[00:00:00] Speaker A: I know it's kind of morbid to even consider, but think of having those things in place for your family and the peace of mind knowing, like anything that that would happen to me, I've already taken care of them. When I'm gone, what a great service. What, What a great blessing to them. Statistically, it's going to happen to some people listening to this right now. But would it be that every Abrahamic family leader had these things in place?
Run your home and your dough like a biblical boss.
Hello, Abrahamic family leaders. Welcome back to Abraham's Wallet. It's Steve Manuel here, coming to you from Cincinnati on an ordinary Tuesday that we're recording this, but suddenly feels anything but. Today we're going to talk about something that is foundational, something that hits the gut, which is our. Are you ready to die?
Not in some morbid, defeatist way, but we're talking about readiness as an act of love to your family, as service to the wife and kids that God entrusted to you.
Because the truth is, of course, none of us get to choose the day or the hour of our passing. And when the unthinkable happens when a man is taken suddenly from his family, the family that's left behind can either stand on the rock of prison preparation that's been done for them, or they can crumble under the chaos that nobody saw coming.
So I've got my co host and dear friend Mark Parrott with me today. And Mark, I know that you've been in the trenches helping, helping people think generationally about money and culture and work and family and community for years, but there's a story that's burning in your chest right now, something that just happened to you this last week, which was the impetus for this episode. So would you tell everybody what just hit you and your community on Thursday night?
[00:02:03] Speaker B: Yeah. So I got a call on Friday morning that I was not expecting, and it was a mutual friend who said, you know, it's one of those. You pick up the phone and something's clearly wrong. And yeah, it, it, it was actually my daughter's basketball coach. So I thought, oh, no, there's been another injury. We're gonna, we're gonna have to bend. You know, I just didn't know. And it was much worse than anything I was maybe thinking could have happened. And it turns out my friend Josh had been out on a run the night before, probably, I'm. I'm guessing, I don't know, probably listen to some tunes and his headphones, who knows? Just running.
Came to a four Way stop. And proceeded. And a woman who was intoxicated blew through the thing and he was killed right then and there. Totally unexpected, out of the blue. So this is a guy who has a seventh grader and a fourth grader.
His wife is, is on the board of directors with me at our kids school.
And this is also a guy who was. You guys have heard me talk about coaching middle school golfers and something I really like doing. This is a guy who was my co coach and unlike me, he was good at golf. He was a collegiate golfer back in the day at South Carolina and just awesome, awesome dude. So I'll talk a little bit more about Josh specifically.
You know, I had the privilege of sitting next to him at a middle school basketball game two days before he went to be with the Lord. And so it definitely hit pretty hard, I would say when stuff like this happens, I know it's kind of like, Stephen, when your dad passed away, we were like, why the. What a wonderful place he's in now. You were kind of like, old Roger is definitely having a good day today.
And I'm sure, I know Josh loved Jesus with all his heart. So there was zero question about that. You couldn't really spend an hour with the guy without knowing that. But I will say I think his family is going through a bunch of crap now and you know, way more than we hope our families are going through if we are lucky enough to live to a ripe old age and see our grandchildren.
I think losing someone unexpected like this, it's got massive emotional pain associated with it.
And as a financial planner, my first instinct is to go, if there's a way for me to take this and just use it as a way to encourage all of the dads out there listening to take a few steps. So that if something like this were to be you that was to go be with the Lord unexpectedly, your family would still be just as sad. I don't think any amount of financial preparation or anything like that's going to make them go well. It's no big deal.
However, you might be able to alleviate some of the immediate uncertainties that can make this even harder than it does when preparations have not been made. So that's what I want to talk about today is just as much as I don't think money is the answer to the loss that our community feels, I don't think that at all. I do think I want you guys to just hear it from us regularly because when I write a financial plan for a new family man, I get a Lot of dads who go, you'll be so proud of me, Mark. I've got life insurance at work and we look into it and it's like this is not even a smidgen of almost enough.
And so we're going to talk today about what does that actually mean? Is there a biblical argument against some of these preparations?
And then what about beyond just insurance? What are the other things that would, would make it less traumatic for your loved ones if you suddenly were gone? What kind of things do you need to have prepared? And even just thought about this is part of being a responsible householder is to not just think about the now and not just think about the path that you hope happens.
You know, when we do financial planning, we think about the path that we hope happens. I me, I've got all these great plans for how I want to bless my great grandchildren.
But I also want you to all think about the worst possible case scenario and at least have thought, well, I don't know the future, I don't know what the Lord's plans are. And if they're not my plans, then I want to serve my family and my generations as best I can. So we're going to just touch on that today.
Great.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: Well, thank you for sharing that. It's a heavy topic. We could ask the question that my dad always used to ask people, which is, tell me the day that you're going to die. And nobody knows the answer to that question. I mean, we don't know if it's next week or if it's 40 years from now. No clue. Not, not even close. We can't even get close to the answer. So we're not here to scare you fellas, we just want to equip you and we want to remind you that good stewardship includes preparing for the surprise exit.
Because providing for your household isn't just about today. It's about the legacy that you'll leave tomorrow and for generations. So as Mark said, we're just going to break this subject down into big buckets. Pretty practical, scriptural, actionable steps so that your family isn't left scrambling no matter what happens. So you've referenced this already, Mark. The, the kind of first present bucket that we have to cover is life insurance. So would you just talk us through the practicalities of how a 35 year old dad can be thinking, okay, what, what should I be considering regarding life insurance?
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Yeah, so the first thing I'll say is that just about nobody, like I said before, has enough life insurance when, especially when they're starting out.
Once in a blue moon, we get the guy who, you know, your college roommate went and worked for Northwestern Mutual and you have too much life insurance. But that is a rare circumstance. Usually we run into folks who just haven't actually done the math on this. And before I get into. I'm going to get to pretty soon. What, what is specifically, Mark, what are you telling me? I need.
I do hear Christians sometimes sort of sneer at this and go, is it even biblical for me to, you know, worry about life insurance? Won't God take care of our needs? And I want to read you a couple Bible verses and see if they wrote, you know, have any implications on that question. The first is first Timothy 5, 8. It says, we, we've read this a lot here on this podcast, Stephen, but it says if anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for members of his household, he is denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
We've talked about what that verse means for a guy who refuses to go out and provide now for his family. I, I just prefer video games and working, you know, shift work. So my family's not going to have everything they need.
No. That's disgusting. We don't allow it.
However, I would argue that part of providing for your relatives is also providing for them when you're not around. This could be as simple as I, I'm thinking back to the episode that we did, Stephen, where you talk to an expert in security of what does it look like to have a secure home? That, right, you could go on a business trip and your family, you could pretty confidently say, I think they're well protected in that home.
But it also could mean, well, there's other threats out there, and one of them is unexpected cancer. I could, I could just find out tomorrow that I've got six weeks left. Well, at that point in time, it is too late to go and buy an insurance policy. So if I haven't, if I haven't prepared to provide in those situations, we hope never happen, then I didn't provide. And I think that this is, this is something that we, we need to take into account. Now. What, what am I saying? Am I saying that every man who has died without insurance is worse than an unbeliever?
No, I think that, you know, James 4:17 is the next verse I wanted to read. It says, whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it for him, it is sin. I think a lot of people have never been told this stuff.
They, you know, Even thinking about my friends who have passed away early. Some of them were awesome, hard working providers. They were out there never complaining, getting the job done to provide for a family. No one ever told them that this was a part of the equation of fully covering your family's needs. And so I won't judge people who have maybe unexpectedly passed away and not been prepared. What I will say is it's kind of like the whole predestination argument, guys. We don't really need to argue about the tribe in Africa who's never heard of Christ, because you're hearing right now about what it means to provide for your family. So I'm sorry, I have now removed your excuses. If you're listening to this, I think you should, you should kind of perk your ears up.
And the last thing I wanted to read was Genesis 41. This is the story of Joseph. I think it's very instructive for the principle of should we. Should we prepare for the future by just giving away some of our money so that maybe in the future we're prepared. Well, Joseph had had interpreted a dream for Pharaoh and he knew that there was trouble coming.
Steve, do we know that there's trouble coming?
[00:12:19] Speaker A: We're so sure of it. Job, the book of Job tells us that trouble's coming and you've set me up. I know I'm interjecting here, but I'm. You've set me up for a verse I wanted to throw in, which is Proverbs 22:3, and it says, a wise man sees trouble coming and prepares for it. So trouble is coming. Yeah. The answer to your question is yes.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Yeah, trouble is coming. We don't know when and we don't know exactly what kind or flavor, but we know it's coming.
Joseph knew specifics around the trouble that was coming because the, the Lord showed it to him.
And what this says is, let Pharaoh proceed to. This is Joseph. He's giving the instructions based on the interpretation of Pharaoh's dream. Let Pharaoh proceed to appoint overseers over the land and take one fifth of the produce of the land of Egypt during the seven plentiful years and let them gather all the food of these good years and coming that are coming and store up grain under the authority of Pharaoh for food in the cities and let them keep it. The food shall be a reserve for the land against the seven years of famine that are to occur in the land of Egypt, so that the land may not perish through famine. This proposal pleased Pharaoh and all his servants. And Pharaoh said to his servants. Can we find a man like this in whom is the spirit of God?
So Joseph demonstrated the spirit of God by preparing for disaster in the future.
I thought that was just. It was like this, ministered to a pagan king, the wisdom of God.
So if somebody tells you, I don't think it's very spiritual to have insurance or to prepare for the unexpected, I just have so much faith that I can walk that path with confidence, I would say, well, that's not what Joseph did. He actually demonstrated wisdom that comes from God by preparing for the trouble that he knew was coming. Now, he had more info than we do.
You know, would my buddy have gone for a run at that intersection at that time if he knew a drunk driver was barreling down the road? No, but we know trouble is coming, so. So we can do some things to prepare for it. I want you guys to be ready. Any comments before I get into what that might look like for you?
[00:14:37] Speaker A: No, that, that's going to be my exact next question, which is get practical with us. Those are good. Those are good principles.
What do we do?
[00:14:45] Speaker B: Okay, you may have heard of the 4% rule in investing. It's kind of. There's a lot of financial influencers out there on YouTubes and things like that that like to argue with it because it can be overly conservative. But what it is is it says that if you have a pile of money and you invest it, you can take 4% out and very safely depend on the fact that even after taxes and inflation, where costs are going to go up over time, you're probably going to have the ability to continue taking that same chunk of money over the long haul, and it's going to provide for your needs by taking 4% a year out of that pile.
So what does that mean for insurance? Well, I think that when it comes to life insurance, the 4% rule, it might be really, really conservative for somebody who's retiring.
You know what, usually when you retire, you've got maybe 20 years left if you're in great shape and blessed with a long life.
But usually if you need life insurance, you might be 32. When something happens to you, that money, whatever it is, if that's all that's going to provide for your family, it might need to last 60 years.
And so I'm all for conservative estimates here, and I think the 4% rule is a pretty fair one. What does that mean? Well, that means you thought, well, when I signed up for my job, they offered me one times six salary for insurance, and I make $100,000 a year. I'm doing great.
So I have a $100,000 life insurance policy. Mark, if I died, my family would have a whole year of my salary.
Well, if we use the 4% rule, that would provide for them $4,000 a year, is that enough to provide for your family? No, obviously not. Let's say that you, you got excited about this, though, and said, I'm going to do better than that. I'm going to go buy a $1 million life insurance policy.
Same math. Now we're providing $40,000 per year for your family. Do you make $80,000 a year? Well, if you wanted to provide that, you might. You would need $2 million to throw off that kind of cash.
But what if you make $80,000 this year, but you've kind of, you've written a financial plan, you've kind of done some basic planning, and I think by the time I'm 45, I might be making $160,000 a year.
Well, that's $4 million to throw off that kind of money.
So I think that that's the number one thing I see is that people are just dramatically, dramatically underinsured, and they don't consider what it would mean if their family actually had to live on the proceeds of a life insurance policy maybe for a long time. This depends on your circumstances. And there's factors we can sort of add into this.
So I think coming up with that number really, really, really important.
If you're hearing this and you're going, I've never thought about it.
Couple tips. One, I recommend that you own what is called an individual term life insurance policy.
That means individual means it's not a group policy. So when you start a new job, a lot of times they'll say, hey, one of the benefits is you can buy into our group life insurance policy.
And those can be actually pretty affordable.
Here's the problem. Let's say you're in a group life insurance policy and you do get a terminal illness. The doctor says this is going to take your life in six months.
Well, usually you don't just work up until your last day. You might have to leave that job. And if there's an insurance agent listening to this, yes, you could convert that to permanent insurance.
Usually with those group life insurance policies, if you had a million dollars of coverage through your job and you convert it, you either take a smaller death benefit or you pay a boatload in premiums. So there's really no need for it. What you can do instead is Go buy your own life insurance policy based on yourself. If you're healthy, this is a no brainer because especially if you're young and healthy, this isn't going to cost you an arm and a leg. You could go buy, I think I have a $3 million life insurance policy right now that I bought a long time ago and I pay 70 bucks a month.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: And if you are, if you are young and healthy, it'll never be cheaper than it is right now.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: That's right. People go, well, I'm not going to buy the life insurance until I have, you know, kids.
And there's, you don't need as much money to take care of one person as you do if you have four kids. That's true.
And yet once you buy that life insurance, you've got it. And so if something happened, I said, if you're healthy, what happens if something bubbles up in your family and all of a sudden, oh, dad passed away and it was a rare genetic condition and it turns out that we all have that gene well before we knew he had it, we could all get great life insurance at a good cost. Now, no, none of us are getting approved for a policy.
And so those are things that you just have to consider. I'm not saying that if you're 19, you have to go out and buy a 3 million dollar policy necessarily, but it is something to put on your list of. If I'm angling towards being a family man, this is going to be a piece of what it looks like to be financially healthy in my household is having a term life insurance policy.
Um, before I just gloss over that second part, I said individual, we covered that term. That means it's only good for however many years it says on the front of the policy when I buy it.
Why do we want that? Number one, because it's really a lot, lot, lot cheaper than buying what's called a permanent insurance policy. We've done whole episodes on sort of the sales pitch that goes on when somebody tries to sell you whole life insurance.
Let's just say it's an industry.
I'm sure there's some good people out there selling whole life insurance, but for the most part these are things that get sold to people who don't really know what they're buying. Usually there are cases where we use whole life insurance, but for the stuff we're talking about today, it's usually not the right tool.
Whole life insurance means as long as you keep paying us the monthly amount, will keep it in force, you can pay it until you're 90 and then you die and we give you the death benefit.
Term life insurance says, you buy this, it's 50 bucks a month for a $2 million policy. But it's a 20 year term, or you could get a 30 year term, it'll be a little more expensive.
That means if you die in the next 20 years, we're paying you this amount. If you die 21 years from now, sorry, Charlie, you don't get anything.
And the reason we do that is because the difference in cost is so big, can be thousands of dollars a month difference in cost, that we would say you will do better by paying for the cheap term life insurance. And if you have $2,000 a month available, pay, you know, like I said, 50 bucks a month for the term policy and then take your other $1,950 and, and invest it, and 20 years from now, you're going to have more than the face value of that life insurance policy. So you won't need the life insurance anymore. And that's why we recommend term alongside a diligent, thoughtful strategy for saving. Hopefully you don't need insurance when you're 70 years old because you've saved and been diligent with your money and your family will be taken care of if you're no longer around to provide at that point in time.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: This is great. These are great tips. I, I feel like there are so few people that actually have a financial planner that's actually looking through their stuff.
Most financial planners that I'm aware of, it's just like, well, how much money have you got? Give me all your money. I'll try to, I'll try to keep it safe. Few, few planners are actually giving your whole life your entire financial picture and overview and going, well, it seems like for you, you should be doing this and this. And this is the kind of wisdom that I think is super valuable to people to even be thinking through, well, how much, how much term life insurance should I have? So great tips.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: Yeah, man, I've, I've sat with people who have experienced sudden loss a lot in the last few years. Unfortunately, I have never talked to anybody who went, yeah, this is really sad. But you know what makes it sadder? All that money we spent on premiums and we didn't really need all this life insurance benefit that we're getting now. But I have talked to a lot of people who went, if only we had known how hard this was going to be, we just would have found a way to cover the life insurance yes.
And yeah, just do that math, please. If the only thing that comes out of this episode is I get a hundred guys out there to go buy an insurance policy, that's great. If you need to know where this is not paid, it's not, there's no relationship with this company, but I send clients all the time to a site called policygenius.com and it's just like a marketplace where a bunch of insurance companies can provide quotes.
They're good because they're not there. There's not agents in the same way that if you have a local agent, they're making a big commission off the policy they sell you.
And most all of the policies I've seen that have come from that site have been with reputable insurers. And term life insurance is not like all these complex insurance products, most of it. There are some details like convertibility and things like that. And if you, if you really want to dig into it with a planner, that's the type of thing we do with our clients. But mostly it's a binary question. Are you alive or not? And if it's not, well, here's your payout as long as it's inside the term. So. And you didn't lie on the application. That's another important point. Don't, don't fib. Or they will go back if something happens to you. And go, you said that you don't have any of these conditions and we found in your records that wasn't true.
So now we're giving you your premiums back, but no benefit. So, so you have to be truthful.
But aside from that, it's pretty straightforward. So policygenius.com is a great place to start there. If you're listening to this and you're already, you're like, I'm headed over there, I'm going to policy genius Mark. I'm going to do it.
If you have a stay at home spouse who you haven't thought about them being insured, well, they don't make any money. So if they died, our money income wouldn't change.
I always tell people, go ahead and throw a half million dollars on, at least on a stay at home spouse because if, if it's your wife and she passed away, I have done the math and it's close to about $500,000 if you hire a household employee to help you with your kids so that you can keep going to work and feeding them.
So it, just because somebody doesn't have a dollar income attached to their, their work does not mean that they don't need any insurance.
And you think a $2 million policy for a healthy guy is affordable? Wait till you see how inexpensive it is for a healthy woman to get a half million dollar policy.
So just something to consider and you know, your specifics may vary. Maybe your wife does work and bring in a lot of income. Well, maybe we should insure that income too.
But, but as a very minimum, I recommend at least a half million dollars on a spouse who's only focused on taking care of kids.
[00:26:40] Speaker A: Great, great. Okay, Just to throw out, you might be having questions about maybe past episodes where we've done a deeper dive on insurance. At the end of this episode, I'm going to give you a list of episodes that you could go back and bone up on, on all sorts of things connected to, around, around these subjects that we've talked about in the past. So that's, that's life insurance, Mark.
Next Bucket.
[00:27:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:10] Speaker A: Is simply the practical chaos that comes from someone's untimely death.
So I'm just going to throw out to you this question. What would be very hard if a family leader was suddenly gone?
What would be very hard?
[00:27:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean the obvious answer is just about everything.
But there are, there are, like you said, it's, there's this chaos that happens where those who are left behind, often they are inundated with help and what do you need? And things like that. And for the first four weeks, what I've been told, even in this case, but in other cases too, is like, man, we couldn't take two steps without bumping into somebody who was almost overly trying to, trying to help.
Some of that stuff goes away pretty fast though. And you, you kind of. The first time the lawn needs mowing, that's when sometimes it hits somebody. I don't have my partner anymore who did a lot of these things. So my goal is, can we, can we think about some of the practical stuff that nobody can help with? Here's one that's really simple.
Our whole lives are digital and online. Now. Where are all your passwords?
If the answer is we have a little notebook? Bad answer.
I don't know what you do, Steve. I really don't. What I do is the same thing I do for my business is we have a software called 1Password. It's a digital password manager. It has all sorts of benefits. Like anytime a site asks me for a password, I just push a little button and it creates a super duper secure one, um, which is nice. But also my wife's phone has it. And all the time these days, Steve, she looks at me and goes, what's the password to our blah blah blah streaming service? And I go, I, I lovingly I try to train her. I say, I need you to go find that in the, the app that we have on our phone where all our passwords live. Because I want her, if something happens to me, to not go. Well, I'd have no idea how to get into our money or our banks or whatever.
So we use a password manager. I think it's a really good solution.
It's also saved my booty a few times when it's got like bank info and something happens and there's fraud. Well, I don't have the credit card with me, but I've got this info here in my secure app. So I really like one password. There's other password managers that do the same thing. But what do you guys do for this? Steve?
[00:29:46] Speaker A: We do a combination of. We, we have one password on a whole bunch of stuff.
And then I, I also have a secret spreadsheet off on the side.
[00:29:57] Speaker B: Okay.
So whatever you do, there should be a way for the, your significant other to find the passwords that unlock the, the most important accounts in your life.
Another one that came to my mind is have you developed a plan for what professionals you're going to work with in the event of a disaster?
So obviously one example, a lot of people, it's our, it's their financial planner.
My financial planner happens to be in my own body. It's me. And so my wife knows. Here is the person that I want you to call if you need to help with our money if something happens to me.
And that's, that's important. But a lot of people it's, it's their financial planner.
And some people, if you don't have a financial planner, doesn't necessarily mean you have to have one, but you should have someone trusted who especially if your spouse is not a lot of times just going to be honest. The guy is really involved in the money decisions. And wife, it's like he does that investing and I, he's doing great. I don't know what he does exactly, but if that's you, once in a while take time to just show everyone where the money is, what you're invested in. Because you'd be shocked how many times we sit down with a widow and she goes, I have no idea if we have $200,000 or $2 million. And so it takes some, some work to unearth that. And that costs time and money for somebody who's not really interested in using their time and money on that in light of losing a spouse.
Okay, what if your wife died? Do you know who all the doctors are that your kids see?
Like that's another professional you need to have both parents are aware of. What about, have you ever talked with your spouse about how they would get access to health care if, if something happened to you? Well, maybe you get it through your job today, but you know, what if you passed away? We don't want to leave people out there vulnerable to whoever grabs a hold of them and tries to sell them something in their moment of pain. We want to have just thought about this. Oh, go talk to so and so because they are connected to people who sell healthcare plans and we trust them to help you in that, in that situation or however you want to deal with that. A lot of this is less about having a perfect plan and just about taking away some of the, oh my gosh, I have no idea what to do. And now you've created a spot where your spouse could be really vulnerable to getting ripped off or cheated.
How about lawyers?
I'm going to talk about this one a little more.
What happens if the death that was unexpected happened due to someone's negligence?
Steve, I have seen over and over so many widows leave life changing money on the table that they are due because they just were so overwhelmed in the moment that they said I can't, I can't deal with a court case.
And so I think I talked about on the podcast, we lost a friend of, of the family who was on a bike ride and got hit by a city bus and it was 100% the city's fault. He was doing nothing wrong and he died and he left a bunch of children behind and similarly no life insurance.
His family should have sued the ever living daylights out of that city. Yeah, but wife was extremely overwhelmed and you can understand that for sure.
I don't want to say to my wife, hey, you gotta go be a bulldog. If something happens to me, I want to have that contact already in place and say, understood. You aren't going to want to go sit in a courtroom if something happens to me. However, it would be evil to let some evil person who killed me through negligence steal all that from our family. So this is who you will call and they will take it from there.
That could be a lawyer, that could be a trusted friend who's going to quarterback that type of process for you. But have that conversation now.
Our good buddy Mark lost his Mother. To the negligence of a. Of a city employee. And the. I promise you the city will come to you quickly with an offer that if you come from a place of desperation, might actually sound okay, ma', am, Ma', am, we'd like to offer you $200,000.
And then you talk to a lawyer and they go, they're going to pay you $25 million because that's what they stole from your family.
That might sound like not very Christian or something. It is actually just. And so we want there to be justice. If something were to happen to you. Set that up now so that you don't put it on your wife to have to make these hard decisions if something happened to you. Okay, the next one is the one where we have to come a little bit clean, Stephen, because you and I own a business together.
And this is the one where I'm a little guilty right now.
If something happened to me, I'm kind of the financial planner, for the most part, piece of our business.
We've talked to other financial planners and said, man, if something happened to Mark, maybe you could take this under your wing or think, but I don't have a firm plan. I don't have a firm plan with you, Steven, for. Well, your family owns a part of this business. What happens if I go away like it?
Do you buy it from us? Has that been funded? So coming up with a succession plan is on my to do list this year that I just get rid of the unknowns here and say, if something happens to Mark, if something happens to Steve, this is what happens to our business interests.
This can be.
It can be easier when you have a partner, if you both do the same thing. Maybe you have a law firm and you've got two lawyers and you're 50, 50 owners.
That can be solved by just having a buy sell agreement and you buy insurance on your partner to buy out the family of the person who's lost.
But if you have totally different roles. If we were a tech startup and you were the software developer and I was the marketing guy, well, probably we can't function without one of us.
So you have to have maybe another company that steps in and says, well, if something happened, we would be willing to buy your company. Or there's a lot of ways to solve this.
Again, I'm not looking for the perfect, most optimal plan. I'm just encouraging you to have these conversations and have a plan.
A plan on this stuff is way better than, I guess my grieving spouse will just figure out what to do with My valuable business without me. No, don't do that.
[00:37:04] Speaker A: And she's going to somehow imagine your network as, and imagine the people that you would have preferred and you would trust to take over your business, et cetera. No, she's not. Don't, don't, don't put that on her.
[00:37:16] Speaker B: Yeah, it's kind of like the, the lawyer thing. Like you could end up cheating your generations out of the fruit of the thing you spent a long time building just because your wife's like, I cannot deal with this.
[00:37:30] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:37:30] Speaker B: So I guess I'll sell it for pennies on the dollar or whatever that looks like.
I put a note. This is especially important in a service business. So if you own a restaurant, you could probably find a broker and sell your restaurant. Probably still worth doing some planning. But if you're a consultant, does your business have any money or any value?
Maybe, but you, you definitely need to plan for that.
Okay, now here's my, my hit list of.
These are probably not the most important next things, but they're the things that came to mind.
Steve, you can certainly add to this if stuff comes to your mind. But I just thought, what are the things I do?
Would my wife remember to get the oil changed in the car?
I will say sometimes I have to go change the oil and kind of hang, hang dog my way to the mechanic and say, I know it hasn't been changed in a little longer than recommended, but here you go, Please just change it.
Who's going to blow out the sprinklers in the fall? That's the kind of thing that I come close to forgetting half the years. But if you don't do it, you've got a multi thousand dollar repair on your hands. So yeah. Have you written down those kind of home maintenance things? I mean, when's the last time the air filter in the H Vac was changed? Just things that you might kind of have in the back of your head and you may not even have a schedule for them. They just kind of. Well, the spirit moves me and I knock those to do items off my mental checklist. Well, she doesn't have that, so maybe you should make that a real checklist. Do you have some, some warranties on key systems in your home? Does your wife know where those things live? Like if the water heater goes out that you bought a year ago, it's probably under warranty, but she won't know that and she might go just spend another four grand.
So have you kind of had that conversation?
Are there any important bills that aren't on autopay, you know, the whatever that you just pay once a year. Well, if she doesn't know about it and she doesn't see it, that could cause a lot of problems for her.
I said it already, but have you documented where all of the money and all of the insurances.
You might not even know this, but if you have, like, a disability policy at work, a lot of disability policies actually say in small print, and if you die, we'll give you 50 grand.
Well, 2 million if you followed our advice. You've got a few million of life insurance, but 50 grand still going to help. Okay, like, she might need a new car.
She might not want to do car maintenance on your 2009 Honda Odyssey. So she's gonna go buy a new minivan to cart those kids around and not worry about maintenance for the next five years.
50 grand would probably do that for her. So there's, there's death benefits that might be hiding in other things that you've got. It would be worthwhile to just read the fine print on all your work benefits, any policies that you might have that might have smaller benefits so that those don't just get lost. Because I tell you, the insurance companies do not scroll through the obituaries and say, I wonder if anybody has passed away that we could give money to.
They will not be sending you money until you say, hey, pay up.
So you want to document all of that, Steve, what else comes to mind on the list of just the to dos that are easy to forget about?
[00:41:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I, I think that walking through a week, a month, and a year in your mind thinking, here's all the things that I do that I don't, I don't report to anybody, but it kind of keeps our life going.
Making a list of those somewhere is so wise and so helpful.
I, I think of to places where you. I'm trying to, I'm thinking through my dad's passing. There were places where he had squirreled away little pockets of cash, and he, he actually made a list of, here's where you'll find this and this. And there was actually stuff hidden in his golf bag that he just said, you might not think of this, but.
And by the way, he had written a note, and I think he told my mom, you know, there's a card in my sock drawer, and should I ever pass you open, you open that up.
Well, I think she was like, oh. Oh, Roger.
And sure enough, the day came, and she greedily opened up that note in his sock drawer. And I gotta say, I don't know if this is anywhere in the list, but I gotta say, it was so comforting for the whole family, chiefly my mother.
That here's. Here's my father's voice speaking, and he's writing as if, well, I've passed away. Because you're only. You're only reading this if I've passed away and I just want to say I loved my life, I love you, I love the kids, I loved our marriage. It's such a simple little thing. It couldn't have taken him five minutes to hand write this little note. But there was a. There was such a nice closure given to being able to read that note from my dad as opposed to, honestly, if I were snapped away right now and I fell over dead, which I certainly could, there's just this shock and emptiness as opposed to, hey, honey, just look in the sock drawer.
[00:43:13] Speaker B: Or where.
[00:43:13] Speaker A: Wherever your place would be. And that would be a great place, which is my dad did. Hey, here's a couple of places where I've squirreled away some. Some fun money for me, some wild hair money. And so, you know, be sure to check those places. When my father passed, as you mentioned this, my mom had no idea what the plan was for.
For lawn care.
And how do you. How do you run that mowing mower, by the way? And so she did, you know, pretty natural things. She sold the mower, she hired a lawn service, etc.
And anything that we can do to lighten the load of our family if you just imagine yourself being gone is a great blessing to them.
So it seems like. And I have to. I have to hype my mom on this. She's always been this way. This has always existed even more after my father's passing.
There is a. There is a lockable. It's not really a safe, it's just a lockable kind of folder, like a big plastic thing that you could put documents in. And that's in her closet right now, today.
And she is adamant that I know where the key is to that thing. It's got every password in it. It's got all. Every account in it. And she's always been very diligent of. I'm going to make my passing as safe as possible. I can. I know it's kind of morbid to even consider, but think of having those things in place for your family and the peace of mind knowing, like, anything that that would happen to me, I've already taken care of them when I'm gone. What.
[00:44:54] Speaker B: What a.
[00:44:55] Speaker A: What A great service. What a, what a great blessing to them. So I, I just gotta hype everything that you're saying. It's, it's real. It's actually going to happen to some people. I don't know who, statistically, it's going to happen to some people. Listening to this right now. And I.
Would it be that every Abrahamic family leader had these things in place? Because it's going to, it's going to affect some families. So I'd rather that we were all prepared and heck, over prepared. That'd be great.
[00:45:29] Speaker B: Couple things as we conclude.
There's also a litany of immediate things. And like I said, if you can put yourself in the headspace of a spouse who's just lost their husband, it's like I, there's a thousand things on the to do list. Even if my husband was the most prepared guy ever, and I don't know what order to do them in. Am I supposed to just disappear for a year and work through paperwork?
What, what am I supposed to do? Do I hire a lawyer who might take all my money trying to do this stuff for me?
We over at our financial planning business put together this document and I hand this thing out regularly when I hear that somebody has been lost unexpectedly. We called it the Survivor's Guide.
I'm going to put a link to that in the show notes and you can save that link. And if you hear it could be somebody that passed away when they were 94, I. That I promise you, that's still plenty of pain for the surviving spouse. Or it could be a situation where it's total chaos because somebody was lost early in life, like my friend Josh.
Please feel free to just hand that out. It's not something we charge for. It's not a sales tool for us. It is just like, can we tell you in the first week, here's three things that you need to do and you can forget about everything else. Tell everyone else. I'm not, I don't care about that right now. Yep. And then in the first month, here's the things that need to happen and everything else you can forget about doesn't have to happen.
But by end of year one, here's what should be in place, et cetera. So I hope that's a gift that can, can help people. And the reason that we do things like that is not just because, hey, we want to be nice guys. I mean, we do want to be nice guys. But I, I think the scriptures have something very clear to say to us about what it what our responsibility is when it comes to specifically taking care of widows and orphans.
Justin was on the podcast recently talking about the poor.
And that can mean the financially poor. It can also mean people who are down bad at the moment. And I promise you, when you've lost a loved one, that's. That's a situation you find yourself in. James 1:27 calls the care of widows pure religion. This is the good stuff that God loves. And so we really do want to make this a thing. If you're out there and you're going, you know, we do generosity episodes all the time. So some, some generosity should go to taking care of widows specifically. If you're at a church and you're maybe a professional minister, I would suggest some of your church budget should be aimed at widows.
We were sitting with a widow specifically in Houston last summer, Steve, and she was telling us, well, here's what our program looks like for the widows. And you don't just get to call yourself a widow because you, you, you know, got divorced a long time ago. You qualify for this program, and then there's real benefits and there's men assigned to check in on you. And they're not just there to give you a nice prayer if you're feeling down. They're also going to fix your gutter if it needs it, things like that.
So we want to be obedient in this. And if you're, if you're hearing this and you're going, I. I don't know any widows. Well, I know one.
I have a new one that is in my life now. And it's something that our family takes really seriously. There's a.
This family wasn't ready for this to happen financially, emotionally, of course, I don't think they could be.
And so I have said to my whole community, this might be a challenge. It might be a challenge for all of us.
They're not going hungry. And just like Michael Bosager said on the episode we aired last week, I've never seen a righteous man forsaken or his children begging for bread. That's going to be true of my buddy Josh.
His wife's not going hungry. They're not going to be out on the street or financially destitute because that we love. We love the king. And the king has told us, well, hey, welcome to one of your new responsibilities, right, Is making sure this family's got it. If you want to be a part of that listener, I'm going to put a link to this GoFundMe.
And you can participate. And I will say if you send me a
[email protected] that's my email.
I will match what you do.
I don't know. I, I don't know who's listening. And somebody out there could just be more generous than I can imagine. So let's call it up to five GS.
I'll match what, what gets put towards this family and for us. Like I said, it's just, it's not a question. It's. This is going to be on our payroll for a while is how do we make sure this family has, has what they need. And I, I am devastated and excited to be a part of that and kind of taking care of any needs that might arise. I don't know what they are right now. I know there are needs, but I don't know the specifics. And I want to help my buddy kind of do the diligent work he was doing before he was suddenly in the presence of the king.
[00:51:14] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:51:15] Speaker B: So there's a link to that in the show notes and I'd love it if you helped. And if you do send me the screenshot. You can donate anonymously. Just I'll know and then I'll chip in.
[00:51:27] Speaker A: Yeah, I've got to throw in on, on this note as we're closing.
I have said this before. It's how I read the scriptures. I think I can make this case Biblically. God sees the planet in terms of families. He sees the earth and his kingdom in terms of families.
So I think I grew up thinking widows and orphans. Those are just kind of people that have it hard up. And so they're people that, that God wants us to be nice to because they, they just got a tough deal.
But, but if you consider it from a family lens, widows and orphans are people who have had the family leader removed from the picture.
So God is so concerned about families that even when the pro, the chief provider and protector of the family.
I'm sorry, that's a bad way to say it. I mean, isn't there anymore. So it's considered death and you've got widows and orphans, that God steps in and he goes, my people are going to look out for widows and orphans and they are collectively going to do the lion's share of the work that a family leader would do.
So it's funny what James says because it say James says that the pure religion is visiting orphans and widows in their affliction. I think there's an assumption that if you're visiting A widow. And she says, there's something up on the top shelf that I just can't get that my husband used to get. I can't, I can't replace these light bulbs because I can't.
Duh. I'm visiting you, I'm at your service. You need me to clean out the gutters? Yeah, I mean, it's the kind of stuff that I do with my mom when I visit her in Houston. And she, and she always says, I've got a list of things that I need you to do because there's no husband around, there's no family leader around. So this kind of practical help is all over the place. And when we consider that your family. I love the picture that God says of the kingdom. It's in the book of Luke where he says that the kingdom of God is like this gigantic tree and it's so full that all of the animals of the field can come and find shelter in its, in its branches. That's what I want for your family. I want your family to be a place where others can come and get refuge from the fullness of your family. The overflow of your finances, the overflow of your love, the overflow of all of your capitals because you've been, you've been maintaining and growing these things.
So I love all of that. And I just want to say in closing, guys, this is multi generational stewardship in action.
You have to protect your platoon so that they can keep advancing the kingdom even when you're not there. I, I know very few men, even in their 50s. I think we think of doing this kind of work maybe in our 70s or something and you start backing in and say, well, what 30 year old has a plan for when he's not there?
I know very few men, even their 50s, who have prepared for their exit in a helpful way. And we have got to engage here for the sake of our families. I want to encourage you to share this episode about readiness with a brother who needs this nudge.
And I want to encourage you to head over to abrahamswallet.com for more tools and back episodes. Let me give you a couple of those references. You're not going to believe how old some of these are. Mark, we did a series on insurance where we covered. One of the things that we covered was whole and permanent insurance, which Mark referenced. We did a four part series on insurance in November of 2019.
So if you go back, you can listen to into that whole episode. It's still salient right now. We did a series called before your parent dies in September of 2020, which included our survivor's guide that you referenced.
And we also did a protecting your money for future Generations episode on July 31st of 2024. So all of those might be of use to you. And I just wanted to give you those, those addresses.
You can also, as Mark said, check out our show notes to contribute to Josh Perry's GoFundMe. And that's it for us today. God bless you guys and bless you as you prepare for the future of your family.
Amen.
