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#36 - Financial Tips and Support for Widows with Chris Bentley, MBA, CFP®, CLU®, BFA®, CRPC®
Eric Blake:
Welcome to another episode of the Simply Retirement Podcast. I am your host, Eric Blake, practicing retirement planner with over 25 years of experience and the founder of Blake Wealth Management. On this show, our goal is to provide education, resources, and support to empower women to live your retirement on your terms, whether you're single by choice, divorced, widowed, or simply ready to take control of your financial future. This show is for you to listen to past episodes, ask a question, or even suggest a topic for the show. You can go to www.thesimplyretirementpodcast.com. We're also available on YouTube at the Simply Retirement Podcast. Now on today's episode, part of my story is my grandmother becoming a widow at the age of 62, which is actually just a few years later than the average age of 59 for widowhood. And my grandfather, who was actually my father figure, passed away after almost 50 years of marriage, and they were married when my grandmother was 14 years old.
She had barely driven a car on her own, much less be put in a position of having to make significant financial decisions when he passed. Having to make those decisions on her own at of course, the most emotional period of her life and seeing the challenges that she faced was a big part of why our firm chose to focus on supporting women that have experienced these significant life events to transition into and through retirement. And one of the biggest challenges that widows and widowers face is knowing where to go for support and where to go for guidance, whether that's emotional or financial. Winks for Widows is a nonprofit organization that provides financial coaching for widows and widowers to help them deal with the financial challenges of losing a spouse without having to worry about being sold to or being taken advantage of during what can be an extremely vulnerable period of time. Today we are going to be joined by the founder and CEO of Wings for widows, Chris Bentley. Chris, welcome to the Simply Retirement Podcast.
Chris Bentley:
Thank you, Eric. Thanks for having me today.
Eric Blake:
Absolutely, and I'm actually one of the volunteers. I'm a newer volunteer, but I actually just started working with my first client, and it's a challenging experience, but it's definitely rewarding and I definitely appreciate the opportunity to be part of the team, but I would love for you to share the story behind Wings for Widows. What was it that inspired you to start this organization?
Chris Bentley:
Well, thanks, Eric. I probably started with the fact that I was born with two sisters and it was raised in a family of women and like you, while I was a practicing financial advisor, I focused on women in transition because I had experienced that with my family members. My mom became a widow, my sisters became divorced, but that's another story, but always sort of in that vein of being a protector and looking out for them growing up. And so as a practicing advisor, certainly had my share of clients who ended up losing a spouse and working through that. But it wasn't until 2017 when I lost a colleague when I was with Ameriprise and inherited his spouse, his surviving spouse and the family. And that opened up a door to a conversation with a number of her friends Later in the year, she called them her grief share buddies.
And in meeting with these ladies and talking about the issues which were grief and financial issues and legal issues and oil rights issues, if I recall, it was all kinds of things that they were dealing with. And it was also the first time that I had that many widowed, and they were all widows at the time, that many widowed people in one room. And it was just great to hear all of their stories and where they were struggling. And some of them even had financial advisors, and I thought, well, why aren't they helping you? And so I promised that I would find a solution. I wrote it on my big white horse, and I wrote out thinking that I would bring him back some pro bono help or any kind of help that's focused on Widowed Journey. And it turns out there was just nothing there.
That was in 2017, and there is still nothing out there today except for Wings for Widows. And so I remember having a number of conversations when I came up empty handed. I thought I got to do something for these ladies. How can I help? And so one thing led to another, and eventually that was the creation of Wings for Widows in January of 2018, and I've never looked back. So that's really the formation of Wings for Widows, and it hasn't changed all that much in the last seven years. We've gotten more sophisticated, but the bottom line is our mission is to provide personalized financial coaching and education to help widow men and women. But about 95% of the folks that we see are women, so widows, we help them reclaim financial stability and independence and really that whole idea of financial wellness and financial health, that ship gets upended during a loss of a spouse. And so we come in and try to write that ship and get 'em stabilized and on their way, empowering them along the way to make tough decisions. And many of them have to make very tough decisions, as you know.
Eric Blake:
Boy. Yeah. And that's the challenging thing, of course, is you've got the emotional aspect of Lou, which is significant, right. My grandmother still, almost every time I go to visit her, the conversation about my grandfather comes up in some way or another. I mean, this is now 28 years, and I always tell the story that I always know exactly. I remember exactly when he passed because it was three weeks before or three weeks after my daughter was born. So that's always my annual reminder of about the time that he passed. We actually took her three weeks old. We took her to see him. But it's almost a conversation that always comes up. Now, there's one of the terms that, and I've worked with a number of widows, but there's a term that I hadn't really seen a whole lot. I would love for you to describe or tell us what that means, and that is the Widows crisis. Can you kind of talk about what that term means, where it comes from and how you use it within the Wes for Widows concept?
Chris Bentley:
Yeah, I'm not sure if it's in the mainstream vernacular. I coined it perhaps maybe there were others. I'm not claiming anything, but I've used it for a number of years. Once I realized from a couple of perspectives how really dire that journey is for so many, and I believe it, I think of it as a crisis for two reasons. One, what they're going through. You mentioned the grief, that's just overwhelming. I'm not a widower, so I don't know what that's like. I hope I don't have to experience that. But in talking with thousands of widows who have is not something I ever want to endure. And so along with that grief, is this complete, in most cases, this utter reliance on that spouse to make decisions or at least to share that decision making around finances. And then when that spouse is gone and they're solely at the helm of their financial ship, so to speak, that's terrifying.
So you have this, there's actually some research that shows about 86% of them individuals are widowed, never made financial decisions on their own, which means suddenly they are. And not only is it overwhelming, it's terrifying and paralyzing for many, and they're afraid to make these financial decisions because they just don't know what they don't know. They don't know enough to make these decisions. And so the Widow Crisis is this fact that there's this overwhelming situation they find themselves in, particularly with the sudden loss cases where it's just a shock, both the loss and the fact that all of these practical matters have to be dealt with, but it's also a crisis in the fact that so few in our country understand widowhood. It's something in our culture we shy away from is death and end of life. And that stuff is just not comfortable for most of us.
It wasn't for me until Wings for Widows. And so the second crisis is that there just isn't enough knowledge and understanding out there, which is why I spent a lot of time advocating and speaking to financial advisors like yourself at FPA events and other places to just try to create awareness around the plight of the widowed individual and what they're going through. So the Widow Crisis is the fact that it is a terrible journey, the toughest journey. It's number one on the stress scale. It's even worse than divorce. And the fact that there's just so little support. As I mentioned, wings for Widows is the only organization, a million and a half nonprofits in the us and we're the only ones who are doing this. It's crazy. They need much more support. There's 800,000 widows every year who don't have a place to turn to. They don't have financial advisories that don't have a professional network. Where are they going for help? We can't have late hundred thousand weeks for widows. So there's way more demand than there is supply. And again, part of the reason of getting out there and talking about it, and again, shows like yours where I just raise awareness around how much support is required and how little support there actually is.
Eric Blake:
Well, I think one of the things that drew me to your organization, and we actually, that's where I first came across Wings for Widows was at the Financial Planners Association conference a couple of years ago and then reached out to you guys. But it's that process. I'm a very big process person. I feel like when a prospective client reaches out to us, they want to know what to expect. What does that look like? If I call Eric, what happens next? Where do we go from here? And that's what I think I really, I appreciate about what you've done and the work that you've put into it is helping know what's that next step to create at least some level of clarity in which is typically a very unclear scenario. And I want to make sure we touch on that process. But also one of the things just to start off, what do you see as some of the biggest financial challenges that newly widowed women face, and how can wings for widows help overcome obstacles?
Chris Bentley:
That's a great question. We're asked all the time by clients, and we also collect a fair amount of information demographic and a number of what we would call a financial wellness survey, financial milestone type questions. And so we actually do have a lot of proprietary data. And so we do speak to this with some authority. It's interesting. It sort of depends on where the widow is in her journey. If they're young with minor children, the primary concern is caring for the children. How are they going to go back to work with minor children, the costs associated with, excuse me, with childcare, those sorts of questions. Whereas a more senior widow may be more around retirement. Well, what happens without his social security? Where is that income going to come from? What do I have to change? What does my budget look like? And for those that have assets, it's less of a concern, but about 50% of those that we work with are with us because they don't have assets. And they're trying to figure out where's that next paycheck coming from? And it's daunting to have to tell them, right, you need to go back to work. There is no income unless you go back to work.
So that we put on that hat and help 'em back into the career lane. So there are some differences across the spectrum, but I would say the number one question, one of 'em we talked about is it's so overwhelming. Where do we start? And we generally start with income. We generally start with, can you afford to live where you're living? Can you afford the lifestyle that you've been living? And on average, the income drops around 37%, 40% with the last number we saw. And so for any of us, if we took a 37 40% hit, we would all be really looking at our budget. You don't have to be widowed for that to perhaps be a crisis when you lose a job. I mean, that's what happens. You reevaluate. So I would say that's the number one area that we focus on is am I going to be okay?
That's the number one question. Am I going to be okay? And what they mean is, am I going to have any money at the end of the month without this income coming in? That's number one. And I think another area where we're folks getting into trouble and don't even know to ask this question, but we focus on fairly soon in the relationship is what is theirs and what is the decedents of the assets? Who owns what, because you can't sell off an asset that is owned by the decedent to pay off a bill. A good example is there's a car that's paid for, it's titled in the decedents, the late spouse's name, and the surviving spouse says, oh, there's some income and all they have to do is sell this car, and that's all I need to do. Well, you can't do that. That's illegal if there are other creditors that need to be paid because that's an asset owned by the decedents.
And so they don't understand what the word in our vernacular is, right? What's the estate? What is the decedent's estate consist of? What's joint property? And even that could be a little bit debatable in a community property state. So it's confusing. It sort of mingles co-mingles the legal with the financial, and it's like, I can solve a financial problem, but oh, I've got a legal problem if I do sell that vehicle that's titled, not titled in my name. So that comes up and they can really get into trouble. So we try to head that one off early. And I think there's just real issues around banking. What do I do with the checking account? What's an estate checking account? How do I open that? And it comes to find out that banking agents aren't terribly helpful in advising our clients on the best way to configure their banks and, excuse me, their banking accounts, their savings accounts. They try to sell 'em large CDs, the insurance proceeds come in, they want to tie it up into cd. It's like, no, no, no, don't do that. We don't want to do that. We want to look at your cashflow first and make sure we can take care of your bills before we tie up any insurance benefits that are coming through. So I'd say those are probably the top three or four areas that are pretty common that we see a lot.
Eric Blake:
I want to definitely get into the coaching services that Wings for Widows offers, who's eligible, that type of thing. But are there one or two surprises that you might be able to share? Things that people probably aren't aware of? I think I actually learned it from you was the credit card. If there's a credit card in the deceased spouse's name, what happens if the living spouse or survivor uses that? Those types of things. Are there one or two more of those kind of surprise things that people just aren't very aware of that you might be able to share?
Chris Bentley:
So estate planning how that works, right, wills and trust. It's just so foreign to most folks. And so in addition to that, you're right, you mentioned the credit card and it goes back to an asset or a liability in the decedent's name. That's their sole responsibility, good or bad. So if there's assets in a checking account in his name, for example, those assets have to be used to pay off debts before they're shared or distributed with the beneficiaries. Can't share those out of order. You can't take advantage of those assets until the liabilities have been addressed. So credit cards a liability, and so you can't use a credit card if there's room on that card for purposes outside of the estate or in fact it's illegal. Even if you're a signer on the account but not an owner, then you cannot use that card. Same with debit cards. So credit cards are a problem. Check e accounts are a problem, whose assets are what? I think there are other surprises. I'm trying to think of some other ones. Those are the two big ones that come to mind.
Eric Blake:
I was going to say those are probably the two typical ones, just the day-to-day stuff that you don't even think about you, it's habit or just naturally think, oh yeah, I should be able to do that. Why would that be a problem? It was my husband or my wife. So I think that's still critically important just to understand those basics. And that's really where your coaching services, the coaching services that wings for Widows offers. Can you touch on that? What are the coaching services? Who's eligible? Maybe even an example of a typical client that you see?
Chris Bentley:
Yeah, so we used to have all these restrictions about eligibility, and it's pretty much open to everyone. If you have a social security number, you're eligible. You might be here on a green card or married to someone with a social security number. There are examples where you may not actually be a US citizen. Our services are open to you as long as you have a social security number. And we see all ages, all socioeconomic levels. I mean, we don't put any restrictions around that. Our doors are open to everyone, even unmarried, which is new for us this year. But it turns out that many unmarried couples, particularly those who have been together for any amount of time, have shared expenses, shared debts in some cases could be joint custody, could be children involved even though they're not married. And so there are a number of issues that still surface that we can help them with. And so we now, we'll see unmarried folks, even though they don't have all of the legal protections of a married couple, there are issues that we can help them with. So really just about everyone's eligible who we don't see are those who are either in extremis, meaning they're unfortunately perhaps living in their car or they're been evicted.
There are no assets. Generally will refer them to county services or services somewhere. We're just not prepared to help those individuals, at least at this time. And those folks who might be suffering from either some cognitive impairment or addictive behavior and recovery. There are some restrictions around that. Otherwise, we are here to help everyone. And those services range really our DNAs around financial coaching as a financial advisor, a financial planner, CFP, I know how important as a practicing advisor, and I retired in 2022, but as a practicing advisor, this how important financial planning is as a cornerstone to making any kind of financial decisions. And so I've brought that into wings for widows the best that I could. We've varied this scenario a little bit, but that's how we approach our services. And so most of that is around coaching. Financial planning might be a stretch because it's more emergency and crisis planning rather than retirement planning, although we do address some of those questions now for our senior retired widows or widowers, if you're 65 or 70, you're going to want to know if you're not working, how is this going to affect my retirement?
And so now we're able to answer those questions, but it's really around coaching. That's our DNA. We offer some limited engagement coaching, simple questions, simple problems, limited access to certified financial planner, volunteer coaches. But so most of it's around what we call full service financial coaching, and that could be exercised over a month or it could be a longer period of time. It sort of depends between what the widow, the client membership plan that they want to embark on. But along with that comes just all kinds of resources on the website that are free, all kinds of information that's available at Widow Wise University, which is currently free to find that on our website. Go check that out. 55 lessons. So modules that they really just about any subject and we're adding subjects all the time, topics that would be of significant importance to widow people. So there's a lot of free content out there is some paid content coming, but we also offer education webinars and workshops.
Eric Blake:
So Chris, if you would, I know as the evolution of the organization has progressed, especially recently, there's not necessarily a standard engagement, but what does some of your coaching options look like? If somebody, they've gone through initial process, you've done your evaluation on where they're at in their life stage and they say, yes, I want to engage wings for widows, what does that next step look like? What is the for them to engage in a coaching engagement
Chris Bentley:
Once they go through that part of what we call the client pipeline? They are paired with a coach. We have about 130 coaches on launch. Your coaches available right now and with that number, we try to pair them in the same state, not always possible. We generally are pretty good about getting a coach and client at the same time zone so they're not fighting that annoyance, but generally in the same state. And the coach will reach out and make contact and connect and lay down some of the ground rules around the engagement materials that they're going to be using. And I'll come back to that and also how they best like to be communicated with. So some prefer texts. I prefer email. We find that email gets lost in the junk folder or spam quite often, but best ways to communicate with one another throughout the engagement. Again, it could last from a month to several months. We've had engagements lasting six months because of one reason or another.
But that's the nature of sort of the meeting. And then they'll establish those ground rules. They'll then set a schedule to meet and they'll meet on a regular basis. And when they're all done, we call that when the engagements actually completed, they've covered all the material that we asked 'em to cover. Then there's some post engagement reporting. We provide the client summary action report that coach provides that kind of follow up items that the client will need to continue to work on. Coach also files a report with wing show widows called an outcome report that gives us some feedback on their experience. And then we ask the widow to retake our financial wellness survey, the same one that she took when she applied initially. And then we are able to take that initial score and that ladder score and compare them and see what kind of coaching experience that she had, at least from a quantitative standpoint.
So that's kind of fun. We're seeing about a hundred percent improvement in financial health, and we think that that's significant to come in with a score of 50 and leave with a score of 130 or something like that is the average. And that says that what we're doing is working and we're effective at writing that ship that I mentioned. So that's sort of the overview of the process, the core of the curriculum, the course is really what it comes to is the all important piece. And that's been a recent change. So some of this may even be new to you as one of our coaches. And what we have done is built out, we've taken our widow's guidebook that has been our staple, our number one resource for years using that since 2020 in virtual coaching environment to work through this paper book 265 pages to be exact.
It's a bit cumbersome. And so we've moved our guidebook online and it's been fully digitized, and that all is housed now in Whittle Wise University that we've created. And it is, I think I mentioned 55 lessons over 10 sessions. It's just all kinds of material. It's housed there for the client. And all coaching clients have access to that, and the coaches have access to that and are able to refer back and forth between presentation that they're sharing with the client, working through over subsequent meetings, but also referring back to Widow Wise University where they can go get more help in between the meetings. There are checklists there and forms and all kinds of good tools there that both coach and client can use to further this coaching engagement process down the road. We think it's going to be very effective. We actually rolling it out here in a few weeks, and so it's very exciting. It's just a continuing evolution of making virtual meetings easier and smoother and really more effective for coach and client.
Eric Blake:
Last thing before, I want to make sure you get a chance to share how people can connect with you and winks for widows, but in our case, many of the listeners are going to be women who are approaching that retirement age or maybe already retired. Any thoughts on what women could do or just what people can do to prepare in advance so that you guys do great work, we know, but in terms of, okay, is there anything we could think about or any suggestions, maybe one or two suggestions that you would say, Hey, maybe make sure you're doing this in advance of losing a spouse. So maybe it's not as the emotional component's always going to be there, but maybe just the financial aspect or there may be one or two things you would recommend that people do in advance of losing a spouse that may make it less burdensome.
Chris Bentley:
That's a great question, Eric. It's my second passion. I actually wrote a book, a workbook for couples I didn't know when I launched or released the book in April of 2020, we'd be in the middle of a pandemic. I started writing it before that. And one of the reasons I ventured down that path was because I was seeing so many couples or so many surviving spouses come through who were just in really horrible shape. And I asked, how is this possible? How could so little planning be done? And it just really, I guess I asked myself, I didn't ask the surviving spouses that, but it just became very obvious that there was just this total lack of planning being done by married spouses and you're married till death to us part, but then it shouldn't be chaos and grief and all of this ill preparedness.
So it just kind of infuriated me and I thought I would do something about it. So I wrote this book. So yes, there is a lot that married couples can do, but the number one thing they can do is those meetings that they have with their professionals, they should both be there. When I was practicing, I made it a point as I learned how Ill-prepared. The surviving spouses were particularly the women, they just didn't have a clue. And that's because they didn't attend any of the meetings with their attorneys or with their advisors or with the tax account. I mean, nobody likes doing that stuff, but boy, those who do it together are so much better prepared for when one is lost. And again, that's taxes, legal and financial. Those are the three big areas. And so just attend those meetings with the professionals. The other area that we see is that just the area of organization.
We don't spend a lot of time with our clients as professional financial advisors helping them get organized, but maybe we should because the other thing that we see is this complete lack of preparedness around understanding where important documents are. They don't know if they have a safe deposit box. They don't know who their attorney is. They don't even know who the attorney was that wrote the will or where the will is. They have to, we spent a lot of time helping them find important documents that they're going to need for the rest of the coaching engagement or for certainly the rest of their time as a widow and making these appointments and knowing what they should know in preparation for these appointments. It's so funny. We tell widows, right? And the funeral directors will tell a widowed person, Hey, the first thing you need to do is go meet with your social security office.
And so they do. And guess what? They're so Ill-prepared to do that. They don't show up at the right documents. They don't know the questions to ask. They don't know what the benefits are. They've done no due diligence before they go into that meeting. That's one of the first things we talk about is if you could go do that, let's give you some help around that. So you're prepared to go in and they can't provide advice legally. So you need to go in with someone understanding of what your benefits could be, what your options are, and have a game plan before you go in. And folks just are ill prepared to do that. So so many things that sort of fall on that list, Eric, of being prepared, but it's having these conversations, it's having these conversations, both spouses attending the meetings and having some of these really important conversations around what would happen if one of us were to die. And it's tough conversation. Nobody likes having you, but it's so incredibly important.
Eric Blake:
Well, that was excellent. How can people reach out to you if they want to learn more about the services, the coaching that you offer, but also make sure just to share if people want to volunteer or contribute to Wings for widows, how can people connect with you?
Chris Bentley:
Thanks, Eric. We're always looking for volunteers. It takes a village to serve this community. As I said, there aren't enough resources and so the more folks we get on our battleship, the better. Can you tell I was a Navy guy, right? All these references to ships and now Battleship, I'm not sure where it's coming from. I don't use that much, but really it is a battle out there. I mean, it's gorilla warfare. There just aren't enough agencies looking out, including Social Security Administration. God love 'em. There's just not enough agencies looking out for our widowed brothers and sisters. And so if you'd like to volunteer, we certainly have a spot for you. And again, anyone who's lost a spouse or know someone who's lost a spouse, spouse, we have a referral system. You can tell us who they are, refer them to us. You can send them to us to check us out. Wings for widows, FOR, wings for widows.org. You can Google us and they're all about our services. And again, there's just a ton of free content. If folks just want to peck, peck and hunt, there's all kinds of information that can help 'em get started on the right foot.
Eric Blake:
Perfect. Chris, thank you so much for joining us today. If you are looking for guidance and coaching or you're looking for resources due to the loss of a spouse or if, again, as Chris said, if you know someone that is dealing with the loss of a spouse, please have them check out Wings for widows. If you're interested in supporting Wings for widows, please contact them for that as well. If you want to volunteer, contribute, whatever the case might be, and we will definitely share all of this information in the episode summary. As always, please like follow and share the show and we will see you again on the next episode of the Simply Retirement Podcast.
In the meantime, please remember that retirement is not the end of the road. It is the start of a new journey.
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