My Hopes for You

I don’t know you, but I have hopes for you. 

Truly, internet stranger, I have hopes that may change your life. 

These are not small hopes. They are big hopes. Because without them, your world may look very different than the one you imagined. 

None of these are insurmountable hopes. They aren’t grandiose. Frankly, they are boring. The good kind of boring. The kind of boring that keeps your world running, your family feeling loved, and secure with peace of mind. 

A few minutes of time and a small investment can make them a reality. And they can be life changing. Wonderfully, spectacularly life changing. 

I’m excited to share these hopes for you. 

Why I Have These Hopes For You

I have these hopes for you because I’ve done enough pro-bono planning through organizations where people are struggling, heard client stories, listened to other financial planners’ experiences, read articles, and experienced it first hand to know many of the issues are often preventable. 

As a financial planner, every time I read an article about a GoFundMe, my heart gets heavy. Somebody needs $10,000 for a funeral. A family needs as much as you can donate because their loved one had a stroke, won’t be able to work, and the family bills are stacking up.  

I’m not here to shame these people for the fundraising. I’ve done one for a friend who had a life-changing medical diagnosis, underwent surgery, and has been out of work as she learned how to do basic life tasks, like talking, that you and I take for granted. 

I read stories about people who take risks with their emergency fund only for that risk to catch up with them. I see people skimp on proper insurance coverage to save a few bucks, only to be surprised when an accident happens and they don’t have enough to rebuild their lives. I see forums where people are too afraid to bring up an uncomfortable conversation that could save their family from being torn apart later. 

I know parents who ignore the risks of not having an estate plan, and their family has to fight the legal system and spend absurd amounts of money to get their parents the care they need. Or young parents who don’t name a guardian and leave it up to the court to decide. 

I know people who won’t have the difficult conversation around money and how helpful a prenuptial agreement can be prior to marriage. Then they find out later that if you can’t figure it out when you are in love, you may experience spending tens of thousands of dollars or more in attorneys fees while fighting. 

I have these hopes for you because I don’t want you to be surprised. I want you to think about the things you think will never happen. I want you to make a plan for them because they may happen. 

When your life is turned upside down by tragedy, the last thing you need are higher costs and more stress.

My hope for you is that you take these hopes to heart and take action — today. 

You Won’t Let a Judge Decide Your Family’s Future

I hope that you won’t ever let a judge decide your family’s future due to your lack of planning. 

If you have young children (i.e. any child under age 18), you have no excuse for not having an estate plan in place that names a guardian for your children. If you die, you are leaving it up to the court system to decide. A few hours of time and the investment in an estate plan with an attorney can avoid it. 

Do you trust yourself to name the appropriate people who can look after your child or do you want to leave that up to a judge who doesn’t know your family? 

Regardless of your family structure, you should have a Durable Power of Attorney for Finances, Durable Power of Attorney for Healthcare, and Advanced Directives. This goes for whether you just turned 18 and are single or are 80 and have a big family. 

If you are ever in a situation where you can’t make decisions for yourself, those documents name people and what powers they have to help. It can be as simple as paying bills while you are in the hospital or as complex as managing your entire financial life. It can be honoring your healthcare wishes and telling the doctors what procedures you’d want. 

If you have an adult child, you should encourage them to get these documents in place. You may think as a parent that you can help in an emergency, but unless you are legally named in those documents, it’s potentially going to be expensive and time consuming — during an already tragic time. 

If you have assets, you should be talking to an attorney about a Will or Trust. Without it, state law will dictate what happens to your assets and it may be more expensive and time consuming for your heirs to receive the assets. 

People skimp on thinking about these documents because they think they are young and nothing will happen to them, don’t want to think about death and disability, and figure if they are dead or disabled, it won’t be their problem anymore. Although it can be expensive to put an estate plan in place, it’s usually far more expensive to die without one. 

There are online solutions, but it’s worth talking to an attorney who can walk you through the documents and create something more customized to you. 

I hope you won’t put additional burdens on your family during tough times. I hope that you take time to create or update your estate plan as needed. 

You Won’t Let Your Family Rely on a GoFundMe

I hope you won’t let your family rely on a GoFundMe during one of the most traumatizing and difficult times in their life. 

If you aren’t financially independent, you need disability insurance. Yes, it’s expensive. Individual disability insurance policies often cost 3% to 6% of the benefit. 

Group policies are cheaper, but sometimes the coverage isn’t the best. The definition of disability may be “own occupation” for two years, at which point, you may be unable to do your old job, but you may be able to scan movie theater tickets and earn minimum wage. Imagine the lifestyle adjustment going from what you were earning to minimum wage. 

If someone relies on you, such as a parent, child, niece, nephew, grandchild, or friend, and you don’t have enough assets to support them when you die, you need life insurance. 

It’s usually not too expensive. People are often surprised by what $50 a month could buy. I get frustrated when I do pro-bono planning with widows and the cost of one restaurant meal a month could have drastically changed their lives if they had bought life insurance. A simple term life insurance policy is not expensive and can give you lots of flexibility in the event of death.

I see people skimp on life insurance coverage. It’s usually a mistake. 

I’ve only ever known people to regret skimping on coverage. I’ve never known someone who regretted purchasing more and ended up not needing it. 

Imagine for a moment that you die. How does the mortgage or rent get paid? Who takes care of the kids? What does that cost? What happens if your spouse can’t work for a year or longer because they are grieving when their life has been turned upside down? How do they continue saving for retirement? 

If you have pension options that include a survivorship option, think carefully about what life looks like if you choose no survivorship option and die the day after taking the pension. You may be the younger, healthier spouse, but what does life look like for your spouse if they were counting on that income and no longer receive it? 

You need a really good reason for not taking the highest survivorship option in most situations. 

You Won’t Let Your Future Self Down

I hope you don’t let your future self down by not planning for the future. 

It’s hard living in the here and now while also prioritizing the future. But, it’s needed. 

I hope you’ll know how much you are spending. I don’t care about creating a budget, unless you need it. But, if you know how much you are spending, it’s easy to create a retirement goal. 

That makes it easy to save money and invest it for your future self. It also makes it easy to know when you can retire. 

I hope you’ll take on a responsible mortgage payment. You may grow your income into a higher mortgage payment, but what if you don’t? What if it’s always a stretch? What if your home needs more work than anticipated? 

The phrase “house rich, cash poor” exists for a reason. 

It’s a special kind of struggle to live in a more expensive house that prevents you from living your ideal life. You’ll think about the vacations you can’t take, the restaurants you wish you could try, and the penny pinching that consumes your life. 

I hope you create an emergency fund that’s at least six months of your living expenses. If the median duration of unemployment is about 10 weeks and the mean is about 23 weeks, you may start to feel anxious after two months of searching for jobs. If you only have three months of an emergency fund, it’s almost depleted or fully depleted, depending on if you go off the median or mean. 

Think about how long it takes from applying, hearing back, interviewing, potentially more rounds of interviewing, and then receiving the start date. 

You can have a lower emergency fund, but think critically about what that means during an extended time of unemployment during a tough job market. The emergency fund is meant for the extreme times — not the garden variety good times. 

I hope you’ll do your own retirement planning, but if you are unable or want a second opinion, you’ll hire someone who will help make sure you are on the right track and provide advice about what more you could be doing to minimize taxes, invest, and other goals you have in life. 

I hope you’ll enjoy life today, but also set up your future self to enjoy life 10 years and 30 years from now. 

You Won’t Underestimate the Business Partnership of Marriage

I hope you take the business side of marriage seriously. 

Marriage is about love, but it’s also about business. In the eyes of your state, you are essentially forming a business partnership in the way that your income is divided and how your assets are built. 

Imagine going into business with anybody without a shared vision, operating agreement, and extensive conversations about how you will build it together. Yet, people do it with marriage. 

Depending on if you live in a common law or community property state, assets before marriage and during marriage may be treated differently depending on how they are titled (i.e. who owns it on paper). 

An inheritance might get comingled easily. It might go from sole ownership to joint. A house one person inherits, but both people contribute toward may become joint property. It’s very easy to think you are in love and never talk about the practical aspects of money and asset ownership, but if you don’t, you may be in for a rude awakening later. 

And don’t forget that if it doesn’t work out, you may see your assets split in half and potentially owe alimony and/or child support for a long period of time. 

Everybody has a default prenuptial agreement. It’s the laws in your state. 

I’ve rarely encountered people that want the default option if they are able to customize it, particularly if they can customize it while in love. 

Not everybody needs a prenuptial agreement, but most people could spend more time talking about how money will be earned, used, saved, and invested in a marriage. 

I hope you never get divorced, but if you do, I hope you’ll have a prenuptial agreement you both decided was fair or the opportunity to go through collaborative divorce instead of paying high attorney fees to be your main source of communication to your spouse’s attorney to decide how to split your lives together. 

The business side of marriage and prenuptial agreements become even more important in second marriages and blended families. 

If you are happily married, maybe it’s worth a conversation with your kids or grandkids about the business side of marriage. 

You Won’t Let Money and Aging be a Taboo Topic

I hope you won’t avoid the hard conversations and difficult realizations stop you from talking about money and aging.  

We are all getting older. What was once easy becomes harder. 

That may be walking down the street or remembering to pay bills. It could be keeping up the house or cooking meals. It might be simply remembering to take our medications. 

Aging is normal. 

What I hope for you is that it’s not normal to sweep it under the rug, deny changes, think you are okay, and make it a loved one’s problems. 

I hear so many stories of people aging, trying to stay at home, and becoming a burden to their kids when they’ve empathetically stated that their main goal is not to be a burden on their kids.

Do you know what is not a burden?

Honest conversations about aging. 

Creating a cohesive estate plan that names the right people for the right roles. Checking beneficiary designations and titling of accounts. Talking to loved ones about where you’d like to live when it’s no longer safe or feasible to live at home. Being open about your finances with loved ones so they know what you can and can’t afford, so if Medicaid planning needs to be done, it can. Talking about boundaries and what loved ones are willing to do and regularly revisiting those boundaries. 

Actually creating an aging plan is not a burden. 

I hope you get to experience the awkwardness of that first honest conversation about aging. It’s a joy compared to the alternative – messy family fights, expensive attorney fees, and none of the help you wish you had. 

You Won’t Be Surprised by a Catastrophic Accident

I hope you never go through a catastrophic accident, but if you do, I hope you aren’t surprised by what insurance coverage you have and how it applies in that situation. 

There are many “gotchas” with insurance fine print. 

Call your insurance broker today and ask them to review the coverage with you. Ask about accidents you hear about from friends or online and how your coverage would apply. Go through the exclusions with your broker. Think about those strange scenarios, such as renting a car, a neighbor’s tree falling on your house, an earthquake, flooding, sewer back up, or anything else you can imagine. 

You may be surprised by what is excluded and under the wrong conditions, you may be on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars or more. 

Take the time to go through your homeowners or rental insurance, auto insurance, and umbrella insurance. 

Don’t have an umbrella insurance policy? Read about how important they can be, particularly in a time when juries are awarding larger jury awards, and how inexpensive they can be relative to the additional peace of mind. 

Once you go through it, review it every year or so. Your life may change. Your coverage may change. Your house may become more expensive to rebuild, but your dwelling coverage may not keep up with it. 

When it comes to medical coverage, I hope you’ll take the time to understand the differences between true medical insurance and health sharing programs that are not guaranteed to pay. I know regular health insurance has its issues (and there are many), but there are more systems in place to keep them accountable to what they promised compared to an organization that doesn’t make the same promises. 

I hope you never have a catastrophic accident, but if you do, I hope you’ll have the proper insurance to not worry about how you will rebuild life after it. 

Final Thoughts – My Question for You

I hope you take my hopes for you to heart. 

Too many people don’t proactively protect themselves and their family. They let the default path be their path — often to their detriment. It only takes one unexpected surprise to throw you off the life you expected. 

A little planning can go a long way. 

I’ll leave you with one question to act on. 

What action are you taking today to make my hopes for you a reality?

Because if it’s nothing, I’ve failed you.