Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - "My Dad Didn't Have a Will— Here's Why It Was a Nightmare."

Episode Date: June 3, 2024

Today, Nicole breaks down how you can set up your will successfully… and the mess you could land in if you don’t. To follow this money trail, she's joined by Erik Huberman, Founder and CEO of Hawke Media, and Cody Barbo, Founder and CEO of Trust & Will.

I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash. But I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start, or even too complicated, if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full-time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you.

I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at airbnb.com slash host. One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was in credit card debt. I got to a point where I just knew that I had to get it under control for my financial future and also for my mental health. We've all hit a point where we've realized it was time to make some serious money moves. So take control of your finances by using a Chime checking account with features like no

maintenance fees, fee-free overdraft up to $200, or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at Chime.com slash MNN. When you check out Chime, you'll see that you can overdraft up to $200 with no fees. If you're an OG listener, you know about my infamous $35 overdraft fee that I got from buying a $7 latte and how I am still very fired up about it. If I had Chime back then, that wouldn't even be a story. Make your fall finances a little greener by working toward your financial goals with Chime. Open your account in just two minutes at Chime.com slash MNN. That's Chime.com slash MNN. Chime feels like progress. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancorp Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A. Members FDIC. SpotMe eligibility requirements and overdraft limits

apply. Boosts are available to eligible Chime members enrolled in SpotMe and are subject to monthly limits. Terms and conditions apply. Go to Chime.com slash disclosures for details. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. Yesterday's episode was all about how the Rockefellers built wealth. I broke it down into three critical steps. Set up an irrevocable trust, take out a life insurance policy within the trust, and set the trust as the beneficiary. Today, you're going to hear how you can do this successfully and what happens if you don't. First, you'll hear from my friend Eric Huberman, who is a very successful entrepreneur and marketer. In the aftermath of losing his

father, piecing together the financial puzzle was not easy for Eric and his siblings. And here's the craziest part. His dad did a lot of things right. In fact, you'll recognize that he did take a page from the Rockefeller playbook. But despite making some of the right money moves, figuring out his estate after he passed was still super complicated. bit. And so the complications are a small price to pay for a privileged situation. And Eric will be the first to tell you that. But what I want you to know is that things didn't get complicated for Eric's family because they had money. This is an equal opportunity complicated situation, no matter if you have money or if you don't. Because if someone in your family owes money when they die, that situation is really hard too and potentially quite damaging. So the determining factor for whether it's stressful to pick up the financial pieces when somebody dies is not whether or not you have money. It's whether the person who dies

has kept a clear will. And that's where our second guest on today's episode comes in. After the break, you'll hear from the CEO of the company Trust & Will, which you guessed it, helps people make trusts and wills. But now here's my conversation with Eric. We were both hanging out in Cannes recently for the marketing festival, not the cool film festival. And we're catching up on life. And we started talking about this really complicated, interesting money puzzle that you had recently when your father passed. Again, I'm so sorry. He passed things on to you that were more complicated than you imagined to sort through.

So I'd love to just have an open, honest dialogue about that, if you don't mind. Yeah. As we talked about, I would never say, like, woe is me. It's like, obviously, most people aren't fortunate enough to have to deal with this kind of an issue. But at the same time, I think it's it's kind of opaque in terms of how inheritance works, how those wealthy families do not retain that wealth for very long if they don't build a lot of structure and a lot of discipline involved in how to maintain it. And I learned a lot from that. A lot of things my dad did right. A lot of things my dad did wrong. You're like one of the hardest working dudes I know.

I don't hate you for having an inheritance. I didn't have one when my father passed. I just had to deal with what liens were. So the opposite way. But there are issues no matter what. And so I think it would be really helpful to just sort of walk through your story in whatever way you feel comfortable with. So when he passed, what did he leave? Cash, house? Well, yeah. So my dad was a waste and real estate guy. So he had a real estate holding company that

was pretty significantly sized that he had built with a partner and a few other partners, but one equal partner, a few others, along with a still operating waste facility. And he did have a couple of homes, a few other assets did have a couple of homes, a few other assets, like a couple of cars, things like that. But it was really the business part is was a really vast, significant part of like what we're talking about, because he never raised outside capital, he was a bootstrapped businessman. So it was, you know, a big portion of it was just his. And so that's actually like point one of the conversation is it was an operating business. It wasn't a lump sum of cash.

But theoretically, estate tax is 40% of the value of the estate. It's not just what cash is sitting there. I'm not a wealth manager and I'm not a tax attorney, to be clear. But if you have, let's say, just using round numbers, it's not actually his. But if we have 10 pieces of property, like buildings, like you own 10 homes, and then someone says, pay me 40% of that, do you sell four of the homes? Do you refinance the 10 homes? Do you try to pay it with cash flow?

I think there's very few times that what you're inheriting is just a bank account with a bunch of cash in it, because frankly, wealthy people don't keep that much cash because it is a really dumb thing to do. Inflation alone just melts that and it'd be not the right thing. So strategizing that piece of it, and then it becomes sort of the moral ethical side of it of like, do I liquidate what my dad built and just sell it off for parts so that I can pay this? Or do I do something a little more responsible that we can continue that legacy? And that's thankfully what my siblings and I, who were put in charge of this, leaned into.

I mean, we literally had to go meet with his lawyers and his operating team. He passed away on a Saturday. We were asked to come in on a Thursday, respectfully. They're like, we're really sorry what happened. And you got 300 employees and a whole business operation that needs to be managed now. And so I remember sitting in that legal office Thursday after just being like,

what do we do here? How does this all work? And again, my siblings and I, we're all business people. My sister worked at Wells Fargo for six years before joining the family business. So she was actually in it. And so it wasn't like we're coming in with no concept. We're actually three pretty savvy business people that are still going like, this is incredibly complex, super simple stuff, like a good example, I forgot the term, but life insurance. If it's not

put in a trust, when you get life insurance, your life insurance is taxed, all you have to do is put it in a trust account, you don't have to pay a state tax on life insurance.. All you have to do is put it in a trust account. You don't have to pay estate tax on life insurance. But if you don't do that, which is one of the things my dad either wasn't informed on or whatever, then that's not a factor. And you actually have to give you get life insurance and you have to give 40 percent of it back to the government. So there's also the gift exemption, which is a bonus to people. It's, I think, currently about 12 million bucks that you can give someone without estate

tax. So it's all these taxes, all this comes into play with the person who passed away and before you can distribute it. And that's where another aspect of this is, if you do this right, and you don't want to just like fire sale off your family's legacy and pay it off and be done, and you want to actually continue it and manage it. It takes years and years and years because a few factors, and this is all stuff I've been coached on. But when you file this, you have to actually continue it and manage it, it takes years and years and years, because a few factors, and this is all stuff I've been coached on. But when you file this,

you have to get everything appraised by a third party that's trustworthy, that can be argued. So all these assets, again, assuming it's not just cash, well, how much is that piece of real estate worth? You can't just make it up. So you have to hire a respected third party to go appraisal of it. You then submit that to a CPI. They'll do what's called a discount appraisal with another valuation firm. Discount appraisal, the government allows you to discount assets from their market value based on the lack of control. So if you're not allowed to just go liquidate it yourself, like let's say I have a $5 million property. And so the government goes, great, you owe us $2 million, 40% of that.

It's like, yeah, but I'm not allowed to sell it. I only own 30% of it. I have three partners and they own the other 70. And so I can't do anything. They actually give a discount on that regard up to about 35%. And this is where CPAs get really creative with what's allowed and what's not. It's not a black and white thing. What is reasonable based on that?

And what is lack of control? And how does that work? And so then you discount it and you get that number. And then there are certain parts of an estate that you can actually finance with the IRS over 14 years with an interest rate. But you can basically take a loan from the IRS to give yourself 14 years to pay off your estate tax.

They only do that for some of it though. Some of it, you're not allowed to defer. And some of it, you are. Oh my God. My brain is already going to explode, Eric. And that's what the picture I was painting is. This is everything I'm hearing five days after my dad, who I was very close to, passed away. And I'm trying to make sense of that while I'm like, what the hell did you just say? I can't imagine. And your siblings in the business, in real estate, you were telling me stuff that I had no idea about and I've covered trusts and wills and you don't really know it until you have to go through it. So where did things get complicated? Did it happen out of the

gate? So again, the other part of this that I am so lucky to not have to deal with is you're also dealing with interpersonal stuff where your sister wants that new car and goes, well, now I get that money, give me my money. And I've watched it with friends where like someone gets into drugs or someone does something and just squanders all of their inheritance and goes that way and won't agree.

I'm really lucky, my siblings are great and we get along perfectly well and money is not what's important in this equation. And so we agreed very quickly, we're keeping everything intact. We're doing this in the most responsible way we can that it doesn't hurt the business or what he built. And so I would say my sister took the brunt of it. She really managed a lot of it. But it was I mean, an absurd amount of appraisals and paperwork and refilings and, you know, debates on how to handle certain parts. And the IRS gives you,

I think it's 15 months from death to pay that first tranche and to file everything. And then the other part of that is my CPA tells me there is a 99% chance they audit this. Because it's like, when you do an estate tax return like this, they're going to look into it. You don't want to try to play games here. And so we agreed, all three of us that like, we're going to do this, right, we're going to be above board, we're going to plan this out, be responsible about it. So let's slow down. And let's go step by step if we can. Before your dad died, did you guys talk about estate planning? Or did you have conversations? My dad never really wanted to face his mortality. And we knew it was coming for like, he had stage four cancer for nine years. So it was like kind of on and off. It wasn't like we got surprised. He was

totally lucid to about 24 hours before he passed. So we talked a little bit, but my dad didn't really want to talk about it. His verbatim words was it's your fucking problem now. Wow. Yeah. Did he set things up with a state plan or? He did a little bit. We did have a trust fund, which is separate. And I think that's important to know is like, he set up a irrevocable trust in the early nineties. He put a little bit of money into a trust and then use that to invest in some real estate. And then he had basically a will of like,

here's what I want to give to the family and who gets what and all that, that we were handed on that Thursday and walked through with a lawyer. We didn't know about it beforehand. We knew, we assumed he had something put together because he had some other comments he had made that it sounded like he was planning a couple of things, but we didn't do the lawyer conversation and look at everything before he passed. It was after. So it sounds like the main buckets you guys had to tackle were appraisals, paying the IRS, what else? Operating the business.

We had to sign all the bank covenants and every property has its own financial, the loans on every property, all the different partners, everything. And we had to step in immediately and personally guarantee that, meaning we had to put our own names on it. We had to make decisions.

We had to sign checks for the business. There is a big operating business that thankfully there's another partner that's been great, but we had to make decisions. We had to sign checks for the business. There was a big operating business that we thankfully there's another partner that's been great, but we needed to be able to, we had to make decisions right away on that was for, on behalf of all the employees, all the shareholders, like everything immediately. And thankfully had enough context, but that was the biggest rush. A lot of this probably could have waited, but there was a business waiting to be operated and we were named the three people to make decisions on his behalf. So we had to struck like redo all the board documents and government's

documents for the business. We had to go do the research on like, how did this affect our loans? Like a lot of times someone passed away, the loan gets recalled. Well, that would be a disaster in terms of our real estate. So it was like all the business aspect of it too came in really quickly. How would you tell somebody else to navigate the situation? Being able to have that conversation with your father, mother, you know, your family before it happens. I think if you can, a lot of people, especially in the boomer generation, do not want to have this conversation.

I think younger people are a little more like, I think culturally we're a little more open to the conversation these days, but I'd watch my friends with their parents. Cause because that's that happened a lot. A lot of my friends called me and went, What do we do about this? Like, you need to know the plan, and have a plan and understand it. Because we probably could have skipped a lot of steps if we had already had those conversations. And thankfully, again, he did mostly right. So we got to go in with a lawyer, he had already brought on and already knew everything. Most families don't have that.

Most people don't. And you end up losing a lot that way and a lot of heartache, a lot of headache. And again, like assets freeze for a little while. Like you can't do anything. In fact, technically, if you take any money out of an estate before you pay the taxes, you are immediately liable for any taxes that don't get paid. So you become personally liable immediately if you do any distributions out of an estate as a trustee. It's never a fun day to be like, hey, family, gather around. Let's talk about

dieting. It's not an easy conversation, but I think you kind of have to get over it because again, you know, like if you accept it, then and that's what I was saying is like, it might be hard for your parents to accept it. But maybe for your generation, if you're thinking about what am I going to do with my future kids or my current kids? Like I think being open to it. Hold on to your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back.

I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash. But I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts

with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself.

Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was in credit card debt. I got to a point where I just knew that I had to get it under control for my financial future and also for my mental health. We've all hit a point where we've realized it was time to make some serious money moves. So take control of your finances by using a Chime checking account with features like no maintenance fees, fee-free overdraft up to $200, or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at Chime.com slash MNN. When you check out Chime, you'll see that you can overdraft up to $200 with no fees. If you're an OG listener, you know about my infamous $35 overdraft fee that I got from buying a $7 latte

and how I am still very fired up about it. If I had Chime back then, that wouldn't even be a story. Make your fall finances a little greener by working toward your financial goals with Chime. Open your account in just two minutes at Chime.com slash MNN. That's Chime.com slash MNN. Chime feels like progress. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bank Corp Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A. Members FDIC. SpotMe eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Boosts are available to eligible Chime members enrolled in SpotMe and are subject to monthly limits. Terms and conditions apply. Go to Chime.com slash disclosures for details. And now for some more money rehab. Eric told you what can happen if your estate plan is messy. Now you'll hear from Cody,

the CEO of Trust and Will, about how you can make sure your estate plan is airtight. When I say Will, it's a set of documents. When I say the trust, it's a set of documents. The biggest difference between the two is a trust, you have some more work to do after you've signed, notarized, and witnessed the docs, which is funded, which we include a trust funding guide, most attorneys do as well, which is putting the home, the house that you live in, in the name of the trust, your financial investment accounts. And it's a more seamless transfer post-death, which again, it's morbid, but that's why a lot of wealthy people historically have done trust. One is to protect their assets from probate. The second is if you're high net worth or ultra high

net worth, then there's tax reasons for it. The estate tax in this country is ridiculous. It's incredibly harmful to the assets that you would want to have your family gain access to. And a lot of it goes to the government. A lot of people think that wills or any estate planning are for super wealthy people. Is there any truth to that? It honestly applies to everyone because you could be super wealthy and die without this. And it's been common in the last 10 years in pop culture. Aretha Franklin died without a will. Almost $100 million estate. Prince died without an estate plan.

Multiple hundred millions in estate value. Tony Hsieh, the founder of Zappos, not a billionaire, but close to it, he died without a will. And I've been shocked. I mean, we're just starting to dip our toes into the world of sports and professional athletes. How many successful, talented athletes and personalities still don't have this? And it's the same questions we ask as civilians, but it applies to all. What exactly should be outlined in a will? And also tell us what happens if you don't have that will. Yeah. So I'll start with the sadder part. So if you die without a will, it's called dying

intestate. That's the term. You have to go through probate. And probate is pretty common in most modern countries. It's basically the court's process for transitioning wealth and assets. If I were to pass away today with a will or without an estate plan, although we have a family trust, the way that we would go through this is you go figure it out yourself. It takes up to two years, tens of thousands of dollars in court and legal fees. And it's basically, it's like petitioning the death. Like Cody's passed away. Here's proof of his death. You got to go to a county level, the state level, federal level, every place that I had

an asset with my mortgage, my finance and investment accounts, my crypto, my cars. And then that's why it takes so long. It's also the government's involved in the process. So the people that set up a trust, which is what I've done with my family, it's an offering, a trust when you fund it correctly. So after you've created the trust, you put the assets in it, the house, financial and investment accounts. Typically they pass without having to go through probate to a trustee, which in my case is my wife. It's most common, it's your spouse or partner, and then kids, your kind of descendants from there. But it's really just a collection of everything you own and the wishes that you have around your

assets. It's who's in your family? What assets do you have? House, cars, art, collectibles, investments? What about your healthcare decisions? So if you are incapacitated, you get in an accident or you go into a surgery, who can make medical and financial decisions on your behalf? Do you want the plug pulled on you or not? That was a fun but odd conversation with my wife when we were creating our estate plan. All the way down through final arrangements, who if you want to be buried or cremated or if you want your ashes shot into space, you can do that now. That's a company. You have control of that. And why is probate so bad?

For any listeners that have young kids, do you want the government deciding who looks after your kids? Because they're going to go to the next of kin in the family sometimes, and you may not want that person. Do they have the financial responsibility to look after kids? Do they have the values that you uphold as how you raise your kids? So it's not just money, it's kids and how you raise them, who gets them, all part of the equation. So probate just, it's kind of a mess. It's sad about a million families per year in the United States end up there. And the sadder part is that it could have been prevented if the estate plan was created, even if it was a will, which has to still go through probate, if it was kept up to date all the way up until your death, that it reflects your true

wishes, how you want your assets to be distributed amongst your kids, your loved ones. It's up to you to decide. And there's a reason why so many people don't have this is it's intimidating. You don't want to think of your own mortality. So we're trying to help combat that. Yeah. It's never a fun day to think about what happens to your ashes, even if they do do cool things like go to space. Let's double click on the tax part of it. Yeah. So estate tax right now, if you were an individual, it's gone up a little bit. If you're an individual, I believe it's around 13 million to date, you have a taxable estate. So government's going to take a big cut of that when you pass, unless you do some creative planning. As a couple, it's I think about 26 million. And this is like, we're talking about the 1% or even like the half

percent of the country. So it doesn't really apply to most people, but, but not just cash, like everything you own. Yeah. Total estate value down to art collectibles, cars, crypto, everything kind of all encompassing. So in, in the next two years, at the end of 2025, the estate tax is due to sunset. It's going to get reduced about half. So you're going to have six to 7 million ish for an individual. And then about 12 to 13 million for a couple, which that actually does expose a lot more to the country. Now we're talking about potentially millions of families, still high net worth, wealthy people that very much want to do this type of creative planning. So where we kind of cut off with revocable trust, meaning you can change it and update it throughout your lifetime, it's revocable. Most of the times when people at that wealth status are going through

this process, they're working with an attorney in collaboration with their advisors, sometimes with a tax professional, even an insurance professional. It's almost like a small family office team that's assembled around that family's estate because they're all trying to do creative planning to minimize that estate tax and burden because it's money that you want to go to your kids or it's money that you want to go to charities. So irrevocable trust is where you start to kind of separate away from trust and will. We don't do that today. Something that we're looking at in the future. It's like, that's, that's the, that's the

power of these documents. You could be Elon Musk rich and a will is better than no will. I hope Elon's got a great estate planning attorney, but this is the thing is like, I'm sure his ashes are going to space. They're for sure going to space. They're going to be on Mars guaranteed At the end of the day, at an individual level or at a family level, you can control and determine who gets your assets, how they're divided, who can make decisions on your behalf if you're incapacitated or if you're already deceased. And it's something that can all be communicated in our documents. Or if you decide to go the attorney route, you can do that as well. But yeah, just to be clear, you could be paying taxes still, but there are creative ways that

you can protect some of that or lessen your taxable burden. Yeah, of course. I mean, if you die with the home and your mortgage isn't completely paid off, like you still have property taxes, the government's going to tax you any which way they can while you're alive and post-death. And you mentioned house, car, brokerage accounts, but also retirement accounts apply, life insurance. Your social media, your crypto, like four or five of the biggest tech companies, they have a legacy contacts feature in iOS. So if something happens to me, my wife or my, I think my mom's legacy

contact, like they could go in and take ownership of the account. They're my Facebook. It's the same thing with Google, with Gmail specifically. It's my wife. And I love that tech companies, like more on the social media side, you can memorialize an account on LinkedIn or Instagram now. This is somebody, whether it's a regular person or somebody of influence that's passed, their show is deceased on their social media page as a place to kind of honor their legacy. But those would go directly through the platforms. That's not something you put in a will or is it? You can call it out. So, you know, I think one of the things that's great is that we have in our estate plan docs, but also you can do this with an attorney, but they're typically not

thinking digital assets, but you can call out specifically what you want to have happen to it. So like in my example in my head, I'm like, I would want my social media accounts to live on. It's like a virtual memorial to my life and my memories and the fun stuff that I did throughout my entire life, or at least since social media launched in like late 2000s, right? Some people may want to delete those social media accounts. They don't want to have that presence. I think from like a privacy lens, like in this country, we should have the right to choose if you want your content deleted, even down to your last email, every photo that you ever took in your photo library, you should be able to choose and decide who gets access to it and who doesn't.

You can call out and communicate these things at that level of detail in an estate plan. All right. And we hear a lot about how trusts can help as well with the estate plan. I think typically people think of like a trust fund as something inaccessible, but a trust is a really common way to also protect all of your assets. Can you unpack the world of trusts for us? There's so many. You mentioned revocable, irrevocable, living trusts. I'm sure there's more. Yeah. So a trust at the end of the day at an everyday family level is designed when funded correctly to avoid probate. That's the key objective is avoid probate.

So most families, even if they go to an attorney, spend $3,000 to $5,000, they're going to get set up with a revocable living trust. It's almost the same set of documents in a will package. It's a series of documents. The trust is the kind of key differentiator with the pour over will. But effectively, you're retitling the assets. So in my family, we, in the last six years, started a company. We bought a house, we moved states, we had a daughter. All those are major updates that we've made and reflected in the estate plan. But when we bought our house,

that's when we upgraded from a will to a trust. And then we did a deed transfer to put the name of the house, which was in my wife and his name into the Barbo family trust name. And then our financial accounts. So like at our bank, most banks, you have a form that you'll fill out, or you bring in a certificate of trust to the bank. And then they're just taking the same checking and savings accounts or any other brokerage accounts, retitling it into the Barbo family trust. And the reason for that is that, again, something happened to myself, or even if something happened to my wife, that either of us as trustees could take over. And ideally, it's hopefully I pass first. I want her to have access to everything as long as possible. But like, it should be seamless for her taking ownership of the trust. And then our

daughter, assuming that she's of age one day, she's only three now, but when she's older, that she would act as a backup trustee to my wife if something happened to her. And that's the thing with the estate plan. It's like, it's not set in stone. Like if you want to make updates, you can make updates. If you want to change guardians, you can change guardians. You want to change health care agents, you can change health. If you want to change from burial to cremation, you can make these changes. Primarily a trust has had to your point, this like negative connotation to some extent of like trust fund babies that like for rich spoiled kids to spend their inheritance.

It's like total BS. Like the whole point of a trust is to avoid probate, which is such a mess. It tears families apart. It takes up to two years, costs tens of thousands of dollars in court and legal fees. That's money that should be in the hands and pockets of families. But what I love about what you guys do is you make it really accessible and you make it really easy to fill these documents out. That can be so intimidating to so many people. Super intimidating. So the traditional process that people go through, I explored this myself when I got married. I was like, oh, we've never talked about money or taxes or insurance. And like, we're going to spend the rest of our lives together. Like I'm more talk about this before you got married. I hope for us. Yeah.

Cause we started the first conversation on trustable was August of 2017. I got married in November of 2017 and we incorporated the company the week before I got married. So that was just timing kind of fun timing. And when you have a conversation with your spouse, when do you think this conversation should happen? Like where you do you get married when you move in? And how can how did you guys have it? Was there one involved? Yeah, that's, that's, that's one for your listeners to decipher based on how close they are to their significant other. Like if you're six months in dating somebody, probably not a good idea to bring this up. But if you're getting engaged, like I think it's appropriate to at least ask the questions about money. Have you ever, do you have life insurance?

Have you ever thought of life insurance? Does your company offer it as a benefit? Same with taxes, like, you know, are you going to file jointly or file separately? And my wife and I were like, I think we were at dinner somewhere. And I was like, hey, we need to have like an important talk. That's not that sexy. But, you know, I think for the health of our long-term relationship,

like i just want to talk about a few items i don't know not an expert at the time especially like on any of these i think that as as couples as you start to like take that next step in getting married but especially if you plan on having kids or if you don't you buy your first home like you now either have people that should be more important than you your kids or an asset that is your most valuable asset, your home. And protecting the kids and the asset is such a, there's such a sense of accomplishment that comes once you get this done and a weight off your shoulders as a parent.

Every time you get on an airplane without your kids that you at least can check the box of like, even if this plane goes down, my family's covered. And that's where maybe life insurance on top of the estate plan. It still can be such an awkward conversation with your loved ones. So for any listeners whose parents, let's say, are still with us, what should they keep in mind in order for their parents to have an estate now? It can be such an uncomfortable conversation. Yeah. So I'm young-ish. I'm 34, but married, kid, homeowner, I feel like I'm adulting, checking all the box life insurance, checking all those boxes there. But when we started Trust I'm young-ish, I'm 34, but like married, kid, homeowner, you know, I feel like I'm adulting,

like checking all the box, life insurance, checking all those boxes there. But when we started TrustMold, outside of my wife and I's conversation, I did go to my parents because I'm the oldest of the siblings. They'd never brought this up before. And they're older, retired, modest retirement. And I remember going to my mom and dad's place and say, hey, I think we're going to start a company in this estate planning space. Like, do you guys have one? Mom goes to the garage, she gets a box and the box is a three ring binder.

It looks like an old college binder I would have tossed. And I'm flipping through these pages and I'm seeing my brother and I's name in there a lot. And I'm like, I don't know what any of this means. There's no like cover page spark notes at the front. It was just like dope straight in going through this binder and seeing my brother and I's name a lot everything's split 50 50 then there's age-based conditions so based on this age you get access to x amount of the money based on this age you get access to x amount of the assets and I'm like my first question I was like why have you not brought this up like you guys aren't getting any younger two who do I call it's like something happens to you like who do I call? It was like, something happens to you. Like, who do I call? Do I call your bank? Do I call your advisor?

I'd like this list of questions that my mom and dad were just like, kind of shrugging. Like, I don't know, go, go call the attorney. I'm like, are they alive? Are they retired? I just, all these questions. And that's, that's why we wanted to build a brand. Is that when something happens sad, you can't come to trust them all. We offer probate as a service now. We've done thousands, it's a newer business line, but we've done thousands of probate cases for families that died with a will or without a state plan in 30-ish states. We're live in all 50 with planning,

but 30 states with probate. Then we're here to help people pre and post death. So like, even in the saddest of moments, you'll still find some peace of mind that we're going to get you through this process. We're going to give you confidence, education, high touch customer experience that will get you done with probate faster than if you figured this out all on your own. And let me say this for the millionth time. I know this is not a sexy topic. It is not fun to think about getting sick, but you get health insurance. It's not fun to think about death, but you get life insurance. But I actually really like the way Eric thinks about this. So here he is again. It's kind of like having a bucket list.

Like I think most people would agree, bucket lists are great. What do you want to do before you die? What are all the things you want to make sure that you see? But by nature, you're agreeing, yeah, you're going to die. Like, remember that piece. And so I know Gary Vaynerchuk, one of his favorite lines now is, you know, what's one piece of advice that will get you motivated? He's like, you're going to die. It's like, it's a motivating thing too. Like this is not necessarily the worst part of human existence because without that, you might not be motivated to do the things you're going to do. You're not going to live life the same way and have the same thirst for it. Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin.

Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Levoy. Our researcher is Emily Holmes. Do you need some money rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your money questions, moneyrehab at moneynewsnetwork.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me. And follow us on Instagram at Money News and TikTok at Money News Network for exclusive video content. And lastly, thank you. No, seriously, thank you. Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.