Real Talk with Life After Grief Chris
Real Talk with Life After Grief Chris
Money Matters When Life Breaks Apart
What happens when two financial planners who've experienced profound personal loss meet? They forge a friendship that transforms both their personal healing journeys and professional approaches to helping others through grief.
In this vulnerable and insightful conversation, host Chris Dale welcomes fellow financial planner Daniel Kopp, MA, MS, CFP®,MQFP® to share his remarkable journey from Air Force officer to specialist financial planner for widows and widowers. After becoming the primary caregiver for his first wife Sarah during her illness and eventual passing, Daniel navigated his own grief journey while completely rethinking his career path.
Daniel reveals how his experiences shaped his unique perspective on financial planning, particularly around risk management and healthcare costs. "Having gone through this personal experience and seeing what it would look like when I had to step away...what if I hadn't had the capacity financially? That could have been ruinous," Daniel explains, highlighting how personal tragedy fundamentally altered his professional outlook.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn as Daniel discusses his current work combining financial planning with financial therapy techniques. He's developing specialized interventions for grieving individuals who suddenly become their household's financial decision-maker while struggling with emotions like money avoidance. This innovative approach addresses both the practical financial challenges and the emotional barriers that can prevent effective financial management during grief.
Perhaps most powerful is the friendship that has developed between these two advisors who found each other through shared experience. They serve as accountability partners, offering candid feedback as they navigate both personal healing and professional growth. Their relationship demonstrates how grief, while isolating in many ways, can forge meaningful connections that enhance both life and work.
If you're navigating grief yourself or supporting someone who is, this conversation offers valuable insights into building resilience, finding purpose after loss, and creating the foundations that help weather life's most challenging storms. Connect with Daniel at wisestewardshipfp.com to learn more about his work with widows and widowers.
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Welcome to Real Talk with Life After Grief Chris, where we talk about relevant issues as it relates to individuals in grief as they navigate finances and the advisors who help them. We help clients in grief navigate financial matters. We also teach advisors how to emotionally and financially work with clients in grief through an unparalleled process. This week's episode is sponsored by Life After Grief Financial Planning and Life After Grief Consulting. Hello and welcome to another episode of Real Talk with Life After Grief Chris. In today's episode we have a special guest. We are interviewing fellow Life After Griever, daniel Kopp. Daniel is a good buddy of mine and he is a fellow griever and a financial planner with his own practice. His practice is called Wise Stewardship Financial Planning and his practice focuses on helping widows and widowers across the US with financial planning and advice. Daniel, welcome to the episode, buddy. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Chris, I'm really excited to be here and share in this mission of yours to change the conversation about grief, make it more accessible and hopefully what I share will be a help to your listeners.
Speaker 1:And, if the truth be told, so in our relationship. We're going to go into some background about Daniel and how we both met, but my knowing Daniel and understanding his journey through grief really helped me in all facets and my journey through grief and my learning about others through grief and ultimately helping other people. Daniel, I'm going to put a lot of stuff on you today, my friend, of course, how did you stalk? I mean, how did we meet?
Speaker 2:Google. So I was in the middle of the beginnings of my grief journey after my wife, sarah, had passed away, and I was interested at the time in exploring the career change. So I was active duty Air Force officer, I had begun the CFP coursework. I was thinking about launching or joining another financial planning firm. Somehow I stumbled across you and I was like, wow, there's this guy out there who is working with people in this space. Obviously, I was first connected with you because of your personal story and what your grief journey had been like and so, as a result of that, reached out, and then also, obviously, your career journey as a fellow financial planner, and so I remember we had like an initial conversation back probably in late 2017, where you just kind of shared about what your journey has been like and been a big help to me since then and paving the way, showing a path forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I paved the way, I like to say I was tripping and falling along the way, so I don't know if paved it, but I was stumbling through it at best. Well, it's been a help regardless. Well, it's my pleasure. Tell us about yourself and you mentioned a few things, but tell us more broadly about yourself and why you are a few things, but tell us more broadly about yourself and why you are a life after griever, so to speak.
Speaker 2:Yes, if I back up a little bit, so I spent my first part of my career after college as an officer on active duty in the Air Force, but my first love was always personal finance. I didn't know that there was an opportunity to work with people one-on-one in a financial planning role, as opposed to like a product sales or things like that. So that's what I did. I was an officer, but in my spare time, my free time, I was doing a lot of personal finance, counseling, teaching classes, things like that. Ultimately, that led to me starting a blog and then somehow stumbled across this whole thing called fee-only financial planning. The journey began from there. At the time, my wife Sarah had started developing some illnesses and things that required ongoing care, such that I became her full-time caregiver while I was still in active duty and ultimately came to the realization that a career and the requirements of deployments and TDYs and just the busyness of active duty and being a full-time caregiver just could not ultimately sync up in the long term. So I started making plans for a career transition. Like I said, I'd started the certified financial planner coursework and it was just exploring opportunities in this space.
Speaker 2:Middle 2017, her health progressed such that she was going to be moving into hospice, and we spent the last six weeks together just enjoying time together with family, and ultimately part of that was some deep conversation about what she wanted next for my future and continue on this journey that I had started with wanting to help people with money. I had no idea what that was going to look like at the time and ultimately got out of active duty in February of 2018, about five six months after Sarah had passed away. Then that gave me time to rest, to heal, to think. I ultimately took a sabbatical about eight months off, lived in an RV and traveled across 37 states, spent time with friends and family and things like that that I hadn't been able to see much in my active duty military career. And then something extraordinary happened that God brought into my life.
Speaker 2:I met Anna on those journey and a relationship developed and ultimately went up getting engaged and then married at the end of 2018. I moved to join her where she was at in Boston and launched Wise Stewardship Financial Planning around that same time, incorporating now both the personal elements of my grief journey with professional expertise on the financial planning side. So that's where I'm at today. Now, my goal's right now at Kansas State University in their advanced financial planning and financial therapy program, where I'm learning to explore more of the past money story as it relates to grief, specifically working with widows who struggle with this money avoidance challenge or belief that money is bad or they don't want to have anything to deal with it. So working to help my clients first, but also advance the profession through academic research, and I'm excited to be here and share on any or all of part of that journey.
Speaker 1:So something that I've learned early in my career is I align myself with people that are smarter than me. So Daniel said a lot of stuff in regards to and I like to bring humor. So Daniel's very well-educated, as you can hear and you can listen to his journey in regards to the thought process and his journey through grief and some of the things that he's done methodically, and he became a certified financial planner. He left that out. I'm going to interject that, which is a very hard element to obtain, and I'm going to say it's even harder when you're in the throes of grief.
Speaker 2:Getting that, yeah, I didn't mention that, but I did have to take like about an 18 month break in there. Brain fog was such a real challenge. So I'd started the coursework in 2016, 2017, but I ultimately did not finish that until late 2018, early 2019. It just I could not study enough. So I yes, definitely recognizing that brain fog. I personally went through that. It was a very hard challenge.
Speaker 1:And I also went through the brain fog that Daniel mentioned as well. I chose to try to power through it, which didn't really work so well in my favor. I eventually did get my CFP designation, as you're all very well aware of. It wasn't without some stumbles, though. So, like I said, I like to align myself with people that are smarter than me, and Daniel is one of those folks. That is a pretty smart, pretty smart guy.
Speaker 1:And, daniel, you talked about your journey, and you and I are both very spiritual people, and I think that is also connected us as well outside of. You know our relationship with grief. Yes, can you just explain from where you came from and where you are now spiritually? You know how you've gotten to this place, because in my situation, it was either a do or die. It was either I am going to not go on any longer because I've had so much happen in my life, or I'm going to find a way to be able to bring myself back up, and it was through other people and through the grace of God and through my belief in God as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is an interesting way to put it in mirrors deeper or out. Going through the health trials at the beginning was certainly probably the biggest challenge to the faith. By the time that hospice came around, I was at the point where I had realized I had zero control of anything in the situation, and for me that was a place of dependence and humility that ultimately allowed the floodgates of grace and mercy to come in ever me down, such that when I was there, struggling all alone, now that's when I realized for me, spiritually, god's grace was more than sufficient. And, as you said, other people came alongside. And, as you said, other people came alongside and that's what the Apostle Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 4 and 5, like the comfort with which we have been comforted, now able to come and help other people. So there were those people, those people who rallied around me, strengthening, encouraging me, pointing me to truth, not abandoning me when I was at my worst in that journey, something that I will always, always be thankful for.
Speaker 1:Well, as I am thankful for your friendship, my friend. You have helped me through some trials and tribulations, and we all go through some trials and tribulations. Even after your throws through grief, you've had others and my deep throws that are publicly known through grief. I've had other trials and tribulations and we continue to march on and lay a foundation for other people. So I'm very thankful for you being in my life. So I appreciate what you have brought to my life.
Speaker 1:And Daniel and I recently had breakfast and I rarely have an opportunity where I can just blab ad nauseum, and so usually I'm on the listening end of other people because they want to feel comfortable, they want to feel very comfortable and they want the situation to feel normalized, and that's what I'm here to do.
Speaker 1:But there are times where I need to just blab and, you know, just talk about whatever is on my mind, and Daniel gave me that opportunity to do that and that's from his wisdom as well, and I think he kind of sensed that I needed that and he got a chance to say a lot as well during the conversation we caught up. It was a very, very good time. He was taking a pre-vacation. I won't go into too much detail, but he was here locally in the Orlando area and so we got a chance to catch up, so I was very appreciative of that. And, daniel, I want to understand what our relationship has really done for you in terms of where you know when you stalked me, I mean where we first met, and you know where we are now. You know collectively.
Speaker 2:Deep question, good question. So one realizing the language, that which you used I had not seen other professionals do outside of my grief counselor or people in the, you know, pastoral ministry or things like that who talked as openly as they did about their grief journey. So for me, chris, I mean that was one of the biggest lessons learned, inspiration points, where you used your story first and foremost to show people that grief is an ongoing journey, like this whole idea of there is life after grief, you know, and it's different and it's hard, and grief is a lifelong journey. You don't ever leave it behind. Your life grows and evolves and changes around it.
Speaker 2:But for me that was probably one of the biggest things because I hadn't seen, certainly professionals in the financial planning space talking about that, but even just in general, outside of you know, the grief space. So just normalizing, we as a culture in America, in the Western world, generally struggle to talk about hard things like death and loss and grief. So learning and watching from you and then, as your professional journey went along as well, realizing that that is an opening now and I have an ability to help clients and people who are in grief but also to point to other professionals and be an example in this financial planning space of what can be done around helping people in that space. Those are the first two things that come immediately to mind. We can take it from there.
Speaker 1:Okay, and I appreciate the candor, I'm going to take a step back, because we are financial planning professionals and one of the things we kind of glossed over there's the financial impact of taking care of a spouse, and it is a dramatic financial impact which can slow down grief because it can sideline you, because you have to worry about the other aspect of finances. And I want to just touch on the facts and ask you some questions about what was the financial implication to you when you were taking care of your spouse as a caregiver it was more emotional, mental, physical than it was financial.
Speaker 2:At that time I was the only one earning income, so it wasn't like we had a loss of income. I know that's the case with many people in the caregiving situation and credit to the Air Force leadership that I had that in the time period when I needed extra time to do those caregiver roles, they gave it to me and it did not impact my pay. I mean incredibly blessed to have TRICARE coverage during that timeframe, which was extraordinarily financially helpful At one point. I estimate over the last two years of care they probably spent almost $1.2, $1.3 million on her care that we didn't have to pay other than small co-pays like literally just a lifesaver financially in that. However, when I was getting out and walking away from that TRICARE benefit, that made me realize so much more as I look to the new family situation like how do I evaluate that?
Speaker 2:So a comprehensive, holistic financial plan wants to look at the risks that are out there with how much out-of-pocket costs other health insurance, disability insurance we don't talk about that enough in this space, sometimes about loss of income but still needing care along those lines and then ultimately, for those later on in their life long-term care. So it changed my perspective around risk dramatically and Morgan Housel, one of the best creative writers in this financial space. He talks about this idea that risk is what you don't see. And having gone through this personal experience and seeing what it would look like when I had to step away and fortunately I had the capacity financially at that point in time, but what if I hadn't? That could have been ruinous.
Speaker 1:Not just the enormous stress that it was mentally, emotionally, physically and you brought up a good point in regards to risk of what clients potentially excuse me don't see, and that's how we're supposed to advise them in regards to protecting them. And there are many things based on your experience and or my experience that we can see ahead for clients and we can advise them and say I've been through this or I've seen other clients go through this. This is not a risk that you should take on. This is a risk that you should put on to someone else, meaning paying an insurance provider to take on that risk. So that's a very, very good point to bring up. Something else that you had brought up in regards to our relationship.
Speaker 1:One of the things that you said that you had learned from me was being open and candid and how to talk about this monster that you call grief, and I'm very comfortable with talking about it as you are and one of the things that I did a couple of years ago is I developed this course, the Advisor's Guide for Grieving Clients, and I had asked Daniel to take the course and give me some candid feedback, and he, along with a couple of other folks that are in my tight circle, gave me some very candid feedback, and Daniel said that he's learned some things from me, and I've learned a whole heck of a lot of things from him. But, daniel, I want to understand, you know, some of the things that the course, what my course, has done for you and your practice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I'm grateful that you gave me the opportunity to take it early on in the practice, because again there's this idea of personal experience is not enough to translate into success, and so what you were able to bring was a little bit more disciplined thought pattern and approach to working.
Speaker 2:The biggest thing that stood out to me going through your course was understanding how the different styles of grieving interplay with different communication patterns, and this goes back to what I was just saying.
Speaker 2:Like, you can only know your own personal grieving style. For those who've gone this journey or watch other people, right, you're seeing their perspective or your own and recognize that there are many different ways that grief can be expressed and then way people want to be communicated through in grief. So, early on, just being understanding of the different styles of people that I would be working with, how they wanted to be communicated with, and then, as they went through their various stages of the change cycle in understanding where and which interventions are needed, to say, like, be the encouraging ear, just the listening ear At the same time, like the person who can come into that inner circle of a griever who still I mean sometimes decisions have to be made, whether it's financial or otherwise and be an accountability partner for them. That says we've had these deep conversations. I know you, here's your values. Let's move towards that. Let's make a decision here. So combining those kinds of aspects were some of the things that walked away with in my financial planning practice, and then personally as well. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:And the feedback that you gave me early on and continue to give me is invaluable. There are some times where I check in with Daniel and we are involved in a few organizations together and I check in with Daniel if he is on the other side, kind of witnessing what I'm doing or looking at me, and I check in with him. I say, hey, daniel, am I talking too much? Am I doing a little bit too much? And he's very candid and there are times that I need that. Obviously, wives do a good job of doing that. My wife does that for me, but I know well enough that I do need to check in with other people to keep me honest and to keep me humble, and he does that for me and I really appreciate that aspect of our relationship. Daniel, what's on the horizon for you, you know, into 2022?
Speaker 2:Yeah, some exciting things I alluded to earlier. So, as I've finished out some of my academic training in this world of financial therapy, bringing it into and alongside the track of financial planning. So financial therapy for those who may have never heard of it is basically the study, the interaction with the emotions from our past around money, today and into the future. For a very, very, very, very long time, the world of mental health practitioners didn't talk about money, and in the world of financial planning or financial advice we didn't talk about feelings or emotions, right when it was very present and future oriented. We don't go to the past. As a financial therapist, I am not going to be licensed in the sense that I'm diagnosing or prescribing, instead acting as a guided facilitator, a conversational partner, a thinking partner to go through this, to use some specific therapeutic interventions that come from the world of mental health. Some of them might be familiar, like cognitive behavioral therapy or solution-focused therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy things that have worked, that have been proven to work in the world of mental health. But now we're going to specifically apply them to the realm of money.
Speaker 2:I mentioned the term money avoidance beforehand, so that's probably my biggest focus now is developing some therapeutic interventions around helping people, specifically those in grief, who suddenly have to step into this role of the household chief financial officer.
Speaker 2:Work through grief at the same time that they're working through everything is new and different and hard as they become the primary household manager around finances. So traditional financial planning can address things like how much life insurance and what you invest in and tax advice and or partnering with other partners like a state attorney for estate planning, all that kind of stuff. But now this is about working and bringing into the past money story, the money scripts, the unwritten rules that drive us sometimes to negative places with negative money disorders that stand in the way. So working, and right now my goal is to build out a beta test track program, if you will, to kind of work on some of the small group of clients and then start offering that out to a bigger group and potentially even partnering with other financial advisors, financial planners with a client, so they'd stay their client, but I can come alongside as the facilitator to work through some of those past emotional issues. So that's what I'm excited about for this next year.
Speaker 1:So you don't have very much on tap for next year, is what you're saying? That was just one of the things.
Speaker 2:I have more but your podcast doesn't have unlimited time.
Speaker 1:Oh man, daniel, you have simply amazed me in the time that I've known you, from where you have come and where you are now. I can't even say good enough things about how great of an example you are for someone else, specifically in your space catering to widows and widowers and in the military space, and how great an example you are. And I keep saying that over and over again. But I hear people you know talk about Daniel, how he's doing these great things and I'm so proud of you, man, you know you make me proud like a little brother, Daniel's, you know he's
Speaker 1:a couple of years younger than me, maybe 10 years younger than me, but I appreciate that very much. Yes, you make me so proud of you. I want to brag on him for a couple of things. So Daniel mentioned that he has his own financial planning practice, which he set out to do and he's accomplished that. He's in his master's program. He's got a certified financial planner designation. Daniel also has a blog that he does every week. I believe he also got a certified financial planner designation. Daniel also has a blog that he does every week. I believe he also has a podcast as well.
Speaker 1:He was well ahead of me on the podcast front and I went to Daniel, as you know, kind of my research, and I asked Daniel, tell me about this podcast deal and, you know, give me some pointers here or there. And he gave me a lot of good information and was very willing to, you know, give me feedback in terms of you know, what I should look for in a podcast technology. You know, editing, sound quality, on and on and on. So I'm going to thank Daniel for a lot of that information. If you think the podcast are good, thank Daniel. If you think that podcast are good, thank Daniel If you think that they're bad. Thank, daniel too. I'm being facetious, but I'm very grateful for you, very, very grateful for you. Daniel, how can people reach you?
Speaker 2:Well, the best place is my website. Can people reach you? Well, the best place is my website, wisestewardshipfpcom. My email danielatwisestewardshipfpcom. I have my other contact information there. You can find me around on social media Twitter, daniel M Kopp, or LinkedIn, and then, of course, instagram, facebook, things like that. When we were talking about this issue of grief, it reminded of like you're either in a trial or you're getting ready for the next one and you know, echoing what you have said about some of those things, appreciating you like what you have done is help prepare me for a lot of those things that are coming next, whether that's in grief or otherwise.
Speaker 1:Well, I appreciate that I'm excited for 2022 for you. I am really excited and I can't wait to see, you know, the other things that you are going to do. I'm going to be looking very closely and I'll probably emulate some of those other things. So I'm smart enough and I'm old enough and I'm wise enough to understand that there are people out there that do things that may be better or different than you, and you know you should take a second look at things other people are doing, and so, again, I'm appreciative of your relationship, daniel, and so I can't say that enough, and anything else you want to say before we sign off.
Speaker 2:The last thing that I'll leave our listeners with at this point is when you are working with people who are in life after grief, or perhaps when it's your time to experience that at some level.
Speaker 2:Like there's internal work that gets to be done right, and we didn't allude to it specifically in here but having you know the pillars of your life set up so I alluded to this a moment ago like you're in a trial, you're getting ready for the next one.
Speaker 2:So your mental, emotional, physical, spiritual pillars in your life, like what are you doing to kind of strengthen and shore those up right now?
Speaker 2:And then, if you have the privilege or the opportunity to work with somebody in those areas, whether it's in financial planning or a family member or a friend who comes alongside, like you know, with talking about this idea of objective accountability, chris has alluded to that Our friendship has and business interactions and things like that have certainly given us opportunity to provide that iron sharpening iron, that accountability, to provide that iron sharpening iron, that accountability. So if you have the privilege and the opportunity to come alongside somebody in their life after grief journey, like being able to have that relationship is invaluable to point out where you might be stronger or weaker in some of those areas, professionally, personally or otherwise. I think this episode has given an excellent example of what can happen when relationships are deepened and strengthened over time to help in a variety of areas. So lean into those relationships in your life or work to develop those with clients so you can have those same kind of impacts.
Speaker 1:And I'll just jump on the backside of that of that, I believe our journey separately, through grief were enhanced, if you can say enhanced, because we had strong foundations before we went through the journey. And there is no way for myself and I'll speak for Daniel to know that we had this strong foundation to prepare us for this journey that we were about to go through. So, in looking back in retrospect, we were very fortunate collectively that we had this strong foundation and I believe, spiritually number one and then number two, the family and friends and the support system really helped our journey to get here. And it's not Chris Dale or it's not Daniel Kopp that did this alone. It is a family, it's a network, it is a neighborhood that helped us to get where we are today. So I would be remiss if I were not able to say that. And again, it's not just us collectively, daniel and Chris, that did this alone. We had a whole support system of folks that helped us get through here.
Speaker 1:So, with that, I am going to sign off and I'm going to say thank you so much for joining today, Daniel. I really, really appreciate you. And, Daniel, I'm going to give you an opportunity to state your website one more time and then I'm going to say a couple words and then we're going to sign off. So what's your website, Daniel?
Speaker 2:Well, my firm is Wise Stewardship Financial Planning, so if you Google that you can probably get there, but the direct address wisestuardshipfpcom.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining and please feel free to share this episode with any friends, colleagues or family members. See you on the next episode. Thank you for listening to our podcast. If you are a client and are looking to work directly with me, chris and or my firm, head on over to Lifeaftergrieffp. That is lifeaftergrieffp. The FP is for financialplanningcom. If you are an advisor looking to emotionally and financially work with your client in grief, or if you are a client looking to get your advisor's head in the game, head on over to lifeaftergriefconsultingcom that is lifeaftergriefconsultingcom. Any information referenced in this week's podcast will be located here in the podcast section and, as always, please feel free to share this week's podcast with any friend, family member or colleague. Thanks for listening. See you next week on the next episode.