Power Up Wealth podcast – Episode 86 – Navigating Life’s Unexpected Transitions
James Derrick 0:00
Ready or not, life’s events happen when we least expect them. I’m James Derrick, today we will explore navigating life’s unexpected transitions with our expert and guest Parker Thompson.
Sharla Jessop 0:22
Welcome to the SFS Power Up Wealth podcast where we provide impactful insight and expert opinions on timeless financial principles and timely investment topics, preparing you to make smarter decisions with your money.
James Derrick 0:45
Thank you for joining me today, Parker.
Parker Thompson 0:47
I appreciate you having me on.
James Derrick 0:48
Parker is a private wealth consultant at Smedley Financial Services, and he is a Certified Financial Planner. Parker recently wrote about navigating life’s unexpected transitions. And Parker, I love this idea. These transitions come whether we’re ready for them or not, and there are all kinds of transitions that we see happening to people around us. Do you want to just briefly cover what are some examples of transitions that you’re thinking about as you wrote this?
Parker Thompson 1:12
The ones that I’m thinking about are debt, disability, divorce and dementia. And it’s a funny saying that my grandma actually used to mention that most of her friends are either dying, dead or divorced or demented. We laugh at that, but that’s a true it’s really a true event that some of these things happen without us really anticipating them. Some of these we actually get the opportunity to think and see and and maybe prepare for, but a lot of these are unexpected. That’s unfortunate, and it leaves people as divorcees and widows and widowers and parentless and a lot of the times kind of floundering around about what they should do, or, in a lot of ways, trying to figure out what’s left and pick up the pieces and figure it all out.
James Derrick 1:54
So I’m curious, because this is a pretty broad list of things, death, disability, divorce, dementia. What are some of the common threads or common problems among these different transitions or different challenges in life?
Parker Thompson 2:10
Yeah, here’s what I see the most. I see the widow that has a husband that did most of the financial know how or actions, or paid the bills or took care of the finances in the family, and that has passed away, and the widow is left with all the pieces to pick up and trying to figure out how to pay certain bills and how to log into certain things and trying to take care of these different accounts, assets, liabilities that they have without really having experience of doing that prior to the husband passing away. The same can be said for the kids that when their parents pass away, and all of a sudden, all of a sudden, you’re the executor of your parents estate, or you are their caretaker, and you now are burdened or shouldered with most of the responsibility of taking care of their estate, or taking care and continuing what they had going. For a parent in need, can see how it doesn’t necessarily have to be husband versus wife or, you know, widow. But even even some of the divorces that we see that had a husband or a wife that has taken care of most of these things, that are now on their own, and they have to figure out how to pick up the pieces and do this all by themselves.
James Derrick 3:13
Yeah, I’ve even heard stories of people hiding valuables in the house. And, I mean, there’s a great deal of risk in that, because if, if something happens to you, it doesn’t even have to be death if something happens, how’s anybody going to find that it takes a stroke of luck to to find it. Communication is your first piece of advice. Could you talk a little bit about what do you see that people do well with communication? And where do you see that they fall short?
Parker Thompson 3:41
Yeah, I think the couples that do this really well are just the ones that get together on a very regular basis, and they talk about their finance, and I say very regular. And that doesn’t mean that we have to get together once a month, and pow wow about, you know, where each of our accounts and what dollar amount are they, and how do we access them, but maybe at least once a year we get together and we say, what do we have out there, and how do we list it all down? And where do we find these things. Just having that conversation, you’d be surprised how better off some of these couples are, or siblings or parents that have to then deal with these things, at least they know and have heard and can visualize what some of those things are out there. You’d be surprised how easy it is to just sit down and have that conversation. Those are the couples that I see doing it very well, right? The ones that don’t do it so well are the ones that have never been a part of those conversations. Have never understood the reason why they have certain accounts out there, or why they have a savings account at this bank, or an investment account, and what type of an account is it? That’s when they begin to be very flustered, and they come in and they really start to ask for help trying to figure it all out, because they’ve never had that conversation before.
James Derrick 4:45
So you don’t go here in in the article that you wrote, but I’m kind of curious, as a wealth consultant, as a as a financial advisor, how do you play a role in the communication? Are you like the middleman? Do you see yourself as a middleman between different individuals?
Parker Thompson 5:01
I see myself as more of like an educator or a teacher. When they come in and they present to me all these different accounts or things that they have no prior knowledge of or how to handle it, I’m more teaching them about what these types of accounts are, what they’re used for. Why you may have had these certain accounts open, and where they may be placed. And then the next question is, usually, how do I get access to them, or how do I transfer them into my name? Or how do I, you know, tap into them to pay for expenses that have to do with this loved one passing away or being disabled? And that’s where I can usually lead them to either the company or the person that they need to talk to in order to get that if I can’t, if I can facilitate it myself, then, then, yeah, we can be the middleman, a lot of it is just education and teaching. That’s why I put communication as as one of those Paramount things, is that if people just knew the why behind these accounts or insurance policies or so on so forth, it would answer a lot of questions.
James Derrick 5:54
Forgive me, I want to go down this rabbit hole for a second. How hard is it to change the name? How long does it take to get access if someone is dealing with dementia or divorce or death? Is it a long process, or can you do this pretty quickly for your clients?
Parker Thompson 6:13
It can be. If we have everything set up and prepared on the front end and ready to transition. If that ever does happen, it can be pretty quick. It’s a matter of getting together and making sure that we if we need to open up accounts, we open accounts, we switch them over, and doing the transfer of the assets is usually pretty quick process of everything is set forth and good, but it can also take months or even longer for some of these things that happen, because some of these companies, they have their tiers and or they have the all these different hoops that you need to jump through. And a lot of the times, I’m the middleman with some of these transactions, and so those can take a long time, and it, it’s, it’s actually a little bit more discouraging for the person that we’re helping too. Part of this process is that they’re trying to grieve the loss, or, you know, the divorce at the same time, is trying to gather all these pieces. And it’s just deflating all across the board, because they don’t know how to get through to these companies. So a lot of the times, we can be an advocate on that side and help push those things through. But that’s why we like to have our hands on it and at least know of it and prepare for it and create these plans beforehand so that it goes a lot smoother and faster.
James Derrick 7:14
I hadn’t thought about that process of grieving, regardless of which transition we’re talking about, there’s a lot of emotion involved, and the more you get lined up ahead of time is really going to help you, so that you’re not overwhelmed.
Parker Thompson 7:27
Right. One of the processes that or one of the sayings that we like to tell people is that in their grieving process, they have to make hundreds, if not 1000s, of decisions, and we would hate for them to have to make, you know, the decisions about the finances when they’re they’re trying to make decisions about how to take care of a loved one, or how to run a funeral or how to it’s a time where you’re already grieving the person. We don’t want to add to that stress with things that matter a lot less than just taking care of people with financial and administrative tasks.
James Derrick 7:27
The next thing you talk about is setting up access. Access to what? and I think this is going to be new to a lot of people, something that we don’t typically think about.
Parker Thompson 8:05
Yeah, I’m surprised how many couples are stuck at the very first they can’t get into a certain phone or a certain computer or a certain document that would help them a lot more if it was actually created on the front end of where to get to some of the accounts and access things.
James Derrick 8:22
So, like, if I’m logging into an account nowadays, everything is two-factor authentication. If it’s not, it probably should be, right? So I try to log in, and it’s gonna say, we’re sending you a text message. And it’s like, well, it could be to my wife’s phone or to my wife’s email. And it’s like, do I have access to that?
Parker Thompson 8:42
Yeah, do you know the passwords to their devices? Are you? Do you have a, do you have someone? Obviously, we need to make sure that there’s a trusted relationship between you and this other person. You don’t want to just go and hand out access to your phone, your computer, you know, essentially your life, to just anyone. You want to make sure this is someone that you trust. But having that access means that, in the case that you are disabled or don’t have cognitive function, or, you know, there’s some sort of a split where that person is not currently there, but it needs to happen urgently, or, or it’s important. Being able to access some of those devices where key information is held is is really, actually a great way to to get those that ball moving in that case right? Or to be able to access important information that matters, that’s that’s maybe pertinent or even urgent.
James Derrick 9:26
Interesting. And so phone access would be one thing most people don’t think about that could solve a lot of problems.
Parker Thompson 9:33
Yeah, I’ve heard of actually widows and widowers that will actually just keep their spouse’s phone for six months to a year after they’ve passed on.
James Derrick 9:40
You’re paying the fees on it.
Parker Thompson 9:42
You’re still paying the fees. But it’s worth it, because for stuff that comes up three months, six months a year later, sometimes they need to get into that phone and access certain apps or certain documents or certain notes that they didn’t think of before, right? And you want to make sure you have that information somewhere. That’s the same for a computer. That’s the same for we’re. Talking about technology, this is the same for even where’s the key placed, for a certain safe right, where I can get to a file that has information that I need. Setting up that access, making sure people know where things are located helps out a lot.
James Derrick 10:13
This is starting to feel a little bit heavy, and I think that’s probably why your last point is set up a guide. So let’s talk about, you know, how to keep track of all of these accounts, pass codes, everything.
Parker Thompson 10:30
I think this can seem very daunting, and this can seem like it’s a lot of work, and man, I need to set up and remember all these things. But my task in this article is to make it simple, right, to have a systematic way to go about, to list all the the accounts, all the investments, the assets, the liabilities, all the important documents. Have somewhere where someone can go to access those that gives them all the information. Where is it? What is it for? Why is it set up the way it is? How to get to it these things? I’m going to call it a reference guide for now, until I find a better name. But just to be able to have that somewhere, and if someone knows how to access it, makes that job so much easier. Half the battle for some of these divorces and and widows and widowers is, where do I go? Who do I talk to? How do I contact them? And this document is at least at a basic level, the start of that.
James Derrick 11:21
You know, what’s interesting about this idea, too, is it doesn’t have to be perfect, like if you have anything, anything is better than nothing.
Parker Thompson 11:30
There are some people that just keep pen and paper. We don’t recommend this. Shane is going to give me the eye here that that we shouldn’t be doing this. But on pen and paper, there are passwords for all their logins. That’s at least something. Bonus points if you have a password manager that’s secure, right? We support that wholeheartedly. That has all the passwords and logins collected, and someone can just get into that and be able to access all the different accounts that you had, investment logins, Social Security website, whatever it may be, just having that is better than something. This doesn’t have to be a whole binded book that is perfectly typed out and worded perfect, like you said, anything is better than nothing, because it gives someone a start to where to where to look for things.
James Derrick 12:12
Do you keep personally? Do you have, like, a checklist that you’ll you kind of run down when people come in with a transition to make sure you’re not missing anything.
Parker Thompson 12:21
We have essentially just big overarching themes of what we should look at. We start with, okay, who are the advisors? Who are the people to talk to that have control or can give more information about someone’s situation? What are people’s assets? What are your you know what are the investment accounts, things that you have that that are dollar amounts or of value, other financial information that’s related to that. Then we go through, what are the liabilities? What insurance policies do you have out there? What are benefits you have that you’ve been paying for, that you’ve been given, that people need to know about, that they neither need to cash in on or or end, you know, stop subscriptions on things. What documents do we have and other information? Where is the estate documents. Where are the legal documents? Where can I find those? How do I put those into motion? And then any other words of advice or kind of the why behind you, why you’ve done what you’ve done with your financial situation? I think that’s kind of a very high bird’s eye view, 30,000 foot look at it. But that’s why we’re going to dive into these with future articles is going to these subjects and sections a little bit more to figure out. How can we really flush these out in a reference document like this?
James Derrick 13:28
Fantastic. I think you just opened Pandora’s box. In my mind, when you said subscriptions. I thought, wow, like that could be a lot of things and a lot of monthly expenses going out, and maybe some of them I want to keep, and some I don’t. And so there’s, there’s a lot to think about. Parker, thank you for coming in today to talk about this. I really appreciate your time.
Parker Thompson 13:49
Yeah, pleasure to be here.
Shane Thomas 13:56
Thank you for joining the Power Up Wealth podcast. Smedley Financial is located at 102 S 200 E Ste 100 in Salt Lake City, UT 84111. Call us today at 800-748-4788. You can also find us on the web at Smedleyfinancial.com, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The views expressed are Smedley Financials and should not be construed directly or indirectly as an offer to buy or sell any securities or services mentioned herein. Investing is subject to risks, including loss of principal invested. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. No strategy can assure a profit nor protect against loss. Please note that individual situations can vary. Therefore, the information should only be relied upon when coordinated with individual professional advice. Securities offered through Osaic Wealth, Inc., member FINRA/SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through Smedley Financial Services, Inc.® Osaic Wealth is separately owned, and other entities and/or marketing names, products, or services referenced here are independent of Osaic Wealth.
