george grombacher 0:02
Bala to get us started give me two truths and a lie please.

Paula Harris 0:06
I would be delighted to so they are as following. I have been skydiving. I have walked on fire. And I have fished amongst grizzly bears and remotes, parts of Alaska.

george grombacher 0:22
She’s been skydiving, she’s walked on fire. She’s fished amongst grizzly bears in remote parts of Alaska. You said, Paula,

Paula Harris 0:31
that’s exactly where I said.

george grombacher 0:36
I believe that you’ve walked on fire. I don’t think he’d been skydiving.

Paula Harris 0:42
You actually guessed it. I have not said that. Well done.

george grombacher 0:47
Thank you. Thank you. Tell me about the fishing with grizzly bears.

Paula Harris 0:51
So I have been fly fishing in remote Alaska six, five times now. It is one of the most exciting things I could say I’ve ever done to be in nature like that. And to be close to some of nature’s biggest, most powerful animals is really a thrill. It’s why I feel calm about it is it’s during salmon season, and all they want is salmon. And there are so many salmon in that river, that they don’t need to come after me to find salmon. So that gives me some comfort. But there was one time where there was a grizzly bear walking, I was on the beach and he was walking on a path behind me. Now that was a little freaky. I did get a little nervous. And then another time I had to use the outdoor restroom. And my fishing guidance said just go up that trail and sing Happy Birthday the whole time. You’re up there. And I was like, Okay, how her birthday to me that that was a little freaky. So it’s it’s quite an experience though. Yeah.

george grombacher 1:59
I how how close to these semi truck of animals? Are you?

Paula Harris 2:06
Usually a good distance? A good distance being like maybe 200 300 400 yards? Okay. I have not had one pop up right next to me. I know people who have that would be a little bit more uncomfortable. But that would be very uncomfortable.

george grombacher 2:25
Yeah, for sure. Terrified. Yeah. Is a good thing that there’s plenty to eat. But nevertheless, nevertheless. Well, very cool. Yeah. And fly fishing. Fly Fishing is one of those things for me that looks just so idyllic. Yeah. But I’ve never done it. And I don’t know that I’m going to do the work to learn how, how did you learn how

Paula Harris 2:49
I learned how by just doing it. So and going out with the guide is everything the guides teach you. I have not gone out too many times unguided. And that has how I’ve learned and I, you know, practicing is a big deal. I don’t practice enough. So if you go on a trip once or twice a year, you probably need to do a little more than that. But to be nature, even if I am not having the success, I would like I’m having a great day. And if you also go to a place where there’s a lot of fish successes, pretty eminent. So that makes it much more rewarding to

george grombacher 3:24
I bet I’m sure that it just regardless of whether or not you catch anything just been in what I imagined to be just unbelievably beautiful place and rivers are something very special about that. And then everything else

Paula Harris 3:38
and the other beauty cell phones don’t usually work they’re even better. So you are focused. Yeah, that’s, that’s that’s partly why we do these trips.

george grombacher 3:47
Yeah, makes sense. Yeah. Stay away from the bears don’t get eaten by a bear. The rest is all gravy from they’re all

Paula Harris 3:55
yesterday. I love

george grombacher 3:56
it. Well, what what is what is top of mind for you right now?

Paula Harris 4:00
Well, you know, this is going to segue really nicely. I want to talk about curveball life planning. So this is something that we we practice in our business. So if that grizzly bear were to come along, that would be a curveball, it would be something that you weren’t necessarily expecting. And are you prepared in life if that curveball hits, and we we’ve discussed this before, you and I George that we work a lot with widows, the average age of widowhood is 59. Which usually startles everybody even startles financial planners, which surprises me because you probably have met some folks of varying ages. But that curveball comes usually when you’re least expecting it. So how do you get yourself prepared all the time without necessarily having the impetus of like there’s a diagnosis that you know there’s a problem. And even then, people still don’t get prepared. aired, which is really hard. So my mission is to get people to think about getting their affairs in order before something happens. And I can give you so many stories, I mean stories that have happened in the last six weeks, like my hairdresser. 58 years old, I was supposed to get my hair cut on December 29. And there’s a sign in the door that says family emergency, she went to the hospital on December 26, she ended up with metastasized cancer and several organs in our body. And sadly, she died on January 30. Like, didn’t, she didn’t expect that I’ve seen this woman every four weeks for like two, more than two decades, almost three decades. You know, someone you know very well, and suddenly, they’re just gone. And her family is left figuring out what to do next. Because you know, the other piece of this is there’s a lot of made December marriages. And what that is, is somebody is 10 years of age difference from somebody else. And the you know, women tend to live longer than men, men will die earlier. But if you’ve in a situation where you’ve got a May, December marriage, so you’re 60 and your husband 75. You know, that changes things, are you are you really focusing on being prepared for what that means to in this case, it was it was the opposite. He, he’s older, she’s younger, and she passes away first, but statistically, the male is going to pass away first. So just the complications of life can be really tricky, especially a time when you’re grieving, to have to sort things things out really hard, really hard. And I can go on and on. So you tell me what you want to hear next.

george grombacher 6:52
These are all realities of just being being human beings is that we get sick, we die. These things happen at inopportune times, not that there’s ever an opportune time to get sick or to die. And living longer than you expect is, is bad also, just like die before the before you think you’re going to. So you would think that because we know that intellectually, Paula, that we would be open to preparing and having these kinds of conversations, but that’s not how it works.

Paula Harris 7:27
No, we’re and we’re human. Nobody wants to talk about death. But it is a certainty. I serve on a board for a visiting nurse and hospice organization. And we were having this discussion at a function the other night, is it is certain, I mean, I can tell you with 100% certainty, we you will die, I will die. But as a culture, we can’t accept that. So we put these blinders on. And we are we are too busy to deal with it. We’re too distracted to deal with it. It’s too uncomfortable to deal with it. But it’s, you know, that in taxes are the two realities that you can’t get out of, I mean, we’re all it’s all going to happen to us. And from the day we were born, we, you know, we know we’re going to die. But yet, culturally, we can’t deal with it. And so I’m trying to help people get more comfortable about it. So I know, in our client meeting, so we’ve had to in the last two days, you know, I asked that question. So you know, your husband is 14 years older than you 15 years older than you? What’s the plan? When was the last time you looked at your estate documents? You know, you you have beneficiaries name, but you don’t have contingent beneficiaries named, you know, what has changed? What will happen to your pets? What happens if something happens to both of you at the same time, you know, that so that there’s a lot of headaches in that and, and my inlaws died within a week of each other a little more than a year ago. And, you know, they were pretty buttoned up. But, you know, two things didn’t end up in the trust. And, you know, probate took over a year, that not something that you really want to spend your money on or your time, and it is a frustrating process. It’s an expensive process. And because people you know, they think something’s going to happen, you know, we’re going to sell that place before we, you know, before we die, so we’re not going to put it in the trust. We’re going to vote. We just forgot about this one piece. And that didn’t end up in there. And then it’s opens up a Pandora’s box for those who are left behind. And not necessarily fun.

george grombacher 9:36
No, no, no, probably probably not fun. No,

Paula Harris 9:40
because they box. Yeah. And the checks aren’t fun, either.

george grombacher 9:45
Right, by the way, and even if you’re prepared, there’s still stuff that that’s that’s that’s that’s going to come along. Now. That’s certainly not a reason to not prepare. Right. That being said, I wrote down a tree Back to run on. And this is this is how we do things. I’m ready. Because if if you do something, you do it consistently you get your hair cut or your hair done every four weeks. That’s just what you do. If you get in the habit of communicating with loved ones, your partner, then that’s what you do. But if you’re not in the habit of doing it, then that’s not what you do. So is there an effective intervention that you have found? Is it just a kind of conversation? Is there a new software? Is there something that has helped catalyze this kind of conversation? You

Paula Harris 10:42
know, I would I think for me, there’s an I don’t find that there’s a software, it’s more of a personalized touch. So when you know that someone has had a loss, you sort of opened the door, or the window to have the conversation. Someone recently had lost a really good friend and they had lost their mother. So you know, you’ve just been through this experience. You know, how do you want things to happen for your loved ones when it becomes your time, so people are often much more receptive, when there’s something that’s happened to them close or something in the public eye. You know, when Prince died without an estate plan, I think Aretha Franklin died without an estate plan, capitalizing on those moments to get people to go, wow, they were successful. They were wealthy, and they didn’t do it. We just did a retirement webinar. And one of the women stayed later, she’s an attorney. Her name’s on the law firm. It’s a good size regional firm. And she said that I have three of us really good friends, we’re all attorneys. And one of one of the friends passed away without an estate plan, and she was an attorney. And so we tried desperately to honor her wishes. But the probate probate courts had to step in, and all of her wishes couldn’t get honored. So they are to the to living friends are now motivated to make sure they do the right thing by their loved ones and their selves. So I think there’s it’s capitalizing on those moments and sharing the stories. When you, you know, we worked with a woman years ago, and her husband was diagnosed, and in 40 days, he died. And they had estate planning documents that they didn’t sign. And he had been a very speculative investor and everything had been sort of crashing down. And she lost everything. We’re talking four properties, including a ranch, waterfront property, all of it, because everything crashed at one time, and they never signed any estate planning documents. So when people hear those stories, they usually go, oh, I don’t want that to happen to me. And then they’re a little bit more motivated.

george grombacher 12:46
Yeah, you don’t want to let a disaster go to waste kind of a thing, which is a terrible phrase, and morbid and all of those things. And it’s an opportunity to get off the dime or whatever the term is to actually start kind of having these conversations. Because there’s a couple of examples right there that you’ve just shared, that your in laws did planning. But there were still little things here. And there. Those folks actually went through the estate planning process, but that didn’t get assigned, or you trust and you don’t put anything inside of it. That

Paula Harris 13:22
happens a lot. I’m sure you’ve seen that, too. It’s like the trust is empty. You didn’t retitle anything.

george grombacher 13:29
It’s like what does that even mean? That that’s the reality is that you create a tool, but then you don’t put the things inside of the tool to distribute them. So, so common? Do people need to become experts? Do I need to become a personal financial expert to be able to get my ducks in a row? If let’s just use an example, let’s say that, that the wife is on top of everything she managed the household finances, the husband doesn’t, he doesn’t need to know everything, but he needs to know something.

Paula Harris 14:03
Yeah. No, you do not need to be an expert. You need to be willing to accept help. You need to know where to go for help. And then you need to implement. So having those trusted advisors in your life are so important. And I just mentioned I met with a woman recently, only child in her 80s No living relatives, and paralyzed with fear on making decisions and that everyone is out together about you know, if I go to the bank that want me to do this, the estate attorney is going to want that they’re going to charge me for this fee. And this woman has no one to turn to and her fear is holding her back from able to make decisions. And that is a tough situation. If she just allowed someone to help her. It will be you know, it will make things so much smoother and she’ll be able to enjoy her life day to day now. Rather than live that absolute paralyzing fear. And when she goes, there’s gonna be a really big mess left behind, for whoever.

george grombacher 15:12
So I think we can take this all the way back to the beginning. And like in working with great professionals, like going to Alaska and having a guide, because the guide is going to help you not get eaten by a bear. And the advisor is going to help you not make catastrophic decisions or not decisions. A

Paula Harris 15:36
beautiful analogy. That’s, you know, one of the things Richard says is, you know, we help people see their blind spots, as advisors. And I think that’s exactly it. We’ve seen more pathways than other people have seen. And we can say, a pitfall coming, you know, just like you said, the guide, the guide knows where the bears usually are. They know their patterns, they know how things work. And if someone can be ahead of you in mind, you were with guides that don’t have guns. So, you know, they’re doing this because they’ve had repetition. They’ve had insight, they have instinct, they know how behavior has happened. And that’s what we do as guides for our clients is we help prepare them. So that if that grizzly bear shows up, you know, it’s going to be okay, because we’ve got a plan in place. That’s right.

george grombacher 16:27
And it’s taking really, really complicated, emotionally charged scary stuff. And making it really easy to understand that God could have told you, Hey, Paula, on your way to the bathroom, sing your favorite song. But he knows that it’s better to say just sing Happy Birthday, because number one, we all know that. And then instead of thinking about what song am I supposed to be singing, and what were the lyrics, again, just because I’ve been here a million times, I know what works, let’s keep it simple, this will get the job done.

Paula Harris 16:59
It’s true. And the way it is a female guide, the way she approached it, she was calm. She was like this exciting, we’re prepared for this type of situation, here’s your little bag, here’s your shovel, here, it’s you got it, you’re gonna get it done. And when we project confidence, and not being afraid for our clients, they’re going to react in a much calmer way, and probably more likely to get things done. And then I always ask this, Do I have your permission to follow up with you to nudge you? And I would say, 98% of the time people say, Yes, please, I would appreciate that.

george grombacher 17:37
And what happens when you follow up? What sometimes people do it, okay?

Paula Harris 17:42
Sometimes it’s, you know, I really appreciate that. And, you know, we, I have a call with my daughter’s again, this Sunday night, and we’re going to deal with it this week. And so it eventually gets done some people that a shorter period of time, some people it’s a little bit longer, and then people feel great, they really, you know, like, they feel like the weight of the world is lifted off them, when they take the action. And that’s, that’s so rewarding as an advisor to see that.

george grombacher 18:09
So sort of following up on the, whether or not somebody needs to become an expert at this, like, it’s not necessary at all. And what I’m saying that is, this, the person you were just talking about, I’m gonna have a conversation with my daughter’s client does not need to all of a sudden teach their daughter, everything about the financial plan, and everything about everything, they just need to know what who to turn to where everything is.

Paula Harris 18:39
Exactly. So we did have a 93 year old client passed away last June, and the son called because there was a folder that said, this is the investment advisor. And, you know, we had tried multiple times to meet with, you know, the kids, and we never were able to but the six children all said, Dad talked about you all the time, we had trust in you, we have trust in you. And he had everything buttoned up. And we were able to distribute those assets. You know, within 30 days, you know, the custodian getting a real paperwork, and it was done. It was easy. So, having having that information clearly laid out for people, then makes it so easy, because he wasn’t expecting to die, either. He got sick, didn’t recover quickly. And you know, six weeks later, even though he was older was not something you would expect. So I think that again, you don’t have to be the expert. Just leave that leave a clear trail to get to the experts and the experts will help take over at a time when you know it’s a lot going on for someone who’s lost someone.

george grombacher 19:42
Yeah. Yeah, certainly. So 59 is the average age that somebody becomes a widow. That means that there’s a lot of people who that happens before that too. Yeah, so don’t wait till you’re 59 Do it now.

Paula Harris 19:58
Now there’s a woman News in financial services, and we follow each other on x. And she lost her husband, she’s 37 years old, died a few months ago. You know, and she’s been so vocal in a good way, expressing what her journey has been like. And it’s really, I think it’s really going to help people because people are shocked when a 30 something passes away. And they really don’t think you know, whatever happened to them. But here’s someone that’s very well known. And it did happen. And people are, you know, pouring a lot of support for her. But she’s also then sharing a lot that’s going to help other people.

george grombacher 20:36
Yeah. Yeah. I always appreciate when people are willing to open themselves up and to share during during a terrible time like that.

Paula Harris 20:50
Yeah, because when we’re vulnerable, and we share that vulnerability, people are able to connect in such deep ways and learn.

george grombacher 20:58
Yeah, I appreciate that. Well, Paula, we’re ready for that difference making tip? What do you have for us.

Paula Harris 21:06
So not having a plan is a plan. So when you don’t take that action, you’ve just set a plan in motion, that may not be what you wanted to happen, and may leave a potential mess for other people, and may not work out so well, for you in the long run either.

george grombacher 21:28
way, I think that that is great stuff that definitely gets Come on. You know, I don’t think anybody’s going to, you know, I hope that nobody dies before they’re supposed to, I hope that nobody gets sick and needs care, or can’t work and anything like that. But the reality is we’ve been talking about is that it does happen all the time. And the consequences to those who are still living or who are dependent on you are so great, that that’s why we do planning. That’s why That’s why we are having this conversation, Paula. So thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? And how can they engage with you?

Paula Harris 22:03
Absolutely. Our website is w h cornerstone.com. And we’ve got lots of free guides, and takeaways for helping people plan for these types of situations. Because again, you don’t have to be the expert. You just need some tools. And we’re here to help. Excellent.

george grombacher 22:23
Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did, shall follow your appreciation. Share today, show the friend also appreciate good ideas, go to W H cornerstone.com. Check out all the great resources and get in touch with Paula to make sure that you put yourself and your loved ones in position to be successful, regardless of the curveballs that life throws at you. Just in case you do get eaten by that bear. Everything will be taken care of. Thanks. Good follow.

Paula Harris 22:52
Thank you, George. I appreciate it.

george grombacher 22:54
Finally, very much in line with the way we’ve been talking about today, a friendly reminder, there’s never going to be anybody more interested in your financial success than you are. So act accordingly.