Ep 74: Helping Aging Parents With Finances
The X's & O's
How do we talk to our parents about their finances?
Asking questions related to money can be difficult even if it's your own family, but it shouldn't be. At a certain point, we are most likely going to be in charge of our parents' money and making financial decisions for them. So, what do you think is the ideal age to start this conversation with your parents?
In this episode, Matthew Theal, Brent Pasqua, and Joshua Winterswyk explain the several things we should know about our parents' finances to help them in the future.
Matthew, Brent, and Joshua discuss:
The meaning of a sandwich generation
Understanding your parents’ income and expenses
The legal and financial information you need access to
What to do if your parents are refusing help with their finances
And more
Resources:
Connect With RPA Wealth Management:
Transcript
Welcome to the Retirement Plan Playbook with Brent Pasqua, Matthew Theal and Joshua Winterswyk from RPA Wealth Management. In this podcast, we cover current events, retirement planning strategies. And provide you with the tools to help you build a successful retirement playbook in any political or financial landscape.
Join Brent, Matthew and Joshua as they navigate the issues that can make the later stages of your retirement plan, challenging and help you create the best retirement plan playbook. Now let's get to the show.
Welcome into the show. We're excited to have you today we are gonna be talking about the issues that we should consider with helping aging parents with money. And it's something that everybody I think thinks about, you know, probably in the back of their mind and they don't always know how to address it.
And today we're gonna lay out some of those questions and answers. But as we get started as always, I'm your host, Brent Pasqua. I'm here with Matthew Theal and Joshua Winterswyk. How are you guys handling school? Being back in session? It's been pretty awful for me. Took my traffic up by at least 10 minutes in the morning.
A lot of traffic everywhere around us here in the Rancho Cucamonga area. I definitely noticed your attitude has changed in the mornings. I have two like, uh, problems with it. Number one is who, whose idea is it to get rid of school Buse? That was just silly. And then number two, it's August. Why are the kids back in school?
I have that same question. There's no reason any child needs to be in school in August. They're probably all dying of heat exhaustion. yeah, it is. It's hot. I don't know what these schools are doing, but they've absolutely lost their mind. And this is all because your drive got longer too.
You could just tell in the tone of his voice. Yeah. He's just mad. Well, it doesn't matter though. There shouldn't be kids in school in August. There's no point to that. When we were kids, we started school after labor day, there was nothing wrong with that. We got out by the first week of June. It was perfect.
The time he made more sense, you know, he had the labor day remember he had that three day weekend, I think. And we started right after that. Right. Or the week. Yeah, this is just you know, government thing to extend it longer. I don't know, but my, we should not be in school. My, uh, commute also increased.
So now that I do a drop off a couple times a week, I've noticed I gotta accommodate for all of the school traffic, which I never had to consider before. So yeah, it does make driving in a lot worse. What about you, Brent? Traffic has been worse. That is for sure, but I think the kids are all excited to be in school for the most part.
And. Fun to see them, ex excited for the new school year. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So let's get into the hot take headlines following up on our last show with Kelli Vanevenhoven the national association of realtors said sales have previously owned homes fell by 5.9%. This is the sixth straight month of declines.
Are we feeling like the housing market is crumbling? Yeah, I think so. Oh, you know, crumbling might be a strong word, but housing prices are dropping houses. Aren't selling as fast. Uh, people are less eager to buy homes. I, I saw that new home sales also declined as well last month. So this is kind of what everyone predicted, right?
Rising rates homes. Aren't gonna go up as much. I think we saw this coming and I don't think that crumbling is the right word. I mean, this is just my take, but we're just headed back to kind. Normalcy, the market was just crazy bananas for, the last couple years. And we're seeing a little bit of decline, which we kind of expected.
So I don't think that there's like too much to it, or it is as big of a headline as people are maybe making it seem I wouldn't be shocked if sitting here in five years, doing the playbook and housing prices are in five years. They're exactly where they are. Yeah, I don't see 'em going up that much, but we also had great accumulation for, how many years, so exactly.
Three to what was it? Three to five years of double digit house price returns. Yeah. And, but you could see from oh nine or oh 10. Once the market collapsed, it took a long time for housing prices to really go up of much value for a long time. They kind of just sat there and then over the last three to four years, then it finally skyrocketed.
Yeah. I'd imagine that's what happens this time. Yeah. But I mean, it's good for people who are looking to buy, right. I mean, it's a good opportunity for them to, it's getting a little bit more in their hands. Yeah. And the price decrease is kind of offsetting that increase in interest rate. So, you know, keep looking if you're in the market for it.
Here's another big story. Joe Biden announced that his administration would forgive $10,000 in federal student loan debt. This is for single filers, making less than 125,000 a. and joint filers making less than $250,000 a year. He also announced that the borrowers who used the Pell grant are eligible for an additional $10,000 in repayment.
A massive story, I guess, I didn't all understand all the details as this was passed. What are your thoughts? And tell us a little bit more. There's a lot to unpack here. Number one, a lot of confusion. With student loans, just when I've been talking to clients and see online It's $10,000 worth federal.
So it's not private student loan debt, it's federal. So that means it's a government loan. That's getting repaid. But outside of that, I have really mixed emotions on this. What do you think, Josh? I can't really tell where I stand on this. It's hard because we know that like systematically with colleges and student loans and like this whole industry.
Kind of broken and this forgiveness doesn't fix that. So I think that yes. Does it help some people through, maybe a short term, tough time maybe gives 'em a little bit more wiggle room, especially through inflation, but I think like the status that 87% of Americans don't have student loans.
So, how many people is this really helping? So I'm kind of mixed on it, like with you as well. It's just kind kind of hard to unpack. So I'm really disappointed. For like my clients who actually ended up paying off their student loans and doing the right thing. Right. Cause you know, we're planners, we work with people, we help them pay off student loans.
We help them pay off credit card debt. We come up with strategies. And I have so many clients who actually did the right thing and paid their loans off like responsible adults and advocates of like 5 29 plans. Forward planning even not just consolidating debt and paying it off. Yeah, exactly.
And. So now, a bunch of people are just getting relief for pretty much being irresponsible, I guess, or so what's the difference between federal student loan and private? Good question. So college is so expensive. The federal government will give you a certain amount towards it. You could, it's kind of like a mortgage for a home, right?
There's federal, and then there's private loans. Same concept. So FHA, right? Josh, that's the federal side of the housing market. Mm-hmm and then there's a federal side of the student loan market. There's a private loan. So if you did a loan with SoFi or another company, that's considered private debt, just like if you do a loan, probably through a Wells Fargo or one of those other companies, it's private mortgage that you have a lot of them associate, I think with like the FSFA application.
I think everyone that's like going through the college process is pretty familiar. But I would wonder though, is when this 10,000 comes off of what they owe, does their payment get recalculated? That's a good question. I don't know the answer to that question. I don't know. There's actually not a lot of details other than whatever Biden said in a document that came out.
A lot of people are waiting for the details. I'm not a hundred percent sure if this is actually gonna go through. It seems like they're gonna get a lot of pushback. I kind of think it's just an election strategy. And they're dangling the carrot out in front of the November elections and it might just disappear by then, without anybody getting any debt relief at all.
And what's crazy is like colleges are still increasing like tuition costs at the same time. That's my biggest problem. I think to all of this, to me, this is like a weed in a planner box. Like you can cut the weeds off or the off the Leafs, but that doesn't take away from the. That's gonna just keep growing back.
Totally. And the root of the problem ultimately falls back on the schools. Who, where is there any regulations on what they can charge? I mean, they charge , a completely irrational amount of money. Yeah, absolutely. And I saw one, one take that I thought was pretty good. And what it said was that the.
College forgiveness should be paid by the endowments of all the colleges. I was like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. Harvard has a multi-billion dollar endowment yeah, sure. Pay off the debt of the people who can't afford their degree. So that makes sense, but oh no. Putting on the taxpayers and especially the ones who are responsible does not make sense.
I do feel like there's one side. Of the political Democrat party. That's very desperate right now. And I wouldn't be shocked if by November they're, giving out free big macs, if you vote Democrat, that's where this is going. That's funny. Somebody's gotta come in though and actually take down the cost of tuition.
I mean that's, somebody's gotta help there. There's a systematic problem that needs to be addressed and it's not gonna be cured by forgiving $10,000 worth of student loans. Right. And what I would want to ultimately know is when you're charging that much more for students to go to school, Their income out of college.
Isn't increasing by all that much. Yeah, you could see it per degree, but it's not enough to offset like the total cost of what they're being charged. No, not at all. All right. Let's get into the next headline. Movie pass a subscription service for movie theaters, which was canceled in 2019.
Actually remember this is actually making a comeback. The new pass will launch again on September. will either of you be perching it, maybe you can tell people like what this movie pass is and then, are you gonna buy one? Yeah. So I had one back in the day. It's pretty cool. It's like a little credit card and you've got an app and you would go on the app, pick your movie.
They would load money onto your little credit card. Do you go to the movie theater and you'd buy the tickets with. And then you'd go sit in the show. Really cool concept. But obviously it's a pretty poor business model based on what they were charging for the monthly subscription and what a movie actually costs.
So it eventually didn't work after a while and they ran outta money, which is why they canceled it. I think it's great for people who like to go to the movies. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time to go to the movies, so I won't be doing it. I also haven't seen any details on what this thing is gonna cost.
I think it's 10, 20 and 30. They have three different tier. And you used to be able to watch like a movie a day, but it's not gonna be like that because they ran outta money. The first time they tried it doing that. And it's kind of like a season pass, right? Like to sports team, but just to the movies.
But I think though, and correct me if I'm wrong, like AMC and couple of the big movie chains already have like their own pass that they've implemented as well. Yeah. There's like competition to movie pass out there now. Yeah. AMC has the stubs program. As soon as movie pass was canceled. My wife and I switched to stubs and we did that for a while, but canceled it during the pandemic.
Yeah I'm not joining the waiting list either. I haven't been in the movies in a while and don't have too much time. So it's not as attractive to me. Is there even that many quality movies coming out that often where you would need a movie pass right now? No. So what a lot of people don't realize is during co COVID so if most of 20, 20, not a lot was.
It was very rare to get a project off the ground. So now we're just starting to get projects back that were filmed, at the end of 21. So it typically takes, at least over a year from the time something is filmed to you're actually seeing it in theaters. So I would imagine movies get better over the next, year or.
It's kind of, anticipating the demand going up to, as they're seeing that demand slowly increase and it's not yet back to pre pandemic levels. So maybe a good time to launch it and get some hype as these movies come out. Be interesting to see. All right, let's get into the retirement planning corner.
One thing that you know has come up a lot over the years is how do we talk to our parents? And they could be aging parents, younger parents, older parents. About their finances. And how do we talk about money, but why is it important to talk with your parents about money? Yeah, so I think this is a really deep topic.
But I think it's really important. And the main thing I would look at it as you're gonna get a better understanding of where your parents are financially by talking with them. And you're gonna hit a certain point where you're most likely gonna. In charge of their money and making financial decisions for them.
So it's probably pretty wise at some point in your life or even, if you're a parent to sit down with your kids, maybe they're in their thirties, forties, fifties, and show 'em the finances. Let 'em know how you're doing things. Yeah. Bringing up that awareness is just going. Create a better plan for the whole family, cuz we know that collectively there could be potential inheritance down the road or medical costs for parents that weren't expected cuz that conversation was never open.
So there's just a lot of reasons there that, opening up this conversation is gonna be helpful, not only for your parents, but for also your personal situation. Just here at RPA, I mean we're helping, 250, 300 households. I have quite a few clients I could think of off the top of my head where I'm like, man I, you know, really think you should probably bring your kids in to help you with your finances.
Like I'm a little bit nervous about your decision making on some things, and maybe you forget something or you're doing something that's probably not wise with your money and. Maybe someone a little bit younger, your kids can maybe help you think through the process better. And I think this goes back to a systematic problem that we have not only in education though, but also in, in our culture of why aren't these things discussed as you're growing up or taught in school where you, your parents should be educating you on all of these things along the way.
Anyway. So when they're at this stage, like the communication lines about a lot of this should already be in place. Absolutely. Yeah. And I'll be doing that with my daughter. Who's young. Like I want to teach her about money and. Show her what mom and dad are doing, how we're saving for retirement, how we're saving for her college and why that's important.
And hopefully she'll get a better at understanding of that teacher about credit cards and interest rates. But for some reason, there's a lot of people in this country who just don't want to talk about. Money with their family. It's very strange, but sharing can also mean like sharing, like the successful strategies or the successful stories.
So like it's going to benefit everybody, and then if there's an issue, like it also can solve the issue together collectively. Right. Two minds are better than one. So I think this just a lot of benefits to opening up that convers. I agree. And what is the actual sandwich generation?
Josh? You should take this one. Yeah, that's good. So sandwich generation is actually. If an individual is taking care of their parents and also raising their children. So there's a sandwich there, right? You're the meat and the sandwich. And you're taking care of the two bread pieces. Yeah. You told me about that.
I was like, you're like, Hey, we should talk about sandwich generation. I'm like, what's a sandwich generation. Oh. Which is why I wanted you to answer. But what's really interest is I find with my clients when I thought about. I feel like it happens sometime in their fifties to sixties where they still have their kids.
Maybe they're in high school, they're getting ready to send 'em to college, but then also they start taking care of their parents who are maybe 75 80 and they're more relying on them. And so then as planners, we have to do so much more work cuz we're not only planning for their parents, but we're playing for their kids, the college, and then also their own retirement.
There's just so much work to do. If you are in that sandwich generation, you have the full financial planning spectrum, like the whole textbooks being used. Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of that, what the oldest parents in that generation have impact all of the trickle down effect between the generation that's in the middle and the generation that's coming beyond because all of that can have such an impact on them financially.
And the planning strategies that we implement. Yeah. Especially when you're looking at an estate plan, you're, you're planning the estate plan as a, a parent, but your child's helping you with it. And if the child doesn't understand, who's inheriting what, and that's not set up properly, there could be so many different like negative tax implications that happen.
And just kind of some consequences from not having that open discussion. Absolutely. What do you guys think is the ideal age to start the conversation with your parents? That's a good question. And I think it's tough to answer but I would say pretty much immediately you should get a good idea of, or at least have an idea of what they have and where it's at, right?
If you don't even know where your parents' bank accounts are at, if something happens to them, what are you gonna do? Do they, do you even know if they have a power of attorney, if you could help them in that way? I think that to piggyback is sooner the better I'll answer that question. It is tough.
It's a tough conversation to have and to bring up, but the sooner you can get this conversation started the better. Yeah, I agree. What assets, or what should you know about your parents' finances to help them in the future? I'll start, Basically just a simple balance sheet. Right? You wanna have an idea of the assets?
You, you wanna know where those are. Do they have retirement accounts, IRA, 401k. How many do they have? Who holds 'em? Is there brokerage accounts? Where is it at? Is it etra, fidelity? You know, Charles Schwab and then also do they own a lot of property where do the property located?
Where the deeds located? And then probably the most important one, because you're gonna need this for day to day expenses, if something happens to your family, but can you get access to their bank accounts? Where are those bank accounts held? How do they do their bills? All that stuff on the asset side to move money is super important.
Yeah. I feel like it's like an earthquake kit, you know, like in case an emergency, you kind of have some like reserves of knowing where things are. And I think that conversation with an older parent doesn't have to actually be that difficult. It could be more or less Hey, if anything were to ever happen, can you give us like a summary of what we're supposed to do?
What maybe some general, the ideas of where the stuff is at. And at least that opens up the conversation with the parent so that they know if you're in a situation where you can't do this yourself, At least we can step in with hopefully not a lot of having us to go find, dig and pull everything out on what we're supposed to do.
Yeah. So starting and keeping it simple or stick to the basics. And if they're not organized now is the time now you gotta get them organized, especially if they're still in, you know, sound mind. And if, if you're not capable of doing it on your end, go hire a financial planner to. Right. I, and I think that's a really important point because I think that if let's say you as a person, your finances are all organized or you're working with an advisor and you do things really well.
This probably gives you a good chance to help them get organized. because what's not organized on their end is probably eventually gonna fall back on you AB absolutely.Totally. When we see that, right. We see that every day here in this office about kids and, potentially parents, maybe even just having a health event or something happens and we waited and now it falls all on that individual.
And it could have been avoided. Yeah, absolutely. And then I think there's other things that come into play by doing that. You obviously want to try to avoid them from getting. yeah. Elder abuse. That's what I was thinking. We thought of the topic for the show. I'm like, oh, that's perfect.
Cause we, we don't want to see our parents scam, at least I don't correct. And that's something we've seen with many aging clients over the years. It happens. It wouldn't have happened to them 10 years ago, but at this stage now it's happening. Absolutely. What are some of the financial things that you should have access to?
I think though, before we move on that, gathering documents to list just a few more too is understanding your parents'. Also just their expenses. BA Matthew also talked about creating a balance sheet. I think a little bit of an outline of the cash flow is important as well. When we're asking these questions to, to our parents and then also some legal documents, right?
What has already been created or what hasn't been created? I think this is a really good place to start as well. Is there a living trust that was created or how the titling of all of these accounts fall in line? Really simple question. Um, but we'll open up a lot of conversation with understanding, who are the beneficiaries and how they're titled.
And then lastly, just insurance, I think in, insurance is very complicated and especially with the taxation of insurance policies. So really taking a deep dive into insurance or looking at a policy with the parents, I think can be very helpful as. That's such a great idea on the legal documents, you know, and while you were talking, I just realized, I don't even know where my parents keep their trust in their house.
And I don't have a copy of it personally. So I think after this, when I go see my mom and I'm gonna be, Hey mom, where do you guys keep the trust at? Cause I know where the bank accounts are. I know the retirement accounts we've talked, but the actual trust, I don't know where it's at. Yeah. It's a good plan.
Yeah. You gotta know where that's at. But at the end of the day, what information do you really want to have access? I would say it depends on the stage. So let's, uh, work backwards if they're in a nursing home or if you think it's gonna be time to get them in a nursing home, or they need extra care from a nurse, you probably need access to almost everything and you probably need to be doing the day to day finances for them, or at least overseeing it.
If they have health issues been in and outta the hospital, going to doctor's appointments weekly maybe on a bunch of pills or struggling to breathe poor diagnosis. You're probably gonna want to have mostly everything. And if not getting ready to take over their finances as well.
But like if they recently retired say they're, 65 70 they, just finished working. Maybe just an idea, an overview. Yeah. A balance sheet. That's it know where their trust is at. Yeah. I need to get into that. yeah. And I think if your parents are getting closer to those stages, or you can see that on the horizon, it's probably a good idea to just make sure they have a trust because having a trust is going to give you the proper and legal way to be able to take control of these things.
and then it's probably gonna save some conflict within other members of your family if you're managing or helping your parents with these assets. Just so you're following within the guidelines of the law and usually like that living trust process and having that provides great organization. And is very, very successful in kind of that transition like you're talking about.
Right. And if you have to follow steps, I mean, it's not like, you know, you just have the trust and then you go and you have control of everything. You have to follow those steps. And the guidelines, if they're, cognitively impaired, then you're gonna be able to have to go to the doctor and get it signed off.
And there's just a lot of steps involved, but it's done properly. Absolutely. How would you manage kids and parents from a financial perspective?
So the number one thing is looking at it from a planning basis. So currently, are you raising a child? Are you getting ready to send them off to college or are you plan to inherit and then how does that change your retirement? I think a lot of people Brent, Josh, one of you can correct me if I'm. But usually you end up inheriting money at some point in your early sixties, I'd say the majority of time.
So that would mean your parents lived until their eighties or early nineties. They pass away. Maybe you inherit a couple million dollars. I feel like that usually gives a lot of people, the confidence they need to retire. I would agree with that. I've seen it happen a lot with my clients. They're like, okay, inherited some money.
I'm gonna retire now. So that's why I think it's really important to. Put that plan together with an actual planner and maybe you even build in, Hey, I talked to my parents a few years ago. It looks like I'm gonna inherit a million dollars or $2 million. Let's actually build that into my financial plan.
It's just my dad, who's the only one left. My mom passed away. He's not in good health. Probably only gonna last three or four more. You could actually create a financial plan, build that in, and we could simulate you getting that inheritance so we know how it's gonna impact you before you actually even get it appropriately tax plan for that event.
Building that out is going to answer so many questions and provide so much clarity for you. And it can also, again, have a successful outcome for your parent, right? There's things that can be done just on a tax strategy basis or an investment strategy basis. That's gonna help your parents and you and your family.
And I think that's really how generational wealth is built, right? Like we're planning through multi-generation. So taking the lead as that sandwich generation can just promote even more success. and then look, let's look at it too from maybe you're in your fifties or sixties, and you wanna send your child to college and, you know, say they're 16, 17, 18, and they're ready to go off to Harvard, USC, UCLA, or even a state school.
And you're looking at the cost. You're like, wow, I can't afford this, but I don't want my kids to have student loans. Well, maybe if you know that your parents have a lot of money or they're standing to inherit some money, you're more comfortable taking on those student loans. If, at some point in the next 10 years, you're gonna inherit money to pay off those.
or you might not even know, like grandma and grandpa's feelings, they might say, I want to pay for that. I just, we just never had that conversation. And we could pay for it. Now we have too much money. Anyways, you might as well give it to the grandkids. Right. Right. So understanding how much money they have that transaction doesn't have to be, when someone, an event happens or passing, it could be now and the grandparents can actually see their grandkids.
Enjoy it. And I think too, like when you time I think for the most part, when you're sitting across from a. And you start talking about inheritance. They it's like almost, they're slightly uncomfortable to have that conversation because it's more, I don't want to count on it unless it actually comes in.
And then I don't know when, and I don't exactly know how much, so I don't want to necessarily count on it. I don't want to base my decisions on something I don't necessarily have yet. But if a little bit of the detail of your parent's situation, I mean, probability will tell you that eventually everyone's going to pass.
And eventually someone's going to get that. And if that could help you, like you said, with your kids with college, or you retire a little bit early, yes. That should be taken into consideration as you're doing your planning. Absolutely. What, and I think this is probably, to me, the most important question is what if your parents are refusing help?
Because we've seen this generationally for many, many times in many years, I would just Disown them. I'm just kidding. That's a great question. I would honestly just sit them down, try and reason with them. Maybe a little reverse psychology. Show them your finances. Maybe that could work. I'm not sure.
I mean, outside of getting them a meeting with a financial planner, I don't know. It's tough. I think one way that is helpful is going back to what we kind of already talked about, which is, in case in an emergency, we want to be there for you. We wanna be able to help you. And if you were in emergency, we wanna make sure that, all of these things are going to be able to get done.
And we can't do that unless you have these conversations with us. And just being honest and having a very, we're not trying to get anything from. We're not even having each wanting you to tell us the amounts necessarily, but let's just talk about where things are structured and how we could possibly help if these things did happen.
And what I'm hearing you say is like really help them organize, right? It is not even about the dollar amounts. Like you said, it's more about getting all of these things in order to prep for the future, regardless of what happens, but start with that basic organizational technique of creating that balance sheet we even with or without account values.
Yeah. Do you think that sometimes it could be more of a ego issue too on maybe the older generation being, oh, I don't want my kid talking with me about my finances, my finances, or my finances that gets in the way. Yeah. Maybe you don't wanna get criticized on mistakes. You made stocks, you bought things that you invested in that weren't as good or things that, you know, you could be doing better, but you haven't done it.
I don't know if that's part of it. I don't know. Yeah. I think this is where the only planner can actually really. A middle man. Yeah. Facilitate that conversation. Right. There's not gonna be any judgment. You know, we're just gonna be objectively providing advice right. To better the situation.
I think that that's a, a good tactic. Yeah. I think that is another way. If your parents don't want to sit down with you and just go over everything, it could be like, Hey, can we meet with your advisor with you? We don't have to talk numbers, but again, let's just talk about the structure of where things are.
Because again, if you don't have an estate plan, you don't have a trust and all that stuff's gonna end up in probate. I mean, you're talking about 2, 3, 4 years of just massive headaches and attorney fees and costs that are going to go into all of that. And that could all have been avoided. Yeah.
You're gonna lose 30 or 40%. You don't wanna do that? No. No. All right. So how can How can you work with a financial planner to help you with this process? And what do they do? I would look at it like, Hey, that financial planner is your middle man with you and your parents. And ultimately at the end of the day, that planner's gonna help you get organized and help you come up with strategies for the future.
Let me give you an example, one that we haven't touched on yet, let's say that you have two parents and one already passed away. So there's only one left. And one of 'em has a really bad stroke and they end up in a skilled nursing facility. All right. Those are pretty expensive. What's the cost on those?
I think average in California is 110 just, but that's also depending on location sort of zip code and then the type of care you need 110, you're saying that's a hundred, $10,000 a year, correct? That's a chunk of change. That's a lot of money. Yeah. If you're looking at it from someone who's in their fifties and sixties, trying to take care of their parents.
And now you have to pay $110,000 for this facility, for your mom or dad who suffered this stroke and can't take care of themselves anymore. Where's that money gonna come from? And that's what the planner's job is. Are we doing a reverse mortgage? Are we selling the home? Is there retirement assets we could use to pay for this.
but what you don't wanna happen is that, you're in your forties, fifties, sixties, and you're stuck paying for your parents. And now it's jeopardizing your financial future. Yeah. The proactive planning helps avoid making a reactive decision that could potentially be very consequential. Absolutely.
I think I've seen as many times somebody inherit money from their parents as I have. The younger kid having to help their parents in the last stage of their, or last chapter of their life or retirement. Yeah, it, it probably just depends how well their parents were set up. Right. Or how much money they have.
But I mean, it could be sad cuz like, we've been talking about the sales generation, you might be deciding between helping out your parents financially or helping your kid go to college. Correct. That's such a tough decision. And a professional opinion's just gonna help. I think that a lot of people.
Don't realize that like financial planners can help that sandwich generation, like maybe it's not you that needs all of the help, but it is the help that is needed to facilitate that conversation and that organization with your parent. So I just think that this is a good alert for anyone out there that didn't think that that help was available.
Yeah. And I, I think there's two things that, I've come to realize with this number one, having these conversations don't have to. Super detailed, but they, we know they can be very helpful. We know that those can open up the conversations on making things easier in the future. And number two, this can alleviate a tremendous amount of stress.
Totally, absolutely. Yeah, for sure. All right. Let's get in the last part of the show. Let's get an RPA recommends Joshua. We want to hit it first. Yeah. Mine's kind of, uh, in line with our topic today. So a lot of people have Google emails, right? We. Gmail or Google email. And Google has a free suite of collaborative, like doc tools, like word and Excel and calendars.
And if we're helping our parents we are that sandwich generation. Or if you're out there just a great tool to like, be able to put together a letter or a calendar or a spreadsheet that you're able to collaborate with, like other family and it's free. So I just a really good toy. I know it's been out there for a long, long time.
A lot of people use it. But I still continue to use it on like the personal side of things. And I think it's good and it's free and it's a great place to organize even a simple balance sheet for your family that you can all share and collaborate on. . Yeah, I think that's great. I have, I've only used it a eliminate amount, but then also my tech skills aren't as, as strong as yours, but you know, that, I think that's a really good recommend.
Yeah. My fantasy league used fantasy football league used Google documents to create a rule book. And then you can share it and edit it. Yeah. You could share it. Yeah. That's pretty nice. Yeah. But hold on, hold on. You have a rule book for your fantasy football league. Yeah. It's a hard, it's a hardcore lead all right.
So I have a, I have one that I can't remember sometimes if I mention them in the past, but I thought this topic is really, helpful with this recommend, cuz we see this problem with the clients across the board. I'm gonna recommend last pass. And last pass is a site that helps you store your user names and your passwords.
And what it's helpful to do is nowadays obviously we need every password. Everything has a username and password, and most people that we work with, they don't remember all their username and passwords. My parents don't remember all their username and passwords. Everything seems to have a username and password.
It's not just, when you use your phone or storing it on your computer or your desktop, that doesn't go with you, but download last. Go with a simple, basic package and allow, have it saved on there because that way you're gonna know where all of your username and passwords are, and you're not having to walk around with a little notebook.
Yeah, that's a great recommend. I love last pass. You mean everybody though? Doesn't use password 1, 2, 3, 4. Or your dog's name actually last pass though. Why? I like it is because you have your browser, right? Like you use Microsoft or you use Google and they have a password software that like, can save your password.
But why I like last pass is because it's third party, right? All of your data and all of your search and everything you're doing on the internet is let's say Google Chrome. But then last passes that third party that's like keeping your password secure from Chrome. Correct. So that's why I like it.
Yeah. I love the product. I use it myself. Yeah. You told me about it. I don't how long we've been using that five plus years. And that's completely a game changer. I mean, that just saves you so much headache, cuz if you don't have the, your password, you're not getting in, it's just a headache.
Yeah. I have random passwords on all of my important accounts. Like financial institutions, things like that. Yeah. So maybe I should change mine. I'm just kidding. I use last fast. what do you have for us, Matt? All right. I've been in the kitchen trashcan market for a while and I like the wire cutter for product reviews.
They, I usually, they usually don't go wrong. So I bought their top review trash can a simple human and I sent it back cause it had a dent. And then I was like, all right, I'll, you know, give it another. So I bought another model of the simple human trashcan. I bring it home. I take it out of the box.
I go to put my trash bag in it and the trash bag doesn't fit. this is their standard kitchen trashcan. I laugh cuz I heard this story. no, it's a good one. And it doesn't fit a normal Costco size trash back. So I'm like great. I'm going to return this wire cutter recommended trashcan from simple human for the first time ever.
I've never liked a wire cutter product. and I happened to be at Josh's house on Saturday. I picked him up cuz we were going somewhere and I saw his trash cans. That was a nice trash can. He said, yeah, I got it at Costco. And so now I went to Costco and I bought the Kohler trash can step can it's on sale right now for $65 is so much better than the simple human $200 trash can.
That doesn't fit normal trash bags. So do yourself a favor while it's on sale at Costco $65. If you need a new step trashcan for your kitchen, Kohler, I co-sign this recommendation, it. And it looks nice in the house. Yeah, no, it looks great. I'm glad you got it. I'm glad you're happy because you seem pretty upset about the simple human ones.
Oh, I was so mad, big fail by the wire cutter. I've never had a worse product recommendation from them. I'm glad you got a good trashcan at your house. It's important. Yeah. All right. So as we close up as advisors, we love helping people. That's why we do it. So if you would like to schedule a complimentary consultation please go to our website at rpawealth.com.
You can also download our ebook from our website. And if you'd like to show notes, please go to retirementplanplaybook.com As always, thanks for being with us and thanks for listening. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you for listening to the retirement plan playbook, click the following button to be notified when new episodes become available to get in touch with our team, call us at (909) 296-7977. Or visit our website at www.rpawealth.com to schedule a complimentary consultation. The information covered and posted, represents the views and opinions of the guest and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of RPA wealth management.
The content has been made available for informational and educational purposes. Only the content is not intended to be a substitute for professional investing advice always seek the advice of your financial advisor or other qualified financial service provider. With any questions you may have regarding your investment planning.