Ep. 201 – Why Financial Planning Isn’t Enough, Enter: Vitality Planning

Ep. 201 – Vitality Planning: The Future of Financial Advice

Patti  00:00

Hi everyone, Welcome to the Patti Brennan show. Whether you have $20 or 20 million or $200 million this show is for those of you who want to protect and use your assets to live your very best lives. I’m really excited about today’s podcast, because we’re going to be talking about longevity planning, and by that, I mean living your best life as long as you can. So today, I am really excited to welcome Frank McAleer. Frank has recently joined Key Financial from Raymond James, where he was senior vice president and was in charge of the wealth management division of 9000 advisors.

Frank McAleer  00:43

Our wealth planning team had, you know, consultants, attorneys, financial planners, that helped advisers, what we call, you know, high net worth, ultra high net worth cases.

Patti  00:52

Well, welcome to the show, Frank. Welcome to key financial thank you for choosing us.  You are living what we talk about when someone retires, you don’t want to retire from something, you want to retire to something, and hopefully key financial is a home for many years to come.

Frank McAleer  01:10

We call it: How are you going to thrive in retirement? Like, what are you going to do to thrive, as opposed to just sitting around and you and I talked about that after four to six weeks, Okay, I’m ready. I’m ready to go already. And that’s what you’re allowing me to do, because I can focus on what I’m passionate about, which we’ll talk about.

Patti  01:24

And  I thank you for that. So why don’t we tell everybody how we met each other. We met up at MIT.  We’ve had several conversations while we were up at MIT at the AgeLab, and it was interesting because you reminded me about a conversation that we had had, because I said to you, Frank, I would love to have a Frank McAleer, somebody to vet out all the resources and make us aware of what’s out there.

Frank McAleer  01:53

This was almost a year ago. It was in March. Joe Coughlin of MIT has meetings every March and last March, about a year ago, you said that to me, and I kind of said it out of the side of my mouth, I’m gonna have an answer for you one day, because I knew I didn’t really want to stop working, and I was loving Raymond James, but I was ready for my next chapter. Sure, I’m ready to leave the corporate environment. So and then, sure enough, I sent you an email, or maybe it was via LinkedIn and didn’t have your email yet, and said, Hey, you might have thought about this, but I’m the solution. Perhaps. Let’s talk about it absolutely. And then I came here and met you and Paige, and we had, we just connected.

Patti  02:32

We just connected. Because, you know, it’s interesting. I don’t know that I’ve ever met somebody who is as passionate about this field as I am, because it just it comes up in so many client conversations, and everything that we do involves money, this being one of them, yep. So tell me. Tell me how you got here?

Frank McAleer  02:52

Yeah, when you say passion, that was an adjective that was applied to me a lot when it came to longevity planning, even though I oversaw well planning, I pretty much was known as a longevity planning guy, yeah, and it all started for me in 2011 I had one of those years that and everybody needs to understand, like, this stuff can happen out of the blue. So I got a call. I was at work in Philadelphia, downtown that come home. It’s my father. I go home. My mother says he didn’t suffer. He had taken a nap that afternoon, 84 year old blue collar Irishman and passed away. And my mom, to me, was really telling like he didn’t suffer, like that’s what people worry about. So, yeah, sure. And then, you know, it was a great celebration of life, Irish funeral and and by

Patti  03:39

the way, for those of you who may be listening and not watching, I have my Irish green on today because it’s right around St Patrick’s Day tomorrow.

Frank McAleer  03:47

Yeah. So lo and behold, nine months later. And keep in mind, my mom was 11 years younger. She was only 73 years old. She said, Oh, I’m going into the hospital. I’m having trouble breathing. I think it’s the humidity of a hot Philadelphia summer, and it was not the humidity, it was stage three lung cancer. Oh, man. And keep in mind, my mom never smoked a cigarette in her life. Wow, hardly drank. And that was where wow, like, what do we do now? And within that same year, I was diagnosed with cancer. My sister quit her job to care for my mom, and I also did too. I spent many nights on the couch on 217 Williams road to be with my mom and give my sister a break. But then then I go to so my mom, the other long story short, my mom, unbelievably, you know, we she was in and out of the hospital, and I’m going to get into this like we were grappling with what resources can’t do, accounting access. I didn’t know anything. Who’s paying for what, and that’s why we’re doing this, so people know what resources to go to and who pays for what. But we finally said, Okay, come home. You want to be home. We want to age or die in place. And we thought it would be months, and she died. In October. It was only three months so but that was when, my goodness, like, what do we do now? Well, not only that, we didn’t know what to do. I called my friend whose wife worked in the cancer ward at Bryn Mawr Hospital, and that was my scientific research. We had oxygen coming and going in and out of the hospital. You know, beds coming and going. We didn’t know who was paying for what resources to use, you’re just in a reaction mode. And I think when you add that to the complexity of everything that needs to be considered, the emotion and the fact that it happens out of the blue, I think what we want to do here is eliminate the surprise. Well, when an event happens, it’s going to be a surprise. But what’s not going to be surprising is I’m financially prepared and I’m resource prepared. I know I can handle what happens financially because we’ve accounted for it, and I know what resources vetted by Key Financial that I can utilize to help

Patti  05:51

ease the burden. Exactly. That’s exactly what is, because it’s really about confidence and peace of mind, right? And that’s what we want to provide. We have to we, you know, I tell people, let’s stop kidding ourselves. People. We’re all getting older, so let’s be real about this and be ready. It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. We just have to know what to do and where to go and make sure that whatever we’re spending is being spent in the right areas that these companies, these people, are legit, right? It’s a good point, because

Frank McAleer  06:25

we can’t eliminate the cost. There’s going to be cost, but by utilizing, utilizing these resources, we can make sure that the money that your clients spent, or money well spent for the right resources.

Patti  06:36

And I think that that, what I learned from you is it really is a family issue, right? And again,

Frank McAleer  06:43

it’s because we were dealing with everything from scratch, right? And you know, when I learned about the MIT AgeLab and the three questions that help you determine the future quality of your life, those being who will change my light bulbs? How will I get an ice cream cone? Who will I have lunch with? Which all relate to home maintenance, transportation and your social network. And Joe Coughlin, at that time head of the MIT AgeLab, started talking about, you need to encourage advisors to go out into their market and find these resources. And back at Raymond James, our advisor said, Frank, we’re not doing that. You need to do that. And that’s what we’re doing here for your clients, we want to vet those resources.

Patti  07:22

It is so important because, in the end, it’s really about quality of life, yeah, right. And the social network is really important. It doesn’t mean that you need a ton of friends, but the quality of people, the people that you’re really important.

Frank McAleer  07:37

Going back to family, it’s hard to interrupt, yeah, going back to family, there can be a lot of family conflict, let me I mean, that’s that’s another that could be a whole other show. But if you like, one of the resources that we’re going to talk about as an organizational tool that enables individuals to line it out ahead of time. Who gets what? Who’s going where? Who has access to all my documents? Who has access to the pictures, the tax returns, if you don’t have that organized? I think anybody that’s gone through this the loss of a father, and especially a mother, to me, when the matriarch passes away, if the house is not in order, sometimes, you know, it gets a little ugly. These resources, if utilized properly, help you eliminate that, you know, Frank, and bring the family together. That’s a unit. My mom’s diagnosis was so sudden, she did not have time to do that. She was only still recovering from her Wow, her best friend’s death nine months earlier. But knowing what I know now about these tools that are available, you can do that far ahead of time. It encourages do it encourages you to do so. And I would encourage everybody to do that plan ahead, because everybody kind of has their eye on different things that they think they want to might want. But if you don’t talk about it, yeah, and you don’t document it can be ugly, and you want to avoid that.

Patti  09:02

And you know, it’s one of those things. We want to save a family from themselves, to a certain extent, right? Save them from themselves. And by not doing something like that, you could be creating dysfunction that doesn’t have to happen, absolutely, right? How many of us want our kids to all get along? Divide it. It shouldn’t really matter, but it does that.

Frank McAleer  09:27

Oh, my goodness, you’re just bringing back memories, because that was a big, big part of how we handled it, because it did get tenuous. Yeah, and I, we, and I have a group of daughters and nieces and nephews get along so well, and my mom fostered that, but I did not want to interrupt that and violate that so and now you’re talking about those kids are now kids in their 30s and 40s, right? We talk about kids right, and they have needs, right?

Patti  09:54

Absolutely, we don’t know, right? They could have young families, etc, and they’re living paycheck. A paycheck, you know, it could make a difference in their lives. So, you know, and sometimes people do things and say things that they normally wouldn’t do if they weren’t under those kinds of pressures. So let’s just remove all of that and make it easy and seamless. And that’s one of the resources that I know, that you have been vetting out, that we have been working on and we’re going to make available to our clients.

Frank McAleer  10:25

Yeah, it’s a great life organization tool. And what this tool does it, not only it in current has nine sections, 29 subsections, things you haven’t even thought of organizing. And it’s not just an end of life tool. Anybody in any part of your life needs organizational tool like this. I have it, I use it. And when I talk about peace of mind, like I don’t have everything in place yet, but if you have everything in place in this ever plan, as we call it,

Patti  10:51

you’ll sleep a lot better. You know, it’s interesting, because when you told me about I’m thinking, Well, wait a minute, Frank, you know, I’ve got everything scanned. Our clients have sent us this stuff. We have special right? You know, vaults for them, with all of the material. But what I’m hearing from you is this goes so many, so much further than goes far

Frank McAleer  11:09

beyond what you may have even thought of, but it also it enables the family to have what’s different deputies that have access to different parts of it. Oh, that’s part of the other settling the estate plan. Okay, Kathy’s gonna have this, Frank’s gonna have this Wayne’s gonna have this access to this now, again, it just enables you to

Patti  11:28

plan it out. Yeah, it’s so much better. Boy. You know, being an executor is a thankless job. I was the executor of my parents estate. Oh, my goodness. And that’s, that’s, that’s our job. That was not fun. So this is phenomenal.

Frank McAleer  11:44

So you mentioned a great point — money. One of the questions I used to get early in the longevity planning game as a financial advisor was, why would we think about this? And the answer is because it does involve money. But it involves money many times when your clients are in an emotional state and it’s really hard to figure out what is up. I gotta go back to my experience — Atlantic City, Chinese fire drill. We didn’t know what to do. My sister quit her job. Quit her job, and she’s never fully recovered since then, because she got breast cancer herself. But when the thing about money is, and you and I talked about this, you had a great podcast, I think, last week or two ago, about the two balance sheets. Yes. And as you and I were talking about, I said, you look at these long-term family resources as part of your life balance sheet, not as an intangible asset, because you need a diversified portfolio to handle what might come. Like you said earlier, you might need some of these resources, but it’s always really, really nice to know where you’re going to go. In addition to being financially prepared, I think that’s really key. That’s one of the goals here — to make sure that not only are you financially prepared, you guys have done a great job for years, but are you prepared from a resource standpoint? I looked it up before the call started, because I used to turn this around: what is an asset? It’s something on a balance sheet that provides a benefit for you in the future. And that’s what resources do. And sometimes you don’t know which ones you can rely on, and which ones are a waste of money. The last thing you want to do right is be spending thousands and thousands of dollars on the wrong things — easily done

Patti  12:37

for the wrong the wrong the wrong thing. Yeah, that’s

Frank McAleer  12:40

such a great point, and that’s why we’re doing. What we do is to vet these resources, not you know, do they know what they’re doing? Obviously, that’s number one. Are they going concern? Is their information safe? Do they have good technology? Do they communicate with us in our clients? Do we know what clients are doing? What with them? And while right, let me just mention, because people may be thinking, what are some of the resources that you’re thinking about? So I list. I’m going to read off list here, because there’s a number of them. Number one is Medicare. You already mentioned that Medicare is confusing. It’s confusing. I honestly, I enrolled myself, and I, even though I have been working with it, I still needed to educate myself, and it was a more of a learning process. Then there’s caregiving, the resources I talked about earlier. And then, what if you want to age in place? Is your house ready for you to age in place? Is it accessible? Can you get in and out? You know, is the bathroom accessible, things like that. And there’s theft and fraud protection. Go ahead. If we can talk

Patti  13:35

about the aging in place, I use the example of my own situation, you know, having, you know, my husband had foot surgery. Ed had foot surgery. It was an, you know, ambulatory surgery, in and out the same day. I’ve got him in the car, right? I’ve got to get him in the house. And I realized he’s not strong enough to jump over the steps to get into the back door. Literally, by the grace of God, one of our neighbors was driving by. He got another neighbor, and the two of them carried Ed inside. I didn’t have a ramp. I didn’t have any of the things that we were going to eventually need, and I ended up spending a lot of money getting them because, you know, I hadn’t, didn’t think ahead so that aging in place stuff is legit.

Frank McAleer  14:18

It’s a big deal, absolutely. And there’s actually you may already know about this, a designation that realtors and builders can get. It’s called caps certified aging in place, especially, really, yeah, it’s a designation that builders or renovators can receive and they which proves they’ve gone through. It’s a three part course that educates you on how do you make aging in place possible for those that aren’t as nimble

Patti  14:43

as they used to be? Yeah? Well, you know, it’s interesting on our website, on the vitality hub, we are launching some new resources and new information in particular from Aurora. Yeah, so Dawn has written great blogs about, you know, the. Things to do and to things to think about. So as part of the process, before you came along, I started vetting out some of the resources. Myself. Met with Dawn, and I said, You know what? Why don’t you go ahead and walk around the office and let me know what you think? Are we ready? Because a lot of our clients are older, I wanted to make sure that it’s accessible. She came back with a seven page paper filled with bullet points on things that we should consider. For example, you know, we have the rails. They’re just too high. I didn’t realize that, you know, in the bathroom, et cetera. So we’ve got the things, but they weren’t put in properly. And that’s really interesting to me.

Frank McAleer  15:42

No, and I spoke with Dawn, and she’s great choice. I mean, I’ve talked to a lot of housing agent play specialists. She’s one of the best I’ve seen. She is really buttoned down. She knows her stuff.

Patti  15:54

She’s very detailed, and she’s she’s got the right question. She’s very nice, yeah, she’s never gonna make people feel bad. I’m gonna have her come in my house next I don’t want that situation to happen ever again.

Frank McAleer  16:06

I talk to my friends all the time. I have a group of friends we text with during games and stuff, and I say, you know, it’s gonna happen. It’s gonna happen to us. You know, it takes a village, so let’s

Patti  16:15

get ready to support each other. And you know, it’s so interesting, because when it happens, we are the ones that people call. I can’t tell you, in the last two weeks how many people I’ve been talking to about these issues, because they need them. They have questions, and I’m asking them some of the questions as well, just so that it bubbles up funny.

Frank McAleer  16:35

You say that as the demographics have, you know, become what they are. Now, I would not say what you’re what you are doing here, to me, is really, really unique. It’s really unique. But still, a lot of clients, when the stuff hits the fan, the first call is the financial advisor, because they control the money. Or, I don’t want to say they control the money, it’s clients money, but you know what I mean? Yep. And I’ve, I’ve been in this for a long time now, talking to different advisors and a lot of a lot of clients, they just say, I can’t work with you. You can’t help me with this. Come on, right? And by the

Patti  17:09

way, in my opinion, that’s the right choice for those people, because, for crying out loud, this stuff is important, very important. We have to be that those people that they know they can call us when things when they’re at their most vulnerable time. I don’t know if I mentioned it to you, but there was a great article written by a gentleman named Ron Lieber who talked about this, the experience that he went through with his father, yeah, yeah. And what he said was New York Times. There you go. What he said was fascinating to me, because it is so true. He basically was bragging about the financial planner that worked with his dad, and he said a really good financial planner is at their best when we

Frank McAleer  17:55

are at our worst. Yes, yes. I read the article. I have it saved in my on one of my drives. It’s such a good article, such

Patti  18:01

a good article. And it was very clear, and he just kind of went through all of the mayhem that they went through as a family, even though he had a background in this.

Frank McAleer  18:11

Now you may have already answered this. I was going to at one point ask you, why are you doing this? You’re already doing it like what’s making you drive even further to dive in further add more resources and hire someone like me, what’s, what’s the driving?

Patti  18:24

Great question, I guess maybe it goes back to the fact that I started as a nurse, right? And I started a time when financial planning was just getting going, even as a profession, and I just always thought there was a better way to provide the services I didn’t want any conflicts of interest. Still don’t, and you know, it’s really it comes up a lot. I want to be the go to person the clients know they can count on us when they are feeling most vulnerable, and that their families know we’re here, right? We may not have the answers on the spot, but we’re going to get them, and that’s what we’ve done in every area, whether it be their taxes, whether it be their wills and their estates, whether it be their portfolios and their retirement income, and making sure they never run out of money. And that includes making sure that we understand the resources that they may need to fall back on if they have a need. Well, it’s it’s like when you

Frank McAleer  19:25

there’s so many investments to choose from. And what you do here with your team and your portfolio team is you vet out which investments you feel are best for your client. It’s the same thing with these resources. We’re vetting it out the same way.

Patti  19:38

Yep, we are really particular, and we’ve got a pretty high bar that everybody needs to meet, yeah, and you know, for whatever it’s worth, we really have a lot of people who would love us, love to work with our clients. It’s up to us to be the, you know, to guard our clients against being taken advantage of whether it be. You know the portfolio, whether it be their cyber security, etc, there’s so many things that we need to be aware of and think about when it comes to protecting our clients and their their

Frank McAleer  20:10

hard earned money. And you mentioned being in the go to resource. What is the go to resource we all go to for when we need something?

Patti  20:18

Amazon. I don’t know about you, Frank, I love, I’m a

Frank McAleer  20:20

professional Box folder.

Patti  20:23

I was telling my husband, Ed about you being the professional Box folder I love, because you can’t put the boxes in the

Frank McAleer  20:30

recycling bin hole because you run out of space in two days. I fold them. I have so many. My daughter like, can you fold them too? But anyway, and I saw you know we’re not Amazon, but we want to be close to it for whatever you need, for whatever you may encounter, obviously, financially, legally, in other words, talking about estate planning and for all of these resources. But as opposed to going to Amazon, we’re not being paid anything. This is just something you’re adding as value to your clients, and you’re vetting the resources out. You’re not

Patti  21:04

putting anything up there. I think that’s important. I think two things that you said, we aren’t manufacturing any of this stuff. We aren’t doing this stuff ourselves, and we hopefully will be a little bit more discerning than Amazon is. We’re not just gonna put a list of things. We’re going to put a list of things together for our clients. Specifically. It’s not going to be for the world. It’s only for our clients and and we are not getting anything out of this, just like when we do things for our clients over and above, which we do a lot of We’re Not Making This is not a revenue source, a revenue generator for key financial that’s not what it’s all about. For me, what it’s all about is making sure clients can have that peace of mind, that confidence, knowing when they go into that season of life, when they’re hit with that you know, that curveball that they can call us and we’re here to help.

Frank McAleer  22:01

Someone said to me, Frank, how would you define longevity planning? I would say just that it’s being financially prepared, legally prepared, to the extent you need to. But also, do I know what resources I’m going to be able to utilize? And that’s where I think the value that vitality hub will add, because they’ll be vetted out based on experience and based on references, referrals we get from people that have used them. We’re not going to this blindly

Patti  22:27

at all. Yeah. We don’t want anybody making decisions emotionally, right, right? Yeah, or or feeling like they have to, they’re in a panic and they have to make it quickly. We also don’t want, you know, adult children to feel like they have to interrupt their their careers, right? To take care of mom and dad. We want to know what the resources are that are available, how much they might cost, so that we can so that, you know, if somebody needs something, it’s just a phone call, they

Frank McAleer  22:55

hit the ground. That’s a great point. There is cost. Yes, that one thing I want to make sure people are clear on and I think they are. But we can’t eliminate cost. We make sure that the money that you spend is the right spend, right? It’s the right, accurate

Patti  23:11

spend, manage the spending, yeah, and to make sure useful way and

Frank McAleer  23:15

productive way, not just like what I did with my mom. I told you like we were they would bring oxygen to the door. They bring a bed to the door. Okay, is Medicare covered? I have no idea. I’m just giving you the money because I need to get this done. Yeah, did we try to recover it? No, but I know that. You know, it’s, it’s money that could be coming out of your retirement plan. You know, because, you know people say it’s short term, but it’s not really short term, because it, it affects your long term savings.

Patti  23:41

It sure does it, and it affects your health, your mental health, your emotional health, and the health of the kids and the family. Yeah, it is a family issue, no question

Frank McAleer  23:51

about it. And you were talking about why you’re doing this a few minutes ago, the sense that I get is you ultimately want your clients to have peace of mind. Oh, I mean, and I’ve thought about peace of mind a lot. My own personal definition is I put my head on the pillow at night, and I know that I have the assets that I need in case something happens, and I also know what resources I’m going to utilize, and I’m not going to panic and I fall asleep right away. I’m not there yet, but I’m getting there. You’re getting getting there because I’m, you know, all these resources we’re talking about, they’re not offered in one week and you’re signed up the next week. Some of them are episodic, yep. And some it takes time to, you know, develop advantage of so anyway, that that’s what I that’s why, if I can put words in your mouth, you like your clients, to have peace of mind, that’s, that’s that’s exactly, that’s your value and why your clients love working with you. Yep, exactly.

Patti  24:45

And you know what? I want people to feel confident that we will continue to be there for whatever they might need, because it’s going to be changing. Everything changes. There is no exception to that. Yes, and we. Want to stay on top of this, which is why, thank you. Frank McAleer, you have come on board to help us to do that, because it’s, it’s more than a full time job.

Frank McAleer  25:09

No, I really believe in it. And I think I told you, like a lot of people that have passionate about it, they’ve lived it in some way, shape or form, I obviously have. I had about caregiving. I think everybody out there that’s listening, I think 80% if not more, are involved in caregiving in some way, shape or form. So like you said, we’re all living it, or we will be living it. But let’s be prepared. Let’s not panic, let’s not be emotional, because he has everything in place, 100%

Patti  25:36

and also prevent some of the things, right? Yes, the cyber security issues and the fraud and things of that nature. It’s all about education. And you know, one of the things that people have been doing, our clients have been doing, is calling us when they have computer problems and to make sure that that that they are safe. And it’s really been been interesting, the identity theft has been an issue for many of our clients, and we know what to do, so that’s a lot. Some advisors just want to manage a pie chart, and that’s fine. That’s what they want to do, and that’s what clients think that they’re paying for. That’s okay. I just want everybody to know that with with what we’re doing, they’re getting a lot more well, you realize that

Frank McAleer  26:19

you said it earlier in this call today that I just really didn’t have the time to do it all. And then when I heard you say that in Boston, I’m like, Hey, maybe I can help you with that, because for to enable me to just focus on this, which I’m hopefully you can tell I’m passionate about it. I just believe in it, just for doing the right thing for people. Here we are.

Patti  26:39

It’s incredible, because those of you who are listening and watching, you should know that Frank sent me how many emails, even over the weekend, articles, ideas, things that we might want to consider. And I appreciate that, because that’s the way I work, too.

Frank McAleer  26:53

I’m always read, like you said, things are changing. Yeah, I read all the time. There’s articles, new offerings. You have to stay on top of it exactly.

Patti  26:59

And you know our relationship with MIT, which is growing more and more.

Frank McAleer  27:04

Joe is Coughlin and MIT, they’re the one I believe that are most focused on helping us help your clients. 100% great relationship. Yeah, they really got we get a lot of value out of them.

Patti  27:14

So thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you, Frank McAleer, for the work that you’re doing. Thank you for helping me to launch the vitality hub that, to me, has been a dream of mine for years, and it just, it just couldn’t get off the ground, because to do it, we’re going to do it right. Thanks to you. We are doing it right.

Frank McAleer  27:34

So looking forward to, looking forward to building

Patti  27:37

this out. Yes, it’s going to be fun. Thanks to you for joining us today. I hope this has been helpful, but stay tuned, because we’re going to be talking about this more and more, and we want to bring these resources to all of you. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you have any questions or any thoughts, let us know what you think. Are we going in the direction that you think we should go? Go on to our website at www keyfinancial inc.com, if you want to hear more, set up a meeting. It’s free. That’s what we’re here for. We’re here to make a difference in your life. Thank you. Frank McAleer, thanks to all of you. I hope you have a great day and happy St Patrick’s Day.