Preparing for the Unthinkable w/ Chanel Reynolds #740

and today we're talking preparing for the Unthinkable with Chanelle Reynolds. Yeah, so this is a topic that's been on our minds, like literally for months, because this past summer we recorded an episode with our Wives that was episode seven oh four, by the way, if you want to go back and listen, and a listener had asked about our communication with our wives and how involved they were with our finances, because it's you know, it's really fun to dream work towards

the different big financial goals that we have, and then of course the day to day discussions, right like what was the water bill that month? How much money's left in the entertainment category.

us handle the bulk of our families finances. The logistics, and that question did spotlight the fact that if something terrible happened to one of us, that it might be difficult for our wives to figure out how to take the reins unless we made a plan for it and so that's why we are honored to be talking with Chanelle Reynolds, who has quite literally been on a mission for the past decade to help folks do what she wished that she had done before life takes a detour,

so we keep it clean here on the podcast. I'll say that Chanelle founded get Your Shizz Together dot com, she authored the book What Matters Most, and both are dedicated to help folks face the inevitable reality of death. Chanelle, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today.

headspace of kind of what to expect. Honestly, we hate to bring up what must be the worst day of your life but can you tell us a little bit about the accident that changed everything for you?

were going to be in for a while. And so for those handful of years where we were stretching and you know, many costs were high, we we hadn't done some of the basic things that we knew of these like small incremental decisions of like buying the stinky cheese,

let's say. And what happened was I was over at a friend's house with my son and went to get my phone out of my purse to take a picture, and notice there are all these calls from numbers I didn't recognize, and my husband had been in an accident, he had been taken to the hospital, and the tone of voice on the voicemail and the lack of information I was getting told me that something was very, very wrong. So I made it to the hospital. He was in the er. He had already been there for a couple

of hours, and people are trying to find me. He had one hundred machines hooked up to him and tubes everywhere, and the er doc said that he had a fifty to fifty chance, and so that seemed better to me than what I had feared most. And then he said, actually, should I need you to listen? If he doesn't die at any second, The paramedics thought he was going to be a doa. If he's stable enough to get into surgery, there's maybe a fifty to fifty chance he can make

it off the table alive. And that's when I realized that no matter what happened, whether he lived or died, and there was a fifty to fifty chance apparently of either that his life, my life, our lives were changed forever. And after a week he did. My late husband was a stubborn man, so he defied the odds as long

as any body could. And after a week in the er and the ICU, all of the tests came back that his injuries were unrecoverable, and I made the decision that I knew he would want because we'd had some but not all, of these conversations and plans in place to remove what was then medical intervention rather than life support.

And during that week in the hospital trying to just figure out what was going on and trying to take care of our son and stepdaughter, became clear to me that there were these hundreds of questions that came up, simple things like do you have your health insurance card? To what are the phone numbers to some of his family members, to do you have your affairs in order? And when the social worker asked me if we had affairs in order, it's just a phrase. Seems silly still

to me. I kind of giggled, but then was very happy to say, yes, we did our wills and all of our stuff. And then a few moments later, as I was walking back into his room, I realized that we did get all of our wills done and they were sitting in my inbox and had been for a

few months waiting to be finalized and signed. So some of the things that we had done, like having some but not enough life insurance, really did kind of offer that life boat for you know, as a bridge from the life we had to whatever the heck my life was going to be now. And some of the things we didn't do, like knowing passwords to phones. It took me dozens of hours to try to access something or

get a phone turned back on. And you know, to this day, I still don't know if he bought bitcoin in two thousand and nine because I can't find the information.

kind of generic things. So the fifty percent of the stuff i'd say was was primarily more like for that long, faraway future inevitable, you know, surrounded by our grandchildren on a lake in our you know, deathbed, laughing at jokes or something. But we hadn't really and that's even that's

a challenging thing to do. You know, fifty percent of us adults don't have wills done, don't have advanced care directives or living wills done, and without some urgency or a trigger in some case, or an accident, we don't know how much it hurts until we see it or we live through it in some ways. So the parts that surprised me, i'd say, and I would not give us one hundred percent marks on having everything done in advance, but what we had done made such a difference. Some

of the things like, you know, an emergency fund. We know that it can be hard just to get through the month paying the bills that we have, much less saving for an emergency, but having an emergency fund really does and did offer some kind of cushioned just to be able to figure out what's going on, or you know, let's say in somebody's situation, by a plane ticket to

go visit a family member, that kind of thing. But you know, like the what if stuff, What if something happens, what would I want or need for the next twenty four to forty eight hours, What would I want or need for a few weeks? Or what if that what if thing is? What's happening now? How prepared am I and passwords, phone numbers, emergency contact plans, Having like an extra key outside of the house so someone could go feed the dog, so the dog wouldn't eat the couch.

You know, just some of these things keep life moving somewhat forward. When a big bomb gets dropped in your life, whether it's a disastrous accident like in my case, or you know, a diagnosis or illness in the family, some of these things we know we'll find us one day or another totally.

thinking of the best potential outcomes for our lives. I noticed in your Twitter profile, I think I saw optimist in there, which is we Oftentimes when we are more optimistic, we don't necessarily think that, oh, these are necessary precautions that we should take. It's almost a matter of waking up to the reality that this might definitely happen.

And what I learned from that experience is when you don't have those things that you wish you could turn to, like you can't buy life insurance after you're dead, it's hard to build up an emergency fund while you're in the middle of an emergency and you need a little bit of flexibility and breathing room.

and you know, optimizing and moving things around. So I think that's great and I wouldn't necessarily suggest someone who can't stand to look at a spreadsheet or or a financial statement all of a sudden take on fifty percent, because it has to be fifty to fifty, but.

our financial priorities do? I have all of the information, and we update our shared password manager. So if something were to happen, and let's say it's a four hour close call and I needed to be gone for a weekend and my partner would want to pay a bill or access something, they know where that is and I would know where their other information is. So now sexy future bonding intimate conversation is talking about like life insurance

beneficiaries in my household. To be totally honest, and it really is an opportunity to talk about wanting your partner to be okay no matter what, want you wanting to be okay, no matter what, building a loving future for however long that future is for you together or your family, and then whoever whoever moves forward in that future. Because women, in particular, eight out of ten women and hetero relationships are going to live longer than their male partners or husbands.

And so I think it's really important that we have these conversations, not just hey, babe, what's the Netflix password today?

still be a beneficiary. But there's a level of transparency and communication which which for me takes a lot of that fear and a lot of that worry, and for a lot of people the wonder, like the wondering what would happen if something happened? I know or I know nineteen answers out of twenty and it's incredibly wildly reassuring to me.

but also how to go about logging in. How is it that you're able to keep that safe but also accessible to those that you want to have it?

it that you are wanting to share this information with. So, for example, with my parents, I had purchased one of the more expensive kind of concierge organized much easier to use online vaults and storage, and they wouldn't use it. They wouldn't use it. They wouldn't use it, like, can I send someone to your house to set it up for you? They can bring some pie it just the answer was yes, of course, honey, this sounds great, and

they never used it. So if I'm trying to communicate information to my parents or a generation of people, or somebody who thinks password managers aren't safe no matter what, or they're just not going to use it, I have my own password manager and there's a number of them, you know. Some of the ones that have been highest on review lists are Bitwarden and one password. I had used last Pass for a number of years until there were security breaches recently and the communication around them I

didn't like, so I decided to move. I'm not affiliated with any one of them. There are you know, there's your Google Drive or there's an Excel spreadsheet. People who are good at and want to take care of, you know,

they have their own system. You can create a safe or safer way to track your most important, most important passwords and accounts, and if you are going to hand them off to somebody who is not computer savvy or won't log into the password manager to get the email that says you know, you're the legacy contact and then they accept it. In some cases, I just have a

folder and it's in my little waterproof, fireproof case. And every year or so when I see family, I hand off to my you know mom, now the updated folder with the spreadsheet, and my brother and my partner are

my digital powers of attorney. And so that makes me, it makes me feel reassured that if something were to happen and I didn't log into my password manager account after a certain amount of time, they would get an email and they would be able to access the files that I've given them access to, so nothing will get lost. Right like when it comes to your analog or your digital stuff in your house for when you need somebody to come in and help you or pay bills or

find something. There's absolutely things you don't want to get lost. You don't want your four O one K drifting off into the ether somewhere and nobody ever knows where it is and nobody ever gets it. And they are more gazillions of dollars out there that are unclaimed. My impression of the many insurance companies that are out there is they're not probably prioritizing finding people who haven't filed claims

to get the money back from them. So we want our friends and family to find the things we want them to find, and also maybe not find everything. Right. There might be a special box somewhere of who knows, like really embarrassing journals when you wrote poetry, or some more consenting adult type things that you might not want

your mother or your children to find. So you might want to have a plan for who comes and takes care of what, not just your digital files, but also like who you want to have your you know, Elvis impersonator outfit collection too.

part of the maintenance. So if we kind of take the scary way and just make it maybe like a boring tax I feel like it might be easier for us to do. In general, one of the things that any attorney who you would talk to about estate planning, any question you ask, generally, the first response back is it depends, and it does. It depends on a number

of things, like which state you live in. You know, there are many as we you know here in the news and know from maybe personal experience, laws vary from state to state, and that's true also when it comes to estate planning and probate. So that's what happens if you die without a will, which you should not want, and.

So the cost of doing nothing is lower than perhaps somebody who's still legally married, strange from their partner, who and they have a really bad relationship with their family and the last people on earth they would want talking to doctors, being in a hospital room, or getting any of their stuff or assets is their legal spouse or anyone in their family. And so it can be devastating. You know, we've heard stories about you know, people not

being let in the room and terrible, terrible arguments. But most foundational state planning packets have three documents. One is your will and that's who gets your stuff after you die, and other important decisions like guardianship, who you would want to be a guardian for your children, your pets, or I worked with somebody who had a really extensive plant a collection, and so there was like there was a guardianship plan for the for the plants. I'm like, that's brilliant.

used their power of attorney document. Let's say, if you had COVID and you were very ill or intubated in a hospital for a few weeks or a month, that can be really handy, so paperwork in life can still move forward. The third document is called an advanced care directive or a living will, and those are your wishes and instructions that you give in advance as directly as possible about the kind of care you do and don't

want at the end of your life. So an example would be someone goes into hospice, you have a medical advocate, someone who can communicate with family or doctors or whoever, and say, you know, Chanelle and I talked about this. I have her piece of paper right here, I'm the

person named. And she absolutely didn't want Abba playing. She absolutely wanted led Zeppelin playing, So turn the radio station to the Zeppelin radio station, and or Chanelle had said, this is these are her quality of life priorities where she's at right now. I know she would not want to do an invasive surgery with little chance of actually getting better, and her final days would be in pain rather than more present. And she wants fewer days, but better ones rather than lots of bad days.

and he was. He never regained consciousness, He could never participate in the world in any way at all. It was way past his quality of life. His injuries were unrecoverable. And after a week in the er and the ICU, and this is, you know, twelve years ago or more, it costs like three hundred and fifty thousand dollars or more, I believe it for that week in the hospital. And had we not had healthcare, had you know, they're not been all of these other things in place, that medical debt,

that amount of like you know, the bills. I started measuring them not in in numbers of pages, but inches there was like four or five inches of those like you know, those medical statements that you get, and I had to get like two binders because it wouldn't fit in one binder. So quality of life is important. And I certainly don't want to say, you know, cost equals care, but it is really really, really really expensive. And if you know somebody doesn't want something, it's really important to

have that information from them. So advance care directive you give your directions in advance to people about your care. And each of those documents, often people will name their spouse or their you know, their primary person as the main person, the power of attorney, the executor of the will, and the medical advocate. And that's great, and that's a

great option. You should always list a backup in case that person, let's say, is you know, in the Grand Canyon and off the grid for two weeks and you don't know where they are. You need a backup. And I have worked with and talked with many people who are like, I absolutely don't want my partner to have to handle all the finances. I'm going to hire somebody or I'm going to ask my good friend who's an accountant to help with that and you know, with transparency

and communication. But I will say, during those months after my husband died, I had a young kid who I was trying to get to school on time. There were some days if I could like get up and find pants and get my son to school on time and make one phone call, I was killing it. So it's a overwhelmed amount of stuff to do. And you can spread that overwhelming amount of stuff to do. You can spread that love around to people who might be better at being a financial power of attorney.

of hours on the back end. Talk to me too about maybe where lawyers fit into this, or where online services fit in. So, for instance, getting life insurance that's often something you can do online pretty easily, or wills if you have a simpler kind of family situation, you might be able to do that from a DIY perspective at a site like trust and Will or free will or something like that, in which case is a lawyer nes to And when do people? Are people able to do it themselves online?

probably going to be worth more. If you don't have complicated, let's say, like a blended family situation or an overly litigious family member, if you don't have international citizenship, most many people using an online template is just fine for them. I would say that one of the things that happens is we really really want to make these perfect documents. We want to have thought of every possible scenario, every possible edge case, and that can sometimes get us restuck

in the process of getting it done. So for me, I think it's most important to think about what's most important to you. Is it that your legal spouse is the one who is still on paper, is the one who's going to talk for you and get all of your assets, update a few of your documents, and name somebody else as your medical advocate. Are you a solo parent and your biggest concern is guardianship of your children? Fill out a guardianship paper. You can do these things

kind of bit by bit. You don't have you know, you can eat the elephant off your chest to bite at a time. And for those folks who spending the thousand couple thousand dollars to work with an attorney, you may not know what you don't know, and this is

the attorney's job. You can talk to a few They usually offer free consultations for you know, twenty thirty minutes, and ask them how they charge and what they charge, and you know you're going to probably get a much better, much more comprehensive plan if you talk to an attorney, if you're not going to, if you don't need to, if you had a bad experience with an attorney and you just won't. And those online options can cost anywhere from free for a very very basic simple will to

a few hundred dollars. And you can also get now some basic trust packages. And that's for folks who if we want to talk about like beneficiary designations and handing off assets. One of the reasons why we do all of this stuff is because I think most importantly it saves our family and friends those couple hundred extra hours of anguish trying to figure out where stuff is, who

gets what. You know, like your weird neighbor Bob won't come over and steal the lawnmower, or if it does, you can go back and get it because you're like Bob, you're screwed. It's not yours. So it can make that really really hard time maybe just a bit softer for family members. Also, when it comes to like money transfer, all of your assets that go through a will, it takes you know, it can take on average about a

year and hundreds of hours. And also you know some of your assets are subject to federal inheritance tax, a state tax, different things. So a trust or naming beneficiaries on all of your financial account is one way to simplify your estate dramatically, so the stuff left in like in your will, is going to be an easier process. It's you know, the Elvis costumes and the ABA vinyl and not necessarily who gets the million dollar life insurance policy? And then people start fighting over the house.

have that money. So yeah, how important is it to go in there and update the beneficiaries in the back end of those retirement accounts?

get it. So yes, transfer on death, payable on death. They trump the will, They beat the will. And nearly every financial account we all have has the option or the you can have a beneficiary designation. You're a four oh one K, you're checking, you're saving your investments often you know, stocks, pretty much anything you have. And then the other things that people can sometimes forget about is your life insurance policy. That is a transfer or payable

on death account. It is immediately transferred to the person who's named as a beneficiary, and in about two thirds of states there's also as on death deed option, and the process for that is, you know, essentially going to a county office and writing up some paperwork. That isn't quite as easy as going to your online account and updating your beneficiaries on your you know, your credit union account online, which takes about five minutes. It's a little

bit more of a process. But for many, many people, we have a life insurance policy, we have whatever savings we have, and for many folks, our homes are the biggest assets we have, and it isn't the perfect solution for everyone, and there may or may not be tax implications.

But if but for many people they don't know that they can do a transfer on death deed, and then that house would be transferred to somebody else, and then you know, and that's not even really talking about joint accounts and how joint accounts are often treated differently when it comes to after somebody dies as well.

sign it with you. Those holographic or those written wills are often less contested and I think more originally created an allowance for when it comes to people at war time or on hospital beds, So I wouldn't if you spent you know, a ton of money coming up with like a really bomb proof state plan in one of those like leather bound things, and then somebody shows up like, oh no, they wrote this on this post it note and they said I should have it all like that

may not actually be as water tight as you might think, but but yeah, and you know, also I always get in trouble when I say this, but you are not legally required to have your will notarized for it to be legally binding. Is it a good idea? Yes? Do attorneys say you should do it? Yes? Do I think you should do it? Yes? You can hire a mobile notary to come to your office or a coffee shop.

It helps make it even that much more secure. But for a lot of folks, you know, choosing a guardian can be a big hard blocker because it's hard to do and executing that will, you know, like you and your partner or you can't get to the bank with the notary, and so that I think is one of the reasons. Why Well that that's me making excuses. I'll say, you know, it's a hurdle.

is something that we can revisit. Like you said, this is something as long as you get the ball rolling, that can go a really long ways. But we've got a few more questions for you here, Chanelle, in particular, just kind of navigating some of the relational waters. Sometimes they can get murky. We'll get to those right after this.

for my family, my wife, my kids. But they made me think about my parents, and they are in their upper sixties, and I don't know where any of their stuff is. Like, I know a few things because we've talked about and I've helped them with some of their retirement planning and stuff like that, so I know kind of roughly where they stand on some of these things. But if if something were to incapacitate one of them, like I think, I would be up the creek. I

wouldn't know where to go. So do you have any tips for talking to a loved one, a parent specifically about some of these things and how to you're talking about your parents trying to lead a horse to water, right, how do you actually help make sure that your parents are prepared and so that you're intern prepared when when or if something happens to them.

with you, that can be a good place. For example, for about five years after my late husband died, I would pretty much run around and put anyone like an a half Nelson and try to shame them to getting their estate plans together. And was that really motivating and

successful plan? Now? It wasn't. When I would say to my close friends or my close family members, or my parents and my brother, hey I updated all of my documents again, that creates an opportunity to say, hey, this just reminds me, I don't know where your current documents are. I don't know exactly what you'd want or how I can make sure I know what you want, so I can make sure you get that. Yeah, and so like that.

That can be a great way to turn it into like a gift and a sharing rather than an obligation. You know, going up to your parents as I probably did however long ago, and saying, so, you guys are getting older, do you have your wills done? Like that may be the best way to do it. Also, the same guilt route, the shame guilt route, you know, it might work in other families. And then one thing too, is that it can be it's often not just one

conversation some people. You know, if you bring up the topic of like, hey, let's talk about you know, your end of life or your funeral plans. Do you want to be you know, recomposed? Do you want to be cremated? I know we've got the family plot somewhere. More more often than people might expect, the conversation blossoms quickly and openly, and it can be such a huge reassurance. Sometimes people aren't immediately interested in having that conversation, so you know,

come at it from a few different entry points. Is it like I want to be able to advocate for you? Is it tell me some stories about what's most important to you. One of the things that often happens when parents or somebody is getting to the point where they may not be able to live independently or in the home that they're in right now. Often the first question I get, or where people get the frustration energy centers is on what do I do with all the stuff?

And sometimes like they're like, well, I got to go into the garage or I got to go in to the basement and start throwing out all my parents' stuff, and it's going to be really hard because my mom or my dad is going to take the stuff out of the truck and put it back inside. So rather than starting with the detritus of our lives and our stuff, I think it's so fascinating and so helpful to ask

what are the most important things to you? And so if you had not one minute and not ten hours, but if you had an hour in your house to grab safely anything before the aliens arrive or a fire starts, what would you get and take with you what's most important to you in an hour? And then those are the things that you know are the most important, And then you can say, oh, so great, so tell me more about how we can make sure your sister gets

this thing. So like starting with the important stuff rather than starting with the fear or the worry or the you know, boxes of national geographics from the seventies that are in the attic can be a really good way to start the conversation too.

My father in law, he's actually over time he's been sending my kids letters with little notes, and literally yesterday he sent he included track and field metal that he won in high school that he shared with one of my daughters specifically, and this is something he's been carrying around for fifty years, right, and so it's obviously meant

something to him. And so the ability to kind of share that with my daughter and kind of talk through this was It makes the relationship that you have now with that parent who is aging even richer, which I love.

that kind of thing too. But even when it comes to funeral plans, because I think oftentimes it's just one of those morbid topics and folks don't really want to spend time talking about that at all, but that can having brought that up can provide so much relief to those who have to make some pretty heavy decisions afterwards.

to pick a funeral home right away. I had no idea that you had about you know, twenty four or forty eight hours before the body now you know, I had to get moved to somewhere, And at that point it had been a week for me in the hospital. Other people have spent you know, years managing a diagnosis or months in hospice, and we hadn't really thought about what happens after you die. I knew he didn't want

to be buried and wanted to be cremated. I had some of the information, but I was not ready or prepared or even had any idea that funeral plans, death care, and after death plans are like right now, it's like, oh okay, there are more options too than we realized that. You know, in a number of states there is a recomposition body recomposting or composting process that's legal in a

few states, and more and more are signing on. There's aquamation, so talking about what's important and you know, whether that's being buried in your Elvis impersonator outfit or whether that's you know, having somebody bring your body home or be home for a day. There are a number of things you can do. You just have more options, which is which is really great. And you know, somebody could say I had no idea that I didn't just get to pick animation or burial, and now you've got a beautiful

plot buried under a tree. You never know.

Where can our listeners find out more about you, what you're up to and even have like checklists and resources on your website to help people kind of start to have these conversations and do the things that need to be done to be fully prepared.

So yeah, check out my website or send me a note through the website and I'd be happy to chat with anyone as well.

are really important to have in place. Until you're faced with us story like this, we can see yourself in that situation. And I mean literally we like we're the same age as she and her husband about a decade ago.

of these things done. You might say, oh, I don't want to pay the one hundred and eighty dollars to get the will made, but that one hundred and eighty dollars could save you thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on the back end. So even though she didn't actually say that, like during the podcast, you said it right after we like when we were just chatting afterwards.

Well that's the financial argument. Yeah, And I'm like, all right, That's my big takeaway from this conversation with Chanel was just like, hey, guess what, Like, if you care about the money you have worked your butt off to save and invest, and you want to protect that inherentants for future generations, for your spouse, for the people that you that you love, and you want to inherit the things that you've amasked in the case of the most unfortunate

event ever happening, then you're gonna want to plan ahead. You're gonna want to get these things done even though they cost money, exactly, and you want to do them ahead of time.

life stuff. But that's not my official big take a lay when she was talking about digital hygiene and one of the parameters that she put around how it is that you should approach keeping up with your information and passing along logins and accounts was going with systems that you a already have in place or b that you know are going to be successful because you can try to take this giant bite out of something that you think is, well, this is we got to do it

this way because this is how you're supposed to do it, this is how it's going to be perfect. But the fact is it needs to be something that you're actually going to keep up with that's going to work for whoever the intended audience is going to be.

He's been telling me that he makes beer for a long time and finally we're getting to try it. So what are your thoughts on this one?

order to make this red phenomenal. It's like an under so good, underutilized style, and so it's fun.

we do. And do I know who you are? I don't know well last name. Thanks Thanks for letting us try your beer on today's episode. This was Yeah, but Matt, that's going to do it for this episode again. We'll put links to all the important stuff in the show notes up on our website at howtomoney dot com.