Don't Neglect Estate Planning. Here's why. Ep. 96

I enjoy a well thought out plan of execution, and I’m lucky because Mallory, my wife, does as well. The pain with this mentality is that we tend to analyze things and come up with a game plan, then re-examine all the possible scenarios. At any rate, we tend to go into things wide-eyed. 

I haven’t always been this meticulous. In my teens and twenties, I enjoyed saying “yes” to new opportunities. It was easy to be spontaneous when you had limited bills and felt invisible. Why not jump off that cliff into the lake or ride that motorcycle, right?

In my twenties, I lived in Colorado for a couple of years, and my buddy, Chris, was out for the summer visiting. We had done a lot of hiking and camping together in Virginia, where I went to college, and naturally did a fair amount of hiking that summer in Colorado. One of the crown jewels of outdoor activities in Colorado is hiking to the top of 14,000 foot mountains. There are 54 mountain peaks in Colorado that are 14,000 feet or taller. I think I conquered five or six of them. More continued in show...

One area that I see where people could use a little extra planning is estate planning, so that they are not caught on the proverbial mountain with no water. Nobody wants to plan their demise, but having proper legal documents in place in the event that you are incapacitated or you pass away is important. I am not an attorney, but we have strategic partners that we refer our clients to assist with estate planning.

A will that goes over how your assets should be distributed is a key to ensuring that your wishes happen after you pass away. Having a healthcare and financial power of attorney is helpful if you are in the unfortunate situation of being incapacitated while you are still alive. I have sat in the hospital with a family member that did not have a healthcare power of attorney when a social worker came to visit. At that point, the pressure was put on me and other family members to decide how that person may want their end-of-life decisions made. I do not, personally, want anyone else to have to make those decisions for me. That is why we have elected to have estate planning documents drafted. We do not want to neglect this important detail.

I know this subject may be a little morbid but it is one topic that I have often seen placed on the back burner. If you have questions about estate planning or would like to be connected with an attorney outside of our office to discuss your particular situation, please give us a call at 864.641.7955.

Investment advisory services offered only by duly registered individuals through AE Wealth Management, LLC (AEWM). AEWM and Clients Excel, LLC are not affiliated companies. Investing involves risk, including potential loss of principal. Any references to protection, safety, or lifetime income, generally refer to fixed insurance products, never securities or investments. Insurance guarantees are backed by the financial strength and claims paying abilities of the insuring carrier. This podcast is intended for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be used as the sole basis for financial decisions, nor should it be construed as advice designed to meet particular needs of an individual’s situation. Clients Excel is not permitted to offer and no statement made during this show shall constitute tax or legal advice. Our firm is not affiliated with or endorsed by the U.S. Government or any governmental agency. The information and opinions contained herein provided by third parties have been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed by Clients Excel. The use of logos and/or trademarks of podcast hosting sites are the property of their respective owners and are not an endorsement by those owners of our firm or our program.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Excel in Retirement Show, where financial planning becomes understandable. Your host, David C. Treese, is a licensed financial advisor who specializes in retirement income planning. David's desire for each of his clients is to have financial confidence, protection and growth. We believe this is achievable with the right plan in place. Together, we'll build a plan specific to your financial goals. We work with clients all over, and we'd love to connect with you. Go to clientsexcel.com to connect with us. If you'd like to speak with us, call our office at 864-641-7955. Thanks for listening. Now to the show.

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Welcome back to episode 96, 9-6 of the Excel in Retirement. There's actually a little town south, I guess it's southeast of Spartanburg, called 96. It's the letter spelled out. It's not a numerical name. It's a letter name, I guess you'd say. But it's 96. It's in the middle of nowhere, a little rural area. So if you're ever visiting, you may see it on a sign if you're going down Highway 26. Yeah. I enjoy a well-thought-out plan of execution, and I feel lucky because Mallory, my wife, does also. The pain, though, with this mentality is that we tend to analyze things and come up with a game plan, then we re-examine all the possible scenarios, and at any rate, we tend to go into situations pretty wide-eyed, and it can be helpful. I like trying to think of all the possible scenarios or possible things that might come up, so that we're not caught flat-footed. That is the name of the game. I haven't always been this meticulous about planning, though. In my teens and twenties, I enjoyed saying yes to new opportunities. It was easy to be spontaneous when you have limited bills and you feel invisible. Why not jump off that cliff into the lake or ride that motorcycle down the interstate, right? Why not do all these things? It caused my mom a lot of distress, and if she only knew all the stories, she probably really would have been distressed. But in my 20s, I lived in Colorado for a period of time. And my buddy Chris was out for the summer visiting. And we had done a lot of hiking and camping together in Virginia where I went to school. And naturally, we did a fair amount of hiking that summer in Colorado also. And one of the crown jewels of outdoor activities in Colorado is hiking mountains that are 14,000 feet or higher. So 14ers is what they're called. And there are 50 mountain peaks in the state that are 14,000 feet or taller. And I think I conquered five or six of them. And they all have different varying degrees of difficulty. Some of them, there's two of them that you can drive up. If you never want to do the arduous activities of hiking up a mountain, you can drive up two of them. You can drive up to Pikes Peak down near Colorado Springs, or you can drive up Mount Evans, which is is closer to Denver. And I believe Mount Evans is the highest paved road in North America. And those are fun activities and you may get a lot of enjoyment out of that. And believe it or not, just driving up there and spending a little bit of time, it was fatiguing to my body. Your body works harder at altitude. And so that is something to consider when you're planning that activity. But one of the big things is hiking up these things. And some of them are easy walk-ups and some of them are take a lot of mountaineering, so to speak, and require a lot of attention to detail. And so Chris was planning to go back home. He was working at Starbucks out there that summer. We had worked together at Starbucks in Virginia, and he was just substituting at a store out there. And so he was planning to go back home to Virginia. And so without a lot of thought or research, we decided to climb Mount of the Holy Cross, which is out near Vail. And we had just asked another buddy, hey, have you hiked any of these mountains? Which one should we do? And our buddy said he had done that one. So we decided to do it. The mountain appears, though, Mount of the Holy Cross appears to have a cross etched in the side of it. And people have been climbing this mountain since the first record. It was in 1873. So we thought, what could possibly go wrong? People have been doing this for hundreds of years now, right? As it turns out, like most everything, the more prepared you are, the better outcome you tend to have. So we got to sleep late the night before, and we needed to get up really early to make the drive to the trailhead. It was a couple hours away. But we took our time. We were feeling very confident in our abilities. We took our time and drank a lot of coffee that morning. And we should have started this hike before sunrise, probably a couple hours before sunrise. And the rule of thumb is that you want to be off of the mountaintop by noon. Afternoon storms can quickly change the weather at altitude. And you might see rain, snow, sleet, hail, anything that afternoon. And it doesn't really matter what time of the year it is. the weather can change very quickly when you're up that high. Also, you really tend to get dehydrated at altitude, so plenty of water is essential. And if you are ever out west and you're at altitude in Colorado or anywhere out there, hydration isn't a day of thing. It takes a couple days to get hydrated. And so if you're ever planning a trip out there, it might be helpful to start your hydration process a few days early. So drink more water a few days leading up to it. But we finished our ascent up Mount of the Holy Cross that afternoon around three o'clock. And we felt okay because we saw two other sets of hikers doing the same thing. They were going up at the same time we were. And your body, again, tends to fatigue a lot quicker when you're going up altitude. So when we finished, we're at the top of this beautiful mountain, literally sitting on top of the world. It's a breathtaking experience. I highly recommend it. But you are tired, or I was tired. And It takes a certain level of fitness to do these types of hikes, and we were tired. Uh, we were very tired. And so I looked over at Chris one time and he looked okay. And then a few minutes later, I looked back at him and his whole disposition had changed. Have you ever looked at someone one minute and they look fine, everything's cool. And then a few minutes later, their disposition changes. Well, Chris, the reason his disposition had changed is he had not brought enough water and he was dehydrated. And we had a very long hike back to the Jeep at that point. The last part of the hike going up, we had to traverse these rocks. It's like these big boulders of rocks. And it was difficult. And it's hard on your body. And even in my 20s, it was hard on my knees going up this stuff. And we made it a point, though, that we wanted to get off this rock area before dark. That was our number one goal because it would have been nearly impossible to get down unharmed in the dark. And so... We got so desperate for hydration at one point that we started picking up snow and trying to put it in our water bottles to drink it. It was pretty bad. And we had one flashlight with us and I was walking behind Chris. I think I had a headlamp and it was one foot in front of the other. It's just assessing what the situation is and taking it one step at a time. And that's literally what happened. And I thought several times we were going to have to sleep out there that night. We may should have, uh, But we finally got back to the Jeep around 10 o'clock, a little after 10 o'clock that night. And we were caught in a very bad situation in this scenario because we had not prepared well enough. One area where I see people and I see people that may need a little extra planning and they could really get hurt by not being prepared, either them or maybe their children or beneficiaries of whoever is going to inherit their money, is when they have not done anything estate planning or have not done it properly. So they get caught on the proverbial mount with no water. And nobody wants to plan their demise, of course, but proper legal documents and having them in place in the event that we're incapacitated or we pass away is super important. Now, it should be noted that I am not an attorney. But we have strategic partners that we refer our clients to to assist with estate planning. But I'll briefly touch on some of the high-level things that estate planning helps with. A basic will that goes over how your assets should be distributed is key to ensuring that your wishes happen after you pass away. If you haven't set up beneficiaries on your accounts, that's a good thing to do if it's possible. And that could help the flow of your money to go where is supposed to and for there not to be any probate issues when you pass away. Also, having a health care or trying to eliminate those possible problems. We can't eliminate all problems altogether all the time, but we can certainly take measures to try to mitigate those risks. Also, though, having a health care and financial power of attorney is helpful if we're in an unfortunate situation of being incapacitated while we're still alive. Now, listen... I've been sitting in the hospital with a family member that did not have a healthcare power of attorney. So what happens when this happens? So the person is incapacitated. They're not able to make decisions for themselves. So a social worker will come by and visit with the family. And at that point, the pressure is applied to the family for them to decide how that person that's incapacitated, their loved one, may want their end of life decisions to be made. And I don't want anyone to be in that situation for me personally, having to make those decisions for me. That's why I have elected to have an estate planning attorney draft documents for me and Mallory and have that set up because that's decisions that you don't want to put that emotional burden burden on a family member or maybe a child. And so we don't want to neglect this important detail. And also it can be very helpful for making sure your assets flow to where they're supposed to go to. If you were to pass away and your accounts are not do not have beneficiaries set up, and there's not a will in place, it could prolong how long it takes for the people that will ultimately inherit your money to get it. And if it's really a mess or there's problems, they may have to hire an attorney to help sort through it. And then your savings and what you've worked hard for is going to attorney's fees. So you can take care of that or help your family and help yourself with a healthcare and financial power of attorney but help your family with a will or a trust if that's appropriate for you by having these matters taken care of beforehand. I know this subject may be a little morbid and that's not my desire, but this topic often gets overlooked or put on the back burner and it's very important. It's important also that after you have documents drafted that you pull them out and look at them and review them every four to five years. That's why it can be also helpful to have a local estate planning attorney or one that is in your state to review your documents. And an estate planning attorney should be keeping up with law changes if there's anything that happens in the legislator in your state. And they can be helpful for making a call to them every four or five years, making sure that your estate plan is good. And so a good estate planning attorney will provide that resource to you. And so if you have questions, though, I'd be happy to speak with you or connect you with one of our strategic attorney partners. Our telephone number is 864-641-7955. I hope you have a great day, and we'll be back next week for episode 97.

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Investment advisory services offered only by duly registered individuals through AE Wealth Management, LLC. A.E. Wealth Management and Clients Excel are not affiliated companies. Investing involves risk, including potential loss of principal. Transcription by CastingWords Clients Excel is not permitted to offer and no statement made during this show shall constitute tax or legal advice. Our firm is not affiliated with or endorsed by the U.S. government or any governmental agency. The information and opinions contained herein provided by third parties have been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed by Clients Excel. The use of logos and or trademarks of podcast hosting sites are the property of their respective owners and are not an endorsement by those owners of our firm or our program