← The Practical Planner
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- [00:00]
A
For the average person I sit down with, they have no idea what they picked. They don't know who they picked as the people. They don't know the decisions they picked. They kind of, you know, sat down with an attorney at some point. They gave them their balance sheet attorney, asked them a few questions, they signed their estate plan and never thought about it again.
- [00:29]
B
Hi, everyone, this is Ann Rhodes, co host of the Practical Planner. This episode, we're going to do things a little bit differently where I am going to be really hosting and asking questions of my co host, Thomas Kopelman. And so welcome everybody, to another episode of the Practical Planner. This one will be about how Thomas actually uses wealth.com and just software in general to bring value to his clients. So, Thomas, thank you for joining us. This feels a little bit weird.
- [01:02]
A
No, totally fair. It feels weird for me, but I'm excited because I think this is an episode that we have to have because I think we've done a few of these. Like, you know, I'll hop on a webinar and kind of talk about it. But, you know, the number one question I get from people about wealth is like, how do you use it? Can you walk me through it? And I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm not on the sales team. Like, we have a great sales team. Like, let me help you get a first call and you do it. But I think this will be a helpful episode to share with people of, like, how do you implement it in process? Because this is still new, right? The whole world of using it. And there's still people, new lawyers who don't love this idea. And how do you do this without necessarily practicing law, but how do you also implement it into your process is, I think, really important. Where these don't work. If an advisor doesn't have a process on getting it started, getting it finished, getting it implemented. And so I'm excited to kind of do this episode.
- [01:49]
B
All right, well, thank you, Thomas. I almost feel like you could just do this entirely yourself. But I will set up the questions and we'll see how it goes. First and foremost, Thomas, just what is your process? Like, a client comes in, they're new, or they're a prospective client, you know very little. But you want to speak about estate planning to them. So what, what do you do with wealth.com?
- [02:12]
A
yeah, so I think, you know, whether they have a plan or they don't changes it entirely. Because for people who don't have an estate plan, it's generally not like our phase one of financial planning. Even though it's super important, it's not an area that I think people, unless they come in and was like, you know, I need my estate planning done. It's kind of like they want to get, you know, tax planning and their investment set up and cash flow and, you know, business entity elections and all of that done. So it ends up being like, you know, for us, phase three or ph for but it's on the docket. They know it's something we're going to cover in year one if they have an existing estate plan. Honestly, I think this is one of the best uses of wealth that, you know, applies to everybody because there's the people who say, well, hey, you know, I get that it's a cool software, but I'm not going to use it for, you know, creating new documents. But almost every advisor can use it for reviewing existing documents. So, you know, client comes in, they have a hundred page estate plan. It's, it's really takes forever to go read through it, organize it, and half the time it's, you know, you find one from 1990 and it's in like language that maybe you don't even understand. So like our process in our firm is like, before I ever meet with a single client, after they become a client, we have them upload everything into financial planning software. So they're linking bank accounts, credit cards, investment accounts, loans, they're uploading tax returns and pay stubs and business financials and equity comp guides, you know, their estate plan. Every insurance doc, I won't meet with them until we have all of it. Like it's a rule. So if they sign on and say, hey, you're starting in June and by June they don't have documents. I won't meet with you. Not going to meet with you until you get everything to us so we can review and income prepared. A lot of advisors don't do that. They say, hey, I really struggle getting clients to get us info. And I think if you put your foot down and say, like, you're paying me, I'm not meeting with you until you've done this. People buy in really quickly because they understand that's a process everybody goes through. And then people hire you for this reason. And so as soon as that's done, my operations team, you know, I have a planner who's going to organize and go through things, but my ops team is getting it into wealth. So we're grabbing the estate plan. Any other docs we need putting into Esther and having Esther summarize it so we can have a really good conversation. Because for the average person I sit down with, they have no idea what they picked. They don't know who they picked as the people. They don't know the decisions they picked. They kind of, you know, sat down with an attorney at some point. They gave them their balance sheet attorney, asked them a few questions, they signed their estate plan and never thought about it again. And most likely they were happy. They picked guardians. Right. Like, I mean, that's kind of the reality we see. So I think step one for me is using Esther to read and organize the documents so we can go through all the key decisions that were made, all the key people inside of it, and make sure all of those things actually match what they want to do. And then, of course, hey, we see the trust, but you have a taxable account, not in the name of the trust or bank accounts, or I'm looking at your beneficiary designations, and they don't follow that. And so just kind of getting organized in a way of I don't read it and type this out myself. Esther just puts this all into a really easy to read document that now I can have a good conversation. My client, because they've never seen things organized like that.
- [05:16]
B
Yeah. So now, you know, now that you've organized everything, you get to have that first, maybe even the second conversation with the client about the gaps that you see in the estate plan. How do you, number one, kind of stay compliant from like an unauthorized practice of law perspective and, you know, could potentially even keep involving the estate planner in this conversation. And then number two, at what point do you make an assessment like, actually this person could just keep using wealth.com to either renew their estate plan or just put in place a brand new one?
- [05:53]
A
Yeah, I think that's an interesting question because I think the, the dancing around not practicing law is not as hard as people make it seem to be. Like, if anything, we'll kind of read through and be like, hey, for this, you know, you picked this person. Right. Like, here's maybe why some people wouldn't like that, here's why some people would like that. Or, hey, you know, you have a will. Here's why some people would actually think about, you know, a revocable trust. Recently I had a client who, they're new and they haven't signed their estate docs from their attorney. They're in Texas. And I was like, hey, let's go back to your attorney. I would just love to hear why they don't Think that you need a revocable trust. And what the attorney ended up saying was, well, hey, you know, probate is really quick in Texas. It's about a couple months. And most people just don't ever implement a trust. So, you know, that's why we didn't necessarily recommend it. If you want to do it, we can add it. So then I can have a conversation with my client, say, that's true. Probate is better here. It's not California, it's not in New York. Here would be the advantages of you having a trust, but it is a little bit more to set up. But you don't own a house yet. So it's not like we have to move deeds of things. You know, we could just change, you know, accounts. What do you think? Is the reasons why having a trust worthwhile to you or not? If so, then we can go back to the attorney and say, hey, we've talked about it for them. They feel like, you know, the, the benefits, they, they want it to be a little smoother. They want the privacy, you know, they want incapacitation planning. Let's go with it. You know, if you guys feel comfortable with it. So I think it kind of can create the conversation or you can look and just say, hey, like you have some people in here that are no longer make sense. Right. That's an easy way to go back to your attorney and update it. There was something like a Fanch attorney or healthcare directive, like, then we could potentially just use wealth in those conversations. But in all honesty, I found most people who've used an attorney before are going to lean that same route. And I think that's okay. I think, you know, when we, when people evaluate a software like wealth, it's not is 100% of my clients going to use it. To me, it's what's the value add for my clients. And so one is reviewing all the estate plans super easy. That's a huge value add that's worth paying for in my mind. But if a third or 50% of my clients also make sense for getting their estate plans done, and most of them wouldn't have done it, that's huge. I don't need to try to fit everybody into the box to doing it because I don't think it's right for everybody.
- [08:09]
B
Yeah, here's what I'm hearing from your answer, which, you know, and here I'm going to put on my chief legal Officer hat for wealth.com and say, so first and foremost, I think that's totally right. You know, you do not have to replace the attorney with wealth.com that is not the mission of the company. And it's actually just to be able to enable you to engage more actively and proactively with the client because you have more regular touch points with that client client than an estate planner. And so if that client has an existing relationship with an estate planner, they liked the experience. The estate planner is still practicing. Like, why not go back to the estate planner with, you know, ideas on the ideas front? There is a fine line, I think, and it's a gray area. We acknowledge this. We live in the gray area of, like, when does something that you bring up cross into the unauthorized practice of law? And here I would just say know your strengths, know what you can talk about. And I am sure that in whatever that range might be of what you know of estate planning, you're going to find things that are not about the practice of law and that you can highlight to the client as a gap in their estate plan. You do not need to cover the whole distance of, like, every single little thing that might be wrong for that client in the estate plan. Let somebody else do that, be it, you know, the software or the estate planner. You just need to be able to approach that conversation to highlight that there is a gap. Not all the gaps, just one or two that are significant. So something like, hey, do you still even get along with your brother that you've named as an executor? That is not legal advice. That is just like, what's the state of, you know, your family and what are your objectives? You know, when you're like, picking a person, is this person still responding to your emails? Those are not things that are, you know, that an estate planner has some sort of, like, special knowledge about, you know, the law. It really is just about you understanding where that person is in their life currently? And that is not legal advice to be like, maybe if you don't get along with this person anymore, let's remove them. And I think the trust versus the will thing, Thomas, you know plenty from both using the software, but also being on those podcasts and just being really knowledgeable about this space. But if that's not your shtick, like, you don't want to make the decision between a will or trust or help your client make that decision, that's okay. Just work within the confines, I think, of what you know. And estate planning is, at the end of the day, a very human exercise, a human endeavor. And you can find all manners of conversations that can be Very fruitful with the client with their existing estate plan or a new one.
- [10:50]
A
Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, our job as advisors is really to be teachers. Right. Like, it's to help educate people on, you know, things to think about. It's not to push them necessarily in one route or the other route. Sometimes you have to do that, but it really is educating them. And so like, you know, I'm even thinking about, you know, I have a bunch of clients now who are planning for space X, ipl, for example. And so estate tax planning is something we're thinking about. So hey, you know, client, you have a ton of money, you're going to hold on to a lot of space X. Should we be thinking about irrevocable trust? Right. Maybe we don't need to know the exact type of irrevocable trust, but here might be the benefit of putting this into an irrevocable trust. If you're going to hold a lot here might be the advantage of something like a grab. You know, I think our job is to help say here, here's the tools that could exist, here's the benefit, here's why somebody might use this, here's why somebody might not use it. Let's get you connected to a good estate attorney and let's evaluate these options together. One thing I do is in wealth, actually there is a part when you do like the visualizer of all of the estate tools that exist and it does have kind of a summary of how they work. So one of my clients was going through this and you know, we were talking all these tools. I was like, let me send you this PDF that goes through these different options and how they work. And you know, then we can go from there and starting to think about why you might like some and why you might not.
- [12:04]
B
Yeah. So Thomas, at this point, let's say that you do have a client who's interested in doing their estate plan through wealth.com, but how do you make the assessment of like, who's appropriate for this tool versus not. Does it have to do with net worth? I'm curious, sort of walk me through your thinking there.
- [12:23]
A
Yeah, so I think there's the, the higher net worth people who are going to need, you know, complex estate planning where some of them could be a fit to do it this way and then add in those later and other ones are kind of like a, hey, we' to need to do this with an estate attorney. There's no way around it. Let's just have them do everything. So so it's perfectly coordinated in the way. Then there's the people who are not really going to have an estate tax issue where I actually, you know, some people will say 5 million net worth, some people might say 10 million net worth. I don't really think it's that at all. I think it's more of who is the person. And so I know who are my clients get stuff done, right? Like if, if they have homework, they get it done. And there's other people that's like, they're never going to get anything done. If you're the person that's not going to be like, I'm going to sign into Wealth, I'm going to read, I'm going to fill out the people, I'm going to, you know, go do things after. Then that's probably somebody who needs a little bit more handholding. And then there's the people who are, hey, I, I get stuff done and they're going to go in, they'll get it done, they'll get it finished pretty quickly. You'll give them the following follow up tasks from there. They'll get that done. They're great fits. And then I think about people who are tech savvy and who are not. Like, obviously my client base is tech savvy. They have no way better for them because it's quick. They don't have to go print their balance sheet, they're linking things in there. They don't have to go back and forth on email, they're just finishing it in one piece of, you know, one period of time. Non tech savvy. People are just going to struggle with tech. You know, they're, they're probably not the right person. I would not hand my client's parent, who's 94 years old to go get their estate plan done by themselves on wealth.com most likely. I think it would feel a little daunting to them. So I think it's net worth. I think it's the ability to get things done on their own. And then I also think it's that last part. Are you tech savvy? Do, do you like tech? Because some people just don't trust tech. So if you don't trust tech, that's probably not going to be the right way for that person.
- [14:15]
B
Yeah. And Thomas, this is interesting to me, your answer, because I'm sure it's taken a little bit of trial and error for you. We were just shooting the breeze before recording this episode and I realized, my gosh, you've been with her company in some way, shape or form since 2023. It's been a long time and you've seen different iterations, different products that we've released. And I'm just wondering what were some of the things that you had to implement, some of the lessons that you learned trying to deploy tech. And I'm sure that a lot of this might be translatable to other software solutions in your tech stack. But kind of walk me through. How do you experiment and then find the right foot?
- [14:56]
A
Well, I think the easy first point is that since we just get their estate plans, we can put it in, so there's not really a barrier there for them to have to, like, do any part there. I think the second part is like actually getting them to get it done. And so, you know, it's daunting. It's like kind of this idea of like, when do I actually sign in and start? And for me, every fall is when we kind of review estate planning, insurances, and end of your tax planning. So we'll go into that. If they have not started their estate planner, that's the start, the time we're starting the conversation. My homework to them is just open the software. Like, what I know is that, you know, once people sign into wealth, on average, it takes them like, I think it's 22 minutes to finish it. And so I give them that stat because I think people think it's going to take them forever. So I'm saying, like, hey, my goal is in between this call and the next is that you sign in and you just look through it, because to them, that feels easy. But what I know is once people do that, they finish it. And so, like, I make the task feel a lot smaller in the way of like, then we'll review. But basically it's get signed in, they'll end up finishing it, we'll meet for the next call. And I'm just going to go through it with them and make sure that they like who they picked and they liked all the things that they picked. So, hey, you picked this person. Does that make sense? You guys both picked this person. Hey, is there a reason financial power of attorney, you didn't pick your spouse, you actually picked your brother. And sometimes they're like, actually, yes, they might. My wife told me they, she doesn't want to be it because she wouldn't know. She would like it to be the brother. Right? We view healthcare directives, we view the decisions that they made and then say from there, okay, great, that's done. You Feel good about it, or here's the changes you decided that you wanted to make. Now I use the mobile notary service for like everybody because that, the next pain point we find is that people finish it, but they don't go to the UPS store, their bank, and they don't find two witnesses, which is super normal. Like, it's not, you know, if you don't live in a town with your parents, it's not super easy to find two random people to go with you at some point when those are open to get it signed. So that's the next one I use mobile notary. If not, hey, you know, you're going to go do it. And then my next point from there is, okay, great, now we need to move the deed of your house into the trust. We're going to. Here's exactly. You sign into wealth, you click the top right of your, your name. You hit consultant attorney, you hit transfer real estate. That's the process there. And then in our next call, I'm going to open up a new taxable account in the name of your trust. We're going to transfer those assets in, we're going to change the beneficiary designations for you. And then here's those things that you need to get done. So it ends up being probably over three or four meetings that everything gets implement, implemented. And then I give them a period of like, hey, you're just going to change bank accounts this time, and then here you're just going to change this. And then you're going to update beneficiary designations of just retirement accounts. And that way it makes it pretty digestible. But what I've learned is you can't give them too much at one time. You can't make them think they're going to finish their whole estate plan in one sitting because that feels daunting. You're going to help review it with them after just to make sure they feel good about it. Because sometimes people just go through things and they don't actually like, like think that hard about it. So then you give them that time before they, you know, go with a notary and sign and feel kind of scary to make sure it's actually what they wanted.
- [17:56]
B
Yeah, I love that. It's like putting this big process, which honestly with an estate planner probably takes six months, you know, two months just to get the draft out and to the clients, et cetera. But, you know, and, and breaking it up into like smaller chunks, but also each of those chunks feels very doable in the moment. So I love that idea. And then the other thing is just, you know, reflecting back to them, like the choices that they're making so that everybody's on the same page. You know, we've had a lot of episodes on the Practical Planner about conversation and just how education, laying out the cards, you know, making sure people are aware of what they're doing is just like, it's. It's so basic. It sounds so basic, but it's so important to this. So same thing here. You're not practicing law. You're just reflecting back to them the choices that they've made, and making sure that they really understand the choice they've made. I think that's great.
- [18:52]
A
Yeah. Because I think that's one thing that I think attorneys get worried about with something like this is that people just do it and they don't actually, you know, think through it. And so I think, like, that's a barrier that we can help create here, is like, let's give you the time to think about it and share stories about, like, hey, here's why, you know, you can't pick your kids. Like, you can't pick your kid to be your financial power of attorney or like, hey, you picked your dad, but you did say your dad, you know, isn't really there. Right. Like, maybe that's not the right person. And so, you know, just making sure that they have that time and space because, you know, who I work with, they're. They're very busy. They have very little free time. This is a task they're just trying to get done. And so maybe they did it right, maybe they didn't. Let's make sure it is correct for. For them. I think the other thing that I use is there are people who are a little weary of doing it. And so I say, great, hire an advisor or hire an attorney through wealth to review this with. And I've sat down on calls with those attorneys. And so at the very end, you can hit consult an attorney and you can book time to just say, hey, I want to meet and review this, and sure. You feel like everything is correct and if there's any changes that you think I need to make, and then maybe you can use them for deed transfers as well. A lot of my clients are business owners, so they do need document changes, potentially. LLCs move to the trust and. And stuff like that. I think people do not use the attorney network in wealth enough. You know, one thing I use it for is maybe I have a client in a random state, and I don't have an attorney, I'm going to, I'm going to use that consultant attorney button and find that vetted attorney to connect my client to. But also just reviewing and also just implementing. Right. That's like, like, you know, most advisors will go to like XY planning community and say, anybody know a good advisor in Utah or good attorney in Utah? And it's like, you don't know if that advisor actually knows what a good attorney is. But the good thing, you know, using some of like wealth is like an. You guys in the, the legal team are vetting attorneys in every state to create those state specific documents that are good attorneys that know what they're talking about. And so to me that's kind of an easy way to say that's a huge value add. You know what I tell my clients is connecting you to the right professionals is a huge value add I have for you. I have it for tax professionals, insurance people, you know, business brokers, everything. And attorneys are one of the ones that's the hardest because it's state specific. Almost any of the other ones, it's glo. It's across the country and we're with people attorneys is not that way. And so having that attorney network, I think super valuable.
- [21:12]
B
Yeah. Just for the audience here, I will say, you know, my legal team and I spend a lot of time vetting these people so we sit on calls with them. You know, first of all, the way that we even source them, oftentimes it's from our own network because we've worked with those attorneys before. But it's also, you know, if we are doing a search like you would, we're looking at their credentials. You know, we're making sure that they're still, you know, barred in the state where they are. And then we get on a call with them and we really push them on, you know, how sophisticated they are. They have to be estate planners by trade. They can't just be like lighting as an estate planner. Because I think this is one of the areas of the law where it's easy to be like a real estate person and then just like have written like five wills maybe for their family members and all of a sudden they hold themselves out as like estate planners. You know, I just think for us we, we have definitely like a sweet spot that we look for and all the attorneys on our network, you know, then also undergo like a demo of our platform. They understand where your clients are coming from, where you're coming from. And so all of that context is like super important. Because we also want attorneys who are tech friendly. Right. And so. And who understand that, like, the role that they play is only elevated by the things that you're doing with your client. And so all of that is to say, you know, it is something that we take very seriously.
- [22:31]
A
Yep. I think the last part I'll say and how I. I use the visualizer again. Right. Like, I think the visualizer is just one of the best tools. Like, every client that sees is like, oh, this is really, really nice. Right. Like, hey, we're going, you know, estate plans done. We're reviewing it through the visualizer are here's all the pages, here's all the key points. You know, sometimes they'll like, kind of help educate you on some of the things that you're deciding. And then for them, that's always in there. Our financial planning software in the vault under estate planning for them. So if they ever were like, oh, I don't remember what I did, or I don't really remember what I picked. And then like, every couple years when we review their existing estate plan, we re go through exactly what that summary says to make sure that's still in line with what makes sense for them. The other thing I use it for is for kids of our clients. Like, most of my clients don't have kids that are adults. But for my clients that do have kids that are adults, you know, I will let them, you know, use it for them for Fanch power attorney or health care directives in a basic will. Or I have clients who have, you know, parents or siblings who are not very well off, but they need an estate plan. And, you know, to me, I don't charge for it. I think it's part of what my clients pay me for. They don't subsidize any of my other tech costs. I don't know why I would make them subsidize it. I get why advisors charge for it. It's just not. I don't like that barrier. I think a big reason I have it is to get rid of the barrier and what holds people back from the estate planning. So I'm willing to share it with any of the most important to my clients who do need something that they wouldn't get done.
- [23:55]
B
Well, Thomas, thank you so much for being willing to do this episode. You know, on my end, I think I'm out of questions, but I'm sure that our this particular episode will end up raising a lot of, you know, comments, questions from our audience. So I encourage all of you guys to write in. You know, if you're enjoying the Practical Planner, please rate and subscribe. And we're always happy to talk about the things that are most important to you and top of mind as you think about estate planning. So thank you so much.