Embark on a transformative journey to secure not just your wealth but your family's financial legacy, as we, Todd Wattley and Ian Weiner, combine forces in a candid conversation that will redefine your approach to wealth management. With backgrounds in elder law and certified financial planning, our expertise converges to illuminate the often-overlooked pitfalls of traditional investment strategies, offering a value-driven blueprint for prosperous generations to come. Our unwavering fiduciary duty takes center stage, as we pledge to only counsel where we can genuinely contribute to your financial growth and stability.
Navigating through the critical stages of wealth growth, preservation, and legacy creation, our discussion from the heart of Northwest Arkansas strikes at the core of financial independence. We confront the stark reality that a majority of family wealth dissipates by the third generation, underscoring the imperative to impart not just assets, but a legacy of values and vision. A crucial disclaimer closes our dialogue, reminding you that all investments carry inherent risk. Yet, armed with the insights from this episode, you will be poised to make educated decisions that lay the foundations for a financial future your heirs will cherish.
Embark on a transformative journey to secure not just your wealth but your family's financial legacy, as we, Todd Wattley and Ian Weiner, combine forces in a candid conversation that will redefine your approach to wealth management. With backgrounds in elder law and certified financial planning, our expertise converges to illuminate the often-overlooked pitfalls of traditional investment strategies, offering a value-driven blueprint for prosperous generations to come. Our unwavering fiduciary duty takes center stage, as we pledge to only counsel where we can genuinely contribute to your financial growth and stability.
Navigating through the critical stages of wealth growth, preservation, and legacy creation, our discussion from the heart of Northwest Arkansas strikes at the core of financial independence. We confront the stark reality that a majority of family wealth dissipates by the third generation, underscoring the imperative to impart not just assets, but a legacy of values and vision. A crucial disclaimer closes our dialogue, reminding you that all investments carry inherent risk. Yet, armed with the insights from this episode, you will be poised to make educated decisions that lay the foundations for a financial future your heirs will cherish.
Welcome to Wealth for Generations, the podcast where you learn to grow, protect and preserve your wealth for generations. Our hosts on today's show are Todd Wattley, a certified elder law attorney, and Ian Weiner, a certified financial planner. Join us and our expert guests as we uncover the mindsets, tools and strategies to help you maximize your wealth and impact. Let's embark on this journey to secure your legacy. Please note this podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended as financial or legal advice. Always consult with a professional regarding your specific situation.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Wealth for Generations podcast. My name is Ian Weiner. I'm here with my co-host, Todd Wattley. This is the introductory episode, so this is one that may be a little bit shorter than some of the other ones, but we encourage you to listen to this one to get an idea of who we are, how we work, how we think and why we're doing this on top of everything else in our life.
Speaker 3:You say it's going to be short, but we never know till we get into it. Yes, my name is Todd Wattley. I am a certified elder law attorney and also investment advisor, and that's basically who we are. Do you want to tell who you are? Some of your letters.
Speaker 2:So I'm a certified financial planner, cfp. Those are some important ones in our world and we'll probably have one that we talk about, why that matters and that kind of goes to why we teamed up initially anyway and what this has evolved into. But we take financial planning and estate planning, which is a part of that, extraordinarily seriously and really the bottom line is what we've realized working independently is that it's not optimal for clients.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was seeing clients that were just invested in some horrible things, that were paying taxes, and I would ask them it's like how often do you talk to your advisor?
Speaker 3:And they're like you know, when they want to sell me something else, I come my God.
Speaker 3:And so you know I was seeing that that was a problem and I had learned over the years, in some of the times that I had worked with people, I noticed consistently when I worked with a certified financial planner, someone who had those that designation and we can go into that later but I had noticed those people do tend to do a much better job. And so then I met Ian and found out he was a CFP and we just started talking and he has a heart, like I do, that we want to do the right thing for people, regardless of if it helps us or not. But that's our job is you know, the fiduciary duty we take extremely seriously, and I wanted someone who had that same mindset as I did. And then he encouraged me to sit for the licensing exam and I got my hot series 65 and we're now doing this together and, I think, doing a pretty good job of helping people in all aspects estate planning taxes, retail planning, preparing for their retirement, but then also future generations, which is why we came up with the name.
Speaker 2:I think that helps so much to start to begin to see why the way that we approach planning is so important, and we'll talk about the process as we go, but everything has to be process driven.
Speaker 2:I think that's really, really important.
Speaker 2:And you know, todd's specialty that he is focused on for years is elder law, and, as I got to learn a little bit about that I'm not an expert by any means, but getting to see you help folks who are in the later stage of life, it really made me start to think more about the planning that should be done before that. You know, I mean, one of the challenges, really, todd, is that we can't help everyone, but if we do a good job with pre-planning, most of the stuff that you help folks with wouldn't be necessary. Yeah, really, I mean, a lot of the crisis planning wouldn't be necessary, and so that caused me to really go okay, we need to look a little bit more comprehensively at things, and one of the challenges that we find is planning is one thing, but implementing that is another thing, and that's where you know, as we've begun to work together more and more going wait, the implementation is just as important, if not more important, than the actual planning and, frankly, our industry needs to get better about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a really good point and you know that's why. You know it's just, we saw a need out there that was not being addressed and I think it was harming people. You know people were Paying way more taxes than they should have. They weren't prepared for those final years and you know it is good that I if always tell people, if I, as an attorney, can see people Early, it's it. It always works out better. Okay, I can do some cool crisis planning for Medicaid or just be for death or whatever. Yeah, we can do those things, but it If we can do it in a peaceful, not hurried way, early, that is just so much better and it it benefits the client tremendously to be able to do these things that they really want done. And Planning of head is always better. Just, I know I've said that about four times, but it's just a fact it's optimal.
Speaker 2:And what we start to, what we start to get into, is Looking at the way that the Financial system is is set up. It's most of it's not designed to really aid you, the end client. In a lot of ways, it's designed to extract fees from you. Now we are in our living on fees. Okay, but that's because the value that we provide is worth some multiple of the fees that we have to charge. Sure, and as fiduciaries, this is our, this is our pledge in our process. If we can't save you more money than it would cost to work with us, we can't engage with you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're gonna and we won't yeah, and Just as an attorney now becoming a financial advisor is, I was always jealous of them because when I get paid, the client writes me a check and you know they would fuss about a you know three, four or five thousand dollar fee.
Speaker 3:But they just love the new annuity they just bought and, and you know, all of my money went into this annuity. I'm like, well, yeah, sorta, but if you want to cash it in before 10 or 15 years from now, you're not going to get all your money back. Can you know where that went? That went to your advisor. But and people just don't understand that they're like my advisor did this for free and that's because you didn't write them a check and our model is not going to be based on that. I mean, you're going to sit down with us and we're going to look at things and you may or may not pay for that initial Consult, for us to look at that, but once we do that, we say here's what we can do for you and here's how much we're going to charge.
Speaker 2:You're going to know exactly what the fees are clarity is the beginning of trust, and we have to have trust to be able to make good decisions, and so one of the big things that we are probably Almost too aggressive about is that level of transparency and clarity. Yeah, I mean, I'm not aware of anyone else, at very least in our area, who is as transparent and clear about how their fees work as we are. Right, I mean, it's it's almost to the point that it's challenging for folks because they don't realize how much they've been paying in other situations.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we encourage people on our radio show and, by the way, if you want to listen to us on the radio, you can listen locally in Northwest Arkansas. It's K? U rm. Go to K? U rm Net Website and you can see the Numbers. I think it's 101 points, I don't know.
Speaker 3:I'm always there so, yeah, just go look it up. If you're not in Northwest Arkansas, you can listen to Kerm on the internet. We do it every Wednesday from 9 until 10 central time and we record it on Facebook. It's answers on aging is the format that we we do it there for. But yeah, we do a radio show and one of the things we say on the radio show all the time is Ask your advisor what the fees are. Make them tell it to you, not in percentages, but in dollars, dollars. How many dollars am I paying to have my money with you and your nice guy who always pats you on the back and sits you know, sits by you at the ball field when the kids are playing? See how nice they become then, and particularly if you Are not happy and want to take your money from them, let's see how friendly they are now.
Speaker 2:And it's one of these things where I'm trying not to chuckle as we're talking about this, because you know, we see the other side of it. You know, of course, you know everyone's advisor is gonna act like their best friend when everything's going great. You know, I mean, it's a relationship business. Most people that we talked to the their advisor, you know, is really nice, but that's table stakes, like, of course they're really nice. That's the, that's the bare minimum. You know.
Speaker 2:We start asking about process. Okay, what's the process for reviewing taxes every year? What's the process for selecting new investments? Is it just, or whatever big firm they work for? The home office tells them what to sell? You need to get a call a couple times a year. Hey, we're the markets doing this. We got a transition from you know, we got to move from biotech to you know, global, whatever, because we're getting. If that's your experience, you're missing out. You know I love asking folks when we do in person events, you know, and, and people don't ask people to raise their hands in this situation, but you know it's like okay, if you're, if your advisor, your investment advisor, has not reviewed the last two years of your tax returns, mm-hmm, I, in my opinion, I don't believe they can give you fiduciary advice. Yeah, in fact, if I don't see your tax returns, I can't give you investment advice at all, because there's so much more than just stocks and bonds to financial planning. People are waking up to this. They're realizing that there's more at stake and it's more intertwined.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh, absolutely. The two things we offer that are unique is estate planning. I do elder law, but I also do estate planning. That's just part of elder law. And taxes People just pay the tax guy, thinking this is what I have to do, and you particularly have looked at numerous plans that people have and find tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars of missed tax cutting capabilities, and it's just phenomenal.
Speaker 2:This is one of these areas where you don't have to overpay. This is a big thing that we talk about. Everyone has to pay their fair share in taxes, but your fair share is variable. It's variable based on a number of circumstances. One of them is proactive planning. The more proactive you are, the less you can pay in tax. I mean, I don't know how much clearer to say that and if you want to pay more, you can donate to the Treasury if you'd like to. But what we find is that people would rather spend their money in their family in their community and in the organizations that they care about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, who's going to do better?
Speaker 3:with your money, the government or you, and I think, even if you think the government does a good job, which we need to have a conversation about, that but even if you did, I think you would still rather you spend your money, just like you said, by the kids a vacation or donate to a local charity that you see does really good work every day. I mean, there are much better ways you can spend your money than the government. They're going to be okay, they're going to figure something out.
Speaker 2:You need to spend your money where you want to spend it, not just where, not to the government, yeah, and I think one of the clarion bells that we're trying to ring is that there's no reason to overpay the IRS anymore and there's really no excuse for it. The approach that we take when we're meeting with individuals and families and when we're talking in forums like this is we would rather be radically transparent and honest, even if it might hurt your feelings a little bit, because if you're going to overpay, let's say, over your lifetime, you are going to overpay by a million dollars, whether it's taxes, fees, sure, when would you like to find out? Would you like to find out as soon as possible so that you can avoid that, or when it's too late?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so I'm okay being the bad guy and giving you bad news in tenderness, if we can fix it, sure, if we can solve it. So these are just things to expect from us. But I think one of the reasons I wanted to record this episode is because when people hear financial advisor, there's so many things that come in. Everyone has had a different experience good or bad and different and we're really trying to reframe this conversation. Most financial advisors start and stop with investments. That is 95% of what they focus on, and the way that we approach this, the way that we approach planning that's where we begin is with investments. It's a total package. Most advisors, all they can do is investments, and that for us, is that's going to be 20 minutes in two hours of annual meetings.
Speaker 3:They might say you might should do a trust. Who knows and who would you recommend? I don't know. There's a guy down the road that I send your bait to, but it's just. Yeah, they do what they do and that's all they do. So, on that topic, who all can we work with? Is it just people in Northwest Arkansas, or can we work with people pretty much wherever?
Speaker 2:Well, we're headquartered here in Northwest Arkansas, right here in Bentonville, the booming metropolis of Bentonville, so we're not trying to get anyone else to move here, but we're able to serve folks pretty much all over the country, and so this is something where our passion is to educate and inform folks, and we find that if you're educated and informed you can make better decisions and that's better for everyone. Now we're selfish. We want the place that we live to be the best place to live, to grow wealth, to retire, to pass it on to the next generation, and so we have a vested interest in that here. But that's kind of our mission and I think that's another piece that's important to talk about is who we really do our best work for. We break planning into three phases Growing wealth that could be in your earlier years.
Speaker 2:How do we position things so that you're maximizing the ability for your wealth to grow, growing wealth and then preserving wealth. So grow, protect, preserve. I like threes. They're easy to remember. So, growing your wealth, that's like typically before retirement. Let's use traditional word, you know language here for a minute. Protecting your wealth is that kind of retirement face. We're gonna work hard to rebrand retirement to financial independence, because we don't wanna build retirement around age 59 and a half.
Speaker 3:Right, and a lot of people don't technically retire. They're still gonna work and do things and volunteer, and so, yeah, when you think about retirement, that has a mindset to it and we wanna get away from that mindset.
Speaker 2:I mean there's really this is what's interesting. You know, todd specializes in legal practice at kind of after retirement and I've specialized a lot in the, you know, pre-retirement and retirement phase, and what we've both found is that if you're not retiring into doing something else, with your putting your hands to something whether it's volunteering, running a little business, spending more time with family it is disastrous. I mean, how many people retire and six months later pass away. I mean it's, it's, and so that's one reason that we are working to reframe that conversation. That's part of our messaging is let's think of retirement differently.
Speaker 2:It's financial independence and how do you use your assets to, you know, really be bigger than yourself, and that goes into the preservation piece. And so we're gonna talk a lot about creating and preserving generational wealth, and this has a lot of different connotations to a lot of people and that's okay. Your version of that needs to be specific to you. But what we find is, if we do the you know first part, well, if we grow the wealth and protect it, there's a situation where folks end up, you know, building habits that they've saved really well, they're not gonna overspend, and so they end up passing a lot of that onto their kids you know, or their nephews or whoever else is important in your world, even if you don't have kids that can your legacy can be generational in impact to charity organizations that you care about so.
Speaker 2:I don't want you to, if you don't have kids, to not think that this isn't something that you need to be thoughtful about. We're talking about creating a legacy, intentionally. And how do we do that? How do we do that? Well, without wasting a ton of money on taxes. You know the easy part is structuring the assets. You know the stocks and bonds. That's like 101. What we find the hard part is transitioning vision, values, behaviors to the next generation. The statistic is this has been studied for decades worldwide 90 plus percent of wealth is lost by the third generation. Sure, yeah, that's a staggering statistic. So if you pass money to your kids, that could be $500,000, a million dollars, I'm comfortable even saying you know that begins at that level. The odds that that money transfers to their kids is about 10%.
Speaker 3:Wow yeah.
Speaker 2:And if that doesn't give you pause and go, hmm, what I've worked my entire life to build is potentially at risk. Nine to one of not existing past my kids. If that doesn't give you pause and go, hmm, this is maybe a problem we're solving. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, and just to, and let me just say probably every sentence we've said for the last 20 minutes, we will do a podcast on. Yeah, okay, we will break this down into much more detail, but let me just say you know, I think leaving a child a large sum of money and then blowing through it having no idea is actually worse than not leaving their money. Oh yeah, because they get used to having, you know, half a million dollars in the bank and then you know they can buy all the cool stuff and then, when they've blown it within a few years they're like, oh, I can't buy that stuff anymore. And you know they're just miserable the rest of their life If they survive.
Speaker 2:Well, that's true. Yeah, I mean, you know, think of, I try to think of. I'm not much older than this, but you know, I think of even a you know your 30 year old self getting you know million, two million dollars in cash, or your 20 year old self. That's scary. How would that have gone?
Speaker 2:Yeah, for some people it's their 40, 50 year old self you know, and so not being mean here, but just think about the risk, potentially, of not being thoughtful about how this happens. And this is most of the people that we see, and so we're going. Okay, wait a minute. If we're really going to do our job and care for people well, treat their wealth, their finances, their family the way that we would want ours to be treated, we've got to do some deeper planning here, and if they resist that, that's okay, that's up to them. But you know we are so serious about that fiduciary duty that it's causing us to have to dig deeper and solve bigger problems than most people even know exist.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and finally, I think what we're seeing is the lack of a team approach. Everything we just talked about for the last few minutes involves a financial advisor and an attorney. Okay, at least you need the attorney to come up with the plan, to put those guardrails up, to say, yeah, when I die, you're not in control of this money. If you have concerns about that, you can leave it. So every dime goes to that kid, but someone else is in control of it. And you need an attorney who can talk to the financial advisor and willing for those people to sit down together. I think that's what I mean. That's one reason we did this again is the team approach. We saw that my specialty, your specialty, is important, but so many times it's two separate things that never come together.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the communication is huge Talk very briefly and we'll do a whole show on this but talk about how billionaires manage this. They have what is known as a family office and we're kind of bringing that approach. We can't do it all, but we're kind of bringing that approach to people that aren't billionaires.
Speaker 2:So a family office is built around the idea that at a certain asset level right now it's about $200 million If your family has about $200 million, typically what happens is you set up a family office and what that means is you hire staff. You hire the top investment people, the top attorneys, the top tax people.
Speaker 2:they're on payroll for your family, and we're talking three to $4 million a year, because if you are going to build a team, you want to build a team.
Speaker 2:That's the best, and they're going to work only for that family and handle all of their legal, tax, investment affairs, and it goes into banking, it goes into small businesses and corporate attorneys, it's lending, all of those things Insurance is a huge piece of that and they work exclusively for the family.
Speaker 2:And so the advantage of this is, if you have enough money, you can build a great team. You can get the top specialist to work only for you. The problem is, it's extraordinarily expensive, and so what we have decided to do is we've looked at that model and gone okay, with technology and with the ability to outsource things, we can synthesize that process without you having to hire a staff, and we can do it for a fraction of the cost, and so we call it a wealth team, and so where Todd and I act is as your personal CFO, so we handle all of the financial matters for your family. We don't make the decisions you do, but if there's any financial matter that comes up, we'll help you build a team that analyzes and handles that problem, so that you really only have to interface with one or two people, unless it's absolutely critical.
Speaker 3:Just if you didn't know, a CFO is a chief financial officer. That is helpful, yeah.
Speaker 2:So you're the CEO, you're making the decisions, but you're delegating some of the decision-making and due diligence process to the folks who are specialists in their field, and so really, it's about taking your time back and not spending time on stuff that you just don't need. To Build a team that you trust that can handle those things, so that you can enjoy your life and spend time with your family or the things that are important to you. Yeah, exactly, all right, man.
Speaker 3:Good deal. So, as I said, we're going to do a number of podcasts fleshing out pretty much everything we just talked about in detail. So please come back, shout out to your friends local, national, wherever if they would like to meet with us, get us to look at things and work with us. We would love that. And so we're pretty much running everything through my law office, which is known as Generations Legal Group, and we're keeping the generations theme because and I just changed that January 1st of 24, because of the mindset, and so if you want to speak with us, call 479-601-4119.
Speaker 3:479-601-4119, that will be in the show notes. Call, tell them that you want to talk to Ian or Todd specifically about financial stuff, and we'll get started that way. Or just say, hey, I need to talk about a whole bunch of things and our intake coordinator will then meet you and we'll discuss those different issues and during that process we'll get Ian involved. I'll be involved. It's just a very cohesive, hopefully easy process to get everything taken care of. So thank you so much for listening and give us a call, and we would love to work with you. All right, we'll see you next time, thanks.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us on Wealth for Generations. We hope today's insights inspire and guide you in your financial journey. Remember, the path to wealth and legacy is unique for each of us and we're here to help illuminate your way. Before we part, a quick reminder this podcast does not provide financial or legal advice. The content discussed is for informational purposes only. Please consult a financial planner or legal advisor for advice specific to your situation. Visit us at wwwwealth-the-number-four-generationscom for more resources and don't forget to subscribe to Wealth for Generations. Until next time, keep building your legacy, One decision at a time.
Speaker 2:This material is intended for educational purposes only. Nothing in this material constitutes a solicitation for the sale or purchase of any securities or insurance product. Investment advisory services offered only by registered individuals through Exoswale Strategies LLC. The firm is a registered investment advisor and my only transact business with residents of those states or residents of other states were otherwise legally permitted, subject to exemption or exclusion from registration requirements. Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of principal. No investment strategy can guarantee a profit or protect against loss in periods of declining values. Under, the information contained on this website shall constitute an offer to sell or solicit any offer to buy a security or any insurance product.