What if you had 90 days left to live?

Connor (00:00)
what would happen or what would you want to do really focus on if you had 90 days left to live?

Welcome back to Navigating Abundance. My name is Connor Mackey. I’m not Chris Tankey, but Chris Tankey is here. Chris, how are you?

Chris (01:02)
I am doing just lovely. Just got back from several weeks in Mexico and I tell you what, it is the thing to do. Very consistent weather this time of year. It’s awesome. So yeah, I’m, yeah we did. Yeah we did. So.

Connor (01:08)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, and you chose the right time to go. Yeah, was negatives

up here and what you said, 85s down where you were.

Chris (01:22)
Every single day, and we’ve been going there, oh, I don’t know, maybe 12 years now. And out of all the time we’ve been there, it rained one afternoon for about an hour. Otherwise, it’s fabulous. So that’s…

Connor (01:34)
Okay, very good. Yeah, meanwhile, we got 14 inches

of snow and negative temperatures and you’re down enjoying cocktails in Mexico. I love it. I love it. Yeah.

Chris (01:44)
Mojitos. Yeah, so yeah,

so the number one planning tip for total family wealth is make sure you vacation in Mexico in the winter if you’re from the Midwest.

Connor (01:52)
Right, right, right. So

speaking of total family wealth, we were talking earlier today and you know, we are oftentimes showing this page right here, which will be on the screen as well, which is your total family wealth. What does it consist of? Your ledger wealth, your logistic wealth and your legacy wealth, which are your financial capital, your functional capital and your family capital. And we started thinking, you know, what would happen or what would you want to do really focus on if you had 90 days left to live?

Right.

which is not enough time to get this done. But what if, right? So.

Chris (02:27)
A very pleasant,

a pleasant proposition, Pretty negative, kind of dark. Exactly right. But you know, in some ways, ⁓ and again, we’re just trying to put a fresh spin on it, maybe to heighten some focus on it. ⁓ You know, almost all of us that are listening to this have longer than 90 days to live, but maybe this can be an encouragement to get some stuff done, to get more serious, be a little more. ⁓

Connor (02:32)
Yeah. Yeah. Welcome back from Mexico. Right. Yeah.

Chris (02:56)
proactive. it really, in a dark way, knowing how if you had 90 days to live, that’s somewhat of a gift too, because I mean it’s amazing how it’ll motivate and focus ourselves on what we have to get done. So we thought we’d kind of use this as ⁓ a tool ⁓ to prime the pump and to have a conversation. If I only had 90 days to live, what would I focus on?

Connor (03:20)
Yeah,

yeah, well, Chris, I don’t know about you, but I really work well under a deadline. So if I had 90 days, I knew it was gonna be 90 days, I think it would actually be pretty, pretty helpful. But as you were saying, nobody knows, right, when their last day will be. I know you’re a huge fan of rap, but there’s a rapper named Logic that says, texting on your way to work and now your brains is on the dash, right? So avoiding texting while driving. But the thing is nobody knows.

Chris (03:44)
my.

Connor (03:50)
when we are going to die. And yet we have these three categories that we think are very important, your ⁓ logistic, your ledger and your legacy. And if you had 90 days, I think most people would try and focus on maybe one, maybe two and really struggle to focus on all three. So what we wanna do today is just kind of give broad overview of what we think would be important.

the conversations that you should have with your loved ones before those 90 days are up. Okay.

Chris (04:22)
Right and every

situation is different. ⁓ So what we’re going to be doing is kind of sharing with you some of ⁓ the casework client histories that we have, things that we’ve learned and also from our personal lives as well. So again, what we’re focusing on here, that might be the not as important for you as something else we’re not going to cover. We totally get it. But if I had 90 days, right, put it that way, what are some of the things that I would be focusing on?

Connor (04:51)
That’s absolutely right. That’s absolutely right. Because some of these things you might already have done and so you got to shift your focus, right? So speaking of which, if you had 90 days left to live, what should I do with my ledger wealth? What should I be focusing on?

Chris (04:53)
Yeah. Yep.

Yeah, and of course we have this up in front of you here. You can see the different bullet points under your financial capital, ledger wealth. ⁓ I would say that ⁓ obviously when you talk about possessions and people that are managing those for you, whether it’s real estate investments, business enterprises, et cetera, ⁓ you certainly want to make sure that there’s a good working relationship between those who will survive you and your professionals in these areas, right?

And I think it’s almost so obvious I don’t need to say it. So I’m not going to even continue on that. So that’s the first thing. ⁓ If your husband is completely out, he’s into your investments, but the real estate has been your baby and you’re the one on the egg timer. ⁓ He has really very little connection with that. Yikes. You got to change that in a hurry, right? So you focus on that. ⁓

Connor (06:00)
Right, right, right. Well, it’s

important to recognize, right, that while these are ledger items and financial capital, oftentimes there can be an emotional tie to them. So Chris, you’re a business owner, for example. Your business, for a lot of business owners, can become like a child to them because they’ve put their blood, sweat, and tears into it. ⁓ You know, who are you gonna pass that down to? Are they clear as to who it’s going to be passed down to as well?

Chris (06:20)
sure is.

Yeah, and we’ll get into that a little more in logistical wealth here in a few minutes. But yeah, so let’s talk about investment portfolio and real estate portfolio and significant collections. Apart from the obvious, make sure your ducks in a row, you get your appraisals. The beneficiaries know who’s managing these things. They understand how it’s working because you won’t be able to explain it to them, et cetera, et cetera. But let’s talk about the emotional part of this. ⁓ We have clients.

Connor (06:33)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Chris (07:00)
I a client that has significant holdings in DTE, Detroit Edison. The main reason they have those holdings is because their grandfather told their father never to sell it.

Connor (07:13)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris (07:15)
It’s done fine would they have done better if they just put it in the s &p 500 over all those years yes but you know can can can you argue with the With the blessing of a legacy stock and should you not honor it? So let’s say you inherit, you Whatever

100,000 shares of DTE stock and you’re like, well, okay, that was my history. I’ve got two, three generations saying never sell it, but it’s a new day. I think I know what I should be doing. Okay, that’s fine, but maybe you wanna keep 1,000 shares of it. As a legacy stock, just as a nod and a thank you to the past, it’s still a good company, still pays nice dividends. You know what I mean?

Connor (07:56)
Right? Yeah.

Chris (08:05)
So in that respect, investments are more than ⁓ just monetary, ⁓ their legacy. I like that. I’ve got another, ⁓ go ahead.

Connor (08:06)
Yeah.

Right, right.

you know, sometimes it comes down to, we have a couple of clients where ⁓ they own the stock because that’s where they worked, right? And so it’s the company that provided for their family as well, and they’re passing that down. You know, you don’t owe the company anything to own their stock, right? And you don’t owe that company any loyalty. It’s not about owing the company something. It’s about owing the legacy before you.

and maybe respecting that in a certain way. But as you said, if now’s the time to sell, then that’s a conversation to have with yourself as well.

Chris (08:52)
Right, but even at that, there are some values that go beyond what’s the best financial decision if you inherited a legacy stock. And those things come into play, and I think that we should more than just nod to that, I think. Another ⁓ example is when my mother-in-law, Pash, ⁓ she gave us an account, and we call that mom’s money.

Connor (08:58)
Right. Right. Right.

Yeah, mom’s money.

Chris (09:17)
And

for many years, ⁓ when we took money out to do something, we figured out how to put money back in. Now that makes no sense whatsoever. None. It was a gift to us, but we loved calling it mom’s money. And then she meant that to be a blessing to us, and that’s just how we did it. Now, full disclosure, we spent through it eventually, but for many years we didn’t.

Connor (09:25)
Mm-hmm.

Right, right.

Yeah. Yeah.

Right.

Chris (09:44)
And

we treated it reverentially. And again, is there a reason to do that other than emotional, other than ⁓ thanks, other than… ⁓

Connor (09:47)
Yeah.

Chris (09:54)
know, familia? No, there is none. But we did it.

Connor (09:55)
Yeah, yeah.

Thanks is a good word, right? It’s the thinking, the person that left it for you, but also remembering them, right? And having that memory of them ⁓ every time that you do spend that cash. This was purchased by mom’s money, even if they’re not there anymore.

Chris (10:12)
Yeah,

and as we’ve said many a times with Navigated Abundance, probably the greatest thing you could ever pass on is a heart of gratitude that your kids have. And I guess I never thought of it that way, but that’s kind what we were doing, naturally. Legacy properties can work that way too, right? You had a story about that, yep.

Connor (10:22)
That’s right. That’s right.

Yeah, absolutely. This… Yeah, that’s what I was gonna say.

This passes over to properties as well. I come from a family where I don’t know much about my family’s legacy. We’ll talk about that later. But I do know that my grandpa has property. And me and my brother and my dad, and now my nephew and someday my son, we go out to this property. We’ve spent hundreds, thousands of hours on this property, both working on it and…

hunting and shooting the 22s, stuff, and target practice, just enjoying ourselves on this property. I’ve camped and slept on this property. And it’s very important to our family and who we are. And sometimes we do question, where’s this property gonna go? Who’s gonna get it? Who’s gonna hold onto it? Will the person that gets it hold onto it for the next generation, right? This is a concern of ours that we have, and it’s not about the acreage.

It’s about the memories that we have there. Some of my best memories with my brother are on this property. And we want to preserve that and pass that down to the next generation as well.

Chris (11:37)
Now I would say to our listeners here, that is, if you love your property, what a blessing it is to have ⁓ future inheritors like Connor say that he does too. It’s possible that you love your property and your kids could care less about it. This could also be the cottage, the family cottage that, you know, while your kids were up to their…

Connor (11:53)
Yeah, it is.

Chris (12:01)
⁓ mid teens it was awesome but since then they haven’t gone now they have families and they’re all over the over the united states and you’ve tried you’ve tried you try to get people together every other year maybe they get together for the fourth of july but the bottom line is they don’t have the heart for it you do ⁓ you might want to have a conversation with them to say hey this is why it’s important to me but you know what if it’s not important to you ⁓ that’s gonna be alright

Connor (12:26)
Yeah, yeah.

Chris (12:28)
But these are the emotional conversations you have about your ledger wealth because now you only have 43 days left. So make sure you get them on paper.

Connor (12:39)
Yeah.

Well, and before we move on, Chris, how’s that work then if somebody does love the property and they know that they’re going to be the one to inherit it and say, say it’s 200 acres in the middle of the woods, right? It’s hunting property, but grandma and grandpa are worth $30 million because they have businesses and assets. How’s that work when you’re divvying up these different assets? Yeah.

Chris (13:00)
Yep. Yeah. You have to these conversations. I have

a similar situation. It’s 130 acres, not 200, hunting properties, a couple of them next to each other. I’ve got a son-in-law with grandsons that love it. I’ve got a son with no children yet. He’s just not into it at all. We’ve already had conversations, and he’s saying, I understand that that’s going to go right to Christopher.

Connor (13:22)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris (13:29)
And I said, I understand and we’ll true you up with something else. Or put it this way, it’s part of the estate and the way we’re written up is that Christopher has the first right of refusal on it. Right? And then they then you don’t have to keep track of what each thing is worth. doesn’t, know, they can they can divide up at that point. So, yeah, really important.

Connor (13:40)
Okay. Okay. Yeah.

And so I imagine

even appraisals can be an important part of that to make sure that at the end of everything, it’s equal, if that’s what you’re going for, at least.

Chris (13:58)
Right, that’s right. And by the

way, that’s very difficult to do. So don’t beat yourself up too much over that one. Significant collections, right? ⁓ The emotional side of this, I would say, ⁓ first of all, if you have any buried treasure.

Connor (14:02)
Yes, yes it is.

Right. Right.

Chris (14:16)
you’ve got a half million dollars of gold somewhere you know you’re you’re doing that thing that’s fine make sure people know about it it’s it’s now to tell somebody else beside your wife where it is because now you only have 38 days left so it’s okay somebody’s got to know right there’s a lot of there’s a lot of money in the ground there’s a lot of

Connor (14:16)
haha

Yeah.

Right, right.

Right.

Right, they do. Otherwise somebody

goes and buys, sells everything they have to buy that field and your kids miss out. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris (14:41)
There’s a lot of crypto that is left.

⁓ It’s lost for that very reason. But the other thing is that not everybody’s going to love what you love. I ⁓ have collected antique clocks, really, really neat, which have become all but worthless now. My dad Lionel trains, all but worthless now. ⁓

Connor (14:46)
Yes it is.

Chris (15:10)
you know, your children are gonna have different interests than you. So one of the things that you might wanna have conversation about is, okay, what do you guys want? What’s important to you? ⁓ My daughter, for many years now, has laid claim to some of my stuff saying when dad’s gone, that’s mine. We call it putting sticky notes under it. ⁓ One is my Bible that I used to preach out of.

Connor (15:29)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (15:36)
old tattered thing with notes in it, etc. Steffi said, I want that. I have given my son some nice watches that actually my father had and I enjoyed and I want to see him have it now. I’ve already started to inherit some of those down, but he’ll get the rest of the watch collection because that’s important to him. He doesn’t care really about anything else. ⁓ My wife, ⁓ relatives passed, etc., etc.

What she wanted to do is she wanted to have great grandparents, grandparents, parents, wedding rings. That’s what’s important to her. And when her mom passed, ⁓ many years ago now, all the jewelry, all the possession, I mean, she wanted the wedding rings. So have those conversations because ⁓ that’s…

Connor (16:12)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Chris (16:31)
That’s really your kid’s spirit, your kid’s roots. ⁓ And just because you think that they want the antique clock doesn’t mean that they want the antique clock. So you have to be honest about that and say, what do you guys really want? What’s going to matter to you? Yeah. Yeah.

Connor (16:40)
Absolutely, Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and in some ways,

say they do get the antique clock and it’s not what they want. Now they’re sitting there saying, what do I do with this thing? If I get rid of it, the family is gonna be upset. If I hold onto it, I’m gonna be upset. There’s no situation where everybody is pleased. You talk about your Bible and passing that down. I have my grandpa’s Bible in my office here.

Chris (16:54)
Mm-hmm.

Connor (17:06)
And I have a picture of him when he first joined the Navy holding that very Bible. you know, he was going to be a, the reason why I keep it around is one, it reminds me of him, but he was, he wanted to be a Baptist preacher, but he ended up falling in love with a Catholic girl. And so it didn’t work out. And so I have that and it’s a reminder of our legacy that whether, if he hadn’t fallen in love with that Catholic girl, I wouldn’t be here today. Right. It did eventually call him away from the ministry, but

Chris (17:10)
there you go.

No.

Connor (17:35)
It’s a good reminder of where I come from. It’s the only inheritance I have from him, but it’s sufficient. It really is. Yeah.

Chris (17:40)
Yeah. Yeah.

Connor (17:43)
Yeah. Okay, well, hey, say you had 90 days to live still, or maybe we’re getting in a little bit closer, but we’re gonna, yeah, 34, logistic wealth. What is there that we should be focusing on in logistic wealth?

Chris (17:47)
No, no, 34 now.

Well, very similar to your ledger wealth, obviously, if you have advisory teams, CPA, business advisors, family, concierges, et cetera, ⁓ attorneys, obviously, you need to be connecting with them ⁓ and refreshing what you’ve developed.

Make sure that your loved ones, your beneficiaries try as much as they can to understand what you developed or at least have a somewhat of a relationship with these folks that they’ll be leaning on after you’re gone. Wills and trusts, the obvious thing, you wanna make sure they’re fresh ⁓ and they can get stale in a hurry. Life changes, kids remarry, your children remarry. Is that reflected in how you want assets spread?

Connor (18:35)
Yeah, they can.

Chris (18:42)
from the trust, there prenups or non prenups, these sorts of things. ⁓ I mean, you know, we can go on and on, but that’s a no-brainer that you would connect with counsel on that to make sure that your wishes, which might have even changed in the last six months. And of course, there’s many, many movies that talk about deathbed wills and all that kind of work. That’s kind of what we’re talking about, I guess, but we’d like to be a little more studied with it, but it certainly is a valuable thing to be.

Connor (19:08)
Right, right.

Chris (19:11)
focusing on.

Connor (19:12)
Yeah.

You know, one of the things about life is that no matter how much you try to make something simple, it’s going to become complex over time. And we see this with clients all the time. They come into the office, they want a simple retirement and we can help them get to that point where they have a simple retirement, but it’s usually a complex thing to get there. I think ideally what you could try to do for your benefactors is try and make this as simple as possible. So,

What is that one person? Who’s that one person that they should go to for this item? Who’s that one person they should go to for this item? How do you make that as simple as possible? Because realistically, a lot of these conversations that we’re talking about here, getting into the emotional side of things, and then also understanding where things are supposed to go, it all sounds simple, but it’s very difficult. It’s not easy, right? So that’s what comes to mind to me is making sure that people understand who they should go to. And if you can get it down to one person per item, at least,

Chris (20:06)
Right.

Connor (20:10)
I think you’re well off.

Chris (20:11)
Yeah, it’d be great. And some of you have a family office or you have a family concierge who basically is like the quarterback that knows here’s that 18 different professional relationships that you guys have.

and I’ll make sure that they’re in the loop of what’s going on here whatever. depending on how complicated it is, ⁓ the point is ⁓ relationships, communication, you’ve got to get on that for sure. Business succession and or business purchases, sales. ⁓ Another big thing, if you’re a business owner, ⁓ this is probably one of the more complicated things you have in the area of logistic wealth.

Connor (20:39)
Absolutely.

Chris (20:54)
And if now we have 28 days, ⁓ you know, it’s going to be very difficult to get this fixed. It just is. So the good news is much more, most of us have more than 90 days, so that’s great. But, you know, for us, ⁓ you know, the things that we’ve seen, we’re pretty close to a case now in which a ⁓ family business was to be sold to kids. ⁓

Connor (20:57)
haha

Yeah. Yeah.

Chris (21:23)
And ⁓ for several years, I was like raising the flag saying, you know, what’s what’s the buy sell agreement? What what’s your section plan? How are you going to handle partnerships? What are we going to do? And some progress was made. But, you know, you could lead a horse to water. Not enough was made. And ⁓ with just a few days left, the business owner who’s on morphine is trying to sign stuff. And still, there’s much to do.

Connor (21:41)
Right. Right.

Mm-hmm.

Chris (21:53)
now that he has passed and the widow is now taking that on. I would ⁓ just suggest that that’s a pretty lousy thing to do to your wife. I’m just going to say it and look at you and say that. So don’t do that. Come on. Let’s be proactive. if the boys, well, I don’t know that I want to do it that way, we’ll say, OK, that’s fine. You’ve got 60 days to decide. Because I only have 90 days to live.

Connor (22:04)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Right.

Chris (22:23)
And if you don’t want it, I’m selling it to somebody else. I want you to have it, but I’m not going to do this to the rest of the siblings and my wife. Let’s get this thing solved. No more dragging your feet. I don’t know, whatever. You got to tough love this. You know? You do.

Connor (22:26)
Right. Right.

You do, you do.

You know, this is one of those things where when somebody does pass, it’s already extremely difficult. don’t wanna add any more burden to the situation by having conversations up until the last moment. So we say 90 days left to do, what should you do? Really, this should be done in the first 30, 60 days, if that was the case. There should be a sense of urgency so that it’s not left for the very end and you don’t get it done.

Chris (22:59)
Yeah.

Connor (23:05)
And now there’s another burden on top of people who are already in pain.

Chris (23:10)
Yeah, and the longer the decision is put off, the worse of the quality of that decision it’ll be. And that’s especially true for people that inherit with a lot of stuff to clean up. So you know, you’ve been a successful business owner, you’ve done a great job. There’s a and again, none of us are perfect. I don’t mean to pile on you too much. But if you don’t solve for this, you’ve really blown it.

Connor (23:15)
That’s right, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Chris (23:33)
Prepare to hand it off. That’s a great legacy under logistic well.

Connor (23:38)
Yeah, absolutely,

Legacy wealth. This is our bread and butter, right? So 90, right? Yeah, now there’s 20 days, but let’s say there is 90 days, but really there is 20 days. What is the legacy wealth focus? What are the things that you say to people? This is what you need to get done.

Chris (23:42)
Especially since we only have 20 days. 20 days left now. Okay.

Well again, all of these categories really are all about people, but this one of course is specific. We call it your family capital, your family riches. ⁓ And if we can, I don’t know where we are with the total family wealth illustration, we could throw it up again here. But you can see in legacy wealth, there are ⁓ five different bullets. There are certainly more. These are all expansive. Family relationships, family ethos, and family wellness is what I want to talk about.

Family relationships, ⁓ you know, very simple. I would just say you got to get it said. When you’re pushing up daisies, it’s hard to say it. ⁓ You know, I mean, you can write a letter, and that’s not a bad idea either to be read and to be sent. ⁓ But here’s your opportunity, toe to toe, face to face, to say what needs to be said. Even if it’s not the easiest thing to say, even if it’s an apology.

Even if hey, I love you so much, I’m so proud of you, but I’m concerned about this. I have to say it because I love you. I want to do anything I can to help you work through this. Whatever it is, ⁓ you know, again, the egg timer is ticking. When it goes off, it’s basically going to be too late to say it.

Connor (25:01)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I would say don’t leave it up to interpretation. Don’t leave it up to your descendants to be questioning. Okay, they said this one time years ago and I never asked them about it again and now I don’t know actually what mom, dad, grandma, grandpa thought about these specific things. Don’t leave it up to interpretation.

Chris (25:35)
Right. Yeah,

that’s exactly right. ⁓ And again, you can accomplish a lot of this. I’m going to take this back now. I guess you can accomplish some of this from the grave in writing. You could be thinking about, write a letter to each one of your kids. And at the funeral, have somebody pass it out. That’s fine too, but I think that there are many things that can only be said face to face, toe to toe, nose to nose. And I encourage you to do that.

Connor (25:50)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris (26:01)
Tim McGraw’s famous ⁓ song, Live Like You Were Dying, you know, and the chorus is, so we only had a small amount of time to live, and that was the idea, and so he made the most of his time. He did it in two ways. ⁓ He did it kind of like in a ⁓ fill your bucket list up way, and then he did it in a legacy way. So the chorus goes, went skydiving, Rocky Mountain climbing,

Connor (26:05)
Love it.

Mm-hmm.

Chris (26:28)
and spent 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu. For some reason, that was a bucket list for him. I don’t understand that. That’s fine to each his own. So basically said, gotta get my bucket list filled up. But then he switches and said, and I loved deeper. I spoke sweeter and I gave forgiveness that I’ve been denying. I hope someday you get the chance to live like you were dying.

Connor (26:34)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Chris (26:55)
you know it’s kinda

morbid but there’s a good lesson in that and that’s really what we’re trying to stroke to especially with the family relationship things if it needs to be said say it say it and we’re talk about family wellness that’s similar to this in a sec

Connor (27:07)
Yeah, so I’m from the country. I’m from a little town in Michigan and now I live in an even smaller town in Michigan. So I love country lyrics, especially this song. I don’t see it as morbid. I see it as inspiring saying, even right now we’re talking about what if you had 90 days, but really the point of this is to say, nobody knows. Nobody knows when that time is gonna be. These are things that we should be pursuing right now and not wasting our time.

Chris (27:23)
All right.

Yep.

Yep.

Connor (27:36)
Every single minute we get closer and closer to that edge, if you will. And so we should be spending our time wisely. Let’s live every day as if we’re going to die. Carpe diem. Let’s seize the day.

Chris (27:48)
Exactly right. That’s

exactly right. Family ethos, your family spirit, because now we have only 18 days left. ⁓ The family spirit is just getting some pride in your family to know their roots, to have an appreciation for the sacrifices and the work that was done to get them where they are. Because again, when you have ⁓ Gen 2, Gen Gen 4 that have an appreciation of that, it’s amazing how…

Connor (27:57)
Right?

Chris (28:15)
how much wiser they are, how they have much clearer values, ⁓ et cetera, et ⁓ So ⁓ how do you pass this along? Hopefully you have been doing it all along, but we only have 18 days. Yeah, ⁓ go ahead. You got some ideas?

Connor (28:33)
Yeah, there are incredible,

incredible resources out there. know, family ethos, especially the story of where your family comes from, I’ll be honest, a lot of kids when they’re young probably aren’t gonna care about it too much. It’s when they get older and they become more sentimental. I’m in my 20s, I do care about it now. I don’t know my own family’s history. I know that my great grandparents came over from Finland

Chris (28:56)
Mm-hmm.

Connor (29:02)
to escape poverty, that’s all I know. And then they moved to Ravanna, Michigan to buy a farm. ⁓ I wish I did no more, but when I was younger, I didn’t care, right? And so there’s great tools out there. There are tools out there where you can essentially get a form that you fill in the blanks and they ask you all these questions about your story and they’ll write a little book for you. That’s one way to do it. You give that to a kid, maybe they’re not gonna care right now, but you tell them, onto it. Don’t ever get rid of it.

put it in a box somewhere if you have to, and someday they’re gonna come back to it. Yeah.

Chris (29:32)
Yeah.

they very well may. And so yeah,

so you might want to say, Hey, I’ve got a great opportunity to arrange all these old photographs in a way that tells the story and I can like document and this is what happened here and this is what this person this is this is what this picture is taken where, etc, etc. And they might not care when they’re 30. Doesn’t matter you handed it off to them at 50. They might care a lot. And that’s that’s what you can do. And that that’s something that that is a fine project.

Connor (29:57)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris (30:05)
right as you’re as you’re waiting for the inevitable.

Connor (30:08)
Yeah, yeah, and if you have a, exactly, when you’re counting down the minutes, now we’re getting closer

and closer. And especially if you do have a kid that cares greatly, this would be a tremendous gift to them to have them help you put it together. Yeah.

Chris (30:20)
Yeah, exactly

right. And you might find some that are really going to light into it right now. That’s fine. But it’s important. Your family history is important, and they’re so readily lost. So hey, ⁓ keep it going. Let them know who your mom and dad were. And keep it going. It’s very important.

Connor (30:25)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Chris (30:42)
to have roots. Family wellness, is making sure everybody becomes who they want to be and so obviously you can maybe set up some accounts for kids to go through college if you haven’t put that together or whatever. mean you can go on and on about this. But I want to talk a little bit about something that’s really touchy-feely. This is very Old Testament, by the way. But there are many examples in the Old Testament where the patriarch, which is who you are in this situation, would impart a blessing

Connor (31:02)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (31:12)
upon their children and would do so by making pronouncements, making a big deal of it, having conversations, and often solidifying it with something tangible. So again, now you have 12 days left and you’re having a blessing conversation with your daughter to where you can say some incredibly cool things to her and to wish for her that this will happen and this would happen.

and speak into her life and let her know you’re sorry you’re not going to be here to see it all happening but you know that it will and then I don’t know give her

Connor (31:50)
Yeah.

Chris (31:53)
great grandmother’s brooch or something who is a who she reminds you of with the spirit and girl go get it done this is my blessing for you and do that for every one of your children and grandchildren try to put some tangible thing to it as well give them something a picture a ring a watch ⁓ whatever or some family heirloom to connect to the blessing and they will not forget that they will not ever

Connor (32:21)
Mm-hmm.

Chris (32:22)
forget that. What a legacy gift, a blessing.

Connor (32:23)
Yeah, yeah, I think that’s, that is pivotal.

Sometimes we get the idea that these heirlooms, let’s think of a really nice watch. It doesn’t have to be a nice watch. I said I have my grandpa’s Bible. I technically have one of his Timex’s as well. But let’s just say it is a watch. It’s not something you have to wait until after your past to give to them. You can give it to them and say, hey, this is tied to a story now, is what you’re saying.

Chris (32:36)
No.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Yeah, I mean if you

Connor (32:53)
And then every time that

they put it on their wrist or whatever it is, it’s going to remind them of that story.

Chris (33:00)
Yep, Stephanie has a very cheap Lionel train watch, my dad collected Lionel train, and the Lionel train like goes around the outside of it, cheap thing. That is far more precious to her to have that watch than if she had a Philippe Pétac watch. Far more, far more valuable to her. And that’s the kind of things that we’re talking about. So, you know, you’ve got 90 days. I know you’ve done a lot of this already. Even if there’s some regrets that I’ve got to catch up with some of this.

Connor (33:05)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

Chris (33:29)
⁓ It is a blessing to know that the egg timer is going to go off when it’s going to go off. So get after some of these things ⁓ that you can do it and really more appropriately. ⁓ This is tongue in cheek. So ⁓ you should be focusing on some of these things now, even if you have more than 90 days, right?

Connor (33:48)
Absolutely,

absolutely. Yeah, 90 days is, I mean, you can get a lot done in 90 days, especially if you’re motivated by a deadline, but a lot of these conversations need to start sooner. Yeah, yeah.

Chris (34:00)
Amen.

Great. ⁓ We were just wanted to let you know folks that we’re putting together some tools as we had promised to do to kind of assist you in your total family wealth. And one of these things that we’re putting together, and we’re like halfway through, so I think we’re two or three weeks away. And you can check back on the website. It’s called My Estate Essential File, My Estate Essential File, which basically is going to kind of codify, like a checklist so to speak.

of a lot of things that we’ve been talking about here. you know, whether you have 200 million or 2 million, you could use this to kind of make sure that I’m covering all my bases and then when your children, like, you know, open up your documents and see something that says my state essential file, that’ll be a roadmap for them to understand some of this tool and where they can find these things, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that’ll be a really useful tool.

⁓ But watch for that. That should be a couple weeks from now. Don’t you think, Connor, we’ll be done?

Connor (35:01)
Yeah, you put a deadline on it and I work well under deadlines. So yes, absolutely. It’ll be done now It has to happen yet We talked about doing an episode about it and really the idea is these are the things that your benefactors need to know And it’s it’s very very specific you know, can put as much work into it as you need to but you need to you need to have something that they know where to go and They know how to do what they need to do Yeah

Chris (35:03)
There you go. So it has to happen.

Yeah, that’s right. did talk about that. Sorry, folks, I forgot. I’m getting ahead of

myself a little bit, but it’s certainly connected to this. But once we get it done, we’re going to have an episode on it and share it with you and talk through how you might be able to use it. I think that whether you’re, we don’t care. We just want people to use it. And we know most of you, we will never meet. But we think you’ll find it valuable.

Connor (35:45)
Yeah, absolutely. So

Chris, my final thoughts, just things that I’ve learned today. One, this is a thing of urgency. This needs to happen quickly. 90 days probably isn’t enough. So if you have more than 90 days, now is the time to start, which is something that we are constantly repeating on here. Second, this is actually very emotional too. It’s not just about having the right documents in the right places with the right people. It’s about them understanding why these things are important to you, why these people are important, why these properties are important.

And then third, we talked a little bit about how the conversations should start, right? That these are things that you should start right now, sit down, make sure they understand the purpose behind all of this. Anything else to add?

Chris (36:29)
I know the best time to start is today and ⁓ you know pick out the easiest one and make some progress and get going on it but again this Navigated Abundance again what we’re trying to do is to not reinvent the wheel but we’re trying to communicate in such a way so that you can find success in these areas and there’s two things that are necessary one is information

But the other part that you need is inspiration. You need encouragement to do it. And so this is more along the lines of, would say, wouldn’t you agree, an inspiration-type approach? Because a lot of what we’re saying, you might say, I know that. That’s fine. And God love you. I just want to ask you this question. But are you doing it?

Connor (36:56)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris (37:12)
That’s why we’re doing it. We’re just trying to push and prod. That’s our job. We’re trying to bring success to your life by inspiration and information. Hopefully you’re getting both of these things as you kick the tires of navigating abundance. And keep checking our podcasts. We think they’re worthy to listen to and that you’ll get both inspiration and inspiration out of that.

Connor (37:24)
That’s right.

Yeah, and I’ll add this as well because it is my responsibility to do so. If you found this conversation helpful, leave us a comment. Let us know what stood out to you. And of course, if you want to learn more information about Navigating Abundance, you can go to navigatingabundance.com. And if you’re interested in seeing more of these episodes and actually following the channel, it’s really helpful to us if you subscribe or follow whatever the platform that you’re watching or listening on suggests that you do. That would be great.

Chris (38:00)
Alright, guys, thanks for listening. Godspeed.

and remember your family is worth it.