The Importance of Having a Financial Strategy Behind Your Estate Plan

We sit down with Wealth Manager, Bruce Weinstein, to discuss the value in having a detailed financial strategy in place when starting to create your estate plan. In this episode, Steve and Bruce discuss the following:

·       Financial planning and estate law with an expert.

·       Estate planning, financial projections, and tax implications.

·       Estate planning, liquidity issues, and transferring assets to next generations.

·       Life insurance planning for wealthy couples.

·       Estate planning, financial planning, and small business ownership.

·       Financial planning and estate law with a focus on trusts and taxes.

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

To learn more about how Bruce can help you, you can visit his website: https://weinsteinwealth.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.

Transcript

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  0:28  
Hi everyone, I'm Steve Altishin, Director of Client Partnerships here at Pacific Cascade Legal. And today, I'm here with Wealth Manager, Bruce Weinstein, to talk about the importance of having a financial strategy behind your estate plan. Hey Bruce, how you doing today?

Bruce Weinstein  0:48  
Good afternoon. Good evening. Good morning. How are you, Steve? I'm doing great.

Steve Altishin  0:52  
Good everything, we are three hours apart. So before we started, though, can you just kind of tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to be doing what you're doing? 

Bruce Weinstein  1:04  
The journey has been long and treacherous, at least. So I started as a financial advisor, what they called an account executive in 1986 in central New Jersey, Princeton-- people might have heard of that. And I we were just called an account executive. And we were stockbrokers in the heyday of the Wall Street resurgence and Reaganomics. And over the years, I evolved into more of a financial planner. And I've been doing financial planning strategies and more consultative, you know, approach versus just a flat out, Hey, I got something to sell. One of my lines is we have nothing to sell just problems to solve. So I'm a problem solver. And we help people from planning from college or retirement, obviously, the estate planning what to talk about. And then the last few years, my wife and I have been very heavily focused on the insurance end of the world, health insurance, Medicare, Obamacare, life insurance, everything you can think of in that regard. And my drive and motivation after all these years, is I have a podcast, that's how we've met. And it's to get more of the education to the masses. I've been dealing with clients on a one to one basis all these years. And as I start to get on the back nine of my career in life, is I want to have this legacy of education information and get more to the masses, because there's just such a lack of financial literacy in this country. And so that's what gets me up out of bed every day. 

Steve Altishin  2:34  
I love it. I love it. And before we started, I'm just going to tell you right now, we need to schedule one to talk about Medicare. My dirty little secret is I used to be an attorney, and then did some insurance and helped a bunch of attorneys try to get Medicare. And I mean, these people with, you know, huge education's can't get through that labyrinth. 

Bruce Weinstein  3:05  
It's intentional government quicksand. I think it's just like, let's see who could get through the quicksand and get out to the other side. 

Steve Altishin  3:13  
Yeah, that's exactly it. So for now, estate planning, I really liked the idea of getting the financial end of it. You know, we're attorneys, we create estate plans, wills, trusts, stuff like that. But there is that financial end that sometimes people don't really look at. And so I'm kind of wondering if you can just start with kind of a basic why, especially when it relates to financial issues, is estate planning important?

Bruce Weinstein  3:44  
I think simply stated, everything's overlapped. And what I mean by that is a financial planner, if the clients engaging with somebody for financial guidance and advice, there's a goal and an end in mind. So you know, Stephen Covey begin with the end in mind. So, Steve, what are you trying to accomplish? And then how do we work and dissect that backwards? And so the financial planning is a proactive way of making projections and assumptions and analysis, and then monitoring the journey as time plays out. I can't control the stock market results, but I know what the stock market history has done. So you can forecast modest too aggressively based upon the client's risk tolerance, their budget, their spending habits, how much are they saving? How much are they spending are the accumulating, and then ultimately, the goal on the back end is when they stop generating revenue from the so called work, when can they flip the switch to then access their assets? So now, how does that tie into an estate plan? Well, throughout this journey, there's assumptions and projections, if not physically, what's in place today of what the size of their assets and the state is. And so if it's somebody who's growing and saving, and go with the 8020, go with the 1%, the 99%, whatever it is, but state planning has different tiers and different purposes for people having a basic will, and trusts and guardianship for your minor children is your first lines of defense with a so called estate plan, right. And then if I'm a multi multi millionaire and a billionaire, well, it's even way way more sophisticated requirements of estate planning. But if I'm dealing with John Q Public, which has always been my wheelhouse, getting somebody from a million to 2 million to 5 million, based upon the changes in my career, when I started in the 80s, the estate tax threshold was $600,000. Now it's like 13 million. So the average guy on the street's not lying around with 13 million in the bank. But 600,000 was relatively easy. And now it's somebody's home or FM, the value of their home depending on where they live. So you had to do estate planning, you had to do projections. And then if I had a 55 year old couple that had a 4035 40 year life expectancy, well, the plan is going to show whether their assets are growing or shrinking. And then based upon what we know, the tax codes are, are they going to run into an estate tax situation where they need to be proactive. So now you have to divide the assets and set up cute tip trusts and residential trusts and just making sure you have all the proper structure in place, which is where you is the legal side of it, the attorneys draft the documents and the legal side. Now, if somebody's already well above those levels, they own a business, a family business and individual business privately held, versus, you know, if you're Bill Gates, his his net worth is tied up with his stock, it's a publicly traded stock. So all of these dynamics have different directions and solutions to go and different levels of sophistication. 

Steve Altishin  7:07  
Oh yeah. I love the idea of of knowing what you want to have happen. Because a lot of times when we talk to people on your estate plan, their first thing they say is, well, I don't have enough money to have an estate plan. And so why should I have an estate plan? And or I'm too young to have an estate plan. But really, I mean, it seems to me that those are the two things you should start having your estate plan even then, because, like you say, you can help them add that financial part. And obviously, the rule of 72, you know, the earlier you start the better off you are.

Speaker 2  7:56  
Again, to me, they're not. if I'm using the phrase the right way, they're not mutually exclusive. They're joined at the hip. Yep. Because A leads to B, we, you know, a shock trace alert here, like we're all going to die at some point. And when we die, our affairs have to be settled. So depending on the state that you live in, whether it's a probate state, you know, mandatory probate or not, how do you hide your assets, protect your privacy, how do you streamline the transference of the assets to next of kin, whether it's marital or not. And again, there's so much as you and I were talking offline of what people don't know. And my job, your job as CPAs job is to help our clients identify and handle the blind spots, because nobody, just like a doctor can't know everything, they have textbooks and they have a specialist, the brain surgeons not going to know how to do the cardiac stick, you know, procedure, you're gonna need a cardiologist. So it's the same thing when you're talking about somebody's finances, like I know enough to be a little bit dangerous or conversational, or more importantly, to identify a problem. But if it's tax and estate related, I need you and I need the tax advisor. That's not my wheelhouse. But the planning is, I've used this for many, many years. I'm sure you, as many listeners as a kid used to skim rocks, right? You'd go to a lake, and you'd find a nice flat rock and you'd see how far you could skim the rock. And but what you saw was the ripple of the wave as the rock made the connection to the water. And so I use that as your whether you have a financial plan or not. You're on a path. And today's the first day we can identify where the path is landing or winding up. And if you don't like where that path or that direction is heading, today's the first day we can fix it. I can't go back 10 years ago and said you should have bought apple, or 30 years ago, Microsoft, or whatever. So, again, it's it's a little cliche, but you know, today's the first day of the rest of your financial planning life. So today's when you start, then at least now, you know, and you're taking proactive direction of where you're heading. And if you don't like it, well, then how serious are you going to buckle down to fix it? And so does that mean, you're going to have an estate problem? May or may not, you may never be able to accumulate enough wealth to do so. But again, I would think, as most estate planning attorneys, they're usually working with somebody at a certain level of financial wealth that needs your services, right? They're not the guy with 50 bucks, it doesn't need an estate plan, per se, but somebody with $50 million, somebody with 5 million does. So it just depends on the complexity. And if I may, there's a question and challenge that you could throw into this. And we could talk about that. Next is there's liquidity issues.

Steve Altishin  11:22  
You read my mind, you read my mind!

Bruce Weinstein  11:27  
I didn't look at the cheat sheet, I promise.

Steve Altishin  11:29  
Yeah, really, there's two aspects I've always kind of thought about an estate plan is that I come in to you and I say, here's what I want to do, I want to make sure that my spouse's is going to be well off, that my kids are going to be well off, I want to make sure I have something for that. And that whole thing, like, here's what I want to have. And then there's that second part, which is, okay, you got all the stuff. So your kids are going to get a house, and a property and all these non liquid things. It's like, you have to think of not just you're building it up, but they're taking it out.

Bruce Weinstein  12:18  
The conversation and the buzzword, you know, multi generational wealth and transferring the assets down to the next generations, you know, like the Fords and the Rockefellers did, right. But I guess to say, from a liquidity standpoint, let's use the example of somebody who's very heavily invested in real estate. That's different than Bill Gates owning a lot of Microsoft, the market is open. Now it's one o'clock in the afternoon, Eastern Time, Bill Gates can hit the sell button, the estate, probate attorney, or whoever is handling his affairs can hit the sell button and create instant liquidity, Microsoft is tradable all day, every day, now, he may have too much to sell. And that's a different problem. But the point is, there is there's instant liquidity. And you could find a market maker and you could move x amount of shares if you needed to, right. But if I own Fifth Avenue, in New York City, if I'm if I'm a real estate developer, a real estate investor, you know, the Trump whomever out there, you know, there's a lot of people are very heavily invested in real estate and made billions of dollars. That's not as liquid. There's an issue of timing, there's issue of buying, finding the right buyer, and then there's the length of the transaction. And so as your listener probably knows, there's a certain amount of time to settle the estate tax when somebody has passed away. And the government wants their money within a reasonable amount of time, I believe it's 10 months, is it not? So you have to rectify and create liquidity? And so where does Where do I come in? Why are we here? Why? Why do you have the plan man on the show? Well, as an insurance advisor, creating liquidity is a life insurance strategy that we invoke with clients. And so again, it's not that we're going to get into the weeds here, per se, but if I need if I need $100 million to pay my inheritance tax, or my heirs to pay my inheritance tax, when I go, if that's the math, well, then my kids or my wife or whomever is going to have to either sell some of my property within that amount of time and get that 100 million dollars liquid. Hey, Ash. So what you know now what if there's no buyers? What if the real estate markets turned down? What if the I'm getting low balled for 75,000? The tax is still 100 Isn't it? Like oh, now I'm short. 25 million. So what happens? So that's where the proper planning comes in, where you can set up an irrevocable life insurance trust, you can use premium financing strategies, like there's ways to come up with and create $100 million life insurance trust, that is not a taxable event. It's outside the estate. It creates liquidity and they write a check and they keep their boardwalk Park Place Marvin gardens have their real estate portfolio, that's a monopoly reference. People don't know what I'm talking about, you know, if if I've got, again, I'm making up big numbers, but you know, it can be 50 million to 500 million, it could be 5 billion. But whatever the math is, anybody over 26 or so million dollars is going to a married couple is having an estate tax challenge. And so now where's the liquidity going to come from? So if you're worth 100 million, you're going to owe 30 million 40 million in potential inheritance tax? Do you want to write a check and give up your assets? Or do you want to come up with a strategy, leveraging life insurance, maybe even premium financing, which means somebody else pays for it? Those are just sophisticated ways that people can? Look, I think the wealthy people know, it's all about leveraging other people's money. So you know, there's strategies in there that's like, well, I shouldn't have to write the check. The insurance can write that check. And so what do I need to do? And then people like Steve, invoke all the legal bells and whistles and physical requirements. And then I take my life insurance, and we plop it into the trust, and it's documented and the tax ID numbers and you know, whose name and what name and, you know, the proper recording of the registration and stuff to make it all legal. And, but it's it's chapter and verse, it's spelled out, it's been used for 100 years. It's not you and I didn't reinvent the wheel, we're just managing the wheel for people who need it.

Steve Altishin  16:31  
That's it. And this, you know, you're talking about scale. A lot of people talk to us are like, we don't have to worry about that. We don't, we're never going to have 11 million. But then you tell them. Yeah, but our estate starts at 1 million. And so scaling that whole thing down, is just as important for the person who, like you said, maybe has a few $100,000.

Bruce Weinstein  17:04  
You know, with the challenge, I found again, as I mentioned, I'm doing this 30 years, is the two buzzwords I throw out a lot is omnipotence and apathy. And that's hard when the other person isn't on the same wavelength. You know, I can't overcome apathy. If you don't give a crap, what am I supposed to do about it? It's, I'm not the one who's going to be suffering. I'm not the one who's going to be writing the cheque or forced to liquidate a property or, you know, they say life insurance isn't for you, it's for them. And how many people don't carry life insurance to cover college or the mortgage or whatever? And it's like, Whoa, don't care? Well, what's your wife and three kids going to do when you die? And they can't keep their home anymore? Like, are you envisioning what could drain? I'm not gonna die. Really? Okay. 

Steve Altishin  17:58  
Yeah and that's sort of the, I'm sure you have this with you as your clients. It's not just one spouse, there's two spouses. And they're coming in for advice. And with a total understanding that one could die before the other. And you have to help them kind of work through that. It's not just oh, I want to do this, because I want to do this, and it's great for me now.

Bruce Weinstein  18:29  
I would say the majority of my career has been dealing with couples, where the majority, both spouses worked. I don't I don't think that Ozzie and Harriet nuclear family of the 50s, in my career has really been mom stayed home and dad worked. And it doesn't not to say that I didn't have clients that did, but the majority were reliant, but if you use that stereotypical nuclear family, dad worked and mom stayed home. And then you say, well, I need the life insurance on Dad, because he's the breadwinner. And then a lot of times, I'd say, Well, what about getting insurance on mom? And they'd be like, Well, I don't need it. You know? I'm like, Really, she takes care of the kids. Like, she provides services in value. What's going to happen to your three year old five year old and seven year old? She's gone? who's raising your kids? Are you going to keep going to work every day? Are you going to have to pay for a nanny? Do you want to stay home and be a stay at home dad, your kids have just suffered this traumatic loss. Like I try and put them in the reality and I come from an environment. Unfortunately, my folks divorced at a young age. I was raised by a single mother. And my mother passed. I was 22. But you know, my mother died at a pretty young age at 45. So, you know, I was thrust into being raised by a single parent. My dad wasn't around that much. There was economic burden that came with that. Right so I can express some of those challenges and put that apathetic husband back in place of like, Dude, you're going to need resources, you're not going to be able to work the 60 hour work week and take care of a three year old. It's just not going to, you're going to need to hire somebody, or you're going to need to take time off. So yeah, so I suggest you pick up a policy on your wife as well. And in term insurance, Steve is super inexpensive like, but again, it's back to apathy and omnipotence. It's not going to happen to me and yada yada, right. And so, you know, that that's the the we do a lot in the health insurance world. And this is a little bit of a tongue in cheek is, you know, people are I don't need health insurance, I'm in good shape. And I'm healthy and, and our responses, walk around any hospital outside of the maternity ward, and ask them if they plan on being there that day. I didn't plan on getting sick, a heart attack or a stroke. Like I wasn't planning on being here. Well, that's why you have insurance like That's why if so, I don't know when that stroke kills me. And my wife finds me, God forbid, at the bottom of the stairs dead. And now she's like, What do I do to pay the mortgage? How do I put the kids through college? What do I do to retire? Can my wife go out and make if I make a couple $100,000 a year to run the household and, and have a lifestyle for my family? Can my wife go out and make $200,000 a year to maintain that lifestyle? No, no, no. You know, I mean, I mean, these days, maybe yes, but you get the point is like, but that's where you have to put people in real pain in the pain. And then let's tie it back to the estate. So now the estate liquidity and the estate needs are? Well, why for the cost of a proper a consultation and be, you know, properly designed a state plan, you know, a few $1,000 depending on house, you know, water, you know, starting point and up, right, depending how sophisticated but you know, two to 5000 would be you know, your your basic work, right, you can eliminate the most common mistake that people have made. And that's not splitting the assets properly, and then having assets tax that didn't need to be taxed. I mean, that's that was estate planning one on one, you know, when it was $600,000? Because you can protect 1.2 million and the snap of your fingers. Yep, yep. But most people never did it.

Steve Altishin  22:30  
It's interesting. And that kind of leads to you know, just a state plans. And we have we talked to this, but people aren't just about dying, they are also about living well as you get older. And that's where, especially a lot of times did the financial planning becomes important. And, and one of the things we kind of hear sometimes is, well, I've got this retirement sort of strategy, but our kids are going to go to college. And so now we're gonna have to, you know, not do that for the next five years or 10 years, because we got to put our kids in college. And And I'm assuming people kind of come and talk to you about, you know, these things come up. And it can just derail people, you know, with what they want in their estate plan and their financial plan?

Bruce Weinstein  23:25  
Well, you have, how big is the epicenter of the entrepreneur in this country? How many small business owners are there? And by what definition, do you want to call them a small business owner? But you know, how many small business owners are worth between 10 and $100? million? How do they properly sell and transition their business? If they have an exit strategy? How do they avoid capital gains taxes? How do they avoid inheritance taxes, like, you know, it's a layer of an onion, and the more you peel back, the more complicated it could get. So there's, again, as we started, the beginning of the conversation is there's so many spider cracks of direction that things can go. And so that's where you have to start. As the consumer, the user of this you have to understand that you may not even know how complex your situation is. And additionally, you may not know how easy it is to fix it. Yeah. And so avoiding it for a few dollars, a few minute consultation, a few hours of legal work, all of a sudden wipes out. I just saved a million dollars like Well, yeah, it was worth paying Steve five grand for that, wasn't it or 10 grand or whatever it is. And, and so one of the one of the biggest cases I worked on and again, the taxation levels were nowhere your state tax levels weren't anywhere near where they were. This is over 20 years ago, but I had a couple that had a $5 million stock position with an $8,000 capital gain. Sorry, $8,000 bases, making it literally a $5 million capital gain. And it was being managed by a trust department when we met them. And the trust department refused to sell the stock and properly diversify, because of the capital gain exposure. And on some levels, and I'll, I'll name drop it, you know, it's a level of malpractice, if you will, because it was a bank stock. And when the I, we did this case in around 2000, to 2003. And in 2008, that bank felt they no longer exist, their stock went from 50 to $1. And so if they hadn't met me, and we hadn't invoked the strategy that I'm going to, you know, briefly touch on, and they never left that trust department, and they wound up with that stock, that $5 million would have disappeared, it would have turned into 50 grand. And all that couple ever did was live on the dividend, they never touched the principal, and the dividend would have been gone, their income stream would have been gone, their asset would have been gone. So based upon my knowledge and understanding, we discussed a strategy using a charitable remainder trust. So as you you know, what it is it is a state planning tool. This is a way to combine, gifting, because most people would like to give or prefer to give their money to a charity. You know, who's first family first, charity, second government third, right like that. That shouldn't be the pecking order and third should never come, right. Warren Buffett's rule, you know, first rule of Warren Buffett is never lose money, right? Never take a loss. Rule number two, see rule number one, right. So you know, rule. First is family. Second is charity. Third shouldn't exist as government but you know, it's voluntary, you can make choices. So the strategy was that we were going to gift the $5 million dollars into a charitable remainder trust, the immediacy of that eliminated the capital gains, which was 28%, by the way, which is $1.4 million. Now we get $1.4 million to reinvest, we have the full $5 million to reinvest, we put them into an annuity, as guarantees, right. And they're able based upon the calculations with the government at the time to pull out about 8%. So now they're gonna get pretty much lifetime income of 8% off of their chattel remainder trust. Now, the dividend the stock wasn't paying them that much. It was definitely not paying them 8%. And we got to diversify, protect the assets use the annuity have some guarantees in place, and then ultimately, when they die, as remainder trust means is the remainder of the money would go to their charity. And then they got a present value tax deduction, so that cash flow was tax free for a few years. And then the last piece de resistance was, we then took about $40,000 of the $400,000 of income, so 10%, and we were able to buy a second to die, life insurance policy funding an eyelet trust for the $5 million that they just gave away. Again, tax the tax levels were like 1.2 at the time, okay, right. So if they died with 5 million, they would have had an inheritance tax of 3.8 plus the capital gain, which would have shrunk the size of their estate. So you know, net net, we saved them a couple million dollars in tax, they have an islet trust set up for $5 million. Now, we recommended more because the 5 million would have grown theoretically over time, but they were comfortable with five and they opted to go with the five like they the husband, the husband wasn't the parent. Those are his stepchildren, his attitude was five millions enough for them. So you don't want to give them 10. So we did all of that work. And so massive, massive problem solve. Yeah. And so,

Steve Altishin  29:10  
God, we're just gonna say, fall, we're almost done. But that is exactly kind of what leads to, both on estate planning. And I think on financial planning is it's not a one time visit. No, and you would never discover that if you weren't thinking about it, and knowing maybe when you need to update something, and I'll

Bruce Weinstein  29:36  
throw this out. In the scheme of things. Again, it's 20 years ago, I was working at Wachovia securities, so I don't know how many advisors we had 10 12,000 but what I'm about to say it's not patting myself on the back as much as the warning sign. There's 10s of 1000s The financial advisors have no idea how to spell charitable remainder trusts CRT like they wouldn't have the, my partner didn't understand what it was, okay, I had advanced training, I went to a course and got certified on charitable remainder trusts, I educated myself. And so when that opportunity came about, I was able to help facilitate this, where, again, the money was being managed by a Trust Company for this person. They didn't know about that strategy, they were leaving all that money in that stock. And as I mentioned, at the beginning, that stock collapsed, that stock went to near zero. And so what kind of lawsuit would have that entailed in 2008? If we had never crossed paths with these people and fixed that situation, we got to diversify their portfolio, we got to eliminate the capital gains tax, we reduce their estate tax we created, we recreated the asset for their heirs tax free, like an end their charity is gonna get millions of dollars when they eventually pass on. Like it was a triple win. Yeah,

Steve Altishin  31:07  
yeah. And just circling back to what we're talking about, which was the importance of having a financial strategy behind your estate plan. That's the that's the, the exact definition of that is, is you can have the greatest estate plan in the world. But if you don't have the right financial strategy, to make that estate plan work, then you're in big trouble. Just yeah, it's it again,

Bruce Weinstein  31:36  
this is, you know, loosely speaking, but do I want a surgeon operating without doing an MRI first to see what's going on in there, we said it earlier, they're not mutually exclusive, they shouldn't be working hand in hand to just plop down in the state plan without having a financial plan and projections. It's like, let me pay my taxes, but never really reconcile my profit and loss and my income, like, No, you, you have to do the work before you get to the end to then go do the next step. And so, you know, for me, it's building blocks that take to the journey, and then my body of work is going to lead to direction for you. Of Well, this is what we're facing and dealing with Steve, how would you suggest family has been partnerships? You know, like, what do you want to do here? That's not my wheelhouse. You know, what would we do here? And I'll tee it up for the client to say, Look, these are the things we're going to need to be doing. I'm going to bring in Steve, and Steve is going to take it from here. And I'm going to sit with you because that's what I've always done. I'm, I'm kind of the co pilot with my clients when I bring in a tax or an estate person, and I sit with them through the process like, um, with all due respect, I'm the interpreter. Yeah, because a lot of a lot of the professionals on the estate and tax side, everybody talks like Charlie Brown's teacher, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, and the client has no idea what you guys are talking about. And I'll say, remember, I said this and this, remember, I told you about that and that and they're like, oh, yeah, I said, Well, that's what Steve's talking about, you know, maneuvering here and positioning. So, you know, I'll get I'm tongue in cheek and then a little bit, but you know, I'll be the interpreter because you and I both know, the clients absorb, probably less than 5% of what you're talking about, right there. There. Once you're in the seat at Steve's office, the trust level is going to be well, that's what I should do. I guess I'm going to do it. Like, I don't necessarily know how it works. And, you know, I got my remote control in my hand as a demonstrator. And I always say to clients, like, look, if I hit this button in the batteries work, would you expect that that device is going to go on? Like, it's a remote control? Like, yeah, like, I hit the button, my expectations, or whatever, I'm pointing it that's gonna go on my TV, my air conditioner, whatever it is, I said, but the engineer, right, that the analytical guy, he's going to want to open it up. And he's going to know how all the wirings work and all the intricacies intricacies of it. Well, that's not every client, most clients just want to know, hit the button, and it works. And then that that rare client, the analytical client, the engineer, is gonna say, Steve, show me how it works, right, pull this apart. And I get that, you know, with the planning as well. So, you know, you want to go into the software and look at the projections and how it's being calculated in the spreadsheet, have at it, like, you know, whatever you want. But, you know, at the end of the day, it's a trust factor of like, look, we're professionals, we're trained, experienced, certified. And if you do what we tell you to do, it's, in theory going to work barring tax code changes or you know, something out you know, a lot of love it.

Steve Altishin  34:39  
Well, we have definitely run out of time. And that's unfortunate because we could talk through this for another hour easily. Bruce, before we let you go though, if someone wants to get a hold of you can just tell them how they can do that.

Bruce Weinstein  34:52  
So 844 toll free number 844PLANMAN, that'll come to me. My podcast is called Ask the Planman. And you could follow us at planman.tv and hit my YouTube and subscribe and follow us and, you know, pick up more education on we've got 57 or so episodes to date on all things insurance and financial related, car financing, budgets, long term care. I mean, we cover the gamut. And hopefully we'll continue to bring more value and more, you know, production of shows for people-- there's no product, Steve, and there's no commercials. 

Steve Altishin  35:35  
I love that. 

Bruce Weinstein  35:36  
We're selling nothing. It's strictly education. It's information, as you mentioned about Medicare. So, you know, we have episodes on Medicare and Obamacare and the like, so love to have the opportunity to come back on your show anytime. 

Steve Altishin  35:49  
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And thank you for being here today. I really do appreciate it. Thank you, everyone else for joining us. If anyone has further questions on today's topic, you could post it here we can get you connected with Bruce or you can go connect with him directly. And until next time, stay safe. Stay happy, be well.

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 Pacific Cascade Legal, 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 pacificcascadelegal.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.