I’m Single, Now What? Rebuilding Your Financial Life After Loss or Divorce

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicit or implies shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or it's employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. Welcome to the Ask Good Questions Podcasts, broadcasting live every Wednesday, six pm Eastern Time on W four CY Radio at w fourcy dot com. This week and every week, we will reach for a higher purpose in money and life, as well as a focus on health and wellness. Now, let's join your host, Anita bell Anderson, as together we start with Asking Good Questions.

1:01 Hey, hello, and welcome to the Ask Good Questions podcast. We are so happy that you're here today and we have a wonderful podcast episode today with a fellow advisor in this crazy industry, We're going to talk a little bit about being women in this industry. So with that said, I would like to invite Lena Nebelle to the podcast stage. Hello Lena, Hello, thank you for having me. Yeah, so, Lena and I are why I'm still in Hawaii. She's on the East Coast, so but you know, the magic of technology makes it work. So let me tell you a little bit about Lena. She is a CFP in MSFS where I have my letters. But they're basically professional designations that take a lot of work. Wouldn't you agree?

2:00 I would absolutely agree it takes a lot of work to get these designations. She is the president and CEO of b FS b FG Financial Advisors, and she joined that firm in twenty eighteen and had nearly two decades of financial advisory experience. So in her in her mind, being a you know, being a successful and trustworthy financial planner meant taking the time to listen and carefully understand each each client's you know, issues and fears and problems, and having a deep bench of team members to collaborate with.

2:45 And she discovered her passion for finances as a at a young age from setting up lemonade stands. You must have been as cute little things to you know, having a lemonade stand I can just so. But she also on the other side, she witnessed the financial struggles of her parents as she grew older. So in two thousand and seven she became the first female president of the Financial Planning Association of Maryland, where she was also presented with a Leadership Award for her board service. And she's passionate also, and I think this is fantastic. She's passionate about inspiring young students, girls especially to want to pursue careers in finance, and is a regular guest speaker for middle and high school classes and after school student groups.

3:41 I think that's just fantastic. Thank you. Is there anything else you'd like to add to that? No, I think we're good. We have left about being able to have long discussions just between the two of us about our women because it has been for the large, for a large shield many many years, very male, male dominated women bring a very I would say, just a different way of listening and kind of a nurturing approach that a lot of people enjoy. And she, like I have had experiences where people say I want to work with her, and so it's always been it's always been great. So how how did you come into this. Let's start with that. How did you come into this industry?

4:36 So going back in time, when I went to college, I went to your College of Pennsylvania. At that point in time, my mom took me to the library to research all the scholarships that were available. I knew I wanted something in business, but I wasn't sure. What I realized through that process was because my older brother didn't have to do all this work to try to get financial aid and scholarships. And she told me that my grandfather set aside money for my brother, but that women don't go to college. So right then I started having kind of that mindset of the differences of male and female.

5:17 So I went to York and I started pursuing different areas of business. I started the first investment club at the college, and we went to the New York Stock Exchange. We went to Philly to where we saw different hedge fund companies, and the one thing that was extremely apparent was that I was one of the minorities there. You know, there was the females that I saw were the secretaries. Okay they and that wasn't what I aspired to be at that point in my life. You know, I wanted to be more of the decision makers, not necessarily you know, the boss. But I didn't just I didn't. I wanted more, I guess is the best way to say it. And actually a couple of years ago, I was looking back in some photo albums and I found the picture that we took on the bus traveling to New York and it's just me, me rather gentlemen on the bus going on to the exchange. So through college, I just I started gravitating more towards investments, more towards financial planning. I landed an internship with back then it was Dean Witter. Then, as I got caught out by other companies, it was very Wolf of Wall Street mentality there, and I realized, you know, that's probably not at my speed at this moment.

6:32 So I then got an internship with a financial planning firm and fell in love. I knew I wanted to get the designations of a certified financial planner. I really wanted to help clients in all areas of planning. And then from there it just took off. Well see, and my feeling is, if you tell a woman that you can't do something, then guess what, right he's going to do. It exactly exactly. And you know, I grew up visiting my mom at work, and she worked at the local police station, the local county police station, where she was kind of in this little group in the finance committee with all these other women, and so I was kind of around a lot of working women. So I knew I wanted something along those lines.

7:26 I would watch my mom work a full day, come home, get dinner, get the kids to sports activities, and do all those things. And so I already had. It in my mindset that that was going to kind of be my life. But I think it just drove me faster on really differentiating myself within my classmates and everything, on doing something that most women don't. Right well, and where you started out, right, you know, fairly early. I started out in this industry after a huge divorce. And so one of the things when I saw when I met Lena. We have both written and we've both been concerned about widows and divorces and the massive changes that that can mean for them as they're going into a brand new phase of life. So that's primarily what we're going to talk about today, is because there's way too many of those out there who need some help right and they need to know what to do about it. So it's the beginning of a new year.

8:37 When you think about a widow or a divorce facing a new year alone for the first time, what's the very first thing you would want her to hear from a financial advisor? You know, I think from the standpoint of if they're newly divorced or they just lost to spouse and you're kind of starting off the year. What I honestly, what I tell clients in those situations is I'm here, we're here, we're a resource for you. We're going to get through this. And so it's kind of starting off the beginning of the year of coming up with let's talk about two to three things that we're going to tackle, and we just kind of take those bite sized pieces and work together each quarter each month to tackle it. I think when you put the laundry list together, of this is everything we're going to do in the year, that's overwhelming.

9:29 Nobody's going to do that. You go over there. So, as you mentioned earlier, you know, women tend to just we have a different way of listening. We're more patient with certain things. I love how the title of this is ask good questions, because that's all I do is ask questions. I think that's one of the things that makes me a great planner because I ask a lot of questions. It annoyed my brother a lot growing up, but I did it anyway. So I think by kind of setting the stage first and foremost and letting them know I'm here or your support system and everything, and then starting to come up with what are the things that we need to start working on.

10:10 What's the most important, What's not that important that can wait a few months, but let's get the things that need to get done right now right Well. Both of us have worked with clients that are, you know, super vulnerable. It's just a overwhelming time. Like you said, so what have you learned about the emotional side of money decisions right after the death of a spouse or a divorce, Because you know, what I've told people is this is it's a death, either a death of a marriage or a death of that person that you relied on. So what do you think about the whole idea of emotional decisions around money. Everybody's going to have emotional decisions around money, and so it's our job to remove that emotion. I'm actually personally going through it right now where I've lost my uncle about a month ago to Parkinson's and working with the family on making some certain decisions that have to be made.

11:07 And I told them that I have to remove the emotions and put the financial advisor hat on and tell you this is what makes the most sense financially for the family for long term, et cetera. And that's hard because we're not in their shoes. So it's giving them the education and the confidence on being able to make certain decisions. And what I would say is specifically around a divorce, most women tend to want to hang on to the items that they don't need to hang on to. And you may have some real life experience on this one, but the house, right, everybody wants to keep the house.

11:48 I didn't have you when I was going through this, darn it. And it's it's so tough because I get it. I get why you want to hold onto that house. But you give up a pension, you're giving up you're signing away the four and K, You're giving up all these other things that you will regret down the road. So I try to make it very clear in a compassionate way of why we may not want to keep the house and how this can benefit you and your family into the future by maybe shifting something around differently. Yeah, well you mentioned just a little bit about waiting or maybe not waiting in those early months after after this loss, after this divorce. What do you think are the financial decisions that absolutely should not be rushed and which ones can't wait?

12:46 So I think the things anything that's an irrevocable decision, you know, we want to kind of hold off on. I don't want to take all the life insurance proceeds and pay off all the debt right away or a big mortgage, because maybe we need those proceeds to generate income if the spouse isn't working. So I think first we take a look at the debt picture of do we have bad debt, Do we have some credit card debts that we can just quickly clean up. I think that's important depending on if the spouse is working and if we need any income. Starting to look at do we have to file Social Security? Do we have to apply for pension survivorship? Are their assets sitting out there we need to get into your name so that we can start generating income. So it's really looking at the clients balance sheet and cash flow picture to then prioritize what must be done.

13:35 Now. Well, I know, I characterize myself as being curled up in a little ball sucking my thumb. You know, I just it just completely, Lena, It completely discombobulated me for a while. And so, how do you think grief or shock show up in the way people think about money, And how do you feel you can help them slow down, take a breath to start making some wise decisions. I see grief and shock and emotion show up by how they're spending. They're you know, they're they're spending on things that they really don't need because they don't want to focus on what.

14:25 They're actually going through. And you know, that's us having to be proactive and have those conversations with them and reach out to them frequently and check in and kind of get a handle of If I get a feeling that somebody is going to start spending through some money and everything, then I'm reaching out to them more frequently on making sure things get taken care of. And maybe that's when we do pay off some debt so that they don't have that cash that's available. But it is tough. I mean, you know, especially when somebody is emotional or almost paralyzed with fear. You're not sure should I buy it? Should I not buy it? And I think as advisors, we have to show that we are that support system and we're here to help them through those decisions. And sometimes that's telling them the things that they don't want to hear, which is, no, you shouldn't give a certain amount of money to your kids because you need it right right.

15:24 Yeah, you make me think I have a very good friend and if she's listening to this, she's going to know who she is. She called me every single day to see how I was doing. I mean, it was, without fail, she was calling me to see how I was doing. So what I'm referring to is kind of that support system. So what are some ways that widows or divorcees can build that support system. Maybe maybe it's going to be professionals, Maybe it's going to be friends, maybe it's going to be family, Because I think there is a real danger in making financial decisions and isolation. And so I think what you're talking about, you know, it's how do you encourage people to do that, to kind of step back and get that support system going. Yeah.

16:12 I love the support system I learned. I have a great example from early on in my career that I share often with clients that are going through this. I met a new client. She was young, she. Had a son who was about eight, twin daughters who are about three, and lost her husband at an early age, and she would have her sister in law at either every meeting or she would just run through the recommendations that I was giving her to her sister in law because she would say, Lena, I trust you, I'm just all over the place right now. I just need a clean set of eyes. And I respected that and I understood that.

16:53 So to this day, when somebody is going through that situation, I ask them, is there somebody that you'd like to have as part to this meeting? Is there anybody that you want to incorporate in these conversations to help to bounce those ideas off of Sometimes I think advisors are threatened by that which they shouldn't be. I think it helps with the relationship. I think that there's you know, we do some extra steps at our office to where we incorporate different type of info sharing letters to where you know people can kind of join that conversation, ask those questions, and be their advocate. So I love it when people have that support system because it gives that client that extra confidence as well, because when you're caught up in that feudal position, you are not feeling good about yourself. You are not confident whatsoever in any decision you were going to make. But when you find the professionals that you enjoy working with, that you trust, and then it's validated by close friends and family, that makes it that much better.

17:52 You know. What I've thought of too, just came to my mind was if you have that person, you know what, it's going to benefit them because they're listening and they're watching you go through this, so it's going to help them in their own you know, it may affect how they do some planning down the road too, which I think is just a bonus for that extra person. Oh. Absolutely, I have this one client. Her sister is always part of the conversation because her sister would always manage the money. But her sister realized, Okay, it's getting a little too complicated now, so you should meet with an advisor. So the sister is part of the conversation, and always the sister will say, well, you know what, on my situation, I kind of have this going on. I wonder if I should do so. Yeah, it's just it's a funny dynamic, but you're absolutely right.

18:43 Well, let's let's transition into the scintillating topic of cash flow and budgeting. Paying yourself first, let's talk about some of the issues I want to you know, paying yourself first. I think people have a really hard time doing Yeah, what does that look like? You know when maybe some people may not know what's what's paying yourself first, but what does that practically look like for someone who's income and expenses may have changed dramatically. Yeah, absolutely, you know, I think from the from the pay yourself first mentality as you know, and you know, kind of educating your listeners as well. You know, it's about putting money aside into other investments, other savings before it really goes into your spending bank accounts. So you're kind of starting to give that money to you but through different vehicles. And it's challenging for clients where maybe they've never budgeted or they don't know what they're spending on.

19:44 So I try to walk them through some very basic steps of you know, kind of looking at your average spending on your bank statement because everything is running through the bank. If somebody has never maxed out retirement plans at work and we need them to do that, we talk strategies about how maybe utilizing the life insurance proceeds to go into the bank account and then increasing the contributions and then doing regular transfers from the savings to the checking is kind of their payroll because they're redirecting savings into other ways. But I think from a. Situation to where your cash flow, your income, your expenses have changed dramatically through a death or a divorce, you still have to sit down and assess where you are.

20:30 You still have to. Determine, you know, what's coming up, what do I need to plan on? And because your world has just been rocked and that takes time, you don't know if you're. Still going to go on that vacation or if you're still going to buy that car. I mean, everything changes. Yeah, So how do you help someone get started on a new spending plan. A lot of people think budgeting is a dirty word. Maybe we just use cash flow cash you and cash out. But how do you get someone to take that proactive step of starting a new spending plan. So I take it slowly, quite honestly, we look at, Okay, what's the income that we used to have that we no longer have, and we try to replace that income.

21:19 So it feels like there's no major changes on day one. So if we can try to replace what was lost, then we can slowly begin to adjust behaviors to determine, well, is that money just building up in the bank account then we really don't need all that income and we can adjust, or are you now spending all of that when it's just you versus it being two of you? So that's where you have to have the tough conversations of can you continue to afford to do this or do we need to look. At other things. I talk a lot with clients about looking at some of those miscellaneous expenses that you don't even realize that you're paying on all the streaming services, all the iCloud storage payment, like it's just that ten dollars a month, twenty dollars a month. That adds up very quickly. So again, bite size items to start knocking off your list. And especially with somebody who has maybe never looked at any of those things or doesn't know where the sign on access is to everything. It takes time, and it takes patients and going through it. But I would say the majority of individuals hate the B word. Nobody wants to budget.

22:33 Budget is scary. Budget is saying you're going to tell me what I can live off of, and I want to live off of more. So cash lows a more user friendly word. And I also in all of you know, I my twenty five years in the industry, I taught a lot of social security workshops and one thing that I would the people were always kind of surprised about was like, typically, you know, the stereotypical thing if the husband has a larger social Security check and the wife has a smaller one, and if he dies then and they're relying on her thousand to fifteen hundred dollars a month, and that's going to go away. I mean, Jess, yeah, what you're talking about is, you know, you basically have to start over and say, okay, here's you know, and I've always told women you have to think about what is what is that budget? What is that cash flow going to be like once that other person is gone.

23:36 Yeah, you know, you bring up at that point because quite honestly, a lot of people don't know when somebody passes away that you lose a social security you know, and that's actually surprising to a lot of people. They think that they're just getting the two social Security benefits for the rest of their life. And so planning for the loss of the social security, planning for maybe you have a loss of a pension. Are you only getting fifty percent of them pensions. That's a lot of things that have to be examined, and you know, it's it's hard for individuals. To kind of even think about those things. And you know, an easy strategy, as you're well aware, is you know, leveraging life insurance to help to replace some of that. Well, then you start talking insurance and people think that's a bad word, but it can be used to help to you know, fill the cap and be able to provide the income that is needed for that spouse. I've seen if used properly, life insurance do some fantastic things for survivors and their kids.

24:35 Oh yeah, so you know, like I said, we're doing this at the beginning of a new year. For someone starting this new year and asking themselves do I have enough to live on? What first steps can they take this week to get to start getting some clarity. So if we're starting at the beginning of the year, then I would say pool your December thirty first bank statement, because bank statement captures everything what did you spend. It's a little scary to look at, but you know your debt went through there, your credit card payments went through. Even if you put everything on. The credit card, you had to pay the credit card, so that one on there too. Look at what you spent and to say, well, was this a normal year or did I have you know, big home improvement expenses I didn't plan on, or you know, abnormal vacation. So look at what you averaged each month and then determine.

25:29 Let's take a look at that balance sheet. Are you putting money away? Do you have. Savings and other vehicles? And can that generate what you need to live off of. You know, many people look at the four percent withdrawal rate or five percent, which can have a whole separate debate on that. But if you just take your assets and say what's four or five percent of that asset of that income stream. Is that going to equal what you have right now? For a lot of people it doesn't, which says you may have to start putting aside more money. But I would say, first, you know, rip the band aid off, look at what you spent over the course of last year, and then determine. You know, for me, as an example, I have three kids.

26:09 They are still on my payroll because they are still young. So what I typically spend, I probably won't be spending that in retirement. However, I do plan on traveling more. In retirement, I do plan on doing other things, so my categories may change. I may not have travel soccer anymore, but I'll come visit you in Hawaii and do. Things like that. So so in the end I still may be spending the same. So for some people, they'll say, oh, I'm not going to be spending this amount in retirement. You'd be surprised. Yeah, yeah, well I've also you know, people have said I'm just as busy in retirement as ever was. Well, filled up your time with other things. Let's talk about another dirty word, Lina, and that's will's and planning, and so one of the things I want to include in here is a note about passwords. I've taken a couple I've listened to a couple of podcasts. I've listened to different things and been to things where we've discussed passwords.

27:13 So if you have somebody that's not in your life anymore and you didn't know what the passwords were for all kinds of things, I want to mention that too. But so they're walking through this change, what are the biggest, most important of state planning updates that should happen in that first six to six to twelve months. So I would say it's your normal three documents. It's your will, your power attorney, and your medical directive. If you've just got divorced, if you've lost your spouse, chances are you're going to be removing that individual from your documents. So you want to be able to make sure that you have the proper backup. If you have minor children, you still want to be able to name a guardian in there, so make sure that you have the right people in place to take care of the things that you want to get taken care of. Now, with that said, just getting those documents done is not enough. You have to update your beneficiary designations. And you and I both know people who have.

28:15 Yes, you know they. They have not updated the The ex wife ex husband is still listed on the four oh one K and that is. A shocker when we go through it with the newspact. Maybe if there's a new wife now yeah, yeah. So it's it's there. We all all have had those experiences. So it's making sure you get the documents updated, and that you're updating your beneficiaries, updating the titling on different accounts, even that small bank account that you and your husband may have had to help with, like joint kids' expenses. Get the names off. It should just be your name transfer and death on it out of beneficiary. But going through that process is crucial, and unfortunately I've seen it all too often to where you're doing it at the last minute because and in the case of loss of a spouse, somebody gets very sick or they're starting to have diminished capacity.

29:12 You know, now we're rushing to get things done, and you don't want to be in that situation because then when the spouse passes away, you're going to be updating your estate documents again. But you may have rushed in the beginning to make decisions, and you may be hesitant in working through them again because you're emotional and because you're going through things. So it's important to take your time with it, you know, be purposeful in who you're naming, how you're naming. There's again a whole separate conversation you can have regarding a state planning. But you're right, it's a dirty word because people are thinking about the things that you don't want to think about, you know, I know. I remember when my husband and I first got married and I had the estate attorney at the house and my husband's like, what are we doing? And I said, well, this is important for us. We're married, right, we had no t children, and one of the questions she asked was if you are pregnant and there's a complication, do you want to save yourself or the baby? And that's a really emotional question for myself and my husband, and those are the things people want.

30:18 To deal with. You don't want to think about that, So to not think about it, then I'm not going to do the documents, right, But you know, you need to do the documents. And we've all seen situations when people didn't update anything, draft anything, and it did not go the way that they wanted to. So that's you know, one of the priorities I list all the time and just meet within a state attorney, utilize you know, even one of the online programs if you have a simple estate plan, just to have something in place. Yeah, well, let's talk a little bit of you know, because people are going to be thinking about taxes and how should someone think about debt, Like you've already mentioned a little bit about mortgages, like mortgages, credit cards, medical bills especially. You know, the biggest thing that can that can be a problem is if their cash flow is uncertain.

31:14 You're going to try to prioritize this somehow. What do you think you have to I mean, you have to prioritize what you're going to take care of. And you know, with taxes, a lot of the times spouses didn't really pay attention. There's usually one person that's filing the tax return, it's working with the CPA or doing it on TurboTax, and the other spouse has just no idea what's happening. So we usually request the copy of that tax return and go through it with the you know, with that individual of here's all of the statements all the ten ninety nine. This is where everything's coming from, and they usually don't even know what some of these things are, but trying to kind of do reconnaissance and inventory on all of that while prioritizing what's happening with especially if somebody is struggling with cash flow, and trying to determine what steps do we need.

32:05 To take to help to pay off if. There's any final medical bills, if there's funeral expenses get to be a lot as well, and that's challenging too. So it is it's going through that person situation on what can be done, what can be done that's not disruptive in the first couple of months when you're highly emotional, right, I. For some reason, I was just thinking about I had a dear sweet cousin who died of cancer several years ago, and I traveled to Oregon to say goodbye to him, and he sat there and said, you know, the thing that. Is the worst for. Me to know about is that I'm going to leave her with medical debt. And you know, and at the time, there wasn't really there wasn't a lot that anybody could do to fix it, and you know, it's just like, oh, so you know so that you know it's hard. You just have to I think you have to just clear the decks and give yourself some mental space to be able to sit back and think about these things. There's another part, and that is because of the time of year, it is, uh, tax issues I think sometimes tend to surprise widows and divorces. What how what do you think is there some what is it that you think surprises people when they have this that they're going through and they have taxes coming up, and they're like, what, I

33:36 didn't know that? What can you think of anything that comes to mind? Yeah? I think there's two. The one big one is for spouses who weren't working who are using the portfolio to generate income. Let's say you have you put the life insurance proceeds into a portfolio. It's generating capital gains treatment and that capital gain is taxed, and then they have this tax bill and so you know, you get the email that says, my CPA said, because the portfolio did well, I owe taxes now. So it's like, well, do you do you not want to make money on the portfolio where it is going to pay some taxes, right, it is going to happen. Now, obviously there's tax strategies you can put within the portfolio, and I get that, but that's one that is surprising to a lot of people.

34:24 So we always try to educate on the type of investment account. It is going to generate income and you're going to get a ten ninety nine and we will have to pay some estimated taxes. And then the other thing that usually surprises people, which surprises me that it surprises them is when they're taking money from investment accounts like a retirement account, them not understanding I may have a penalty, I may have additional taxes because it's treated as ordinary income. So as much as we do from a financial literacy standpoint on educating a adults about how a four oh one K works, an IRA and a wroth, there's still a big gap of understanding.

35:07 So I go into meetings with the assumption. That they don't know how a wroth works or how a four h three B operates, and if they do, fantastic, but I educate them through that so they understand you can't just close out that four oh one K plan because your spouse passed away. You're gonna get hit with a massive amount of taxes. So I have that conversation a lot of don't use the four one k to pay off the mortgage, right right? You made me think of another I had. Actually, this was a good friend and I had been hounding her to get her will done. She had been recently divorced and she's helping somebody move one day and she gets hit by a drunk driver and oh my gosh, and her will is sitting on unsigned on her kitchen table and the life insurance that we had put together. Anyway, her kids. The point I make is her kids went, they received the life insurance and they all, all of them just went and blew it. And I had to step back and say, I did the best I could, and I can't make myself responsible for other people's choices.

36:19 And sometimes you know that there's just crazy things that happen, and I think you're right, you know, we just we do the best we can and try to educate the best we can. Yeah. So another there's another area that I have found interesting how people can fall for this, and that is I had an episode a while back with someone who went through a romance scam after her husband had died. And do you feel have you come across, you know, too good to be true offers or products or strategies that you see target did at newly single women. Has that ever happened?

37:04 Yeah, I don't. I don't know if it's been targeted at newly single women, but definitely single women. I had two situations to where they met a guy online. Everything was very promising and he knew how to trade stock and he developed a code on how to do day trading. And I just have to give him my log one information to my tedm ror trade account, so. On and so forth. And so this client, obviously, when she's telling me this was a new client, red flags left and right, left and right, and I said, I need to see I need to see a statement and the amount of margin calls that was on this statement that she just didn't understand.

37:52 I was in that first meeting. I had to pull up the account and I said, you're going to change the password immediately. You are freezing him out, like you this is not good. So I had to show her what was happening in the portfolio. So I had to actually had two situations where that where that had happened. I think from I don't want to say I see more scams because I don't see a lot of the scams. What I see is that there's just. Unfortunately when you're newly single women, they just they don't have that person that they can ask. Of, Hey, should I do this? Should I buy this? Does this make sense? Should I click this? Back to that trust is a proper right. So if you had to list, like the top three mistakes that you see people make in the first year after losing a spouse or going through a divorce, what would be those top three mistakes?

38:53 Uh, honestly, I think the top three are all spending. I mean, as as simple as that is. That's where I've seen majority of clients fall into fall into traps. And when I say spending, I mean they're giving a lot of money to their kids that don't need it, They're giving money to the cousins that are coming out of the woodworks, They're just buying stuff, taking everybody on vacations. It's just we're spending way too much, and that just it can derail everything. It just causes so many problems down the road. For also that maybe that non working spouse not realizing that maybe they have to go back to work is very difficult, especially depending on the stage of life that they're in. So trying to get back into that mindset of you have to go back to work.

39:47 There is not enough assets here to generate the income that they need, and so when they don't go back to work and they're spending down the portfolio, that's a problem also. But honestly, it has always come down to spending when I when I look at kind of where people have had challenges and everything. Even in my personal life. I remember when my father in law passed away and you talked about passwords. When my father in law, he was literally on the deathbed and he said to me, he told me where his password book was because his wife didn't know where what the passwords were for certain things, and he knew I was going to be the one who have to deal with it. But I remember when he passed away and just the spending that was happening, and we had to talk about we can't continue at this pace.

40:37 Yeah, yeah, that's that's really something you know, to think about. Let's get let's maybe take you know, we could we could talk a whole long time about investing and risk and time horizon. One of the things that I think that a lot of people don't think about is say, you know, you lose somebody at age sixty, you could have another thirty years right that you you know, would be moving into a whole new area of life. Like I have a I have a cousin whose husband died prematurely. She spends a lot she's found cruising. She loves cruising, and she's going to be stopping in Hawaii in a few weeks and overnight we're going to have her for overnight before she goes on a fifty day thing. But she's keeping herself young by doing all this great stuff.

41:33 But what would you what would you say to someone about how should they think of you know, if they are like if they if they could potentially have another good set of years, how do you look at risk in your time horizon? Well, I mean that's where you again, that's where you have to educate the client. And if they want to try to keep it all in cash and CDs because they're an ultra conservative investor where they're terrified they're going to run out of money, that's going to have a dramatic impact on the lifestyle that they have or that they want to have. So it's talking about gradually getting back into the market, whether it's you know, starting to invest a little bit, you know, into bonds or starting to get into the stock market to get them comfortable with that. Most of the time, they've already had that exposure.

42:22 They've had it through whether their spouse was investing in that way, if they had any type of retirement plan. And so it's just again holding their hand through that process. And we know there's no guarantees in the world, and we know that things are going to come down, they're going to move up, but it's looking at that long time period ahead and a lot of that just comes down to building that confidence with the client and having them understand. And so it is it's kind of, you know, getting your toe in the water a little bit right. Well, you know, I'm always amazed at how how quickly these conversations goes. This today, you know, we are coming close, we are coming close to being having to wrap up.

43:04 So as we close, what is one small doable action you would love every listener to take in the next seven days. And you have a resource that we're going to mention. And also if those that are listening do not know on my website is a will be Lena's information about where to find her. But she has a resource called I'm single, Now what and it's at i Am Single ebook dot com which they can download for free. Correct. Correct, absolutely, So what would be that one one simple, doable thing that would be an action step. I try to get people to do something to move them forward.

43:53 So what I'm about to say, I don't think people will think is simple, but it is so simple. Is just make an appointment within a state attorney. Just go online and look for and you can contact me. I have resources all over the states. Love to introduce you to somebody who can just draft something for you. I just see it all too often that people don't have the basic documents. And if you can start off the year and say, this is the year I'm going to have my estate documents done. I'm going to name the appropriate people, et cetera. It is simple and do what you just have to do it, you know, and I want to give I want people to have the confidence to say the first step is the hardest rights it's making that appointment.

44:38 Just make that appointment. Talk to your friends, to your family. Look at our resources and ask who they use, and I can assure you it will be smooth sailing from that standpoint. So that's what I would say is having to really focus on that estate plan. Super great advice from a trusted advisor. Lena, Thank you so much for joining us today. This is a topic that a lot of people maybe don't want to listen to, but all of those that have listened, this is great advice, great way to start the year. If you are not going through something like this, maybe you know someone who is, and so think about how this can relate to you in your life. Think about how it might relate to you and your friends and your family. So with that, Lena, we must say goodbye for now, and thank you so much for joining the Ask Good Questions Podcast today. We will see you next time.

45:41 Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Okay, today's episode is over, but we did Ask Good Questions again, didn't We don't miss out as we broadcast live every Wednesday, six pm Eastern Time on W four CY Radio at W fourcy dot com. Joined Benita Bellemerson next week for more conversations with experts on finances retirement, behavioral finance issues, health and wellness, and more. Until then, remember to ask good questions.