Financial Advisor Success Podcast – Ep 423: Expanding Across The Household By Helping (Affluent) Sandwich Generation Kids With Their Parents’ Financial Needs

Host: Michael Kitces
Guest: Cristina Livadary, CEO of Mana Financial Life Design
Date: February 4, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode explores Cristina Livadary’s evolution as a financial advisor specializing in the “Sandwich Generation”—clients simultaneously supporting their own children and aging parents. Cristina shares how personal experience with her parents’ health crises inspired her to create a suite of services highly attuned to these intergenerational family dynamics. She details how Mana Financial Life Design’s approach to holistic life planning has helped expand offerings up the family tree, supporting both adult children and their parents, often with distinct fee structures. The conversation also delves into the business’s successful growth, fee evolution, and valuable lessons learned about hiring, process design, and the use of technology.

Main Themes

• Organic Evolution Toward Sandwich Generation Planning:
  Cristina didn’t set out to serve "Sandwich Generation" clients. Instead, her own life circumstances—losing her father, her mother’s dementia diagnosis, and caring for young children—shaped both her empathy and service model.
• Holistic Life Planning as Market Differentiator:
  Mana leads with emotional intelligence and life planning, creating deep client relationships and facilitating difficult conversations about family, money, aging, and care.
• Expanding Services to Multiple Generations:
  The firm’s planning routinely extends to clients’ aging parents, either as an add-on service or, for affluent households, a separate engagement.
• Business Growth and Fee Model Evolution:
  Cristina traces the firm's start from “anyone who can fog a mirror” clients, through rapid evolution in complexity and minimum fees, culminating in a $10,000 firm minimum and a complexity-based planning fee calculator.
• Hiring, Operations, and Use of Technology:
  The conversation highlights early hiring missteps, the importance of defined roles, and productivity boosts from tools like Fathom, which streamlines meeting notes and follow-ups.

Detailed Segment Summary

1. Getting Personal: Cristina’s Sandwich Generation Story

[08:58–13:29]

• Cristina’s firm started serving people like herself—30-somethings starting families and careers.
• In 2023, personal crises hit:
  • Her father became gravely ill and passed away.
  • Within a week, her mother was diagnosed with dementia.
  • Cristina, two months postpartum, was thrust into estate, healthcare, and caregiving responsibilities.
• “I realized I had no idea what I was doing, Michael. I was responsible for being the co-trustee of my parents’ trust... I had to figure out a plan for care and I had to do that all within a span of several weeks. And so this is where I realized I don’t know what I’m doing. And I’m a financial planner.” —Cristina [12:33]

2. Translating Personal Experience Into Client Focus

[13:39–19:57]

• Grief and necessity pushed Cristina to research elder care, legal, and financial logistics, which she channeled into Mana’s blog and newsletter.
• Content ranged from the nuances of care facilities to navigating conversations about money and aging.
• “We started realizing that a lot of our clients were in similar positions as I was.” —Cristina [15:44]
• This led to deeper, more empathetic, cross-generational planning discussions with client families.

3. Crafting Content That Resonates

[16:12–19:36]

• Content is story-driven and emotionally transparent, deliberately sharing Cristina’s own challenges.
• Topics include:
  • Types of assisted living and memory care
  • Engaging aging specialists
  • Facilitating difficult conversations with parents and adult children
• Result: Clients began approaching the firm about family issues outside the original scope.

4. Mana’s Origin and Early Growth

[20:00–36:38]

• Founded in 2018 by Cristina (former investment wholesaler) and her best friend, Stephanie Bucko (hedge fund risk officer).
• Raised $150K via convertible note from friends and family, repaid before converting to equity.
• Started with a $2,400 annual planning fee and 50 basis points for investment management.
• Early days were “anyone who can fog a mirror”—mostly friends and referrals.
• Built fit meetings—20-minute, no-pressure, mutual evaluation calls—into onboarding from the start.

5. Evolving Fees and Defining Ideal Clients

[36:47–44:02]

• Fees began low ($2,400), reflecting initial inexperience and young client base.
• Rapidly realized workload required higher compensation.
• Gradual, structured fee increases (e.g., $2,400 > $4,500 > $6,000) led to losing only about 10% of clients, with little attrition among friends.
• “We lost maybe…10% of our clients and again made up for it with the fee increases.” —Cristina [43:10]

6. Surviving Lean Years & Building for Capacity

[45:01–46:59]

• Personal and business runways: business aimed for 3–6 months’ expenses, Cristina saved 18 months’ living costs.
• Growth to financial security for the firm took 3–4 years.

7. Productizing Complexity: The Fee Calculator

[47:14–55:02]

• Current structure:
  • 119 households, most paying for both planning and investment management.
  • Average fee for both services: $11,500.
  • Firm minimum is now $10,000.
• Fees are calculated via a detailed “complexity calculator” with add-ons (e.g., stock comp, rental properties, business ownership, divorces) ranging from $500 to $5,000 per factor.
• “We have complexity riders…if you have two plus rental properties...stock compensation…going through a divorce…We know what we should be charging for those.” —Cristina [51:40]
• Will share the fee calculator as a resource for listeners.

8. Handling Intergenerational Engagements & Billing

[57:58–60:44]

• Parents’ planning fees handled two ways:
  1. If adult children expect to support parents, a one-time project fee for the parents, typically paid by the children.
  2. If parents are financially independent but need better advice, treated as a new client (using the same fee calculator).

9. Marketing, Referrals & "Sweat Equity Saturdays"

[64:05–66:16]

• Proactive digital marketing: Started a blog and newsletter in 2019; leveraged Instagram, SEO, and guest podcasting on client-facing platforms, not industry shows.
• “We do weight training while talking personal finance. We call it ‘Sweat Equity Saturdays.’” —Cristina [65:07]
• The referral network now generates 60% of new business.

10. Building Team & Operations

[66:55–70:34]

• Staff: 5 full-time, 1 part-time (UX design); 2 lead advisors (Cristina & Stephanie), 2 planners, 1 operations associate.
• Team structure: All clients are clients of Mana, not of individual advisors. Planners manage plan preparation; lead advisors focus on relationships and onboarding.

11. Key Lessons: Hiring, Processes, and Tech

[70:45–83:33]

• Early mistake: Under-defined team roles, over-hired without clarity, led to burnout and loss of both new hires in 2021.
  • “Both of those employees quit within like five days of each other at the end of that year.” —Cristina [74:32]
• Solution:
  • Sharpening service offerings (“do less, better”)
  • Paring back unnecessary processes (e.g., weekly manual cashflow reports)
  • Reduced meeting frequency from quarterly to annual comprehensive “updates”
• Tech stack:
  • Emoney, Airtable for client data/qualitative notes, Redtail for CRM, Fathom AI for meeting notes and follow-ups, Zapier for automations.
  • “Fathom takes better notes than any of us…cuts meeting summaries from 30-45 minutes to 10-15.” —Cristina [83:59]

12. Reflections and Advice

[84:08–88:02]

• Don’t over-invest in early process design; focus on getting clients and revenue.
• “Put a limit on getting ready to get ready and just sell…a lot of those early pains could have been solved by more revenue.” —Cristina [84:17]
• For new advisors, especially women:
  • “If you are even considering being an advisor, the answer is yes…there is truly an incredibly vast blue ocean of folks that need real financial advice.” —Cristina [86:26]

13. Defining Success

[87:52–89:07]

• Success now equals “spaciousness”—having time in the day for herself, her family, and meaningful strategy, as well as earning clients’ trust as a life guide through complexity.
• “What success means to me is having the trust of my clients to shepherd them through this wild, wild ride of life.” —Cristina [89:07]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the emotional toll and clarity from personal experience:
  “I realized I had no idea what I was doing… And I’m a financial planner.” —Cristina [12:33]

• On raising planning fees:
  “We lost maybe…10% of our clients and again made up for it with the fee increases.” —Cristina [43:10]

• On redefining client service after team loss:
  “We had to do it. And honestly, it was…probably the greatest gift that we were, like, shocked into that existence.” —Cristina [77:21]

• On tech upgrades with Fathom:
  “Fathom takes better notes than any of us…cuts meeting summaries from 30-45 minutes to 10-15.” —Cristina [83:59]

• On spaciousness as success:
  “What success means to me is having the trust of my clients to shepherd them through this wild, wild ride of life.” —Cristina [89:07]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Cristina’s Personal Sandwich Generation Story: 08:58–13:29
• Blog Content & Client Conversations: 13:39–19:57
• Evolution of Fee Structure: 36:47–44:02
• Complexity Fee Calculator Explained: 47:14–55:02
• Handling Multi-Generational Planning Fees: 57:58–60:44
• Building the Team and Operations: 66:55–70:34
• Lessons on Hiring & Process Redesign: 70:45–83:33
• Advice to New Advisors: 84:08–86:26
• Redefining Success: 87:52–89:07

Additional Resources

• Mana’s Complexity Fee Calculator (to be linked in episode show notes at kitces.com/423)

This summary captures the original episode’s warm, candid tone and Cristina’s philosophy of leading with empathy, clarity, and process. It highlights intergenerational planning as both a technical and deeply human challenge, and offers practical strategies for advisors seeking to evolve their fee models, operational practices, and client relationships in a complex, family-centered world.