Business Innovators Radio - Episode #49 – Make a Will – The 15 Minute Financial Feast Podcast-With Mark Triplett & Troy Westendorf

Episode Date: September 14, 2023

We believe that every dollar has a purpose and a timeline. When and how your retirement assets will be used should be understood before making important financial decisions.The Triplett-Westendorf Purpose and Timeline 5 Step Planning Process (PT5) begins with Discovery.Understanding where you are now, and then defining where you want to go (Your Purpose) and when you want to get there (Your Timeline), programs your financial GPS. Our Purpose and Timeline 5-step process (PT5) programs your financial GPS.Learn more: http://triplett-westendorf.com/ | https://mypt5.com/The 15 Minute Financial Feast Podcasthttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/the-15-minute-financial-feast-podcast/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/episode-49-make-a-will-the-15-minute-financial-feast-podcast-with-mark-triplett-troy-westendorf

Welcome to the 15-minute financial feast podcast, bringing you 15-minute segments to help you retire with purpose on time. We're serving up food for thought and bread for the head. Are you hungry to learn? Here are your hosts, Mark Triplett and Troy Westendorf. Welcome to another episode of the 15-minute financial feast. Today, you are listening to the audio from a live television interview where one of our favorite local news station anchors asked us questions about a financial feast. topic on the minds of many hardworking folks in our community who are trying to make good decisions and get ahead. It's not always the most comfortable topic to discuss to think about,

but it's necessary. Today, Mark Triplett from Triplett-Westendorf Financial Group, join us to discuss the importance of having a will. Mark, does everyone need a will? I'm not hearing audio. Uh-oh, we might be having some technical difficulties. Mark, can you hear me? we might be able to have a conversation about a will. Hey, are you there? Okay, so the question, does everybody need to have a will? Hi, Sam. Are we live?

I'm sorry, I didn't hear audio. It's all good. Live TV, it happens. Yeah, we got to the next question. Everybody should probably have a will, particularly if they have minor children. If you have minor children and you want to be the one to make a decision of who becomes their guardian, if something were to happen to you, rather than leaving that up to the courts, you should probably have your state plan in order.

But if you don't have kids, it still is a good idea to get your estate plan in order just to save your family and your friends a lot of time and heartache. And if you don't a part of a guardian for your kids, a judge will choose someone for you. Is that correct? Yes. Yeah, it's going to be left up to the courts and a judge will decide who will be the guardian for your children. So it's best to make those decisions while you're here and able to do so. So I found it interesting a point to draw from an example. Aretha Franklin's estate recently settled, what can we learn from her estate plan? So interestingly enough, Aretha Franklin wrote down in a handwritten will that was found later under the couch cushion, and it took five years of legal fees and legal battles before it was deemed that it was a valid will.

And the family could have saved a lot of time and heartache had this been properly done with a proper estate plan rather than leaving it up to the courts to decide the outcome of this. it's really important that you sit down with your financial planner as well as an estate planning attorney who can help you draft the proper documents to be able to specify clearly who you want to inherit your assets and how you want that to happen. How do you want that to go about? What are some common mistakes people make that could be avoided? But it's kind of like you don't know what you don't know, right? Yeah, I hear the big ones. Okay, number one, using online documents. They're cheap. They're easy. But they can leave themselves open to a lot of missteps. For example, miss signatures or not including all of your assets. Also another big mistake. And actually,

this is one that we can take a page from Kobe Bryant's estate plan. He had a great estate plan. But when his youngest daughter was born, he failed to update it. So she was left out. It took the co-trustees a lot of time and money to get her added back in. So anytime there's a life changing event, like a birth of a child, a death in the family, a marriage or divorce, or any other family dynamic change. It's important that you update all of your documents and just make it a rule to kind of update your estate plan every couple of years. I have done this with my family and it was an uncomfortable conversation to have and it wasn't pleasant to put our time into meeting, you know, with an advisor. So how do you, if you get the pushback from families saying,

no, you're always going to be around. I don't want to talk about this. Like I just, out of sight, out of mind. How do you get family on board or your trusted, you know, guardians? How do you just soften the unpleasantness of it? So it really is a tough conversation to have. One of the ways that we've accomplished this in our conference room with some of the folks that we serve is that we will ask one of the folks, you know, what you want to have happened with your estate after you're gone.

And then we don't allow them to talk because they're not here. anymore. Yeah, I think that's the best way. Then allow the other family members to decide and see why it's so important to have that written out. Because once you're gone, you don't get to come back and make those decisions. They have to be made now, even if it's an uncomfortable conversation to have. Well, you always give the best advice on difficult things to talk about. So thank you so much, Mark. We appreciate your time. Sorry about a little bit of technical hiccups, but we got to the meet of the conversation. Thank you again. That's right. Thanks for having me, Samantha. Take care. 15-minute financial-faced podcast.

Remember, every dollar has a purpose and every dollar has a timeline. If you have questions about today's topic, schedule a call with a team member. Visit www.m.w.com. Until next time, be sure you're taking steps to retire with purpose on time. Mark Triplett is an investment advisor representative of and advisory services offered through Royal Fund Management LLC, an SEC registered investment advisor. Nothing contained in this program should be considered an offer to buy or sell securities. Different investments have different risks associated with them, and not all investments are appropriate for all investors.