Okay. Well, good afternoon, everyone. And, welcome to those who joined us, and, welcome you to our webinar titled Yes, She Can: How to Build Financial Confidence. In recognition of Women's History Month, we're focusing our attention on important financial planning considerations for women. 

And as you joined, we had the poll up and it seems that people attending here kind of recognized the fact that, you know, seventy-five percent of women are concerned about their ability to save for retirement. So we said, fact, ninety-four percent answered fact, and, And as far as what people are hoping to gain, it looks as if, it's pretty well dispersed.

I think, you know, a lot of these things are probably areas that people want, you know, assistance in and, in, across all these areas, but, you know, it's nice to kinda see that, all of these areas that were listed are on people's minds.

But, introductions, my name is Dana Vosburgh. I'm the Managing Director of Advisory Services here at Manning & Napier. And I'm, happy to be joined by two of my colleagues, Chelsea Seibel and Sharon Treiser.

Sharon and Chelsea lead the wealth management team for the Southwest Florida region. They have combined financial industry experience of over four decades. Both Chelsea and Sharon have worked at large institutions and small boutique planning firms.

Their strengths include working with individuals, families, business owners, and non-profits across a full array of comprehensive financial planning areas, including retirement, state, tax, and business owner planning. Chelsea has her CFP(R), and Sharon has an MBA along with both of them having the Series 7, 63, and 66 licenses.

Sharon and Chelsea have a passion for helping and educating women through their professional work as well as their community outreach. So I'm gonna hand it over to Chelsea first to build a little bit more on their backgrounds.

Thank you, Dana. We are so excited to be speaking on this topic today. As Dana mentioned, my name is Chelsea Seibel, and I'm a Certified Financial Planner(TM). I'm also a new mother to a five-month-old little girl named Isabelle. I've recently navigated the often difficult task of the transition to maternity leave and then back again. At home, I have a supportive husband and my first baby, a mini golden doodle named Tucker. On the community side, I serve on the board of our local non-profit agency committed to serving victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking, as well as I serve as a child advocate for the Guardian ad Litem program, which helps children in the foster care program. So that's a little bit more about me, and I'll pass it on to Sharon.

Thank you, Chelsea. Thank you, Dana. Again, I also am very excited to be here and to share whatever nuggets we may have that will be helpful to the attendees.

As Chelsea said, I am Sharon Treiser. I have my MBA from Washington University in Saint Louis and have been helping families and individuals achieve their wealth management goals for over three decades.

I have two grown sons and live in Naples with my golden retriever rescue, Archie. I have a passion for supporting my community and therefore have been named by the Community Foundation of Claudia County as a woman of initiative, and am currently involved in the shelter for abused women, children, and pets, as well as the Humane Society of Naples and sit on several professional advisory councils, including one for the conservancy of Southwest Florida and the women's foundation where we support the mission of supporting girls and women to achieve and be their best. So that's what we have. Thank you very much. I also have one more comment which I just wanna comment.

You know, as women, we often are blessed to achieve certain levels of of success. And in this area, I would not be where I am today. If it worked for my cohort of other supportive women, as well as men, who have been fantastic partners. And to that point, I would like to give a shout-out to Dana who is our moderator today as one of those amazing partners who I am blessed to work with. So thank you, Dana.

You're welcome. And thanks, Sharon, thanks, Chelsea, for taking part in this webinar today. I'd like to also add that Chelsea and Sharon represent the depth and breadth of our entire wealth management team, which includes Certified Financial Planners and Chartered Financial Analysts, Masters in Business Administration, and other designations to guide you on creating, reviewing, and updating your financial plan. For times when you need additional support, we also have, experts in estate planning, with tax consultant, Certified Divorce Financial Analysts, and others to guide you through your unique situations.

Also as we get started, it would be great to know where everyone is joining from today. So we like these events to be interactive.

So please, you know, feel free to type in your location in the chat feature. It's interesting to know, you know, who we're reaching, where people may be tuning in from, so to speak. And, and right now, I'm located in Rochester, New York. Chelsea and Sharon are in, what I see, Florida.

Sunny and warm Naples, Florida. So it's actually not too bad here in Rochester, New York. We're, we're getting there, but just interesting to see, you know, where people may be joining us from. 

So and one other, housekeeping item, we encourage questions along the way. So if you have any questions, please feel free to submit them using the Q&A function located at the bottom of your screen. You can open that up and type in a question and we'll see that. We'll also have several polls and questions that we'll ask in the chat. We'll spend time at the end of the webinar answering as many questions as possible.

And, and certain questions, just from experience, certain questions can be a challenge to answer adequately on a live webinar, either because, you know, things can be very specific to an individual in the individual's planning situation or maybe we just prefer to have a little bit more time to do some research before answering. But just know that that we'll have someone on our team, we'll reach out and and, like, one of us or somebody on the team will reach out and, answer your question.

And it's nice to see a broad range of locations where people are coming in from. Florida, a number of Florida, Pennsylvania. Yeah. Lots of Florida representation. I think, Chelsea and Sharon, you're drawing a fan base in, which is good. The a mixture of people all across the country. It's great to see.

Alright. So we're really excited about the topic today and the conversations we're going to have. And, we'll be discussing the importance of planning, setting goals, monitoring and tracking goals, and other important considerations that are going to be unique and relevant to women. And as you'll see, there's a lot to consider.

But the goal for this webinar really is for you to take away a couple of good tips or perspective that can help you as you think about your planning, and also for you to know that Manning & Napier is here to help clients navigate the complexities of your individual financial situations. 

So, to really help frame the conversation and organize some of our prepared comments, we've grouped the conversation into three sections that you'll see here and, there's certainly some overlap in these, but, you know, I think just a way to to kind of think about the conversation. We'll start with planning with confidence. So this is basically talking through how to to lay the groundwork for for where you want to go, kind of the starting process, also building your wealth. So what are some tactics and strategies to assist and and help you get there and then controlling the controllables. So what happens if things don't and most certainly won't, go as planned and what are some of the things to keep in mind there. So that's that kind of outlines our agenda. 

So if we if we start with planning with confidence. First, we'd like to invite everyone again in the chat, and just to provide a general answer if you're comfortable sharing, but what do you need to be more confident in your finances and your financial plans? So just, you know, what comes to mind for you, in order for you to be more confident overall with your finances. Just, don’t mind sharing. Just, we'll we'll see some of those answers and maybe and maybe comment on those, but, that's a good way to kind of get the conversation started here.

And, Sharon, Chelsea, as you meet with clients, how do you like to start the planning conversation here, Sharon, if we start with you?

Sure. Thank you, Dana. Thank you for that intro. So what I have found over the years when I meet with clients and prospects, one of the one of what I like to open with is why are you even here? Why are we sitting taking this meeting together? What is it that prompted you to say I really need to meet with the team, with Sharon, with Chelsea, with Dana?

Because once we get that answer, it makes it easier to drill down and make an impactful and effective conversation to help the client slash prospect. We look for gaps. Some of the questions and some of the items that might come out is, what were the previous experiences with their previous advisors? Were they good? What was good about them? What was lacking? What are they looking for? I also will ask, if you could paint the perfect picture of what an advisor relationship would look like for you and your family, what does that look like to you?

And so, therefore, that opens the conversation so that we understand better what the prospective client is looking for and how we can be of help to them.

Yeah, Sharon. Those are all great points. And this question on the slide, what do you want your life to look like? This is my favorite part of planning with clients. It's so fun to hear all about dreams and aspirations of our clients. Sharon, do you remember vision boards? I remember doing those as kids. Of course, back then, I was gonna marry Brad Pitt, and we were gonna live on a beach with our three kids. Clearly visions can change, and that's normal. But the key is to keep coming back to see if your plan is keeping up with that vision.

Once you have that vision, it's time to put the puzzle pieces together, what do you have and what additional pieces do you need to obtain to reach those goals? So I'm gonna let Sharon read one of her favorite quotes on the next page.

So many of you have heard of Maya Angelo and this quote, "you can't really know where you're going when you don't know where you have been", or in this case where you currently are. What that means is we need to start with baby steps. We need to not be overwhelmed by this process of a financial plan or trying to get your ducks in a row.

It can really be overwhelming. So how we start is, let's get a piece of paper and a pen out, not literally right now, but as as a or an excel spreadsheet, whichever you prefer, and list everything you own. It, your savings accounts, your checking accounts, your real estate, your 401ks, your IRAs, your children's accounts, your a savings accounts for children's school, and maybe college.

What else is out there? So all these different accounts that you all of a sudden look at this and say, wow. One of three things. Yep. Okay. This is good. Could use a little tweaking.

B, oh my, I feel a little behind the eight ball. 

Or, C, man, I've really been doing pretty well and didn't realize it. Just life kept happening, and I kept doing this.

Regardless of the three items, let's say that you fall into or three areas, we can sit down with you and help you tweak it to actually achieve your long-term goals. And that's what the benefit is of working with an advisor. Oh, just a slight note here. You've welcome to take notes during the course of this webinar. However, we will be following up with these salient points and with worksheets and lists so you can listen actively, maybe make a note or two, but then know, feel confident that you will receive your, this information after the fact.

So that's where we are. So, Chelsea, do you have some ideas on this as well?

Sure. Yeah. This exercise of inventory in your your assets and constraints are so important. It's surprisingly not hard to lose track of what you have. For example, you may have switched jobs and left an old 401k or maybe you know exactly what you have, but you forgot how you're invested and it's sitting in cash, and that could be just as detrimental to your plan.

So you'll see on the the slide here in terms of your your goals, you want to rank them and categorize these goals in terms of needs, wants, and wishes. Those that are needs, we need to make sure we're doing everything possible to reach those goals. And then the far more far-fetching goals may be met with more favorable variables like up markets.

But with so many moving pieces, technology can be a huge help to help us model out your plan. At Manning & Napier, we utilize a sophisticated software program that can map out your probability of success. Having a goal can increase your confidence about your particular situation. So Dana leads our planning department. Would you mind talking quickly about the benefits of this plan?

Right? Yeah. Definitely. And we use a financial planning software that's designed around goal-based planning. You know, it's great because very, it's very good at addressing the full spectrum of planning, whether it's a very general, or 'do I have enough money' temperature check which is good and very common and that's important. Or a plan that's extremely granular for someone interested in being very specific. So, you know, looking at retirement needs, health care, college funding, a vacation home, maybe downsizing in retirement, even common situations, like, you know, costs down the line, like, you know, special expenses like wedding costs, charitable giving, maybe funding for a family vacation every year, or a new car every four years.

And then we run multiple scenarios to give you context on how things might play out using different assumptions. And this really helps to give someone context and actionable steps to take. So one of the takeaways today is to know that we can provide a complimentary financial plan and a conversation using this, and have a good conversation around the software. We encourage you to take advantage of that. 

And I know that Sharon had mentioned something even before we started the webinar, but, a comment came in ahead of time about technology and people being maybe, you know, certain people having a bit of a phobia, if you wanna call it that, with technology or just not being as comfortable. And we're comfortable kind of meeting a client where they are, right, using the technology and giving access to, you know, online portals and things like that or bringing something out and sitting down with somebody and walking through it and that, if that's the best way to have the conversation. So, you know, across the board is really how we wanna take it. And, however, the client, our clients feel most comfortable, addressing those topics and having the conversation. 

So that's, that's about the planning, and I will, just wanna stop and touch on some of the comments that came in on the chat because we appreciate you participating in that way and kind of a wide range of things.

And if you can see what's in the chat, you know, just people interested in saving more, maybe taxes, being able to... being able to save more and also, where to put money. So kind of a nice full range of things that we'll absolutely get to here along the way with some more specific planning strategies and ideas, and even some opportunities to answer some of those questions a little bit later in the Q&A. 

But I'm going to also pull up a second set of polls here. So, that I would would love you to to vote on the first question is, the other... this is the third poll. The second one we want here if we can switch it out, would be maybe 82% of women have a financial plan. If you can pull that one up.

Bear with us one second.

See technology happens all the time.

Perfect. So '82% of women have a financial plan. Do you have one?' So, obviously, that's helpful for us, and especially when we're working with people, to know kinda where they're starting from and great to see where people may be that are attending this webinar. 

And 'What is the primary goal of your financial plan?' So you know, all of I guess all these could apply, but, you know, there's certainly... it's helpful to have prioritization.

And, it would be interesting to know there where people may be thinking about as far as what the top priority is. So give it one second to submit your votes.

See where we end up.

Let's see.

You have the results yet?

Here we go. Alright.

So Wow.

Okay. So we have a little bit more than than half than have a financial plan right now. And then we could see that it looks like you know, securing a comfortable retirement. Very understandable, is that being a highly voted answer there. 

And then understanding your financial picture. So that's, you know, those are great, and those are important things, and, obviously, key parts of of the financial planning process. So, great. Thank you. Thank you for holding there. 

And, you know, on to the next one here, Sharon, what are some actionable steps then that can be taken merely to help somebody move in the right direction?

Sure. So on a very high-level approach, we've touched on some of these before. First of all, do you have an inventory list of all your accounts and assets as we mentioned before? What we didn't mention was on the other side of the balance sheet is do you have your current liabilities, debts, income streams, mortgages, car leases, credit card debt, etcetera.

Also, can you name who your current financial advisors are? 

So I know this may sound a little odd, but there are families where one person handles all the add, all the planning and all the investments, the other person's kind of in the dark, and we will touch on that later. But This is very important that you should know exactly who you can call if you have some and if you have people that respond. And then also, this is another one that we'll get into, which people often freeze on, is how often do you engage in financial conversations with your loved ones?

Again, this goes back to psych 101. When you were raised, was it okay to talk about money? Was it considered taboo? Was it an awkward topic? And then depending on how you've been raised relative to your partner, your financial partner, it can often cause some angst. We are more than happy to act as moderators in those families and help you with those conversations and to see where you are. So they, later on, we will be talking about how beneficial these conversations are.

Sharon, I'll add one additional level to step number three and that's coordination. And that's the nation of your advisors. This reminds me of a client who came to me and part of our process is asking to look at estate documents, and they came back to me and said, 'You know what, we have the best estate attorney in town, we have the best documents. I don't know if we really need that.' I said, 'that's great. But we don't have any record of them.' And I asked, 'did you set up a trust with your attorney?'

And they said, yes. And I let them know that currently, you have direct beneficiaries listed on your accounts that are your kids. So the assets that we had would never go through those trusts, and they had no idea. So this is just one example of the importance of these steps.

Great.

No. That's good. And that, so I think from here, we'll move on then to the next section that we've identified. And I think we've, so the first section, we're covering, laying the the foundation for the planning process.

So let's now talk about strategies and and tactics to get there and to to help you along the way. So, Chelsea, can you please give us your thoughts here on this on this next step?

Sure. Yeah. So there are a lot of different understandings of what financial planning or wealth management is. I'm sure you've heard different terminology used. For us, it means taking a holistic look at these different components that all have an impact on your financial life.

Some of these things you may be doing already, others you just need the time to to focus on them or it means that you need to hire a professional.

I did wanna say first of all, I applaud you for being here. You're taking the first step to make sure you are on the right track.

And with this being a female focused workshop, I did wanna highlight that we know everybody is different, but we do see some trends with differences in financial planning for men versus women Dana, you see a lot of plans come through your department. Do you mind expanding on that a little bit?

Yeah. And it's, something we've either thought about a bit here as well, just uh Women's History Month and and and sort of putting some attention on it. Right? But I think it's evolved a bit over time.

The general trend is that women, tend to put others first. I think in various things first and prioritizing certain things over finances, And if one spouse handles the finances, it's often been the the husband historically.

You know, that dynamic and create challenges for later down down the road as women approach retirement and are later in life.

Finances may not have been as much of a a focus for a large period of time, And now there's that added responsibility.

You know, long longevity is also a consideration as women tend to live longer than men. So the money that you save needs to last longer. And, women tend to also be more generous with their money, interested in in gifting the family and parity, you know, during their lifetimes. It may be, you know, in in place of saving a little bit for themselves.

And they tend to be more risk-adverse. So, you know, the investment portfolios that they have may be more conservative just because they're trying to protect the assets that they have. So, again, these are these priorities, are are often very good, but they can create challenges. And, that's why it's so important to start the planning process early, invest in yourself, and, and really review regularly to make sure that you're staying on track.

Yeah. Thanks, Dana. You hit on some really great points and realities that many of us face. It further emphasizes the fact that you really have to be the champion of your own financial success.

Nobody's gonna do it for you. So adopting good habits in your everyday life can help you achieve those those long-term goals. As you can see, there are many areas that you can focus on But each one of these can be a webinar in itself. So we only have an hour, and we won't keep you that long.

So, we'll just, we thought we'd share a few nuggets that may get you thinking about what you can do now to make a difference in the long run. So let's start with charitable giving.

I'm sure many of you have a charitable cause that you hold close to to you. Maybe that's your local humane society or religious institution.

But if you're just writing a check, from your bank account, you may be doing yourself a disservice.

There are some more tax-efficient ways to do that. So let's first start with appreciated assets.

Appreciated assets are investments that have increased in value. Typically, when you have investments in a taxable account, you have to pay taxes on the difference between what you pay for it versus what you sold it for.

However, if you gift directly to charity, that's not the case.

You can take an income tax deduction for the full fair market value up to thirty percent of your AGI. So that's a great technique.

Another one, has has anyone heard of donor-advised funds? Donor-advised funds, are like terrible investment accounts.

We've been using the strategy more now that the standard deduction is higher, which pays many people out of itemizing their taxes, which would allow for those standard deduction.

I'll give you an example on how you can use this donor-advised fund. So we see, let's use for example, you give five thousand dollars a year to your cause whatever the case may be. Instead of, doing it over a five-year period, and this is just an example, you can bundle that gifting. So instead of doing five thousand one year, you do twenty-five thousand dollars worth into the donor-advised fund.

And then you it it's it may push you over that that threshold so that you can itemize on your taxes. But then through the donor-advised fund, you can continue gifting that five thousand per year. So it it's, essentially holds those, that gifting for you. The other benefit for a donor-advised fund is you can continue it onto your kids and and hopefully instill in those charitable, intentions to the next generation Finally, I'll mention qualified charitable distributions.

If you have a retirement account, after a certain age, the IRS requires you to withdraw money. These are called required minimum distributions.

In order to avoid paying taxes on the distribution from a retirement account, you can direct those distributions to a qualified 501c3 charity tax-free.

Again, now that less people are itemizing their taxes, this is a way to get a tax benefit while still giving to charities.

So all of these are strategies to allow you to be more tax-efficient while increasing your impact to your cause. So, Sharon, why don't you go on to the the family conversation topic.

Thank you, Chelsea. Those were great points to make. And, again, each one of these as Chelsea and both Dana said, these could each be another webinar. So we'll try and keep this higher level for everyone.

So family conversation. What is key here? Communication.

Open communication so that the if you are in a relationship, that your partner, your spouse is aware of each what each other is doing. Both spending and saving, coordinating 401k contributions if one spouse is not working, perhaps utilizing the ability to contribute to a spousal IRA.

And these are the the the nuggets that come through. It also helps you be a stronger financial partnership. Because if one tends to spend more and one's a little more conservative, talk about it and see where you can hopefully come together. But what's really important is go to meetings with your advisors together.

I have had in my, experience where the man shows up. The woman's invite both cup the man and the woman are both partners are invited and one's on the golf course or one's on the tennis court or on the pickle ball court, the other one's in taking care of business, and I will call that other spouse and say, "Hey, I missed you today. We spent over some really important things for your family", and I I actually, am pretty insistent that when we work with a family that all members are involved. So super super important.

It also makes a more supportive environment.

The other is another example would be when do you make, the decision is to sharing finances with the children at what age and how often? I mean, even little ones, if they're getting an allowance, teach them, you know, if they love puppies and kitties do if they get a five dollar allowance. So what percentage goes to charity? What percentage goes to?

Fun and games and what percentage goes to saving. It's easy when they're younger because you make it a game and we help with that again. We help with those conversations. Another situation would be establishing a family mission statement.

Again, it's to be all inclusive. We've been blessed to work with multi-generational families where that everybody from the patriarch and matriarch all the way down to the little ones get together. Usually, it's a Thanksgiving. Interesting because that's a very, most people who do get together and they get to discuss what's important to them.

And perhaps, you know, what does our family stand for? What do we represent? Are we religious? Are we environmental?

Are we, you know, none of those things? Maybe we're just a really great golfing family, and that's our gift. Okay. But at least you have an identity to the family.

So that's that's a lot of fun and I enjoy those conversations and and also, we also help to moderate those. One last thing I'll just say, we often, we didn't really touch on single, individuals who are on the call and, or if you are in a subsequent relationship with titling issues. Again, family discussions need to talk about and be clear as to what and who will bear the brunt if one of the partners does become ill or passes away. And also if you are single, how to find a partner, a financial partner.

I don't mean personally necessarily, but again, utilizing an advisor group to be your financial partner to help you stay on track and to be there for you. So that's where we are there. Oh. And not just taking care of your family, but back to Dana's point about taking care of yourself.

We women do tend to put ourselves on the back burner. Right?

We're not feeling great, but our kid or our parent or our husband isn't feeling great or our partner, we tend to say, "I'll get to the doctor later." Please, please, please. Those annual checkups, nobody loves them. Please go.

Please make sure you're okay. And I personally don't use the word diet. I find it to be a negative connotation. But let's just focus on a healthy lifestyle.

Whatever, you know, moderation and moving. Just keep moving and eat within moderation. It will help you be healthy. And also really important.

What is it that makes you happy personally? How do you reduce your stress? Walking the dog?

Doing meditation on the one eye when it's raining, having a cup of coffee or a glass of wine with a BFF or doing your yoga to yoga practice. So everybody, this will help you be strong so that you can be helpful your tribe.

So there we go. So to that point, Chelsea, let's talk about when they live longer, what they can do to be healthy with their retirement planning.

I'm sure, the listeners didn't think they'd be hearing about dieting on a financial webinar, but it is important, that health factor is so important.

But let's chat a little bit about retirement planning.

This can include a wide wide range of topics. And let's start with what you would normally associate with retirement planning, and that is retirement account savings.

For those of you that are still working, it's important that you are contributing to your employer plan. I'm often asked how much one should be saving, and that completely depends on how much you can do. Everybody makes a a different amount and have different capabilities.

But at the very least, if your employer has a match, you should contribute enough to get that full match. Ideally though, if you can get that contribution up between ten and twenty percent, that would be ideal. A lot of plans have a function that increases for you every year, and that's a good thing to to have on your employer plan.

For those of you that are retired, it's important to come up with a plan to determine where you are pulling your distributions from. If you have both retirement and non-retirement accounts or perhaps even tax-free Roth. It's best to run through some scenarios to make sure you're not inadvertently throwing yourself in the next tax bracket. You pull out of retirement accounts, that's considered income, and that can have a negative effect to your plan. Then on top of that, if you have any income streams like social security, you need to determine how those factor into your plan. Again, running these scenarios in the plan is extremely helpful, especially because there's so many moving pieces.

Now many don't realize this, but if you have a health savings account, you can treat it like an additional retirement account, especially if you're maxing out other accounts.

A health savings account is an account that you can use, to save tax-free when you have a high deductible medical plan.

Oftentimes people add to it and then as soon as a health expense comes up, you use those funds.

I would say if you have outside savings I'd consider continuing to save each year in your HSA, but save it for retirement and use your outside savings for expenses that come up. It's triple-tax free, meaning it goes in pre-tax, grows tax-deferred, and then comes out tax-free if used for those qualified medical expenses.

So you can use this for Medicare Part B, Part D, Medicare Advantage Plan premiums, deductible co-pay coinsurance. So it's it's pretty power powerful stuff.

It's also great to have a a tax-free account that won't hire income when you need to withdraw money. Again, when you pull out a retirement account, that's considered income.

So there are additional considerations. If you're a business owner, I don't know if we have any business owners on the call. But there are some considerations with how you structure your business, how you set up a retirement plan. There's different iterations of a retirement plan that you can set up. And then, ultimately selling the business is also a huge factor here that, and again, this can be another webinar. So, we can certainly help you with that, but there's a lot of moving pieces if you're a business owner.

So transitioning to tax planning, everybody's favorite subject.

You you don't want the tax tail to wag the dog meaning it shouldn't be your sole focus, but it's very important and can have a big drag on your performance.

I'll just mention one tip here. If you have investments in a taxable account, consider tax-loss harvesting. And and let me explain what that is. When you have an investment that has grown in value, typically when you sell that investment, you have to pay capital gains on the difference between what you bought it for and what you sell it for.

However, when the opposite occurs and you have a loss, you can sell it and capture that loss. You may not want to get rid of that position so you can buy it back in thirty days. However, you've already banked that loss. If you sell something for a gain in the future, you can offset the two.

And lower your tax bill. So this is fun stuff. Right?

But I'm gonna let Sharon continue on to estate planning.

Our next favorite topic. Estate planning. Actually, estate planning is really cool because it allows you to set up entities trusts that will allow, your assets when you pass to go where you want them to go, whether it's depending on your family situation or whether it's to charity. It just depends on your situation.

Again, everyone's slightly different. So again, estate planning, as I mentioned, I think way back at the beginning, I always look at the estate plan. We always look at the estate planning documents to see how things are titled and how the the assets need to be passed. I will say that estate planning, everybody has a different idea a little bit, but they need to be reviewed at least every five years.

But maybe every year if you have a lot of change in your family, if there is a marriage, a death, a change in financial situation, a divorce, marriage, whatever comes on. That's when the, that should be a trigger. And I don't use the word 'should' very often for those who know me, but I, that should be a trigger to pull out those documents and go over them to get, you know, to to make sure that they are following your wishes.

I also find that although not everybody in every state utilizes trusts as part of their estate planning, they can be very, just as useful for the living as for the the people who have passed in the sense that if you or your partner, especially if you're single and it's be you, if something happens to render you incapable of handling your affairs for a brief period of time. It allows your successor, trustee, whomever you've asked to step in and be you when it comes to handling your finances, etcetera. And some people will say, 'well, I have a power of attorney, so I don't need a trust.' I'm not gonna weigh in on that.

That would be between you and your attorney. However, we also have an attorney on staff who will work with you and your attorney. We do not charge for it. We do not draft documents.

We just act as another set of eyes for you. And part of your team. So that's important.

Also trusts, again, you would talk to your attorney about this, but could set up protection from divorce, litigation, bankruptcy, stentress. I saw briefly, someone did say, 'hey, as a single mom, how do I protect my son?'

I believe it's, I, and I didn't read it exactly. I just caught it. So that again would be something that we would definitely highly recommend that you meet with your attorney to set up a trust to protect assets on behalf of your child or children. So that's just a quick, there, and I think Chelsea, you oh, before I go there before I go to Chelsea, I did wanna just say, and you'll be getting this in a follow-up. There are, regardless of what state you're in, there are just a few documents that one would want to have in case of whatever happens. You want a will which designates where your money goes. You want a living will, which is, helps with, if you're ill, what doctors will or won't do.

You want the general power of attorney, which allows another living human being to step in and be you, pay bills, etcetera, if you're incapacitated, and then a health care power of attorney, again, to designate who and what happens to you if you can't speak for yourself. So those are four items that we really strongly believe in. So, Chelsea, Please tell us a story of a client. I think that would be of interest to our crowd.

Yes. So continuing this this theme here, it's just so important, speaking to a professional, to really understand how your estate would be distributed and make sure it aligns with your vision. You may think your estate goes a certain way, but that may not be the case. So I'll give you an example here. I was working with a client who had three children and this gentleman wanted to list his oldest son as a hundred percent primary beneficiary.

And I asked him what he was thinking behind this because I knew he was close to all of his children.

And he told me he said that his oldest son was the most responsible, so it would go to him and then he would then distribute equally amongst the three of them. And while this had good intentions, it could cause issues with the children once he passes, especially if there was no family discussion about this. Perhaps the other two children think that their dad is disinheriting them. There could also be issues if the oldest child is going through issues like a divorce or bankruptcy, and then all of that money could be at risk for the three kids. So, you may think again, he he had good intentions, but when you go through the legal aspects of it, it may not go how you want it to go. And then just to reiterate what Sharon said, it's important to keep coming back and assess annually but, or if there's there's changes, dramatic changes, like Sharon mentioned.

And and I'll give you another example of that. So I was working with a client who had the unthinkable happen and her daughter passed away in her forties. The client's estate was set up so that her children's portion would go to their children if they pre-deceased their mother. This daughter had a five-year-old, daughter And what that meant is that if something now happened to the mother, this five-year-old would have access to five million dollars as soon as she turned eighteen.

I don't know about you all, but at eighteen, I don't know if that would have been a good idea to hand me that much money at such a young age.

So all that said, there's ways to set up parameters and guardrails to preserve the money and protect children because you don't know. You you have a vision for how your kids will turn out, but you never know what they're going through, in that situation.

That's a lot of great information on that, on that page. And and one thing that we we didn't touch on quite there, is, on the investments. And investment management. And so let's let's touch on equity and sharing. I know you wanted to, cover this for us.

Did. I did. This is what I've been doing since 1986, so I love investments. I love portfolio management because all these, all these other items must be attended to.

But if you're not invested, it's very hard to achieve the goals that everyone is speaking about here today. So what you have here, we're not gonna go into deep dive again. We're not, that'll be another hour. We will, we have a whole series of webinars we're hoping to put together on your behalf.

So, our this this slide is an example of Manning & Napier's fifty-year flagship strategy versus the compounded comparable benchmark. This also represents if five percent had been taken out every year, this still shows a positive, very, very positive net result. So 500,000, fifty years ago, end of December thirty-first 2023, you would be left with 7.9 million and change versus the benchmark of 4 million. So that sounds pretty amazing.

But what this speaks to really is process, discipline, stick to itiveness, and following good advice.

We don't want to invest based on investment advice given to us by our buddies on the golf course, the pickleball course, the tennis court, It's just they don't always end very well. You know, look at Bitcoin. It, Bitcoin's such a timing deal. Yeah.

Great. You could buy Bitcoin one minute and then the next minute it's down to zero and you're like, what happened? It's also hasn't until recently been able to be treated very easily. So again, that's just a fad.

That needs to be carefully considered relative to the rest of your investments. But this is a solid. way to invest. We believe in solid, process-driven, and going, stick, sticking with a good investment strategy through good times and bads. Bad, excuse me. I do want to point out, and you will see this, of course, that if you look at the green line, which is the Manning & Napier results, you do see some volatility. Right? You do see ups and downs, but staying the course and listening to your advisor would have excellent results. So that's where I was.

Great.

Thank you. And and, and I think just to kinda wrap up this section, we're going to have, another set of poll questions to come up. And you'll see those on your screen here momentarily.

First question is do you currently invest? So just kind of, you know, continuing on with that the the last topic there that Sharon covered and, and, and then if no, what's stopping you? So it's good to know kind of, if If you aren't investing and we talked about investing early and often and investing in yourself and and making sure that you put money away, you know, what's what's keeping you from doing that, and that's something that, again, as we we wanna have those conversations and and understand what may be preventing some of that and and work on ways to, to to find some solutions there. Right? So we'll give everybody a minute here to go in their answers.

Here we go.

So, yep, seventy-five percent looks like are are investing currently, which should, you know, that's something most people have, that makes sense. The people are invested in some capacity.

But, you know, if no, what's stopping you, and I think, you know, what you see here is not really sure where to start. Perfectly understandable or somebody else may, as we talked about before, is oftentimes in a, in a, really in couples, maybe one will handle the finances, and the other may be focused on other areas. And that makes a lot of sense, and it makes a family work. But, you know, that's that does create situations, maybe over one one person in the relationship is just not as up to speed on some of those, and that can create some challenges as well from a from a planning standpoint.

That's good. It's interesting to see. Thank you again for for voting. So we'll move on to the third section that we're that we wanted to cover here, and it's, building on the first two sections and, which were laying laying the foundation and understanding kind of, you know, where where you have to start from and and then understand the tactics, and the strategies to get there.

So now we're going to address the very important area of planning. Which is monitoring the plans and the tactics that you've put in place. So you've done the work put in place. Now what?

And so Sharon, I know you wanted to to gonna talk through some of the considerations here because you certainly have experience.

Yes. So the question on the slide, obviously, are you prepared for the unexpected? You've been doing what Dana just said. And so what if you go through a relationship change? What if you lose your job? Ninety-four percent of women believe they will be personally responsible for their finances, but only forty-eight percent, less than half, confident in their finances. That's that's, and and what and that's why we're doing this this webinar, how to help build confidence, that you can be closer to the ninety-four percent than forty-eight percent. So I'm gonna take a moment and step back and and give you a little personal experience.

My own personal story for just if you'll indulge me for about sixty seconds here.

So I have been divorced. I was widowed.

I have sat with both my parents individually, while they each went through their illness, and then passed on to the next life.

So I have act, and obviously a a really positive note, I have two great sons that are grown and and doing very well.

But what, why am I even bringing this up? I'm bringing it up because as women, when we get knocked around, by life, we don't wanna just survive it even though it feels like sometimes that's all we're doing. We want to thrive. We wanna come out at the other end and thrive.

Right? So how do you do that? Well, I'm, so, this is the reason I'm so passionate about helping women and families because I've been through it. And one of the reasons that I am thriving and not just surviving is because I've been blessed to have a team in place to take care of the details while I took care of dealing with life.

So it's so important as things change and they come unexpectedly you want unemotional advice from your professional team. You want to know that someone or some ones are in your corner and are watching those details while you go and figure out the rest of what's happening for a while. So thank goodness you know, having a Chelsea, a Dana, a Team behind you when you're going through, whether it's a relationship change, a loss or a divorce, etcetera. A health scare.

A career loss, you have a team behind you, and I think that's super, super important. And She's gonna go into a little bit more detail here, regarding the situation.

Sure. And I appreciate you sharing your story. It's not always easy to to divulge personal information. So thank you for sharing, but I know others can probably relate.

It's always unimaginable to go through these circumstances But our job as advisors is to try to ease that burden as much as possible. And although it can be uncomfortable, that means that we need to talk about these what if scenarios before they even occur.

For example, if you have a partner or not, what happens is something happens to either one of you and you lose a stream of income or the only stream of income, how do you envision that playing out? Will the survivor have enough on one stream of income? Or if it's the only, will the survivor go back to work? Will your family be okay?

If not, what protections are in place. And that's where we can utilize insurance to ensure that survivors have enough that they can pay the bills and will not force the survivor back to work unexpectedly if they weren't working before And we've mentioned this before, but titling of assets is so important. If assets are titled incorrectly, they can get tied up in probate. I had a prospect that I met with who was married, but never added his his wife as a joint owner beneficiary.

Unfortunately, he got sick and passed away and while he named her primary beneficiary in the will, she had to wait six months for the court to approve her as executrix and beneficiary.

So in the meantime, she wasn't able to pay bills So she was paying incredibly high fees on her credit card until she had access to the account to pay it off. So you never wanna be in that position.

Now what if somebody gets sick and can't work? That's a little bit different. Life insurance won't work in this case. So that's where we look at disability insurance.

That can help provide a stream of income if you're not able to work or your partner is not able to work.

What if your parents get sick?

And have you had a conversation with them with what they expect.

Do they expect you to help them in a long term care scenario?

If they do and and you're not aligned, perhaps you're in the peak of your, professional life and you're not ready to take a step back to be caregiver. Do they have long term care insurance, or are they trying to pay out of pocket, and do they have the funds to do that, or do you have siblings to help you in the circumstances so so many variables here and that conversation ahead of time is what really helps.

If you have younger kids, being able to name guardians and your will is super important. You wanna make sure who's if in the case that you and if you have a spouse, toss away who's gonna care for your children.

Then divorce. Nobody gets married thinking that they're gonna get a divorce.

You know, so not everybody puts a prenup in place. But it's so important before you make decisions, speak to a professional first. There's things that you can do and to protect yourself before you go through that process.

And then finally, if if you have a job change, maybe it's your choice or not your choice, maybe you're taking time away from the office to take care of kids, take care of parents, where are you pulling money from? So we always recommend having at least six months of essential expenses saved up. You wanna have that cash available. If the market's down, you don't wanna have to pull out of your account while it's down. So you wanna have that access to that.

Again, you don't wanna think about the things that can happen, a a spouse or child that goes before you, but let us help you. We wanna support you through those like moments.

Just like we can't control the weather or the stock market, we can't control relationship changes, health issues, family changes, but we can bring an umbrella for when the thunderstorm rolls in.

Great.

Thanks, Chelsea.

So we we really covered a lot there and, and, you know, I think just it Sharon, if you wanted to just kinda pick a couple of key takeaways here.

And what would you say? Just you'd want people to just to think about here, as as we wrap this up.

So this will be repeating a couple items from before, but I think they're super important. First of all, the topic is overwhelming.

But you're not alone in this journey. There's a lot of information, and there's no way for you to know everything.

So making sure you put in place a team that listens to you that coordinates that is there for you and you being the boss of your own finances is very, very important. You're the boss So you you deal with it. You take it and you make sure you build your team that will support you.

I know that we had fit a lot into the in less than an hour. There are a lot of questions. We'll be able to hopefully get into some now. And if regardless we will get back to you, we promise We also will be putting together some workshops covering some of these other topics in a deeper dive.

So we'll be getting that back to you with that. To go back to the beginning of this conversation, what is this called? Yes, she can. Building confidence in your financial future.

I'm going to say, yes, you can. You can do this with the people around you. Don't try and do it alone. And your successes are success from planning to advice, we are here for you and look forward to working with you.

If indeed you would like to do that. So thank you.

Great. Thanks, Sharon.

We have one more poll question that just as as we kind of end our prepared and prepared the comments, and we'll we'll go into Q and A. Just a nice way to to kinda wrap this up. What's your next steps, on your financial journey? And, know, again, a lot of these, you may you may wanna answer all of them, but I guess just as you pick one, what is the one that comes to mind. So if we wouldn't mind voting there, it'd be nice to see what we get as, as a result.

Give it one second.

There it is. So we'll say Didn't you to educate myself? Looks like is sort of the lead the leading, choice.

But again, pretty well dispersed. So it's nice to see that there's you know, interest in across all these areas.

So, and I'll I'll just, you know, one other thing we wanted to make sure we emphasize is, we'd like this as, I mean, Chelsea and and Sharon both touched on this. But we'd like to serve this to serve as a as a first step in starting the planning process for you or or revisiting, you know, some of the planning that you've done in the past. So if you access the QR code that you see on the screen here, it will take you to a page that allows you to schedule time for a free consultation with one of our financial consultants. So, you know, in that conversation, you can discuss your goals and and, and and we'll work with you to outline a plan using the tools we described earlier.

You know, some of them could be the the the fancy sophisticated tools and, access online or, like I said, also, you know, just sitting down, with a with kind of the old school, paper report and and walking through what what works best for you. Right? So we encourage you to take advantage of the service, and we look forward to the opportunity to work more closely with you.

So with that, there's some I'll I'll mention there's some neat worksheets on there too.

So it's not just to schedule an appointment.

Oh, good. Good. Yeah. Thanks, Chelsea. Yeah. Perfect.

Yes. Really good really good ones.

Great. Well, so we'll move into the, the Q & A here. We'd like to highlight that, if you have any questions after the webinar concludes - so if you're thinking about something tonight or tomorrow, you know, feel free to reach out to speak with if you're working with a Manning & Napier financial consultant already, please please reach out or if you don't currently work with one, please contact us and we'll be sure to have somebody reach out to you. As we touched on earlier, we'll aim to select questions here in Q & A that, are as broadly applicable, I think, as as possible. You know, that that that just hit on a lot of the important issues that people may be asking about in in these questions, but, please submit any and all.

Feel free because if if we don't answer your question, we'll have somebody contact you very soon to address it. So so with that, we can hit on a couple, we had some questions that came in ahead of time. And, and it was nice to see a few, a few, topics in the chat as people were mentioning things that were pretty consistent with, I think, some of the questions that had that had come in earlier. But, we just picked one here on the list.

One question was, 'When can I know if I'm prepared to buy a home?'

This question is a little hard to answer without knowing your your exact personal situation. So I'll speak a little bit more generically.

However, a big part of that is long do you plan on living there?

There are a lot of expenses with the upfront cost of buying a home. You want to make sure you're there for at least five years is the general guideline, just to be able to recoup some of those those expenses. It's also important that you have a reliable source of income, because if you get a... a mortgage lender's gonna look at your assets, your income, your debt, to be able to make sure that you qualify for one.

The other aspect of owning a home is you don't have a landlord to call when an expense pops up. Right? So you wanna make sure you have savings on hand, to fix that dishwasher, to fix the whatever happens to come up at two o'clock in the morning like it does in my household.

Well, good.

Here's one that, it's it's on a lot of things. But it's it's good that I think a lot of people are probably having a, you know, in their mind as far as, just a good question overall about retirement planning. But, 'people seem to be living longer, and my salary is not very high. How can I make sure I have enough money to take care of my needs for the rest of my life, but still enjoy doing things to enjoy life?'

So that's that's got a lot in it, but it's a great question.

Yeah. I'm happy to jump on that one. Again, as Chelsea said, there, it's hard to know exactly, again, on this call, exactly what the answer is. However, taking a step back again, taking steps as as to what you have and what your debt is. And then if you meet if you have someone, who can do a plan for you. Great.

If not call us, we're happy to do this for you. Again, no obligation. And we'll sit down and put in what you what your aspirations are. I mean, when you say retire comfortably, does that include a lake house or a beach house, does that include, or what is that, and what do you like to do?

Are you a big traveler? Like, I'm a huge traveler. Right? And that is something that, can put a big dent of other ways to travel and their ways to travel.

So once we know better, what it is exactly that you're passions are and what you're trying to accomplish while you're living and healthy and and and working, then we can help you. We can give you some, as Chelsea was, some parameters and guidelines, and then you can choose what you wanna do with that. Right? So that's where we come in and where we we love we love stuff like that. It's it's like a jigsaw puzzle, right? And it helps our our our clients feel good and and go about and live their best lives.

Right? Yeah. Writing that context, which is is so helpful. Full. And, so that's great. And I I just wanna acknowledge, so I know we just went past the top of the hour.

We'll stay on and continue to answer the questions that have have come in. So please feel free to to stay on. And, if if you have the time to do it, and we'll continue to answer questions, or if you even submit a question you know, this is this is good and we'll we'll continue to to answer as many as we can at least for the next two or several minutes.

One good one here. Well, there's a a few that came in that were, related to IRAs. And I do, at least I know I noticed in the chat, and then there were a couple pre-submitted, but, I guess, let me see here where to go back to it.

What what are the general major, pros and cons of transferring funds from IRAs to Roth IRAs, in 2024 or 2025. But I guess, you know, just a general concept there of maybe pros and cons. I don't know. Maybe Chelsea, if you have some thoughts there on kind of the Roth conversions.

Yep. So, again, there's a lot of variables here. So I'll speak high level. And this is another thing that we can actually show you in your plan.

So one of the factors is, your tax bracket. So typically, and I'll just go over the basics, right? A a Roth is you put after-tax money into a Roth and it grows tax-free when you pull it out in retirement.

A traditional IRA on the other hand, you put in pre-tax money and that grows, and when you pull it out, it's taxable.

So really you're looking at your tax bracket to see, and typically if you're in a lower tax bracket early on a Roth makes sense.

And the opposite is true for a traditional.

And if you're doing, if you're talking about conversions, there's some considerations for how long are you gonna have this investment account before you need to pull from it? Because the longer that, that money has to grow in in a Roth, for example, the better because that growth is all tax-free.

So it's hard to say exactly without knowing your situation, but we can run those different scenarios for you. Right?

One question I know is very, very common, that people ask about is Social Security.

And when to take it.

You know, that that's something that, probably are on a lot of people's minds as they're nearing retirement. So any thoughts on that, I guess, just a general sort of, good good thoughts and and guidelines for taking social security.

Happy to happy to talk about that a little bit. So again, Social Security has to be one of the most convoluted and complex topics because there's so many moving parts. Not not sure that makes you feel really good, right?

But there are answers. That's the best part. Whether you are married single, age 60, age 62, age 65, full retirement age, not full retirement age, All of these items come into play where to decide when you should take it. And there are also blends, a blended, sorry, a blended answer to that as well.

It might be the one of, if you're married, one of you take yours until the other one reaches retirement age, or it might be that you both wait a while. Or if you are divorced, you can take half of your ex-husband's, and he doesn't even need to know about it. If you're a widow, you can take 100%, but you have to be 62. You, I mean, there are all these different, as you can tell, variables.

And again, that's where we come into play or a specialist in Social Security and Medicare come into play. Again, happy to work with and or direct.

And just to add that a little bit. A lot of it has to do... So we can actually run an analysis to show the crossover point for whether it makes sense to postpone and let your your benefit grow. So another component of that is your health. If you have really good health, maybe it makes more sense to delay it and grow it because you'll live longer. Right? And the the opposite is is true. So we can we can show you where that that crossover point is.

Good point, Chelsea. Great point.

Yeah.

Let's see here. There's one question about budgeting, you know, how to keep a budget. That was something that that that somebody pre-submitted. So, I guess, general, I mean, this this probably falls into, you know, a couple of the other comments are made where, you know, it certainly depends on on your personal situation. And and I think, you know, and the benefit of of using tools to sort of help organize yourself and and and kinda get a good start there. 

But I don't know if, Chelsea or Sharon, if you have good thoughts there and just kind of budgeting.

Yeah. I I think with budgeting, it all comes down to discipline.

And that could be hard. But I think when you have buckets, so for example, if you're putting money away, it's coming out of your paycheck to your retirement account. You don't even think about it. The money's gone out of your hands.

I like to think of it as you know, three different buckets. You have your bucket that, just a general idea, about fifty percent of your income towards essential expenses, like rent, food, utilities, maybe another fifteen percent to retirement, and then five percent for emergency fund. And then there's a little cushion. Right?

So if you decide to go out to eat or, you wanna add a little bit, redecorate. You have a little budget there, right, wiggle room. So I think that's probably the best way to be disciplined about budgeting The other thing that can help, and this is something I do personally, I put everything on my credit card. So at the end of the year, you get that nice summary.

That tells you where you're spending money. I like to look at that. And I'll I'll analyze it and say, wow, I just spent a lot going out to eat. Maybe that's the area that I can cut back in the future. So, that's just an easy way to kinda get a gauge for what you're spending money on.

Great. That's good.

Here's a question that's good. I think, you know, from retirement, income.

But how is it best to access accounts for for retirement income order of accounts even example of IRA, Roth, 401k, and monthly allotments. So, you know, I guess just a general maybe, you know, that's just you know, how how should you access your money, right, in retirement? What's what's a what are some good thoughts there? Again, everybody's situation's gonna be a little bit different, but, you know, what are some good takeaways and thoughts there?

If you'd like, I mean, I can start and Chelsea can can chime in.

It depends. It depends. It depends. And it depends on what your personal situation is. It depends on if you have assets in taxable accounts that are already kicking off income.

If you can delay taking from your taxable retirement retirement accounts that would be income would be taxable, excuse me. From them, if you can delay that as much as possible, that's usually a good idea. You just wanna look at your tax bracket. You wanna work with your CPA also.

We can run those numbers as well and work with your CPA to see where where, your tax bracket is hitting because many individuals have many different investments that kick off different kinds of income. So we wanna be sensitive to that before taking other. Maybe you've gotten an inheritance, so that again could delay. Again, and Chelsea will confirm this, but for your required minimum distributions with IRAs, you do have to start taking them at., I believe it's seventy-three. Now I think it's been pushed. Right, Chelsea?

After 1960, it's age seventy-five.

Oh, is it gone up even more? Okay. See? That's why you have a team.

Your birthday.

Got it. Okay. So there you go. So that's where it is. And, so again, it just depends. We wanna watch that tax bracket.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's it's good in general where you, and you touched on it, Sharon, which is, you know, basically, if you're already have taxable money and you have an invest you have an account that's currently being taxed, you know, access that and delay those withdrawals from an IRA or another, retirement account that, like you said, when you take the money out, it's all taxable. So, you know, I think, you know, you delay that.

Now there are times when, you also touched on the fact that it's gonna be different, for for different people. But maybe there are times when you wanna kinda take a little bit out of both, and that's from a tax bracket standpoint, that makes sense and sort of understanding kinda where you fall. So I think that that's a it's a good question because a lot of people are asking and wondering about it. When they re- when they near retirement, but, those are some initial thoughts.

I guess, you know, we touched, there was something on the, in the chat as well about kind of about divorce. And I think, you know, you you you touched on a little bit in the comments, but, somebody asked about how might divorce uh affect my retirement savings if if my husband doesn't have the same amount, in accounts, I guess I'm not a hundred percent sure as far as what what's being asked at the end there, but I think just a question on, kind of divorce and, and, you know, we do have somebody on our team that is a certified divorce financial analyst. So that's, you know, that that's something that we could also kinda take away with us and and provide a good a good follow-up. But I I don't know if there's any thoughts there on on divorce or or just kind of navigating some of that. I think we we hit on a little bit in some of the comments.

But, so it a lot of that depends on the state that you're in. There's two different types of states and how they handle divorces.

So there's different requirements, don't wanna get too technical here because it kinda gets in the weeds. But I do recommend before you make any decisions to to talk to a professional because there's certain assets, assets that you had prior to marriage, inheritances that you haven't commingled, there's certain assets that if you treat them a certain way, they are excluded from, at least in Florida.

Again, that that changes if they are in states like California and Arizona.

So it's so important before you do anything to to talk to these professionals.

I would echo what Chelsea's saying. You need to speak with a divorce attorney, actually. And they are the ones who are the experts in the field. And then as Dana was saying, we do have a a certified divorce planner who then we could bring in as well to help you know, vet through some of the the situation. But absolutely don't do that one alone. Do not.

Yeah. And I think the good concern about maybe family members that would be dealing with that, Sharon touched on it before as well, with the use of a trust. You know, I think you can you know, try to protect the assets that way. If that is a concern, passing assets on, and then maybe there's some exposure there to to, you know, a divorce situation.

You know, there's there's options there where you could pass assets on using a trust, and then that can that can protect assets a bit.

So, well, I think just being conscious of time, and thank you for everybody staying on with these questions. And again, if we didn't answer your question, we'll we'll be sure to do that. But, but that's that's where we'll, we'll conclude today. And and thanks again, Sharon and Chelsea.

You know, I wanna thank everyone as well for taking the time out of their day to be here with us. And we greatly appreciate it. And if you wouldn't mind, take a few seconds to, fill out a survey that we have linked in the chat section so that we can have some feedback on this webinar, that would be that'd be great.

Also, if you're interested in learning more about Manning & Napier and and how we can help please use the QR code on the screen to schedule a call. And again, as as Chelsea mentioned, there's additional content there that you could take advantage of and utilize we're here to help. 

We have decades of experience addressing the full range of planning situations you might be facing, whether it's just to talk through you know, a a couple of specific planning questions and and topics that are on your mind or to begin a a real comprehensive plan, getting more information and beginning to put strategies in place really are the essential steps to to achieve your personal financial goals. So, so that's that's a good place to to start certainly. 

So on behalf of my colleagues, Chelsea, and Sharon, thank you very much, and and from, Manning & Napier. Thank you again, and and have a great day.