WindRock Wealth Management’s Director, Brandy Maben, joins Wealthion’s Andrew Brill to share essential insights on estate planning, life insurance, and financial strategies to safeguard your wealth during life’s most unexpected events. Learn how proper planning can ease emotional and financial burdens, especially during difficult times like death or divorce.
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Brandy Maben 0:00
Planning is crucial, and if your family is going through any sort of heartache or trauma, all of the planning you put into place at the beginning of an onboarding process with a financial advisor or your firm can really help a lot of headaches in the end, as well as save you a lot of money. If things aren’t planned out correctly, get an estate plan, set up your life insurance and make sure you have a roadmap for your loved ones.
Andrew Brill 0:31
Welcome to wealth, and I’m your host. Andrew brill, every once in a while we like to get away from the normal discussion about the economy and the market to bring you some educational and informative content to help you guard your wealth and make sure you hold on to it. That is our goal today, while we talk about some subjects in life that are absolutely less than fun,
Andrew Brill 0:54
I’d like to welcome back brandy. Mabin to wealthion. Brandy is a director at our partner Investment Advisor Winrock wealth management. Brandy, welcome and how are you? It’s always great to have you.
Brandy Maben 1:04
Hi. I’m doing well. Thanks for having me again. Absolutely
Andrew Brill 1:07
an interesting discussion we have today, because there’s, you know, life events that nobody really plans for, but they creep up on us. But I want to start by asking you, Brandy, how important is planning. I mean, we, you know, go through life, and I know me, I never had a will until recently, and I have four kids that are now I don’t have to worry about because they’re all kind of on their own. But how important is planning for
Brandy Maben 1:35
the future? Planning is crucial. And if your family is going through any sort of heartache or trauma, all of the planning you put into place at the beginning of an onboarding process with the financial advisor or your firm can really help a lot of headaches in the end, as well as save you a lot of money if things aren’t planned out correctly.
Andrew Brill 1:57
Just to peel back the curtain, I never had a will because I never figured out who to leave my kids to either my brother sister, my wife’s siblings. We could never figure it out, but it is that important. But you know, can you share with us what an advisor does when you encounter a life event, say a death in the family, or something like that? Yeah,
Brandy Maben 2:19
these are obviously not our most fun topics. We have to experience with our clients. So today is a little bit more of a gloomy conversation with you. But after going through covid and seeing all the deaths through that and divorce rates going up with the aftermath of what happened, it’s just such a relevant topic in our industry. So we’ve basically made roadmaps ready for our clients in these circumstances. We make sure they’re ready for complex financial tasks, and obviously we provide an emotional and practical support system and team behind our clients that are going through this.
Andrew Brill 2:59
What are the financial considerations we have to look out for? Look at when something like this happens.
Brandy Maben 3:06
There’s a lot, but four main ones to put at the top of the list, bank accounts. A lot of people forget that individuals, through death, have their own personal accounts, and to make sure those aren’t subject to any credit or risk threats, fraudulent activity, also managing joint accounts and assets, such as brokerage accounts, taxable assets that are held away in investments, and then sadly, paying off those immediate debts and expenses, those are never Fun things to take care of as as family members, but hopefully there’s life insurance and those bank accounts have enough liquidity in them to cover those. And then, of course, the funeral and burial costs, if those weren’t taken care of by the deceased prior to these conversations, we’re hoping there are enough funds and means to cover those in this, in these conversations, initially, is it?
Andrew Brill 4:04
Is it like as a person who has to deal with this, and as a financial planner and a financial person, how important is it to set up your your, I guess, financial situation, and make sure people know where everything is? That’s right. Foremost, it’s
Brandy Maben 4:21
crucial, and we at windrock act as a hub for our clients. With that, our encrypted systems and our filing sources help family members be able to have a one stop shop so that we can guide any beneficiary, executor, grantor that needs that information. Now, some people, unfortunately, don’t have that team behind them. It’s important to make a roadmap yourself for your family, and that’s any age. As soon as you have kids, there needs to be a roadmap for your loved ones to take care of all of your assets, your children, your debts, and you can leave those in a safe you can leave them with a copy with a family. Remember, thankfully, we do have computer systems now that can keep secure things like that if you do it properly. But it’s very important to make those roadmaps for your loved ones.
Andrew Brill 5:11
And what, what common mistakes do people make in these instances?
Brandy Maben 5:15
Yeah, I would say the number one thing people do is they rush major financial decisions. They’re going through this emotional heartache, and they want to get these hard decisions off their plate. So we encourage clients to take their time, not make any rush decisions. I try to help them focus on immediate needs, first, providing a clear timeline for when they should address larger financial situations and matters. And then, you know, they overlook important financial tasks. So there are bills to pay, there are tax forms to complete, and these are necessary financial steps that really need to be handled timely, and then not updating beneficiary information. So as soon as someone passes, that’s a domino effect that changes, and we help clients review and update all beneficiary information, ensuring that their loved ones can receive the intended benefits that they need.
Andrew Brill 6:11
No brandy. Most of our viewers are into markets and making money and all this stuff. But what is the importance? Explain to us the importance of estate planning, and that the documents and forms that we should have when we’re obviously trying to make money grow our wealth, right? Isn’t that? What everybody’s trying to do here is grow our wealth. We all worry about how to do that, but we never take a step back and say, Okay, now I have this wealth. How do I plan on this wealth and in my estate, of
Brandy Maben 6:44
course, yeah, the growth is the fun part, right? Putting our money in account and talking about all the investments we can provide. However, if you don’t do these steps, those can be cut. All the growth can be cut to the government or go through probate tax and make sure that none of your family’s left with all of that hard earned money and investment strategies you put forward. So we discuss Wills, trust, power of attorney, durable power of attorney, of your finances, ensuring beneficiaries on not only life insurance is up to date, but your retirement accounts are all updated and making sure that there’s strategies in the end that help you and your family best tactfully attack these situations. So an example is, if you have a terminally ill partner, say you both have your individual trust, so you and your wife have separate trusts, and unfortunately, you come down with a terminal ill cancer, your wife can then put all her assets in your trust and get up as a step up in basis when you pass. So those strategies we try to plan on, not only at the very beginning of our planning process, but when the time comes, we’re it’s always top of mind to protect that growth and wealth. And
Andrew Brill 8:08
it’s, it’s when we talk about wealth. Wealth could mean anything to anybody, whether it’s the low end of the income spectrum or the high end. You could always have a will. You can always put stuff in a trust for protection, right? It’s not, it’s not like the, we’re not talking about millionaires and billionaires here. The average person who has some savings can can protect that as well, couldn’t they,
Brandy Maben 8:32
of course, right? And, you know, we’ve printed a lot of money in this country, and the government’s going to find a way to collect tax on anyone. It’s like watching Robin Hood all over again. That could be our future. Some knock on your door for taxes. So we want to make sure that those wills are put in place as soon as you have a family to protect and you want written documentation of what you want done, power of attorney, the medical system is always changing, and you want to make sure that you are treated the proper way in those conditions that you want to be, and then a durable power of attorney, make sure that you have a trusted family member and counsel with your advisor to make sure finances are sorted out correctly. So you’re right. It doesn’t matter if you’re just starting out and you’re low income or you’re a billionaire, everyone has to ensure that these planning efforts take place, because unfortunately, we all, we all have to see death in our family. I want
Andrew Brill 9:31
to ask you about life insurance policies, because I know there’s different types and there’s different vehicles. Sometimes a life insurance policy can actually give you money at some point in time when you know, talk about Whole Life policies versus term policies. What role does a life insurance policy play? Right?
Brandy Maben 9:52
There’s so many life insurance policies. A lot of people use them for investment products, business. Purposes, we at wind rock, see them as the essential need to make sure the afterlife of your family is taken care of. So whether it’s term and you have kids going through school and you want to ensure income is supplemented, college is paid for your spouse can pay off debts. That’s a really key component of Term life insurance. Whole Life policies can be used for those funeral expenses, those debts, those cash flow needs, when when someone passes on so we try to touch on every application possible with life insurance policies and make sure our clients are well sufficiently funded in those because family members do get a lump sum of whatever that contract was written for, usually tax free to pay for all of these expenses that are incurred. And we want to make sure that we touch on any tax implications and how we can help navigate those
Andrew Brill 11:01
what role does the financial planner, in essence, WinRock and you Brandy, what role do you guys play in this whole process?
Brandy Maben 11:10
You know, we we try to help in every aspect that could come about financially. So we try to assess budgets. It’s basic. Budgets is always the first step. We handle investments, real estate holdings. We transition retirement accounts anywhere from a company, 401, K to your IRA. There’s a lot of complexities with divine benefit plans and how spouses get taken care of with those so pension plans, and then we try to help file final tax returns with CPAs, whether what it’s in the family or one of our partners. Those four things we really try, those four main topics we try to help with immediately.
Andrew Brill 11:50
So once someone dies, you’ve taken care of the immediate things. What are the next steps? What do you take care of next. What should people be thinking about after that?
Brandy Maben 12:03
Right? So first, we try to assess the structure of the inheritance or trust. We review the will and trust documents with the attorney to ensure that all the assets are distributed accordingly to the best wishes of the deceased. We identify beneficiaries and coordinate with the state attorneys to facilitate those smooth transfers. We ensure tax compliance is on the up and up. Assist in managing estate taxes, inheritance taxes or any capital gains implications from distributions of these assets, and we also help beneficiaries understand potential tax obligations when inheriting property, for instance, or retirement accounts like IRAs have to be distributed within 10 years, investments and how to navigate those capital gains. And then we try to provide financial advice to every beneficiary involved. So these beneficiaries want to know how to manage and invest these funds. We can help with that. We can discuss options for setting up long term saving strategies like IRAs or paying off these debts strategically, and then we guide clients through implications of liquidating and holding on to these assets for the betterment of the long term.
Andrew Brill 13:20
So for viewers and listeners who are not don’t have a financial plan, what? And aside from you wanting to beat them over the head, what should they be thinking about in in event, you know, because strange things happen and unexpected things happen, what are they thinking about?
Brandy Maben 13:40
I would say three main things, get an estate plan, set up your life insurance, and make sure you have a roadmap for your loved ones.
Andrew Brill 13:49
I feel like you know estate people, you know, every time we say, oh, it’s an estate, you’re looking at this huge mansion and everything. But a state is just your personal wealth. It doesn’t matter how much it is, right? It’s, it’s, you know, this estate has this grandiose thing attached to it, and it just seems like that’s just not the case, right? People think of this and they’re like, Well, you know, I don’t have that much money. I shouldn’t have to worry about it, but everybody needs to worry about this, don’t they?
Brandy Maben 14:16
Yeah, everyone does. And it’s really important to think of the little things. One thing I bring up with my spouses I work with. Or your wedding ring, who’s that going to go to? Or that baseball that’s an heirloom that was signed by your favorite baseball player and your dad’s and your grandfather’s favorite who’s that going to so it might not necessarily mean dollar bills. It really could just mean your valuables and what’s important to your family. So we want to make sure that those are all listed and assigned to the right beneficiaries, and ensuring those are really updated on a regular basis too, because your life changes, right? You sadly could go through divorce. Course, your family dynamics could change. You could lose a child. You could gain a whole new family with adoption. So you’re constantly trying to re up your estate every three to five years even,
Andrew Brill 15:13
and we’ll get to the uglier side of marriage. But how often does somebody, or should somebody, look at these things, and I feel like now I need to take inventory of my life, because I do have some signed baseballs, but it’s how often do we look back and have to revisit this stuff?
Brandy Maben 15:32
Right? So we recommend clients review their estate and financial plans every three to five years. Like I said, those significant life events, marriage, birth, death, divorces, those all can trigger new updates, and so we ensure that the changes in family structure, health status or wealth are reflected in these estate plans, beneficiaries and assets should be revisited to make sure that the client’s wishes remain current, especially after any legal or financial changes. So new property, business ownership, large purchases. There’s a big community in this country that loves art, and art needs to be noted for on all of these as well.
Andrew Brill 16:14
Somebody who’s starting out in this process or hasn’t thought about it yet, what is the one key piece of advice you would give them to kind of nudge them or push them over the edge, to say, You know what? Let’s think about this a little
Brandy Maben 16:27
bit, right? Well, it’s easy to start when the trauma hasn’t hit, so start early. Talk to a professional as soon as you can, so that you’re clear headed. And then when it does happen, just don’t rush decisions. So in the aftermath of a loss, emotions can cloud your judgment. My advice is to take your time before making any major financial decisions like selling property or making large investments. A lot of people get excited with inheritance and don’t make the best moves for their family and their future, and then lean on your professionals like a financial advisor for guidance, and give yourself permission to focus on healing first, while professionals like us manage the financial details,
Andrew Brill 17:13
there’s other ugly things that happen as well, Like separation and divorce. And you know, as a financial planner, as a financial person, how do you approach that?
Brandy Maben 17:27
Well, you know, sadly, I feel like everyone I know has been through a divorce situation, whether it’s immediate or a loved one or a family friend, it’s all around us. And like I said earlier, covid has just increased those numbers. So there’s key aspects. We look at asset division budgeting, cash flow management, retirement planning, tax planning. We also look at future financial planning within your new structure of family and what that means. And then we try to always coordinate with other professionals. So your CPA, your lawyer, there’s a lot of holistic planning that goes into this process, and we make sure we’re trying to be the quarterback behind that. This
Andrew Brill 18:11
show is sponsored by BetterHelp. It’s finally happened, and was only four years in the making. The Fed has cut rates by 50 basis points. Yes, it was a little surprising, but maybe they see bumps in the economic road going forward, and maybe there are bumps in your personal economic road that are weighing on you, or maybe there are other things that are on your mind, keeping you from thinking about all the good things in your life. It happens to all of us. We walk around with the weight of the world on our shoulders. Look at others thinking their lives are perfect with no worries or cares in the world, everyone has worries and things they think about all the time. You can’t let those things get in the way of the fun things you want to do and explore or the things you’re curious about and want to tackle. It’s why I speak to someone. It helps to ease some of the negative thoughts and gain a new perspective on some of the things that are floating around in my head. And believe me, there’s plenty. If you need to talk to a professional or thinking about giving therapy a try, give better help a try. It’s easy, online, convenient and flexible. To fit your schedule, just fill out the questionnaire. Get matched to a licensed therapist anytime. Rediscover your curiosity with better help. Visit betterhelp.com/wealthion to get 10% off your first month. That’s better help, H, E, l, p.com/wealthion, so what? What role does a financial planner play in, you know, making sure that there you’re finding out everything, I guess, the transparency, right? How important is that, that you guys figure out that? Okay? You know what? We’re finding everything, right?
Brandy Maben 19:52
It’s key. I mean, we are struggling every day with our clients being partners in their financial. Relationship, there’s always that person that feels more comfortable with the finances, it doesn’t give them as much stress, or they like the control over it. And then there’s one partner who doesn’t know the transparency, whether it’s trying to be hidden or not. One person usually seems to have more sophisticated knowledge of their financial means, and sadly, 40% of divorces involve disputes about hidden or misrepresented assets. So it’s really important that I can say it as a female, there are way too many women I deal with as as the wife that don’t put themselves in financial literacy within our conversations to know if there’s assets being hidden or not, and then a divorce comes and you don’t know what the assets, liabilities and income even are. So it’s really important that a role of a financial advisor is in helping these couples maintain the accuracy of these financial records, which simplifies that asset division later on. And
Andrew Brill 21:05
I want to, I know that there’s a lot of tasks that probably have to go into this, but the most pressing, the most important financial decisions, I guess, that you have to make or come to when you’re facing something like this,
Brandy Maben 21:20
right? So organizing assets and Dividing property is really key, and to do that with a financial advisor up front can really help all the cost savings once an attorney comes into play. So having that transparency we just talked about, including real estate, including retirement accounts, brokerage accounts, bank accounts, high yield savings accounts, all of those need to be on the table. Sadly, the statistic shows 80% of divorced individuals feel unprepared. But the complexities that of separating these assets, another key topic is qualified domestic relations order a QDRO. Those are crucial to dividing retirement assets, and usually about 50% of assets are retirement assets in divorces. So the fact that a lot of these are not filed correctly with the QDRO can really cost you a lot of penalties. We’ve talked about the government wanting more tax rates, right? There’s lots of penalties for early distribution. If you don’t file it correctly, you could both get hit with penalty on these accounts.
Andrew Brill 22:33
It, you know, I know divorce is separation, but there’s entanglements. You know, people own houses together. They own real estate together. They own investments together. How do you untangle all of this stuff?
Brandy Maben 22:48
You know, we try to make it as simple as possible, but that emotional piece really can drive these to be very difficult. It’s what’s great about my end of things as a financial advisors. It’s black and white, and we try to make it as simplistic as possible, taking the emotions out. We have financial affidavits we use. We have resources and softwares that we can pull up to really cut this in half or make it equitable for each party. Now, there are state requirements, right? There’s community property states like I live in, in Arizona or there’s equitable distribution states, many are just like that that try to be as equitable as possible. So the debt division is often the second most contingent issue after child custody. Actually, we just try to help by documenting liabilities and advising on strategies for fair debt division.
Andrew Brill 23:43
Are there trends in this stuff? I obviously, when people get divorced, it’s many times adversarial, but sometimes, I guess people just say, you know, okay, we’re we’re okay, we don’t belong together anymore. But are there trends that you’ve seen in divorce when how it affects each party differently?
Brandy Maben 24:04
There are Yeah, and we’re speaking mostly of female and male marriages in this statistic, but post divorce income shifts, women tend to experience a 20% decrease in income, while men actually see upwards to 10% increase now that could be due to the women taking on more of the child custody and not having the bandwidth to actually work more. It could be that men have more time to then put into their job and have more sophisticated roles and promotions. But sadly, the importance of reassessing budgets and financial strategies, particularly for women who may face more challenges in rebuilding financial independence, is a major topic with us.
Andrew Brill 24:52
I know this is something unfortunate that you deal with. Obviously, there’s, you know, death gets all of us, Father times undefeated. So. That gets all of us, but divorce is also something you have to deal with. So post divorce now let’s say, Okay, we’ve untangled everything. I’ve paid off your credit cards or my credit cards. We’ve decided how to separate the house and just put it in whoever’s name. What do we do next? I mean, now that we’re legally done with each other, what do we do next? Right?
Brandy Maben 25:21
So we go back to estate planning, right? That basic planning tool to make sure everything is easier on your family and your loved ones come that time we review wills, powers of attorney and the beneficiary designations, and that means we make sure it’s correct on your life insurance, on your retirement accounts, your bank accounts and your trust are all titled correctly, and financial advisors like us ensure that all post divorce estate planning documents are probably updated and reflect the new reality. Sometimes that includes a new spouse almost immediately. Sometimes it involves new kids almost immediately, new residencies. We just try to check off all the boxes that we can for these couples. There’s
Andrew Brill 26:10
a big difference in where you live too, right? The laws of each state can be different.
Brandy Maben 26:15
They can Yeah, that’s right. So you have to make sure with your estate attorney that all the laws are being followed and that everything is fair and in regulation with where you live, we can only go so far as financial advisors with our advice. So as soon as the assets are divided, we really try to make sure we bring in that attorney, and we almost counsel the attorney to counsel you so that there’s no miscommunication or or double advice that’s conflicting each other. What advice
Andrew Brill 26:47
are you giving somebody who’s gone through this and is trying to rebuild? Obviously, we
Brandy Maben 26:54
try to look at the future for them, because that’s so hard for them to focus on. They’re thinking about the past and the present and the very near future of what to fix. So we try to really focus on rebuilding retirement savings and creating a new budget to reflect change income and expenses so that one day after this trauma subsides, they can live the life that they’ve always dreamed of. So we just want to make sure everyone’s very well prepared. And sadly, going back to women, they feel the most unprepared after these losses. They feel like they really had the breadwinner, usually supporting all of these endeavors for future plans and now their whole frame and focus of goals is completely relaunching. So we try to emphasize the importance of maintaining financial independence through investments and career planning before this happens, so that afterwards it, God forbid it happens to any of our clients. But it’s not as much of a shock.
Andrew Brill 28:01
I’ve heard of divorce being called financial Armageddon. Is that, have you experienced that? Not that you’ve experienced divorce, but is that what you experience when people are going through this? It’s just, yeah, daunting thing.
Brandy Maben 28:15
It’s completely daunting. It makes them completely foggy. There’s no rationale in their decisions half the time. And you really need to step back and let them feel those emotions and take the wheel and really help with these financial decisions, so that it’s black and white very clear. And this is the least of their stresses on what they’re going through.
Andrew Brill 28:38
I like you said before, that you take, try and take the emotions out of it. I can’t imagine. You know when, either when someone passes or when someone’s going through a divorce, that the emotions are at a heightened level and sometimes hard to deal with, right?
Brandy Maben 28:54
Always, always, you don’t see any of these situations where anyone doesn’t come into the office with some baggage and emotional hurt, it weighs on them incredibly heavy. So it’s really important that us and their the rest of their team that’s going through this with them is on the same page and can do the nitty gritty work, so that after this emotional roller coaster, they’re in a good position. I just
Andrew Brill 29:21
want to conclude by stressing how important it is to plan you explain to us one more time, whether it be for anything. You know, even in the best of times when the money is rolling in, the family dynamic is happy. Accidents happen. People do pass and just explain to us one more time how important it is to plan not only for now, but for later,
Brandy Maben 29:48
right? And everyone feels the need for financial security, right? Everybody from the moment your mom and dad let you off the hook at 18. In that you you really want to strive for not only financial success, but you want to sleep at night. So in any of these circumstances of life events, let’s make sure that we are on your side as your team to make sure that that’s possible. And the onboarding process for us is crucial in this planning experience. So every financial decision needs to have a clear minded person behind it, and like you said, deal with those before the trauma hits, and deal with it with experts that have the software, have the expertise, and have the team behind them to set you up correctly.
Andrew Brill 30:38
And I want to get that in writing that I can let my kids go at 18, because that’s when college starts. And you know, there’s some financial planning that goes into that as well. So and at 26 I’m not handling the finances anymore. Thankfully, he’s out on his own, but I do get questions of what you know what to do. So they’re not exactly on their own at 18, but I hear exactly what you’re saying, and that’s true.
Brandy Maben 31:05
I think more the 18 year old thinks that they’re financially independent, right? Like there’s they still have you on the hook. They’re smart enough not to really detach themselves fully. But I would say they are making the next steps to make sure that they can do it themselves one day.
Andrew Brill 31:23
I don’t know how old yours are, but I think at the age of 13, they start thinking that way. It’s like I got them on the hook, but I’m independent.
Brandy Maben 31:31
Yeah, no kidding.
Andrew Brill 31:32
So where can we find more of your research, more of your writings about this stuff, more about wind rock in general,
Brandy Maben 31:40
right windrock, we have our website, we have our ex. We’re about to get on Tiktok. We’re working on that, and of course, I
Andrew Brill 31:49
want to see Chris on Tiktok. Yeah, we’re
Brandy Maben 31:52
going to try to make him do a few dances. Can you imagine? It’ll probably be more lame than this new, upcoming generation posts about but it’s important, and we hope that it grabs some attention. Excellent.
Andrew Brill 32:06
Thanks so much. I appreciate it. And you know, if you haven’t started, windrock is a place to start. Obviously you can contact them. You can get to us, get to them through our website, wealthion.com and thanks Brandi, so much for enlightening us on this less than pleasant conversation,
Brandy Maben 32:26
I guess, right, exactly,
Andrew Brill 32:28
or situation. The conversation was great, but the situation, I guess, is not. I
Brandy Maben 32:33
appreciate that compliment Absolutely. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Andrew,
Andrew Brill 32:39
thanks so much for watching our discussion here on wealthion with brandy Maven, I know it’s not one we’d like to have, but one we should be aware of. So if you need the facts on being financially resilient, please head over to wealthion.com backslash free and fill out the form for a free, no obligation portfolio review. And of course, if you could like and subscribe to the channel, we’d greatly appreciate it. Don’t forget to turn on notifications. So you know when we post new videos to the channel. Of course, please do the social media thing with us. All. The links are in the description below. And if you’re looking for more ways to achieve long term wealth, watch this video next. Thanks again for watching until next time. Be informed. Stay empowered and may investments flourish.
