Summary
In this episode of the CareLab podcast, Emilia Bourland and Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA, discuss the intersection of financial planning and caregiving. Jennifer shares insights from her decades of experience as a financial advisor, especially how the challenges of caregiving influence financial decision-making. They talk about the importance of estate planning, preparing legal documents, updating beneficiaries, using life and long-term care insurance, and planning across different life stages. The conversation emphasizes how proactive planning can ease burdens for families, especially those in the "sandwich generation" caring for both children and aging parents.
Key Questions Answered
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Why is financial advising especially relevant for caregivers?
Caregiving often brings unexpected expenses and decisions. Financial advisors help ensure clients have proper documents, estate plans, and financial strategies so they can manage both their parents’ needs and their own future without major disruption. -
What common mistakes do families make in estate and financial planning?
Forgetting to update beneficiaries after divorce or major life events, leaving accounts without proper designations, or failing to follow through after visiting an attorney. Even well-prepared families often overlook small but costly details. -
What are some proactive steps families in their 40s should take?
Secure legal documents like wills and guardianships, consider life insurance, prepare a “love letter” explaining values and wishes, and begin retirement planning. Revisiting these plans regularly ensures they evolve with life changes. -
How does caregiving impact financial stability?
Caregiving disrupts both emotional and financial wellbeing. It can drain resources and create stress unless families pre-plan with tools like long-term care insurance, or hybrid products that combine life insurance with long-term care coverage. -
What should caregivers do if they are already in a crisis and no plans were made?
Start by gathering all documents and financial information. Work with a financial advisor (and possibly an attorney) to assess resources, secure powers of attorney, and create immediate strategies to stabilize the situation.
Transcript
Emilia Bourland
Jennifer Lee, we are so happy to have you here today. Welcome to Care Lab.
Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA
Thanks so much for having me.
Emilia Bourland
So it would be great if we got started with you kind of just sharing a little bit about your background and your story for how you came to work with caregivers specifically in financial advising.
Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA
Well, I'll tell you, it's just a natural progression really because life happens. I've been in the industry going on 29 years. So I've had clients who are accumulating assets and then now, you know, they're in their 50s and they're dealing with the same, they're the sandwich generation, right? They're dealing with their parents and caregiving and mental capacity.
And so, you we have to get involved as advisors to make sure that they have the proper documents so we can communicate with kids. It just ends up being that we're a natural communication space, you know, with caregivers because people are aging.
Emilia Bourland
Can you talk to us a little bit since it sounds like you've had your clients for a long time, you add new ones, I'm sure, but some of you had with you for a long time. How does their past kind of impact the way they're thinking about now and their money management, as well as like the future of being the sandwich generation and dealing with their parents finances?
Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA
Yeah.
Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA
it's tough. mean, I'll tell you probably in a very positive light, one of the most important outcomes from the frustrations of dealing and the anxieties dealing with your parents is now they want to get their ducks in a row, right? They want to make sure their children aren't going through the same things. They want to make sure that if there's a trust that they don't name one child as the trustee because that can create discord.
So they might think about naming a corporate trustee or, you know, they're just thinking through things that they didn't really want to do before, you know, as advisors, we bring it up all the time, at least once a year. So we can check a box and say, hey, we talked to you about this. We really need to be thinking about these things. And, you know, I find that when people are doing the caregiving on that older side, you know, they're dealing with long-term care issues, mental.
issues? Are we going to run out of money? And if you don't run out of money, how are you distributing those assets and how efficient is it from a tax perspective? So there's a lot of planning involved.
Emilia Bourland
That's really interesting that you bring up the fact that people have really learned so much about caring for their parents, that they're trying to organize their own financial situation so that their kids don't necessarily have the same sorts of struggles that they've had. Can you share a story or an example of something that you feel really highlights?
maybe a challenge that someone had because things weren't organized particularly well financially and kind of what the solution might be to to solve that situation.
Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA
I'm going to tell you, even the most well-prepared always have an issue. There's almost always something that you think it's buttoned up, you think everything is neat and tidy and everything is great. It may be that, you you establish documents, your powers of attorney, medical and healthcare, as well as financial, and you have trust documents and you have beneficiaries designated.
and you have your bank accounts where you have somebody associated with the bank account so it doesn't go through probate. Oftentimes there's one account somebody didn't know about and then you end up stuck in probate for a $10,000 account and it's incredibly frustrating. So unfortunately, oftentimes what happens is people go through the efforts of going to an estate attorney, they set up their documents.
And then that and they say, shoot, we're done. And the attorney sends a letter and the letter says, OK, you need to change these beneficiaries. Here's how you should do these things. And maybe they they they follow through on those things and maybe they don't. The most important part from my perspective as an adviser is I need that letter along with your copies of your documents. Right. So I can help you facilitate those changes. You know, that's what your adviser is supposed to be.
do it, but we can't do it unless we get that document. Yeah, don't have a, I mean, there's a lot to come to mind. So I'm sorry, I can't give you one specific example of a fix, but, you know, making sure that you do change those designations is critically important. Actually, I do have a story. One just popped into my head. I have a client who,
has been divorced for many, years, remarried happily, has two grown adult children, and her ex-husband passed away. She was the beneficiary on his IRAs. Okay? Clearly, in her mind, that money should go to the two children, the sons. Well, she's not a spouse.
Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA
You can't just change the IRA beneficiary to somebody else. You have to now take that money and the law is you have to distribute that in 10 years. So now she has to pay tax on it at her tax rate and then give her kids what's left over. It's highly, highly, highly inefficient and wasteful. And it's really a simple fix. And a lot of times it does happen where
you know, people forget when they get divorced that they're going to, you know, that they're, that they need to change the beneficiaries. Many times they remember, but sometimes they don't.
Emilia Bourland
So it's definitely not a set it and forget it kind of situation. so, okay, will do me a favor and I wanna know like from start to end in the best case scenario. So you can use me as an example if you want. I'm 41, I know that I need to do these things. I come to you and I say, okay, what should I do right now in some years and in the future in order to have...
what I hope is a good outcome. Because everything always changes. But just like what in your ideal situation would be like our pathway.
Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA
Okay, so we're talking about not just your legal documents, but your assets.
Emilia Bourland
everything that you think it needs to be paid attention to. And I know you don't want to have to go through like specific details, but if you could just talk about like in chunks, know, like you need to consider this, you need to pay attention to this, how should somebody think about planning through this?
Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA
What the?
Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA
Absolutely.
Yeah, that's an excellent question. And it's a big one. So if I'm going in a direction, you want me to go in a different direction, just let me know. You're in your 40s. Are you married and have kids? Okay, so you're married and have kids. God forbid something happened to you or your spouse. You want to make sure there's guardianship provisions. Who's going to take care of your kids? Okay. So it's not just a legal document or a will that says, I named my sister or
Emilia Bourland
I'm there to have kids, yes.
Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA
I named my parents, you want to put those in order. And I like to add to that a love letter that talks about why you're choosing this person and what you hope for your children, what you hope for their education, what you hope for their marriage, what you hope for them in life, their contributions to society, their values. You're imparting your wisdom and your essence, right?
to those people that you love that may be left behind. And you probably are writing that to your spouse too, because let's face it, if this were the last conversation you had with your husband, there's probably a lot of things he needs to know, right? Not just where are my passwords, but what is the kid's favorite, you know.
band that they like to listen to or what is their favorite toy, depending on the age and all those kind of things. It's also what your hopes and expectations are for those kids. So there's a very personal component to, hey, God forbid something happened, here's who I want to make sure takes care of my kids. So guardianships are super important. Young families, if you haven't yet, you know.
educated your kids, paid off your mortgage, accumulated your retirement funds, which most of us in our 40s haven't done. We're in the process. You know, might want to have some life insurance. So you make sure that, forbid, something happens, boom, there's a cash injection that takes care of your families and the unmet needs just yet. As far as as you grow, right, your
your financial picture may get more complex. So depending on the complexity, you may need to revisit a conversation with an attorney. Maybe you just did a will. understand, we're not, I mean, I'm a financial advisor. I'm not an attorney. I just happen to deal with this stuff because we have to get these items from our clients. And so we have to encourage them to go meet with attorneys.
Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA
So oftentimes as you progress, now you're in your 50s, now your kids are grown, that's taken care of, now you're in what I call crunch time, you're really making the best money of your life and you're looking at what's going to happen on the other end, when I'm going to retire, what's that going to look like economically, how do I move from growth oriented to taking income and so we talk about what are your goals, what does life look like if you were to
and we back into how we plan for that. At that point, if you've accumulated significant assets, it may or may not make sense to establish a trust. So you have to have those conversations with your estate planning attorney. If you have children and you have three children and two are fiscally responsible and one can't keep a job or can't keep $10 in his pocket,
her pocket, whatever, then you may want to have provisions to protect them from themselves. Because if they were to inherit a life insurance policy, you know, that ends up being a million dollars split between three, they may end up spending it all. So you might want to put provisions to help them get so much money a year or to help them with education or to help them specifically with a down payment on a house.
There's so much in this arena. Am I hitting some highlights that you you
Emilia Bourland
Yeah, yeah, yeah. absolutely. think something that is a real particular pain point for a lot of people of the sandwich generation and for caregivers certainly is how caregiving impacts them financially. And I know that that's something that you see and work with as well. Can you talk a little bit about the effects of, you're
you're going through life, all of a sudden you become, let's say, a caregiver for maybe your spouse or your parents. And obviously, there's a financial impact to both care partners in this scenario. Can you talk a little bit about that and ways to kind of help plan or protect oneself in that situation? But before you do that, give me one second.
Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA
Yep.
Emilia Bourland
I think she's going to go check on some background noise here. Yep.
Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA
feel like there's not a lot of light in here.
Emilia Bourland
There's nobody over here.
Emilia Bourland
Hey, can I just let you know that we are recording a podcast just on the other side of the wall? Please slide like 15 more minutes just so you know.
Emilia Bourland
Hey, can I let y'all know that we're recording in here so we can hear all of this in this area just for like 15-20 minutes.
Emilia Bourland
Okay. Okay. We're good. We're better.
Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA
It's the beauty and the curse of being able to do work from any place, right? I said it's the beauty and the curse from being able to do work from any place.
Emilia Bourland
Say that again.
Emilia Bourland
Yes, indeed.
Okay, we are ready for you.
Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA
So, you know, looking at your finances when you're in that sandwich enter, it's tough. You know, not only is it an emotional disruptor, it's a quality of life disruptor, but it's a financial disruptor. I'm not sure that there are a lot of ways that you can circumvent it with the exception of doing planning for long-term care insurance.
The ability to have resources more available or efficient for that parent is really the pre-planning that you can do. when I think about, nobody likes to talk about long-term care insurance. In fact, the only time, the only time they talk about it is when they're dealing with their parents. And they're dealing with their parents and they don't have these resources in place and they're frustrated and they're exhausted.
And they're like, my gosh, I need this. I mean, I quite literally was walking out of a, my grandmother was in a rehab facility in a nursing home and I promised her I'd never leave her in there and was 30 days she had to be in this rehab. And we're walking away from the facility, my mom and myself. My mom says, you know, your dad is applying for a long-term care insurance right now. And I'm like, okay, great. Because I think what you want in a,
perfect world scenario is you want your family member to be there to have dinner with you, to have conversations with you, to give you love and communication and special moments. You don't necessarily want them to be exhausted running around with errands and bathing and feeding and it's a lot. So you can buy long-term care insurance. There's a lot of different
programs and products that are out there, depending on the health of the person who's applying, right? You can now there are things called life insurance with a long-term care rider. So the way I describe this, cause I'm very pragmatic in my thinking, right? I want to say, what is, what's my return on my investment? Is this, does this make sense for me? Right? So I look at a couple and you do a,
Emilia Bourland
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA
a life insurance policy on two people and it only pays on the death of the second person. So you might say, well, why do I need that? Well, what it does is it gives the money back to your estate or to your children or whatever. Whatever money you're funding in, you're effectively going to, the worst scenario is your estate is going to get it back whenever you die if you never use it. But if you do need it for long-term care, either party,
you have access to a large number of monthly benefit for at least five years. So it's an attractive consideration, especially if one party is less healthy than the other, because it's based on the younger person. Cause again, doesn't pay or yeah, it doesn't pay until the death of the second person. So there's lots of creative things. Nothing is right for any particular family or person. It takes an independent person to
talk about all these different pieces. What are the resources you have? What is it you're trying to take care of? And how do we most efficiently manage that?
Emilia Bourland
So financial advising sounds a lot like planning for the future, which is a thing that humans don't do very well. It makes your job hard. And so this is going to be even a harder question, I think. But it's only because I see so much challenge with it. So like in our best case scenario, because you laid it out for us, we do these things early and we have a good outcome at the end. What happens if I'm caring for a parent and those things haven't been done?
Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA
Yeah, it is.
Emilia Bourland
Do I have any level of ability to think through like, here's a couple of ways that you can make things a little bit easier and they're struggling right now. Like I know it probably is very...
specific to each individual person, but like if there was maybe just one thing that you could give to a family caregiver right now who's already providing care to a loved one, what would be like one thing that you would be like, this is just one thing that could be used for a beneficial.
Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA
Yeah, well you make a really valid point and I like to say that financial planning is important. It's not urgent. There's no deadline. There's no tax filing date. Like you have to file your taxes by, you know, X date. We don't have a deadline. The deadline is either you're retired and you hopefully have enough money or you die and then, you know, what's so nobody wants to really plan for those things. If you're in
Emilia Bourland
Yeah.
Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA
I call that crisis mode. Now you're, now you're, got to do damage control, right? You have to figure out, you have to assess what documents they have or don't have, what assets they have or don't have, you know, do they have a house? Is it saleable? Do you have, do they have a spouse that's going to stay in the house? And, you know, so they only have social security. Do they have retirement accounts? You really, like with anything else, you need to gather the data.
and assess the impact of their financial picture and what are your choices. And you probably need a financial person and you probably need an attorney. I would start with the financial person because they're gonna be able to lay out what potential concerns you could have. I mean, it really doesn't matter. You could start either way. One isn't much better than the other.
but I say the financial person because they'll be able to look at your documents and say, we can't transact any of your accounts until you get a financial power of attorney on your parents. So you need to go get that. And they might be able to look at your beneficiaries to make sure things are right. Or they may be able to look at your parents' resources once they get the power of attorney to say,
Okay, well, they have this account and we can create more income off of this account so it'll help support the expense. Does that make sense?
Emilia Bourland
Yeah, that makes total sense. I wouldn't have thought of it in those terms. That's like, of course, the first thing you should do is just like gather it because that is actually challenging. Like you're not the person who's filed all the stuff away. Yeah. You don't know what stuff you've signed up for. Sometimes it's challenging when you are the person who filed all the stuff away because you're like, wait, when did the especially like buy this? We could do this. And the older you get and things change and like you're like, wait.
Is this still here anymore? mean, the business has changed. Exactly. So that's his own thing. It's like finding the stuff and getting the professionals lined up. I'm a fine meal or I'm a fine meal advisor. Those are really good actionable steps. So thank you for that. Yeah. Yeah. And then of course, like that really is probably the hardest part. And then once you're working with those people, then you can get to a place where you're feeling so much better. I'm sure. think so often the barrier to doing the thing that we need to do
is taking that first step because it feels like so much work. Like it feels overwhelming, like we can't possibly do one more thing. But on the other hand, you always have, like you've got this thing hanging over your head the whole time until you do it, right? Until you take the step. And then after you do that work or you call that professional and then you have a plan, it's like, okay.
You can take some steps. can take you can take steps. can breathe a little bit, you know, and you've got one less thing hanging over your head. So worth it in the end, right?
Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA
I really think it will, you know, part of, we work a lot with people in transition. So loss of spouse, going through divorce, big, big changes. And one of my most heartening moments is when after we've had a meeting at the end of the meeting, the person goes, I feel so much better, right? Like you're unburdening yourself.
And I'm going, okay, yeah, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. All right, here's what we're gonna do. And here's your options. what is, do you wanna do this or you wanna do that? And they're like, okay, now I have a strategy. I say, okay, I need these three things from you and here's what you're gonna do and here's how it's gonna help you. I know it sounds like a lot, but it's just natural for me, right? You're the caregiver, you're the divorcee, you're the widow, you are, your executive function is not at its best.
And that's your human. is normal. This is to be expected. How can you be expected to operate at this level when you're already dealing with your kids, dealing with your spouse, and now you got a parent who's in crisis, you're back and forth to the hospital, PS, you have a job, right? It's a lot. It's a lot. So lean on people who can lend some...
direction and expertise, certainly lean on your friends and your family that can help you with the emotional support side of the difficulties. But make sure you get your ducks in a row and lean on professionals.
Emilia Bourland
Well, I think that's probably a pretty good thought. think that ties a bow on it, I think. It sure does. I do have one. I have two more questions before we wrap up. Untie my bow. That's fine. No, The bow will stay tied. I promise. The first question is I want to know what your favorite thing is about your job, the moment about your job that lights you up and says, yes, this is why I've wanted to do this for so long.
Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA
Hahaha!
Emilia Bourland
And then the second thing that I want to know is would you please share with our audience where people can find more from you? How can they connect with you?
Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA
Sure. Great. Thank you for those questions. I think hopefully you can see that I love what I do. Like it's not work for me. It's fun. I have nerd alert moments all the time. I did one yesterday. You know, Wednesday night I had done a call, an hour and a half call with an existing client and they're getting ready to transition to retirement.
Emilia Bourland
Yeah, it's clear.
Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA
and go into income planning. And so I'm doing a financial plan. And my nerd alert moment is I was having a lot of fun doing this financial plan to then meet with them in a couple of weeks, right? To understand what it looks like and help them in that journey. you know, definitely supporting clients in these changes is rewarding. But probably the most favorite part is when I know that
I'm taking something off of their shoulders and helping them move forward. my job is really to, it's not to tell you what to do with your money. It's not to tell you how much you can spend or can't spend. People get nervous talking about cashflow or you're gonna tell me I have to save more money. No, look, it's your life. My job is to understand what do you have and what do you want and help you be as efficient as possible with that so you can reach your goals.
A couple of months ago, I had a meeting with a business owner client that I've had for 20 some years. And he said, you know, Jennifer, I remember when you came into my office and were and were needling me about putting money into my simple plan. And I said, yeah, I remember that. And he says, and look, you know, like now I'm right there. Thank you. You know, so so it's that's I mean, that's priceless for me.
And then as far as how do people find me? So I have two websites, modern-wealth.com, which is my financial planning practice. And then I have a website for the book that I wrote during COVID. It's called squeezethejuicebook.com. And it's just basically about, it does have some financial concepts, but it is a super easy read. It's not painful. It's not like a textbook. You don't have to be scared about it.
Emilia Bourland
it.
Jennifer Lee, AIF, AWMA
incorporate stories and it talks about writing your family love letter and what to include and taking care of your people. That's really what we're talking about here is taking care of your family. And then lastly, I'd just like to say I have a Calendly link and if anybody has, hopefully we've answered some questions, but if you have a burning question that we missed somehow, you could just set a 20 minute zoom.
or send me an email. It's Jennifer Modern Wealth and I'm happy to answer your question.
Emilia Bourland
All right, awesome. And we will link to those sites in the show notes. So if you want to check out more from Jennifer Lee, you can find those there, whether you're watching on YouTube or if you're listening wherever you get your podcasts, just look down at the show notes and you should see the links right there for you. Dear listener slash viewer, if you made it to the end of this episode, thank you so much for watching and listening to this episode of Care Lab. If you enjoyed it, please make sure to take a second like, subscribe, follow.
But most importantly, if you can leave a review, leave a comment, that would be the most helpful thing that you could do to help us reach more listeners who would benefit from this content. Until next time, we'll see you right back here on CareLab. Bye.
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