Real Talk with Life After Grief Chris
Real Talk with Life After Grief Chris
From Advisor to Advocate: The Unexpected Side of Client Care
What happens when financial planning unexpectedly transforms into caregiving? This deeply personal episode explores the real-life experience of navigating the sandwich generation from a financial advisor's perspective.
When my 20-year client—a man my father's age—was involved in a serious car accident, our carefully established estate planning documents became the foundation for maintaining his dignity and autonomy during a vulnerable time. The foresight to complete these legal frameworks just months before proved invaluable, allowing me to help him financially while respecting professional boundaries.
The accident's aftermath created a delicate balancing act: respecting my client's wishes to remain in his home, collaborating with his attorney and neighbor to ensure proper care, and expanding my role to include regular home visits for bill payments and financial management. Throughout this process, I discovered the importance of maintaining clear boundaries while still providing compassionate support beyond traditional financial services.
This experience highlights the profound importance of proactive planning for cognitive decline or physical incapacity, especially for aging clients without family support systems. It also demonstrates how comprehensive financial planning extends far beyond investment management into deeply human territory—territory that requires both professional expertise and emotional intelligence.
For advisors navigating similar situations, remember that self-care isn't optional; it's essential for providing sustained support to clients in need. And for clients, this story underscores why establishing clear legal frameworks before crises occur can preserve your autonomy when unexpected challenges arise.
Have you prepared your estate planning documents? Or if you're an advisor, are you prepared to support clients through life transitions that extend beyond financial decisions? Connect with us to learn more about navigating these complex situations with dignity and expertise.
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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 to emotionally and financially work with clients in grief through an unparalleled process. This week's podcast is sponsored by Life After Grief Financial Planning and Life After Grief Consulting.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome back to another episode of Real Talk with Life After Grief, chris. In this episode I am going to talk about something that recently happened to me and it pertains to the sandwich generation. I have previously written about being part of the sandwich generation and I've also done a podcast on the sandwich generation, but I want to bring a real life example here, outside of talking about the scope in which I was involved with my parents before their passing. So recently I had a client and this gentleman is a 20 year client, known very well and I have seen him pre-retirement, into retirement and, you know, living the good life in retirement and he is of the age that would be very similar to my father. You know he's getting up there in age and you know as life would take it. You know things happen and memory starts to slip here and there and nothing out of the ordinary. The reality of the situation kind of came to light where I kind of saw a little bit into the future, where I wanted to make sure that this particular client had funding in the event that he needed it and if he were not in a situation where he could say, hey, chris, I need, you know, 10 bucks or I need you know, 100 bucks or something like that. I couldn't give this money to him based on what somebody else is asking me. So I was very adamant about the estate planning piece, which wasn't done prior to November of 2024. I was very, very adamant and I said to my client I really, really want you to get this done, because I want to be in a situation to where, if you need help, I can still give it to you at someone else's asking meaning an attorney and then you know, beyond that, I wanted to make sure that there was somebody in place that could act on his behalf in a capacity to make whether it was financial decisions or whether it was to make medical decisions based on his wants that he has written down. So we got the estate planning done and we couldn't have done that at a better time. So fast forward several months.
Speaker 2:He was in a pretty significant car accident and this is kind of where my experience kicked in and the experience of my parents. I'm kind of outside of a financial planner, but the financial planning will come into play here as well. So when he got in this accident, it was a pretty dramatic accident and he was very lucky that he wasn't seriously hurt. He had a, you know, some bruising, I think, on his head. He was kind of in a fog, as you could probably imagine after being in an accident, being in you know, some sort of a fog practice.
Speaker 2:What I've written about and what I've read about and what I've kind of recommended is I wanted to help maintain his dignity and I didn't want to take away, you know, or be in a position to make recommendations here that were giving the impression that I wanted to take away his rights Again. I wanted to maintain his dignity. I was already thinking after he got in this accident that he shouldn't be driving anymore. The physician assistant at the hospital made that recommendation and I looked at my client and I said I think I probably agree for your sake and for anybody else's sake, my client agreed and fast forward that my client was in the hospital for probably two weeks after this accident and there were a lot of things that were going on, you know, during this process and the hospital was contacting me. The hospital was contacting a close friend of my clients and the hospital was contacting the attorney that could act in the event of incapacity for, you know, my client for my client and my client had a very good team around him and the neighbor, the attorney and then I'm going to include myself in that mix and the hospital. They were trying to force his hand to do some things.
Speaker 2:And I had a conversation with my client and I saw him a lot and the attorney saw him a lot and there was nothing that we deemed that was cognitively off or anything that could deem my client incapacitated. And so we acted on his behalf in that regard because we deferred to my client and said, well, he makes the decisions and as long as he is cognitively aware, he's going to continue to make the decisions. I just kind of popped in at certain points and asked some questions of my client and if there was something that I saw I would get with the attorney and then maybe we would get with my client and say is this the direction that you would like to take? And from his estate planning, we had a conversation with my client. He said he wants to stay in his home as long as possible. Conversation with my client. He said he wants to stay in his home as long as possible. He doesn't want any care other than folks coming into his home if that need were to arise. That's a very dynamic conversation to have. It is very emotionally driven. It can be, especially if you've worked with someone for a long time and if it's a parent specifically.
Speaker 2:But me bringing in this third party because the dynamic between my client and I we have such a very close relationship she was just a kind of a third party that saw some things and you know we're looking at my client's best interest long term. So that situation is ongoing and Not that I am my client's caregiver, but he does rely on me for a lot. What it's also kind of developed into is kind of the normal realm of financial planning, which would include retirement planning, estate planning, tax planning, investment management, cash flow management, liability management and things of that nature. This blossomed into a lot more than that. This really blossomed into the estate planning category where I really had to engage the estate planning attorney a lot during that process because there were things that I were unsure of and I wanted to make sure that my client's best interest were always adhered to and deferring to the attorney kind of at the end of the day.
Speaker 2:Sometimes when you're going through a process and it's new this process was new for me to kind of act in that capacity for my client and really help him. I actually picked him up from the hospital and brought him home after he was ready to go. Sometimes you just need a second set of eyes to make sure that you are on the right path. And the attorney assured me and at the end of the day my client said man, I'm glad that you're here in the mix because I knew that you were going to make sure that everything was going to go fine, and that really reassured me that I was doing the right thing by my client. Again, I have the fiduciary responsibility due to my licenses that I have to do.
Speaker 2:But, man, this was a I'm not going to necessarily say it was a gray area, but it was an area that was unknown to me as a financial planner. And again, I wanted to make sure that my client was in the best possible situation that he could be in. And you know his neighbor was also great in the process and his neighbor kind of ensured all the moving pieces were there on a regular basis, cause my client needed some extended care afterwards, making sure that there were people coming in um when they were supposed to and they were doing the right thing by my client and that he was happy ultimately and he was well taken care of. And again, this is kind of outside of the scope of the normal financial planning but because I had the experience with my folks and the sandwich generation, I look at this as no different and I wanted to maintain again his dignity and I wanted to make sure that he was ultimately being taken care of in the best light. So the best thing that I did as a financial planner in this situation was I was pretty adamant about him getting his estate planning done and to give you an idea kind of of the scope of this situation, so this particular client didn't have any beneficiaries or anyone that he really cared to give anything to and that kind of set the direction for him not necessarily having a high interest in doing the estate planning.
Speaker 2:But I came at it at a different angle because I had concerns, again, like I said, about not being able to give him his own money and if something happened to him without an intermediary meaning in this particular situation, an estate planning attorney that's drafted all the documents, who has ensured that he will have someone acting on his behalf, which is not me, because it would be a conflict of interest and I was very forthright that I cannot do that. You can check in with me, whoever that individual is or whoever that company is, and we can have a conversation with that, but I cannot give direction and I cannot make decisions on behalf of my client. That has to be totally separate. But it all kind of works, you know, like a well-oiled machine ongoing. But this was very successful, if you will, kind of at the highest level of financial planning and really doing the right thing for an individual or doing the right thing for a family. And I really felt good about what transpired. I felt terrible about the accident. I'm glad, and my client's fortunate, that it was not anything life threatening and it wasn't anything that my client couldn't recover from. We were very fortunate.
Speaker 2:But it's kind of the after effect of taking care of things and making sure that things are buttoned up. And my level of being my clients financial person is kind of taking it to another level and it has involved me kind of going to his house, you know every at least every month or every couple of weeks, and we kind of go through his finances. There are things that he needs to pay or people that he needs to pay, and we sit down and we hash that out at his house. And that's a little bit different kind of than the scope that I normally have with most clients, but he needed that and he asked me to help him in that capacity. So and it's it's, it's very easy and we've set up things to make it a little bit easier to pay some of those individuals and or companies, whether it's automation through his bill pay or whether it is a simple transfer from his bill pay or otherwise, just making things easy from that client's perspective and really just catering to him. And where he is in life, all he wants is to be able to kind of sit home, chill out and read. He sometimes looks at me, he's like you do all the hard work and I'm like I'm happy to do that for you. Again, we've had such a long term relationship. I won't get into kind of the aspect, the business aspect, of how that our initial arrangement kind of worked out to, kind of how it's changed, but it's changed just a little bit. My client was happy that I was here and he was happy to have any kind of iterations or changes to our business relationship. Again, it was making things in his best interest.
Speaker 2:So I am going to leave you with a couple of links that I left on a previous podcast, but I'm going to kind of go into them here. So caregivercom I'm not sure if I've actually recommended that specific site. I've recommended some articles. There is one about handling the guilt and, as you can imagine, going through a process that's unknown. You want to make sure that you are doing things and again the estate planning attorney reassured me, from an outside perspective and an objective perspective, that I was doing the right thing by my client and that was very, very reassuring, reassuring.
Speaker 2:The other article it is by the Mental Health America website, so it is mhanationalorg, and in this particular article it really just talks about caregiving in the San Luis generation and there's a lot of facts and it talks about stressors, getting organized family dynamics, dealing with emotions, feeling like a failure or the guilt that I talked about, and navigating certain cultural expectations. That's one to be powerful and know about, and then also taking care of yourself. One of the things that I have done in this particular situation with my client is I had to separate myself. I had to be in a situation to where I could take care of myself and I could still be very objective in this situation, and I had this conversation with the neighbor that was involved that I do have to separate myself and it's more important for me to be in that place where I can take care of myself so I can continue to help take care of my clients. His neighbor really respected that. So I hope you like the information in this article. Cheers, be well and see you on the next episode.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to our podcast. If you are a client and are looking to work directly with Chris and or our firm, head on over to Life After Grief FP. That is Life After Grief FP. The FP is for financial planning. 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 related information referenced in this week's podcast will be located here in the podcast section. Thank you.