Protecting your wealth

As we tackle new years resolutions and goals, we wrap up the series on financial health check- This is the third and final episode discussing how to Protect your Wealth.

Don't forget to check out the first one on credit cards and credit scores (managing your wealth) and the second one on Investing and Retirement (growing your wealth).

In this episode I discuss how to protect your family and wealth, including,

1) How to pick a Financial Advisor
2) The importance of Insurance 
3) Why you should assign beneficiaries
4) Why you should have a Will, Trust and Power of Attorney for Health and Financial
5) The importance of getting a holistic financial picture

Take a listen, this episode is filled with little nuggets, I suggest you take out a pen & paper or an electronic device to take notes.

#Radioshow #financialdecisions #financialadvisor  #finances #Insurance #beneficiaries #probate #protectyourwealth #will #trust #powerofattorney #protectyourfamily

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I'm a former tech executive, a podcast host and an entrepreneur. I work with Universities on Organizations to transition students to the corporate world and building successful leadership pipelines ensuring a healthy financial future.

If you're interested in coordinating or working with me on keynotes, workshops, or on a one on one basis, you can go to my website www.sirishakuchimanchi.com

Check out my other podcast "Women, Career & Life" where I share stories and practical advice to achieve your career & life goals as you strive towards financial independence.

All: https://solo.to/sirishak

Instagram: womencareerandlife

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sirishakuchimanchi/

#womencareerandlife #podcast #paintlifetogether

Transcript

0:00

hello everyone and welcome to Live Beats with cerisha on Radio Carat 1 0 4 0.1 FM, and 700 am This is your host, CIA Riman. I'm a tech exec, the podcast host and a working mom. I do a podcast, women Career and Life. It's spelled W O M E N C A R E R, ent, L I F e. You can find it on any of your popular podcast platforms, including Spotify, apple, and Google. It was actually in the top 30% of Spotify. Chaos for 2022 and I share stories and practical advice for you to achieve your career and life goals. Today I will be talking about a continuation of this is a third episode in this series called, doing a Financial Health Check. Basically, it is the new year, so it's a good time to work through this process. So if you have been tuning in or you've heard a couple of the episodes, the first one I talked essentially was around how do you. Take care of your basic daily financial health. It was talking about credit cards, credit history, credit score, and very briefly around budgeting. So that was what the first episode talked about. Basically, our daily grind around the finances, but also really how credit cards and credit history can really impact our big financial ticket items like buying a house, a car, and any other big expenditures you might. Last week we talked about more about growing our wealth, really spent time talking about investment and retirement with a focus on retirement and talking about the different type of accounts that are there and what we can do to grow this. Portfolio. And just to do a quick recap, one of the things we talked about in retirement was about the four pillars, which are important mostly, and for a long time even, I did think about it mostly around a financial aspect, but really, You can think about retirement as a full, like a chair. So you need to be thinking about not just your finances, your health, which is very important, all the relationships that surround you to keep your social aspect and everything together. And then the last purpose is trying to figure out your purpose, as I just said, to get this full, like a chair, to stand sturdy and for you to have a successful, healthy. Retirement. Today's episode, which is essentially a wrap up of this financial health check, is going to be about protecting your wealth. You've spent time you are in the process of growing it. Maybe you have spent a lot of growing it, maybe you're closer to Robin. Doesn't really matter where you are in this journey, how new you are just starting to, work or do anything like that to. Much later in the journey you are. But there is a process around protecting your wealth. So I'm going to talk about essentially four things that I'm going to briefly touch upon in this lot of 25 minutes. So I'll be talking about financial advisors, talking about insurance, which I've touched on in the stock where we talked about layoffs. And talking about beneficiaries and will and all of this that surrounds protecting our wealth. So I'm gonna start off with talking about financial advisors because it seems a very natural conduit to what we talked about last week, which was retirement. So financial advisors most of us, I think, manage, many of you be, may be managing your investments, everything yourself, which is a great way to do it. But if you're looking for help or an external. Check for this. There are financial advisors who do this health check. So there are a couple of ways you can access it. If you're working for a company, they're say, I will use Fidelity as an example. So say your company has fidelity very often there are ways you can run your numbers in the bottom and you could even get access to free financial. Advisors for a brief chat. It's not obviously for a long-term relationship nextly, but you'll be able to get, there a lot of companies, depending on how they have their. Benefit setup. You may be able to have access to financial advice for a free consult at least, and then see how you want to progress in that relationship. If you're looking for a financial advisor outside of your company and your corporation, or you don't have access to those resources, one of the things you can do is really look and ask friends and other trusted sources for financial advisors they may know about that you can meet. And what it does is a financial advisor is looking at everything in a holistic picture, which is what I really like about it. So they look at not just your investment, your retirement, they're looking at college. Say if you have children, any big purchases, you're planning, a lot of. Different aspects, trying to decide when you want to make the right moves and what those moves are. So there is a way to get access to that. You will pay a fee for meeting with a financial advisor, but if you are able to do that, it is a great way to figure those pieces out because it will provide you a lot of peace of mind. And also a really good big picture idea of what. The one thing I do wanna be clear here is especially if you're doing investment, there is a certain type of financial advisor you should be going to, which is a fiduciary financial advisor. by the nature of being a fiduciary, they are implicitly implies that they have to keep your interests at number one. They are not paid through commission. So they will be, you are the, they have to do everything that is best for the client. And you should be looking for a fiduciary financial advice and not fiduciary but someone who is, and you can Google it. And there is a national agency which gives you a. All the fiduciary financial advisors that are there wherever you may be listening in from. So go and Google them and find someone maybe around your locality and then you can read reviews or find someone who has used them before. Do. And usually the financial fiduciary, financial advisors do also help with investment. That is a choice you can make if you want to invest with them. And fees will range across the board differently, but it seems to be around ballpark of like maybe a percent or so, but, you can access those resources. So I would suggest if you are able to, it's something to think about. You can look, where you might have some free resources through some benefits you could have access to. Or if there's a place you can go and get a check. And if you've done used a financially financial advisor and you don't have one, and maybe it's been say five years or a decade since you went to one, it may not, it may be a good idea to go and redo an health. Redo those that whole picture and see if you're still on track, whatever. You might have changed certain aspirations, certain items around your list. So it's a good checkup to do again. So that was just a continuation of our investments and retirements and talking about how we would invest in our benefits as well. One of the things that also that ties to protecting your wealth and these topics might seem a bit uncomfortable to discuss, and I hope you'll see the value in this discussion beyond just the stickiness of the topic. There is insurance. Most of us of course, have medical done television. If you're working for a company or you are, you're self-employed you get them through a provider. and you get life insurance and a d and d, which is accidental death and dis government insurance through your companies. If you are it is strongly recommended to also look at it through a private insurance, especially if you see the current landscape. I think Google just had a bunch of layoffs, with 10,000, I think it was like 12,000 employees. You've seen some big corporations and those are making their headline use, but there's a lot of companies that are also having layoffs, and I talked about this during the episode on how to move forward from your layoff. The reason I would say to get life insurance outside of your companies, Essent. The statistics show that 40% of people who work in the US will experience a layoff. I've experienced one myself, so it helps to have private life insurance outside because then you're not tied to your company. Because once you are not say working for a corporation, those benefits will go away. But if you have private life insurance and you can decide which type of insurance is right for you, for how long, how much, all of that, you can run the numbers. There'll be people to advise. You can then get the insurance externally to do this and have that protection for yourself and your families. And there are companies that will do, there are websites you can find outside, I think like select code and so many others that have ways to match and check that out for you. I know there are various insurance companies that I keep getting in the post, in the mail as well offering these services, so you'll just have to do the research, but it's something to think about. I forgot to say this, but if you're not driving, something to think is maybe take a pen and paper or an electronic device and jot down notes as I'm talking about some of the things that you might wanna follow up at a later point of time if you're just tuning in. This is Live Beats with Cerisha on Radio, caravan. I am talking today on maintaining a financial health and basically protecting our wealth. This is the third part of a three part series where we talked about, how do. Do our budgets and our daily things like credit cards and credit history. We last week talked about growing it and investments in retirements. Today's episode is on Protecting Your Wealth, and I'm so glad you joined us. And today we just talked about financial advisors and briefly about insurance. And if you're tuning in that is what we will continue to talk about for this episode as we wrap up this three part series. One of the things when you're talking about insurance and everything else is there are beneficiaries that we have to assign in all of our accounts, all our financial accounts. So say even if you're thinking of your bank account, you have say a joint account or a solo account or whichever joint rates of survivorship. There's so many types of bank account. That you would ha you can get. What I would say is this is what happens to most of us, right? We come to a new place, or you move to a new city, or you're starting something new and you go and open these various accounts. We never go back and look how we set them up. And for the most part, it never really matters, but there might be. Your life situation has changed. There have been so many changes. It might be good to go back and see what type of accounts you set up and if they're still the right accounts for you. And once you've set them up, all of these accounts need beneficiaries, and you probably set those up. Maybe recently or sometimes many years ago, it would be good to see who's listed as a beneficiary. Almost everything is online nowadays. You often get prompted by different providers to provide this. So go look at who your beneficiaries are and make sure you're updated. So here are a couple of accounts you should be looking at for beneficiaries. Definitely. Bank accounts and stuff I think will be probably processed through beneficiaries or through your world. Your 401K investments for sure need beneficiaries. Your life insurances, those kind of accounts tied around your life insurance need beneficiaries and it becomes very imperative for you to make sure you have all of these tied together. and why am I talking about this? Since this episode is really about protecting our wealth, I think when you are thinking about, you are working hard either at home or outside or wherever, whatever way you are providing for yourself and your family and your community around you, it is imperative that we are spending. And hours doing this, we want to protect everything that we have so that we can, take it, use it wisely for ourselves and if you wanna pass it down to the next generation, that you have that ability to do that. So one of the things that I wanted to briefly touch on, and all of these that are obviously. Experts in experienced certified people, you should be reaching out to actually do the work. Like when I talked about financial advisors, there is a national association where you can find fiduciary financial advisors. Similarly, when I'm talking about, I'm gonna be talking now about Will and trust and power of attorney, but a brief segue here, if you're just tuning in, this is the radio show, life Beats with Siria. I host a podcast, women Career and Life, w o m E n C A R E R N. On Spotify, Google. You can check it out on any platform. I share stories and practical advice for you to achieve your career and life goals, and also towards you strive towards financial independence. If you have questions on this show, you wanna share your stories, you wanna hear certain topics, you can also email me on live Beats 1 0 4 0.1 gmail.com. So I'm gonna spell it out. L i f e. B E A t s 1 0 4 1 gmail.com. I would love to hear from you, your questions, the topics you're thinking of, anything that you'd like to hear. You can leave me an email. You can even record your voice and send it to me as an email. I could play it probably on the radio show. It would give me a good idea of what you are thinking about and what is the things that you know you are finding that you would like to see answers to on this. So going into the next topics, wills and trusts. Will many of you have, may have already had one or have processed through one. If you have assets, say in a country outside, in a different country than your country of resistance, then you might need to process a will in those countries. Like I think in India, you, if you have assets, you have to have registered will often to transact. So you have to go see where your other things is. But let me talk about the wills here. We are in the state of Texas. and the reason you would wanna have a villa is of course, like I said, a lot of the beneficiaries we just talked about also do execute on the beneficiaries. So Will does certain things and your beneficiaries, like on your life insurance and retirement and stuff. There's two different buckets. So the beneficiaries that you would have on your investment, on your I. That's how the money and assets from those accounts will be executed. Your will be there for your house and other assets, maybe your car and other accounts that need to be transacted, and that is the reason you need a will. The other extremely important part for a will is especially if you have children, minor children. You want to be able to decide how you want them to be taken care of. Because otherwise, from my understanding of the taxes way it's set up is the state can, step in and decide if you do not have a bill. So you want to have that, then that's why I said it's protecting your wealths. That's what we are talking about. And protecting your wealth is also in terms of family relationships and everything. Making sure you're able to take care of your loved ones and having that so that it follows the guidelines that you want to set up for it. And one of the things that, if you were to think not talking like of course you know, the lawyers are the ones who will draft the will, but just as a person, as you are trying to process how this goes about, one thing that I found a mindset, the way to think about this is, First, you have to wrap your head around wanting to do a will. And I know sometimes it can be hard to think about it, but it is something that would really benefit in the long run. So once you decide you want to do a will again, you can go and find a resource if you're working for a company or a corporation, more often than not you should be able to have access to resources. They may be offering free legal services or free will services, so check that out. If not, you should be able to find a. Close to you who does this transactions, they fairly can be quite straightforward unless your situation requires more nuanced approaches. So when you are thinking about it, the first thing is as we move new, if you moved to a lot of different companies, you moved countries, so you moved different places. What tends to happen is we. Leaves this trail of breadcrumbs of different accounts we have opened. I have moved different places and realized over time that I've ended up opening this bank account, that investment account, this retirement account. And if you move companies, it just adds up. It's, it drives you crazy. Trying to think of all these different pieces to pull them together, but, When I started to do my will, I think it forced me, and I've seen this with a lot of my friends who've also done it, and it's a I think this whole episode if you, I would suggest some of these topics would be good conversations to have with your friends. As I said, they can be uncomfortable, sticky ones, but I think it really benefits for us also. Have these conversations just because we can have such a huge impact on making sure we are all doing the right things. So one of the parts of all of these accounts is it helps you and forces you to consolidate. You may realize that you do not need so many. Bank accounts, or you may realize that you have this trail of, different IRA accounts or rollover ira or Roth ira, traditional, like thought of different retirement accounts. Maybe it gives you the opportunity to follow the guidelines and consolidate some of that so you can see where everything is dispersed, and that is one way to do it. First step would be that, of course, then if you have children or assets, whatever you want to pass on, you'll have to think about who is going to execute, who is going to be the guardian and decide on the people. And that often is a very hard decision to make because you have to think about who you want to assign for those. And I think it lends itself to very interesting discussions at home as you're processing. and then definitely going to the lawyer and drafting this into whatever you think the right way of drafting this information is. Whether you decide to do it in pieces, in lump sum, what whatever is, the lawyer will be the one to guide you on figuring this piece out. If you have done a will many years ago or. And your life situation has changed since then. It might be something to revisit and redo and check. This is an episode on a financial health check, right? So we have may have made the decisions and done a lot of the things in an amazing way a few years ago, but it times comes back and. Hes has to go and have a check and see what to do. Some of the other parts that are a extension of the will that also you would want to think about and really, ask your lawyer and whoever else you're working with is a trust. You trust can be money on how it goes into this part, and it's executed through that. And how money is distributed. If you have seen on movies or read books, you'll see that money sometimes goes into a trust and someone has to reach a certain age for them to get this, a dis. This birth meant from this account. So think about maybe if you wanna set up a trust, there are different kinds, like the revocable or irrevocable. So do some research on your own. Talk to the lawyer who's helping you draft this and see how you want to do it. And then the last part of it is like the power of attorney. There are two types. There's the health and the financial. There in case you are incapable of making certain decisions at certain points and time for various reasons. It gives someone the power of attorney for either health or for finances to be able to make those decisions for you, and it's someone you would trust in who you would give guidance to. And you can have a lot of, there's obviously a lot more pieces to this and you can have that discussion with someone on how to do this. I hope this topic is. Not just too uncomfortable you're feeling like that, but I think it's something for us all to give thought to, to think about it and see what to do personally. I've had a lot of conversations with friends over the years, and many of us over time have, processed through this build it. It's more, I guess once you get started on it, it's very easy to get it done, but it's the. Challenge of, getting over that hum to decide to do it. And I think it's very important to do it if you are, have assets, you have family, all of this, it becomes very important to be able to protect your wealth. So if you're joining us right now, this is, we are getting close to wrapping up this episode in the last. Three to four minutes. This is Live Beats with Cerisha on Radio Caravan 1 0 4 0.1 FM, and 700 am Thank you for joining us on this radio show that come on five 30 every Saturday we have been doing a financial health check where we have been doing this three part series right after the new year, doing a financial health check, doing, getting a financial house in. The first one I talked about credit cards and credit history and credit score and how important it is to maintain those and how we pay off all of those bills and keep an eye on it because it impacts our big purchases, especially, mortgages, car loans, and some of those big ticket items. The second episode, which was last week, we were talking about essentially growing our wealth, which was about investing and retirement. It was not about how to, what to invest in because I am not giving you that kind of advice. It was just talking about the type of accounts and the type of investments that are there for you to think of which platform is right for you and accessing those. And today we are talking about protecting our wealth. A lot of you may be self-employed or working for an employer if you're especially working for an employer. A lot of these things that I'm talking about you probably have access to through your employer. They have them in their benefits, they have them in various resources. So think about checking those benefits. Those are like the soft little benefits that get hidden in the fine print. Some employers have ID theft, some of them will have other resources. They may have access to legal resources. If you are, say you're going through somewhere where you need legal advice or you're signing some paperwork and you wanna check. They even have legal resources for doing your like will and trust and other power of attorneys. Like I said, maybe there'll be a portion they pay and then you pay extra and they'll usually connect you to lawyers around you. Then we'll be talking today about finding a financial advisor and how important it is to find a fiduciary financial advisor so that they have your best interest at heart. And as such, they can be found through Googling. They, there's a national registry for that and you can find them there and probably look up reviews and do that. I, what I appreciate is it gives you this holistic financial health check and more often than not, if you have an. Investment firm, like maybe through your employer or privately, maybe say like a Vanguard or affiliate or Charles Trump, they may have access to some of those potentially free resources or some paid resources. So check out what's right for you. And we talked briefly about beneficiaries and other things as well. We are getting close to wrapping up. Thank you for tuning in to Live Beats with Cerisha next week. I am thinking of talking about the transition. This is getting to new year. Kids are starting to maybe transition next year to middle school or high school, and what the process is, what resources are available. It's not gonna be anything wrong. Parenting as much as what do we need to do? How do we get these kids prepared? Where can they find resources in a community? That's what I was thinking of tackling. But if you have other suggestions, you can email me. Life Beats 1 0 4 0.1 gmail.com. I would love to hear from you. Take care. Bye.