A Widow’s Journey to Love, Happiness & Financial Independence
Michelle Cooper, author of I’ve Still Got Me: A Widow’s Journey to Love, Happiness & Financial Independence, Director and Co-Founder of XML-W, a division of XML Financial Group, and former practicing attorney, joins Tim Ulbrich on this week’s podcast episode. Michelle shares her personal story and unique perspective on finances and law to inspire hope for those experiencing loss and provides sound financial principles for those seeking financial independence.
About Today’s Guest
Michelle P. Cooper is the Director and Co-founder of XML-W, a division of XML Financial Group which focuses on the planning and financial needs of women at all stages of their lives. She brings to XML-W over 25 years of experience in the estate planning, finance and tax fields. Prior to joining the XML team, she worked for Merrill Lynch and U.S. Trust as a Director helping high-net-worth clients design and update their estate plans. She also had the responsibility of educating over 650 financial advisors on estate planning and trust services. Before starting her career at Merrill Lynch in 1996, she worked as an attorney specializing in tax and estate planning for the law firms of Ralph R. Polachek & Associates and Joseph, Gajarsa, McDermott & Reiner, P.C.
Michelle recently wrote a book called I’ve Still Got Me – A Widow’s Journey to Love, Happiness & Financial Independence. In this book, Michelle shares her personal story of resilience after the loss of her husband to suicide. By sharing her journey and the life lessons learned along the way, she hopes to empower women to become more active and involved with their finances and estate plan so they can live a more healthy and secure life. Michelle has been featured on several local and national media outlets and was recently named one of JWI’s 2019 Women to Watch.
Summary
Michelle Cooper joins Tim Ulbrich to share her personal story of navigating her finances during loss and grief and her unique perspective on financial planning for those seeking financial independence.
Michelle is the Director and Co-founder of XML-W, a division of XML Financial Group which focuses on the planning and financial needs of women at all stages of their lives. Michelle worked for Merrill Lynch and U.S. Trust as a Director helping high-net-worth clients design and update their estate plans and previously worked as an attorney specializing in tax and estate planning. When she was 36 years old, she unexpectedly lost her husband to suicide. Although she talked about estate planning all day at work, she didn’t think something like this would ever happen. They luckily they had some aspects of their financial and estate plans in place, however, her husband Scott had previously handled everything financial. She was fortunate to have a background in estate planning and was able to find financial resiliency during such a difficult time.
Michelle shares three practical tips that every couple should think about: insuring both names are listed on every service account, having a conversation about bills before tragedy strikes, and automating bill payments.
She also shares her five building blocks to an estate plan which includes creating the following documents: a will, a revocable living trust, a power of attorney, a healthcare power of attorney and a living will. While not everyone will need each of these, it’s important to know what you want when you’re not here. Michelle shares that having a will and power of attorney are documents that everyone should have in place.
On this episode Michelle also discusses the importance of life and disability insurance and the process of getting your estate plan in place.
Mentioned on the Show
- Refinance Student Loans
- I’ve Still Got Me: A Widow’s Journey to Love, Happiness & Financial Independence by Michelle P. Cooper
- XML Financial Group
- YFP Planning
- Your Financial Pharmacist
- Protect Your Income (Life and Disability Insurance)
- Michelle Cooper
- Michelle Cooper on Facebook
- Michelle Cooper on LinkedIn
Episode Transcript
Tim Ulbrich: Hey, what’s up, everybody? Welcome to this week’s episode of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. We have a special guest for you this week, Michelle Cooper, an attorney who specializes in tax and estate planning and author of the book “I’ve Still Got Me: A Widow’s Journey to Love, Happiness & Financial Independence.” A little bit of background on Michelle before we get started with today’s interview: She’s the director and cofounder of XMLW, a division of XML Financial Group, which focuses on the planning and financial needs of women at all stages of their lives. Prior to joining the XML team, she worked for Merrill Lynch and U.S. Trust as the Director and Senior Trust Specialist, helping with high net worth clients designing and updating their estate plans. She also has had the responsibility of educating more than 650 financial advisors on estate planning and trust services. Before starting her career at Merrill Lynch in 1996, she worked as an attorney specializing in tax and estate planning. Michelle earned a BS degree in business from Miami of Ohio University and her JD and MBA degrees from Capitol University here in the great city of Columbus, Ohio. She’s married to Paul Cooper, and they have five wonderful children together. She enjoys yoga, traveling, a good bottle of wine — amen to that — and helping women thrive with their financial plans. Michelle, welcome to the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast.
Michelle Cooper: Thank you, Tim. It’s great to be here. Thank you for the warm welcome.
Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely. I’m so excited to have you. I’ve really enjoyed your book and what we’re going to talk about in today’s interview, again, your book “I’ve Still Got Me: A Widow’s Journey to Love, Happiness & Financial Independence.” I really think this book is fantastic. I would highly encourage our listeners to check it out. I think it’s well written, it’s easy to digest, it’s honest, it’s raw, and I think it’s a quick read. And I really do think the key principles that we’ll talk about here on the show are those that will stick with you and are action-oriented towards one’s financial plan. So your story that led to the book — and the book that we’ll discuss today — starts at the age of 36 where your life really took an unexpected turn. You were thriving in your career, you were a new mother to twins, you were happily married, and then in an instant, things changed. What happened at that moment in time?
Michelle Cooper: Yeah, like you said, Tim, I was happily married. I had been with my husband Scott for almost 11 years. And we just had a great time in our marriage. We did a lot of traveling and dining and just fun stuff. And then we decided to have kids and with the miracle of modern science, we were able to have twins. And they were quite small. We had a boy and a girl, but we were just elated. It was really I think the best time in our marriage and in our lives. We were so excited. And my career was going gangbusters. I was nine years in to kind of growing the corporate ladder at Merrill Lynch. And you know, one day, it was a March rainy day, I was sitting at my desk and looking out and the phone rang. And it was late afternoon because Scott usually called me about that time. And I was expecting kind of our normal banter, which was “What are you making for dinner? What do I need to pick up?” But instead, he kept saying, “Michelle, I love you. I love you. I love you.” And I said, “I love you too, honey. And I’ll see you at home.” And I buttoned up my desk and walked to the elevators, took the ride down to the parking garage, and it was in that elevator ride where I recalled the conversation, and my heart started racing. I was thinking, something was weird. That was not what Scott normally would say over and over again. And when I got into my car and out of the garage, I kept dialing his number, dialing his number, and there was no answer. And when I got home, he wasn’t there. And I filed a police report, and weeks later, I got a call from the police letting me know that they had found him in the Potomac River. And in an instant — he had committed suicide — in an instant, my life went from just a normal, everyday where I was happy with life to a day that changed me forever. I was a single mom overnight, a young widow, and I had more responsibility than I could ever have imagined. It was overwhelming.
Tim Ulbrich: And in the book, Michelle, you describe that evening you come home. And as a father of four young boys and happily married to my beautiful wife, I could just picture that moment you describe in the book where life’s kind of going on, you’re trying to bathe them and get them ready for bedtime and the uncertainty of the evening and just really, really a compelling picture into how difficult that moment was and the weeks to come. And as you talk throughout the book, not only that moment obviously personally, what that meant for your family, but what we’ll talk about here today in the interview just what that meant for your financial plan. And hopefully, it’s an opportunity for our listeners to really ensure that they have the right tools and resources and knowledge and understanding of their own financial plan, even if they have somebody else who’s helping them, whether that be a spouse or a financial planner or even potentially both. So at this point, you have 2-year-old twins, you’re working full-time as director at Merrill Lynch, so obviously you have what would be a unique background in this field in terms of estate planning attorney and working in finance where you’ve helped many, many couples plan their own estates. So surely, things were all in order and in place when it came to your financial plan, right?
Michelle Cooper: You would think so. But the answer, unfortunately, was not really. I talked about estate planning all day long. I knew it inside and out. I talked about finances with clients. And I knew that we had to do planning, and we had some things in place, but you know, frankly, I never thought anything like this would happen to me, especially not at that time in my life. I had read about lots of hypotheticals in law textbooks and I knew from dealing with client situations that things happen in life, but I just never expected it. So we divided and conquered. Our plates were full, and this is similar to so many other people in their 30s and 40s where you’re just juggling work, home, everything. And we divided and conquered the way gender roles typically fall. Scott handled everything money, he did our investments, bills, and taxes. He was really good at it, and I was like, great. I totally trust you. And I handled all things children and running the household. And I just, I had to pick up the pieces. And I was fortunate because I had this background knowledge, and we had taken some steps that really enabled me to find resilience and rebuild my life. But not everybody is that lucky to have some planning in place.
Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and my wife and I, we’re talking the evening or after that I had read through your book, and you know, it’s a very similar situation for us. And I would say on the other side would be for all the inner workings and understanding of the day-to-day of things that she’s doing with the kids, I’ve done similarly on the finance side. And we have a planner that we work with, and we have legacy folders and documents and estate wills and plans, but there’s that level of preparation, but then there’s also just the day-to-day. And we’ll talk about some of this in terms of paying bills and whose names are on accounts and what’s the monthly process look like and how important it is for each individual to make sure they have a solid understanding of that. One of the things, Michelle, that stood out to me in the book in Chapter 2, you start with a question from your financial advisor the day of the funeral. And that question from your financial advisor was, “Are you planning to keep the house?” Why was this question so overwhelming at the time?
Michelle Cooper: Yeah. I’ll never forget that day. I mean, I can picture it in my mind right now. And when he asked me, I was really taken aback because I thought, well, why are you even asking me that question? Is there a possibility I can’t continue living in this house? And I just remember my stomach turning more than it already was. And shortly thereafter, I started digging into all our financial details because I knew that in order to keep the house, I had to make sure I was able to pay the mortgage and the real estate taxes and utilities. And frankly, I had no idea. But that house, when you go through a tragedy, was my one source of stability.
Tim Ulbrich: Right.
Michelle Cooper: And so just the thought of moving in addition to everything else going on was overwhelming. And so that’s why that question really rocked my world. And I had to figure out at that point, what did we own? What were our assets? What did we owe? What were our expenses or liabilities? And did I have enough income coming in to cover all the expenses? So I did a deep dive into our whole financial picture.
Tim Ulbrich: And my hope with this episode is our listeners will be able to hear your story and certainly there’s many others out there and use this as an opportunity to make sure that they are effectively aware and educated and ready when it comes to certain aspects of the financial plan. So I want to get practical for a moment in that I’m guessing there’s many of our listeners that are hearing the beginning of this interview and thinking to themselves, I’ve got some work to do to bring myself up to speed with my significant other or spouse. Or potentially on the other side of that, I’ve got some work to do to help my partner, my significant other, spouse, get up to speed. And in the book, you go through three I think very practical tips that help people begin to execute and think about this. And I’ll read those off and then we can talk about each one in more detail. One of them is ensuring your name is listed on every service account. The second one is having a conversation about the bills before a tragedy strikes. And the third is automating payments or setting calendar alerts. So let’s tackle that first one. Tell us more about this idea of ensuring your name — and that it’s listed on every service account and why that’s so important.
Michelle Cooper: You don’t really think of these things when you’re moving into a new house or you’re renting an apartment. It’s either one person or the other if you’re in a relationship that just wants to check that it’s done, that the water is turned on, that you’ve got power, you’ve got internet hooked up, you’ve got your cable. And no one’s really thinking about hey, both people need to be able to talk to the service provider. So when all this happened, we had cable, I had telephone, and all of those bills were in Scott’s name. So when I called the provider, they would say, “What’s your name?” I’d say, “Michelle.” And they’d say, “Well, you’re not Scott. We can’t talk to you.” And then I’d explain the situation, they’d say, “Well, I have to get a supervisor.” And it was a long, drawn-out process that really could have been simplified if when we opened the account, my name and Scott’s name would have been on the ownership. We would have both had authority to talk to the provider, make changes. So I encourage everyone, know what your bills are and make sure that if something happens to your partner, you have the ability to keep the lights on. Very simple.
Tim Ulbrich: And you give a great example in the book, and I think you do throughout as well, where you talk about an example where a couple was living together, but they’re not necessarily married. Both are contributing to savings for expenses but that the bank account may have been opened in one of those individual’s name. So I think these are just situations to think about, whether it’s service accounts, whether it’s bank accounts, whether it’s people that are living together and maybe they have a home but the home’s only in one person’s name and the other is contributing to it. And therefore, that asset isn’t necessarily — that they would have a portion of that. It’s just a good reminder I think in this tip, and again, as you do throughout the book, to think about the implications of some of these as we sign up for accounts. Because as you articulated well, you know, we just want to make sure things are moving. We want to make sure the water’s on, we want to make sure the lights are on, especially when you’re in a very busy phase of life where you have lots of things that are happening. The second tip you give here is having a conversation about the bills before tragedy strikes, which I’m guessing everybody hears that and says, “Yes, of course, I agree with that.” So my question here is tips or strategies on how to have this conversation and why, of course, this is so important as well.
Michelle Cooper: Well, when you think of like the fun thing that you want to do in the evening, it’s usually not talking about bills.
Tim Ulbrich: Right.
Michelle Cooper: So I always try to advise people, don’t do this when you’re tired. Do it on a weekend when you’re relaxed. And start off by saying something positive like, “You know, I want to make sure that we’re both on the same page with our expenses.” And maybe bring in some wine or something fun like a nice dinner out. And you know, make it conversational where you’re not accusing the other person of spending too much. You’re a team. And you are taking care of each other by making sure that each of you know what the expenses are and how they get paid. So sometimes, bills are on autopay or you have to pay them through an online password because you turned off the hard copies that get sent. I mean, there’s a lot of things that have happened since my tragedy where bills are automated. So it’s important to know how to access paying them and what is currently set up? And again, don’t make it harder than it is. It’s helpful to maybe make a list of the bills that you think are there just to start the conversation. And then it will flow from there.
Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely. And I think you do a nice job just building on that in talking about the third tip, really automating payments. I think especially in the situation where a tragedy strikes and maybe there is an account that didn’t have both names on it that payments can continue to be made. And again, you talk about setting calendar alerts and the importance of that as well. One of the things in the book you mentioned is that “a larger percentage of people fail to have a financial plan that will help them track and achieve their goals. And if you can take away one tidbit from this book, please take away the importance of having a financial plan.” And so my question for you in the backdrop of somebody who’s maybe listening that says, “You know what? I’m single, I don’t have any children, I’ve got $200,000 in debt. I’ve got very little assets to manage.” You know, whether it’s them or somebody that does have some of those variables involved in terms of children and other assets, why is this concept of a financial plan so critical?
Michelle Cooper: So when you’re thinking about a financial plan, I like to look at it more of a life plan. And it doesn’t matter what age you are, how much you have in assets, what your income is. You need to have a plan to achieve your goals and to achieve inner happiness. And so I analogize a financial plan to getting directions through a GPS or Google Directions where you don’t know how to get to that address, but you have a roadmap to follow. And if someone doesn’t have a lot of assets but maybe they have student loan debt or credit card debt, a financial plan is going to help you structure how do I repay those debts? What’s the interest rate? What’s the underlying principle that I owe? Can I refinance? Can I consolidate? If you are newly married with young children, part of the financial planning process is making sure you have an estate plan with term life insurance, disability insurance. So there’s many different aspects to financial planning that are going to be important depending on what stage of life you’re in. So it’s super important no matter where you are on the spectrum of your life.
Tim Ulbrich: And as you were talking, Michelle, I was just reflecting on all the conversations that Jess, my wife, and I have had with our financial planner, Tim Baker, over the last three years and all the things we’ve talked about from goals and visions for our family to the what are we going to do next month in our sinking funds and our accounts and our estate planning documents. And I think what resonates with me is that certainly I think that’s important for everyone but especially when you think about in the example of when a tragedy or a situation like this strikes is that you have a plan, you have a roadmap, you know, to use your example, you have directions and where you’re trying to go and I think you have a planner who’s in your corner that can really help continue to move that forward and especially in such a difficult time, talk that out loud and continue the path and also continue to execute on the things that you were trying to move forward with.
Michelle Cooper: That’s exactly right.
Tim Ulbrich: I want to dig into this next section. It almost has a checklist, just like we did with those three tips. I want to talk about things around income protection, appropriate insurance coverage, and estate planning. We’ve talked about many of these things on the show before like life insurance, disability insurance, and estate planning. But I want our listeners to hear it in this show. And my hope is that they’ll walk away with each one of these say, “OK, what are the things that I need to be thinking about with life insurance and disability insurance or my estate plan?” And hopefully this can be a reminder that they heard us talk about it before and they didn’t execute on these things, and they need to execute on these things, that they can take that action step here today. So let’s start with life insurance. Why is life insurance so important? You know, who do you generally think about absolutely needs life insurance? And then you alluded to term life insurance. Talk to us a little bit more about this area.
Michelle Cooper: Yeah, so there’s two main types of life insurance. There’s term, which goes on for a period of years, and whole life, which covers you until age 95 or 100. Term is more economical the younger you are and the healthier you are. That’s also true of whole life. But term is so important in those years where you’re really relying on a dual income to support your family. So as you listen to my story, put yourself in my shoes and think, if something happened to my partner or my spouse, would I be able to continue living the same lifestyle with the income that I earn or the assets that we have saved. And if the answer is no, then you have to plan for enough life insurance to produce the income or the cashflow that you need to continue living your life. And it’s not just until the kids are in college, unless you want to go back to work. It’s really for the rest of your life. And that number could be a big number because if you think about a $1 million policy, I usually look at that producing about $50,000 of income. So depending on what your expenses are — and that’s one of the things that you do in the planning process is figure that out — depending on your expenses, that’s going to dictate how much you need in terms of insurance. And there’s different ways to buy the insurance. Sometimes, there’s group policies at your employment. You can also work with an insurance agent to get a separate policy. And I usually recommend if you can, having both because you never know what’s going to happen with a job. Sometimes companies downsize, you might decide to go to a different job that doesn’t have life insurance. And those policies that you get through employment are not portable. So a really good plan is going to have a separate term policy. And get it when you’re young because it’s going to be the cheapest at that point.
Tim Ulbrich: Absolutely. And what you said just resonates with a lot of what we’ve talked about here before on the show in terms of individual coverage on top of the employment coverage but also not using just a general rule of thumb for life insurance calculations. You do a really nice job in the book of encouraging people to take a step back and say, what are you trying to do in terms of replacing with this policy? And for everybody listening, that’s going to be different depending on their situation, depending on if somebody’s at home and whether or not they go back to work, do you want to keep the home, this is going to serve retirement funds, kids’ college savings funds, you know, what’s the purpose of these funds and really objectively trying to evaluate that to determine how much need there is before purchasing a policy. Now, disability insurance, again, we’ve talked about this before on the show, but I think long-term disability, especially for our audience, is so important where their income is typically their greatest asset. And I think many pharmacists, certainly like life, they don’t like to think about a situation where they may pass away, and they don’t like to think of a situation where they may become disabled and unable to work as a pharmacist. So talk to us about the importance of disability insurance, especially when you think of somebody like a pharmacy professional.
Michelle Cooper: Yeah, I mean, I think disability insurance is at the same importance level of life insurance. It goes to relying on that income for your life. And if you’re not able to work for whatever reason, you need to replace that income, not only for yourself, but for your spouse and your family. So if your employer has a disability policy, I highly recommend. And also with your insurance agent or financial advisor, evaluating what types of disability policies are out there and work it into your financial plan.
Tim Ulbrich: So to our listeners, life, disability, I know many of you out there listening have thought about these, haven’t executed on these plans for probably just a variety of reasons. Again, it’s not necessarily something that’s fun to think about it. I know as I’ve shared before on this show, it’s something that I delayed in my own financial plan. So make sure to head on over to the website at YourFinancialPharmacist.com. We’ve got a whole section that helps you understand more of what Michelle and I are talking about here in terms of types of coverage, what to look for, projected costs, so make sure to head on over to YourFinancialPharmacist.com and check out our section on income protection. Now estate planning — and again, I think this is a topic we cannot emphasize enough. We’ve talked, again, before on the show about this. But the quote I love that you have in the book from Suze Orman was, “Estate planning is an important and everlasting gift that you can give to your family. And setting up a smooth inheritance isn’t as hard as you might think.” So for a moment I want to break down the different parts of an estate plan, quick definitions that I think our listeners can take away and begin to think about and evaluate their current estate plan or if they don’t have one, begin to think about what they need to have in place.
Michelle Cooper: So we’re going to talk about basically what I call the five building blocks of an estate plan. And the first one is a will. A will basically spells out your intentions on how you want to be buried, that’s in there, that’s one of the first paragraphs. It also names a guardian for your children, so for all of you that have children under age 18, this is so important because if you don’t name a guardian or a contingent guardian and something happens, a court’s going to decide who’s going to take care of your kids. And we don’t want that. A will also spells out how you’re leaving property to your beneficiaries. So it could be leaving something outright, meaning they get it right away when they’re age 18. Or it could mean leaving money in trust until they’re a certain age, which is what I recommend. And a will could work by itself or depending on what state you live in and what the probate laws are, sometimes they go hand-in-hand with what’s called a revocable living trust. There are many different types of trusts, but what we’re talking about is a trust that is revocable, meaning you can change it. And the main purpose of a revocable trust is a few things. One is avoiding the probate. And probate, depending on your state, can be costly and time consuming and an attorney would be involved. So states that have very expensive probates, people or attorneys will typically recommend a revocable trust. It also helps for incapacity. So for your listeners that have older parents and maybe one has dementia or Alzheimer’s or some kind of illness, a revocable trust would allow the spouse to step in and manage the affairs quicker if someone’s disabled. The same thing for us. It’s also private. So when you open a probate estate, a will gets filed at the county where you pass away. A trust is private unless there’s some kind of litigation. So a lot of folks like the ability to have things private, avoid probate, and have that incapacity protection. So those are the two main governing documents that spell out your intentions. And then there are powers of attorney. So there’s what I call two different flavors. One is a financial durable power of attorney, and what durable means is it’s going to go through incapacity. So it’s a document that you would sign today giving your agent, usually it’s a spouse or maybe a brother or sister or relative, the ability to transact financial affairs in the event you’re incapacitated. You’re alive, but you know, mentally or physically, you’re just not able to. Very important to have and also healthcare power of attorney. And the people that you name in these documents might not be the same. For example, I am aging and my husband’s financial power of attorney, but in the healthcare power of attorney, he’s named my brother because my brother has more health knowledge — he’s a physician — than I do. And so he would be a better choice in kind of an emergent situation than I would. So you have to think about who you’re naming and if they’re the right choice. And then you have a living will. Some of you might have signed these if you ever had surgery in the hospital. It’s a document that spells out whether you want to be kept alive if you’re in a vegetative state, if you want the plug pulled. And that goes along with the healthcare power of attorney.
Tim Ulbrich: So you covered will, revocable, living trust, financial durable power of attorney, healthcare power of attorney, and living will. And you talked about those in more detail, all of those, in the book. So when I hear “revocable living trust,” that implies there is a irrevocable living trust. So what are the main differences between the two?
Michelle Cooper: So an irrevocable trust, there are so many different types. But when you hear irrevocable, it means that it’s a document that typically cannot be changed unless you go through the court process. So some examples of an irrevocable trust might be a life insurance trust, which holds an insurance policy to keep it from being taxed in someone’s estate. It could be a charitable trust like a charitable remainder trust, some people have heard of those. It could also be what we call a testamentary trust. And that is an example of is in your will, you might have provisions that delay when a child would inherit assets, say until age 40. So if something happens to you when your child is 25, your will would create a testamentary trust for them with the provisions that you and your attorney draft and talk about. And that trust is an irrevocable trust. Typically, irrevocable trusts are going to file their own tax return, both a federal return and state return. But again, there are so many different types of irrevocable trusts, you just need to know that they are typically not easily changed and they accomplish different things.
Tim Ulbrich: So Michelle, as I hear you talking about — I’m guessing many of our listeners, you know, I’m thinking of the objections as I hear this, like oh my gosh, it’s so much. There’s five documents that we talked about, it’s a busy phase of life, the costs of doing this. So you know, Suze Orman’s quote that I outlined before talked about these and suggested it isn’t as hard as one may think. So talk to us a little bit about the process of putting these together, the potential costs of doing it, and I think that will help our listeners get some guidance about OK, maybe this isn’t as big or as overwhelming as I thought to ensure these documents get in place.
Michelle Cooper: So you definitely want to look at this as something that you can accomplish very easily because you don’t have to know all the documents. All you have to know is you want this person taking care of the kids, you don’t want your kids to get money until they’re age so-and-so, and where you want your property to go. The attorney that you work with will figure everything else out. And being in this field for so many years, I do recommend that you meet with an estate planning attorney that specializes in this type of law because there’s a lot of nuances in drafting. And every family situation and different. And you want to make sure when you’re not around that what you think is going to happen actually happens. And it doesn’t have to be super expensive. You can get a plain, vanilla will and powers of attorney. Not everybody needs a revocable trust. You know, you can probably get it, depending on where you live, I would say low end, $500-800, and on up into several thousand. When you add an irrevocable trust, that could increase the bill. But the best way to find an estate planning attorney — I talk about this in the book — is you could ask your financial advisor, your accountant if you work with one, you can ask a trusted friend, you can also look at your state bar. They’re going to have different choices online. And then interview two or three of them because you want to like this person just like you like your financial advisor. You have to open up to them about your concerns with leaving money to family members because that’s the way the attorney is really going to make a good document for you.
Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I can attest to what you had said about a good attorney will ask you the right questions. And you don’t have to get bogged down in the legalese and the terminology of it. And that was the experience for Jess and I. We spent an hour with an estate planning attorney, they asked some great questions getting at the individuals listed and certainly talking about the basics of the documents as well. But they asked really good pointed questions, good conversation starters for Jess and I, things we needed to go back and think more about if we hadn’t thought about it already. And then that led to a follow-up meeting and essentially the drafting of the documents. We had I think one revision, and then we finalized all five of these documents. So it definitely — I think like life and disability, it’s one of those things you go through and you look at at the end and say, “Wow, I am so glad I did that. And I thought it was going to be way worse than it was in both time, expense, and how overwhelming it can be.” One of the quick tips you give, Michelle, in the book that I really like that I think is something that often gets overlooked is you mentioned outlining your burial wishes and personal property in a letter along with having a list of your digital assets. Can you talk more about that?
Michelle Cooper: Sure. So you know, we just talked about working with an attorney to get documents done. And I wanted to mention that when you sign those documents, it doesn’t mean that you never look at them again because your life is going to change, evolve and change, and some of the provisions might need to change. But at the same time, you don’t want to have to go back to your attorney every time you change your mind on how you’re leaving particular assets. So the letter that Tim is talking about is a letter that spells out for your personal assets who gets what: maybe a watch or an engagement ring, particular furniture, because what I’ve seen in my practice is that the most simple personal property can cause a lot of family conflict. And that conflict can take a long time to forgive. And by having a letter right attached to your will that spells out who you want to give what assets to, you’re going to make the job that your executor has of handing out all this property much, much easier. And the other thing is explaining what your burial wishes. Nobody really loves the topic, but when there’s a tragedy and your children or a family member is trying to figure out what you wanted, if they can see in writing that you wanted to be buried or cremated or you wanted a celebration of life party, it’s going to make them feel so much better when they’re in this challenging time trying to do what you want and what’s best.
Tim Ulbrich: And I was also thinking, Michelle, as I was reading the book and I saw you mentioned digital assets, I even just started to think, well, if my wife or I were to pass away tomorrow, like I’m thinking of things even just like family memories and photos and all those things that might reside on a computer behind a password that nobody knows how to get in or on my phone or on a Google shared drive or something. So you know, or is there letters to children or family members or other things that, again, not something you want to have to think about, but certainly memories and other types of treasures that you want to ensure can get passed on. As we wrap up, I’m going to end on a quote that you have in the introductory letter to your readers that I think sums up so well the conversation we’ve had here today as well as the takeaways from the book. And that quote is, “In order to be empowered and independent financially, we all need to take an active role in our financial well-being. The good news is that it can be done. And all it takes is the willingness to do it. I am living proof of that. You too can accomplish this by being proactive, starting early, and following a plan, whether you’re single, married, widowed, or divorced.” So Michelle, I want to thank you for your time. I want to thank you for your willingness to share your story. And I hope our listeners will pick up a copy of your book as we have just scratched the surface during our time together of the wisdom that you share in this book. We also didn’t talk about during the interview mommy guilt, finding love again, kids and money, working as a blended family, and elder care, all of which you do a great job of covering in the book. So in addition to getting a copy of the book, “I’ve Still Got Me” on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work that you’re doing?
Michelle Cooper: They can find me at MichellePCooper.com. I spell Michelle with two l’s. They can also find me on Facebook or on the XMLW Financial Group website. And I would be happy to talk to any of your listeners that have questions on the estate planning side or how to get the conversation started with a spouse, whatever your listeners have, I’m willing to help.
Tim Ulbrich: And again, that’s MichellePCooper. Make sure two l’s and a P between Michelle and Cooper. And the book “I’ve Still Got Me: A Widow’s Journey to Love, Happiness & Financial Independence.” Michelle, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast.
Michelle Cooper: Thank you so much, Tim.
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