The Jon Sanchez Show
08/12- How to prepare for the loss of a spouse.
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It seems like a keen on what's gonna happen later in the week, but today was sort of a non-event. - Yeah, it really was. It's somewhat of a lackluster session today. But, you know, as the saying goes, today's over. We're already focusing on tomorrow. And, you know, what a week that we have lined up. We're gonna talk about this in just a moment. We're gonna have a little inflationary data. In the next couple of days, we're gonna have some retail sales data, all kinds of market moving events. And let's not forget, of course, we're gonna continue to have a lot of earnings numbers that begin to, or continue to trickle in. So yeah, we got a lot of things to talk about. So I don't know about you, but it's like, okay, nice quiet, start to the week, nothing too severe. And we'll just kind of get ready and get our energy levels up and get rested for the rest of the week, right? - I couldn't agree more. After the last week, I'll take a calm day for sure. - Yeah, that's for sure, that's for sure. All right, let me tell you what Jason and I have lined up for you this evening. After we, of course, give you the stock market recap and tell you everything that happened today. We're gonna move into our topic. And this is a, I hate to use this term, but somewhat of a sensitive topic. But one that we have to talk about, right? We've got to do this. Again, it's a very difficult topic. It's a topic when we deal with it in real life. And we're gonna bring a lot of experience to you. So here's what we're gonna be discussing. If you die, not if, but of course when, what is life gonna be like for your spouse, your kids, if you're an entrepreneur, for your business, everything? Now, I'm not referring to the importance of estate planning, right? We talk about the importance of having a living trust and we'll briefly, briefly touched on that. But what we're really gonna get into tonight is really talking about the real life scenarios. The real life scenarios that Jason and I deal with when we get word from a spouse, that their loved one has passed away. Now, again, we have experienced many of these scenarios and all kinds of different things happen, like from clients liquidating their investments, the saying, you know what, I'm done, I'm gonna go travel the world, something I've always wanted to do, to selling everything, moving to another part of the country, to be with their kids, what we call moving the magnet and everything in between. And so, we're gonna bring to you, again, some real life experience when it comes to this very touchy area. We're gonna explain to you how you can prepare for this period of your life. Again, a lot of it's gonna be, you know, I won't say not financial. I mean, of course, we're gonna talk about money in a little bit of estate planning, as I said. But Jason, it really goes above and beyond this. It really goes into the psychological side of it. And again, trying to prepare people for what to expect, because we all think we're gonna live forever, but inevitably, of course, we're not. And, you know, what you do now is gonna take care of your family and gonna prepare them for this inevitable event. And again, this can happen to you, as we all know, to any of us at any time, at any age, it just does not matter. But those that are prepared, we've seen a significant, significant difference in how the spouses, the surviving spouse, handles the situation versus ones that have not planned for it, because as Jason and I always like to tell our clients, look at, if things have been planned properly, when that unfortunate time period happens, you get to do what you need to do, which is you get to mourn the loss of your spouse, right? That's what you should be. You should not be concerned in a dated, overwhelmed, confused, stressed, I mean, what other adjective can I use about your finances? Because this is where things get really tough, is you've got the world thrown on your shoulders. And as I always say, you know, the average is, most of us men are gonna be the first ones to go. And so therefore, the woman, the wife has left to, to handle everything. And again, as Jason and I deal with, like I said, numerous times a year, it is an overwhelming situation, Jason. It's an overwhelming situation, so again, I'm very much looking forward to, again, giving real-life examples of what you and I deal with with our clients on this. - And I tell folks, unfortunately, fortunately, we do deal with it quite often, right? I mean, like you started out with, this pretty much is the guarantee, right? We all know it's gonna happen at some point. But, you know, planning for it, you mentioned you touched on trust and things along those lines of beneficiaries, but more of the things you don't talk about, right, is getting a good, you know, more often than not, one side of the coin ends up dealing more with the financial part, or ends up dealing more with the budget, and the other, you know, a spouse never paid any attention to that sort of thing. And I think this also highlights that having those conversations around expenses, having those conversations around, what if something happens to me? Where's this money come from, right? How does it get into the account? Who's depositing it? What money actually stops if I pass away, right, if it's, you know, early on when you have an income of a spouse and what goes where? And, you know, I mean, these are all things that are, heck of a lot more difficult to do when someone's gone than at least spending a little bit of time like we are now, at least highlighting some of the checklist items that it makes sense for everybody to go through. And if it helps you sleep better, knowing that, you know, where the box is, or know where the notes are, or know where the passwords are for the, you know, whatever software programs you're using it, it makes you feel a little bit better. - Absolutely. So we've basically summarized it, and again, we're gonna test just briefly on the actual estate planning documents like the Living Trust, et cetera. But let me tell you, we've basically put together eight different areas that we think you need to be paying attention to, and we're gonna go into details on these. Income change is number one, expenses, the debt management, the estate and inheritance issues, the emotional and the psychological impact of losing a loved one. Long-term financial planning, tax considerations, and then the legal and administrative responsibilities that you're gonna be dealing with as a surviving spouse. So it's a very, like I said, very serious, very tough discussion to have, but one that we need to have because we want all of you prepared, like I said, not a matter of if, it's a matter of when, unfortunately, you lose a spouse. And again, if we can alleviate this stress and get rid of this level of concern for you so that you can focus on the morning of your loved one, then we've done our job tonight. So looking forward to this topic, like I said, tough one to talk about, but something we have to do. In the meantime, my friend, let's talk about something else we have to talk about, and that is a recap of today's trading activity, fire away. - Yeah, I mean, today, again, light volume day, markets are poised to get PPI tomorrow and CPI on Wednesday. Those, after last week, it was a welcome blessing to just look at the futures this morning when I woke up to see green on the screen. It was like, okay, everything's fine. I hate going to bed now, looking at the Nikkei every night to see-- - I still do it, I still do it. - We'll shoot a thread. Yeah, it was like, oh, okay, that's fine. But the mega caps were, I would say, the most dominant as far as the moves today, it was really tech and energy. There were the two areas that were popping up. Obviously, we're seeing more headline risk around geopolitical with Israel and Hamas and some of that, you know, the saber rattling last week that was talked about becoming less of saber rattling now. And, you know, oil has certainly responded. I think oil was up 4% or something today just on the back of this angst. Whether it's quick and goes away, time will tell. And you saw areas like people, you know, if they're playing a little bit of a safety dance into the Microsofts and apples and in videos of the world, small caps were down over a percent today, so you really felt that rotation. 'Cause it wasn't interest rates that was doing it. It's slight deceleration in the steepening we've seen. I think short rates, the two year was maybe what we got, three basis points, lower to 402 and the 10 year was three basis points, lower at 391, so call it a draw, I guess, overall. A little bit earlier, it was flattening. But, you know, S&P's up 12% this year, right? I mean, those are all good things. The market is happy to see that some of that, you know, we talked about a lot on the show last week as long as no bodies float to the surface with this Japan move and interest rates, then I think that risk can still be something to be deploying, but I still think you need a little bit of time first to see if anything else, like I said, floats higher. Had a budget number today for the government shows our continue to run large deficits, the net in cost. - That was shocking. That was shocking. - That was shocking. - Yeah, isn't it amazing, right? So, let me guess, if you don't have as much income and you borrow more, I think we do a show on that, quite often about debt. We'll probably touch it on here tonight, but we don't have a money tree in our backyard, but tomorrow will be good. - Maybe we should do a show, maybe we should do a debt show for the government. How about that? - That'd be good. Yeah, or how to print money in your backyard, right? You get a bunch of printers, right? So on and so forth. - Yeah, exactly. Print the line and print the line. - Let's pass over our risk assessment to the government. (laughing) Break down your fixed expenses, fixed expenses, you don't income. - Yeah, they keep going up. What do we do? But have a lemonade sale. But yeah, I just think today, like we said, is fortunately a quiet one. We did see inflation expectations through New York Fed come down, which was good. Their five-year expectations were down to 2.3%, which was a pretty decent drop. I think that helps the Fed's cause of lowering interest rates again. If we get numbers that are soft or even in line at a PPI and CPI tomorrow and Wednesday, it probably still continues to keep this market buoyant with that interest rate. - Yeah, it's a great point. It's interesting, I was going over the projections this morning on the stock updates. And for those of you that did not catch that, here's basically the streets expectation on the PPI, which remembers the inflation on the wholesale side. This is gonna be July's data we received tomorrow. In June, PPI was up 2/10 of a percent. They're only expecting a 1/10 of a percent increase on that tomorrow. And then as Jason said, on Wednesday, we're gonna get CPI. When we got it in June, remember, that was a big shock. It was down, negative down, 1/10 of a percent. They're looking for that big jump on that one, up 3/10 of a percent. So those two reports could kind of wash each other out, depending upon what side of the table you're on. But remember, the way the streets gonna look at this, if it's a hotter than expected inflationary number, then that's gonna start to wane in the argument of the Fed interest rate cut in September. If it's a weak CPI number, a weak PPI number, obviously just the opposite, people will be talking about, oh, quarter percent, half a percent, whatever it may be at that September meeting, if not sooner. So that's a very, very important reports that we're gonna receive. But real quickly, before we go to break you, I wanna go back to what you mentioned about the situation heating up a little bit in the Middle East. Basically, what kind of made my heart drop a little bit yesterday, being Sunday, Pentagon ordered a guided missile submarine to the Middle East, first of all, they also ordered a carrier strike group equipped with F-35C fighters. The Defense Department today noted that the strengthening of U.S. military force posture and capabilities throughout the Middle East is in light of escalating regional tensions. And again, the market did not pay any attention to it, which is obviously a good thing. So we'll keep a close eye on that and see if it does have any influence, but at this point, no real major market influence, as I said. All right, let's turn it over to Kristen Snow. She's in. Welcome back to the John Sanchez Show on new stock, 780K, which now pay Monday to all of you. Doing my course by Jason Gunnar, Sanchez Wealth Management. So here's how we finished up. Again, it was a wild ride on the down side. A lot of periods of strength, a lot of periods of weakness and kind of closed midstream, what a surprise. Finished down 141 on the dowel, 0.36% loss, the 39,357. Now, it's like a small gain of 35 or 0.21%, closing at 16,780, and the S&P unchanged on the session to 5,341. Again, as Jason mentioned, a strong day in oil, 4.1% gain for those Middle East tensions. Again, that was a big, big move on that one. $34.40 rise in gold today, 2,507.80. And also, as Jason mentioned down three business points on the tenure at 391. You want to touch on that movement on gold prices? Yeah, I was definitely wanted to point that. We're kind of broke out of that top end of the range, right? This is now back to all-time highs again. You know, roughly $24.50 level, $24.75 level on gold. It's been decent resistance, and silver moved as well today. So I think you probably get a little bit of legs to this trade, especially given the geopolitical. You know, like I talk about view it as a trade, not an end-of-day kind of thing, but I think from a chart standpoint, you'd probably have another $100 a room to the upside, just looking at gold. Yeah, substantial. Yeah, what a break out. What a break out. Good side of today, even though, again, we're weak on the downside and kind of lackluster on the NASDAQ, the good side is we did have some pretty good buying interest in some of the major tech names. Apple finished the day with a $1.54 gain, $2.17.53. Microsoft up 79 cents to $4.06.81, and NVIDIA higher by 4.1%, a $4.27 gain to $1.09.02. All right, our friend, anything else you want to mention on today's activity before we get to our topic? I think we've covered everything we possibly can about today. Good, excellent, let's get our topic started. Once again, we're going to be talking about this situation when we lose a spouse. What are the different things that we go through? And once again, this is something that unfortunately Jason and I deal with, I don't know, I haven't counted, I don't want to count, but I'm going to guess Jason probably at least five times a year with clients, if not more. Yeah, I would take that or the over, unfortunately, tends to, for whatever reason, come in, fits and starts too, but. It does, you're absolutely right. So the financial life of any of you, after the death of your spouse, can obviously change life very, very significantly. We're dealing with emotions, we're dealing with financial situations, we're dealing with practical challenges. So tonight, what we're going to be doing is going over, again, roughly eight areas that we think are very important that you should be aware of, that when that time comes, you're going to go, you know what, the guys were right. I remember hearing about this back in August of 2024. So the first one, I'll tackle the first one, Jay, and you go to your favorite area, the expenses. So the income challenge side of things. So first thing, of course, that we talk about, and again, this is why the pre-death planning, as I hate to call it, is so very important. You want to know now, while both of you are young, vibrant, and healthy, what your income sources are going to be if something happens to one of you. Now, what we're talking about here is the loss of income. Now, if the deceased spouse was a primary or a secondary earner, the surviving spouse may experience a significant, significant reduction in a household income. Here's a prime example. Let's say, you know, we got a husband and wife, Jack and Sally Doe, we'll call them. So let's say Jack retired with a nice pension. But when Jack retired, Jack decided to take a single life pension, meaning it was the largest amount, but when Jack passed away, that pension, let's say it was, I don't know, $5,000 a month. That pension comes to an abrupt halt. Sally's going to get zero. Now, Jack chose a joint life with survivor benefit pension. Guess what? That payment amount, probably identical. Maybe it changes a few bucks, but for the most part, it's going to be the same amount as when Jack was a life. We'll go to Sally. So that's why Jason and I spend a lot of time when we have clients that are going to retire, and you don't see pensions very often, unless you're, again, coming out of purrs or something along those lines. That's why we spend a lot of time. And it's human nature to say, "Oh, I want that single life." Right, Jason? I want that single life. It's the biggest amount of money. And then we have to go, "Oh, wait a minute here. Think about Sally in this example. Do you want Sally to lose out on that?" You can get $5,000 when single life, but your joint is, sometimes it's half, sometimes it's three quarters of that $5,000 just depends upon a number of circumstances. Do you really want her just to go cold turkey and lose all that income? And what I found, and I know you have too, once you throw that question to a man, and especially if that man is sitting next to Sally, guess what, he completely changes their tune, right? He completely changes their tune. The other thing I want to mention on this one that I've run across, I'm not sure if you have or not, I'm sure you have, is a second marriage, or sometimes a third marriage, right? So here's a scenario. I had one gentleman years ago that retired from LAPD, right? And they retired with very, very nice pensions. I think it was around $7,000 or $8,000 a month. But he was single, he had been divorced, and he was single when he decided to retire from the police department. And so he chose a single life pension, right? He had no spouse. Well, since then he had remarried, and he hadn't had that conversation with the new wife. And I said, "Look, you've got to have this conversation "because she's expecting this 7,000 a month "that continue to come in, and when that stops, "you know, it's going to completely stop upon your passing, "assuming you pass away first, "she's going to be in for a financial shock." And so he had to break that news to her, and it was not a pleasant conversation. But that's something, again, if you're getting second, third marriage, whatever it may be, make sure you let that surviving spouse know, or your spouse, I should say. Let them know, look at, this is, you've become accustomed to this $7,000 a month coming in, it's going to stop, or it's going to be cut in half, or whatever may occur. Just something you need to be talking about while ahead of time. Let's go ahead and take this break. When we come back, Jason, I'll finish up on some Social Security benefits as far as income changes, pensions, and life insurance. Let's turn, yeah, big one. Let's turn it over to Greg Neff. He's got news traffic in with her. Hey, Greg. Welcome back to the John Sanchez Show, a new stock, 780K, which would Jason, gone to Sanchez's wealth management. Once again, we finished with the loss of 141 on the Dow, a gain of 35 on the NASDAQ, and a big old goose egg on the S&P 500, closed in at 5344. All right, we're talking about what happens, what will life be like for you as a surviving spouse in the event of obviously the passing of your loved one? So we just started to get into this, we're going to try to hustle through eight different areas. So the first one we're on right now is, again, the first thing you need to be aware of that may change is the income side of things, right? You may be facing a significant income change. And the example we gave is if a spouse was collected a single life pension payment, you know, through purrs or through an employer, whatever it may be, and they selected single life instead of joint life, again, you could see that payment come to an abrupt halt. So first thing you want to do, check and see what you signed up for. Many people do not remember what they signed up for when they took their retirement. I find that all the time. So that is something you want to absolutely discuss and discover what you did. 'Cause again, many people do forget that. Second one is the social security benefit. Now the surviving spouse, of course, may be eligible for social security survivor benefits that can give a little bit of relief, but that gets really messy way beyond tonight's discussion. You know, again, there's a number of different scenarios, but bottom line, look at your social security statement. And as we always say, go down and talk to our local social security office over on VASTER, there are phenomenal minimum women down there, and they can kind of outline things and discuss with you how the social security benefits work, the ins and outs of them. The pension benefits, again, very similar to what we talked about, check on to that. And then the life insurance, remember a lot of times people get confused on this that when you receive a life insurance proceed, in other words, your spouse had life insurance on, he or she, they passed away, your insurance company is going to give you, meaning yours because it is now your benefit, you're the beneficiary, they're going to give you a tax-free check, dollar amount does not matter. So whatever that insurance company hands over to you, you do not have to pay income taxes on that money, depending upon the amount and depending upon the size of your state and so on and so forth, they're potentially, and right now it's pretty tough, but they're potentially could be some estate tax issues that are due on that. But again, remember each of you and your spouse can have a little over 13 million, so combined over 26 million value of your state before those estate taxes are due. But one thing you want to talk about, of course, and think about is what you're going to do with that life insurance. And that's where someone such as ourselves can sit down with you and say, all right, is there debt we want to pay off, what's life going to be like, so on and so forth? But just remember, it is a tax-free paycheck, that tax-free check that's going to be coming to you. So loss of income, social security benefits could potentially change, pension benefits change, and then the life insurance. Under number two, Jason, the expense side of things. - Yeah, just real quick, back to the life insurance and pensions, right? There are some work that you can do to take a look and see what a single-life payout is from your pension, but also use some of that added gain in not choosing spousal to add term life insurance, right? There's some other ways to at least, you know, try to find out what's the best payout for you. And, you know, again, that's something that we can certainly take a look at for you. Maybe buying some life insurance in lieu of a spousal benefit or something along those lines can mend the gap for certain folks, depending on what your income needs are. - Looking on the expense side, certainly funeral burial costs, those run the full gamut. - And they're expensive. - Right, and most don't do a lot of work preemptively, right? Unless it's a known, you know, the process, oftentimes when you're older, you're maybe looking at this, but if it happens to folks who are younger, they're not spending a lot of time on funeral costs. You know, something that advisors can help with too, right? That can be part of what they offer folks is at least understanding what some of the costs can be and help prepare for those. Housing costs, other living expenses. - Can I interrupt you one quick thing? Let's not forget, we have a lot of clients and this is a great idea. Prepay their funeral costs, funeral expenses. So that's another good thing, sir. - Yeah, for sure. And, you know, the many of the costs, the budgeting, the housing costs, the expenses, right? Depending on where you are in terms of your financial planning, right? Some people may use quicken. Others have advisors that we're doing active financial budgeting, et cetera. You know, it may come as a shock or you may have already known what your normal housing and expenses can be. Very much to your point. If one of those income stops, can you afford those other items? Can you afford the housing payment or the car payments or some of those maintenance numbers that come out of nowhere? Do you have a proper emergency fund if something like that happens? But living expenses, all of those items change. Quick number rule of thumb, we use as a 85%, right? If one spouse passes away, typically expenses are still 85% of what they were as a couple, right? When your spouse dies, you don't heat half the house, right? You don't just buy half the amount of food. You know, the water bill doesn't get cut in half, right? So all those things, 85% is typically sort of industry standard for how much are my expenses posted on the past. - And let's, that's a great plan. Glad you brought that up. Your expenses don't go down that much when you lose a spouse. But what we find a lot with clients also is they, many times, you know, you pass away later in life. So you're usually empty nesters at that point. And we hear this all the time. Hey, you know what, we're sitting in a 2,500, 3,000, 4,000, I just had one the other day, 4,000 square foot house and it's my husband and I, right? That's it. And we close all the bedrooms and we live in the living room, our bedroom and the kitchen. That's about it. So it was already too big of a house when you had a spouse. Now it's a really big house when it's just yourself, but the carrying cost, right? Especially the property taxes and so on and so forth. That's the other thing you need to factor in in your planning and say, hey, if one of us passes away, can the other spouse handle the carrying cost? And that's where something like life insurance would come into play there. So a great point that you bring up about, yeah, still cost a lot to maintain. And that goes for all your other assets, right? Things that require, you know, cars with the insurance and so on and so forth. So good point there. - So tell me about debt. - Yeah, let's talk about debt, debt management. Well, yeah, well, he ran into this one a couple months ago with the passing of a client. The joint debt, here was a scenario. Husband dies, wife never really established credit on her own, even though they've been married forever. He had three credit cards. One of them was a joint card. I believe it was a Costco credit card. Which I, what is that? I think that's a visa if I remember right. But anyways, when I met with her, and unfortunately they did not plan ahead of time. So this was kind of the right after his death. And you know, reality set in about the financial side of things, he died very abruptly. And I said, look, you gotta be prepared because when you contact that credit card company, guess what? If that card is under his name and there was a balance, it wasn't big, it was like five grand. But if there is a balance, that credit card company legally and most likely will cancel that credit card 'cause it was under his credit, under his social, so on and so forth. But yeah, they're still gonna come after you for the balance. And so it's kind of the worst of all worlds. You gotta pay off the debt because they, in many cases, could come after you. Usually they don't, I haven't seen that. But many times a credit card company can come after you as they're surviving spouse. But more importantly, she didn't have any credit. And so she has to go out and, you know, I gave her some ideas of how to go out and start establishing credit. And again, this is somebody that's in their 60s, but this is very, very common. So just be prepared that, and also mortgages. If you have a house that's just under your deceased spouse's name, there's a good chance, very unlikely, but there's a very good chance the mortgage company could say, you know what, you didn't qualify. You weren't on this loan and so on and so forth. You don't have any income or you got very little income. So therefore, we're calling your loan. So once again, the other major life change. And then the medical bills, something else, of course, we deal with all the time. Haven't seen too many disaster situations. I don't know about you, Jason, you know, if someone's on Medicare, most of it seems to be taken care of. But, you know, I remember when my mom passed away, you know, a number of years ago, my father called me up just obviously in tears after, you know, losing his wife of, you know, almost 60 years, but he was saddled with about $20,000 in medical bills that Medicare did not pick up in miscellaneous things. And so you've got to be prepared for that. You know, that's a lot of money. And I mean, 20,000 is nothing nowadays when it comes to medical. So watch the joint debts. Watch the medical bills. Yeah, I mean, jumping from there, we touched on trust. We touched on estates, the probate and estate process, right? You know, as we've talked about before, if assets don't have a, aren't funded through a trust or they aren't attached to an IRA where they've got beneficiaries, good chance that you're going to be dealing with a probate judge or a will process. That is just a letter of instruction to a probate judge, you know, doing some of this preemptive planning. Again, we've had lots of shows and podcasts that touch specifically on this process for sure, but inheritance, right? Those are things that are helpful to, you know, at least have an idea of how that flow is going to work, who were the beneficiaries on accounts, who do those assets and estate taxes, as we mentioned, for most shouldn't be a problem. And hopefully that continues to be the case. But, you know, your estate is high enough, there could be estate taxes that are due. Certainly something you can work with your CPA advisor, et cetera, to take a look at. But those are just some of the things that pop up. The probate process is not fun. It delays things, it delays you potentially getting income from items or access to items that could help you pay some of those expenses that you thought you owed, merely because it's wrapped up in probate. - Absolutely. All right, we come back, we'll hit on point number five, the emotional and psychological impact of losing a spouse. Kristin Snow, please wrap us up in the right now traffic center, my dear. - Welcome back to the John Sanchez Show on this talk, 780K, would you like that song as much as I do? - Don't say it, rockin' away. Swing it, dancing around that chair. - Exactly, yeah. - Okay, good memories of that one. Good memories of the old club and days. - Right, exactly. - All right, folks, we're talking again about a situation that's very difficult to talk about, even for us. And that is, again, how do you plan for the loss of your spouse, all the different aspects of your life that are gonna change? So we're gonna go on to our fifth point here and hustle through these. The emotional and the psychological impact. Now, what we always recommend to clients, and I'll be honest with you, rarely does this happen to the T, but we always recommend, don't do anything major, meaning changes to your financial life for a period of six months. I have some that no matter what we say, they're ready to make changes that maybe, well, like that one client has mentioned a moment ago about the credit card situation, you know, he passed fairly quickly, but it was a long situation with cancer, and they kind of saw it coming, it was in and out of remission of cancer, et cetera. So they had been planning for this. So she was ready, I mean, she literally made a major move in her life in many aspects, just within a couple months of his passing. I've had others again that do listen, and you know, they wait a while when it's exactly six months. So everybody's situation is different. Just know that mentally is very difficult, again, dealing with the loss of your spouse, and then making major financial situations, like, yeah, you know what, I'm just gonna sell my house, or I'm gonna close out all my investments and go travel the world, relax, just let time heal, let your financial advisor know as soon as possible what has happened, and then sit down, 'cause we have to immediately code the account that, you know, so-and-so has passed away, so on and so forth. So just hold off on any major financial decisions until you're of sound mind. And the last point on the emotional and psychological side, don't hesitate to ask for help, right? Especially you men if you lose your spouse. Most men hate asking for help. This is the time you wanna bring together your friends, your family, your financial advisors, your attorney, insurance professional, et cetera, and let everybody work for you. Everybody loves you to death, and they want the best for you. You may not be, again, in the right frame of mind and make major decisions, but, you know, hopefully you've got a great team that's looking out for your best interests, and they can do that. So be careful of the emotional and psychological impact. Number six, Jim. - Yeah, long-term financial planning, right? Now that, you know, may you had a plan in place with your spouse, right? And now that they've passed, things need to be changed. Potentially, trusts need to be updated. Beneficiaries need to be changed. Again, you know, reaching out to your financial advisor, or CPA, or prepare to help you update items that need to, you know, be looked at now through a new lens. A bunch of different ways we could go with that specific topic, but I think overall, you know, you may need a new will, you may need to need update the trust, like I mentioned. So there's just a lot that goes there, but something you should be thinking about. You had a plan in place. That was a good thing. You execute. Now you start to think about the plan for you going forward. - Perfect. All right, our seventh point, the tax considerations. Again, your filing status, obviously, is gonna change. You're not gonna be filing single, which can have, in many cases, negative tax impacts to you. So once again, just like letting your financial advisor know when a spouse has died, let your CPA know right away. Another little gotcha that is out there. When it comes to the tax-free exclusion of selling your primary home, remember, if you're married, you can stay, as long as you've been in the home two out of the last five years, you can sell and make a half a million dollar profit tax-free, state and federal, right? But when you become a single taxpayer, now things start to change. There's a different, very complex set of rules. So be very careful if you're thinking of selling your primary home. Make sure you consult with your financial advisor/CPA and really lay out a plan as to when you should be selling that from a tax-free exclusion standpoint. Drop us up at number eight, my friend, I think we did it. - Yeah, the legal and administrative part, right? Surviving spouse need to update property, car titles, those types of things where you may have been joint owners on a lot of these assets that need to change to an individual. And again, these are tough things to do and unfortunately, part of the closure process, right? In re-titling and starting to move forward, but obviously that takes a lot of time. You may want to change your healthcare proxy or things along those lines. If your spouse was there to be the one to decide on what doctors do, if you're ill, you may now need to assign a new one because they're no longer able to do that for you. - Very good, great advice. We've asked our marketing manager to go ahead and turn this into a blog. I think there's some great information here. And don't forget, you can pick up our podcast anywhere that you listen to your podcast. So it'll be on our website, sancheswalthmanagement.com, probably in about two to three days by the time. Gets through compliance, right? - Yeah. - Great job, Jay. We'll see you everybody tomorrow. God bless, have a great evening. - This program was sponsored by Sanchez Wealth Management. The material in this program was intended as general information only and should not be taken as specific investment tax or legal advice. None of the information on this broadcast was intended to be a solicitation for the purchase or sale of any security. Further information is available by contacting John at sancheswalthmanagement.com or 775-800-1801. John Sanchez offered securities and advisory services through independent financial group LLC, a registered broker, dealer, and investment advisor. Remember FINRA SIPC. Securities offered only in states, John Sanchez is registered in. Sanchez Wealth Management LLC and independent financial group LLC are unaffiliated entities. - America, we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. At Grand Canyon University, we believe in equal opportunity and the American dream starts with purpose, by honoring your career calling, you impact your family, your friends, and your community. The pursuit to serve others is yours. Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University, private, Christian, affordable, visit GCU.edu.