This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Finishing Well brought to you by CardinalGuide.com with certified financial planner Hans Scheil, bestselling author and financial planner helping families finish well for over 40 years. On Finishing Well, we'll examine both biblical and practical knowledge to assist families in finishing well, including discussions on managing social security, Medicare, IRAs, long-term care, life insurance, investments and taxes.
Now let's get started with Finishing Well. Welcome to Finishing Well with certified financial planner Hans Scheil. And today's show, really one of those must-have shows, if there was a show you need to listen to, and I'm talking about you, right there, the one on the dial, yeah, it's estate planning documents you must have. And so, you know, for those of you who've ever seen the movie Pollyanna, and I hope you do, go rent it or something. It's amazing because Karl Malden, a famous actor from days ago, plays this preacher and he gives this sermon, Death Comes Unexpectedly. And the sad news is that, oh my goodness, not only death, but some critical illness or a car accident or you don't know what may fall on you, the tomorrow or whatever. And so like Ecclesiastes, Solomon had a lot of wisdom, as you know, and he wrote Ecclesiastes 3.12 where it says, For man also does not know his time, like fish are taken in a cruel net, or birds are caught in a snare. So the sons of men are snared in an evil time when it falls suddenly upon them. And so when that happens, oh my goodness, do you need to have your ducks and roe, these documents that we're going to talk about. But you've got so many different stories, Hans, and so do I, really, where these things become critical, and they become critical when nobody expected it.
Yeah, this is the first one that I'm going to go over, a case study. You know, Joe called me a few weeks ago, here in 2025, and Alice and Joe became engaged New Year's Eve. So she's 65. He's 68. And they Alice has a stroke on January 9.
Completely unexpected. And, and so two or three days later, it gets worse as they diagnose that she had stage four cancer. And somehow that was tied in with the stroke.
And we found that out on January 11. So now he's calling me, he's been watching my videos on YouTube, very concerned about Medicare for himself, because he's retired from his job to take care of her. And they both work at the same company.
And so he's got to get some health insurance lined up, he's got to get signed up for Medicare. And then we started talking about her. And I said, What's she going to do? And he's like, Man, I don't know. And I said, Well, if you're the only one taking care of it, she had kids, no, ex husband, brother involved, somebody.
Yeah, it's kind of like him. And so I found out real quickly, they have no will. She doesn't have one, he doesn't have one.
They have no poas, they got no hip rollers, they got nothing. And I started asking her like, you know, does she does she know? Once you ask her who the beneficiary is on her 401k, if she doesn't have any children, and he did ask her between some phone calls, and she doesn't know who she put down many years ago.
And so I mean, it's just the point I'm trying to tell about these is a lot of people even getting up there in years, they just hadn't really thought about this. And so I started in arranging an attorney to do this by zoom for her, she's in the hospital. And it ended up that never ended up happening because she's under medication. And, and so I don't really know what's going to happen to them.
But I, you know, I feel for them. And they're both single people that just don't have any of this stuff done. But she did, as I recall from watching the video, she did get the hospital to do a healthcare power of attorney. So he did at least have that part of it, which that POA word, I mean, his power of attorney. And these things become critical, like immediately, because who's going to approve the situation if you're passed out, and you can't tell them to go ahead and do the surgery, that kind of stuff that healthcare probably did that for their own needs.
Because somebody's got to make decisions for her. So they whipped out something that's going to work. And it may I never saw.
So it may have only worked in their hospital, or their situation. But in any case, they do have that. So that is a good thing. But so anyhow, I guess more news to follow on them. Let's talk about the next one.
So this happened a few years ago case study. And you know, Harry is 60 years old. I'm dad is 82. And Harry works in dad's business. Harry's been a radio listener, and finishing well, and he calls us up really around his own life insurance, and some things around his mother, who lives separately from his dad, they've been divorced for a long time. And so I started asking him a bunch of questions. And I said, so what's going to happen in this business? If your dad dies? Has he done estate planning? And he says, Well, I don't really know, you know, and I said, Well, why don't you ask him about it?
Oh, I have. And, you know, so I sign up as the guy that's going to go in there and talk to his dad, or I don't want to say confront his dad, but just, I said, I'll go do it. So I brought Tom over there with me. And we went over to the business. And I went in to see the guy.
He practically threw me out. He says, Oh, I thought taken care of, you know, he doesn't have anything to worry about. And so about a year later, we get a call from Harry, that dad passed away. And as it turns out, dad had no will. And so and dad has gotten married six weeks earlier to his longtime girlfriend.
Okay. And no will. And so now, things are in disarray. He, he, his girlfriend who is now now his wife, and we passed away because you die intestate, North Carolina, you get one third goes to the spouse, two thirds goes to the children. And so this business was really in jeopardy. And frankly, I don't know how this is all played itself out.
This happened about a year ago, and haven't really followed up with very much, but I assume that maybe they've worked it all out. But what a mess to leave people behind. It could have been simplified, very much so with just having a simple will knocked out. Right. And that's, that's the will. Those power of attorneys.
Oh man, those come in phenomenally helpful. You know, fortunately for me and for my family, you know, I met Hans a few years before my dad got sick. And he immediately had us, that was the very first thing he did.
Hans instructed us on how to get these forms done, these four forms. And my dad did do a power of attorney. Well, then he fell unfortunately in 2019 and broke his neck and immediately he started to fade very fast. He wasn't able to make good decisions and those kinds of things. And these people from one of the alarm systems I won't mention came in and really took advantage of him. And all of a sudden, you know, I see this huge $10,000 bill show up on his credit card statement. I'm like, dad, do you know why this alarm system's on your credit card for $10,000? And he goes, oh, they were going to lower my payment per month, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, because I had the power of attorney and we actually almost ended up with whatever they call it, old timer abuse or something like that. And you know, got all that money.
It was $20,000 because you're going to hit his credit card for another $10,000 the next month. And again, essentially because that power of attorney was in place, you know, oh my goodness, we were able to stop all the shenanigans right away. And similarly with my mother-in-law, again, just the financial power of attorney as she started to fade and she was no longer able to pay her bills and on all these kinds of things that come upon you and decisions as far as her Medicare and all those things, those forms, they become such a lifesaver for the people left behind, right Hans?
Oh, it is. And you need to do these for your children because even when we're sitting down doing them at 65, like I was with you and your wife, I mean, more than likely, they're not going to be needed for at least 20 years, maybe longer than that. And it's not going to be, maybe it's not going to be Tammy working on yours.
It's going to be one of your kids because Tammy is the first one, but then you have one of your kids put down as the backup. And these kids need these things when they're taking care of their parents. Mine are right over there in the next room, in the safe. My kids are going to need those when they're making a deal with an assisted living or they're checking me into the hospital or they're going to need these release forms. So we can't stress enough that if you haven't done these, and we're going to, the second part of the show, we're going to talk about specifically what are the four documents that you need as a minimum. When we say you must have, this is what you need as a minimum.
Maybe we'll talk a little bit about trust, but you really need these four set up for you. Yeah, it becomes so obvious. And again, it was one of the neat things I always felt like was in Hans' book, The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning Foreign Retirement, was here's something that obviously is no benefit to Hans whatsoever.
He's just teaching you. And one of the basics on finishing well is to have these things in place. And from my standpoint, my kids need, at 20 years old or whatever, they're married, they have children. These things are critical at any age because I can't tell you how many of my kids' friends, all of a sudden something suddenly happened. And certainly Tom's own case, right, is one of those where he wasn't in his 20s when he was stricken down?
Oh yeah, early in mid-20s. Yeah, and he, this is his business, he just kind of has to go through the goat of Hans. You know, it's just this stuff, we get these done for just about everybody we get in touch with. We have an attorney right in our office. So if you live in North Carolina, this is easy for you to take care of through us. And we'll talk a little bit on the second part of the show about how you do it.
And if you live anywhere else in the country, we have contacts with attorneys all over the country. And again, we're going to take this moment to remind you that this show is brought to you by Cardinal Guide and cardinalguide.com. You're going to see the Seven Worries tab. And I honestly don't know which word, this probably falls under what, of the worries tabs, Hans? Yeah, this falls under estate planning. Oh, that's right.
It sure would. Under the estate planning worries tab. And there you're going to find a wonderful video along these same lines where you can obviously see these forms. And there's links on how you can get these things done.
And it's not all that expensive. It's just one of those things you just got to get done. And it explains it again in Hans's book, The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning for and Living in Retirement. Or of course, easy enough, you just contact Hans or Tom there at the contact page at cardinalguide.com. Of course, when we come back, we're going to go into these four forms, what they are, what, why they're needed. And this is a really important stuff. I'm just saying, so stay tuned.
We'll be right back. Investment Advisory Services offered through Brookstone Capital Management LLC, abbreviated BCM, a registered investment advisor. BCM and Cardinal Advisors are independent of each other.
Insurance products and services are not offered through BCM, but are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed agents. Cardinal Advisors is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Social Security Administration or any other government agency. Welcome back to Finishing Well, a certified financial planner, Hans Scheil. And today's show, which again is brought to you by cardinalguide.com, is estate planning documents you, and I'm talking about you must have, you got to have these things, Hans.
Yeah. So the first one is the last will and testament. And if your husband and wife, you each need one.
I mean, it just, that goes without saying is, is, and you need to name an executive. I mean, you need to choose and most people are going to name their spouse as the executor, but then you're going to need a backup or, you know, what if you both die together or what if you never change your will after the first one dies? So you're going to need a backup for an executor. And if, if you have minor children, you need to appoint a guardian for your children. So, um, the, the last will and testament, and most people know they need one of these, but probably half the people out there don't have. So, uh, just note to self, and if you don't have a will, the state has already drawn one up for you. It's called dying intestate and they, they've all got it laid out exactly who gets what.
Right. And, and as we talked about in that case study with Joe, uh, earlier on that his father died without a, without a, uh, a will. And so a third of the business that Harriet worked in and the whole of his life went to this wife of, you know, six weeks or whatever it was. And then his sister who had never been involved in the business. And so now all of a sudden, all he's got is one third of the business he'd invested his whole life in and was fully expecting that, you know, his dad had made arrangements for him to, you know, move on with that with making other arrangements for his sister and for his, um, a stepmother. But oh my goodness, people dying without a will and they're famous people that die with that. Well, it's crazy. Yeah, it is. And so, you know, that's why we put the U in the title.
We're talking to you today. So if you haven't updated that in a while or you just flat don't have one, um, now is just as good as saying, let's get started. Let's go to the second document and the second, third and fourth are documents you need where you're still alive, but you need, somebody needs to act for them. So the second one is a financial power of attorney and the acronym of POA. And what this does is gives, you know, like Robbie's dad gave a financial power of attorney to Robin and he was able to go in and transact business on behalf of his dad and pulled some people that were doing some fraud to his dad accountable. And it was made much easier, um, by having this POA. If he didn't have that, they probably would have kept the money from your dad because your dad just wasn't up to the challenge.
Yeah. Or in the case of my mother-in-law, uh, with some of the stuff she needed to do with the bank accounts because one ran out and she needed to get money out of another one, et cetera, et cetera. But because she had power of attorneys, you know, she could, she just had a power of attorney, excuse me, she could go in and do that transaction so that, you know, the bills could be paid and those kinds of things can happen because again, you don't know, like you talked about with Joe that, you know, somebody has a stroke, somebody has some, the car accident and all of a sudden, you know, they could, their life insurance could go into, um, what do they call it or lapse and, and, oh man, the amount of money that could be on, you know, lost as a result of this kind of stuff.
It's just crazy. And you can't even ask the bank questions or the financial institution, you know, I'm managing somebody's money. We're always, we're all over this because it puts us in a bad situation if we have a person that it's not a joint account, it's a single account and they, you know, they're incapacitated and now the relatives are calling in, they want to do things with their money. We can't even talk to them about it because, so you definitely need this financial POA. And the next one is the healthcare power of attorney. And it's, it's similar to the financial, but it's over healthcare decisions. Um, and, uh, you can make deals with the doctor, you can talk to the doctor, you can go to an assisted living, you can decide about the care. Um, it just empowers whoever's looking after you, uh, even your spouse to, to act on your behalf.
So you need that right along with the financial one. I can tell you that for me, again, just another short story that when I, um, was crushed by the Jeep, right? I didn't see that coming. I was probably 38 or nine years old at time and all of a sudden, boom, this, this car hits me. And then next thing I know I'm in surgery and the next thing I know they've got me, I'm so much morphine.
I don't have a clue what in the world is going on and they needed to make big decisions on where they were going to transform me because the accident happened outside of Murphy, North Carolina. And because my wife had that document, you know, she was able to make those decisions, you know, getting back to the idea why you need to have this because you don't know what's coming at you tomorrow. So the fourth one you need is the HIPAA release form.
Yeah. You know, a lot of people, Oh, I find that the doctor, okay, that's great. Just for that doctor. I mean, these doctors and hospitals are good at looking after themselves where they get the releases signed so they can protect themselves. But you need a HIPAA release going forward for the rest of your life to this responsible person. Like if you call Tammy's doctor today and you wanted to talk to Tammy's doctor about Tammy's medical records or how she's treated, she's treated, they would talk to you, Robbie, because I've been down that road too, actually with Tammy, that she got sick because of a problem with her medication in the hospital in Dallas because she'd gone there to help her mother with something. And I was in North Carolina trying to get through to get help for my wife and they wouldn't talk to me.
And this was prior to the Hans 101. And to talk about frustration is your, it's your wife and she's in Texas. And like, really? You can't help me?
No, you don't have a HIPAA. What we deal with this is, you know, with the adult children with their aging parents and they've just jumped into the situation. They're trying to take care of them.
Their parents aren't able to make their own decisions. All three of these forms all work together. And when a child is named, life is a lot smoother. We can focus on things.
But you just brought up many situations where they've helped you. There's four documents. You need a will, you need a financial POA, you need a healthcare POA, and you need a HIPAA release. And you really shouldn't be paying more than $1,000 to get all this done for a couple.
And I say that. I'm thinking in North Carolina, five, six, 700 bucks is the amount that you're going to pay for a couple, or one, it's pretty much cost the same to do it for one, as it does two. And I can find you somebody to do this for that price. Now, if you need some things like a trust or some things beyond that, and a lot of attorneys you go into and you just say, What do I need, they're going to create a situation for a trust.
And a lot of people don't really need a trust. I don't want to get given advice over the radio, but I'm just going to tell you, you need these four documents. And I can either get you to an attorney that's going to do it for a reasonable price. Or I can find you an attorney if you live in a state where I don't have some contacts, and an arrangement to already do this.
We do it all the time. So yeah, and believe me, it also creates a situation where you can have that talk, right. And I had that talk, you know, it was really beautiful thing, you know, my kids that are involved in this, they know exactly where these documents are. They know where they are on these documents, and they know why they're on these documents. And that talk is almost as important as the documents themselves is your kids know. And your wife knows, okay, if something like this happens, I know where this stuff is, I know how to get to it. And I know what I'm supposed to do.
Yeah. And for a lot of those people, it's called me, or Tom, you know, when they're our client, then we get the relationship with the kids that way. And then, you know, they're going to call us about their money, and about their insurance. And a lot of times I can get on advocate for them, where they're, they're the POA. But I'm the person talking to the person with the authority with the POA.
So just real necessary. I got one more example to just throw in here if we have time. Oh, we do.
Okay. So Rita, 67, I'm Cameron 71. They got no will, no POAs, they got nothing.
And it's just a bunch of land, and a bunch of money. And Cameron had two children from a prior marriage. But Rita and Cameron were married for like 40 years or something. So these kids have really known Rita as their stepmother. Anyhow, Cameron passes away without a will.
He dies in testing, and they got land in two states. And Rita is luckily the beneficiary on his IRA. So she, she has that. And then there's eight properties, eight different properties. Five of them were held jointly. So they were acquired during the marriage. And they had both names on. So that was solved that, that not everything went to the kids, because Rita really contributed to building all this stuff. But there were still three properties that were held by Cameron alone, because they were things that he inherited a long time ago. So he wanted them to go to his kids, but he wouldn't be able to tell it because he didn't have a will. And so Rita was able to just give the kids her interest in the three properties, which was really nice that she did that. And then some of the accounts were held jointly.
But then there were other accounts that were only in his name, and two-thirds of those went to the children. And so we want to remind you that this show is brought to you by Cardinal Guide, cardinalguide.com. And so if you go to Cardinal Guide, you're going to see the Seven Worries tab and this one being the estate. So these, these documents are very much connected to your estate. There's a wonderful video on the same with show notes that shows you all the details of these forms, links on how to, like Hans said, he's got attorneys that work right there in his office. And again, if you want to just make the easy way, you just go to the contact page at cardinalguide.com. Or of course you can get Hans' book where it goes into all these forms at length, The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning for and Living in Retirement.
It's all there at cardinalguide.com. Great show. Thanks, Hans.
Thank you and God bless you. The opinions expressed by Hans Scheil and guests on this show are their own and do not reflect the opinions of this radio station. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable, although it should not be relied upon as such.
Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated are not guaranteed. Past performance cannot be used as an indicator to determine future results. Any strategies mentioned may not be suitable for everyone. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for you. Before acting on any information mentioned, please consult with a qualified tax or investment advisor to determine if it's suitable for your specific situation.
Finishing Whale is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject covered. Investment Advisory Services offered through Brookstone Capital Management LLC, abbreviated BCM, a registered investment advisor. BCM and Cardinal Advisors are independent of each other.
Insurance products and services are not offered through BCM but are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed agents. Cardinal Advisors is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Social Security Administration or any other government agency. We hope you enjoyed Finishing Whale, brought to you by CardinalGuide.com. Visit CardinalGuide.com for free downloads of this show or previous shows on topics such as Social Security, Medicare, IRAs, long-term care, life insurance, investments and taxes, as well as Hans' best-selling book, The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning for and Living in Retirement, and The Workbook. Once again, for dozens of free resources, past shows, or to get Hans' book, go to CardinalGuide.com. If you have a question, comment, or suggestion for future shows, click on the Finishing Whale radio show on the website and send us a word. Once again, that's CardinalGuide.com. CardinalGuide.com. This is the Truth Network.
