Ken Moraif  

Hello everyone, and welcome to the retirement planners of America podcast where we have more fun than a human being should be allowed to have when talking about all this boring financial stuff. And in this podcast, we’re going to be talking about something that we’ve gotten a lot of requests to do a podcast about, and that is estate planning. And we consider estate planning the art of passing on to your greedy, unwashed, undeserving heirs the fruits of your labor. And by the way, I’ve been saying this for years, please do not email me and tell me that your heirs are not greedy or they’re not unwashed. Okay, it’s a joke, maybe rpoa.com

This podcast, we’re going to talk about the basics. We’re going to go through several of those things for you. Thank you for watching. I hope this video finds you healthy, wealthy and wise before we get going. Let me introduce myself. I am Ken Moray from the founder and CEO of retirement planners of America, and we’re a firm that specializes in working with people who are in what we consider to be the most important decade of your entire financial life, and that’s the five years before you retire, and the five years after you retire. That decade is supremely important. The decisions you make during that period will affect your retirement for the rest of your life. So it’s super important that you do it right. And estate planning is part of that. And we’re going to get into it. So I’m going to bring into the fray, Jeromy. My What is your actual position? What’s your title?

Jeremy Thornton  

I’m a co host. I think co host, yeah, yeah,

Ken Moraif  

my co host. I like that. Okay, so you’re my co host, yes? So, yeah, we’ve got a lot of requests, you know, to talk with, to put together, you know, and we’re, this is a whole series, yes, right? So we’re gonna be talking about the basics. We’re gonna talk about how to design your beneficiary designations. We’re gonna talk about different kinds of entities you can create, like trusts and Family Partnerships and all those kind of things. And then we’re going to get into some exotic stuff and do some exciting stuff. So we’re going to build a little bit at a time on all these things absolutely so and but this podcast is the beginning, just to set the stage and the basics. Yeah,

Jeremy Thornton  

there’s too much to cover in one sitting. It would be a three hour long thing, and nobody’s gonna sit there and watch that. Yeah, they will, well, not, maybe not about the state planning in one setting. Yeah, we’re talking about dinosaurs and aliens. Maybe. Oh,

Ken Moraif  

yeah, okay, we’ll have to inject a few dinosaurs and aliens. Yeah,

Jeremy Thornton  

great. Okay, so I think we should just started when we’re creating estate planning and we’re trying to plan out how we’re going to pass along assets, money, property, whatever it is, what is estate planning?

Ken Moraif  

Yeah, I’ll tell you estate planning. I’ll tell you what it’s not. Estate planning is not a science. Yeah, it’s an art, because it’s different for everybody. And how you do it, what you do is determined by your own circumstances, and a lot of times, emotions get into it. You know, sometimes people don’t like their kids, or sometimes they like them too much. You know, new grandchildren, as in, you know, my case, have had some new grandchildren lately. So, you know, it’s an art, but there’s a science to the art as well. So it’s kind of a combination of both. But essentially, the way I look at it, it is passing on to the aforementioned greedy, unwashed, undeserving heirs the fruits of your labor in the least taxed, most cost efficient way, so that you achieve the goals you want with the wealth that you’ve accumulated.

Jeremy Thornton  

Yeah, yeah. Who, who would benefit from planning passing on their their their goods that they’ve earned?

Ken Moraif  

You know, I run into people who think, well, I don’t have enough, you know, stuff right to to warrant doing estate plan, right? And I think that’s not right, because one of the things that have, if you don’t have, and you know, a will, is estate planning. Yeah, right. So when you sit down and you say, This is who gets what, and when you create guardianship, you documents, whatever those things are, that is estate planning, yeah, if you don’t do that, and you pass, then you die with you die intestate, okay? Intestate means without a will, and if you didn’t create one, guess who has one created for you? The state that you live in, yeah, the government, right. And let me ask you a question, do you think the government has their best interest at heart, or do you think they have your family’s best interest at

Jeremy Thornton  

heart? I’m gonna venture a guess that the state is going to get as much as they possibly can. Do you

Ken Moraif  

really? You mean they wouldn’t want to design it? In a way that your family gets as much as possible, and they get the least,

Jeremy Thornton  

it’s for the greater good. Yeah?

Ken Moraif  

Oh, okay. So, yeah, so you do not want to die intestate. So really, if you have, you know, two shekels to rub together, yeah, you should do some estate planning. You should plan on who gets what and when, and don’t, don’t die intestate. Yeah, a good idea,

Jeremy Thornton  

yeah. So if you don’t do it, what’s, I mean, we’ve alluded to, the state’s going to get as much as they can. But what? What is the outcome? Let’s say you have several children and grandchildren, you die intestate. What happens if you don’t have a will?

Ken Moraif  

Well, you know, it does depend also on the size of your estate. Actually, it doesn’t thinking about it, what you could, you could be setting the stage for a family war. Yeah, you know, I know of a family where these three sisters in their 80s who had gotten along their entire life a small plot of land in Kentucky that was not worth very much. I think it was like $10,000 but because their father, who lived to be 100 and he was a long lived family this. These people did not have a will, and one and two of the sisters wanted to sell the plot. One of the sisters wanted to keep it. It turned into a family war. And these women, they’re 80 years old, they’ve known each other, they’ve been sisters their entire life, and now they’re at war with each other over a piece of land that has not a lot of money, but has a lot of sentimental value. You know, one of them looked at as an heirloom, and the others, like, we wanted to get rid of it. We want to deal with it. Yeah. So, you know, you could create a family war. You could create the state doing stuff for you. It’s, you know, it’s not difficult to create a will. There are, there are lots of ways of doing that. So at the very least, you should have a will.

Jeremy Thornton  

Yeah, okay, so a will is documentation that says, here’s what I own, and this is where it’s going to go. Are there any like stipulations, or, I know there are stipulations. What are some specifics in a will that make it kind of binding and keep the state out of it?

Ken Moraif  

Well, the mere fact that you have a will, in most cases, will keep the state from creating it. Well, you know, if you have that, you’re not intestate, so by definition, you the state should stay out of it. However, it does depend on the state you live in. There is such a thing as probate, and we’ll talk about living trust in a minute. But if you go through probate, that’s an indirect where the state may get involved, and that could create delays and cost and issues that families have to deal with in a time when they’ve just lost their fan, their loved one, right? And you know, they’re not in a psychological frame of mind to be dealing with these things, and yet, right? They’re forced into it. So another reason why you should do your estate planning is to help your family to avoid, you know, having to deal with all this stuff when they’re not in the frame of mind to do it. Yeah? And then also, they don’t know what your stuff is, yeah, right? Yeah. Unless you’re sharing with them every day, they don’t know where all your stuff is, and right, and all that. So if you haven’t done your estate planning, then what’s going to happen is they’re gonna have to go find it all it’s going all. It’s going to be delayed. Who knows? There’s some stuff they never find. And then suddenly somebody does, and they sell it off in an estate auction. So just it makes life easy for everyone to take a moment and do your estate planning.

Jeremy Thornton  

Absolutely Okay, so we’re kind of talking about wills. What is an A B trust will,

Ken Moraif  

ooh, a B trust will. So we’re going now from just a basic will, where you just say, this is what you know, what I have. This is who gets it and when, and potentially how, when you start getting into the how you’re going to get it, yeah, now you’re talking about the next step in more advanced estate planning. And so there is, there are tax laws, which we’ll talk about in another podcast, with regard to when you pass money down to family members or to anybody, for that matter. And there’s a, there’s actually a story about that one. So, you know, back in in the 19 teens, 1913 I believe, apparently, there was a smoke filled room where all these people in the government were gathering, and back then, they smoked a lot. So it was, right, you know it was, it was like a fog filled, cigarette smoked room, and the guy in the back of the room, which we’ve come to know, well, right with the glass, and he’s got the pocket protector with the ink all over it, and he’s like, Guys, people are, are accumulating wealth. Yeah, and then we haven’t taxed it all, and they’re passing it on to their to their heirs, and we’re not collecting anything on that. This is terrible. We can’t have that. And so they came up with the estate tax, and they said, you know, what has to happen here is we have to tax it when it goes from one generation to the next. This is super important. We got a piece of our pound of flesh. And so they created what they then they said, Yeah, but we can’t tax every single dollar, right? Because if we do that, then we’ll have, we’ll have a revolutionary, oh, right, every single person, when they die, they got their, you know, their money has to go to the government. Then we’ll get voted out of office. So we can’t have that. So they created what are called exempt, the estate tax exemption, okay? And so, and that was this guy with a pocket, right? The coke bottle glasses. He said, Well, what we’ll do is we’ll have an exemption. There’ll be a certain amount that you can pass on without tax, but when you get above it, boom, that’s when the estate tax kicks in. And boy, you should have heard the cheering. They were like,

Jeremy Thornton  

genius, genius. A lot of cheering, and then a lot of coffee,

Ken Moraif  

yeah, right, well, yeah, and teary eyes and all the smoke, but they carried the guy around the room. They were, you know, this is, by the way, folks google it, this actually happened. And so there’s the exemption. So the exemption is per person, okay, okay. Currently it’s pretty high, you know, but it has been pretty low that I remember early in my career where anything over $200,000 that was passed on to the next generation was subject to the estate tax. And the estate tax could be 50% of everything over that 200,000 so the exemption amount the 200,000 back then it’s higher now is what you want to try to protect you don’t want to lose it, right? So, and how you could lose it is if, when I die, I leave everything to my wife, so we both have an exemption, just for sake of argument or conversation, let’s say that the exemption is a million dollars. Okay, okay, so I can pass on a million dollars tax free to my kids, and so can my wife. I die and I leave everything to my wife. Yep, guess what? I didn’t do. I didn’t use my million, yeah, and I didn’t pass on that million tax rate. So now it goes to my wife. How much does she have a million? She has a million, yeah, my million got lost, yeah. So now when she dies, it goes down to the kids. But we only use 1 million of the $2 million total exemption that we could have used. Gotcha. Okay, so that’s where the A B trust will comes into. Okay, so what the A B trust will says is that upon my death, what I want to have happen is I want my half of the estate to go into the B trust, okay, the B trust. So now, by virtue of me putting my half into the B trust, and let’s say that my half was a million dollars. I’ve used up my exemption. Million dollars went into the B trust, right? The B trust is usually for the benefit of your spouse, yes, generally speaking, that’s how it’s set up. Your spouse can be the trustee. Your spouse gets the money. The spouse gets to use it, but you’ve used your exemption, so now your estate has been depleted. It’s gone into that trust. My wife now has her million dollars right upon her death. It passes on tax free. So now we’ve passed on $2 million tax free, and before we would have only passed $1 million tax free, yeah. So what the A B trust will does is the B portion is the is the portion that we’re using the decedents estate tax exemption so we don’t lose it, okay? And then it could go on from there wherever you want. Yeah, the A part is the spouse’s side, yes, which you can’t control in this example, because it’s my wife’s money, right? It’s half hers, although there is some argument about whether my half is hers as well, right? But right, that’s for a

Jeremy Thornton  

different day, and I’m guessing this is not something I could write on a napkin. Let’s say at a restaurant. Decide this and say this is my will sign it at the bottom and that’ll be legally binding.

Ken Moraif  

No, that’s not a good idea. You don’t want to be doing that. No. I mean, you could, right, but not the a, b part. You could, you could do a straight up will by hand. I don’t know how well it’ll hold up, but yeah, if it’s the last minute and you don’t have one, you could write something down and say, This is my these are my wishes, yeah? And I, I don’t want to be a lawyer here, but I think it might hold up, yeah, witnesses and it got notarized, yeah? But better to have a will, yeah? And if you do want to make sure that you’re using your exemptions, that you’re creating trusts for your children, you know, and you have other more advanced planning now, what happens is, is the A B trust wills, yeah, so. And you know, one of the things about a B trust wheels is they’re not. Expensive, you know, people probably think, oh my gosh, that’s probably got, you know, 1000s and 1000s of dollars, yeah, generally speaking, in the scope of things, they’re not that expensive, yeah? But if you take into account the value that they’ll bring to your family, and, you know, the thing about estate planning is it’s a totally altruistic exercise, yeah, because you’re gonna be dead, yeah? Right, yeah, yeah, you know. So, so you’re not doing it for yourself, yeah? You know, I remember when my mother, God, God bless her, when she was on her deathbed, you know? I said, Mom, you know, she had done estate planning and all that. And I said, you know, what do you want me to do? She had some stocks that she had owned her entire life, and she’s partial to, I said, Mom, what do you want me to do with these stocks? She goes, Kenny, I’ll be dead. Do whatever you want.

Jeremy Thornton  

Keep them forever. No,

Ken Moraif  

whatever you want, I’ll be dead. I don’t care. You know, at this point, it’s my role in here is over, yeah? So, yeah. So, so that’s the advantage of having the A B trust wills. Now, once you’ve set up the A B trusts, then the next thing that you should consider are, what are called dynasty trusts, okay, okay, so you have the the parents up here, yep. And so they’ve, they’ve created the A B trust. So upon death, the A and the B trust. The B trust is funded when the first spouse dies, right? And then the second spouse is it has the a trust, the next level down is, is the kids? Yeah. So when the kids inherit, what you might want to consider is that each one of them inherits into what’s called a dynasty trust, okay? And we’re gonna do a separate podcast on that one as well. But dynasty trusts are essentially a way that you can preserve the inheritance that you leave to your greedy, unwashed, undeserving kids for up to 100 years under current law, and it can protect it from estate taxes going down to your grandchildren. It can protect it from lawsuits, from bankruptcy, from divorce, all those kind of things. It hermetically seals the inheritance that your children receive for 100 for potentially 100 years. Wow. So it’s a pretty powerful document, one of the few documents that lawyers have created that I think is a really good idea. So that would be the AB trust will so you have a B, B is for Spouse. A is for the surviving spouse. Upon the death of the surviving spouse, then the B trust goes down into the dynasty trust. The a trust goes down into the dynasty trust. Structured properly for most people, you should avoid all estate taxes, you know, because the limits are pretty high right now, and that for most people should be sufficient. Yeah.

Jeremy Thornton  

Okay, so are there any alternative options for a will?

Ken Moraif  

Yes, yes, there are. So I mentioned probate earlier. Probate in many like, for example, in Texas, probate is not a big deal, right? And probate can take 60 days and costs $500 so it’s not a really big deal in in a few states now, there are other states where it’s a very big deal. And unfortunately, what happens in those states is that the court actually makes money off of the probate process. They get paid for that. Yeah? So, you know, my view is, anything that you pay for you’re gonna get more of. Yeah, absolutely, and so and so a living trust can help to avoid probate. Okay, so if you live in a state and let me back up, so a living trust is essentially a will substitute. Okay, okay, so it does exactly the same thing that a will does. It says, who gets it? When do they get it? How did they get it? The a, b trust scenario that I described, you can do that with a living trust as well. So all of those things can be done, just anything you can do with a will, you can do with a living trust, okay, which is why a lot of times people have living trusts that they don’t need. Yeah, you know, they could have just had a will, and that would have been sufficient, right? So, but the living trust, the main advantage of it is the avoidance of probate. Okay, so, if probate is a big issue for you, if you live in,

Jeremy Thornton  

what is a probate? Yeah, we didn’t explain what probate does. What is probate? Good

Ken Moraif  

question. So probate is basically where the estate, you know, the court makes sure that the your assets are distributed according to your desires. Okay, okay. And so it’s the family war scenario. You know, our families are fighting over each you know, who gets what enforcement of a legal document? Yes, yeah. And so it’s basically to make sure that the the desires of the decedent are enforced. And probate is what does that? Okay? And. You know, like I said, in some states, it can be laborious, it can be time consuming, it can be expensive, right? And you want to avoid that, you know, I would say in other states, it’s not so depending on the makeup of your estate. How you know, if you have a lot of complicated stuff or your property in different states, or you live in a state where probate is a big deal, you may want to use a Living Trust instead, and the reason why is because a living trust is essentially, like I said, it’s a will substitute. It’s doing everything, but you’re also pre probating your estate. Okay, okay, so the probate has already been done by virtue of you creating the living trust because you have to now put things in the name of the living trust. Yes, and that, you know, people get intimidated by that it’s not, it’s not a big deal, yeah, but it’s not something you should do if you don’t need to, right? But if you do, it’s not a big deal to do it right? And so by pre probating right, you’ve already legally documented that this is how it’s supposed to go and all that. You put it in a living trust, then you avoid probate, yeah, and it can be quick and easy in most cases. And so a living trust. And the other thing also about living trust that you have to be careful of is that a living trust is, is basically it’s you, okay? It’s not like an irrevocable trust, which we’ll talk about in another podcast, but it has no tax ID number. It’s your social security number, okay? So it doesn’t, you know, a lot of times I hear you’ll save on estate taxes by having a living trust. That’s not true. The what saves you as the AB part of it, right? But you can do that without the living trust. You don’t need the living trust to save on estate taxes, yeah, so that’s sometimes in the marketing of those I think is a little disingenuous, but because it’s you, right, it has your tax ID number, it doesn’t save you one thin dime of income taxes, estate taxes, no taxes at all. You still pay the same taxes in all circumstances. What it does help is with avoidance of probate.

Jeremy Thornton  

Gotcha, okay. I mean, that makes sense. Now, it’s definitely a case by case scenario and where you are and what your situation is as to whether or not that’s even a thing you should even consider Okay, so when should I kind of create a will or a living trust? Or when should I really make that decision? Okay, I need to get something on paper, because we neither know the hour nor the day when we’re called. When should I start really considering creating something like that?

Ken Moraif  

Yeah, so the Will everyone watching this podcast, I think, you know, I’m trying to think of exceptions. There’s probably an exception, but I would say that everyone watching this should have at least a will. You do not want to die intestate. Yeah, it’ll create all kinds of issues for your family. And, you know, unless you hate them, right?

Jeremy Thornton  

One last joke for everybody, yeah,

Ken Moraif  

just don’t do anything. And then from wherever you are, you’ll watch them, and you’ll see their whole life collapse. And you can, and you can feel happy about that, but that’s a very negative emotion. Have a will at the very least. The next step up is the A, B, trust will with, with the dynasty trusts. That’s important if you have certain assets, you know, if you, if you built up, you know, something worth organizing and leaving in some sort of formal way. And then the next step up from that is the living trust, yes, which is where you have, you know, a complicated estate, or you spread out in different different states, or, you know, if you have a Brady Bunch family, also, you may want to use a living trust for that. So there are, there are circumstances where the living trust does fit. So, yeah, it’s kind of a progression of of, I don’t want to say complexity, because then it sounds like, you know, you don’t want to go there, but it’s just depending on your estate and what your situation

Jeremy Thornton 

Okay? So I create it, and I should create one today, like I, if I, if you don’t have one, go do it right now. Stop what you’re doing. No, finish watching this video, and then go do it. No, um, how frequently should you review and look over that will because your circumstances are going to change? Yeah,

Ken Moraif  

that’s a very good question. You should review your documents at a minimum every three years. But that’s kind of a very generic rule of thumb, I would say worst case scenario. Every three years you should review it, yeah, but there’s a whole list of things that could cause you to go back and look at your documents. You change jobs, you have a new you get married, you get divorced, you have a new grandson, you have a new daughter. Uh, you know, there’s, you move to a different state, there are, you know, any, any kind of major change in your life, probably should get you to say, I need to review the documents to make sure they reflect what I want to have. Yeah, and so, yeah and, and it’s important that you do. You know, I think I’ve probably looked at, I’m not an attorney, so, you know, I don’t give legal advice. But, you know, over the years, I’ve, I’ve seen, I don’t even know, I’m going to say 5000 maybe more, you know, estate plans and, and one of the most common things that I see is they haven’t reviewed them in a long time, and they do not reflect, you know, what they want anymore. And then secondly, what I see is that the their life has changed, or the laws have changed, and what they have does not reflect those changes, right? So you have a change in preference. You know, sometimes people want to leave more to one child than another, or they change their mind. Laws can change their life has changed. There’s all kinds of stuff. So at a very minimum, you should look at it every three years. But in a lot of times, it’s even more frequent than that,

Jeremy Thornton  

yeah, major life change. You should look at it, buying, selling property. Take a look at it exactly. Yeah, yeah. If you move, you change your driver’s license, take a look at your will. But nonetheless,

Ken Moraif  

right? And it’s just easy, you know, because it’s the last thing you know that you want to think about, is your own mortality, of course, you know. And so it’s easy to not want to do that, but trust me, you’re doing your family one of the biggest favors by doing that, because, like I said, you know, I’ve unfortunately run into many heirs who are dealing with, you know, the finances of their parents or their grandparents, and they’re in no emotional state to deal with this stuff, and you have to deal with it within nine months. Oh, yeah, that’s very much time you have. And nine months sounds like a lot, but it goes by really fast. And if you’re not, you know, if you’re trying to sort all this out and organize it and do what you think mom and dad wanted to have happen, and all of that, it’s, it’s, you’re putting somebody in a really difficult position, right? And it’s not fair to them. They want to grieve, they want to remember you. They want to do all that, and yet now they’re having to deal with probate and taxes and this and that, you know, do them a favor. Yeah, it’s an act of love. I agree.

Jeremy Thornton  

Okay, speaking of mortality, on a darker note, Power of Attorney documentation and documents, yeah, how should you kind of think about that again? When should you think about that? And then, how should you

Ken Moraif  

so the power of attorney documents are something that I think that basically everybody watching this podcast should have, okay, okay. And I think a will too, yeah, but the power of attorney documents are the ones where you give others the right to do things, right? And those are super important, because it’s the right to do things while you are alive, right? Okay, so in the scenario where, you know, I don’t really care because I’ll be dead, right? You know, that’s your will, but this stuff is about when you’re alive, and so they affect you personally. So you have a selfish interest to have those documents, and there are several. One of them is what’s called a durable power of attorney. Okay, so the durable power of attorney is where you give somebody the right to make financial decisions for you. Okay, okay, so if you are incapacitated and bills have to be paid, investments need to be taken care of, property taxes, etc, you need to give somebody the authority to do that for you. And by the way, nobody has the authority to do that for you if you don’t give them that authority, because otherwise, guess where they have to go to the state and they have to go to court to get that permission. And that can be time consuming. It can be costly, and it could be very costly if bills are due or taxes are due, or investments need to be done and they’re stuck waiting for the judge to give them the right to do that. So the durable power of attorney is the one where you’re giving somebody the right to make financial decisions. The second one, you know, I call it a pull the plug document, okay? And basically it’s a physician’s directive, yes. And the physicians directive says that if three independent doctors deem that you are not going to make it right, then they can pull the plug. Okay? And that is very important, because we’ve all seen, you know, where families are stuck in court for years trying to pull the plug. They’re being drained of all their money. Need keeping somebody that’s never going to make it, you know, on life support. It’s costing them 1000s and 1000s of dollars, right? And it’s tragic. And you see this, you know, I’ve seen it many times in the news. And if they had a, you know, physicians directive, they could have saved themselves from the anguish, the costs all of that. Yeah, so, and you know, it’s up to your moral compass. There are people who don’t want to that. It’s, you know, depending on their morals. You know, there are some religions that don’t allow for that. If that’s the case, that’s fine. But for most people, that’s an important document. The other document that you should have is the medical power of attorney. Okay, okay, so the medical power of attorney is the one where you give somebody the authority to make medical decisions for you, okay, to authorize procedures that could be done those kind of things. And again, don’t think that just because you know you’re what, you’re married, that your wife can make these decisions for you, or that your kids can just go to the hospital and say, Yeah, you know, operate on Dad. No, nobody can do this stuff right. Only you can authorize who can do this stuff for you. And so even your spouse does not have the right to, you know, to operate on you, yeah, you know, or all those kind of things, unless you’ve given them that authority. And so that’s, you know, don’t assume that they have that. So you have to give somebody the right. And the thing about, you know, there are different situations where you could have, let’s say you have three kids, and one of them is just a genius with money, the other one is a doctor, right? So maybe you name the one who’s a genius with money to be your durable, right? And you make the one who’s a doctor to be your medical, yeah, absolutely, you know. So you don’t have to have the same person have all the rights, right? Could you could do it differently? Yes, probably dating myself here, but I remember a Seinfeld episode where Kramer was trying to figure out who was going to have his his medical power of attorney. I think he named George at first, and then he was like, You’re gonna kill me. I know what you’re gonna do the moment I get sick. You’re pulling the plug on me. I don’t want you to be that anymore. So, yeah, so you know you have to pick and then again, that’s why you review your documents. Of course. You know time goes on. Your kids may be minors right now, and you don’t want them to have any of those rights right, but then later, you know, you might as they if they come of majority. So one child may be able to but now they’ve moved to Hawaii, and so now they’re not there, so they can’t do that. So there are lots of additional reasons why you want to review your documents Absolutely. So let’s see, what if I Okay? So then there’s another document that most people don’t think about, and that is the guardianship document. Okay, so the guardianship document is kind of like, you know, if you had minor kids, you, you know, you talk to your spouse, and you’d say, if something happens to us, you know, who’s gonna, yeah, who’s gonna change the diapers? Who’s gonna bathe them and clean them and medicate them and feed them and, you know, take them to school. And who’s going to be their guardian? Yes, well, if you become incapacitated, somebody needs to be your guardian. Somebody’s going to need to, it’s terrible to say, but change your diaper, feed you, medicate you, and do all those things absolutely and again. Don’t think that just because they’re a family member that they have the right to do that, yes, now they can do it, and probably nothing will come of it, right, but they don’t necessarily have the right, and if there becomes an issue about it, then all of a sudden you’ve got a family war on your hand. You got the stuff is just easy to do yes, to avoid all the complications that could happen. Yes. Now hopefully none of them will, right, but they could. So the guardianship document is where you say you give authority, power of attorney to someone to take care of you, if you can’t take care of yourself, your activities of daily living, as they’re called. So those are the power of attorney documents. I think I’ve covered them all. Yeah, those are very, very important, and they’re not expensive. So that’s the thing, yeah,

Jeremy Thornton  

get it done. Yeah, there’s really, there’s not a good excuse to not having it done,

Ken Moraif  

and it’s a little bit of your time. And you have to kind of think about your mortality. Yes, you have to think about your morbidity. Morbidity is the stuff we’ve just been talking about, where you become incapacitated. Those aren’t pleasant things to think about, and I know that, and that’s why people don’t do it, but the fact remains that if you don’t do it, they’re gonna have to do it for you, and it’s not fair to them to put them in that position again, because they’re not in the frame of mind, they’re not gonna make proper decisions, or they’re in the emotions of that moment, yeah,

Jeremy Thornton  

yeah. And, you know, on a, I guess, a lighter note, you don’t want the state stepping in either. No, you

Ken Moraif  

don’t want your family have to deal with the state. Yeah, yeah. No, nobody wants to

Jeremy Thornton  

deal with it. You don’t want to deal with them. So you your family sure doesn’t want.

Ken Moraif  

No, they are not your friend. No. No, the state is not your friend. No, you know, I’m not saying they’re bad guys, but they’re not your friend, right?

Jeremy Thornton  

Yes, absolutely. Okay. I think that pretty much covers our the basics of a state attorney. I think is a good start. Or series. Anything else you want to add?

Ken Moraif  

No, that’s, that’s the beginning. So we this is a series, right? And so the next one we’ll talk about is beneficiary designations. And you know, a lot of people, when they create their beneficiary designations, there’s a lot of things that they don’t understand about the ramifications. And you know, we’ll talk about why. In many cases, you do not want to name your spouse as your beneficiary. You don’t want to name a trust a beneficiary of your IRA. There’s lots of little intricacies I’ll say about beneficiary designations. It’s not just as simple as this is who I leave it to, and this is the percentage. There’s some things you need to understand and before you make those decisions, and we’ll do that in our next podcast. Perfect, awesome. Well, thank you, Ken, thank you so ladies and gentlemen, thank you for watching. Please like and subscribe to this. Share it with your friends and family as well. That would be great. And I hope you found this interesting and, most importantly, entertaining, because this is really boring stuff. We made it entertaining for you, then hopefully you learned something in the process, and we’ll look forward to talking to you soon. And I hope this video found you healthy, wealthy and wise. Take care, everybody. Retirement planners of America, rpoa.com, you.