More Than a Will: Writing Your Family's Love Letter Part 2

Summary

In Part 2 of this CareLab conversation, Jennifer Lee shares the deeply personal story that inspired her concept of a "family love letter"—a heartfelt document that goes beyond legal paperwork to communicate your values, wishes, financial guidance, and the legacy you hope to leave behind. Drawing from her father's own experience after a terminal brain tumor diagnosis, Jennifer explains how his clear communication became an incredible gift to their family during an unimaginably difficult time.

The discussion explores why creating a love letter isn't just about preparing for death—it's about making life easier for the people you love during any unexpected crisis. Jennifer, Emilia, and Brandy encourage listeners to start before it's too late, reminding us that it doesn't have to be perfect. Even a simple letter can provide clarity, comfort, and lasting connection that no legal document alone can offer.

Key Questions Answered

Transcript

Brandy Archie
Hi everybody, welcome to CareLab. I'm really excited for this episode because we have a returned guest and I'm sure we're gonna get so much information out of what we have to say, and Emilia's gonna introduce her.

Emilia Bourland
Yes, we have back with us here today Jennifer Lee. Jennifer Lee is the founder of Modern Wealth, a Sarasota-based financial planning firm specializing in helping individuals navigate major life decisions, including things like divorce, retirement, and the loss of a spouse. With nearly 30 years of experience, actually, I think it's over 30 years of experience, she takes a values-based approach to financial planning focused on building lasting relationships and meaningful legacies. Jennifer is also the author of Squeeze the Juice.

Live with purpose, then leave a legacy. Jennifer, welcome back. We're so happy to have you back on CareLab.

Jennifer R Lee, AWMA®, AIF®
I'm delighted to be back. Thank you, ladies.

Emilia Bourland
Okay, so we have you back today to kind of dig a little bit deeper into one of the concepts that you introduced in our original conversation. And that is- this is one of my favorite things- about writing a love letter to your family. Can you kind of introduce us that, like what the heck does that have to do with financial planning?

Brandy Archie
Yeah.

Jennifer R Lee, AWMA®, AIF®
 It it it could have everything to do with financial planning. So you know, in in my world, not everybody is comfortable talking about money and and assets and what's gonna happen if I'm not here. But everybody cares about their family and the people they're gonna leave behind. So if you, you know, I try to try to pull these conversations out of clients and and and friends and say,

If this is the last conversation you're gonna have with your spouse, with your child, with your aunt, with your business partner, what do they need to know? And there's so much. If you think about that for a minute, it gives you a little bit of goose goosebumps, and you're like, my gosh, there's so much I have to tell them. Number one, they don't know, you know, the kid's schedule and they don't know their favorite animal, and they don't know what all these little things. but there's also

The assets, right? What do what do you do with the how do I pay the house? Right? How do I make sure that will I have enough money? Is there life insurance? Who do I trust? and then there's the the squishier, softer things around, you know, what impact you want to have on your children, right? What you hope for them in the in terms of what their contribution is gonna be in life, who you hope for them as a partner, you know.

D do you distill your work ethic, right? and what does that look like? So your legacy doesn't necessarily have to be money. It could be it could be a treasured memento, it could be I see your puppy in the background, it could be your dog making sure that your dog is taken care of, right? It's all of these things. And so writing your love letter or thinking about doing it to me pulls.

all of those things together and and it can be a really pragmatic exercise and I think you know your your spouse or your loved one that's left behind will will really appreciate it.

Brandy Archie
I think that's such a masterful reframing. Because I think from my experience, we come at it from a clinical perspective and it's very matter of fact. Like you're in the hospital, everything is fine, but because you're here, we want to talk to you about your durable power of attorney and your what your healthcare decisions are made. Just fill out this paper, no big deal. And like, we try to make it no big deal so people will do it, right? but they don't really want to do it because they don't want to think about those end of life decisions.

Jennifer R Lee, AWMA®, AIF®
Yeah.

Brandy Archie
But framing it as like a what what are what would you want to say in your last conversation to your family so that they are, you know, they have everything that they need, even though you're not present, right? Of course you want to tell them that you love them. But then that immediately triggers you to think about all those things that you just said. So in reframing it this way, is there like some prompts that help people get through all those different things?

that you are talking about because my mind might go there but somebody else's mind might not go through all them all the things are important, but the things that, you know, are financially important too.

Jennifer R Lee, AWMA®, AIF®
Sure. And Brandy, a number of years ago I did an event and it was, a a lot of times I would do this talk and it would be to a room full of women and they would all say, my gosh, my husband needs to do this. Like because they oftentimes we're the non-moneyed party, not always, but sometimes, right? And my gosh, I need to get my husband to do this. I'm like, Well, you really need to do it too, because think about all the stuff he doesn't know. I mean, there there's a a litany of things. But

the comments they would say is he's never gonna do it. So I made, you probably remember we're maybe close in age, the the mad libs, right? So I made a mad libs love letter. Okay. you know, we have this fill in the blank, right? So so there's a fill in the blank that's available on my website as just a a frame of reference. It's really basic. but it gives you a start.

Brandy Archie
That's cool.

Jennifer R Lee, AWMA®, AIF®
Right, someplace to start. that's when you're ready to sit down and write it all down. To me, the most you know, effective way for you to do it is to just stop for a second and think about if if this is your last phone call, who are you calling?

Okay, who are you calling? And what do you need to tell them? And that might go on for seven pages, right? And so I don't care if you voice text it into your phone because now it'll translate, right? You have somewhere to start. Okay. There's our excuses are are going out the window because technology is making it easier and easier. You could you can video record yourself. Well, you know, it's the it's there and it's accessible. So

Brandy Archie
So true. So true.

Emilia Bourland
Mm-hmm.

Jennifer R Lee, AWMA®, AIF®
There's a lot that we have in our head that we need to, we would want to make sure that that those family members understood. And yes, it is important to have your documents, you know. Nowadays we don't get all of our statements in the mail because it's a nuisance getting so much mail and statements and you have to file them and shred them and all this kind of stuff. So a lot of times we do it online. Well.

You know, you don't necessarily have the password for your spouse or your family member for their account. And they probably have a two-factor authentication where it texts them a code or it emails them a code. You probably don't have that either. So even more important that you need those legal documents. and certainly your love letter does not solve the legal component of it. You need your powers of attorney, you need

your advanced healthcare directives and all those things. But this operates as a guide and a softening of of the you know, the intensity of planning for you to not no longer be here.

Emilia Bourland
Okay, I have two questions for you, and one of them is a serious one, but I'm gonna start with the non-serious one, which is how many boxes of tissues do you recommend people have on hand while they're writing this letter? Because I cannot listen, I so actually the reason I bring this up is because leading to my serious question, so right after I had kids, yeah, and I I this is over a decade ago at this point.

Jennifer R Lee, AWMA®, AIF®
Yeah. You're already getting the clamp thread.

Emilia Bourland
I actually did this for for my husband because I am the keeper of all the things in our in our family. And I was like, if something happens to me, you're gonna be screwed. So so I sat down and I wrote him a letter, and I, you know, with all the passwords and all these other things. It, and it did require at least one full box of tissues to get through. especially because I was a new mom. So it was extra cry. but so my my real question is.

Now though, I mean that was over 10 years ago that I did that. A lot of stuff that's in there is not relevant anymore. So how often do you recommend like rewriting the love letter? Or is that something that you recommend?

Jennifer R Lee, AWMA®, AIF®
Yeah, so I think I think most certainly you have to revisit anything any any document like that. you know, your kids are getting older. There's lots of other things, other other additional tribal knowledge that you have that he would you know, have challenges with if he didn't know. So there's there's definitely updates, right? I think you can

have your password document be fluid when as you're updating it, you're updating it, right? Because we get updates on passwords every, you know, 45 days, every every two months on a lot of things and sometimes longer on others. But you know, that's gonna constantly be be adjusted. You also may change jobs and so you have different retirement accounts or rollovers or different things. So you gotta add those.

you might change your CPA, you might change your advisor, you know, those things, when those change, they gotta be updated because if that's their guide book to say who do you contact and who do you trust, you know, that's that's kind of hard if it's not there. I I like to, in a perfect world, you know, your my clients would say something happens, they

They call me to their to their spouse. They call me and they say, my gosh, this just happened. And we have a conversation about you know, the gravity of that terrible event. But then they're saying, What do I do? And I say, Okay, just breathe. We don't need to make any big changes right now. I'm gonna make sure there's enough income coming into your checking account so you can pay your bills. Don't worry about those things. We have your plan.

You know, you have all these other things. We will go- th I will go through those things with you as you are able. Because realize, grief is so massive. It's you know, it it it could take some people two months, it could take other people a year before they can address those things. We still need to have money, we still need to be able to facilitate our life. So we need to at least to get those things going. but you don't need to come in and address every little nuance right out of the gate.

Emilia Bourland
Yeah.

Jennifer R Lee, AWMA®, AIF®
most people want to know, am I gonna be okay? Do I have enough? What do I do? And okay, well, you have a half hour worth of capacity, you know, this week. We'll do that. we we we take the lowest hanging fruit and handle those items.

Emilia Bourland
Mm-hmm.

Brandy Archie
And it seems like definitely best practice to be able to have somebody, you or somebody like you, to be able to lean on, especially because when we need to implement these changes, it's there's usually grief involved. And but in the meantime, like do you have like any good suggestions for ways to keep this information and also make it easy to keep it updated? Like I could just write it all down on an actual piece of paper and put it in a safe. And that would be better than nothing.

But as things change, I would have to intentionally think about going and changing it. So do you have any digital solutions that are safe or any other ways that you've seen people do it?

Jennifer R Lee, AWMA®, AIF®
You know, I don't have a digital solution that has all of this combined. I think, you know, it gets a little bit I'm sure that there are apps that, you know, lock your passwords and things. In in my industry, we have secure vaults so you can, you know, you can house a document there.

a lot of times we'll have a a family vault and so you can store a document there in the vault and you can update it and you can have a beneficiary who has access to the vault. that's something that that can be done. but otherwise I would probably use a password protected document and you know and just I put I would put a calendar note in my in my calendar to remind me like

Brandy Archie
Yeah.

Jennifer R Lee, AWMA®, AIF®
six months, hey, did you do you need to update this or take a peek at it again and and and make any changes to it if you're not doing it as things happen.

Emilia Bourland
Okay, well, this has been so informative already. We're gonna take a pause right here, though, and we invite you, dear listener and/or viewer, to come back for part two of this series with Jennifer Lee about the love litter letter to hear more about how this applies in real-world situations. So if you have made it to the end of this episode, please take a moment to

Like, share, subscribe. please leave a comment and a review. That's the best way for us to continue to grow our audience and reach more people with helpful information. Until next time, we'll see you right back here on CareLab. Bye.

Brandy Archie
All right.

Do us a favor and subscribe to the CareLab podcast on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts! It will help others find our conversations and grow the community and you’ll stay updated with the latest insights and expert advice on elder care.