Caring for Parents, Planning for the Future with Beth Pinsker

Welcome to Bolden youn Money. I'm your host, Steve Chen, and today I'm excited to join Beth Pinsker. She is a certified financial planner and a columnist at MarketWatch, and also has recently written a book called My Mother's A Guide to Financial Caregiving, published by Penguin Random House. So Beth has spent her career helping people make better choices and now is kind of dealing with in her own family. So with that, Beth, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.

Yeah, no, it's awesome. So I would love to kind of just jump in a little bit about your background. I mean, in a couple minutes, how you got here and why are you doing this work.

I started working on personal finance right in the middle of the Great Recession. I launched a personal finance website for AOL called Wallet Pop. And before that, I was a film critic and entertainment reporter. So it was a big switch for me. But the topics came naturally to me and I was naturally interested in them. And so I just sort of followed the path of what you do when you're interested in that sort of stuff and ended up getting a CFP. And I got the Series 7 at some point along the way. But you can't hold that when you're not at a brokerage. So I don't currently have that. But I just got really interested in the mechanics of all of this and how it all works together. And that works now to inform my journalism and my other writing.

Nice. How long have you had your CFP certification?

Since 2018.

Oh, wow. And have you ever practiced? I mean, did you practice?

I have not practiced. I sort of give out general information and help readers. My. The thing I can do is explain really complex things to people in a way that they can understand. Sometimes the people who understand the numbers and understand the money part of it can't explain it in a way that real people can access it. And this book was part of that. And the columns that grew out of it in MarketWatch is the impetus for it was that you can lead people to a checklist, but you can't make them do the checklist. What's going to convince them that this stuff is important and that that it should be done now rather than sit on their to do list and never get done. And the idea that 30% of this country has a will and 70% of them do not, and that's the way that people think of estate planning and they never get to the other documents you need, like power of attorney or a Health care proxy or a living will or a trust, or any of those things are less prevalent than a will. It's crazy making for people like us who do this for a living, because you really need all those things. So my book was my way of explaining to people through a story, my story, my personal story of taking care of my mom. And all the things that even though I'm a professional, you know, financial professional, all the things I didn't know how to do, all the things you learn in books that have no application to real life and, you know, you have to navigate your way through this stuff. And my hope is that by telling my story in a way that people can really relate to, it would get them to see why things are important and get them to do it. Like the idea is, read this book and you go, oh, now I get it. Now I get why people keep saying I should have a power of attorney. If I don't have that power of attorney, I'm in deep trouble. And if my mom doesn't have it, if my sister doesn't have it and my kids don't have it, we're all in a world of pain if something happens. And this writer explained it to me because she went through it and now I don't have to go through something bad. That's my hope.

Yeah, right. I think hope is good. I would say I feel like, you know, and I'm in this bucket, right? Like people can know better, right? And then there's the knowing and then there's the doing, you know, And I think the thing that people have to know is they have to know themselves and how they're gonna act or actually. And the self awareness of like what they are actually doing. And yeah, the risk increases over your life. You live longer. It's like, okay, some, you know, we're all headed to the same place. It's like more and more every day that goes by, there's a higher chance, something goes sideways and then you're gonna leave a mess for your family. That is really interesting that 70% of people don't even have a will. Right?

And then the numbers, that's the, that's the national average. The numbers go up the older you get. Like by the time you get to be 70, you know, the number of 70 year olds who have a will is greater than the number of 30 year olds that have a will.

Right.

But it's still not 50%, you know, in most cases, you know, and that's wealthy people and unwealthy people, like the you know, when the brokerage firms, the fancy ones, you know, when they do surveys, they still find that, you know, people with greater than a million dollars don't have a will of any sort or a trust or, you know, any other power of attorney documents. And you would think that they would know better. They have advisors, they have lawyers, they have people on their team at that wealth level. You know, you have people that, that help you with those things and. Or access to them at least. And they're still not doing it.

Yeah, it's so interesting. It's like there, I think, like this preamble is opening, is kind of highlighting so many, so many of the challenges that are out there. Right. So one, explaining things in layman's terms. Right. So people understand it. Like, you know, the industry is still full of jargon. Even people who are, like, really know what they're doing. Like, I was looking at Cody Garrett, you know, he's like, doing such good work to educate people. And I looked at his LinkedIn post. He's like 529, you know, 72t. Like, there's all these, like, stuff. It's like people have no idea.

Like, and when it gets down to a caregiving situation, you know, you can put it in very, very real terms. I'm sitting at my mother's bedside. She's got caregivers who need to be paid. How do I write out the check? Right. Where money coming from? Whose account is it coming from? And who's signing the paperwork to give it to the person that you have to pay? Like, that's just a common situation that we are all going to face at some point. And when I was sitting there next to my mother, I realized I'm like, I know better than this. I know that I was supposed to do all of these things, and yet I'm sitting here with her checkbook next to her in the hospital bed with the caregiver standing right there, who needs to be paid, and I don't know whose name goes on the check. I can't sign my name. She can't sign her name. What do we do? You know?

Yeah, right. And if you don't have it figured out, you're writing the check out of your own whatever. And then, like, you gotta get them. There's a cash flow. There's a very pragmatic kind of cash flow thing that has to get set up and created.

Yeah. So that's. That's what I was hoping to highlight for people is like, these are real situations that come up often. In life, there's no book. There was no book until my book. There was no book for me to look at for how to handle these things. And there's functional issues and there's moral issues. You know, can I forge my mom's name on this check? She's sitting right here. She's telling me I can. Does that make it okay? And then there's emotional stuff that comes into play because all the money I was managing for my mother, spending it or not spending it, eventually it becomes my money, you know, and managing and spending somebody else's money is a lot different than managing and spending your own money, emotionally speaking. It's just. It's just different. It feels weird. It. There's guilt attached, there's childhood, you know, recriminations. There's, you know, fights with your siblings. There's all sorts of stuff that comes into play.

Right, exactly. I was going to bring that up, I think, within a lot of families. Do you have siblings?

I have a sibling. And we get along. And it's still hard.

Yeah, it's still hard. Right. And it's like, very often people don't always get along, or they have different means and they have different needs, and then people. Some people are leaning in and doing it, and other people are not doing it. And how do you keep that fair? How do you keep decision making fair? Like, we've had this idea of like. Or I've had this idea of like, maybe there's needs to be boards, especially as the money gets bigger. Right. So it's like, hey, you and your sibling, plus a third party, independent third party are going to make this decision. So it's not like one person's, like, doing things.

And like, sometimes people don't like their parents either. Like, people don't have perfect families. And the people I interviewed for the books, I was so surprised often, you know, I loved my mom and my mom was a great person, and we were lucky that way. But it wouldn't have mattered if she was a horrible person and I hated her. Like, I still wouldn't have ended up her caretaker. And so many people I talked to in the book had terrible relationships with their parents. And yet you end up in this caregiving role nonetheless. And it's very hard to say no to it. You can put parameters on it and, you know, build your boundaries, but it's really hard morally and to say no.

Yeah. Do you. Do you have any data on, you know, the number of people that get involved in caregiving? You know, everyone's living longer.

Yeah. The AARP does an annual survey and it's 63 million people currently in the United States who are involved in caregiving duties on a steady basis. And at some point, you know, the other stat is that 70% of us, like each individual, 70% of us will end up with some sort of care taking need. Like you have a 70% chance of ending up needing somebody to help you at some point. So this goes both ways. You have to be prepared to take care of somebody else and you have to make your life accessible for somebody to take care of you.

Right. So there's like 20% of the US population now, 63 million out of 300 something, 30 million US people is involved in caregiving today. And I imagine the number is probably growing pretty fast.

I actually had to break into the book and update the stats because the book was locked down. And AARP came out with that study. They do it every year and so they updated it. And I was like calling the publisher and saying, can I break into the book and update this? Because the numbers jumped a lot and they let me, they let me update it. But it'll change again next year.

Yeah, I mean, for sure, you have these generations now. It's, it's much more common that people know someone that's like over 90, over 100. And then, you know, you could have whatever, four generations like alive right at once, which is kind of, you know, that's more common.

I love sandwich generation. Somebody at my work came up with that. It's, you have kids, a parent and a grandparent that you're taking care of because your parents at that point also need help and they can't take care of their parents. And so you get stuck with all of them. You know, your grandparents, 100, your parent is 80 and your child is, you know, 16.

I think what's so interesting is that the, you know, you raise, when you raise children, like we've kind of been, you know, we're like, okay, we raise our kids till they're 18 or 21 or like now it's like you support them till they're 25 or whatever like that. We're extending these like time periods of our lives. But there's kind of an ending point for your kids. But at the same time you're going to be inheriting your parents and you know, that could be 20 years. I mean like it, you know, it's, you know, probably not, but you depends, like if, you know, someone starts needing help in their 70s, which depending on their health situation. Right. You know, and they live to mid-90s. That's 20 years.

Yeah. I speak to a lot of people who are in the. Well, a lot of your audiences is sort of do it yourself. People who manage their own finances and they're very careful with it. Right. Talk to people in the financial independence, retire early movement. They're very concentrated on, you know, and fixated on their own plan. Like, I'm going to do this and this, and I'm going to, you know, my money's going to grow to this point, and then I can retire, and then I'll. I'll live off the. This income. And if that works for you in. In a bubble, but you're connected to other people, and if they haven't taken the same care with their resources, your whole plan gets blown up. Like, you can map out, you know, with the bold, with whatever software you want, you can map it all out for you. But you know, what happens if a parent gets sick? Not even your parent. It could be your spouse's parent, it could be an aunt and uncle, you know, and they get sick and then you're on. On call.

Yeah.

I think that the thing that would probably interest your audience the most is I go through this whole section in the book. There's like a whole. Like, there are four sections in the book, and one whole section is on how to make the money last. And, you know, you do that for yourself. Like, you plan your retirement, you do all your projections and all of that. And, you know, we get letters from readers over and over again, every permutation of the scenario, every. You know, my mom just got diagnosed with Alzheimer's. She has $500,000. How do we most effectively make the money last? And, you know, pay the least amount of taxes on it, get the most amount of growth, you know, how long. And what do we do if it runs out? That's. That's the scenario that every single person who talks to us wants to know about. Like, so what do you tell people in that search? Like, what's your plan for that?

I mean, it's such a good question. I mean, for sure, we've been seeing this need for intergenerational planning. And I think what you're describing, like, with the fire folks, like, I've hung out with the fire folks a lot. It's great. You know, these people are super intentional. They're literate and they do all these good things, and they do get financial independence. And, yes, it's way easier if you have no kids. It's like, yeah, two high Income earners, no kids, no problem. We're good, right? Then, yeah, your parents, well, whatever, they're on their own. But yeah, no, you definitely, like, yeah, Start thinking about your parents as another obligation, and it's real. And most people aren't making those good choices, and they have much tougher situations. Yeah, no, as we're, as we're talking, it's like, I'm like writing this, I'm like, all right, you know, like, a good practice is have an investment policy statement for your family. Right? You could have a caregiving policy statement. Like, you know what? We need to think about what we're signing up for with our kids. Right? You kind of talk to your kids about it. Like, hey, I have friends. Like, guess what? You graduate, you know, here's we're going to subsidize your education for 100 grand. And after that you're on your own. Like, good luck and like, and don't come back. And I have friends that have done that. And then that's like, there are. They're my generation. They were told by their parents, like, you know, great, we helped you with college, you know, but now, like, don't plan on moving back in here. You got to make it work. That's less prevalent now. But, but like, with the caregiving, it's like, okay, here's what our commitments are and discuss it because, you know, you kind of know what's out there. But, like, and it kind of sneaks up on you. And then you're like, okay, well, you know, this is happening. My parents, it's like, okay, they're both alive. Yay. They're both living independently. Yay. And they've done that for a long time, and they're pretty healthy, Knock on wood. But, you know, you can ride it out in your house. But, like, it gets harder, you know, stairs, bathrooms, all this stairs and bathrooms seem to be coming up in discussions. More single level living comes up. But, yeah, like, what's the plan? And then different people live longer. What's the plan if one partner goes away? Okay. You know, where families are distributed. I mean, if you're all in the same place, easier, but, like, if you're not, you know, all these things have to be thought through.

One person read an early copy of my book, and I, they were like, I didn't understand. What are you talking about? This whole thing about one Social Security. She didn't understand that. That, like, you know, you have two people living together and they have two each have their Social Security, and when one dies, you go down to one Social Security income, and you get to pick the larger of the two if you're married. But it's still just one of those two checks. And that's a huge, like, if you don't know that's coming, that's a huge whopper.

Right. Well, that's the kind of stuff that you can see in our software and you can build scenarios or the bigger thing is someone has a monster pension with no joint and survivor benefit.

Yeah.

You know, they're like, I'm good. I've got a great pension. Oh, but if the. And that's tied to the husband, but the husband dies first and there's not a great benefit, then like, actually that was like a huge income thing, which is quality of life. And your wife is hosed. Right. Or your spouse is hosed. So, yeah, it's. It's just. It's kind of like happening now, like, as we speak. I feel like so many families are. And I see this in our business, too. There's people in our. One of our senior guys right now is like, back, you know, with his parents. Like, we're in their 90s. And I've had this happen. There's a guy, he was in his 30s and his parents were in his 70s. It's like, guess what? I'm like, schlepping him around to, like, medical stuff. I'm sitting in counseling sessions and talking to doctors. So, like, you're thrust into it and it crowds out so much other stuff, you know, and that's happening for 20% of our population in every business.

Every business. It's a huge concern. And it's really hard to offlay some of this stuff. And it's hardest to offlay the financial stuff. With my mom, we were able to handle higher caregivers to cover the bathroom needs. I didn't have to be there every day to help my mom go to the bathroom and shower. But we couldn't hire. You can hire people to do the financial management, but some of the financial tasks and decision making, you still need to be the sort of. Not even necessarily next of kin, but you have to be a trusted confidant of that person. And, you know, these are intimate, irrevocable financial decisions that somebody's going to make. They're going to have access to your bank account. They can take money out, and you have to be able to trust them. You need to be able to know that they're acting in your best interest and, you know, not going to sell the house out from under you or.

You know, to me, a lot of this is, like, back to, like, how businesses run it. Like, you know, we've got 60 people in our company, and, like, we have different people with different levels of control. But, like, you have signing authority, and, like, there's certain people that can look at money, and there's certain people that can, like, sign for sign checks. And it's like that, you know, some of the stuff that we're talking about, like, there are care concierges out there that can help with all this stuff. And, like, so what happens, though, is like, you're like, okay, we haven't thought about this. Oh, someone falls. Okay, now we're in it. Okay. And that's like, you know, when. When our kids were younger, we're joke about, like, we're the most expensive Uber drivers. Right. Parents are like, in my day job, I'm a svp, you know, Google. And then I spend two hours a day, drive my kids to soccer practice, and my time is worth $5,000 or whatever. Yeah, $2,000 an hour. Right. But whatever. That's like, you know, and then you, you know, you should do that as a parent. But. But there's a balance. And now, by the way, with Waymo Teen Mode, you're gonna be able to order robotic cars to drive your kids around. That's happening. I feel like this, you know, there are experts out there, and that's gonna become. It feels like that's gonna become a huge industry where it's like, okay, guess what? Call somebody. They know they. They have the right level of control. They understand how playbook. How to run the playbook, and they help kind of like figure this all out and help you make decisions and whatever, and that'll be pretty valuable.

Yeah.

For society. So maybe it's a workplace benefit. Who knows?

Yeah. Hopefully some help comes along. But then, you know, you still end up. At the end of the day, somebody's got to be the named representative. And I'm going through this now with a friend who's trying to get the power of attorney in force for his parents. And, you know, there's six different banks involved that he's got to get this paperwork to, and they're making him jump through the most extreme hoops in order to be verified to be the representative on the account. And it's just torture, you know, so, like, you can have a financial advisor telling you what to do, but at the end of the day, you might be making those phone calls, you might be on hold with, you know, a bank you know, trying to talk them through why they should accept your document. You know, one sent. The. One sent this. You know, we sent the same documents to all the places. And, you know, one rejected it because it wasn't the original. Like, do we need six, you know, fully notarized original copies of the power of attorney? Like, nobody has that.

It's tough because on the one hand, you know, the banks are like, well, you have to know your customer. Kyc. Right. Anti money fraud and all that stuff. You don't want. This is such an area where people can come in and be like, yeah, I'm the caregiver. Give me control. And then they drain the account. There's that. So that's good. But there's also, like, banks make lots of money holding your money, and they know that people will move money around and simplify it and rationalize it. And so having friction is fine. I'm sure the manager there is getting the phone calls, like, well, and older people have a lot of money. Oh, they might move 200 grand out of the bank. Well, that's not really good for me. So I think it's something to be aware of. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. So.

Yeah.

What, like, you know, in terms of your own story? I'm just curious. Kind of like the story arc in terms of, like, were you planning for this? When did your mom. When did the need arise? How long were you doing? What's. Is your mom still alive or does she pass away?

She passed away. For us, the trajectory was very short and very intense. My mom was 76. She was living her own life. She was perfectly happy. She was treasurer of her condo board. She was an active person, but she was having back trouble, and she had lifelong back trouble. And she went in for a spinal fusion operation to try to maintain her ability to walk. So she called me up. I get that call. The story starts with me getting that phone call, like, hey, I'm going in for this surgery. Can you come down here? I don't know how long I'll be, you know, incapacitated, but it'll be a couple weeks. So can you come and, you know, make sure we have everything set up and take. Take over the reins for me, you know, for as long as. As need be. And so I went down there thinking it would be, you know, a couple days, whatever, you know, like, she would be fine. Her brain functioned perfectly, you know, and everything would be good. And from there, it was just complication after complication after complication. And from November until July, she was just, you know, Rolling waves of sickness. So I ended up, you know, fully taking over all of her financials, the long term care insurance, the Medicare, you know, the decisions about where she would go and what facility she would be in and how much the caregivers would cost and what we can afford and, you know, how would we manage her nest eggs through all of that. Then she went home finally on hospice, didn't make it very much past that, and then started the process. The second half of the book is me settling her estate, which is its whole, whole separate ball game that nobody prepares you for, but that all of this stuff is important to do ahead of time so that it's not so bad when somebody's trying to settle your estate. So I went through from the time she had surgery to the time I filed, her last tax return was just like a little over a year. And so I was able to tell it as a story in the book because, you know, some people go through this stuff for decades. You know, if a person, if a person in your life has Alzheimer's or some other dementia disease, it could be regularly 10, 12 years of this, and that would be hard to tell as a story coherently. But mine was just like this. And some people, you know, they get the call and it's a car accident or a heart attack or something, and it's just, it's just, you know, it's just immediate. And all of them are bad. Like there's no better outcome than one or the other. But mine took about a little over a year. And I was a financial caretaker. My brother was the one who dealt with the doctors. I hate, I hated dealing with the doctors. I couldn't, I couldn't. And so he did, he did that and I did the bills. And that was sort of our, our split of labor. And we had caregivers to, you know, do the bathroom. And that was, that was how we got through it. But as I was going through it, I started to write about it because my job is. I'm a retirement columnist. And this is what, this is what this is all about. And it just really struck a chord with people. There's so many people going through this. And it occurred to me that most of what is out there for people is piecemeal. You have a problem, you Google it and you get a piece of information and you get them one at a time as you go through it. And nobody ever tells you how they all, all the pieces fit together and why all the pieces fit together and why it all works this way. And so that this was my attempt to do that because I felt like there was, like, missing this, like, unified string theory of, you know, financial planning.

No, it's awesome. Well. And good job going through that whole process and writing it down and sharing it.

Thank you. My mom was very careful with her finances, and I felt like I needed to respect that. When I was growing up, we got audited three times. My father was a college professor, and he would take sabbaticals every couple of years. And so he would, like, take a huge cut in salary and go live somewhere else for a year. And he would get a grant, and there would be all these expenses. And when we come back and my mom would file taxes, then we'd get a letter from the irs. And this was my whole life. This is why I'm in financial journalism, I think, is because my whole life was my mom fighting with the irs. And this became, like, the underpinning of everything in our household was, you know, my dad would go buy a book, and my mom would say, do you have a receipt for that? And it would go into the receipt bin for his business expenses. And this is how we lived. I mean, my mom kept track of everything, and she never lost an audit. And, you know, like, you try taking care of that person's finances, you know, are you going to mess it up? No. I was terrified of her.

To live up to the standard was, were your parents good investors?

My parents were terrible investors. We also never had any money. And I go through this in the book, too, because they were both teachers and all of their money was annuitized and they had no savings. And so the way this impacted me as a caregiver is we need to put our hands on money and fast. And I couldn't. Like, it was all locked up in annuity contracts because that's how, you know, in 403bs, that's how, like, they. The advisors steer you into these products. And teachers are generally conservative, and that's where their money went, and that's where they kept it. And they were happy with that situation. My mom. My mom was a conservative person with her money, and that's what she wanted. She wanted a guaranteed rate on her money. She didn't want to be worrying about the stock market. And that worked for her until she got sick.

And then how did it play out? I'm just curious on the other side of this for. Because, you know, we, you know, obviously there's 401ks, there's 403bs, is 457s and yeah, you know, people invest this way. Like what happened with your. When did your dad.

My dad died in 2018 and they didn't have very much before he died. And the nest egg that they ended up having was from death benefits after he died. So the majority of my mother's money came after my father died.

Your dad had an annuity?

My dad had a new need that had a death benefit rider that there. I will say this about that advisor that helped them with all of this, who really cared and was a good guy. I'm not saying anything negative about that. He got some sort of death benefit attached to my dad's annuity product that was a phenomenal death benefit and really secured my mom's financial future. It wasn't life insurance. My dad also had a nice life insurance policy. But these things really helped my mother. They allowed her financial flexibility and freedom.

Okay, so you're. So your father's income ends, but there's a death benefit. So that creates a pile of money. And I guess. Was that tax free?

That was tax free. It was pre tax money. It was an ira. It was not. This is like complex stuff I go into in the book. It was an annuity, but it was not annuitized. So she had to take RMDs from it as if it were an IRA.

So your father died, but he had not started annuitizing.

Right.

So he had been saving money in his vehicle, wasn't annuitized, but there was a value to the vehicle.

Yes. So there was a value created. There's a value created for RMD purposes at the end of the year. There's like a net present value of the annuity contract. And that is your RMD is based on that. And so by the end of the year, you have to take the RMD out, but the money was not annuitized. And since my mom's illness fell right in this five year contract period after my father died, the money goes into a contract for my mom. She kept it in a similar contract, but a new one in her name. And because we hadn't reached five years yet, if we started breaking into it and taking money out beyond the rmd, then there were going to be. She was going to lose value on the contract. And the advisor was trying to prevent us from losing any principal value by breaking into it a couple months early. But, you know, my mom was dying. You know, I'm like, we've got, we got it. We need this money now. You know, like, we have to pay. Gary, it's July I have money for the next two months, and then you're telling me I have to wait till October, but I can't wait till October. I got the caregivers cost, you know, $15,000. I need. I need $15,000. And, you know, so we went back and forth a couple of times, and then my mom just got too sick, and she ended up passing away before her cash on hand ran out. You know, that was just our particular situation. If she had, you know, lasted like Jimmy Carter lasted a year or more in hospitals, you know, if my mom had rebounded a little bit or had, you know, even lasted six months, we would have needed to break into that money, and we would have. It would have been worth the penalty to not have to take it my account, because I would have had to liquefy, liquidate stuff in order to cover that amount of cash. I don't have $15,000 sitting around.

Right. Okay. So I'm just super curious how this unfolded. So your parents, when working and saving, they're building value in these vehicles that are a little bit not liquid. And then money flows to. Your mom started diving into these a little bit, and then she's subject to RMDs. And I know there's rules about RMDs, like inherited IRAs. By the way, our software does help people think about all this stuff and see all that stuff. Then she's getting sick, and then there's her own annuity situation. Okay. And then that's all ultimately making its way to you. And I would say net. Net. Do you feel, like, satisfied? Like, oh, my. You know, my parents worked hard. They saved. They didn't live as long as they might like to enjoy the money. But, like, thankfully, we get the. You know, our family's gonna inherit that money. Is that like, that's.

It's. It's a little. It's a lot more guilty than that. I go into this in the book, too. I'm real open about it. No, I feel guilty about that. Like, my mother had that money to. For her own care. It wasn't intended for gifting. It was, like, just enough to take care of her, you know, until her 90s. If she had lived any longer, you know, that would have been a sufficient amount, and we wouldn't have had to worry, and she wouldn't have had to struggle, and she would have maintained her, you know, standard of living, but. And she was 76, which is young to lose somebody, you know, these days. And My father was five years older than her. He also died at 76. So both my parents died young. And it's really hard. I don't know, it's hard for me to fathom inheriting money in that situation because I'd much rather have them, you know, so I'm still in that mindset of the money still almost. I don't know when to say it feels dirty, but I can't look at that money without feeling loss. And so that's why. I mean, I titled the book the Way I Did, because my mother's money becomes my money at some point. And that's not it. It's not easy, any of it, you know, and sometimes people get in. I've heard about family fights. I wrote about some of them in the book. And, you know, one sibling wants to keep mom at home, but that's the more expensive option. And one sibling wants to put mom, you know, frees up the assets in a trust and put mom on Medicare, Medicaid, and, you know, put her in a nursing home. And, you know, and the one sibling is accusing the other of wanting just to take the money, you know, so you go through all this, am I being frugal in order to inherit more, or am I being frugal because that's the right thing to do? You know, like, it's very complex when you have to. We're used to money decisions being rational. Like, your software computes numbers. It doesn't compute emotions. And what I found is, you know, I have all this financial training, and I know how to do the equations, but the equations in real life are often not. What's the best scenario. Like, I have three options, you know, like, the computer can tell me which is cheapest, but the computer can't tell me which is the best moral option. You know, like, which is the best. And most of the time, all the options are bad. Like, there is no best option. They all suck.

Well, I think it's. So it's like we're moving from this for some people. Like, this world of this didn't used to be a problem, right? You kind of, like, you know, 100 years ago you worked and then you died. And then, like, there wasn't a lot left and your kids were kind of scraping by and whatever. There wasn't a lot of caregiving because people just didn't live long. Social Security, Medicare, all this stuff was designed for people that live, like, to 65, you know, a lot of legal.

Rigmarole after somebody died either. Like, turning. Like closing out somebody's life and turning out the lights wasn't that hard, you know, years ago, right?

It wasn't complex. But now where there's like $80 trillion piled up by people like your parents, right? Good for them. And so on the one hand it's like, okay, you know, a lot of that could be used for their care, you know, hopefully will be used for their caregiving. I think also people, there's this whole other thing of like, how do you want to live, right? Like, you know, there's this whole die with zero. Like, you know, a lot of our users are going to have all their money, their maximum wealth in their 90s. Well, you know, for a lot of folks it's like actually use the money, enjoy yourself, like really value your human capital. I think this is a Zoroastrian, Sewell Wells. He's one of our top like folks that we work with. Partners. And like he talks about this, he's like, you know, by 65, 68, there's like this massive chance you're gonna, as a male especially, you're gonna have this medical thing that's gonna prohibit you from really like fully embracing your life. And like, you know, so you need to be not thinking like 90, you need to be thinking like, depending on your health, right? Like, you know, use your time, right, and like spend your money. But now we have this problem, right? Or a good problem, but really complex problem of like with all these dynamics, right? Of like a big pile of money, Siblings that think differently, parents that like have different levels of health care. And like, how do they, how do we make this easy and not too complicated? Help people look into their future, their parents future and their own future and like make these decisions about how they want to live their lives right before it just like happened for them, which is what happens. It's like it happened. I got the phone call. Here it is, you know, now deal with it.

Yeah, that is, it's a, it's a problem that doesn't lend itself to spreadsheets, that sort of thing. That's a family conversation. That's about your values and what you hold important. And you know, there's. That's part of money too.

Yeah. Well, this is where I think financial advice and coaching is going. Like the basic blocking and tackling of like trading and portfolio management, that's like commoditized, right? The job is help people see what, where they are today, what's likely to happen. Think about it in advance, pre negotiate this kind of stuff so that there's way less conflict and way more alignment and like prep it all Up. So it's like lower friction and just make those choices. Be much more intentional with your human capital and your money. Like, another big thing that's happening with millennials is like, they're like pressing mom and dad for like, give me money for the down payment. Probably Gen Z too, right? Which is fair. You know, like, don't take it all with you. Like, why not? Let's help your. We're having, you know, your grandchildren. We're having kids, you have grandchildren. And like, we could have a better life if we could buy a house now, right?

Yeah. I'm working on a story right now on whether people should, as part of their retirement decision making process, if they should work till their kids are 26 to keep them on their health plan. Like, should that be part of your retirement decision? You know, because I'm sure it is. I think about that all the time, you know, because the way the age that people have kids now, you're bumping up against that.

Yeah, for sure.

That didn't, you know, it didn't occur to my parents because, you know, first of all, there was no mandate for 26 back then. And, you know, they weren't at. They, they had kids young. You know, I had kids older. And so if I want to think about retiring at 26, it means they have to be launched enough to have their own health plans. And I don't know that they, I don't know that society is set up for them to be that launched at, you know, by that age.

Well, it's changing. Yeah, it's for sure. I mean, there's so much data about kids boomeranging now. Like a huge percentage of adult children move back in the house at some point. And I think many of us experience that. And I definitely think about this, like, I want to keep our, like, you know, the house we raised our kids in so that we can be kind of like a home base for people if necessary. But yeah, that comes with costs and everything else versus, like downsizing and stuff. I mean, we still have kids in high school and stuff like that. So, you know, do you. For your own life. I'm just curious, did. Did your, did your inheritance change your life and your perspective on your own work and like how you think about your life?

The inheritance. No, I mean, the inheritance was, was not like life changing sort of situation, but the lessons I learned from it did hit home. All those points about live the life you want to live and do the things that you want to do sooner rather than later. I mean, the fact that Both my parents died at 76. That's not that far away from me. And that really is terrifying, to be honest with you. Like, I want more time than that. So right now I have the same back condition that my mother had. And right now I'm like, I just. My prevailing thing is I don't want to end up in the same health condition as she did. I need to be healthier than that so that I can enjoy my life. And the health part of that, it's not about money for that. It's about lifestyle. And so I am, you know, really focused on that. But also, you know, my parents, I will say this, they Both died at 76, but they lived the hell out of their lives. They did not. They did exactly what they wanted to do and made no compromises to anybody. Anybody who knew my father knew that he did not care about what anybody thought and just did exactly what he wanted to do and pursued his own intellectual pursuits. He was, you know, like, that sounds wild, but, like, he liked to read books, you know, about literary theory. He wasn't, you know, going off on mountain climbing or anything like that, but he never had an answer to anybody, and he never had to do anything he didn't want to do. And to me, that was the greatest lesson in life. Like, I want to live like that.

Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, I think that's. I mean, our human capital is our scarcest resource, and, you know, we control it, and yet we treat it as, like, the least valuable asset. I think for many of us do, like, and, I mean, look, we're investing it. We, you know, I think most people kind of live their life, they're trying to take care of other people, their. Their kids, their parents, and then be smart about their own stuff. But, yeah, like, I appreciate that you appreciate the importance of. Of lifestyle and healthcare and like, health span. I think a lot of people really trying to emphasize that, like, we have to invest in ourselves, work out, eat healthy, all that, try not to have heart attacks and heal over.

I don't want to give away the end of the book, but the conclusion I come to is that any money. My mom liked us to be happy. My mom liked to give us treats, whether they were, you know, she was a baker and a cook. And so some of the treats were food related, but she liked to treat us and do nice things. And so the money that I have from both my parents, I call bubby money. You know, bubby is Yiddish for grandmother. Anytime that we do something a little bit extra we call that, you know, they're like. I'm like, don't worry about the cost. It's bubby money.

Okay?

You know, so like, I buy a pair of shoes that's more expensive than I would normally buy. That's bubby money. You know, sending the kids to college is bubby money. Anything that makes anything we do, that makes somebody smile, that's bubby money.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

Well, I think that your parents would want that for you and their grandchildren, right? Your children. So that's a good thing. I think they'd be like, psyched that their hard work resulted in this and hopefully. And it sounds like your family appreciates it, which is good too. I think that's another big thing. It's like, people need to understand their family histories and like the sacrifices that people make to kind of like, don't take it for granted. Right. And by the way, just one comment. It feels like there's so much data in here, but like, you know, this, this big wealth transfer, it's really concentrated at the higher end. It's like, oh, there's money. Yeah, well, certain people are going to inherit a ton of it and they trust fund kids. This trust fund idea is going to become like a bigger thing. I think you're going to see more trust fund kids and then there's a bunch of people. Or it'll be like your situation where it's like, okay, it's helpful, but doesn't it sounds like it's, you know, it's not nothing like if it's helping with education and stuff like that, like the difference.

So I was already living the life I wanted to live anyway. So I don't need to change anything because I was already. I was already doing what I wanted to be doing. So. But that was already the lesson my parents had given me anyway. You know, like, I grew up in a household where people were led to do the things they wanted to do. And so, like, I didn't have to like, cut loose and go crazy because I was already doing exactly what I.

Wanted to do already. Living the dream. That's good. If you were to kind of step back and say, okay, here's some. What are some practical things that people should consider or do? Like, now.

Make sure everybody you care about, including yourself, has a power of attorney and a healthcare proxy. Really easy to do. Make sure that your phone has a legacy contact named so that somebody could get into your phone. And make sure that you have some sort of plan for all of your stuff. If you Die something, Will a trust.

All the estate plan stuff. Yeah.

Like, if you have a house, that house needs a plan. A house doesn't necessarily need a will or a trust, but it needs a beneficiary deed or, you know, whatever your state allows you to have. Homestead exemption, you know, whatever that is. All of your bank accounts need beneficiaries. You want to avoid probate as much as possible and pass the assets seamlessly so that people don't get stuck with them. Like, I talked to a guy for my book who financial professional tax expert. His mom died and she passed the house to him at a will, and it took a year for him to get the clearance to sell the house. So he's sitting on that house for a year, paying all the bills on it before he can put it on the market. You know, like, that's a problem. You're sticking somebody with. Like, don't stick somebody with that problem.

Are there any services that you used? And like, I mean, I know, like, I know the guys at trust and will. There's all these different estate planning tools that are out there. You know, how did, did you find things that were useful?

I have resources in my book. I don't like to name specific ones just because I'm a journalist. And, you know, we don't, we don't endorse anything. There's plenty of help out there. You know, there's lawyers you can find, there's financial advisors. I send people generally to the professional organizations for these things, like the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, which is. Or Napa for finance fee only financial planners or even the CFP board. You, you know, you want to fee only, you know, hopefully an hourly rate instead of, you know, 1% of all your assets. But you need, you know, like, you're going to end up needing a lawyer. Somebody along the way is going to need a lawyer. You know, at some point, financial advisors helped. A lot of this you can do on your. A lot of the financial stuff you can do on your own.

Did you do most of it yourself or did you have an outside advisor helping you?

I did it all myself.

You did it all yourself? Yeah.

You know, the key question for my mom was just, you know, managing the, just making sure that the money would last. And, you know, I have a financial calculator. I know how to use it. Like, I would say that that is the number one thing that gave me peace of mind is being able to run those numbers. And I know you guys have a way of doing that I give away in the book to run those numbers, because it's not addition and subtraction. It's. It's way more complicated than that. And you need. Need some kind of, you know, calculator that can. Can run multiple scenarios and do growth at the same time. You're taking out money. Is. This is the thing is, like, so I always knew that she would be fine. Like, I always knew that there would be enough money. So I didn't panic. She panicked. She was like, no, this is costing so much money. We can't afford this. I'm like, wait, you know what? We can afford this, and you're okay.

I think so many people need to hear that message, right? They don't. I can't appreciate it. It's hard for them.

Yeah, it's really hard. And when it comes time, you know, people don't like to sell houses or cars or anything like that, but when your loved one is at the point where they need to go into a facility and they're not coming back out, you can sell the house.

Yeah, 100%. Okay. Well, this is great, Beth. This is super helpful. I think this story will resonate. It's actually hearing it. It's awesome to hear it in your words and what you went through. And hopefully people absorb the lesson and then also get the level of support they need. I mean, I think on our side, we see this problem, we see intergenerational planning happening. We also know that some people are diy. Some people need, like, coaching and support, and some people just want to outsource it. So we're trying to kind of, like, think about and head in this direction of being able to offer people this level of support. And I think the important thing is, like, people themselves need to recognize what. Where, you know, themselves and, like, you know, like. And, you know, like myself, like, I know there's always things I'm always learning, and there's things that I do, and then there's things that haven't happened and, like, should happen. And I'm in this space. Right. And so the data that you shared, 70% of people don't have wills. And then for the more advanced, like, poa, all this other stuff, like, people aren't there and they need to get there. It's a huge opportunity for the industry in general. Any final thoughts for the audience out here?

I answer questions on my website, so if there's anything else you want to ask, it's BethPinsker.com and you can submit a question and I will either answer them on the website. Or in my Market Watch column. And I'm hoping I'm like an ongoing dialogue with people and help people as they find the book and find me to be able to guide them to the right places.

Maybe you should go on YouTube and become a YouTube.

That's not for me. I don't have infrastructure.

You'd be surprised that like I meet so many people that have interesting things to say and then they get, you know, they're authentic people and sharing their stories and that builds trust and credibility. But. All right. Well Beth, thanks for joining us. This was great and for everyone listening, definitely bethpinsker.com you can also we'll put a link to her book My Mother's A Guide to Financial Caregiving. And you know, all reviews of this are welcome. Also hopefully you check out Beth's work at MarketWatch as well. So with that thanks for listening And Beth, thanks very much for joining and sharing your story.

Thank you.