The Get Ready Money Podcast

Connecting Wealth and Great Health

• Tony Steuer

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On the latest episode of The Get Ready Money Podcast, I spoke with Chris Heye, Founder of Whealthcare Planning and Whealthcare Solutions about changing the way we think about money and health. 


In this episode we discussed:


  • You can’t separate great health from wealth.
  • Why it’s important to have productive conversations on health related events.
  • Have conversations with other family members.
  • Our capacity to make good decisions declines with age.
  • Poor financial decision making is an early sign of cognitive decline.
  • Working on your self-awareness.


Connect with Chris Heye, PhD:


  • LinkedIn (here)
  • Whealthcare Planning Website (here)
  • Whealthbot (here)


Resources mentioned:


  • Is Joe Biden Too Old To Be President? Is Donald Trump? (LinkedIn)
  • The Cognitive Impairment Probability Calculator (here) 
  • The Decision-Making Fitness Check-Up Assessment (here) 
  • The Power of Compound Interest - The Get Ready Money Podcast episode (here)


Chris Heye, PhD is the Founder of Whealthcare Planning LLC and Whealthcare Solutions, Inc. He is a technology entrepreneur, writer, researcher, speaker, and product innovator with a passion for crafting solutions to the challenges and opportunities that reside at the intersection of personal finance, health, and longevity.  Chris is also a published author and frequent industry conference speaker, excelling in both internal and external communications and guiding teams and clients through change and innovation. He has a unique ability to translate complex concepts and problems into actionable plans and products. Extensive experience aligning activities, strategies, and messaging across product development, marketing, and sales teams.

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The Get Ready Money Podcast and its guests do not provide investment advice. All content is for educational purposes. Guest opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Get Ready Money Podcast and Tony Steuer.

Speaker 1:

Are you looking to get ready, be prepared and transform your financial future? Then you've come to the right place. This is the Get Ready Money Podcast with Tony Stewart, where Tony has insightful conversations with financial experts who are changing the way we think about money. Catch up on the latest financial trends and hear practical advice from Tony and his expert guests so you can build healthy habits that work, Be empowered with tips for implementing small changes that can have a big impact on your financial future. So sit back and get ready to hear from today's guest. So sit back and get ready to hear from today's guest.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the Get Ready Money podcast changing the way we think about money. I'm pleased to be joined today by Chris Hay. Chris is the founder of Wealthcare Planning and Wealthcare Solutions. In this episode, we'll be discussing Chris's insights on how we change the way we think about money and wealth care. Chris, welcome to the Get Ready Money podcast. Thanks for joining us today.

Speaker 3:

Hey, tony, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, excited to have this conversation. I know we've talked in the past so you know for the audience you know. Tell us a little bit about yourself. What is your origin story?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so my origin story has a lot to do with what happened in my family. I unfortunately have a family history of dementia. My mother suffered from dementia and eventually died of dementia. Her mother, my grandmother had dementia, her sister had dementia and during my mother's final years of life I was the primary caretaker for her. I have siblings who helped a ton, but towards the end we moved her. When she started memory care I live, I was the closest one there and I was the one who had sort of the most. It's funny because I actually have sisters who did more on the financial side, actually did more on the healthcare side. So I would be. I was the one who was interacting with their healthcare providers, you know, taking her doctor's appointments, interacting with the staff at the memory unit, taking her out to dinner. So I spent a lot of time in memory units and just at times it can be depressing, but it was incredible learning experience for me. And this was after my dad actually died of prostate cancer.

Speaker 3:

He had pretty serious prostate cancer in his early 60s and he died when he was 70, which now seems you know pretty young and my dad was the primary income earner and kind of the chief financial officer was the primary income earner and kind of the chief financial officer and he was a college professor, kind of an absent-minded college professor. He was really good at investing, as it turned out, but he was like a pack rat, it's just the financial stuff was all over the place and it was classic. And then when he died we were like literally my siblings, especially one of them, spent months figuring out where all this stuff was. So I guess, in short, I have.

Speaker 3:

I have a lot of experience, first time experience with how these health related risks can affect financial management, because I've been. I've been through it with my dad, I've been through it with my mom, been through it with some you know family and other family and friends, and so that's really shaped my worldview on financial management and you know where I come from now is that, especially as we get older, you know you can't really separate health from wealth. That you know health and healthcare decisions are going to affect your personal finances and financial decisions can have a significant impact on both your mental and physical health. So that's been my area of focus and I think, especially as the population ages, these issues are only going to get become more important and the interaction between health and wealth are only going to become more important and the interaction between health and wealth is only going to grow.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I completely agree and I'm so sorry to hear about that with your family, and caregiving is so difficult for people who watch and listen to the shows. They've heard from so many advisors themselves who've ended up as caregivers. So many of us will end up as an informal caregiver or needing informal caregiving.

Speaker 3:

So we all, we're all going to be both caregivers, and I think it was a Rosalind Carter had the comment either everybody's either going to be a caretaker, has been a caretaker or will need caretaking. It's just. It's just the fact of life these days.

Speaker 2:

Definitely definitely, and you know that goes to the importance of an aging plan. But let's jump into. You know your specialty, which is wealth care. What is wealth care?

Speaker 3:

So what I started about 10 years ago, actually getting interested in this area and trying to figure out ways how I could develop these educational tools and resources that would help older adults and their families more effectively plan for these health-related financial risks, and I actually did a trial at Mass General Hospital.

Speaker 3:

Another important piece of this is a good friend of mine is the head of geriatric psychiatry at Mass General Hospital, dr Tony Weiner, and we did a study that tried to look at the relationships between aging cognitive impairment for sound financial decision making, and at the time a lot of people were focused on memory, and I think memory becomes kind of a euphemism for cognitive impairment.

Speaker 3:

And so, anyway, we found that there are these other factors related to what doctors call executive function that seem to be very impactful for sound financial decision making. So just ability to plan, to organize, to connect the dots, all that seems to be, you know, very important for good decision making, and so I just kept sort of drilling down in that area. And then so we've developed this assessments, which you can we can talk about that later if you want, but the assessment is now available for free on one of my websites and I encourage anybody who has concerns about a family member, the ability to make some financial decisions to take that assessment. So I've got some new products coming out which we can talk about later, but basically the high level goal is to help educate both financial professionals and the clients they work with on how to more effectively plan for these health related financial risks, including that kind of a subspecialty in there, including how to deal with dementia and other mental and behavioral illnesses that can severely impact decision-making.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think this is so important and I had some experience when I was doing some litigation consulting is seeing this come up in elder financial abuse cases where there were signs of decline or changes. I think I read a paper and you can definitely sure talk to this is that sometimes elderly people will take on more risk, sometimes surprisingly, than they have historically no that happens a lot, I think, with people surprisingly than they have historically.

Speaker 3:

No, that happens a lot, I think, with people. Again, when people think about Alzheimer's and some of these other cognitive illnesses, they think about what I would call kind of like the cognitive side of things, especially like the memory loss. But there's also these more sort of behavioral issues that are sometimes a little more subtle and a little harder to detect, but they can have very significant negative consequences for decision-making. Things like excessive risk-taking, impulsivity so lack of impulse control, overconfidence. These factors have been shown in studies even to have some really, really bad effects on decision making, especially overconfidence. I mean we've seen this over and over as people, as people to get older, I mean the studies have shown that people's capacity to make good decisions tends to decline. Right, you know, it goes up and then, like a lot of things, later in life, we're not as good at running, we're not as good, as you know, shooting basketball hoops, we're maybe not as good as some other things, but we tend to lose these capabilities and one study suggested we start losing these capabilities in our 50s already. The problem is a lot of people, even while they're losing these capabilities, they don't want to recognize that they are. So you get this gap between actual capacity and perceived capacity and that can get you dangerous. The other thing that and this came up in the trial.

Speaker 3:

Getting back to your point about risk-taking, there is this difficulty A lot of adults, when they get older, it gets harder and harder to connect the dots, and I saw this with my mother, you know really clearly. With my mother I would ask her questions like would you like to do X? Figure out if you wanted to do X. You kind of have to go through. Well, if I do X, I got to do A first, then B, then C, and she just couldn't do it.

Speaker 3:

You know, just having to be able to plan, you know, at any point in the future was hard. So that can happen with older adults. So you just, you don't, you're just not as aware of the consequences of your actions. For you know these are general statements, obviously, and that can lead to excessive risk taking, which is why you know, and I have concerns about especially some of these risk tolerance questionnaires For older adults. You know they can be, you know, worse than useless Because, again, older adults can't make those connections, so they may take these assessments and come up as being very risk loving, where, in fact, they just don't understand the risk.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's a really good point is I hadn't thought about it from that perspective. But yeah, if they are becoming more risk tolerant when actually they need to be taking less risk, you know that does become more of a dangerous tool. So you know, what can you know? Do you have a couple simple tips for advisors to kind of maybe be looking for to see if their clients risk profile I mean, is that just it, is their risk profile changing from what's been?

Speaker 3:

historically, it can change over time. Yes, and again, it's possible that people do become more risk-taking as they get older and they can also become more impulsive as they get older, because one thing we found in this study is that it does appear that this ability to control impulses is important for good financial decision making. So, as some people get older and again I've seen this with some older adults with cognitive issues you know that your executive function is your kind of your governor. It's what tells you to say don't say anything inappropriate, you know. You know, you know think before you speak and for certain population of older adults, that those governors start to come off. So, basically, what happens that the heck make you more impulsive and that can be really detrimental to, you know, sound financial decision making.

Speaker 3:

So, as far as the advisors goes, yes, there are some things to look for. I mean, I think, just in general, there's a lot of good reasons just to stay in touch with your clients, right, especially older clients. You know, stay in touch with them frequently because and I saw this with my mother and I've seen this with other older adults these declines in decision making capacity tend not to be linear. They tend to be more discontinuous, like somebody's good for a while, and I'd see this with my mother and then I didn't see her for a week, and then I'd come back and go, wow, mom, just seems different today, and then let's see if and sometimes I'd come back the next day and she'd see, fine, but it did seem like, okay, she just sort of permanently dropped, permanently dropped, permanently dropped, permanently dropped.

Speaker 3:

So advisors want to be in touch and there's a lot of good, you know, a lot of sound evidence suggesting that just good communication is critical to keeping your clients anyway, you know. And also, of course, you want to get to know the spouse, you want to get to know the kids, because this you know, especially if it's a male client, you know, usually, frequently, not always, but frequently the woman is kind of the chief medical officer in the family and the spouse, the female spouse, may be the one who says I'm a little worried about Dave, he's been forgetting stuff, he's been getting confused. So you want to stay on top of all that no-transcript, all things to look out for. And again, you don't need to be a doctor, you just need to be someone who's you know, who's had some interest in their client and is paying attention to what they're saying and how they are appearing. So I think those are all important things for a financial advisor to be professionals, to be aware of.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think you said something that's super important is because, okay, so an advisor spotted a potential decline or change in a client's behavior. Cognition is you have to have somebody to be able to talk to about it. You're not a mandatory reporter, so you may not report it to Adult Protective Services, which would be a huge step. Which would be a huge step, but, as you point out, if you have a relationship with a spouse or if you have a relationship with the kids, then that is a conversation to have. But you know, a question that comes up for me, though, is confidentiality. Do you have any advice for advisors on how to reach out to somebody?

Speaker 3:

There's a couple of things. One is I know some advisors have and I have a copy of this, but they'll have some sort of letter or some sort of agreement that they asked their clients to sign, and it can be very simple. It basically says if I suspect that you are having difficulty making sound financial decisions because of some sort of cognitive disorder, what would you like me to do? You know, contact you, contact your spouse, contact the kids. Get your permission first, you know. So I think it's good and all this should be done. It's always good to be proactive and we can talk more about that, but it's always good to do this in advance. So do this when your client don't. You know it's better to do this when your clients in their fifties and sixties rather than when they're eighties, right, and and you want to make sure that when you're talking to your clients it's like I'm not singling you out, I do this with everybody, and so do it early, do it with everybody and have some sort of agreement in writing. Ideally that specifies what the advisor, what you would like the advisor to do in the event that he or she suspects you're having difficulty making financial decisions. So I think that that's the best thing you know to be done. And then, and then you know sort of have the written agreement and then you know if you have some other verbal agreement with a spouse, with the kids, that's great.

Speaker 3:

Because one thing that's increasingly evident now is that poor financial decision-making is an early sign of cognitive decline. It's really one of the first skills to go. There's been a few studies now. I mean there's studies that suggest there've been two major studies looking at things like, you know, credit card errors and credit scores and other types of decisions. Some of those poor decisions start showing up, you know, three, four, five, six years before an official diagnosis of dementia.

Speaker 3:

So again, getting back to this, the clinical study is that you know, one of the first things that goes, or what they can go, is these executive functions, and when the executive function goes, that can have, you know, just wreak havoc on financial decision making. So the advisors are really they're kind of on the front lines in a lot of ways. They may see signs of cognitive decline before their doctors you know the client's doctors. So you know, for better or worse, they're in a really, you know again, frontline position on these issues and it's even more reason to have some sort of agreement with the clients before these things even occur.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's great advice, and I think one thing you talked about is starting early, and cognitive decline can start at an earlier age. I mean, we may associate it with later ages, but it can start in the 50s and 60s Sometimes it's rare and we started by mid 60s.

Speaker 3:

He was already pretty out of it. You know it was so sad, really great, great guy and I mean he. There's no way he should have been making. And I don't think he was, I think his, his wife was, was was very aware, but it was. He was in the 60s, not 70s, not 80s. And even you know, like I said, even there's a major study that suggests financial decision-making capacity for most people peaks around age 53. So you know, it's earlier than a lot of us want to think. You want to think it's 63 or 73. And again, that's average. But it really suggests that even families in their 50s should really start thinking, start preparing for basically the inevitable health risks. Maybe not dementia for everybody, but some cognitive decline is pretty much inevitable for all of us and a major health event is 100% inevitable for all of us. So it's going to happen.

Speaker 2:

Wow. So I definitely don't want to go down this road, but it immediately made me think of our federal legislature in the age of all the people running the United States of America, the United States of America.

Speaker 3:

It's hard. I've written about this and it was actually probably my most viewed post ever on LinkedIn. When I did this was right about when, just before Biden resigned, or resigned just before he decided not to run for office, I wrote a paper about this, because there's sort of you know, there's, on the one hand, you don't want to be ageist, right, I mean I think that we do have a big problem with ageism in this country. I think, you know, especially when it comes to employing older adults, I mean, ageism is kind of one of the last prejudices. You know there's a bunch of things that you would never say having to do with someone's ethnicity or race, but it's still, you know, in some circles still okay, yeah, that old guy, he's crazy, you know. That's still kind of, you know, unfortunately a little bit too okay.

Speaker 3:

But anyway, again, one of my, you know, most popular posts was, I kind of drilled down on this issue, because we do kind of look at Nancy Pelosi and you look at Biden. You, I mean you look at, say what you want about Nancy Pelosi, but she doesn't seem like she's lost it. Or Mitt Romney, I mean he's in his 70s now. These people haven't lost much off their fastball Again. There's, on the other hand, you know, do we really want to have a country that's run almost exclusively by people you know well past their prime years of decision making?

Speaker 2:

So it's an issue that it's going to be increasingly important for us to be able to address Fantastic and for people watching and listening. Chris, I think I have the link, but I'll double check with you to make sure I have a link to that post so I can include it in the show notes no-transcript.

Speaker 3:

Fantastic. So before we jump into the get ready questions, let's talk about AI, because Wealthcare was at doing graduate work at MIT in the 1990s and I had some exposure to the guys back then. It was all guys doing AI research and they were super smart. You know there's a cognitive scientist and you know philosophers and and I was. It was really interesting but but you know, I was did a little bit of programming and and and I just I just it's like, yeah, this is great, but where are the practical applications? You know?

Speaker 3:

And and they were like, oh, it's going to change the world and I was like, yeah, maybe someday. And so it's funny because for most of the last 20 or 30 years, whatever that is I've been a bit of an AI skeptic, in that I know that there's things that AI is affecting my life in ways that I don't even recognize. And then along came ChatGPT and I started I was an early adopter using ChatGPT and then it came to the point where, you know, chatgpt enabled you to, you know, basically train your own models, and then I kind of had that holy bleep moment. So since then the last you know, really I guess now a couple of years I've been just fascinated and very interested in the promise and the capabilities of these large language models. So the way I'm using AI is mostly what I've been doing is I've been training. I'm training a couple of different models because I have a lot of educational content that I've developed or I've developed in concert with other financial planners. Or, you know, again, I work with, you know, head of geriatric psychiatry at Mass General Hospital, dr Tony Weiner. Dr Ned Halliwell is another person that I've worked with. So I have a lot of content around the sort of the intersection of health and wealth. So I've been using that to train my own model, because I do think that these sort of personal assistance agents are going to become increased. They're going to in the next few years we're going to see many, many more of these and their capabilities are only going to get better. I mean, I've seen ChatGPT get much better just in the last year or so. So we are now. So I've got a couple models that I've trained and I'm going to be and I'm training more now, and so what I'm going to be doing is sort of drilling down. What I'm trying to do is develop some capabilities where these models are kind of keep them kind of narrow but very deep. So I've done a lot of training on this intersection of health and wealth.

Speaker 3:

Two areas now that I'm really interested in is the related areas or wealth transfer. So I'm developing some capabilities around that, because if you look at these surveys of financial advisor clients, sort of the thing that they want most that they're not getting from their advisors is wealth transfer, planning, state planning, wealth transfer. Going through that process and you know, it seems like every two weeks the volume of expected volume of wealth transfer goes up, and it was 70 trillion, it's 80 trillion Now it's like 100 trillion. So that's one area that I'm working now and I've been, I've kind of been through that. I've been it's kind of been through that twice. My dad died and I transferred the money from my dad to my mom and then my mom died and we, you know, figure out the transfer to the kids and you know there are a lot of different pieces. There are a lot of kind of not traditional financial planning pieces around estate planning, just around like financial organization, end of life planning, you know, areas that advisors don't always have a lot of expertise in.

Speaker 3:

So working on that, the other area that I want to use these models for is to help really both financial professionals and their clients, but mostly financial professionals have more productive conversations in these areas. Because, again, more productive conversations in these areas? Because, again we alluded to this earlier, this stuff is kind of hard and I get that a lot of financial professionals don't feel comfortable talking to their clients about health-related events, especially dementia, but again they kind of have to and I think not only do they have kind of an no-transcript hey, I beat the S&P by 2.1% last year that's going to pale in comparison to helping take care of their spouse who's got dementia, and it's also, I mean, there's a lot of reasons to do that. But the one major obstacle now is that advisors just don't know how to initiate and sustain those types of conversations. So I'm working on now training some. I've already got some training on how to have more productive conversations and so I've got some guidelines.

Speaker 3:

I've got some, you know scripts like basically say, you know how to start the conversation, but also I want to be able to develop the capability for these models even to enable the advisor to even practice, have a practice conversation using these models. So those are two areas where I think that, again, I think that these large language models like ChatGPT, with training, can really help, because really, I mean you can just and I even have some now if you go on my website, you can access one of these models you can just say you know my mother has dementia, what should I do? And they can get very personal Okay, my mother has dementia and she's living alone and you know I'm, you know this far away and you know blah, blah, blah, and they, and, and. So these models are really capable. You know, if you give them enough information, they can really provide highly personalized advice, and that, I think, is really going to be invaluable for many, many financial advice clients moving forward.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think I think so as well, as I think the one question is we probably don't want to talk too much about hallucinations and some of the challenges with AI, but I think that's just a growth bump. But I think I do want to stress something to advisors from more of a stick perspective is you do take on some liability if you miss some very obvious signs with your clients that things are going on, and that can open you up to litigation risk, sure. So it's important to pay attention to these signs and not overlook them.

Speaker 3:

No, I've met with a very senior, I've met with folks at FINRA and the SEC and basically they said, ignoring signs of dementia does not make you less liable. So unfortunately there is and there was just some Wells Fargo advisors just got in trouble because of this and you know there's legal and no one wants to get involved in a dispute involving elderly abuse. I mean that's just, they're awful in so many ways and they're bad for business. So there definitely is a stick component. You know, I try to, you know, point that out. But also I really do think there's a major carrot component because I really do think and we've been seeing this for a while now, you know, financial advice is getting much more holistic. Right, you know the days of, you know, advisors being, you know, only portfolio managers. Those are, those are going if those are going, if they're not gone going if they're not gone, I mean, as many people want you know, if you're getting to look at these surveys people want wealth transfer advice and financial planning as much, or at least as much as portfolio management, in some cases almost more. And you know, and so, and advice, and again AI, like I mean there's some tools now that I mean that are designed to do portfolio analysis.

Speaker 3:

Some of these models have been trained to do investment and I just think, at a high level, ai is going to free up time for financial advisors, right?

Speaker 3:

I mean, you've already got applications that can take extensive notes from meetings and summarize them and they can, you know, write emails and send emails and they can, you know, do portfolio. You know different types of portfolio management. They're only going to get better at managing. You know, rebalancing portfolios and doing tax loss harvesting. All that's going to just get better and better and better. And so the way I look at it is that's going to free up time for advisors to focus on a bunch of these more holistic, you know sort of maybe slightly less technical issues about you know, managing health-related risks, watching out for dementia and just getting to know their clients better. And I think those are going to be the successful advisors. And, again, I think AI is going to be a major driver of these results, and I think the advisors who are going to succeed in the future are going to be the ones who can seriously leverage AI in all these different ways.

Speaker 2:

AI in all these different ways? Yeah, 100%. And it doesn't mean that there's a loss of the need for the expertise for the advisor, because the expertise that you have, maybe as a certified financial planner can also be applied to making sure that everything is flowing correctly. Absolutely.

Speaker 3:

No, absolutely, and I think that the good ones are going to be able to use AI to get even better at those chores as well, and again, that's what their clients tell is going to come to expect to be able to have that comprehensive, holistic financial management. That's going to become the baseline.

Speaker 2:

That's going to become the baseline 100%, 100%. Well, chris, I'm going to switch over to our Get Ready Money questions, which I ask every guest.

Speaker 1:

Great, these are more quickfire questions.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the first one is what basic money concept do you wish people knew?

Speaker 3:

You know, I guess there's kind of two. One is again having great awareness around the relationship between health and wealth, but also, I think, for younger people, I just think the miracle of compound interest rates, the miracle of compounding, just think about that early and often, because it is kind of a miracle when you look at the results over time.

Speaker 2:

That is by far the most popular answer on the show and for people watching and listening. There is an episode of this podcast that is dedicated just to compound interest. As always, I'll put a link to it in the show notes, so if you want to go deep on compound interest, you can listen to us talk about it for an hour.

Speaker 3:

Got that out there. It's kind of a no-brainer.

Speaker 2:

Yep. For me, I think it's the basic money concept. I wish everybody knew. So, Chris, what's one simple thing people can do each year to set themselves up for financial success?

Speaker 3:

Well, again, I think it's always. You know it's good to be proactive. Human beings by nature are not usually not very good at long term planning. When you think of you know our history, let's say that species have been around well the pension, say, 250,000 years for 249,000 plus. You know, life expectancy was like 30. You know, and then a couple hundred years ago got to maybe 40.

Speaker 3:

So we just didn't think about planning, we were thinking about survival and there's no such thing as retirement. You know not many people, you just retirement's kind of a new thing, so what we need. Know not many people. You just there was retirement's kind of a new thing, so what we need to. It's hard, but you know you need to get yourself in kind of a longer term mindset and think about where you want to be. And I could have done much better at this, I think in a lot of ways personally, but I think you know, try to think five, 10, 20 years ahead and then leverage that miracle of compounding to set yourself up. Because it's funny, because you see these surveys now of younger people they want to retire in their 50s. I'm like great. So how are you going to afford those next 30 years? So that's something that I guess you know. That'd be advice on sort of an annual basis to think about. That Say, okay, if I really want to retire early, how am I going to build that nest?

Speaker 2:

egg. There's so many other issues we could talk about there, but you know some of the people I follow in the FIRE community financial independents retire early.

Speaker 3:

A lot of them have gone back to working, you know, at least part time. You know that they found that is, you know, for many reasons, that it was hard to just stop working. You know, in their 50s or 40s, I think we're going to see a lot more of that and I think, both for financial reasons, a lot of people, I mean I think we're going to see a lot more of that and I think, both for financial reasons, a lot of people, I mean. I think you know one thing we don't want to lose track of, sure that there's a lot of people. I mean, if you look at statistics on, you know things like medical debt and retirement savings in this country that's a big problem. So a lot of people are going to have to work.

Speaker 3:

I mean, there's going to be people who have to work in order to live the lifestyle that they want, and then there's a lot of people, probably like you and me, who want to work, who want to, or at least want to, keep, you know, stay active, stay active. You know, intellectually, maybe, stay active, as you know, being continuing to be part of a greater conversation. You know, in your case, you want, as you know, being continuing to be part of a greater conversation. You know, in your case, you want to. You know you want to be part of this, this, this greater discussion about financial management, and that's probably not going to go away for a long time. So I think that that's something else that we're going to see is going to be very impactful and going to it's going to be a major sort of social issue that we're going to need to do a better job of coping with. Is this how to ensure that we have this you know, productive life that people want to live, you know well, past traditional age of retirement?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, 100%, All right. So the next question is what is one habit that people can change when it comes to their money?

Speaker 3:

I think that I think there's a, there's a few. I think that you know there are. Again, money is not money for most people. So I think I would say, at a high level is trying to better understand your relationship with money. Level is trying to better understand your relationship with money. So I think, for some people, money is self-esteem, like. This is probably a subset of people who you know, think that you know, who correlate their self-esteem with their bank account, and there's people I think I would put myself in this category. For me, money can be anxiety, and so I think you know money can be anxiety and so I think you know. If I would have a suggestion is to you know, do this, do this on your own, do this with a therapist, do this with friends is try to understand your emotional relationship with money and figure out how that is A impacting your overall you know well-being and how that might be also impacting your ability to manage your finances successfully.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that is so important and I think you know there. You know, as we've been talking about, there is a greater recognition of that. So, chris, to wrap up, what is your number one tip on changing the way we think about money?

Speaker 3:

I think you know I've alluded to a few of these already.

Speaker 3:

I think you know coming to a greater understanding of what money and an emotional level means to you. And then I think the other thing is sort of related is to I think all of us could, you know, work on your self-awareness, so understand what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are. This gets back a little bit to the comments I made about overconfidence and, especially as you get older, understand that you may not be as good at managing money as you used to be, and then that's okay and it's okay to get help and at some level, get help. And then, like we did this with my mom and she didn't have to worry about money, just didn't have to worry about it, because one sister was paying the bills, the other sister was managing the finances, managing the investments, and she didn't have to worry about it. So, if you can get help, build a team is something I always talk about is building a team. Get that team together and, especially as you get older, get back, relax a little bit, let go, let go of control.

Speaker 1:

You'll be happier. Let it go.

Speaker 3:

And your money will probably be safer. You'll actually in some ways have more control if you let go now than than if you don't and then something bad happens later.

Speaker 2:

Definitely. And I think the most important thing I'd like to stress from what you said is that it's okay to ask for help. I think so many of us are like you know that asking for help can be very difficult, but it's okay to ask for help. So, chris, where can people learn more about you? Pick up the assessments and check out.

Speaker 3:

Sure, so you could go on LinkedIn. I do. I do a lot of, I publish a lot of articles on LinkedIn. So go to LinkedIn. Subscribe to my newsletter. It's called the Wealth Care Wire. Subscribe to that and you'll get updates.

Speaker 3:

Check out, if you want to look at my columns, the Journal of Financial Planning Every few weeks I have a column, and then probably I've got a couple of websites. Probably the best website to go to now is WealthBot. So wealth with an H. Wealthbotcom. There's access to the assessment that's based on the clinical study Mass General Hospital. You can access that. You can access one of my AI models. You look in the corner of the web page. There's a little chat box. You can access that, and then there's also a listing of all my public or not Many of my publications is also available. So WealthBotcom, but follow me on LinkedIn. There's going to be more. Like I said, there's going to be more products AI based products coming pretty soon the next couple of months, I hope to have one that's focusing more on wealth transfer and one that's focusing more on having better conversations. So, again, there's a little bit of that now, but there's going to be more coming.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome and for everybody watching and listening. As always, there will be links to all of these resources in the show notes so you can check out what Chris is up to. So, chris, thanks again for joining us today on the Get Ready Money podcast.

Speaker 3:

Thanks for having me, Tony. It was great to be here.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and this was a fantastic conversation and, as always, thank you everyone for tuning in to this episode of the Get Ready Money podcast. If you learned something today to change the way you think about money, please be sure to subscribe and to tell a friend. Until next time let's change the way we think about money. You.

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Tony Steuer

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