(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel. I'm Chris Hutchins, and I'm so excited you're here today. Now, as much as we think about money often being like math, turns out money is often a lot more emotional, about relationships and the mindset you're in and not the actual dollars and cents.

And if that doesn't sound right to you, then definitely go back and listen to my episode a few weeks ago with Ramit Sethi, or check out his podcast or his Netflix show, and I am confident it will change your mind. So if money is a lot more emotional than rational, how do you make sense of it?

Well, that is one of the skills of my guest today, Erin Lowry. She calls herself a financial translator, and she's the writer behind "Broke Millennial," the website and the book series. She's written and spoken on personal finance issues for more than a decade, and focuses a lot of her effort on helping people have productive and healthy conversations about money issues with others.

Whether it's among friends, parents, or other family members, or even romantic partners. Now, I know I first read her work many years before starting this podcast, probably when I was trying to figure out how to stop being a broke millennial myself. And I've wanted to invite Erin on the show for a while, but I wasn't quite sure what the right topic would be.

Then I was reading her most recent book, "Broke Millennial Talks Money," and I got to chapter seven and it clicked. The chapter was titled, "How to Ask Your Parents "If You Need to Take Care of Them Financially." As soon as I read it, I thought, "Hmm, I haven't had that conversation." And I'm guessing most other people haven't either.

So today we're gonna talk about why it is important to have that conversation with your parents, how to actually have the conversation with some specific scripts you can use, and what to do next after you have the conversation, depending on how it goes. But I also wanna spend time on a few other topics Erin's an expert on.

So we're gonna spend a little bit of time on engagement rings, pre-nups and post-nups, how to talk about money with friends, lending money to others, and a lot more. So let's get into it right after this. Erin, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here. - Wonderful to be here.

- Can you start by just telling people why having this kind of a conversation with your parents is so important? - Well, you know, it's funny that you mentioned the title of chapter seven in the intro, because it's much gentler than what I really wanted to say. And my greater point here is, are you your parents' retirement plan?

That is really the question that all of us need to get the answer to. My editor didn't totally love that strong of language, which I understand. But that's the critical question for a lot of us, is how are your parents doing financially, for one? Two, will they be able to comfortably retire and live out their days with some form of dignity?

And most of us don't wanna ask that question, and most of our parents don't wanna give us the answer. Even if the answer's yes, even if it's, "We're great, we're flush with cash," they might not feel comfortable talking to you about it, particularly because it can feel like you're parenting your parent, which is a very delicate balance to be walking.

But the big thing is, if you don't have the conversation, what's gonna probably happen is at some point, there will be an inciting incident, whether it's a healthcare situation, or job loss for your parent, or some sort of disability that happens, and then it will become very apparent whether or not they can financially support themselves, and whether or not you need to step in.

And if you don't have that information, and you haven't been laying the financial foundation yourself to do that, are you able to step in? Do you have the financial freedom to do so, especially if you've gotten married? Maybe you have kids, maybe you have an expensive house, maybe you have something else that's going on in your life.

So that's why we need to talk about it early. - I can imagine having to support a whole 'nother family, and maybe you have in-laws, you have two parents, maybe your parents are separated, you have four separate households effectively. Is it common for people to have to support their parents towards the end of their life?

- The thing for you to know is that it's not uncommon. In 2021, which is latest figures from AARP, $600 billion of unpaid contributions for caregivers, and that's 38 million caregivers providing an average of 18 hours of care per week, which sounds kind of crazy. - That's how much was unpaid, meaning-- - Unpaid.

- There was not enough money, okay. - Not only that there's not enough money, the bigger thing is to think that that's, 38 million people are stepping in to care for their parents, and they are not receiving any financial compensation for that. So you are doing effectively a job for free in terms of caring for your parents.

And I'm not saying you shouldn't. I mean, a lot of us would step in and care for our aging parents, but the problem is can you balance that in with working your job, taking care of your children, living your life? Do you have the time, the energy, and the finances to be able to balance all of that?

Because for some of us, our parents are gonna require a level of care that is not tenable for holding down a full-time job in addition to caring for our parents. Some of our parents are going to have some sort of in-home aid, or they're going to have to go into a nursing home that can provide stability for them that we just frankly can't.

And the average cost of nursing homes right now in the United States is about $8,000, depending on what you're looking into needing. Do your parents have that kind of money to cover that? Do you have that kind of money to cover that? That's a huge sum. - And that's monthly plus all of the other expenses, cable bill, and all those kinds of things, I assume.

Maybe nursing homes include your cable bill, but I am sure there are other costs per month than that one fee. - And that most people over the age of 65, the majority of people will experience some form of disability at some point. For some, it'll be short-term. It could be that you had shoulder surgery and you needed help for six weeks afterwards.

It could be that you're going through chemotherapy and you need help. Or it could be something long-term has happened and you no longer are physically able to do something, or you've just aged into a place where you no longer are physically able to handle things yourself. - And we're talking about all of the extra costs that might come from medical issues or disabilities, but there's also just the cost to live.

If your parents haven't saved enough for retirement, just rent, food, bills, that kind of stuff, someone is going to have to pay them. And if there's not a plan in place, I guess any child could say no, but I imagine the common answer is to try to help out, given your parents more often than not were the ones that helped you out for so many years.

So it sounds like you're probably gonna take on that burden. Are there programs, if you find out your parents don't have any money, that can help them out? - There can be. A lot of this varies. Speaking specifically to the United States varies by state. There is Medicaid that might be able to step in, particularly if you're looking at needing some sort of aid or a long-term health aid or moving into a nursing home, perhaps.

But that also means that they have more or less exhausted all of their own financial resources first. So they have to be in a very specific position in order to even be eligible for that. And there are a lot of people, especially if your parents have any sort of pension plan, which our parents might be kind of the last cohort that had access to a pension, that pension might not really be enough for them to live on month to month, but might be just too much for them to qualify for Medicaid.

So that's the other part of this that gets very tricky is they might have just enough to be ineligible for the thing that would help them. Therefore, you are also going to need to step in to provide some sort of support. And you're right to also think about the fact that a lot of what I'm talking about right now is the doom and gloom and scare tactics of like people are gonna get sick.

People are going to physically be unable to do things. And that is true. But maybe your parents are in excellent health, both physically and mentally. You look at your family lineage and people have lived well into their 90s. And what if your parent retired at 65 thinking that they were going to have enough?

Maybe they, at the time, did. Perhaps they mismanaged money a little bit. Perhaps they hadn't diversified their investments enough and took too hard of a hit at a particular time, at a vulnerable time at the stock market. Whatever it is, things happen. Maybe one spouse predeceases the other and that person gets into a relationship with somebody who drains their bank account in a particular way.

So many things can happen that can involve then adult children needing to step in and financially support. Often, some people, you might think it would be hundreds of dollars a month. For some people, it's going to be thousands of dollars. a month. And you need to know whether or not your budget could actually support that.

And we need to be having these conversations very early. - We're already talking about a little bit of the what to do. So let's back up. And first, I want to talk about how to even have the conversation. But I'm curious, is there even data out there about how many people have had this conversation?

How uncommon is it for people to have this conversation? - I don't have a solid data point. All I can say is anecdotally, I don't know very many people personally. I'd be curious if you know very many people personally who have had this conversation. I've had it with my parents and my in-laws.

I don't know anyone else who has, quite frankly. - Well, hopefully everyone that's read the book has had it. My first reaction, funny enough, was I read that chapter title and I was like, should I have the conversation or should I do the episode? And then I was like, oh, once I do the episode, I could just send the episode and be like, hey, take a listen to this.

Tell me what you think. I know you were saying that even if you have advice, even if you have a financial advisor, you might not be having this conversation. It's like such a rare thing for even the people that you pay to help you plan to talk about. - So that to me, I was doing research on this, actually just about six months ago.

And I came across a survey that had done, MIT Age Lab had come out with this survey. And one, tying into all the doom and gloom that I was bringing up in the beginning, it's so important because according to this survey, 51.2% of folks who ended up providing care, they themselves did not financially prepare for the cost of caregiving.

So more than half of people just do not prepare for the potential financial burden. I hate calling our parents burdens. That's not really what I'm saying, but this can be a financial burden. But the other big part is of those folks who did have financial advisors, about 41% of them never brought it up with the financial advisor.

Never mentioned that they needed to provide care for the parents, didn't talk about the fact that needed to be part of their financial plan. So anyone who's listening to this, who is a financial advisor, my big push in that arena is, are you asking your clients, both your aging clients with adult children and your younger clients who might have aging parents, have you talked?

Have you shared this information with each other? Encouraging them to try to open up a dialogue? Because especially for millennial and Gen X clients, Gen X is in the sandwich generation. They're already getting the squeeze of aging parents and raising children. But millennials, we're getting into our forties. We are rapidly heading to the point of aging parents and young children that we're trying to raise and feeling the squeeze from both sides.

So if you are in the position that you already have a financial advisor, have you spoken about this potential with them? Is your financial plan set up to account for that possibility? - Just as you were saying this, I was just thinking to a handful of studies that show that people with lots of money live paycheck to paycheck and that people who drive nice cars, I've seen this as a financial planner in the past.

The lifestyle you live is not always correlated to the money you have. And so one other point that makes me think this conversation is even more important is that just because your parents might be living like they have their whole financial lives figured out does not mean that they have their whole financial lives figured out.

And as much as I often think of my peers as the ones who would be maybe spending above their means and kind of in our minds, we often think our parents, they have it all figured out, they raised us. I would imagine that if you looked into the financial situation of people approaching or living in retirement, there would probably be very similar themes to what you see in all other demographics across the country of people who are spending more than they should or more than they can and maybe not managing everything properly.

- And also think about all the financial vulnerability points there for folks who are aging into retirement where perhaps your parent rated their own retirement account to send you to college, or perhaps you got married and your parents financially paid for your wedding or significantly contributed to it. And are you sure that was money that they had discretionary spending or that they had saved up for it?

Was that maybe financed on credit cards? Like, do you actually know that just because your parents wrote you a check or paid for something on a credit card, that was something that they could afford to do? And there are all these moments, whether it's because of social pressure or just because our parents love us and want to do nice things for us that they might pick up the tab on something that is then to their detriment in the future.

But my question becomes, if they're rating their retirement plan for you, again, are you then the retirement plan in the future? And you have a right to know that. - How do you have this question? It seems like if almost everyone doesn't know the answer, there's probably got to be at least a few reasons why our parents haven't just volunteered up this information one night at dinner.

"Hey, let's go through our books." I guess, yeah, why are we having the conversation and how can we have the conversation? - I mean, the subtitle of the book says it all, "Navigate Awkward Financial Conversations." We don't want to have the conversation because it feels uncomfortable. And particularly for parents, especially for those who are listening who are parents to adult children, I fully acknowledge that this is an incredibly uncomfortable thing to talk to your adult child about, especially if maybe there have either been missteps of your own or because just things happened and life happened and your financial situation aging into retirement is not what you hoped and wanted it to be.

And now you're having to figure out either, do I work for maybe a decade longer than I wanted to? Am I physically able to keep doing that? Or do I need to have a frank conversation with my child about the help that I might need at some point? That's an incredibly vulnerable thing for a parent to talk to a child about.

And that's also why adult children, yes, we have a right to know some of this information, particularly if it's going to impact us, but our parents are adults at the end of the day, they can make their own decisions. You cannot force them to take your help and you can't force them to open up about this, which is why sometimes it takes a little bit of delicate dancing and footwork and context clue picking up that you need to do over potentially years, which all comes back to why I say start this conversation early and don't wait for the inciting incident to happen so that when the inciting incident does happen, it doesn't have to be as stressful.

The fact that if you start it early, it can be slow. You can do this gently. You can bring it up multiple times in different ways. You can have multiple people deployed to have this conversation because it's incredibly important to us. Remember, parents do not have the same relationship with each of their children.

So one of you might be the better point person for this talk or, and this might be crazy to folks, in-laws, because if you have a healthy relationship with a in-law dynamic, it is quite possible that your mother or father-in-law might feel more comfortable talking to you than to their own children.

You're a valued member of the family. They love you, but they didn't raise you. And so the connection is a little bit different. They might be willing to be vulnerable, but maybe it doesn't feel quite as, whether it's embarrassing or nerve-wracking or what have you. I'm in a very privileged position with my own in-laws that I can have very frank conversations around a lot of this stuff that, honestly, they don't really have with my husband or their other two children.

It mostly gets had with me. - Wow, let's get tactical. How do you actually broach these conversations? Let's say someone listening is like, you've sold me. I need to have this conversation. I am gonna call my parents tonight or I'm gonna see them next weekend or whenever. How do I start?

- All right, we have a few different strategies. So buckle up, 'cause it depends on your relationship and how your parents operate. Step one, I always love the advice route. We all know parents love to give advice. It's like one of their number one favorite hobbies. So going from the angle of mom and dad, X thing is happening in my life.

What would you do? Sort of strategy. So one that I use often is, this is a little bit for maybe the younger millennial or the Gen Z-er who is listening. Perhaps you're early on in your career. Get access to a retirement plan. Mom, dad, I started a new job.

I have access to a 401k. Not totally sure how to handle it. What would you do? Very telling answers in something like, oh, I never had to worry about that. Oh, I have a pension. Oh, I don't have one of those. Oh, that was really overwhelming. Or, oh, here's exactly what I did.

Here's my investment portfolio. You might be able to get really helpful information back. The advice asking, though, needs to be authentic to you, what your parents know about you, the dynamic. Obviously, if you're 35, you've been in the workforce for a long time, your parents know that you're very successful.

Trying to go the 401k route might read as like, hmm, this is a weird question. They're clearly trying to get something out of me. So seeing about different phases of whether it is estate planning or caregiving. Bringing up something like, hey, Joe and I are thinking about having kids and we're realizing that we should probably have a will and we probably need to look at updating beneficiaries across our accounts.

I was just wondering, when did you guys create a will? When was the last time you updated it? Have you updated your beneficiaries? There's lots of follow-up question opportunities here. But it could also be great advice. Your parents might have a guy that they recommend that you actually do need.

And then it's a win for everybody. Now you know your parents have a will or an estate plan. So the advice strategy in a way that reads authentic to you and your relationship with your parents can be incredibly helpful. Even if it's not the answer that you want or not all of the information upfront, and it won't be, I'm gonna be honest with you, you're not gonna get all the information that you need from one advice-seeking question.

But again, the context clues here can give you a lot of insight and be something to file away for later. The other thing on the advice front, maybe you're not the one that could go and ask the advice question, but a sibling could. And then you can also be having this conversation with your siblings if you have them at the same time.

What do you think about mom and dad aging? Have you had conversations with them about that? I think we should start asking them some of these questions. I think it would make more sense for you to go ask X, Y, Z question based on a situation that sibling is having in their life.

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Again, that's allthehacks.com/G-E-L-T. Have you heard anyone use like an aunt or an uncle as a tactic here? 'Cause I feel like I know some people whose relationships with their aunts and uncles are so good, and then they have like a sibling relationship with your parents. Is that a strategy?

- Oh, bringing in third-party players can be very effective. So whether that's aunt and uncle, just make sure that you understand the family food chain in terms of gossip. That's the only thing you have to be really careful about. Like if you try to bring somebody else in who's in the family, how is that gonna get back?

Is your question gonna get maybe misinterpreted or shared? Or you know how your family operates, so just really think it through. But maybe it's not an aunt and uncle, maybe it is a religious figure or a community leader or somebody else that your parents are really comfortable with and close to that you could also talk to.

That's also really helpful if you're worried about a medical-related incident with your parents. If you notice that maybe your parents seem to be forgetting things a lot lately, you maybe want somebody to get tested, maybe Alzheimer's runs in your family or dementia does, and you're feeling like red flags seem to be popping up here, and they're not listening to you, the child, that's also when another person might be the right person to step in, particularly 'cause you can't always go to their doctor.

They have a confidentiality that they can't come talk to you about. - In your book, you have the actual word-for-word scripts here. We're not gonna go and read them all. You sent me some in advance, and I'm like, "Oh, can we make a PDF and send it to people?" And if we do, we'll put it in the show notes.

But you have a whole book where it's like, "Here's how to have this conversation." - Yes, the book has all the scripts, word-for-word, many different strategies depending on the situation. So speaking of advice, we started with that, which is one of my personal favorites. If you're like, "We're past that point.

"My parents know me too well. "I can't come to them for advice." We are very clear on that. It's not gonna work. Maybe you don't have siblings, or maybe your siblings also totally have it together. They can't go. Just asking open-ended questions can be huge. So bringing up situations that have happened either to your friends, if it's not a friend, I don't know, TV shows, pop culture.

There are things that you can pull to. Usually every year, a celebrity dies without a will, and their estate is a mess. So even not asking a direct question of your parents, but saying, "So-and-so died, and it turns out "they did not have a will and an estate plan, "and the family is fighting like crazy." Can you imagine?

What would you do? What would you think about that? Like just open-ended, see what they say. Also bringing up things like, "Oh, my friend's dad recently passed away. "He had been remarried. "He had kids from both marriage. "He had not updated a will "or had any sort of an estate plan, "and it is just a nightmare." And our family situation, honestly, is a little similar.

So it was making me wonder, do you have a will? Or it could be our family situation is different, but it still really just got me thinking, do you have a will? And again, I'm talking estate planning, but it could also be caregiving, plugging that in. - One thing I'm hearing is that it's probably not the best tactic to jump straight to, when are you gonna run out of money?

How am I gonna support you? It sounds like we're trying to pick up clues first. Is that intentional? - Yeah, listen, you can be direct. I do not have a problem with you being direct. However, again, know your parents, know your relationship. How are they gonna react to that?

I mean, I don't know about you, but if somebody came up to me, spouse, sibling, parent, child, and was like, "Hey, do you think you're gonna outlive your money?" I don't know that I would react great to that type of a question. So bringing it up in a little bit of a more nuanced way or hearkening to things that you have seen happen in your family dynamic, particularly if you saw your parents care for your aging grandparents, how is that not just a perfect open door to be able to say, "I saw a lot of what you had to do to take care of grandma at the end of her life.

And I also know that dementia runs in our family and that got really stressful. And that's something that has started to give me a little bit of anxiety as both of us are aging." Like, "You don't have to throw them under the bus. You're getting older too. Let's be in this together." And then following it up with something like, "Have you started creating the proper paperwork that we would need if something were to ever happen just so I don't have to be guessing and you immediately can get cared for?" A lot of people, even if they themselves have been through the negative experience, are going to assume that they'll be okay, which is why so often people get into a position where the health scare happens, where the inciting incident happens, and they're not prepared for it, even if they saw their parents went through it, even if their siblings went through it, because still in their mind, "Well, that's not gonna happen to me." And that puts all of us at a massive disadvantage.

- On the estate planning front, I think the open door that worked really well in both of our families was that we had to go do this, right? We have two small children. So we went through the estate planning process. We set up our will, our trust, our healthcare directives.

And then I just was like, "Oh, let's talk about this. Hey, we're going through this." You have to make these decisions for anyone who hasn't done it. It's like, how much support do you want? Do you wanna be on life support? Do you not? Who makes the decisions for you?

Who doesn't? Even things like who's gonna manage your money if you're not there? And so we kind of just shared, "Hey, this is what we're thinking about. This is how we decided. This is what we want." And kind of just remind everyone that it's important. And depending on your parents' relationship, sometimes they're like, "Well, if our kids are doing this, we can't let our kids be more prepared than we are.

So we have to do this too." But in my situation, it didn't lead to a natural conversation about money. It did lead to a, we're gonna make sure our will and our trust and our estate plan and our healthcare directors are all set up. I still don't have a great answer on whether my parents will outlive their finances.

How do you keep this going? How do you continue that conversation? - One of the things that I would ask, again, with the open-ended question, is how do you see retirement looking for you? And just see what they think. If you could dream your ideal day in retirement, what does that look like?

And the thing that's also very important is to bring up where they live, which I know sounds a bit sensitive, but I live in New York City. If my parents had been born and raised in New York City and didn't wanna move, but retired with a lump sum that maybe meant New York was not gonna be the option for them for the next 20, 30 years, then that's a hard conversation you have to bring up about, I love you and I wanna make sure that you have the best possible life.

And I know that you love where you're from, but we do have to face facts that are you gonna be able to sustain a high quality of life in this high cost of living area? Or if you don't live there anymore in the high cost of living area your parents live in, we'd love if you came down and lived near us.

If that's true, don't offer it if it's not true. That's the other big part of this. Don't offer things that you don't wanna have happen. But it is really critical that you give your parents the space to talk about what they want. That this is not you coming in, taking charge, trying to parent them, trying to sort of ram them into whatever version of life that you want them to live based on what you think they can do and what you could maybe do for them.

This really needs to be a dynamic conversation that their opinion matters 'cause it is their life at the end of the day. So it is critical that they are part of the conversation. And as long as they are able to care for themselves, that's where this conversation can get a little bit more complicated is if they can.

But if they can, this needs to be about them and their wishes and not just you and what's easiest for you. - And it's funny 'cause I'm playing through these conversations in my head while we're talking and where they go and how they go. And I was thinking along the lines of, will someone outlive their savings?

And I went back to, in my mind, to making financial plans for a living, which I've done in my past. And I realized when you're making a financial plan for a millennial client, there's so much time that you don't need to get that specific and they're earning money. So it's really about this saving for the future.

I imagine, and I don't know, but making a financial plan for someone in retirement needs a bit more precision, right? There's a little bit more exact science because the money is being spent and the income is, maybe it's there in the form of social security and maybe it's there in the form of dividends and interest, but it's probably not there in the form of like a W-2 paycheck.

It's no longer about save a lot. There's a lot of variability in how the market will grow this pot. It's more about, is there enough? Am I doing the right things? Is it in something that matches the risk I'm willing to take given the amount of years I'm trying to make this money last?

I don't even know if I, without a bunch of extra research, would feel good at answering that question. If my parents even said, "Here is exactly how much money we have." I don't even think I could answer that question today. Is it enough? So when you see these conversations come up, obviously, if the number is $100 million, it's probably enough.

If the number is zero, it's probably not enough. And then in between, there's a lot of open questions, but is this something that is probably worth bringing in a financial planner to make a financial plan who maybe specializes in retirement? Because even as a financially savvy millennial, I don't think I could answer that question in the right way without a lot of homework.

- My gosh, yes, please. Do not take on the full responsibility for creating your parents' retirement plan unless you are a financial planner who has in-depth experience with working with this particular clientele. And I say that because first of all, you don't want the liability on your conscience of like, "Oh no, I screwed something up.

"And now my parents do have to live off of me "and/or with me because I messed up." No shot at your ability to figure out your parents' retirement plan. But getting into the previous question being about how we ask and me saying open-ended questions, I do think we can reach a point in this, again, progressive conversation where you do say, "What does your retirement look like?

"And if you don't wanna share a number with me, "you don't have to, "but I am curious how it's distributed to you." That is actually pertinent information potentially for you to have. Because for some folks, your parents might get a lump sum distribution at some point. And that to me is very scary.

Because if your parents get a lump sum and are not entirely sure how to handle it and then don't hire somebody who can appropriately figure out how to either have it invested or in some sort of fixed income asset or what have you that's best for your parents, maybe they go buy a house that they shouldn't be buying.

Maybe they use it to take a big trip for the family that maybe they shouldn't have been doing or what have you. 'Cause to them, it's all of a sudden getting this huge lump sum of money, not necessarily thinking about the fact that this amount might need to last me for the next two decades of my life.

So asking about how the money is distributed instead of how much money is there, that could actually be very helpful information for you to find out and give you a lot of insight. And then yes, please hire a financial planner for your parents or encourage them to hire one depending on the dynamic, depending on if they can afford one.

One resource that I would recommend, I love XYPN, there's a bunch of different ones, but let's be honest, they're more for the millennial Gen X cohort. If you wanna find somebody who maybe has a few more gray hairs that match your parents that they would feel more comfortable with, the CFP board has letsmakeaplan.org that has a filter on there that you can search for estate planning, you can search for retirement planning, whatever it is your parents need, and you can find somebody that's a CFP vetted, all of that.

Maybe you go to some of the meetings with them if they feel uncomfortable with vetting someone themselves or if you might feel more comfortable and they're willing to let you in on that process, that could also be really helpful. - And for people who aren't familiar, CFP is a certified financial planner.

One of the requirements is that they act as a fiduciary, which means that they are legally bound to act in the best interest of their clients, which we've talked about this in the past, but maybe not for a handful of months. Many financial advisors, the majority of them, there's a great John Oliver segment about this, are not fiduciaries.

They do not have to act in someone's best interest. They generally have to do something suitable. So if you say, I wanna invest in the stock market, they can't just take your money and do something else, but they could put you in a stock market fund that has a 2% fee to them.

They aren't required to weigh the cost of the fees and the cost of the services. So that's one thing to keep in mind. I think anytime someone's seeking financial advice, I am a big fan of fiduciary-bound financial advice and certified financial planners offer that. The other big thing is that so often we conflate this, I have a financial advisor, they're managing my money.

One of the things that many financial planners do is prepare financial plans. And that can be a one-time service that does not require managing someone's finances on an ongoing basis. I know that many of our parents have a financial advisor managing their money, presenting it not as, you should talk to another person, but maybe you should get a financial plan, which might be a service that your financial advisor doesn't provide.

Let's get a fiduciary to come in and make a one-time plan. And then the other thing that just came to mind as we were talking is, if you look at the expected return of a lot of investment portfolios, when you're young, they're really heavily weighted with the stock market, which has a higher expected return.

As you get older, you reduce the risk of that portfolio, which inherently reduces the expected return. So that if your parents have had a financial advisor for many years, paying them 1%, with an expectation of earning seven, one seventh of their portfolio is going to fees. But if now as they're getting older and older, that's coming down to maybe they're in such a low risk portfolio that they're expecting three or 4%, well now 25 to 30% of their portfolio could be going to fees.

So I think as you reduce the risk of your portfolio, fees can come into play as an important factor. You have to be pretty far along in the conversation with your parents to be talking about their financial advisor's fees. - But to tag in on this too, the other thing that if your parents, for whatever reason, would like to handle it themselves, don't necessarily want you involved with the finding or the meeting or what have you.

In addition to all of that, I would also bring up to them, how does this person get paid? And obviously fees, assets under management could be one, but asking, does this person get a commission? Which is also how, but you can suss out the fiduciary versus suitability standard depending on the situation.

Are they fee based? Are they fee only? This can also give you a lot of insight. Not making a statement one way or the other, but just saying fee only tends to be the cleanest, easiest relationship dynamic as well. So making sure that your parents have all the information on how to vet somebody, share the John Oliver clip with them.

Share the things that you're finding. Share the articles that you're reading. That's the other part of this, is that maybe they're not hearing it from you, but they will hear it from someone else and you'll just find the thing that will connect for them at some point. - So we've walked through this process.

Here's why it's important. Here's how to start the conversation. Here's some things to think about. Let's say you've gotten your parents through that and it's not looking great. Are there things that you would recommend? I was thinking off the top of my head. It's like, okay, maybe you could travel less.

Do you start helping them budget? What do you kind of recommend if you are in that state where you're like, I'm probably gonna have to come in and help at some point. Do you just accept that's gonna happen and save for it? Or do you try to course correct to potentially make their savings last longer?

- I mean, you might've heard me deep sigh on the word budget on Mike, because I mean, yeah, that's a great option. If your parents will accept that level of help for you to come in and try to help overhaul their month-to-month financial plan and spending and maybe getting them on a debt repayment strategy, depending on what the overall situation is, wonderful.

I know a lot of parents that are gonna be really resistant to letting their adult child do that. And it's one thing you can offer. Or again, if they're not taking the help from you, sharing the podcast, sharing the books, sharing the YouTube videos, whatever it is that you think might personally connect with them and might make them feel encouraged to be able to take the control.

But it is a conversation that needs to be had that if they've shifted from earning income to now having to live off of their assets, their lifestyle probably needs to pivot a little bit. And what does that look like? And how do they feel about that? And is it little things day-to-day or is it a really big thing?

Like the house needs to get downsized because that's a huge expense. And maybe all of a sudden we don't need to be paying for that much house. There might be pushback of like, oh, but grandkids come over and you come to visit or whatever. And you can be like, you need to take the us out of it and we need to be doing what's best for you.

Again, if they're completely resistant to you getting that level of involved, and yeah, you can probably take back control to a degree in the sense of talking to your siblings, if you have them, about what feels fair and equitable amongst you about how to handle this. Is somebody gonna be financially contributing a little bit more, but the other person is perhaps more boots on the ground to be able to handle day-to-day stuff with mom and dad when they're gonna need help?

Is it that you're setting aside an emergency savings fund that years in advance of a problem, all of you start contributing to so that there has been money set aside in order to be able to support your parents. Is it that you just put into your financial plan and earmark an amount of money that is being set aside to care for your parents or to, at some point, buy a home that you can move them into with you if you need to?

There are so many different options and also cultural expectations play a huge factor in this conversation. For some people listening to this, this far in, they're like, I don't know why we're talking about this way. My parents obviously know I'm gonna take care of them. That's how we do things.

And for some people, that's true. And for others, it's not. Also, who did you marry and what do their parents expect? Have to be another fun part of this conversation as well. - You mentioned send them different things, whether it's this podcast or a YouTube episode. So let's pretend you sent them this episode.

I'm now speaking to the parents of the average listener or the listener who is a parent with adult children. What advice would you give them to how they can make this situation better for their children and their family? - You might be the parent who's like, I wish I could get my adult child to engage in this conversation.

They will not talk to me about these things 'cause they don't like to think about me being in a situation that's tough or to think about me dying or what have you. But first of all, I'm so glad you'll initiate this conversation. That's wonderful. And if you're listening and you're like, heck no, I'm not having this conversation with my child, my first question is why?

What is the knee-jerk reaction that you're having that's making you not want to engage in this conversation? Is it the sense of vulnerability that it might take to be able to talk to your adult child about this? Is it maybe a sense of embarrassment about what the situation is?

Or is it that you feel like there's too much money and you're not entirely sure you want your child to know that at some point they might inherit X amount of money? There's myriad reasons why parents might not want to have this conversation, but to at least lay out the information about this is a plan I have, this is what it looks like.

Also, by the way, we do have a will, we do have an estate plan, we do have advanced healthcare directives. Here's where all of that stuff is stored. Here's the executor of my will, here's the person that's my power of attorney. Pertinent information for adult children to know, because to me, caregiving/especially estate planning, having that planned, taking care of that, and letting people know the actual information, that is such a great act of love.

It is one of the kindest things you can do for your family, because it is incredibly important that in a time of intense stress and grief, people are also not scrambling to try to figure out what you would have wanted, or scrambling to figure out how to pay the bills, or whatever else it is, and just making sure that information is handled, and it's not just you and your spouse, 'cause what happens is something happens to both of you at the same time.

They're like, your adult children are also looped in on this information. So bringing up, we have this document, they're prepared, I wanna make sure that you're prepared if something ever happens to me. Here is where all of this is kept, or here's the guy that you need to call in case something does happen, who has all of the information, and don't worry about it.

It's a beautiful gift that you can give somebody. And if there is some form of inheritance, and you feel uncomfortable talking to your adult child about it, I think that also could be really telling about everybody's relationship with money at this phase, and what conversations maybe should also be happening in order to foster better, more positive relationships with money, and potentially with each other, depending on family dynamics.

- One thing that you just said that made me think about is, if you're uncomfortable talking about this with your children because there's too much money, and you're not ready to tell them about that, at a minimum, you could say, hey, I just wanna let you know we've done a financial plan, and we're very confident that we have enough money saved that we're gonna be able to cover our costs, we've thought through it.

You don't necessarily need to let them into the calculations, but at least letting them know where it is so they're not worried could be a thing. So that was just one thing. Also, if you are having interesting thoughts about that conversation, I did an episode with Bill Perkins. He wrote a book called "Die With Zero", and it changed my perspective on inheritance.

Not that I'm even at a point where my children are old enough to even spend money, but he kind of had this idea where he said, my goal is to die with zero, and a lot of the criticism he had was that if you die with zero, you don't leave anything to any future generations.

And his answer was, no, but if I'm gonna leave money to my future generations, I wanna do it while I'm alive. I wanna see what it can bring to their lives, what things they can do with it, the education it might provide, et cetera. So if you're struggling with how to think about that, there's a couple interesting lessons from that episode that hopefully one day I get to use.

- I would also bring up, in addition to we're set for X, Y, Z reasons, bringing up any sort of proper planning you've done, such as we have life insurance policies, here's where they are, here's how to make sure the bills keep getting paid in case something happens to me and I end up in the hospital and it's not on auto pay, and then my spouse is cared for, or you guys need to know that there's this life insurance policy, or we bought a long-term care insurance policy.

Again, also going back to the way that adult children who perhaps have parents who are not in a financially stable situation, depending on the age of your parents and longevity prospects, looking into a long-term care insurance policy if they're not quite what they used to be. So looking in to see whether it makes sense financially, whether you'd rather just be putting that money into an investment yourself, whether a hybrid life insurance policy and long-term care insurance policy works for you.

Again, this is a great opportunity to talk to a professional who has all the knowledge and all of the information and can look at the specifics of your and your parents' situation. But just knowing too that there are strategies beyond how can I just save and scrimp my way to making this successful for my parents and vice versa.

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So please consider supporting those who support us. So I've been trying to take notes. I'm gonna try to recap all the things. Beneficiaries on accounts, important. Setting up a will, setting up a power of attorney or a healthcare proxy, healthcare directives, all of which are common components of an estate plan.

Anyone listening knows that I used a product called Trust & Will to set up our estate plan for our family. If you've listened in the last few weeks, you know that All The Hacks members get 50% off Trust & Will, which is pretty cool. Thank you, Cody, the CEO, if you're listening, for offering that to members.

But your parents might be more comfortable with someone in person, and there's plenty of estate planning attorneys they can talk to. Insurance coverage, especially long-term care insurance, whether that's there, any other types of insurance policies or life insurance. Not just all of those things, but when they've last been updated.

Usernames, passwords. I'm a big fan of 1Password. I went through what I'll call a medium painful process one holiday of getting my parents all set up and moving every single password they had in their head, in their notebooks. Maybe it was just they had one password and I switched it, or I helped them go and create new passwords on lots of different services so that they were less vulnerable to someone learning one password and getting access to everything.

- Also, where it is. - Yeah, is it in a safe? Does it have a combo? - Where's all of it stored? Let's be honest, it's great if our parents are using a digital storage option for passwords. How many of them have it written down on a piece of paper somewhere in the house?

Where is that piece of paper in the house? That is very critical for you to know. I will also say, and I gotta be honest, my dad might be listening to this, so I'll be careful about exactly what I share, but I was in the incredibly fortunate situation that my parents sat down with me.

There was a full list of all the assets where everything was, who I would need to talk to. My sister and I, for well over a decade, have had basically a call sheet, I would call it, about if this happens to this person, then this is the triggering situation.

If this happens to this person, then this is the triggering situation. Here's who you call if this happens to this person. The peace of mind that provides, and is it hard to think about a situation where my parents either are incapacitated or no longer with us? Yeah, it's painful.

I don't enjoy that part of it, but the fact that I know exactly how to very painlessly settle in a state and a time where I'm already gonna be in a lot of pain, again, greatest act of love. It is such a kind thing to do. And I know not everyone's parents is gonna write out the list and slide it across the dining room table and have a three hour long conversation about everything and have a basically org chart about the flow of where everything is and who to call and who to get in touch with.

But if you're a parent and listening, please do it. It is so kind and so wonderful. And on the flip side, on the other side of my family, two months ago, my mother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer and she's fine now, thank goodness, but pre-surgery, I had to be the one that was like, do we have a will?

Do we have an upstated power of attorney, advanced healthcare directives? Does your husband know how to log into all the bank accounts and pay the bills? And did I get some elbows from my husband about bringing this up moments after we started having this intimate conversation about cancer? Yeah, but also, it was my mother-in-law like, no, you're right, I have to get all of this done.

I pointed her to resources and directions and ways to get it handled. But if you're not gonna ask the hard questions, especially in a moment of an inciting incident, what if something had gone wrong and we hadn't have settled all of that? It would have been hugely difficult and painful for the family.

And thank goodness everything's okay, but that's not always what happens. And that's why someone has to ask the awkward, uncomfortable question. - I haven't gone through all of these. I've gone through some of them. I've encouraged my parents also to sign up. There's a product that I worked with a while ago I still use called Trustworthy, which is basically a place online to put all of these things.

And the thing I liked was it has a great onboarding where it's like, do you have your insurance documents? Do you have a contact for your financial advisor? What are your bank accounts? The other great thing is it doesn't actually get into the dollar value of accounts. It's more about where are they and who do I contact and not how much is in there.

So Trustworthy is another option. I think the discount they gave is still good at allthehacks.com/trustworthy if anyone's interested. I love that product. There's plenty of options. Just finding something that can help organize this and make it easy offline, online, in a safe, just get the access. I feel like we went through the flow.

You have the conversation. Why do we have the conversation? How do we do it? What's the important stuff to do? The good news is once all of this is gone, there's a little bit of relief. You could just not worry about any of these things and just be in the moment.

Talk about the health situation, be supportive, not be stressed out about all the other components. And if you're a parent or the parent of adult children or small children, these are all really important things still. My two-year-old and nine-month-old does not need to know how to access the bank account, but someone does.

Because were something to happen to my wife and I, someone needs to be able to figure it out. So for us, we've identified who that person is. We've gone in on Trustworthy and said, "Hey, if something happens, let this person have access." We've put our 1Password emergency kit in a folder in an estate plan in a safe in our house, and they know the combination to that safe.

So we've tried to do these things already. Anyone could have a health problem at any time, but it doesn't feel like we're approaching end of life right now, but we're still prepared. And it just gives us a lot of peace of mind. And it's not that hard creating your estate plan, your will, like you can do it in hours.

If anything, the hardest thing is figuring out who to name as the caregivers and the trustees. That kind of stuff is harder. But actually just putting the docs together and signing them was actually the easy part. - Well, and that's also why checking in on this information and making that a practice to do every couple of years, particularly if you have young children, because the named guardian very easily could shift over a couple of year period.

So making sure that is always up to date and accurate, really no matter your age, is incredibly important. And also, I know some people will think that this is a little bit bonkers, but sometimes it gets brought up like age appropriate ways to talk about this with kids. And like, listen, if you have adult children who are fully into their like 20s, 30s, 40s, like, yeah, let's have this conversation.

When I was 10 was the first time that I had any sort of version of this conversation, which might sound crazy, but hear me out. We were living in Japan at the time and obviously not near any of my family. So it was my parents, me and my little sister, we're the only family around, and my parents were traveling together and my sister and I were staying behind.

Now we were obviously being left with a guardian, but my mom said right before they left, "If anything were to ever happen, you just need to call your Uncle Kevin and he'll know what to do." I was 10, but the level of peace that gave me to just know like, this is the adult that I would need to contact if something were to happen.

Now, I did not know at the time that my Uncle Kevin is who would have been our guardian and we would have just been moving back to America. That would have been the course of action if something happened. I didn't know that piece, but I just knew that like, this is the adult who we should get in touch with if something ever were to happen to my parents.

And for me, there was a level of peace to that. Now, all kids are different. Your kid might be really anxious in a way that like, that's not helpful information to share, but at least make sure to know that the person watching them knows who to call if something were to happen.

Like sharing information also on that level, we never wanna think about it because we don't wanna think about something happening to us but it's really important. - Maybe not my two-year-old, but our au pair should know what to do if something were to happen when we're out of town or my sister, for sure.

Okay, as long as we're on the topic of uncomfortable conversations we can have about money, there is another topic in the book that I feel like it would do justice to cover, maybe not as in-depth because it probably doesn't come up for everyone or many of us listening might've already gotten past it.

Let's talk about the conversation around money and your partner. We've already covered the emotional side of it in my conversation with Ramit, but I haven't had any conversation on this show ever about pre-nups and post-nups and that whole can of worms. And I know you have and have lots of opinions.

So for anyone who's either in that situation, will be in it, regrets not having been in it, what advice do you have for people to think about? - Man, we need to stop making the pre-nup a big deal. That is my first and foremost soapbox on this topic is that pre-nups are one of the biggest remaining taboos, I feel, when it comes to money conversations because to just say the word, like people are like, cursed, how dare you get a pre-nup?

Your marriage is gonna fail. You do not trust and love your spouse if you want a pre-nup. All right, here's my multi-prong attack on people who are currently listening to this and feeling that way. First and foremost, as my pre-nup attorney said to me, because yes, I do indeed have a pre-nup, is that everyone has a pre-nup, it's just the default laws of your state.

What a great reframe. So technically, there is a pre-nup in place for you if you didn't get one yourself, and it's just based on how your state would divide assets in the case of a divorce. All right, fair enough. You should look at those state laws prior to getting married to see if that feels fair to you and the ecosystem of your relationship.

And if it doesn't, you should get a pre-nup because that'll account for what actually feels fair to you within reason. You can't just do like anything you want in a pre-nup. There are rules and stipulations. But within reason, you can take back some level of control. The other thing is I really just think of it as marital insurance.

And I think of it that way because again, a lot of times people say like, oh, if you get a pre-nup, it means that you don't love or trust your partner. Well, I don't have renter's insurance because I think that I'm gonna get burglarized. I don't have car insurance because I think I'm gonna get into an accident.

I have those things just in case the bad thing does happen, then I'm protected. I kind of think of pre-nups in a very similar way that it is an insurance policy on my marriage. I didn't get married thinking, well, this could go sideways and we could get divorced. I got married thinking this is my person forever, but life is long.

And if something happens and we're no longer happy being married, then I have an insurance policy that will make it much easier to get divorced. And we will have made decisions about what feels fair and equitable at a point where we're very much in love and we'll have been kind to each other.

And it will save so much money on the cost of a divorce. Divorce can be so expensive. And also no one talks about that part. And then finally, for those of you listening who are thinking, well, I just never leave my spouse. Listen, people think that for myriad reasons.

It could be religiously, societal pressure, cultural pressure, personal feelings. You just would never leave this person no matter what happened. Well, you can't control what they will do. They could leave you. And that's always really hard to hear. But again, to have a document in place that stipulates what feels fair to you is important.

Because finally, everyone listening here would not sign a contract or a business agreement or anything in the business realm. You would never join a partnership with a friend without having a contract about what feels fair and deciding what would also happen if things were to go south. Why are we all signing this very legally binding agreement that has huge financial implications without reading the fine print?

And that is one thing too that I think about a marriage license is that's one of the biggest financial decisions you might ever make in your life. Why are we not knowing the terms and conditions prior to signing? - One thing that never crossed my mind with what you just said was that I have at least a few friends now that have gone through the process of divorce.

And even when amicable, it is very expensive. And I've always just put prenups in the light of this is a thing to make sure that you protect money in a situation where one person has more or might have more or something like that. That's the idea. But is there a world where someone could say, look, I believe that if we ever get divorced, we should split everything 50/50, but we should still have a prenup so that if it happens, it just is a simple process.

In the way that an estate plan might avoid the messy process of probate, you could decide how things get affected. Could a prenup just be something that adheres to the same process as what you'd thought what the state would do, but just does it more efficiently and saves you on attorney fees?

- I would talk to an attorney about that before I'm gonna be like, yeah, absolutely. 'Cause again, so much varies by state. If you live in a community property state, your divorce might actually be easier if you're not gonna contest anything, 'cause they're usually just like 50/50 down the middle, let's go, it doesn't matter why.

So again, knowing the laws of the land could impact whether or not you need one in the first place, if it feels super fair, and you also can see a world where you can get through a divorce quick and easy with like minimal amount of pain and suffering financially.

'Cause if that stuff drags out, it is so expensive. But the other part, I sometimes feel like it's a bit of a misconception that a prenup is just to protect the one person who brings in all of the assets. Yes, obviously, if you come from wealth or you've already created wealth, those are two key reasons that you would want a prenup.

A third being if you have a child from a preexisting relationship, that's another good reason to have a prenup, to protect the financial interests of your child. But it also can be about what would happen to, let's say, retirement accounts. Those are often forgotten about in these conversations. So even if you haven't accumulated a bunch of assets going in, if you have one that you know has the potential to get pretty significant over, let's say, 10, 15, 20 years of a marriage, those are often some of the first assets to get completely gouged in a divorce.

So even just having a prenup that might be as simple as, we're protecting our retirement accounts, we each just have the right to our own retirement account, we don't have rights to each other, that might be something that saves you a ton of money in the future. Now, a prenup isn't cheap.

I look at it as an upfront lump sum on an insurance policy. So again, that amount of money might not feel good to you for doing something just like exclusively protecting a retirement plan. But if we wanna talk postnups, this also might be an opportunity to bring that up with a spouse.

And postnups are a really hard sell if you have not previously had the prenup conversation. I actually know a couple of people who wanted to have a prenup, just kind of ran the clock down on getting it done, and then got married and had a postnup instead. That's an easier pitch.

If you're 10, 15 years into your marriage, and all of a sudden you're like, "Oh, postnup sounds like a great plan." And you pitch that to your spouse, it might sound like you're preparing to divorce them. So it's a much harder sell to be like, "Let's have a postnuptial agreement." - But I guess conceptually, you can make these changes at any point in time, it sounds like.

It doesn't have to be done before marriage. - You can. And honestly, a lot of prenups should, again, like all the documents we've been talking about already, you should check in on that from time to time, just in the sense of, has something big shifted in your marriage? So if you had outlined something in the prenup that now no longer feels fair, based on the current ecosystem of your relationship, it might be time for a postnup.

And that could be something like, "Hey, if the two of you waived alimony in your prenup, "but you're 10 years in, you've had two kids, "and one of you has left the workforce "for an extended period of time, "that doesn't feel so fair anymore "that you waived alimony in the prenup." So it might warrant having a postnup to compensate for that.

Or maybe you had kids, and now you feel like the finances are a little bit of a different conversation. Or maybe somebody, Bill Perkins style, received a lump sum inheritance early, and you bought property with it, and you wanna have a postnup that accounts for who has rights to that property in the case of a divorce.

- I know some people whose parents have asked to set up a postnup pre-inheritance, but a situation that you just alluded to that I thought was something that I'd never really thought about a prenup in this perspective was one of the spouses was going to leave the workforce to take care of kids full-time, and that would, in the future, kind of hinder their ability to earn income.

They'd be out of the workforce maybe five, 10 years. They would be out of their career track. At that point in time, they actually talked about, "Can we set up something different? "Because my ability, were we to get divorced, "to go get a job is different going forward than it is now." So that was a point in time where someone brought that up, where it felt a little more natural than just out of the blue.

I haven't thought or done any of this stuff, it just never crossed our minds, and now I don't even know how I'm gonna think about it. You just threw this at me, like you're crazy to have not done something. I respect your opinion, and I haven't done it, and I still have this weird undertone of like, "Why would I do it?

"That seems crazy." I trust, you know, like... (laughs) So it's just so funny that-- - I get it. - I'm trying to have this rational conversation, and those emotions, I still see them. - Oh, listen, I have, I'm gonna say 85% of people react to this soapbox that I have in that way.

Even if they see from like a very rational side of things that it makes a lot of sense, a lot of people still feel, "Yeah, it's not romantic, I get it. "There's nothing about that process that is romantic." But even if you're not gonna sign on the dotted line, to have the conversations that are required of you when going through the prenup process, that is some of the best pre-marriage conversations that I could ever recommend somebody having.

And even if you're not going to get married, but if you're in a long-term committed relationship, it is such helpful conversation to be having, 'cause it really digs into not only how each of you react to money, and let me tell you, you'll be surprised what triggers you during the prenup process.

And you might be like, "Wow, I did not expect to react that way to something." But you will. And it also gets into how each of you personally feels about money, how you wanna handle money in a marriage, what feels fair to you, and then, yeah, if certain things come up, what feels fair to you at that time.

And again, that's gonna be an evolving conversation. What felt fair six years ago when my husband and I were working on this probably feels a little different than right now at this phase in our relationship and marriage. - So I just binged part of Ramit's show, and I've listened to his podcast.

It still amazes me, just given the way that my wife and I manage our finances, that there are couples where you can get married and find out later that one spouse has a lot of debt, and the other one doesn't. It seems crazy that you could sign a contract that would require you to be equally liable for a financial situation in some ways without actually understanding that situation before going in.

I know you have a few things to say here, so I'm just gonna leave that as an open door when it comes to if either spouse has student loans or credit card debt or anything like that. Does that play into this situation and change anything? - It should. If your spouse has debt, first of all, again, know the rules of your state.

Is there any possibility for you to become legally obligated to that debt as a byproduct of getting married? Oftentimes the answer is no, unless you accumulated it together in the marriage, or they accumulated it unbeknownst to you in the marriage, it still could impact you, so that's an important thing to know.

But student loans obviously being a big thing for millennials, outside of you co-signing on it, typically you are not legally connected to that debt in the case of a divorce. Now, what happens if you get married and you graciously, aggressively help your spouse pay off the student loans, and then your marriage goes down the tubes a year or two later?

I've seen this on Reddit a few times. (laughs) And all of a sudden, you had paid tens of thousands of dollars to help your spouse get out of debt, and they're like, "Okay, I'm out." A prenup actually could solve for that problem. There's all sorts of different strategies that you could put in, but you could have kind of like a vesting period for what they would owe you back if you came in and paid off a huge amount of their debt, and then the marriage dissolved in a certain period of time.

Again, is that a romantic thing to be talking about when you're planning your wedding? Absolutely not. Does it sometimes sound like you don't trust your partner? It might, but that is an important conversation to be having, 'cause again, you just don't know what could happen. And particularly if you have worked very hard to set up a solid financial life for yourself, you don't want something like a divorce to completely undo all of that work.

But it sounds like even if you're four or five years into a marriage and you're like, let's use our savings to pay off your student loans, that could be a time where you say, could we set up a very specific post-nup for this situation? The thing that I never really considered is like, it doesn't necessarily have to change some of the default state rules.

You can get a post-nup, I assume, that says, "Hey, you're gonna have to pay back the student loans," but we still split all of our assets. You don't have to rewrite everything and kind of do it in a way that's like protecting your money and make sure no one ever gets any.

It doesn't have to have all those stipulations. And it doesn't need to be adversarial, truly, at any point. The one beauty I see of doing it at what hopefully is sort of like a peak time of your love bubble when you're engaged and you're getting excited to be married and start this life together, that you will be kind and fair and generous with each other, 'cause there's a reason you're marrying this person.

And also, depending on work situations, that person might have helped you get where you are financially. Like, I know a lot of my career is owed to my husband handling a lot of things behind the scenes and being supportive and doing a lot for my household, too. So, yeah, he deserves some of the money.

- So, there are a handful of things that we didn't get to. We're pretty far into this. I'm gonna maybe ask you some questions. We could treat it more like a rapid fire, and you're welcome to get on your two-minute soapbox and share your thoughts. While we're still on the topic of money and other people and taboo subjects, talking about money with friends, sharing information about your finances, you have a perspective that I would say maybe is contrarian.

Can you share? - Yeah, I think you should. That's contrarian. Most people don't wanna share the information. You don't have to share numbers. But if you are dealing with paying off a big sum of debt, or if it's a positive thing, like you're trying to save up for a down payment, or you guys are gonna have a kid, or whatever it is, it's helpful to give your friends context about why you might be opting out of a social engagement, especially if you keep saying no.

And I really say this one from a place of personal experience, where if you say no enough times, people stop asking. We're also all pretty self-centered creatures at the end of the day, so if you keep saying no with absolutely no context, they're gonna think it's a them thing and not a you thing, and that for some reason you're mad at them, or you're upset at them, or you don't wanna spend time with them.

So giving people a little bit of context about, hey, I gotta be honest with you. I'm in a situation where I'm trying to pay off some credit card debt, or I'm trying to pay off my student loans, or we're working really hard to save up a down payment for a house.

And so that is just gonna kind of limit my ability to be able to say yes to every single concert, happy hour, birthday, dinner, insert activity here. If you're hearing me say this and you're like, I'm feeling itchy, none of this sounds good, absolutely not. The other option is always just provide an alternative, the old compliment sandwich routine.

I love you, wanna spend time with you. Don't really wanna spend $50 on bottomless brunch. How about we grab a bagel and go for a walk in the park? Anytime you're saying no to your friend, provide a counter to what you're saying no to. So create a solution to the problem that you are causing by not wanting to just opt in all the time.

Okay, loaning money to friends. You can do it, just never expect to get that money back, which is very common loan advice. But my bigger point here is I would really encourage you, friends, family, whomever it is, reframe that in your mind like a gift. You are giving them a gift.

So first of all, don't gift them more than you are comfortable gifting. And if you get paid back, delightful. But if you don't, and also the reason I'm saying to do this is because inevitably you loan somebody money and then they go and like book a trip or buy a new TV or like spend money in a way that you're like, excuse you, I just loaned you $300 and you haven't paid me back yet.

How dare you go spend money on this thing? You trying to have ownership or entitlement over someone else's financial life is just gonna be an absolute relationship deal breaker. So if you're gonna loan money, no more than you can afford and you've reframed it as a gift. And if you can't do that, for the love of God, say no.

Just don't loan the money. But provide another thing. Oh, I'm happy to help you budget. Happy to help you do this. What have you, but don't loan that money. - Engagement rings? - You know what, I don't see the point. It is probably the most controversial stance that I have.

I feel like don't waste money on engagement ring. Why are we doing this? I don't get it. I also don't get it from like a personal aesthetic situation. People who are seeing me, I like wear a gold band. I do wear a wedding ring. I did not at any point in my engagement wear an engagement ring.

You don't need one to propose. My husband proposed without one. And if it's something you genuinely want, great. It is the byproduct of the world's best marketing strategy. And so that's more of my thing. Why do we do it? Do you actually want it? Or have you only been socially conditioned to want it?

And it's okay if you actually want it. But do you really truly want it? And is it worth the ring? Or is there somewhere else that we can spend this money that makes more sense and is more aligned with your values? And again, there are folks for whom it's like, no, no, jewelry is my thing.

Like, I love this. I can't wait to have it. Maybe it doesn't have to be a diamond. Maybe it can be something else that means more. Maybe it's made in a lab, so it's a lot cheaper and people really can't tell the difference. Whatever it is, but only have one if it really is in alignment with what you want and not because of socially it's what we're supposed to be doing.

- Love it. Okay, we're gonna wrap. We're way over time. But normally I ask everyone for some fun tips on what to eat, what to drink, what to do, where they're from. For you, I have a little bit of a different question because since we first talked, you both listened to the episode I did with Brandon on Japan, went to Japan.

So I would love any tips you have. Did you do any of the things he suggested? Were they fun? Were there things he missed? And then feel free if you want to make any suggestions in whatever place you know best. But rarely do I get to talk to someone who actually listened to a travel related episode and then went and did the trip.

- So first of all, never gonna say you missed anything. All the advice is great. If anything, I'm really mad I didn't get to it. Like I'm not kidding, three days sooner. Because there were multiple restaurants that he had recommended that had gone up like 48 hours prior and were already sold out for the dates that we were gonna be in Japan.

Some of them just book that fast. So if you listen and you're planning a trip, truly calendar reminder for like 45 days out to start planning to make some of the dinner reservations. So that was my only bummer. It was so helpful for strategizing my itinerary. As I mentioned earlier, I lived in Japan as a kid.

So first of all, our itinerary was a little different than some people's might have been 'cause I lived in Kobe. So we wanted to spend a good chunk of time in Kobe. People kind of overlook Kobe as a city. So my first tip would also be like, don't overlook it.

It's a great city. So Kobe beef, go get it in the motherland. The other part, I was really struggling about when to stay in a ryokan, which is a traditional Japanese hotel. I was like, I know I wanna have this experience. I want my husband to be able to experience the onsen.

And there's a point in the podcast where he says that a lot of people try to shoehorn that into Kyoto. And that is always the wrong move because Kyoto, you wanna be like out experiencing it, going to all the temples, going to the wonderful food. There's so much to do there.

But that's antithetical to what a ryokan is 'cause you wanna be relaxing in the hotel, doing the onsen. So that really should be the dessert, as he described it, of the trip. We didn't quite do it as dessert. It was like third course, almost dessert, but it was at a point where we had done a lot of the things.

And so it was great to be relaxing. And we actually did it a little outside of Kobe in Arima. A-R-I-M-A, Arima. Wonderful town that I would highly recommend. But that part of the episode, I just had this like full sense of clarity about like, okay, this is actually how we should schedule this trip.

So we did Tokyo to Kyoto to Kobe. In route to Kobe, we did a half day in Osaka, which some people might think is sacrilege 'cause you should probably spend like a full day or two. And then a few days in Kobe, up to Arima for the ryokan, and then back to Tokyo where we did get to do a Tokyo Giants-Hanshin Tigers game, which if you're in Japan during baseball season, get tickets to a baseball game.

It is a sight to behold. Even if you're not a baseball fan, one of my favorite travel things to do is to try to experience a sports and/or arts thing in the place where I am. So baseball in Japan is one of the best things to do. - That's awesome.

This has been great. Any final tips, somewhere, someplace, if you've got something top of mind? - Oh, Champagne and Gyoza in Tokyo is a great restaurant. Not talking about money, but Champagne and Gyoza would be my one restaurant ad that is not on the podcast previously. And I would challenge everyone listening to have one awkward financial conversation by the end of the week, whatever week you're listening.

- I love it. - Challenge yourself to have one uncomfortable money conversation with someone that will be productive. - Where can people go find scripts you've written, posts you've written, books you've written, everything? - So everything we've talked about is in "Broke Millennial Talks Money," my third book. You can find that wherever books are sold.

My first two, "Broke Millennial" and then "Broke Millennial Takes on Investing." And then I have a workbook, "Broke Millennial Workbook." Plus me, you can find on Instagram @BrokeMillennialBlog, on Twitter @BrokeMillennial. Website is BrokeMillennial.com. I don't update it a ton anymore. So I'm gonna be honest, Instagram is really the place to find me.

- Awesome. You've owned the term, but I will say that the content has also evolved. If you're listening to this and you're like, I'm not broke, why would I go read this book? Chapter seven inspired this episode. There is a lot there. I just wanna caution anyone that hears the word "Broke Millennial" and thinks, I don't need this book 'cause I have some savings.

There are still scripts in there that I've used for this purpose already. - And I will also say, you might not be, but someone in your life probably is. And so they might find it helpful. (laughing) - Awesome. Thank you so much for being here. - It was wonderful to be here.

Thanks for having me. (upbeat music) - I really hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for listening. If you haven't already left a rating and a review for the show in Apple Podcasts or Spotify, I would really appreciate it. And if you have any feedback on the show, questions for me, or just wanna say hi, I'm chris@allthehacks.com or @hutchins on Twitter.

That's it for this week. I'll see you next week. (upbeat music) (electronic beeping) (electronic buzzing)