could find Megan. How many, how many articles can they find on there for you?

I think technically there's 80 listed now, 80 published articles. A couple of them are book chapters. I also have a book too. I find these topics so interesting. I'm like Hamilton. I'm like, well, why do you write all the time? There's so many questions to be asked and so many stories to be written.

No doubt. All right. So, millennials, those people that are having kids now, the ones that are, some are just buying their first home, some that are really starting to earn money, but they're at their also their highest expense time in their life. You did some groundbreaking research that found that financial anxiety explains up to 79% of the commitment clients feel toward their financial planner.

Absolutely.

You discovered that planners greatly underestimate a client's financial anxiety, reporting that anxiety impacts only about 49% of clients when the reality is much higher. For millennials, they grew up during the 2008 financial crisis. They carry significant anxiety about their financial futures and really lack of financial literacy. How can millennials communicate their anxiety to advisors?

Absolutely. So, millennials are so interesting because we're also the generation that's probably the most negatively impacted by student loans because there's been reforms after they went to school, and that they were the first generation where the cost of education skyrocketed. So millennials have faced the Great Recession, the Y2K, and so much more. And so anxiety is more the norm than, than uncommon when it comes to our money. I think that there's so many ways to work with anxiety, but I like to differentiate what is anxiety versus what is stress. All of us have faced financial stressors in our lives, like when we move and we have to get new furniture and pay for the moving trucks, or when we change jobs and we have that weird week of in-between, or when our car breaks down unexpected and we have to pay for those repairs. Those short-term external events that cause us to be like, crap, money's a little tight, is a financial stressor. Financial anxiety is different. It's not time-bound. It's this generalized feeling that the other shoe's about to drop, that I'm not gonna be okay, that I'm not gonna have have enough. And what I'm scared about is how high financial anxiety is rising in American populations, this worry that it— even if everything's okay right now, that it's not enough. And so I think separating what are the things that I'm worried about that I have power and control over— like, I have power and control over maybe I'm overspending. I have power and control over maybe I'm under-earning and I need to ask for a raise or look at other job opportunities. What I don't have opportunities or control over are things that are like, where are the oil markets going to take us with Iran? What is going to go happen with the next election? When you notice yourself having too many fears that are outside your control, you have to separate them, get them all out, write them down, say them out loud, whatever it is, but help yourself differentiate. What do I have control over? Where am I going to make a plan for those? And what do I have no control over? And I need to find other ways of coping with it.

You say in that paper that when you have these flood of stress hormones, that it prevents logical thinking and it can cause clients to avoid dealing with financial situations altogether. And I just think it's just a powerful thing that the financial advisor community doesn't recognize The stress. They don't, uh, and, and, and they, and they don't recognize the anxiety. 'Cause you say there's, there's really a difference between those two.

Yeah. And let me highlight one little thing is that if they have studies on financial anxiety in the US, right? And it's right around 72%. We actually surveyed financial planning clients that tend to be a little bit older, tend to be a little bit more financially stable and have a steward of their finances. We thought there's gonna be a big gap between general American population and clients, and there was not. It was 71% for clients. It is not about how much you have. It is again this underlying fear, scarcity mindset, concerns, worry that is eating away. And you're absolutely right. We cannot hear and process information when our anxiety is heightened. So, sorry. So planners need to recognize that sometimes anxiety manifests as that client is calling you every time the market moves, but sometimes it manifests as a client who's not calling you back. Sometimes it manifests as a super angry, nasty person comes in cranky. Sometimes it manifests as someone who is overspending because there's— they're not, they're not believing that there's any possibility of making a difference. And so there's all these ways anxiety can manifest. And the more we can ask our clients intentionally, what is, what is underneath your worries, the more that we can recognize it in them.

Good. So good. The millennial generation is a generation that I also think is the Reddit generation. They're more into like this collective thought. I'm going to ask people who are similar to me what they're doing to be able to find out. And then Reddit boards, there's a personal financial planning Reddit board with 30— I mean, I think it's 3 million users, active users on it that are asking the same questions over and over again. And that's where financial advisors, the financial planning community and all just says, Vanguard and Fidelity are really not competing against each other for millennials. They're really competing against Reddit.

Yeah.

And that's what we don't recognize as an industry is that that generation, I mean, one of the things that millennials were actually surveyed, and the question was, is when your parents pass away and you inherit your money, will you keep their advisor. And in different surveys, one survey said 90% will not keep the current advisor. One said 72%. The truth is, is like our firm, OneUp Financial, looks to be the family advisor, but that's not where most people want to be. They're the parent's advisor, and then they just hope that they get the rest. So, let's move on and talk about maybe all generations for a second. And talk about the power of money stories. And you wrote a paper back in 2013 that introduced narrative financial therapy. First of all, what is narrative financial therapy?

Yeah. Narrative financial therapy is actually a derivative of an approach to counseling called narrative therapy, where we help people tell the stories of their lives. That too often, we start getting these really thin descriptions of ourselves or our lives, like, I'm stupid, or, Life's boring, and it's like very one-dimensional narratives. Like, let's richen that story and say you're not stupid. Like, you're great at these things, and you're weak at these things, and these things give you interest, and these don't. And so you, you get people to retell their relationship with money through stories. Like, what is the power of money? How can money be used as a tool? Where does money make you feel confident? Where does it make you feel anxious? And that's the beauty of it. It's not like Telling people to retell it as perfection, but telling it as thicker.

Oh, wow. And so now, that is one of the first integrated theoretical approaches that you combined with the 6-step financial planning process with some methods, right? So, you write about how helping clients co-construct preferred narratives, like constructing them together around money, can be really helpful. Can you share how someone listening right now, regardless of their age, can begin to identify And rewrite their own money story and why this matters more than simply following a budget.

And I love this. And one caveat before I answer your question is that I think this is one of the areas that financial planners need to strengthen on too, is for couples to co-create. So hard. It's so hard to get both people into that planning room with shared goals and shared sense of motivation to work on their finances. Usually one person is coming and the other person's like, ah, whatever. And so this idea of co-constructing a family story is powerful. I think for individuals, I think reflecting back on the huge moments you've had around money and thinking about what were you telling yourself about those moments. Brad Klontz and Ted Klontz call these financial flashpoints, these moments in time where money shaped how we saw ourselves. So example from my own life is I paid for college by working all these part-time jobs. One of them was waitressing, and one night I forgot my tips on our little bus in our community, lost, I don't know, $60. That did not make or break my life. But what made or broke my life was when I went home, I was like, oh, you're such an idiot when it comes to money. You're always losing money. You're never responsible. And that story shaped how I interacted with money for years until I sat down and said, why would I say that to myself when I would never say that to a stranger? What are the things you're saying to yourself that if you looked in at a friend you would never say to them. And maybe those are the stories you can rewrite to be more positive or at least more strength-based.

Uh, Megan, would you, would you be open to doing something with me?

Yeah.

What is, what is your money story?

Oh, my money story is that I was, when I was a kid, I always wanted to make the world better. And so for some reason, making money seemed opposite than that. Like, I was a kid with like 6 Earth Day shirts that wore them every day, that wanted to be a therapist. And for some reason, I thought that meant almost a vow of poverty. I also, at the same time, was a huge nerd, and I read all the time. And in my head, I had made the story that I'm so good with words, I'm so good with reading. Numbers are for other people. And so I'm not good with numbers. So you put that storyline of I'm taking a vow of poverty because I care more about making the world better than myself being happy, and I'm not good with numbers, so therefore not good with money. It really caused me to make huge mistakes that then I felt guilty about, but it kind of created this—I don't know—recursive cycle where I'm like, of course I made a money mistake because I'm no good with money. And it took a lot of intentional work to say money is an object, money is a tool, money is a task that I can learn just like I've learned. Hundreds of other tasks that I'm not naturally gifted at, right? And that by taking care of myself financially, I have more space and more energy to help those around me and therefore make the world better too.

That was podcast gold right there. I mean, if you, I mean, just think about this. Somebody who's done probably more research, at least top 0.1% of research on money stories, right? Laying out her money story and saying that I was not good with money. And now you look at your career now where you teach personal financial planning at one of the top financial planning schools in the United States is just absolutely— your story is still yet to be written. But that little girl to who you are now, the little girl that wanted to save the world is still going to save the world. She's just going to do it in a totally different way by helping people understand and change their future and their story. Just freaking gold. That was so good.

And I just hope that it really does immobilize someone listening and say, gosh, if that mess-up can do better, I can do better. That's the story I want people to take away.

We all mess up with money, to be truthful, right? We can all go back in time and say, you know, I can look into my clients and I have a client who they've been to Disney World almost 100 times. And when I asked them one time, tell me about your childhood and Disney. Well, my neighbor always went to Disney and we never went. And so, they've almost overcorrected from that loss of that experience, that childhood experience. They've overcorrected and done it. Now, They love it. And I mean, it's become their go-to 3, 4, 5 times a year. But when you realize that, now it opens up the door to maybe I should go try to vacation somewhere else or I should just dive deeper into Disney, one of the two. And it's funny because when we find our first money script, I mean, mine is I remember cleaning pennies with Tabasco sauce. I mean, we were very poor, but my grandmother would always have me clean them with Tabasco sauce and shine them up, shine up a penny. And we would do that before we would put them in rollers, those 50-cent rollers, and take them to the bank to get cash. But it's like you just remember these little small things. And to me, if a penny's worth shining up, an old penny's worth shining up, well, it's worth picking one up off the ground. It's worth saving a little bit extra. It's just our money scripts. It's who we are. Now, let's talk to my generation. All right. So, Gen X, I turn 50 in 2026. And one of the things that I am doing now and that this generation will be doing really for a little bit longer is supporting adult children without enabling them. And so, in your research on scaffolding versus enabling, I love that terminology, by the way. You explore the tremendous changes in how long parents offer financial support to adult children, and you distinguish between scaffolding and enabling. Can you just kind of tell us the difference between those 2 terms and what your research showed about how we have kind of kept the ATM open for our kids?

Yes. I mean, I think that adulthood has kind of transformed in the last 60 years. I think in 1950, when you were 18, you were out of the house getting a job and going on. But things have changed. We have had children later with more resources, and so we are able to pass more resources on to them than we could. When you have 8 children, it's hard to enable them too much as an adult because you're still taking care of the other ones. Also, the rise of higher education has made them delay their first job, and so that also changes— like, are you really cutting off all financial support when they're stuck in a classroom all day in college or in grad school or in law school? So there's all these real really concrete reasons why we take care of children longer than nowadays. And I think when you are supporting them financially clearly for a goal— I'm supporting them through their education so that they can have a better job, I'm supporting them by giving them a little bit of nicer apartment to live in so that they can live closer to work and spend more time at it— when it's clearly goal-driven, Support, I think it makes sense. I think the problem happens when we kind of are supporting for reasons we may not have said. I, I love, love being a working mom. I couldn't do either full-time without the others. They both give me so much life. But there are times where I feel guilt if I'm not home at 5 o'clock on the dot. You know, there, there are times where I may buy them ice cream because I feel bad I missed something. And so sometimes I worry that we may— be supporting adult children in lieu of guilt or trying to make up for something that happened, or like the story you said about Disney World, we're supporting them because we didn't get enough support ourselves as young adults. So I think what I'm trying to say in a long roundabout way is that scaffolding is a choice to help them for a clear goal. Enabling happens when something else is causing you, whether it's guilt or stress Or love or desire to have power over their lives, that's when it becomes potentially enabling. And uncovering your why of why you support oftentimes will answer that.

And that research really helped create a framework for understanding healthy financial boundaries within families because there's—

They look different.

Yeah. And there's— because there's this thing about, like, I mean, I have 3 adult kids. One of them is just— he's just finishing medical school now. The other one works at a nonprofit, right? And the other one is coming through college. And the interesting part about that is I will continue to support the 2 girls for a little bit longer on their life's ambitions, but they don't necessarily want it all the time. And I love that about them. They would rather suffer just a little bit than have dad just swoop in and take care of everything. And I think that's the whole idea of scaffolding versus enabling. Now, we're going to, as we walk through generations here and what some of your research, and we're just hitting the high level of, this is the highlight reel of your research because you go so much deeper on so many other topics that are relevant here. For baby boomers, those people that are in their 60s and 70s now, 61 to 79 is where they are right now. More 65. This will be the last year we're hitting peak 65 this year. More people will turn 65 this year, and then the trend will start going down next year. But let's talk about navigating grief and money avoidance because you actually won an award for this research because it addresses one of the— in this demographic, widows. The common saying is 80% of men will die married, 80% of women will die single. And the stats are not exactly like that, but the concept is true. You found that money avoidance during grief isn't just about procrastination, but reflects deep money scripts. We're back to that again, where people believe money is bad and anxiety-provoking. So, you developed the Change in Grief Model for financial health.

And my co-authors, I have to give so much shout-out to my co-authors who are practitioners in the field. I don't want to take too much credit for this one because I had an amazing team of co-authors on this one.

Well, so, let's talk about that. Let's talk about what you learned from the field with your co-authors, and then what you brought from an academic standpoint. And let's talk to those who are, you know, maybe have found themselves suddenly alone or will find themselves in the future suddenly alone. And those are widows.

Absolutely. And my co-authors and I really talked a lot about how there is a gender difference. It might that always persists, but in those who are 65 and up, there is still gender socialization that was different. So what we find is that widows who lost their husband experienced much more financial distress and anxiety about how do I manage my finances because my husband tended to take care of things so much. The opposite is kind of true for men who lose their wives at that age, that that so much of their social connections were through their wives, making those connections to the church or to their neighbors or to family. And so they actually have an increase in emotional distress, not the financial distress. So if you're listening and you have parents who are aging, thinking about how both your mom or dad may have different needs when they lose their partner is something good to keep in mind. But I think another layer that is true for all of us listening is that when we receive money through inheritances or lawsuits or things that have an emotional component to it, grief component to it, that money tends to be treated differently. Some researchers even call it blood money, that our spending what we get from our partner's life insurance feels different than spending our checking account, that it feels more pressure to make the right decision. So, you'll see people not touching it at all or spending it all at once because they just want to get rid of it and not think about it anymore.

That is so true. And I mean, the reality is I was sitting in a conference room yesterday with a couple, like in their mid-60s, and they love each other. And I literally in the room said, we have to plan for 3 things. We have to plan for taxes. We have to plan for investment rates. risk. And then we have to plan for long-term care in the end. And when I walk them through, for the first time, they realize this. I walk them through life expectancy of, or actually, the life that his parents had, the life her parents had, and from a longevity standpoint, and it became crystal clear that she was going to live, if they follow the same trends as their parents, She was going to live 15 to 20 years without him. And it was heartbreaking because there were tears in the conference room, right? Because for the first time, and listen, they're in their mid-60s, for the first time that grief started. Now, the interesting part about starting that grief now is now they can plan for it together, right?

Absolutely.

For the next 10, 15, 20 years. And this is where the financial industry sometimes struggles to bring this level of the psychological or emotional side of financial planning to the table. When you bring it to the table now, it's not so sudden. It doesn't have as big of an impact. They could plan together for what that looks like. And she said at the table, the wife said at the table, my hope is that we just die in a car wreck together.

Oh.

I mean, it's somewhat heartbreaking. But it's also the reality of what a couple who has already been together 40 years, when you put it in front of them and you realize, and they walked out of there yesterday, first meeting together, they said, we will be your clients for life because of what you're going to take us through. And that's the side of this, your research and then us in the practical field applying them together like this. So, I want to say thank you for doing that research. Because like, for those of us who read it, those of us who go deeper into this, it makes a lot of sense. So, let's end with something a little bit happier.

Okay.

Right? So, baby boomers and near retirees, let's talk about some nudges in retirement planning. And so, you won a prestigious award, and I can't even pronounce the second name of this award. It's Montgomery and—

Warsauser, I think.

There it is. There it is. Yeah. Montgomery and Warsauser. And you examine how choice architecture— I love the word architecture in financial planning, right? Like we're building something. And behavior nudges can shape retirement savings outcome. And you write about the psychological barriers that prevent people from making optimal retirement decisions, even when they know they should do it. And so, for listeners in their 50s and 60s who just feel paralyzed, they're experiencing that paralysis penalty, that In the podcast, I talk about all the time that, and they're experiencing that. What are the most effective self-nudges they can implement? And how does understanding the why behind those nudges actually make them more effective than purely just automated solutions?

I love this. And again, another amazing co-author on that paper, Shawn Eckert, is amazing. That paper did talk a lot about the nudges. So things like automatically having your paycheck distributed to multiple accounts is a great one. Like, we have a couple accounts that my paycheck automatically gets separated into that is for like Europe in 5 years or a car in 3 years. That automatically makes it that my checking account is already taking all the bills and the saving goals and the retirement goals all out of the equation before it gets to my ATM card. I think that's a great nudge. I think also in retirement, what's fascinating is that we're seeing more and more retirees actually underspending. This is so much harder to pull from your savings account, right, than it is to, to spend your paycheck. So you might have to do some kind of, um, mental note of like, this is how much I should— I plan to spend, and let yourself spend without guilt in retirement. That is why you work so hard. That is why you save so hard. And I think one final note is the idea of don't let goals be these big, vague things. Really dig into what brings you joy. It's like, if spending time with your grandbabies is bringing you joy, have that as a line item. Like, we are going to spend this much to go visit grandbabies. If going to the beach brings you joy, have that much Have that much for the beach if going to see the Royals play, have that much for baseball tickets. Figure out what brings you joy.

I love that you said the Royals because that is unique, right? Not many people would say, I want to line item for going to see the Kansas City Royals play baseball.

My parents are from New York and they're probably going to be mad if they hear I didn't say Yankees.

Right. So, I mean, it obviously tells you where your heart really is at Kansas State. It's in Kansas. It's with the Royals, the Chiefs, I'm sure, right? This has kind of been what walked through the generation from those who are finishing their teenage years now all the way through baby boomers has been like, it's been transformational. And people who listen to this will hear it. Just in maybe a couple of minutes, what are some projects you're working on right now that we should be looking out for?

Yes. I'm really excited to work on a series of papers around financial infidelity. So, these are the lies we tell our partners. This is don't tell daddy we went shopping and those. Big or small indiscretions, I think they're the canary in the coal mine. So it doesn't mean like a real true financial infidelity. Of course, hiding massive debt, hiding massive income is true financial infidelity. But the smaller indiscretions, I think, are a sign that communication needs— skills need to be built on, or you're shameful of what you're buying, or you don't have enough power to ask for what you want. And so I'm really excited about that work. The other area I'm spending quite a bit of time on is financial abuse. So using money to control others. And I'm fascinated to see if we can find out if this is a predict— a precursor to intimate partner violence. We might be able to protect more women by being able to get inter— you know, interventions in earlier before people get hurt. And so those are the 2 areas I'm really excited about.

Those are— those— when you talk about that little girl who wanted to change the world, and then you say those 2 things that you're working on right now, Oh, Mike, this ended up being a therapy session for me.

I feel so much better now.

It's really what financial planning should be at some level, right? Hey, just, and then the one last thing, because you're in the classroom with the next generation of financial planners, are you hopeful for this profession?

Gosh, yeah. I can't tell you, like, I know I'm biased. My program, our slogan is Ahead for Business. and a heart for people. And I swear, like, my students not only are brilliant and mature and just way more grown up than I was at 19, but they care so much about making their clients' lives better. And that's what brings me a lot of joy and hope every single day.

Well, this has been absolutely amazing, right? So I told everybody earlier, like, where they could find your scholarly research, but like, Is there any other like work or things that you're focused on that you think our listeners should go out and research for themselves?

Yes, please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm also the editor of the CFP's academic journal, Financial Planning Review, which is now completely open source, meaning you don't have to work at a university to get it for free. So, please read the articles in Financial Planning Review whenever you have a chance. And I hope we get in touch.

That is absolutely amazing. I think I can look into the future a little bit, and I think this may be like an annual podcast where we can come and like either walk through the generations or hit a specific topic that's important on the planning side, because really, planning is at the heart. I mean, an investment is a tool. A long-term care policy is a tool. Your tax return, just a tool. It's a historical document. But the art and science of financial planning is where people can go live that one-of-a-kind life. And that's what we want to inspire people to do because instead of being one-size-fits-all, we want you to be one of a kind. And your research is doing that and we want to use this podcast there. So, guys, thanks for listening today to the Ideas by Mike podcast. Be sure to like, subscribe, and share this podcast. If you want more information about the firm, One Oak Financial, go to oneoakfinancial.com. That's the number oneoakfinancial.com. Or you can also reach out with— to me on LinkedIn or any of my social media handles. So until next time, this has been Mike Milligan for Ideas by Mike. Thank you for logging in. And listening or watching to another episode of Ideas by Mike. If you want to learn more about my firm, One Oak Financial, please visit us on our website at www.oneoakfinancial.com. That's the number oneoakfinancial.com. If you enjoyed this podcast, you could help me by liking it, subscribing to our channel, and telling others about what we're doing. See, guys, we're looking to change the game. And that game is about making financial planning more about you. Until next time, this has been Mike. CFP Board owns the marks CFP®, Certified Financial Planner, and CFP® in the United States. As a reminder, Mike Milligan, Certified Financial Planner, is an investment advisor representative of Advisory Alpha, LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisory firm. All opinions expressed by me or our guests are solely our own opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Advisory Alpha. This recording is for informational purposes only. It should not be relied on for investment, tax, or legal decisions, and it's in no way intended to communicate or guarantee specific performance or suitability of any security instrument or product. product, as we may have discussed. Investment advisory and financial planning services offered through Advisory Alpha, LLC, a registered investment advisor. Insurance is offered through Ideas by Mike, a Virginia-based LLC here to serve you in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Ideas by Mike is a separate and unaffiliated entity of Advisory Alpha, LLC. While tax and legal issues may be discussed in the general course of financial and investment planning, Advisory Alpha does not provide tax or legal services. Please consult with your tax or legal professional prior to making a decision relative to those decisions. Any and all statements of purported or observed general practices of non-affiliated firms and advisors or conditions of the broad financial services industry are solely the opinions of Mike and are not intended to be offered as factual. The validity of these statements has not been verified and as such, no representation of their validity are made. An annuity is a long-term financial product designed largely for asset accumulation and retirement needs. All guarantees are backed by the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company. This podcast is produced in conjunction with Mike Milligan, LLC. Thank you again for joining us today. We'll see you on the next podcast.