The Stories We Lose When We Don't Talk About the Money

Grammy puts butter on her pancakes. A four-year-old asks why. Ian Schaeffer explores how the small family stories we forget to share are connected to the inheritance conversations we forget to have — and what happens when both disappear.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the American Retirement Advisor, coming to you from One to Three Z Studios. Real stories, real strategies, and straight talk about healthcare, retirement income, and inheritance planning. I'm Ian Schaefer, joined with Eddie and Betty. Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Grammy puts sugar and butter on her pancakes. Ian Schaefer's daughter, who is four, watches her do this with the kind of focus only a small child can manage. Then she looks up and asks, Grammy, why are you doing that? Ian's wife, Elise, is sitting across from them, drowning hers in maple syrup, three generations at one breakfast table, and three completely different ways of eating the exact same thing. Grammy laughed and said something about how that's how her mother always made them. Ian's daughter didn't ask a follow-up question, she just went back to eating. But he sat there thinking about what would happen to that story if Grammy hadn't been here to tell it. If that little piece of who we are just quietly disappeared because no one thought to bring it up over breakfast.

SPEAKER_02 1:14

According to the Williams Group, 70% of wealth transfers fail by the second generation, and 90% fail by the third. The primary cause is not bad investments or poor tax planning. It is a breakdown in communication and trust within the family. The families who lose their wealth are overwhelmingly the families who never had the conversation, and it almost always starts with the small stories.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Nobody wakes up one morning and decides to erase the family history. It happens slowly. Grammy's pancake recipe doesn't get written down. The reason grandpa worked doubles at the plant never gets explained to the grandkids. The story of why your parents never took vacations, why they saved every dollar. Those stories feel so obvious to the people who lived them that they forget other people don't know, but they don't. Your kids don't know why the money is there. They don't know what it cost. They don't know about the decades of grinding it out. And if nobody tells them, they'll make assumptions. They'll think it was easy, or they'll think it doesn't matter, or they simply won't think about it at all until a lawyer calls and says there are decisions to make.

SPEAKER_02 2:27

Ian works with retirees every day at American Retirement Advisors in Scottsdale, Arizona. From hundreds of conversations, the families who talk are the families who thrive, not just financially, emotionally. The ones who sit down and say, here's why we did what we did, are the ones whose kids actually understand the weight of what's being passed down.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

The ones who don't talk, they leave behind what Ian has started calling quiet chaos. He's watched this play out closer than most people realize. Two people on our own team lost parents who said the words every family dreads in hindsight. Oh, it's over there. It's pretty well taken care of. It wasn't. What followed wasn't one year of sorting things out or two years, it was three years of wasted hours and misery. Legal questions nobody could answer, documents nobody could find, wishes nobody could confirm. And the worst part? After all of it, the memory of the parents was clouded. The adult children weren't sitting around telling stories about mom and dad. They were buried in unfinished, unresolved challenges that consumed every family gathering for years.

SPEAKER_02 3:43

That phrase, it's pretty well taken care of, might be the most dangerous sentence in estate planning, because it means nobody had the real conversation. It means the hard stuff got skipped and everyone assumed it would work itself out. It doesn't work itself out. One of our clients called and said something that stopped Ian. We really, really need to get started with inheritance planning because my husband is in poor health and we have to get something going. We don't even have a will. That call came not at the beginning of a planning journey, but when crisis was already at the door.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Most people think the inheritance conversation starts with documents: a will, a trust, a list of accounts. And those things matter, but they're not where the conversation starts. The conversation starts at breakfast. It starts when your daughter asks Grammy why she puts butter on her pancakes. That answer carries more weight than any legal document. It says, I come from somewhere, I carry something forward, and I want you to know about it. The financial version of that story is no different. Why did grandpa work the job he worked? What did your parents sacrifice?

SPEAKER_02 4:53

Here's a simple way to start. First, start with the story, not the money. Tell your kids or grandkids why you made the choices you made, the career, the sacrifices, the values behind the numbers. The money makes more sense when it has a story behind it. Second, name who gets what and why. One of our clients is dividing her estate three ways: one-third to each of her surviving daughters, and one third to the children of a daughter who passed away. That decision is the family story. It says, nobody gets forgotten. Third, talk about your wishes while you can. Another client built a farm for her son. He moved to Malta. Now she's reworking her entire plan because the original assumptions don't hold anymore. Life changes and the plan has to change with it. Fourth, write down your passwords. Ian asked a room of 20 people, can you right now take out a pen and write down your username and password with 100% confidence? Four people raised their hands. Four out of twenty. That means for the other 16, a lifetime of digital records disappears.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

Most people hear legacy planning and think it's a fancy word for estate planning. It's not. Estate planning is about documents. Legacy planning is about meaning. Estate planning says, here's the will, here's the trust, here's who gets what. Legacy planning says, here's why, here's the story of this family, here's what we value, here's what I hope you'll carry forward, whether that's a business I spent 30 years building, or a recipe for pancakes that goes back three generations.

SPEAKER_02 6:37

The families who do both are the ones who keep their wealth and their identity intact across generations. According to the American Bar Association, roughly 55% of American adults do not have a will or any estate planning documents. That means more than half the country is leaving every decision to a court that doesn't know their family, their values, or their story. The judge who handles your estate has never tasted Grammy's pancakes, and that judge will never know why that recipe mattered.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

When a family doesn't talk about inheritance, the consequences are not abstract, they're specific and they're painful. Here's what Ian has seen happen and what the data confirms. Probate. Most people don't realize that a will still goes to probate.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

An estate attorney in our office says it clearly. Homes pulled out of trusts. During the 2020 and 2021 refinancing boom, countless homeowners pulled their homes out of their trusts to refinance because that's what the bank required. Then nobody put the home back. One family went 18 years before discovering the house was no longer in their trust. The wrong people making decisions. Without a clear plan, the state decides who inherits. Intestate succession laws don't know that your daughter loved that rocking chair. They don't know that your son wasn't responsible with money. The law applies a formula. Families apply love. Digital lives that vanish. Photos, emails, financial accounts, all locked behind passwords nobody else has. The stories those files contain are irreplaceable, and they're one locked phone away from being gone forever. Every one of these outcomes is preventable, not with a bigger portfolio, with a conversation.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Ian's not going to tell you that watching his mother put butter on her pancakes was a spiritual experience. It was breakfast. It was ordinary. It was a four-year-old asking a question and a grandmother giving an answer she probably gave without thinking twice. But that's exactly what makes it important. The small, ordinary moments are where family identity lives. And if we don't protect them, if we don't pass them down, they vanish as quietly as they arrived. The same is true for the money. If you don't talk about where it came from, what it cost you, and what you want it to do for the people you love, then someone else will make those decisions for you. A court, a formula, a process that doesn't know your family's name, let alone your pancake recipe. You don't need a formal meeting, you don't need a lawyer in the room, you need a moment. Maybe it's a holiday weekend, maybe it's a visit from Grammy. That little question might be the spark you need to have the bigger conversation. Tell the stories, have the conversation, and write down your passwords.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

A quick note before we wrap up: today's episode covers financial topics for educational purposes only. American Retirement Advisors does not provide tax or legal advice. Please consult a CPA or tax professional before making any decisions based on what you heard today.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

This is Betty with the American Retirement Advisor. Thanks for listening. If this episode helped you think differently about your retirement, share it with someone who needs to hear it. You can read the full article and browse hundreds more at AmericanRetire.com. And be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. We publish daily. See you next time.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Thanks, Eddie. Thanks, Betty. Until next time, this is Ian Schaefer coming to you from 123 Easy Studios. I hope you've enjoyed this recording of the American Retirement Advisor, where we make healthcare, income, and adherence planning 123 Easy.