Modern Family Matters

Wait! Important Questions You Should Ask Your Financial Advisor Before Negotiating Your Divorce Settlement

February 11, 2022 with Grant Johnstone, Mark Renard and Alex Cyprus Season 1 Episode 44
Modern Family Matters
Wait! Important Questions You Should Ask Your Financial Advisor Before Negotiating Your Divorce Settlement
Show Notes Transcript

Join us as we sit down with Certified Divorce Financial Analyst, Grant Johnstone, and his team of financial advisors at Miracle Mile Advisors, to discuss pertinent questions that they wish their clients would have brought to them before negotiating and finalizing their divorce settlement. In this episode, Grant and his team discuss the below topics:

•    How Important are the Impact of Taxes in a Divorce Settlement?
•    How Does Long-Term Impact of Inflation Figure Into Negotiating My Divorce Settlement?
•    How Do you Evaluate a Settlement Proposal?
•    What Does it Really Cost to Keep the Family Home? 
•    Why are My Spouse’s Eligibility for Social Security Benefits Something I Need to Consider?
•    Why Do I Need to Insure the Divorce Settlement?
•    Do I Need a Post-Divorce Financial Plan?

If you would like to speak with one of our family law attorneys, please call our office at (503) 227-0200, or visit our website at https://www.landerholmlaw.com.

To get in contact with Grant and his team at Miracle Mile Advisors, you can email him at gjohnstone@miraclemileadvisors.com or visit their website: https://miraclemileadvisors.com/

Disclaimer: Nothing in this communication is intended to provide legal advice nor does it constitute a client-attorney relationship, therefore you should not interpret the contents as such.

Miracle Mile Advisors LLC (“MMA”) is a registered investment advisor. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where MMA and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. Advisory services are offered through Miracle Mile Advisors, LLC (“MMA”). The information provided is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice and it should not be relied on as such. It should not be considered a solicitation to buy or an offer to sell a security. It does not take into account any investor's particular investment objectives, strategies, tax status or investment horizon. You should consult your attorney or tax advisor. All information has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but its accuracy is not guaranteed. There is no representation or warranty as to the current accuracy, reliability, or completeness of, nor liability for, decisions based on such information and it should not be relied on as such.

Intro:
Welcome to Modern Family Matters, a podcast devoted to exploring family law topics that matter most to you. Covering a wide range of legal, personal, and family law matters, with expert analysis from skilled attorneys and professional guests, we hope that our podcast provides answers, clarity, and guidance towards a better tomorrow for you and your family. Here's your host, Steve Altishin.

Steve Altishin  0:31  
Hi, everyone. I'm Steve Altishin, Director of Client Partnerships here at Pacific Cascade Family Law. We're here today with certified divorce financial analyst Grant Johnstone, along with his team at Miracle Mile Advisors, Mark Renard and Alex Cyrus, to talk about questions a person should ask their financial advisor before signing their divorce decree. So grant, Mark, Alex, how's everyone doing today? 

Grant Johnstone  1:01  
Doing great, Steve. Thanks for having us on the show. We appreciate it.

Steve Altishin  1:05  
Oh, not a problem. This is gonna be great. So Grant, before we start in on today's topic, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your team, and maybe give us a brief explanation on just what a certified divorce financial analyst is?

Grant Johnstone  1:21  
Well, as you said, I am a certified divorce financial analyst. I'm a certified financial planner. I'm also an attorney in Texas and Washington. And I've been in the financial services industry for coming up on 25 years. Can you believe that, Mark? It's gonna be 25 years. Mark is my partner of mine. We have been working together for goodness, at least 15 years together. He's been in the industry for coming up on 20 years as well. Mark is a certified CIMA--Certified Investment Management Analyst. Is that right, Mark?

Mark Renard  1:57  
 Yes.

Grant Johnstone  1:59  
And Alex is one of our new associates, and he works real closely with us and all of our meetings to provide additional contact to our clients. And we are with a firm called Miracle Mile Advisors based out of LA, but their footprint is now becoming national. We were absorbed into their ecosystem recently, and they have recently expanded to an office in New York, and I believe that they will be continuing to expand across the United States. And so many of the clients that we meet with are now are just like this, it will be a video.

Steve Altishin  2:39  
Well, let's start it on today's topic. Let's just say I'm getting a divorce, and I'm talking property settlement, I'm talking support, you know, I have an attorney, she's giving me great advice. I do have some financial questions. But you know, our finance person is my spouse's brother in law. And I figure besides that, I'm pretty financially savvy, I can handle it. So I settle the case, sign the decree, and then I bring it to you. Well, I'm guessing this is not the right order to have done this in, is it?

Grant Johnstone  3:14  
Well, there are a lot of advantages, Steve, to looking at the assets, the tax brackets, so many things to look at, before you actually sign. Because, as you know, your law firm, once they roll up their sleeves, they begin to fight, or they begin to negotiate with what's been laid in front of them. And as we work with attorneys, they really appreciate that, you know, we're not certainly going to get into any of the advocacy, but we would actually be able to line out all these assets in a nice grid showing assets and liabilities and long term effects. We can discuss it not just with you, but laying that spreadsheet out in front of the attorneys, and then they can then advocate on your behalf with that additional information. 

Mark Renard  4:08  
Steve, I actually have some comments on that, I'd like to jump in, if I could help on that point, thank you. You know, I had some personal experiences and going through a process where a client came to me with just that situation, they had already signed the decree. And we got into a conversation about what her goals and objectives were, and I want to point this out because I think this gets forgotten. But our job as certified financial planners is to listen and to understand what a client is trying to achieve, what are the goals in their life, and it's more than just, you know, lifestyle, retirement income, it's where do they want to live? And so, I had to do a complete redo on this judgment because the clients' goals came to the surface, and the decree ran counter to the goals and objectives of the client. And, yeah, and so I would say that it's important to have a financial plan regardless if you're young, if you're married, if you're, you know, for many reasons. Aplan allows you to deploy money in the most intelligent way to help you achieve the goals that you have for your life. So I would say that if you're getting a divorce, that's how much more important it is to get a financial plan, especially in situations such as that. Also, if you're in receiving an inheritance, or some lump sum of money, or there's some major financial change that's going to happen in your life, afinancial plan is not just great to have, it's actually essential.

Steve Altishin  5:53  
Yeah, that makes complete sense.

Grant Johnstone  5:55  
So the point being, before you even sit down with the attorney, it's important to know what it is that's important to you. What is it that your goals are, as Mark was saying. It may not be something that's split down the middle, it may not even be just getting more assets on your side of the table. Some of the things that we'll talk about today is you can look like you're winning, and you're actually not when you start looking at the tax impact, or the long term appreciation, or the cost of maintaining certain assets.

Steve Altishin  6:29  
Well, let's start with that. Let's start with taxes. I guess my question would have been, that I didn't come in and ask you guys was, you know, do I need to care about the impact of taxes in a divorce settlement?

Grant Johnstone  6:42  
Well, you definitely would, and let's take, for example, if your wife had a much higher income than you, and you have a much lower income. Ttrying to determine what's going to be an equal income, after taxes, would be something we want to pick up based upon what your tax profile is. And the other interesting part about this is, your tax profile can change. So we might say, Oh, well, your income would be increasing, or hers may be decreasing. Once we get into subjective determinations, that's going to be left for the advocacy of the attorneys. But at least to be able to have that narrative, as you're going to the attorney and say, Well, this is where my income is now, but I'm expecting this in the future. So you know, what I would say is, when we're dealing with spouses that have dissimilar incomes, they may have resulting dissimilar tax brackets after the divorce. The other thing to look at is, I know Mark has seen this as well is, when there has been one spouse that's been working, and another that hasn't been working, and the spouse that hasn't been working is accomplished and has academic accolades but they haven't been in the workplace, and then the attorneys or the judges or whomever may want to determine how easy it is going to be for them to get back into the workforce and to regenerate that income. And quite often, we've seen that that's more of a struggle than people have accurately, actually calculated. So it's not as though these things have a really clear defined answer going into the attorney. It's just that by going to your financial advisor first or going to a certified divorce financial analyst, you can create and know where the margins are, you can know where the variables are, and that'll allow the attorney to be a better advocate. So I would put in there, not just the dissimilar incomes, but the expectations of, can you keep your job, can you get a better job, will you lose your job? And as we'll discuss, the more that you can nail down something in the present for your divorce, the better that is if we can make a determination as to what these things might be in the future, then distill them into a present value so that that present value can be moved over to your side of the balance sheet.

Steve Altishin  9:21  
That really makes sense. Well what about, say we're talking about two different things that we maybe want to, you know, you take this and I take that. I'm looking at it thinking, yeah I think I could sell it. Do I have to worry about taxes.

Grant Johnstone  9:45  
I'll kind of ease into that saying. You know, with different incomes and different assets, you're gonna have different deductions. So once you go off into your own world, your single world, you might then say, well, he or she has all the deductions, I gave those up. So then, to your point of, you know, she got these assets and I got these assets, it looked pretty equal to me at the time. But if you don't know what these assets cost going in, you might have a surprise because of the tax burden that you're left with. Now I'll give you an example. Let's say your wife got ABC stock for $100,000, and you got XYZ stock for $100,000. And it seems kind of even on its face until we get through the divorce, and you realize that the ABC stock was purchased for $20,000. And the XYZ stock was purchased for $90,000, creating a much greater burden when you go to sell that stock at the lower cost basis. So determining what the cost basis is on these assets is paramount, you can't just go and look at what those values are at a given time.

Mark Renard  11:07  
More examples that are important, Steve, would be like qualified assets. So spouse has a 401k or has an IRA, and they have taxable money, after tax money. Well, you've got to realize that really, you know, every IRA dollar is really gonna have to be discounted at whatever assumed tax rate, because it's pre tax-money that's funding that account. So if I've got $100,000, and I give it to my spouse, and it's an IRA, and in return, I got $100,000 in cash from a bank account, I just made an unequal exchange, because that IRA asset is really only probably worth about $75,000. Secondarily is on the spousal support, I can tell you that laws changed, of course, as we know, so now it's not deductible, and it's not counted as income for the person receiving spousal support any longer. Whereas, previous to 2020, it was the other way around, you could deduct that. And the reason I bring that up is that a spousal support payment of $2,000 kind of pre-rule, or $2,000 pre those tax changes, has turned into really a $1,500 spousal payment now. And so you saw judges all across the board kind of readjusting how they were thinking of spousal support. And I bet if you look back, you'd see that, yeah, well, because it's not tax deductible, and it's not construed as income, it's not going to be as high as it was using the previous rule. So those are some examples. 

Grant Johnstone  13:04  
Well, when looking at two different assets, I was going to point out, you know, let's take a car and a house, for example. A car you would think of as being inherently depreciating, and losing value, whereas a home could be appreciating. So just putting the dollar amounts on either side of the table isn't going to be a fair comparison. And the other thing to look at is that, let's say if they're both financed. Acar has non-deductible interest, whereas a home has deductible interest. An investment account, let's say that you might have with Miracle Mile, is going to not require a whole lot of maintenance on your part, and it's going to be something that should appreciate. A home on the other hand, maybe it appreciates, but it's also going to be very high maintenance. And those maintenance costs could go up with inflation. I know that the person that cuts my yard just raised his fees and the taxes on those homes can go up. And taxes on a home are quite significant as compared to no taxes really on a car. The insurance, the mortgage, the list goes on with the house. And then back to accounts, a stock, even in a panic, even if you split an account, a stock might be appreciating, and a CD is not appreciated. So when when we look at those types of things, it's actually easier for us to say, All right, well we can actually split and liquidate those now, if we know what the cost basis was. What were you going to say mark?

Mark Renard  14:47  
Well, I I think that, you know, inflation is something that we're always warning our clients about, and it's why we encourage them to have riskier assets in their portfolio, so that they can hedge inflation, hedge rising costs. The other thing that inflation does, of course, is that it reduces the value, the present value of something. And so it's very important to know, you know, especially in some judgments, there might be a partial lump sum spousal payment, in addition to maybe spousal support being paid out over a period of time. Well, you know, a Certified Financial Planner will help you to figure out what is the present value of a future stream of cash payments, and that's a very handy calculation. And that number changes based upon, you know, what the risk free rate of return is, or what the inflation rate is, and the higher the rate of inflation or the higher the interest rate, then, the lower the value, the lower the present value. So there's a relationship between present value and interest rates or inflation, as you're talking about it.

Steve Altishin  16:11  
That make sense. God, that took me back to my college days.The rule of 72, is that still used?

Grant Johnstone  16:17  
Yeah it is. You've got 10 years at 7%, they say you should be able to double your money. That's one thing about inflation also is the assignment of different obligations. Let's say for example, you're assigned the obligation of putting the kids through school, and you take the education account in order to be able to do that. But we found that education has had inflation rates of 8% to 9%, annualized, even when the broader inflation rate was at 2%. So knowing that here's not just one set of inflation figures to apply to different obligations is important.

Steve Altishin  17:03  
I think that's huge. That kind of leads to, how the heck am I going to know if I got a good deal, or if it was a fair deal for everybody? How do you evaluate these things? And it sounds like this is all part of that, you know, how you go about trying to evaluate whether something is equitable or not.

Grant Johnstone  17:28  
Well, what we'll do is, and financial advisors that are experienced working with divorce counsel will know to do this, but they will put together a spreadsheet of all the assets. They'll try to do the discovery for the attorneys, and outline what's actually on the table, and then to issue spot for the attorney, what the impact of time, inflation, and maintenance might be. There's another issue to consider, and that's the impact of control. One of the things that I really don't like to see in divorce orders is where there's an obligation that extends beyond the divorce, like, we still have to wrap up this business, or we still have to wrap up this home. And I'll tell you what,  any loose ends that are left open, creates some potential conflict down the road. Now, the things I would point to would be, for example, business interests. You might say, Well, you know, I can't just get out of the business, we can't quite wrap that up. Well, staying in on board with the same business could lead to concerns about mismanagement, the complications of a sale, things like insurance payments, and those types of obligations. Let's say the person who's obligated becomes sick, loses their job. Those could be reasons to reopen the divorce. And if there's a way to distill that into a present value and negotiate for money on the side of the table for the person who is giving up those benefits, I feel much better about that than relying on the ex spouse to fulfill obligations in the future. Certainly, so much of what we're talking about here, Steve, is left to the advocacy of the attorneys. Even selling a home later, that can lead to some serious complications. If one person is expecting more out of the house and the value of the home drops or goes up a lot between the divorce and the time itself, it just provides more fodder for conflict.

Mark Renard  19:42  
Yeah, so the control issue is really important, Steve. I want to go back to your what you opened up with, which was an important question of, you know, should you see a financial advisor before you sign the decree? So here's an example. Spouse comes in and written in the decree is that debt is not to be reconciled. So both the spouses had their own debt. And the idea was that when the house sold, then the debt would be reconciled and paid off. And so now the spouse who is ready to buy another house goes to a lender, and a lender says, Hey, you can't buy another house, not with this debt hanging there. And so the decree had to be changed so that that debt could be paid off prior to the selling of a home. And control was huge. In other words, the ex spouse was able to control this woman and be like, oh, sorry, you know, haha, can't refinance the house, can't live in the house that you've loved to live in. And so in this situation, the decree got changed. The attorney changed it, it got refiled and the debt got paid off with retirement assets to alleviate the spouse so that she could refinance and purchase the home that she lived in her whole life.

Steve Altishin  20:57  
Yeah, there are horror stories about leaving something to be done. And I know that I have seen many more litigations going on after divorce. Because you know,  one parent or one ex spouse is not doing what they're supposed to do--they're not cleaning it up, they're not keeping it up, the house value is going down because of what they're doing. I mean, all these things, you can't control it. Another one I saw where were the closing company wouldn't insure it because every I and every T wasn't dotted in the decree as to the description of the property. I mean, just simple things like that can go wrong.

Grant Johnstone  21:47  
Yeah. Talking about descriptions in a divorce decree, I'm sure you all have had your fair share of QDROs that you've had to work through, qualified domestic relations orders. And those, my goodness, they have to be done just exactly the way that the pension manager wants them to be done. It's not even something that's codified, it's their way or you're going to end up waiting. So pensions, 401K's, those can be divided through a qualified domestic relations order. But what's interesting about pensions, very much like Social Security, is that you don't get to take those necessarily until the spouse is taking theirs. So that's possible, but it's not always the case. I've seen pensions that and I say, Well, no, we will pay a pension to the non employee spouse, but they've got to wait until employee spouse starts taking their pension. And so that kind of gets back to the control issue. There's definitely calculations that we can do to figure out, what is that value now? It gets to be somewhat subjective, because we're inputting the variables of, you know, what is the expected return? What is the expected costs on it? With Social Security, again, a spouse can receive half of their former spouses for Social Security, if they've been married to them for 10 years. And I believe some of the statistics we received from your office said that most divorces occur at nine and a half years curiously, right before that 10 year mark. That's a statistic I didn't notice. Seems pretty interesting. If those people held on just six months more, then they would've been entitled to that other social security. I actually had a situation with a happily married couple where the wife realized that by being married to the second husband, she was going to get a much lower social security benefit. And so they actually arranged to get a divorce, just so that she could receive the much higher benefit from her previous spouse. 

Steve Altishin  21:51  
Yeah, yeah. And that's, again, just stuff you don't know until you talk to somebody who does know the importance of getting information. Real quick. I imagine that you have people come in and say, I don't want to sell this, or if it's a divorce, I don't want them to have it, I have a personal attachment to it. And, you know, how do deal with that other than to just say, Fine, you're gonna lose money.

Grant Johnstone  24:44  
I was hoping you'd bring that up. Yeah, being emotionally attached to assets is a big mistake. I think that your firm has, you know, they're very even handed in really trying to get to the best result for everybody in their advocacy, but if someone comes in and they are fighting over an asset, that's going to be a burden to them. It's better for us to lay out and show that, you know, things like houses, cars, and toys, I've seen people get very, very attached to those. And they create this goofy bidding war between two attorneys that are trying to fight for the maximum for their clients. And so we can end up spinning our wheels, fighting over these assets that have a very clear monetary value. And if we can set those out on a spreadsheet for somebody and say, Okay, here's the value, here's the value of this toy, these things can be replaced. In fact, they're probably not even worth what you think they're worth. And so if we can actually educate a client about that, then it makes for better advocacy, because then they can get their, I guess, the other spouse to fight over the goofy stuff, while we are preserving those things that actually have value, things that can't be replaced. So calling out the emotion before you go to the attorney is really valuable. Because if you go to the attorney, and you say, Hey, I just want to fight over this, it's my Jetski. And I don't want her to have it because I bought it, you can make some really big mistakes. I see it all the time. I see that all the time, one of the biggest things. So being being level headed, being the level headed negotiator, being the level headed party in the divorce, will help you get a better deal.

Steve Altishin  26:43  
Mark, I think we talked about this a little bit. That involves getting hate, and anger, and revenge, and all of those things that can pile up out of the way of evaluating what's a good settlement, and what's a good way to go forward.

Mark Renard  27:03  
Yeah, you know, the bills you pay in a divorce kind of run with emotions. So the higher the emotions, the higher the bills, and I learned this personally, and it's really difficult when you're going through this life event to not have emotions flooding you. You know, anger, resentment, just frustration. There were some days where I just wanted to say, go ahead, have everything, I just want to walk away and be free, you know? But like in life too, and in investing, we have to have control, self control. We have to be able to control our emotions nd not react to what we're feeling because feelings rarely have anything to do with the truth and what's really going on. And so I guess this is going to be the spiritual segment of, you know, practice self control. Practice not reacting to the strong emotions you're having over things, over possessions, and there will be much better outcomes that way.

Steve Altishin  28:16  
Sometimes it's just good to talk to someone who isn't talking. I mean, it's like a vault to themselves. Just having a calm person to talk to. I'm sorry, what were you going to say?

Grant Johnstone  28:28  
Well I was gonna say that, you know, not only do we see clients that want to fight over something that shouldn't be fought over, we also see spouses come in, and they want to be nice. And so they say, Well, he wants this and, you know, maybe there's a chance that we get back together, and so I need to be nice about this. And so part of our counseling in terms of, you know, what Mark's referring to, is just that emotional component. The time for being nice is kind of over at that point. This is not the time to try to get back together. So you need to back away from the attorneys and go work it out. But if you're in front of the attorneys, and your spouse is being really, really nice to you about something, beware. And if they're really, really fighting over something, maybe you need to check yourself. Maybe you want them to go ahead and fight themselves into a hole. So by having good counsel of people that can see past the emotions of the assets is a tremendous benefit, especially if that can be done either in concert with the attorney or before you actually get there.

Steve Altishin  29:46  
Before you get there reminds me also that, you know, one of the big frustrations with attorneys a lot of times is getting Discovery. It literally is like pulling teeth sometimes, and it's not necessarily the client's problem or fall. So the the cleaner, more filled in discovery that they can get, that just makes their divorce go smoother as it kind of chugs along,

Grant Johnstone  30:18  
It certainly gets the attorney much better equipped, and it saves time and money at the attorney's office. The attorneys at your firm, they would much rather be paid to do what they actually are trained to do, and not just to go through boxes of statements and to try to figure these things out. We speak that language, we speak enough of the law language, that we can marry up with a legal team and make it stronger. But you know, to go to an attorney and try to have the attorney work through your emotional issues on assets, to learn and work through the cost issues, the tax issues, the maintenance issues, that's expensive, and doesn't need to be done in front of the attorney, that can be done ahead of time. A lot of times also, we bring people in thinking that they're gonna have a contentious divorce, and we work out a spreadsheet for them. And then they're able to kind of actually come to your law firm and seek an agreed judgment. So much less expensive, so much less painful. And so sometimes by getting all these ducks in a row, it reduces the cost and actually makes the attorneys look a whole lot better.

Steve Altishin  31:40  
Yeah. Like you said, I, I've seen various numbers, but up to 70% of the divorces are caused by money problems. So it's a huge issue. I know we're getting near the end, but I've got a couple quick questions. Say one of you just makes the greatest settlement in the world, on paper it looks wonderful, and then 18 months later, your spouse dies. Is there any way you can protect yourself from any of this stuff?

Mark Renard  32:11  
Yeah, I'll jump in because this is a question about, you know, Why is life insurance a requirement in a divorce and most judgments or judgments that are written? Well, if there is an future obligation, it has to be protected against an untimely death. And so, you know, what's really important is to make sure that the insurance amount is correct. So if you have two opposing sides, and life insurance is required, one side is going to want to have as much as possible, and the other side's gonna want to have as little as possible. So where a financial planner can come in and help is, one of our roles is to identify what needs a person has for insurance. W do this day in and day out in our reviews. Well, we apply those principles to say okay, this is how much insurance we recommend you need, and here's why, and here are the calculations. That way, they go armed with a discussion, because, you know, a million dollars of insurance versus half a million dollars of insurance is a significantly different monthly cost.

Steve Altishin  33:18  
Yeah, yeah. 

Grant Johnstone  33:19  
And also, Mark, you might mention that not all insurance needs to be paid monthly, as we're working through these negotiations. You might talk about that real quick.

Mark Renard  33:30  
Yeah, you know, insurance can be bought, paid up with a lump sum. There are different forms of insurance, term insurance and such. And so, you know, again, it ends up being a negotiation, and the judge has to approve it. So I don't think it's a real big issue, because I think that it's easy to understand that if you have a future liability, you need to have it insured and protected. I mean, that's the right thing to do.

Steve Altishin  34:07  
Oh, final question. We talked about this, and it's really not part of today's discussion, but we've talked about planning for the divorce. What about post divorce? I mean, is it a good idea? Do I need to come and get a post divorce financial plan? I guess my financial situation is vastly different probably than it was before the divorce.

Mark Renard  34:35  
Absolutely, Steve. Absolutely. Because what will happen is that typically, especially with a couple, usually there's a dominant partner in terms of handling the finances, the spouse that was paying the bills, the spouse that was saving for retirement. So you know, for sure there's going to be a situation where you're going to have lump sums of cash, you're going to have received your portion of a QDRO, maybe a household. And so you're starting over, and there's nothing better than a financial plan when you're in that position of having assets, and needing to identify what your goals and objectives are, and then getting those assets to work toward helping you achieve the goals and objectives that you have. And that's what a financial planner can do for you.

Grant Johnstone  35:26  
Yeah. You know, you can hear just by even talking to Mark, he has a really good bedside manner. He's very comfortable to work with. Once you're divorced, suddenly you don't have the person you had before to bounce things off of. And having somebody that understands and is also kind of nurturing and gets you and appreciates what you've been through. Having that good sounding board, people like Mark, you know, they're they're sensitive to what people have gone through. It's not just about the money. It's not just about the accounts. So having someone to be able to bounce ideas off of, as you formalize, finalize, and get used to your financial plan, I think that's really important.

Steve Altishin  36:08  
Oh, my God, I couldn't agree more. We have to quit, I hate this. But thank you guys, for being here today. You gave incredible insight on this whole idea of not knowing what you don't know and getting the information before it's too late. So I just thank you guys so much for doing this and for being here and going over this with us today.

Grant Johnstone  36:38  
Absolutely. You all reach out to us anytime we can be of some help to you or your clients.

Steve Altishin  36:43  
We absolutely will. And on that, I want to thank everyone for joining us again today. If anyone has questions on today's topic, you can post them here and we can get you connected with Grant and with a team at Miracle Mile Advisors, and we will happy to do that. So until next time, stay safe. Stay happy. Stay healthy. Good night. 

Outro:
This has been Modern Family Matters, a legal podcast focusing on providing real answers and direction for individuals and families. Our podcast is sponsored by Landerholm Family Law and Pacific Cascade Family Law, serving families in Oregon and Washington. If you are in need of legal counsel or have additional questions about a family law matter important to you, please visit our websites at landerholmlaw.com or pacificcascadefamilylaw.com. You can also call our headquarters at (503) 227-0200 to schedule a case evaluation with one of our seasoned attorneys. Modern Family Matters, advocating for your better tomorrow and offering legal solutions important to the modern family.