Carolyn McClanahan: Why Advisors Must Discuss Health With Clients

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Speaker B: What happens when two of the things clients care about most, their money and their health collide? Hi everyone, I'm, uh, business coach Steve Sandusky for Barron's Advisor the WayForward podcast I wanted to have this conversation Today with Carolyn McClanahan because health the most important yet still under discussed parts of financial advice. Now, it's true advisors have always planned for health care costs, but that's not the same as planning for health. It's not the same as helping clients think through how long they may stay healthy, where they want to age, who will make decisions if they can't, what happens if one spouse gets sick, how cognitive decline changes the family dynamic, or how a serious diagnosis can rewrite a financial plan overnight. And this seems even more relevant now because clients are living longer and healthcare costs remain a huge unknown other than we know that they keep rising and we just have to jump on social media and we can see that there's more and more people talking about healthspan and longevity and wellness and optimization. And of course, AI is beginning to reshape both medicine and financial planning. And at the same time, many of the most important client conversations still require changes, judgment and empathy and trust and the willingness to talk about hard things before there's a crisis. And I think that's why Carolyn is such an important voice for advisors. She's both a physician and a financial planner, and she understands this intersection in a way very few other people do. With that, here's my conversation with Carolyn McClanahan. Uh, one of the things that's very fascinating about you is that you're pretty unique here in that you started your career as a medical doctor and then at some point you switched to becoming a financial advisor. And I think to this day you still do some medical work, some volunteer clinic work. I'd love to hear how you think about what has changed over time. So you've been a financial advisor for many years now. You've always been interested in the connection between health and financial advising. So if you go back to maybe around 2004, I think is when you got started as an advisor to. Here we are in 2026. How has or has the conversation with advisors about health has that changed?

Speaker C: Oh, dramatically. You know, when I first started, nobody really talked about health. And I saw these intersections. It wasn't because I was particularly smart, but just coming, uh, from two professions. I saw how much health impacted personal finance and how much personal finance impacted health. And you know, I did my first talk in 2006 on how to improve your insurability. And that was back before the days of the Affordable Care act and people had trouble getting health insurance. And you know, that was a game changer. That sort of put me on the map. And when the ACA passed, I started talking about all the issues and concerns and the good things about the aca. The sad thing is, is that the health system has continued to, to uh, me disintegrate. And I think we're basically on the verge of collapse. I hate sounding like a doomsday, but it's pretty significant right now what's going on. And advisors have no choice other than, than to talk about health. And so when I started, say 2007, 8, 9, and I was more on the map, speaking at multiple conferences, it was something that they were very afraid to tip their toes into. It got a little better starting in 2010 after the Affordable Care act passed and they realized, gosh, I better know something about health and health insurance. And especially as costs started to rise, not only for regular health insurance, but for long term care costs, it's become a very important conversation. And now there are a lot of people out there that are trying to bridge that gap and help advisors in the realm of health and finance.

Speaker B: And so I think most financial advisors that hold themselves out as comprehensive financial planners are certainly including the healthcare costs as part of their calculations. They've been doing that for a long time. But now we have. I would say maybe it's a cultural moment here. We've got sort of the Maha movement, we've got Andrew Huberman, we've got Brian Johnson on longevity. So, so there's a lot of media around health optimization. And I think there's a big difference between health optimization and healthcare and just health in general. How do you Think about the intersection of all of that. What role does a financial advisor play or should they play as it relates to health and sort of this, I would say, cultural moment that we're in right now related to it?

Speaker C: Well, uh, one of the beautiful things that I think that has happened is we have quit talking so much about lifespan and now we're talking more about health. Health span and advisors are on board with that. And for those who don't know what that means, it's like health span is how long you can live a good healthy life. Lifespan is how long your body keeps going. And the ideal thing is to have a very tiny gap between your health span and your lifespan. I call it the live long and die quickly plan. And so there is a lot of work out there that has been done on how to improve your health span. I think many people, especially higher net worth people who are most of the advisors, clients, are on that bandwagon of eating the healthier diet, getting their weight under control, exercising. And so I think advisors need to be taking that into account if they're not already about how they are going to help clients age successfully, both from a physical standpoint and a cognitive standpoint. Because one of the things that uh, all this change is addressing, it's addressing bodily health and some cognitive health. But we're seeing greatly increased rates of cognitive decline and dementia not because there's increased incidence, but because people are living longer. Older people are living long, wealthier people are living longer. So that's something that advisors need to learn how to address.

Speaker B: Do you see in some situations, Take Brian Johnson as an example. He recently announced that he's got some disease, that it's eating his stomach away or something like that. So here's a guy who's spending millions of dollars to try and live forever essentially or live to 150 or whatever his number is. And is there a risk that we get too anxious about our health if we try and spend all this time and money optimizing everything that it actually is going to have the opposite effect on us. So is there some middle point, middle path here where yes, we need to take care of our health, but if we go too far to try and optimize, we may have the opposite effect.

Speaker C: It makes me laugh because people forget the body is a complex adaptive system. We don't know what we don't know hoops going to happen. You can do all the right things and still get hit by it car. That is why I focus on getting people to live fully now and make sure instead of just like saving for this uncertain future and foregoing any good things in life now, uh, not just from taking care of your health, but enjoying your relationships, doing all the things on your bucket list, do them now. Stoics have a great outlook on how to think about life and death. And I think about dying every day. You know, you're going to die, I think about, my husband's going to die at some point, my friends are going to die. And you don't do this in a morose fashion. You do it from a standpoint of this is a fact, and you embrace now. So for all those people that are trying to extend life and they're. They're doing, you know, especially if they're not enjoying doing the things they're doing to extend life, you know, if you're spending six hours a day on a bike to try to get exercise, gosh, how much else are you giving up for that? So just like Ben Franklin says, everything needs to be in moderation and making sure that you're doing what you can to statistically improve your life, but don't count on it. So don't forgo all those other good things that make life what it is and make it more enjoyable.

Speaker B: Yeah, and I appreciate you sharing that. It reminded me of a conversation I had with an owner of a gym some years ago, and it was just after Thanksgiving, and we were just chit chatting about Thanksgiving. And this was a guy who, he was sort of an early Brian Johnson. Not that he was popping pills all the time, but he was so dialed in on his diet, and he just would not eat anything that didn't seem to be good for his body. And so I asked him, I said, did you sneak a piece of pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving? And he had a little smile on his face. And he said, well, I thought about it, but nope, I passed on the pumpkin pie. And I'm thinking to myself, oh, my goodness. To your point, it's like, if you're so perfect, but it ends up making you miserable, what's the point of that?

Speaker C: Yeah, one of the things that I like to do is when I'm making a decision, this is another stoic philosophy thing, is like, what's the trade off of this? Is it going to improve my life now or improve my life later? And the pumpkin pie would improve my life now. Right. And, and the thing is though, it's in again having a balance. If I ate pumpkin pie every day, and that was my main diet, then that's not a good decision. And so just making sure you weigh the pros and cons of your choices and that you're happy. If you're having a contented life day to day, living whatever life it is that you're living, then you're doing the right thing for yourself.

Speaker B: Yeah. And you mentioned here just a minute ago that you sort of followed this philosophy of live as if you're going to die tomorrow. Not in a morose way, but just like, hey, I'm not guaranteed tomorrow. I'd love to hear like an example. What is something that you did under that philosophy knowing. Well, I actually I could have done this like 10 years from now, but I'm actually going to do it today because I don't know where I'm going to do it six months from now. We're going to big vacation or whatever. What's something that you did as a

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Speaker B: Nat. Uh, philosophy.

Speaker C: Oh, goodness. So my husband and I just took a trip to Greece for two weeks and I've never been to Greece. And uh, we did this bike and boat tour. You live on a boat and, and you bike the Ionian Islands during the day and they take you island to island. Well, I know Greek food is good, but once you get to Greece, you don't know how good it is to there. I ate so much. I would never eat like that at home. And it's like when I got home, it's like I had two pair of pants that fit. And so, you know, but I got that I live a very healthy lifestyle at home and I eat a very healthy diet at home. And you know, so I've already knocked a chunk of that weight off, but it was worth every minute. We had the chef on the boat making all this great food. And then when we were in Athens, I had a friend that actually her family's from Greece and she happened to be there, she took us out and ordered all these fabulous dishes that I would had no idea to order and we just gorged so I think that's a pretty good example.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that one.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: As you work with clients and you're putting retirement projections together, where does the healthcare fit or the healthcare costs? How do you think about those costs? How do you model those costs? What assumptions do you make what as you're talking to the client and say, hey, we're going to make this assumption, but there's a possibility that this and that and the other thing could also happen too. So here's how we're planning for that too. So how do you think about the number that you put in there for health care going forward?

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that I do not like is both Fidelity and the Employee Benefit Research Institute put out a number every year about how much you need to have saved at age 65 for your health care costs. It's like nobody sets aside a lump sum of money for the health care costs. And you know, I like the EB report a little bit better because they do take health into account and they take drug use into account. But it's a number that scares everybody. And I think the better way to do it is you first have to determine what is that client's healthcare mindset. You have some people who go to the doctor all the time, no matter what. You know, they go to chiropractors, get their massage therapy, psychotherapy, psychologists spend a lot of money on healthcare and then you have people who are the whole opposite end that never go. And they only want to go if they absolutely know they have to and it's going to be of good use to them. And so the best way to determine what type of client you have is first ask what are your attitudes about healthcare? And they'll tell you, I want to be able to go to any doctor I want to go to. If I get diagnosed with something serious, I want to be able to go to out of network doctors and not have to worry about it. And we also look at client spending. We use E money. I'm not putting in a plug for them that just the software we happen to use, but we use their portal to track all of our clients spending and that allows us to see over time how they spend on health care. I have one client couple, they're actually in very great health. They take good care of themselves. They spend 20,000, 30,000 a year on out of pocket cost health care, doing things like massage therapy and stuff to optimize their health. And it's important to them. And so we put that sort of health care spending as a cash flow item. So we put that as every year. And so somebody has lower health care costs. We put that as a cash flow item every year. Then we incorporate what are their health insurance costs. So whether that's employer based insurance or whether they're getting it through the aca, what their premiums are going to be starting at age 65 on Medicare, including if they're subject to IRMAA, so that's the health care bucket. Then we account for long term care costs of whether is somebody healthy, uh, if they're super healthy, that puts them at higher risk of dementia. I know that's counterintuitive, but if they're super healthy, they're going to live longer so they're going to have a higher risk of dementia. So we'll use a five year time frame for long term care because that's about the average need for somebody with dementia. For people who are an average to poor health, then we use a two year time frame because the overall long term care usage is about two to three years. So somebody's bringing down that average. So we make sure that people have enough money at the end to account for those long term care costs. So we do it as a cash flow model.

Speaker B: So you mentioned at the start, um, of our conversation about your concerns about the whole healthcare system. So tell me a little bit more about that and does that factor into your cost projections that you put in the financial plans?

Speaker C: Part of the challenge with financial planning is you can't predict the future. And one of my initial training I, so I trained in immunology and virology and I don't know if you remember, I was like my 15 minutes claim to fame was I predicted the coronavirus pandemic back in 2013. And you know, so, so all my old tweets came out, hey, we're going to have a coronavirus pandemic one day. Right. But I had no idea when. Right, right. And so the health care system, it is very, very broken in so many ways. The uh, providers are unhappy. That's like the nurses, the doctors, everybody, everybody wants to make their money. Nobody wants to give anything up. Patients want the best care and none of it's really compatible. And we have a very broken payment system. And so people talk about, well, what health care rate of inflation should you use? And some uh, people use 6%, 7%. The problem with that is right now health care costs in this country are about 19% of GDP. And if health care continues to inflate past regular inflation, so let's say Regular inflation average is 3%. Well, health care will take over 50% of GDP within 25 years, and that's not sustainable. So something's going to have to change. Either we'll have mass political upheaval where we finally get common sense health reform. Other countries are doing it right, we can do it right. So that's why I don't like using those crazy rates of inflation for health care separate, because it has to eventually revert back to the mean. Uh, the other thing that I caution people of is because we cannot predict the future. That's why financial planning should be an ongoing process where we're revisiting the financial plan every year and taking a new look at the client's healthcare costs, the current healthcare situation, helping them plan based on what we know today.

Speaker B: You mentioned common sense health reform. So what to you does common sense health reform, what does that look like?

Speaker C: Uh, oh, goodness. You know, the problem is the United States is very schizophrenic. We have 50% of the population is collectivist. That means that group feels that people should have a safety net and that everybody should at least have basic health care. Then you have 50% of the population who are individualists, who feel like everybody should be out for their own and look out for themselves. And there's no other country that's really this divided out there, any developed country that's this divided out there on this issue. Every country out there, industrialized nation has universal health care of some sort. We pay the most of any country in the world for our health care and we have horrible outcomes. And so the ideal common sense reform, and the big difference between our country and other countries is we do not value primary care. Other countries has very strong primary care and preventive care systems that do a good job taking care of basic hypertension, diabetes, so that people have less heart disease, less diabetes, they live longer. We don't have a health care system. We have a sick care system. We don't value preventive care. We don't value keeping people healthy. We end up spending a ton of money on people on the back end after they're sick. So common sense health reform. And I wrote a health policy proposal back in 2012 that a lot of politicians were interested in and it's come back up. And there are other groups that have run with that ball on providing primary care for all as a public service or as a low cost, not in the insurance system feature. Because if you think about it, primary care is not insurable, right? Insurance is meant to cover large Losses, Rare losses. Primary care is neither large nor rare. And because we cover it by an insurance system, we end up spending about 25 to 30% more than it needs to cost because we're having that middleman of the insurance company deliver it. So any common sense health reform would start with totally providing primary care as a base to everybody. And you could have a public and private system coexisting. Australia does that, New Zealand does that, and they have great health. In fact, in Greece, I spent a lot of time with a, uh, New Zealand doctor on my boat, and she taught me a lot of things about their healthcare system. It was very, very interesting. And so that would be a start. And then, you know, we would revamp the payment system so that we're paying for how care is delivered instead of how much care is delivered.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned, uh, the primary care physician. I had a conversation a few years ago with a guy who founded a concierge medicine company. And I asked him, I said, what's like, the most important thing a person can do for their health? And he said, the single most important, important thing you can do is have a wonderful lifelong relationship with a primary care physician and see them regularly.

Speaker C: Right, right.

Speaker B: See that person regularly.

Speaker C: And what happened in primary care, which is so sad, when I, from when I trained in the 90s, you know, primary care doctors used to be the quarterbacks that would help the patient navigate all the specialists. They would make sure that the specialists understood the values and goals of the patient. And that's all gone away. When once hospitalists came in and primary care doctors basically were pulled out of the hospital, that's when things started to fall apart from the primary care realm. The other area where our country just has it backwards is, you know, specialists should be taking care of the hard things. They shouldn't be taking care of bread and butter. Things like ents shouldn't be taking care of basic sinusitis, but they do, because that's bread and butter fee for service for them. So there are a lot of things that special specialists are doing that primary care doctors should be doing that specialists should be paid to support primary care doctors. And so that when primary care doctors see something that isn't common, critical, or normal, that the specialists pop in to help. And right now it's just a free for all.

Speaker B: We have some very large RIA firms that are working with very wealthy people, and a lot of these firms have a huge variety of services that they offer, one of which is like, connections to concierge medicine. And if one of their clients gets a diagnosis that's horrible, then they call their financial advisor and the financial advisor springs into action and they work with people who can find out who are the best specialists in the world that can deal with this and they help coordinate all that. So I know there's different models out there, but how should an advisor think about the level of service that they're going to offer as it relates to the health side? Now obviously they're financial advisors, they're not healthcare specialists, but they want to be of service. And again, you're in that position because you can really move into both of those worlds. How should a normal regular, uh, financial advisor think about where does my role as a financial advisor end as it relates to the health piece?

Speaker C: Well, to me, financial advisors have different tiers of service. Just like any other field, if your market is middle market, it's going to be very hard for you to deliver that kind of service to help connect people with. And those people wouldn't be able to pay for those services that get you to the best specialists in the world. You know, most people's health insurance isn't going to cover that. So those specialized services that find the best doctors, whether it's in the country or in the world, and I know companies that have talked about this, it's like the challenge you run into is it's not going to be paid for by your insurance. So you got to have a pretty wealthy person to pay for all that care and to pay for that coordination. So to me, the advisors for the middle market, the mass affluent, uh, and even the millionaire next door type, they should have in their Rolodex doctors they can call to connect people with. Like I had a client call who needed this physical for this special thing and their doctor couldn't get them in in any timely fashion and wanted to do all this other crazy stuff. Well, I knew a direct primary care doctor that was happy to take her fairly quickly and charge a reasonable rate cash pay. So knowing the doctors in your area, knowing the resources for your clients when they need specialized service to be able to help with that. When our clients get diagnosed with a, uh, serious illness, we do make sure that they're getting good coordinated care and that they're doing things like getting early palliative care as far as if it's like a life threatening illness. And so we just basically educate them on what they need to do and connect them with the appropriate type of doctors that can provide that type of care.

Speaker B: You mentioned that when you have A client that calls and there's a bad diagnosis there. What are some of the financial implications that you, uh, think about? Maybe the kinds of questions that you might start asking, asking in a situation like that?

Speaker C: I actually do a whole talk on financial planning. At the end of life, when you have a serious illness, it might not even be a end of life illness. It just may be a serious illness that people can recover from. So I have a whole checklist of what do you need to think through from a cash flow perspective, tax planning perspective, estate, uh, planning, insurance planning. And usually when somebody calls and they're calling you as a financial advisor to tell you they have a serious illness, they have something on their mind. And there's three things that clients generally worry about when they're diagnosed with a serious illness that are financial, not the medical side. And that's one, do I have the resources to take care of this? Financial resources take care of this? Two, if that person is the financial caretaker, is my spouse or whoever is my surrogate, are they going to be able to actually handle everything if I become sicker and I can't handle it? And then three, if I go through all this treatment, is it going to decimate my family? So you make sure that you understand what their worries are, and then you create a triage list. And usually cash flow is the biggest one. What are their cash flow needs going to be? And then tax planning is one people don't like to talk about. But when somebody has a serious illness and they're spending a lot of money on health care, you need to be thinking about doing things like Roth conversions, IRA distributions to take advantage of those expenses. One of the things that breaks my heart is to see like a tax return with all these deductions, zero income, zero taxes, because you just left a lot of money on the table for that client. So making sure that you understand what can be done for that client and keeping that level head because everybody's all upset because you know they have the serious illness. So you should be the voice of reason to help them navigate the financial impacts of those issues.

Speaker B: Well, let's back up. And prior to that kind of diagnosis, or maybe at the beginning of the relationship with the new client, what are some of the documents or permissions or family structures that should be in place as it relates to the health side so that we're not making important decisions in the heat of an emotional moment there?

Speaker C: Oh, Steve, thank you for bringing that up, because that actually is the primary thing every advisor should do. I am a big big fan of ongoing comprehensive financial planning and so when a client comes in we do a plan that looks at their estate tax insurance and we make sure every this

Speaker A: podcast is brought to you by Pictay Asset Management. Looking to refresh your investments? Discover Pictay's active ETFs inspired by over 220 years of independence and innovation, from groundbreaking investments in emerging markets to the creation of our thematic strategies and AI driven investments, being a privately owned partnership gives us the independence to adapt at speed to make the right move at the right time. The fund's investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses must be considered carefully before investing. The prospectus contains this and other important information about the investment company and it may be obtained by calling 855-994-4778 or visiting pictay.com ETF read it carefully before investing. Investing involves risks, including the possible loss of capital. Distributed by Foresight Fund Services LLC.

Speaker C: Everything is tidied up. 100% of our clients have an estate plan. 100% of our clients have advanced directives. We know the titling and we have beneficiary forms on all of our clients assets. And so when that client calls, you're not scrambling trying to figure out oh, is this beneficiary right? Is this when somebody calls with a serious diagnosis we can quickly pull their stuff up and make sure everything is right. We go through it with clients because every now and then somebody will open a new account, not tell you about it or they've gotten rid of something or an insurance thing has changed. But when you do those reviews every year when disaster strikes, it just makes it so much easier for everybody. And in the old days it was a lot harder. I love being old. Now I'm not that old, but I'm

Speaker B: older than you are.

Speaker C: We didn't have the systems we have today to be able to keep up with it. Everything, you know, and we keep everybody's all their insurance, estate and everything up to date. Need money. We have their file folder that has all their documents. I had a client that ended up getting, you know, I'm in Florida, they got into health trouble in Virginia. They were up there visiting and needed advance directives very quickly and we were able to fax because health systems still fax fax their health directives to the hospital in Virginia because we kept all that on file and that gives our clients a lot of peace of mind knowing that if something happens, we're there, we're ready, we have everything organized, we know what's happening.

Speaker B: I want to Touch on AI here for a moment. And there's obviously a lot of talk about that and there's a lot of talk about what is like the last human thing that AI is not going to take over. And I think end of life conversations might be one of those. So I'm sure you've had a lot of those end of life conversations. What overall thoughts do you have for human financial advisors when they have a client, perhaps a longtime client, that has been diagnosed with a life ending illness and maybe they only have days or weeks or months left, what is that conversation? How does that go? What advice do you have for advisors who are in those moments?

Speaker C: Well, first off, the one thing AI doesn't have is real empathy. It has fake empathy. And when a person's conversing with AI or using AI, they know that the things that I say aren't really real. And when you're a human, you're not perfect and you're not always going to say the right thing. But if you're showing that you care, that's the most important part. So when a client calls and they have something serious like that, you know, one of my first things is, wow, this is really big and huge for you. My heart hurts for you. That's, I mean, because that's what I really feel, you know, you've got to have that empathy for the client. And you know, what can I do to help? And AI is not going to say, what can I do to help? And so you're going to listen to their concerns and what they're worried about and help them digest that and help them put the pieces in place, uh, so they can move forward with whatever treatment they need to do or whether it's, you know, if it's that serious and they need to move to hospice, making sure that they have all their ducks in a row for hospice. Do they have their funeral plans? Have they thought about their personal effects on letter? I had a client that called and she had a, uh, glioblastoma, which is horrible, horrible brain tumor. And you never know how much time you have left. But one of the things that I helped her and her family decide and this was, it didn't take me being a doctor to do it. She had already done her advanced directives. She had a wonderful life. And we did look up, you know, we knew the prognosis, she knew the prognosis. And it helped her, that conversation helped her stand up to her doctors who were trying to make her do this horrible treatment that really wasn't going to work.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: And so she immediately entered hospice, and family surrounded her. And we went through her personal effects letter. She had done this beauty. She had a lot of fun stuff in her house and had done this beautiful personal effects letter. I said, you have to think about going in and giving all this stuff to these people now. And so she actually reached out to everybody that she was giving gifts to and gave it to them while she was live. It's just a beautiful thing. And so when an advisor is doing those little nuts and bolts thing of making sure people have their estate plan in place, that they have their funeral plan in place. Oh, and she went and prepaid her funeral. I don't believe in prepaid funerals unless you know you're going to die soon because things get lost. But she went ahead and took care of her funeral arrangements from the work we had done on her funeral planning. And it was just beautiful. And it doesn't take that much time to do that when people are well. And so if you've already made them do it, it's a behavioral psychology tool. When people have thought through things, when poop hits the fan, they're going to make better decisions, and it just takes the pressure off and allows them to have a better end of life because they don't have to go through decisions that were already made.

Speaker B: I think it's to some extent human nature to try and avoid hard conversations. So what advice do you have for advisors who may want to avoid some of these difficult emotional conversations about facing death or clients that are facing death, and maybe they just want to do the minimum because they don't want to confront it. What advice do you have? What skills do they need to learn? How do we get trained to be comfortable and actually embrace those moments, which are just wonderful opportunities for deep human connection.

Speaker C: Right. Well, first off, everything's a practice learning how to have hard conversations. There are tools out there for you. A great book I recommend is Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott. It's kind of a business book, but she teaches you how to have hard conversations and make everybody who's had those conversations glad they happened. And so there's an art to having hard conversations, and it's a learned process. I teach my young advisors, you know, when I speak at conferences, I teach advisors how to do this. And what's to me amazing is when people know you're comfortable talking about the hard things, they're comfortable talking to you about. About the hard things, and they're grateful that you, uh, opened it up and that you helped them Solve these problems. AI will never do that. And if you learn how to do this, the nuts and bolts of being a financial planner, that's going to be eaten by AI. That's going to be so easy, but never helping people put it into perspective. Will AI be able to do that? And helping people think through all those critical moments? It would be very difficult for AI to do that.

Speaker B: Is there one change that you wish financial advisors would do as it relates to serving AG clients? Or is there one conversation that you wish every advisor would have with their aging clients?

Speaker C: The one dream I have, and I'll share a little bit, I'm doing some work with the CFP board on this, is that people have these conversations around aging and cognitive decline when everybody is well. And so I encourage advisors to open up and have. We have what we call an aging planning meeting. We do this right after we get everybody's estate planning documents done about when are you going to get help with financial decision making? When are you going to get help with health care decisions? When will you quit driving if people are worried about your driving? And when will you move to a place that's safer? When it's not good for you to be living independently anymore? So how are you going to age? Where are you going to age? And by having that conversation with people in their late 50s, early 60s, it's again, another behavioral psychology tool where you're laying that neural pathway for that when bad things happen down the road, they know it's safe to talk about it with you. And the work I'm doing with the CFP board, I serve on the Standards Resource Commission. And, uh, we're the group that puts out the guides to help advisors practice better. So we, last year we put out the Big Divorce Guide. I don't know if anybody. It's an amazing document on what do you do if you have clients calling and they're saying they're getting divorced? How should a financial plan or act in that circumstance? This fall, we'll be releasing the guide to working with clients facing cognitive decline. And the two recommendations that we have in there are, number one, you should have a trusted contact letter to make sure that if you're worried about a client and the client's not acknowledging it, that you have the permission to call their trusted contacts, their family members. You know, right now, broker dealers and your custodians have their trusted contact form, but that doesn't extend to the advisor. So the advisor needs their own. The second recommendation that, that we'll be making is that every Advisor should encourage their clients to get their estate documents done because if something bad happens and you don't have a power of attorney document or you don't have the wills done, that just causes the family angst and a lot of money. And it's just good practice to make sure that clients are getting that done.

Speaker B: Well, Carolyn, what haven't I asked you that? You just want to make sure it gets communicated here.

Speaker C: Wow. Goodness gracious. I love financial planning. And to me real financial planning is being holistic with clients. And so, you know, doing all the different six parts of the financial plan I think is super important or at least addressing them in some form or fashion. But I dream the day that where advisors actually talk about health as comfortably as they talk about finance, it all goes together. So, uh, in the one question I tell advisors, just start with the simple question of asking clients, tell me what you do to take care of your health. That opens the conversation. It's non threatening and it makes it comfortable for the client to be able to talk about their health issues and other things regarding health with you.

Speaker B: Well, speaking of that, I have a mom and dad who are still alive. My dad is 96, my mom is 92 and they're still living independently, uh, much to the chagrin of my mom who wants to be in some type of senior living facility with other people. But my dad adamantly, in no way, shape or form will leave the house and he's going to die there. So that's a whole nother conversation. But my question is, neither of them really did a lot to take care of their health. I mean they weren't stupid about it, but they socially drank, they, you know, they would eat what they wanted to eat. They didn't necessarily do a whole lot of exercising, but somehow here they are and they still, I still talk to them on the phone and they can carry on conversations and they live independently. So it's pretty amazing. So how much, much of our health is luck of the draw? How much is genes? How much is lifestyle factors? I know it's a combination of everything. They did have really good social connections, so they had a great group of people that they were very social with for many, many decades. Unfortunately now I think almost all of them have passed away. So I'm sure that played a role of it as well. They were smokers earlier in their life, but they quit many decades ago. How do you think about health and people making it to 100? What are the factors, factors there?

Speaker C: Well, Steve, I hope you got their genes because it I hope so too. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, about quarter of longevity is related to genetics, but all those other factors matter. The number one factor, and something you said is probably one of the reasons they're doing so well is social connections. And. And it's more than just being around people. Social connections and interacting with people in person rewire different parts of your brain. Your brain's constantly rewiring itself, trying to learn new things using different neural pathways. And that's why the number two way that people can age better is hearing, because that helps the neuropathways too. So that's the second most important thing people can do to age well and reduce their chance of cognitive decline. So people who are worried about vanity and having hearing aids. Yeah, you can't even see hearing aids. So people should get their hearing checked early and start early if you're having any significant hearing issues. All the other, it really is luck of the draw. You know, you look at Steve Jobs, he died fairly young from a neuroendocrine pancreatic cancer because he was being super healthy. He overloaded on fruit. He would eat only fruit. And that's probably why, you know, when you overstress an organization, it does things like create tumors. And so moderation, again, is key. And it sounds like your parents did a good job moderating, so that's why they're doing so well. But, you know, to me, it's, again, life is meant to be enjoyed today because you don't know that you have debara. And if you're enjoying today and you're in a good spirit, that's likely going to help you expand your life in the future if you don't get hit by the truck.

Speaker B: Well, Carolyn, what's the best way for folks to connect with you or learn more about all the great work that you putting out there?

Speaker C: My speaking website is Carolyn McClanahan.com so that's pretty easy. I'm pretty bad about updating it, but I'm there and people can leave me messages there. I still call it Twitter@Carolyn McC. I'm on LinkedIn and my company is Life Planning Partners, so LifePlanningPartners.com all right,

Speaker B: that's all for today. Make sure you like and share this podcast through your favorite social platforms. And for more great podcasts, Visit us@Barrons.com Podcasts Take Care and be safe.

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