Nobody wants to think about their own mortality. But careful planning can ensure that both your final wishes are granted as directed, and that your loved ones won't have added stress on top of their grief.
Richard and Jag discuss the advantages of digital organizers in today's episode. Many, such as Everplans, can help you create a final plan. And you can set it up to give access to who you want, when you want.
At the end of today's episode, Richard makes a very generous offer to anyone listening.
Learn more:
Email Richard: ROring@ncfg.com
New Century Financial Group Website
Call Richard: 609-924-2049 x126
Nobody wants to think about their own mortality. But careful planning can ensure that both your final wishes are granted as directed, and that your loved ones won't have added stress on top of their grief.
Richard and Jag discuss the advantages of digital organizers in today's episode. Many, such as Everplans, can help you create a final plan. And you can set it up to give access to who you want, when you want.
At the end of today's episode, Richard makes a very generous offer to anyone listening.
Learn more:
Email Richard: ROring@ncfg.com
New Century Financial Group Website
Call Richard: 609-924-2049 x126
Jag Gay:
Welcome in to Financial Matters with Richard Oring. I am John Jag Gay joined once again by Richard. Great to be with you, sir.
Richard Oring:
It's great being here, Jag.
Jag Gay:
Happy new year.
Richard Oring:
Happy new year.
Jag Gay:
So one of the things we're going to talk about with it being a new year and a lot of times people make resolutions and take stock of where they are financially at this time on the calendar. We want to talk about getting your household digitally organized. What do we mean by that? Where do you want to start?
Richard Oring:
Well what I don't mean is trying to figure out how to digitally organize your spice cabinet. That's the last thing I really care about. What I'm talking about is getting all your financial information organized in one spot. A lot of times people write things down, they put journals, they don't update it, they lose it. Also people can find it.
Jag Gay:
You are preaching to the choir because I got to jump in here and tell you that whenever I play tech support for my folks, whenever I go visit Mom and Dad, I just got so frustrated, I just put a notebook next to the computer. Here's your AOL password, here's your Comcast password, here's your Apple password, here's this, here's that. And then it expired and they change and now they have no idea what any of their passwords are. And it's beyond frustrating.
Richard Oring:
You know, in this business you see everything and it's amazing. Even myself, I keep ... my mom when my dad passed away in '09, it was like a year and a half later my mom got a notification from Prudential on life insurance. No one knew about it.
Jag Gay:
Really?
Richard Oring:
It was paid up life insurance. She had no clue. We had to fill out some paperwork and they sent us a check. So I mean there's a very important reason why you want to have everything organized and not just knowing where you know where it is, but your spouse or maybe an adult child or a trusted friend or relative, knowing where to find that for, God forbid something should happen to you being in a hospital or death. Jag, everyone works really hard and saves and they had these goals and what they want to do with their money. And unfortunately a lot of people pass away and they never shared their wishes, what they want done with everything. It could be as simple as I want my body donated to science or I want to be buried. I live in Florida now, but I want to be buried back home in New Jersey. There's so many different things you need to let people know. And we always say, there's always tomorrow. I could do it tomorrow.
Richard Oring:
Having this organized somewhere documented ensures that your final wishes could be carried out.
Jag Gay:
It needs to be spelled out to the letter and then it needs to be in a place where somebody after you can find it because otherwise it's just a guess whether that's power of attorney, medical stuff, what you're going to do with your finances. Like you said, where you want to be buried, if you want to have your ashes scattered somewhere. You need to have a plan and more importantly or just as importantly, somebody needs to know what that plan is and where to find it.
Richard Oring:
I remember when I first got into business, the mutual fund companies used to, for marketing purposes, used to give the financial advisors these booklets to give to our clients and it would say like, oh who's my accountant, my lawyer, what do I want done? And people looked at it like maybe they did it once.
Jag Gay:
It's just checking the box at that point.
Richard Oring:
Yeah, I have one right now who every year makes an appointment to update that list with me to make sure I have everything. We are now digitally set up and her adult daughters are very into it also helping out mom because her husband passed away. She's very concerned about when she passes, the mom, that things are done exactly the way she wants it down to the point to the eulogy speech.
Jag Gay:
Wow.
Richard Oring:
Yeah. I mean she's very detailed on what she wants done.
Jag Gay:
So it used to be back in the day, I think about when I was a kid in the 80s everything before computers really got so prevalent and the internet did, everything was just all written down by hand, right?
Richard Oring:
Yep. So this year it was my goal to get clients organized. So there's a problem call Everplans. There's a lot of these digital applications out there which help you get organizers. There's Everplans, there's my life and wishes, and another big one is cake, which helps you archive everything and then someone can access it upon death or you can give them access earlier, they can have it. More and more of these programs are coming up. When we were prepping for this, I was Googling some of this and Wall Street Journal had articles, I mean all the big financial magazines had articles on the importance of using these. But this year I decided I wanted to lay out the cost on myself, but make sure my clients had access to it.
Jag Gay:
That's great. And prior to our recording today, you had sent me a link to go check out the program and I thought it was great to have everything organized in one place. I mean, right down to your passwords for websites to have it all in one place and nowhere to get it as opposed to having it just scattershot all over the house.
Richard Oring:
You know, as a financial advisor, I have my own office, so a lot of my personal documents for home I keep in the office. So my wife's been bugging me to do exactly what I'm telling everyone else to do. Sometimes you're your worst own client and just getting everything, where the car insurance policies are, the life insurance policies, our living document for our wills and like insurance trusts, everything. She wants to know where everything is. So I showed her this, and we're now setting this up for our household and it gives her a lot of comfort knowing where everything is.
Jag Gay:
It's the whole, if I get hit by the proverbial bus tomorrow, somebody knows where to find everything.
Richard Oring:
Yep. So as a financial advisor when I was going through all these programs, they all have a lot of bells and whistles, a little bit different. One of the biggest things I was looking for was portability for the client. So even though I'm paying for the licenses from my clients, I wanted to make sure that they weren't stuck using me just because of that. If they're not happy with my services, they move and they want to work with a local advisor, I wanted to make sure that they could take their data and move it with them. Everplans has a program with financial advisors where we could pay for it, but if the client, for whatever reason, they can get their own license and it's cheap. It's like $70 or $80 a year or God forbid I die early. Yeah. They should have access to their data because it's something which is not going to be ... you just can't do this in an hour.
Richard Oring:
As you know, you just logged in. I always recommend clients breaking down sections at a time. You can make it really complicated. You can scan all your insurance documents, you can scan the wills, or you could just say my insurance documents are stored in the file cabinet in the basement. You know, letting people know where it is. So there's two different ways you can enter the data, but if you're very thorough and you want to enter everything, it's going to take a while.
Jag Gay:
All right, so let's talk about it a little bit. If it's me or if it's a client of yours or if it's somebody listening and they log into the Everplans, and again, like you said, there's many of them, but we'll use Everplans as an example because that's the one that you're specifically working with. How does the whole program work and how do people get in? How do people get started?
Richard Oring:
Okay, so first off they have to request a login. So my clients would contact me. I need both a husband and wife's full names and email addresses. A lot of times we have the email address for just one of them, like for a house [inaudible 00:06:50]. We need it for a separate, if they want to have individual logins. Then as you log in and it kind of goes through a wizard, asks you a few questions, do you have this, do you have that? Do you have a will? Professionals, and then when you're done answering the questions it creates folders for you. In each folder there is different categories. So the first one would be like personal info and ideas. There you're going to find your name and other things like your religion.
Richard Oring:
Your IDs, your social security cards, your marriage certificates, things like that. You're going to find other things that you might not have even thought of, like affiliations or your military service. When my dad passed away in '09, I never knew my dad was a Mason.
Jag Gay:
Really.
Richard Oring:
Never knew. He wasn't active when I was around. So it must've been something before kids or whatever. I guess you're a Mason for life. And my mom made sure that there was a Mason service before their general service. So if I didn't know, God forbid my dad passed away after my mom, he would not have had that service for the Masons.
Jag Gay:
I will say regarding this in having looked into Everplans and played around with it for a little while, it does make it very, very easy. It walks you through step by step by step by step and you know if there's a part you want to skip, if you say you know I don't want to give that piece of information, you can just keep working. So it really is going to be customized for exactly what you want.
Richard Oring:
Yep. So the next section I'll talk about is the digital information section. And when I first logged in I was like all right, password management program. So I personally wouldn't put my passwords in it. What I did is I put my password software program information in it. Okay. So like I use robo form. So then that's where I would put my username password so someone can access it if they need to. But your email account information so you can cancel someone's email or forward email for temporary if they're in a nursing home or rehab center or something, airline miles, everything you can think of imagined digital. Here's the best thing I've found in there. So having three boys who oldest is 15, youngest is nine, they're all on computers. They all have X-Box profiles or Fortnite or whatever and they do not remember their username and passwords for these programs.
Jag Gay:
I'm glad it's young people too and not just older and middle aged folks because I feel better than kids forget their passwords too.
Richard Oring:
In the digital section, it's so defined. They even have a section for your gaming information.
Jag Gay:
Wow.
Richard Oring:
So the next category would be your home and property. You have your house, your cars, maybe some expensive jewelries and things like that where you want ... not everyone stores their jewelry in their house anymore. Some expensive pieces might be at the bank safe deposit box or maybe they lent it to someone like, hey I'm going to lend it to my daughter, but upon my death it has to be appraised and things like that for the estate value.
Jag Gay:
Sure.
Richard Oring:
Then we go into the financial state section. That's where you're going to be listing your bank accounts, your investment accounts, but you're not listing the individual holdings. You're not listing the cost basis, things like that. It's just enough information for someone to know who to reach out to.
Jag Gay:
Yeah.
Richard Oring:
And get their information. You're also going to have your credit cards and loans. It's interesting. When my mom passed away, I called all the credit card companies, canceled everything, and one of them was like, oh, your mom just got charged like a hundred and some dollars for the annual fee. It was like the Amazon card.
Jag Gay:
Oh my gosh.
Richard Oring:
And the person was so nice to me. He's like, don't worry about it. I'm going to put a request to get it reversed.
Jag Gay:
Oh, that's nice.
Richard Oring:
Yeah. That was April of 2018. Now I have a collection agency going after a hundred and 20 something dollars.
Jag Gay:
Oh my gosh.
Richard Oring:
And I'm like, really?
Jag Gay:
You talk about stereotypical heartless credit card companies. There you go.
Richard Oring:
Right. But I guess with my mom being her financial advisor and knowing where everything was, I was glad to know where all her credit cards were. Because she didn't have cards where she always carried with her. She had cards just set up on the computer. I'll give you an example is the Apple card. You don't have to have a physical card for the Apple card.
Jag Gay:
It's all on your phone.
Richard Oring:
It's all on your phone. So if someone passed away, how would you ever think of knowing to go on their iPhone to pay their Apple credit card?
Jag Gay:
Right. It's a good point.
Richard Oring:
They're not mailing statements. So it's important to list all that and loans. So let's say you lent money to a friend or a child or with the bank, I would put loans on who owe you money or money you owed. Then you go into your trusted advisors. This is really important. It's interesting. A lot of times the kids know to call me. It's amazing. I've had people, clients of mine in the hospital, their spouse died 15 minutes ago and I'm getting the phone call already because they don't know what to do.
Jag Gay:
They're panicked.
Richard Oring:
They're panic. Who do I call? I call Rich. Rich will figure out who do I call? I need to get funeral money, I need to do this and that. And I usually say, all right, you know what? You know you have money for this, you have that, we'll take care. Just breathe. Just breathe, call your family. You know, I'll come over tomorrow, we'll sit down or whenever after the funeral we'll go over everything. But they don't think of ever calling their lawyer, their accountant, their insurance people. It's usually in our meeting and I'm telling them to reach out. So there's times where I don't know their accountant or so forth and they should be calling them.
Richard Oring:
But if someone passes away, you don't know who the accountant is. You don't even know where the tax returns are sometimes. So you're trying to figure it out.
Jag Gay:
It goes back to the general theme of this whole thing, which is having all this information available for somebody to access so they know where to go, what's out there, and what needs to be addressed.
Richard Oring:
Yep. Then you have your insurance information. People don't realize a lot of times you're prepaying for your insurance. So give you an example again with my mom. My mom passed away in April. I notified the Allstate agent, sorry for picking on Allstate right now. I'm sure it could happen to any of them. They canceled the policy. They just refunded me the premium prepaid.
Jag Gay:
Nine months later.
Richard Oring:
Right. The state tax return has already been approved by the state. So I mean it's crazy things like that. So I would list any type of insurance policies. Like I mentioned before, my dad with his life insurance and I've had other clients find insurance policies. This morning I was on the phone with a client, her husband, unfortunately is in a nursing home with Parkinson's and early Alzheimer's beginning and she found a $25,000 life insurance policy she didn't know about. And I said to her, well, just because you found the policy doesn't mean it's still enforced. So she needs to find out if that's still enforced. She only found it because she was going through her husband's file cabinets to see what's there.
Richard Oring:
The next thing is tax returns. Now this is something you may want to be careful with or not. Even on the program on Everplans, it talks about uploading your tax returns. They sometimes recommend that you cross off like your social security number so it's not scanned.
Jag Gay:
Just for a little bit of extra security and peace of mind. Sure.
Richard Oring:
Yeah. Another layer. I always tell clients archive seven years of tax returns to be safe, which is usually what the IRS requires. So I would suggest putting at least the previous year's return on, so people know. The next section is your legal documents. It always has ... you're going to find things about your attorney again, where your will is located.
Jag Gay:
Important.
Richard Oring:
You know, a lot of the bigger firms store the original copy of the will for you in their vault. Sometimes people keep it in their house, but they need to know where it is. The power of attorneys, medical directives, any trust and things like that would be in that category. The big thing is the health documents now.
Jag Gay:
So important. Yep.
Richard Oring:
Unfortunately remember that case years ago in Florida? What was her name? Alice Shriner.
Jag Gay:
Terri Schiavo.
Richard Oring:
Yes. So that really brought this to light with her husband and her parents fighting on what she would want to do to end support or not. So this is where you're going to put that information in there. What do I ... do I have a living will? Do I have a medical directive? What would I want? Who are my doctors? Who to call. Do I have any allergies? My health insurance information card, things like that. That's where you're going to put in that category. That's really important. The next category is family and loved ones. That's where you're going to list your emergency contacts. A lot of times we only list one. You know, you go to the doctor, who's your emergency contact? My spouse. What happens if you're both in an accident? Who do I call then?
Richard Oring:
All right. So having additional contact for emergencies is good to list. What to do with your pets? Where are your pets? What kind of care? Are there any special needs for your pets? Listing that there and then you can always list other family members and friends. I hate to say this, I kind of use it that that's the call list if something happens to you so you can notify.
Jag Gay:
I'll mention here, we're talking specifically about Everplans, but there's also so many of the different ways to do this and these are all things you need to have somewhere for someone to find, as you plan for things. I just noticed on my iPhone maybe about a month ago, if you click the button a couple times, there's emergency call 911, but you can actually set it up so that it will alert contacts designated in your phone if there's an emergency.
Richard Oring:
Oh wow.
Jag Gay:
It will call anywhere from I think up to 10 people if there's a problem and this is how good it is. I was actually just playing around with it and I was seeing what would happen if I hit like the emergency thing and it said calling 911. So I hung up and then about five minutes later I get a call from a number that I didn't recognize. It's like, hi this is the police department. You got a 911 call from this number. Is everything okay? Oh yeah, I'm so sorry. It was just an accident. Okay, no problem. Happens at the time. But like they saw that abandoned call came in from my iPhone and they knew to call that number right back.
Jag Gay:
So the technology really is improving and it speaks to the importance of having the ability to reach out to people if something were to have happened to you and if God forbid you were in a car accident, you're in the emergency room and you're unconscious or incapacitated, a doctor or nurse can hit that button on your phone, even if it's locked and then it'll notify the people that it needs.
Richard Oring:
Yep. That's important. I don't know if you've ever heard of a company called road ID?
Jag Gay:
I have not. No.
Richard Oring:
So road ID straight off recyclist for people go for bike rides.
Jag Gay:
I haven't had a bike in 25 years. That would explain why I haven't heard of them.
Richard Oring:
So literally it's a bracelet you wear on your ... it's like a nylon bracelet you wear on your wrist and it has a metal tag and it has your name and it has an emergency contact phone number and then it has an ID number with another phone number. And if you're in an accident, the paramedics calls that 800 number. They give the number on your tag to them and it has your doctor, your blood type, everything. So if you need carry it, you know you can get it, and then they call your emergency contact and let them know something happened to you.
Jag Gay:
And that's even something that's on your phone now too. You can set up ... My parents on their iPhones, you can set up a medical ID so that-
Richard Oring:
Nice.
Jag Gay:
You can say, okay, blood type, doctor, allergies, any of that kind of stuff if God forbid you're in a situation where you can't speak for yourself.
Richard Oring:
Right. So fast forward road ID. What's interesting is so I had to reorder a new one because what I realized was I had the wrong emergency contact phone number. I put my own number. I was kind of stupid. It took me like 10 years to realize it. But so I ordered a new one and at the same time on the check I noticed they had other products. They had the little metal tag that goes on the iWatch on the band. So now my iWatch has that little metal tag. We'll go once step farther. On my dog's leashes, they even have the metal ones for dogs now.
Jag Gay:
No kidding.
Richard Oring:
So if your dog gets lost or needs something, they can look it up, they can see who to call if something happens to your dog.
Jag Gay:
Wow.
Richard Oring:
It's pretty cool. So having information is important. It doesn't matter if it's on this online or a medical bracelet, like you're saying on your phone or you know the road ID. It's important to get the information out there when you need it.
Jag Gay:
Absolutely. So what else are our next steps after emergency contacts and pets and family and friends? What are we tackling next in getting digitally organized here?
Richard Oring:
Let's talk about what we all hate doing and that's aging.
Jag Gay:
Yes.
Richard Oring:
So aging is where you're going to list providers. Now I'm 47. I know you're younger than me, so we don't really think about this kind of stuff, but-
Jag Gay:
I turn 40 at the end of 2020 so I've definitely been thinking about age and it's a significant birthday for sure.
Richard Oring:
It's going to be a fun party.
Jag Gay:
30 was a fun party. 40 might be a night in with the wife in a movie. We'll see.
Richard Oring:
So list of providers. You don't realize like when someone actually needs care, I don't care whether it's home care or assisted living facility or nursing home, you've got rehab, physical therapist who comes to the house. You might have nurses come in to organize the medicines, just to help shower, do laundry. So having a list of all these agencies is very helpful. So you would list out there the other things you would want upon there is longterm care insurance information with a company is the benefit of now who to call. Here's a big one is, and this was big for my mom. My mom's biggest fear in life was going into a nursing home.
Jag Gay:
Sure. Yeah.
Richard Oring:
I mean that was her fear life. I never want to go into nursing home. My mom went to rehab multiple times and it was at the point where the rehab, she needed more care.
Jag Gay:
More full time, permanent care.
Richard Oring:
We didn't know if it was going to be permanent or just another 30 days. Okay. So my sister and I, we had the list of facilities if she had to go to one, which ones would be acceptable, even though none of them were, but she wanted to be close enough to her friends. I had to break the news to my mom. I said, mom, you know you're going to have to leave the rehab facility and unfortunately it's not safe to go back home. So they want you to go to assisted living. And I did some research and you can actually, you don't have to do a buy in. You could do a 30 day, a temporary, for 30 days.
Richard Oring:
And there was one my sister and I wanted. My sister and I didn't really feel that she was going to leave, but we felt that it was very important that she was close enough to us. So it's going to sound stupid, but the ones she wanted, it was like 15 minutes down the street and the ones we wanted her to go to, my sister and I could have walked to. So we asked her if she would consider at least going to the one close to us for 30 days.
Jag Gay:
Just temporarily. Yeah.
Richard Oring:
Temporary. And she did. And it was so my children and her children could visit on a regular basis, making sure ... have dinner with her and breakfast and we knew it would be hard for her. Because when you go into these facilities, my mom was 71, 72 at the time and the average age could be 80 and older. My mom had her mental capacity. It was more physical and it was hard for her to interact with a lot of people there and so forth.
Jag Gay:
As a side note, my folks are currently ... my dad will be 69 this month and my mom will be 66 in March and they live in a condo, but it's like a 55 plus condo. And I asked them, hey, how's it going mom and dad, how are you doing? Oh well this person got took out in an ambulance the other day and this person has this heart problem and this person died and it's kind of sad to be around all this death. And I'm like, oh my gosh. Tell me what you watched on TV. Tell me about something else, please.
Richard Oring:
Yeah. Unfortunately I go to Florida a lot. My in-laws live in a 55 and older and it's the same thing. Oh my golf buddy's in the hospital. He's not going to make it and this and that and it beats him up. It beats him up emotionally when it happens to people he knows. It really does take a toll on them. Here's the other thing, things I wouldn't normally have thought of, but I mentioned earlier, one of my clients, when her husband passed away, both of them already decided to donate their body to science. So there's actually a section in the program to even put down donation and then all the information, the donor ID ahead of time and all that. And then usually after that they will send the body back for cremation or something and it has all their information you need to put in there so someone would know. I've got to imagine the average person has never dealt with that before.
Jag Gay:
Right. There's so many different variables and the last thing you want to be doing or putting your kids through or doing for your parents is, I think they would have wanted this, but we never really talked about it and there's really no direction, there's no information left behind. So you're taking your best guess and with the emotion of losing a parent that's just got to be so, so much to deal with all at once.
Richard Oring:
Some of my friends who've lost parents after I lost or before me, it's going to sound sick. They said that I was lucky in something. Not that I lost my parents, but my mom was very open about death. She never feared death. She said God didn't owe her anything. She was very blessed to see her children, her grandchildren be okay. And that was more than what her older sister ever got to experience. And her parents, my mom, she has two sisters. One was 20 years older, one's 10 years older, who's still alive, and she had a younger brother. The brother died very early in life. And then her mom and dad and her older sister, her older sister raised her, died all within two years. So my mom experienced it and she wanted my sister to understand what was life about being successful, what fulfills you as a person and when you do that, you won't fear it when it comes.
Richard Oring:
Not living your life would be fearful, but she always said, as long as you and your brother did, my sister, she would say to me like, you and your sister, as long as you guys can raise a family, be successful, then I know I did my job. And then when the time comes, I'll be all right with that. Even when she knew her time was coming, it wasn't about being scared. It was about us being taken care of.
Jag Gay:
We should all be so lucky. For sure. Yeah.
Richard Oring:
And she always told us if I die this is where I want to be buried. This is the kind of funeral I expect. My mom grew up in a Jewish household from European parents and back then it was more of an Orthodox, what we call modern Orthodox today and when dad died nice coffin, nice thing, funeral. But when she died she wanted a simple plain non painted coffin, non stained graveside funeral, nothing big and that was her wishes. She was very adamant about that and told my sister and I that.
Jag Gay:
It's good that you knew and you didn't have to guess.
Richard Oring:
And she wanted good deli served at the shiver. That was very important that we had good deli.
Jag Gay:
I feel like your mom and I would have gotten along really well, Rich.
Richard Oring:
Even after she passed, she wanted to make sure everyone was fed well. That was very important to her.
Jag Gay:
If anything, always talk about the food.
Richard Oring:
So luckily my sister was a great writer. She was a journalist major in college and then Master's in librarian. So she actually wrote the obituary for my mom. But if you want to write your own, a lot of people do, you would upload it there. I asked my mom to keep a list outside the will of certain requests like charitable donations or things like that, and she did. You can also use this program for that list because that's the kind of stuff which might change on a regular basis. As you're not talking to your child, you wipe out certain things. When you're talking to them again, you can add it back.
Richard Oring:
Tombstone information, things like that. When my dad passed, my mom planned ... when my dad got sick, my mom started the planning and my sister took care of everything. But my mom was very organized in this sense, which I guess that's why my friends called me lucky in that sense. I knew what her wishes were. She was very vocal about it and wrote a lot of this stuff down, which was very helpful for my sister and I to make sure we follow through with her final wishes.
Jag Gay:
And one thing I noticed too in the program, Richard, is this letters to people or individual letter to certain people is when I was looking through the program and setting it up and realizing that hey these are my final thoughts that I'd like to give in my case, my mom, my dad, my brother, my wife, my nephew, something like my best friends, something like that. Like a nice little letter to say, hey, thank you for everything you've done and whatever else personal sentiments you wanted to put in that.
Jag Gay:
I think that is a really nice thing to be able to have that you can ... it's a little weird again to think about your own mortality, but it's the responsible thing to do and it can really take a load off of those around you in your life to be able to say, you know what? These are the thoughts that I'd like to share with each of these individual people separately. Here's a letter that I want to share with them upon my passing. So I really liked that piece of it too.
Richard Oring:
Yeah. I just had a client pass away a few months ago and he actually hand wrote a letter to ... he had a big family. I mean at his funeral there had to be close to 200 people there. He hand wrote a letter to every single family member because every single family member was special to him. My kids always ask like, my youngest one goes, dad am I your favorite child? Am I your favorite child? I am your favorite child. I know I am. And I always say, you know what? If you think you're my favorite child, then I'm doing my job right.
Jag Gay:
Yeah. That's great. If all three think that, that's fantastic.
Richard Oring:
And that's what my client did for every single family member for him. They felt like they had that special relationship with him and he told them again in that final letter.
Jag Gay:
As we start to wrap up here, Rich, what are some of the other features that you like about Everplans and those types of solutions?
Richard Oring:
Well, first of all, let's talk about security because I mean you're putting some really important stuff there. I mean, you can go on Everplans website. They're HIPPA compliant. They got the 256 encryption, two factor authentication. I mean you can just keep going on and on. They can't jeopardize getting breached on something like this. But saying that also don't be foolish and putting things in there like your social security numbers and stuff like that. You can always black things out if need be before you scan or upload it.
Jag Gay:
You can redact them.
Richard Oring:
That's right. The other thing I think is really, really nice about the program is okay, so I did all this. I don't want my loved ones to see these final letters now or I don't want them to know everything. You can set this up and Everplans they call them deputies. Those are people who have access to your data. So as a financial advisor, I usually request everything but their online stuff. I don't need their passwords and stuff like that. And a lot of the stuff I already have. So when they request this, I'm usually taking the stuff I have and putting it in for them. When they get their log on, they're going to see your financial advisor has requested this. They could say yes or no. They have total control what I can see, and don't see.
Richard Oring:
Then they create deputies, so each spouse usually has their own log on already to see this. But let's say an adult child. All right. Maybe they're going to have two adult children. Maybe one of them has access to now so they can say, I want them to have access to my medical directives, my financial advisors, the lawyers and things like that, but they don't have access to see where my accounts are or anything like that. Okay. Unless I pass away, then it opens up, but let's say that person passes away. Then they can have a backup person and saying, well this person can see it after I die and they have access or they update. We can update it as needed, but you always have backup. You've got multiple people. You can say I want my estate attorney to have access to my financial accounts, my legal documents.
Richard Oring:
So instead of when they have to modify them, instead of me having to upload them, he could just upload a copy right there, on my behalf. And again, I think the biggest thing is portability. You own the data. Even though I'm paying for that license, you have control of it. I think that's very important. I'll even go as far as anyone listening to this podcast who wants to get a complimentary copy of this program to use, if they reach out to me, I need again, the name for them and their spouse and their email address and I will set up an account for them.
Jag Gay:
That's tremendous. In fact, and I've looked at this plan. It's a great tool to have. So if you want to get ahold of Richard, I'm going to put the contact info in the show notes and for anybody listening you want to give the website, email and phone number real quick before we wrap up.
Richard Oring:
Sure. Actually we have a new website we just launched Tom yesterday. It's www.ncfg.com so it's the same address, just been updated. The phone number here is 609-924-2049 at extension 126. You can always reach me by email at roring@ncfg.com.
Jag Gay:
It is a little bit of a heavy topic that we've covered today, but it really will be such a tremendous burden taken off of the loved ones and those that you care about if you're responsible at this and make sure that you have these things set up when you're of sound mind and body to do it now. So it really is a great idea. Great talking to you as always and we'll talk to you next month.
Richard Oring:
Great, thanks Jag.
Jag Gay:
Richard Oring's branch office is 1 Airport Place, Princeton, New Jersey, 08540. The branch phone number is 609-924-2049. Securities offered through Royal Alliance Associates, Inc. Member, FINRA SIPC. Advisory services offered through New Century Financial Group LLC, a registered investment advisor not affiliated with Royal Alliance Associates, Inc. New Century Financial Group, LLC and Royal Alliance Associates, Inc does not offer tax advice or tax services. Please consult your tax specialist for individual advice. We make no specific comments or recommendations on any tax related details.