Planning for the Unexpected: Building Financial Confidence for Every Family Member

Life is unpredictable—but the right guidance can provide clarity, comfort, and confidence when it matters most. In this episode, PCM’s Irvin Schorsch and Donna Zanetti share how Pennsylvania Capital Management helps clients prepare for the unexpected, especially when one spouse is less involved in the financial picture.

They discuss real-world scenarios—such as the sudden loss of a partner, estate planning challenges, and helping a surviving spouse navigate complex decisions. With a focus on empathy, education, and empowerment, this conversation explores how advisors can go beyond the numbers to serve entire families with care and foresight.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How PCM supports both financially active and less-involved spouses
• The importance of building financial confidence before a crisis occurs
• What happens when estate planning is incomplete—and how to fix it
• How advisors can help families transition with grace after loss
• Why financial literacy is a lifelong, multi-generational goal

🎧 Tune in for a meaningful conversation on how true financial planning is about people first—and numbers second.

Thank you for listening. For more information about how we can help you achieve your financial goals and live a life you love, please visit PCMAdvisors.com.

Transcript

Lesley Buck: Welcome everyone to our podcast today. We're joined by Irvin Schorsch and Donna Zanetti from Pennsylvania Capital Management, and the two of them are going to talk about how we help our clients. Irvin, take it away. 

Irvin Schorsch: Thanks, Lesley. Donna, if you think about how we provide comfort and confidence to our clients, what comes to your mind?

Donna Zanetti: Oh, what comes to my mind? Family. Family comes to my mind first because I think At Pennsylvania Capital, that is our strongest character that we build and instill with families. I take it very personally, and I think one of the things that we deal with a lot with our families are helping them through all the life challenges.

And some of those that happen in the families are the loss of a partner or spouse [00:01:00] and a lot of times, in that situation, one of the partners is the financial one and the other is not and traditionally in our 

you know how we have it usually it's the woman in the relationship who was not and I take very to heart that I want to empower in learning how to navigate their finances with PCM because, I feel like I, I take them in and I want to educate them because, if they're suddenly faced with challenges that they have no idea about and they don't know where to come they come to us. And I think that's one of the things that I pride ourselves on that they always know we're the first person that they call when they have any challenges going on in financial or otherwise.

Irvin, you've always been, you want to know about what's going on in their lives. And I bridge that gap for you to say, [00:02:00] Hey, and I won't use real clients' names, but Hey, you need to call John Doe about his wife is not doing well and we hear cognitively things are not good and, maybe you need to figure out what's going on and how we can help them more.

 Not necessarily about the finances. That's something that we do very well, but it's about the personal relationships that we have. And as a fiduciary, we're always going to do the right things for them but give them little steps along the way on how to keep their security and independence and learning basic things that they may not have known before.

Irvin Schorsch: Now, let me ask you this question. When you see a new couple coming in, and it's obvious who's the more financial person and who's the less, or in some cases, one person is very interested in the finances, the other one says, leave it to him or her. 

Donna Zanetti: Yeah, I zone in on the one who's [00:03:00] not.

Irvin Schorsch: Right. 

Donna Zanetti: Because I want to empower them to develop that sense of independence for themselves.

Not relying on somebody else because tomorrow's not guaranteed. And I find that in our history that the person that is not independent and relying on someone else is the one that I have the heart strings for. That I want to help them bridge that gap for their personal freedom, because that's, to me, it's, that's what's important.

Irvin Schorsch: It's interesting with having 10 of us and many of us do focus on the financial part, which may be with the other person more. How do you make sure that the less financial person is protecting the family in [00:04:00] case the spouse, the other spouse dies, is disabled, or runs across something that affects their ability to make decisions.

What do you do to help that couple?

Donna Zanetti: Sure, first of all you want to make sure that you know they have their estate planning all set up because the challenges that they face, they don't know until it happens, and I think one of the things that we set is that we hold a mirror up and say, this is what could happen. If they're going in one direction versus another trying to think of an example...

we have a client who lost their husband several years ago and they are having troubles moving on to that next phase of their life. So they're still in their home and they're trying to declutter, but the house is too big. They probably should downsize, but they're having trouble doing that. So my [00:05:00] goal is to gently open their minds to what's on the other side.

Because as we know, people are very set in their ways to the norm, of what they're used to, and they're afraid to what's going on. And we and, we've heard more and more stories of why didn't I do that sooner? 

Irvin Schorsch: Absolutely. 

Donna Zanetti: So we're trying to guide them in giving them the resources.

They're worried that can I afford to do this? We paint that picture for them. And we want to make sure that they have the clarity they need that can get them to the next level in their lives.

Irvin Schorsch: How do you find dealing with that less financial spouse when the let's just take an example. Husband dies; wife is left. What role do we serve as a firm and as a fiduciary firm in terms of helping [00:06:00] that, that survivor make good and live a bright and exciting life even after they lost their spouse? 

Donna Zanetti: Sure. Hopefully that person's been dealing with us for a long time, so they already have the comfort in coming to us and saying, I don't know where to go next. And I think that we pride ourselves on getting them to the next. level in that working with their attorneys. If they are with us, they've already have their estate planning and process and we already know what the next steps are going to be.

And we are in that wheel with them to navigate, to, to get to the next level. And what did that mean? We had somebody who said, I never had my own credit card. I don't have my own credit. What does that mean? People don't understand that, when you're, when you have your own joint spouse with you, you're, you are, you do have your own credit.

Even though you may not think you do. So we help guide them through what they have. Do they still own their [00:07:00] home? Working with the attorneys to get things transferred over to the spouse or could be trust set up? There could be kids. How does that look at the death of a spouse?

What happens? They don't know where to go first. So we usually tell them to just stop and remember their loved ones and work with their families. And I find that we have become an advocate for them in connecting them with the right people. 

Irvin Schorsch: I see it very similarly. I'd add a couple of things when they're in the at the point that their husband or wife is disabled or dies We've spent years developing the blueprint with them for what are those next steps you were just talking about. So we do understand. And for us, it's less emotional. We're sad to lose a client, but it's not we were living with that partner and to me doing [00:08:00] that blueprint and then being able to also offer to meet with the family, invite the kids in to meet with that spouse if that's what they want.

And of course we do it at no charge, which puts us in a whole different position than other financial institutions that charge very high expenses to take on that role and responsibility. I'm proud of the fact that we don't do that and we don't charge any of them to do that. I think that's special. 

Donna Zanetti: But we definitely help them navigate through their life events, right?

Whether it's marriage or divorce or children or caregiving their whole timeline of what goes on in their lives we're trying to build, confidence for them in their financial literacy. People don't, people always worry that they're going to outlive their monies and we help them try and give them the resources to learn about all their finances and how they have set their [00:09:00] goals at a younger age and growing through because we deal with children of our older clients because they're the next, they're the next ones up. So we want to make sure that we are always, helping everybody building their own financial literacy because that's so important.

Irvin Schorsch: Very true. This was fun today. I think we covered a lot of those important issues to help our viewers understand what is important as, they, they look for their fiduciary if they don't really have one, and I appreciate you spending the time here.