Welcome And The Big Problem

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Influential Advisor Podcast. Today we're sitting down with Brandon Hayes, a certified financial planner with 26 years of experience working almost exclusively with widows. Brandon is the founder of Compass Financial Group in Evansville, Indiana, and the author of You're Not Alone. We're going to get into why the standard planning process breaks down when grief is in the room, why the advice widows hear in those first weeks is often wrong. And what it actually takes to walk beside someone when everything is falling apart.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

Brandon, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today? Great. How are you, Gabe? I'm doing great. We're so glad to get to talk to you. The first question, Brandon, I wanted to ask you is could you just tell us about your story and what led you to where you are today and how helping widows became a focus of your practice?

Brandon’s Story And Calling

SPEAKER_00 1:00

When I was 13, my father passed away from colon cancer. My brother was nine. It happened pretty quickly compared to typically to colon cancer. That obviously had a tremendous impact on my life. During that time, going through my teenage years, witnessing my mother grieving, seeing the impact a financial advisor had on her life during that time was really eye-opening for me. As I came of age and I realized I don't know what this financial advisor actually does. They had a really impact on our family. So I wanted to know more about that. Over time, that's involved into one, I wanted to understand, like, well, because I didn't understand the financial part at 13, 14, 15, 16 years old, but I was starting to learn more about how the world works. And we had a middle class lifestyle, and my mom didn't work. My dad drove a bus and I had a was an insurance adjuster. So we went from him working, her staying at home to she started after he passed away, she picked up his part-time income or his bus route. And really financially, our lives didn't change from my perspective. I was wise enough to realize, okay, wait a second, here. We've got this nice house, we've got a pool. I'm still wearing the same type of clothes we wore, I wore. We're still doing all the sports and the activities and the vacations and the food, everything. Nothing really changed financially. And that didn't make sense to me. I know my mother was meeting with their financial advisor. His name is Don. And through that time period, I could see her relying on his advice, assuring her. And then she would assure us, like, hey, I'm not going to have to go full-time work. No, we're not going to have to get rid of the house. It was like, wow, I don't really understand how that's happening, but I know this person that she's working with does that, and they need to stay does for a living. Also, I realized during that time is that something that I wanted to be involved with, even though I didn't really know what it was. I had a front row seat to see a widow of young children deal with the emotional aspects of losing their spouse, but then also the financial aspects, and then trying to understand that and pushed me into this career. And then what I found over the last 26, almost 27 years is that that experience I had as a young person, a teenager, of dealing with death and grief at such a young age, it prepared me and gave me a skill set that I would have been able to use for the last 25, 20, 26, 27 years with my widow clients. That when they're in that phase of life, when everything's falling apart, that I'm very comfortable standing in that space with them or sitting with them in that space and just walking through that with them. It's become a like a ministry, a mission for me to do that.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

That's so important when somebody goes through an experience like that to have somebody that understands and that can help them through that time of their life. And so, Brandon, you've recently written a book called You're Not Alone. Can you tell me about the idea behind the book and uh who's it meant to help and to serve right now?

SPEAKER_00 4:08

The inspiration from the book came from really it just I felt like I had a story to tell. And I felt that one, my experience having enough time to look back over life and go, wow, I do believe God uses all good things, all things for his good. That to look and go, I have been able to work with widows over the last quarter century, have an impact on their life. Very much like my mentor and the person that helped my mom through that time and our family through that time, is I've been able to pay that forward and help other widows during their times of crisis and through that grief. When I look back and say, well, what's the most rewarding part about what I've been doing, what I continue to do and have done, is being able to help those people that at that moment in their life feel really helpless and to see that transformative process over the years where they gain their own personal identity back financially and be a part of that is just extremely rewarding.

SPEAKER_02 5:09

Yeah.

The Silent Crisis In Widowhood

SPEAKER_02 5:10

Brandon, you call financial widowhood a silent crisis. Could you tell me what you mean by that? And why does traditional financial advice, why does it fail widows?

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Originally, when I was thinking about the book, in fact, I was gonna call the book the silent crisis, and it evolved to more you're not alone as I continue to write it. But this because the silent crisis is when someone's going through that gut-wrenching grief of losing a spouse, there's really not a lot of space to make decisions that feel your or comfort to make those decisions. I felt like, okay, here I know how to do financial planning. I'm a certified financial planner. I've been doing this for a long time. I've retired hundreds of people, I've worked with num uh tens and tens and hundreds of people over the years through their finances. But the financial planning process traditionally doesn't fit working with a widow and working with someone that's going through that much difficult emotional grief because the financial planning process is very, you go from this step to this step to this step to this step, and you work through a process. Well, when you're dealing with emotions and loss and all the hard stuff in life, you can't put that on a spreadsheet. There's no time. Financial planning has a timeline. Grief doesn't necessarily match. That timeline doesn't match. I think where I saw that there's a crisis is a lot of widows going through the finances after a loss are more confused and feel more inadequate because the the traditional financial industry that I'm in doesn't have a process, doesn't know what to do with someone going through that phase. Or it's something where we say, well, just come on in and sign the forms and we'll transfer the account over. Well, that widow can't even possibly get up off the couch and drive because she's using every bit of her energy just to survive that day. Yeah, it's not as simple as that. It's not as simple as that. So there's a lot of just giving grace, understanding where someone's at, and everybody's different with their grief. It manifests its ways in very you know in a lot of different emotions that sometimes don't always make sense, which can lead into bad financial decisions. But it also you got to have somebody that says, Okay, I have an idea of what's going on here. Let's just take it easy, go slow, understand what's happening, and walk beside them, walk with them. So we just we start sometimes right there, just the basics.

What Grief Does To The Brain

SPEAKER_02 7:46

Well, you talk about how grief it can literally shut down the brain's executive function. So tell me, because you have such perspective on this, what's happening to somebody in those first months after they lose a loved one?

SPEAKER_00 7:59

There's a fog that grief creates. I've worked with so many widows over the years that are highly intelligent, people that have are been professionals, executives, ran households, done a lot of great things. When the body, when every ounce of energy is being used to just uh survive that day, to get through that end of that day. Something like going and getting death certificates or figuring out health insurance or where it counts are or what bills need to be paid, there's no emotional energy for that to occur. And then it makes those decisions that even though those tiny decisions just feel overwhelming.

SPEAKER_02 8:40

Yeah, I'm sure that could feel impossible without somebody that's there to help and to even do it for somebody.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

They don't necessarily do anything necessarily for people. That's where we're just trying to encourage them. It's just like, hey, where you're at is okay. We're in baby steps mode. We don't need to do anything complicated here right now. Let's just focus on your grief. Let's deal with the here and the now, the stuff that we need to get done. And I think that's also a big part of where there's a that silent crisis is what the financial industry and the attorneys and the accountants and every everybody wants to hurry up and get stuff done. It just needs to slow down because this is a point in time where these people, most of the people I work with, are not real comfortable making decisions that can have a long-term or profound impact on them. It's okay just to slow it down and nobody's telling them slow down. Let's just slow down. We don't have to get in a hurry here.

SPEAKER_02 9:32

Brandon, you say that grief has a voice and it lies. Can you tell me about that?

SPEAKER_00 9:37

Yeah, it does every time. I think we all have that internal conversation going in our heads about just life in general. And then when we're consumed with loss, the narrative that gets created that I've seen over and over and over again is a narrative of lies. And those lies come in the form of I've had million-dollar clients come in thinking that they're going to be broke in a month or that they're going to get their home possessed in 30 days, or that they don't have any money to pay for the funeral, or stuff like that. What would seem irrational is really just grief lying. And it screams, it screams. The biggest thing that I talk about in my book is the fact that one of the consistent lies that I hear that comes from grief is I've got to change residence. I got to move. I need to get rid of the house. I got to go somewhere else. And that is probably the biggest lie that grief tells most people early on, and even for a year, a good year into that loss. It does. Grief has grief lies, and I see it over and over again. But I take the time when I do is when I see that, is to try to talk to people about what emotions drive in and trying to understand where they're at and where those thoughts are coming from. 95% of the times it's coming out of the fear that the the lies that grief's telling them.

What Must Happen Right Away

SPEAKER_02 11:03

Can you walk me through, okay, so somebody loses their spouse and everything's feeling urgent. What actually needs to happen right away and what can wait even when they're well-meaning family members or friends are saying that it can't?

SPEAKER_00 11:17

Any big life change, everybody around you seems to have an opinion, especially in a situation like this where you may have the funeral home telling you you need to do this, you may have family members telling you you need to do that or not do this, and so you're getting bombarded with a lot of unsolicited advice. And then you've got your own questions that you're trying to figure out and answer yourself. I tell a lot of people that go through this is hey, let's get the funeral home paid for, let's identify where your money's at, and let's get some death certificates and everything else, you're good. We've got time to get the of the rest of it taken care of. Let's focus on just grieving, just focus on mourning, be there, be present in those emotions right now because nobody's gonna come get your house at the end of the month, nobody's gonna repo your car, they're not gonna turn your water off, and they're not gonna shut your electricity off. But these are real things. This and that's that lies that the grief tells people. Just get death certificates, deal with the funeral home, and then let's just circle back around on just gathering mail and stuff over the next month or two. We can transfer accounts, we can do that. Most stuff really doesn't have a quick timeline. I think the sense of loss creates a sense of urgency on a lot of us and most people, especially widows I work with. I think a lot of times when I'm working with someone is just slowing everything down, saying, you know what, we've got time for that. We don't have to make that decision today. That's not something that we need to do right now. And there's a tremendous sense of relief there because that's probably the first time they've heard that because everybody around them is telling them what they should do or shouldn't do. And I'm just saying, hey, let's just grieve. Just this is grieve. We got a couple of small things to do here, but we can handle some of the other stuff as it comes.

SPEAKER_02 13:09

It makes me think that some of the people, the well-meaning family members that are around them, they could be listening to grief's lies as well. And so because you've helped people go through it, and when you say you can slow down, these are the only things you have to feel. I can really see that would bring some relief in that moment.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

That's probably the biggest thing in the early week or two after I've met with them in my office, after they've passed or the funerals occurred, is you know, there's a sense of what do we need to do? What do we have to do? I feel like I need to do this, this, and this. And I'm like, if you've done these couple things, where are you at with the funeral hole? Where are you at? Did you get death certificates, or here's how many you need to get? It's slow stuff. And if there's some things that people sometimes feel like they need to do, one or two things, they'll be like, Yeah, go ahead and do this and do that, just to give a sense of control. Just get a sense of, okay, I'm a little grounded if I've got the basics in front of me.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

Brandon, can you tell me about the financial landmines that widows sometimes step

The Notebook That Prevents Mistakes

SPEAKER_02 14:07

on? And on the flip side of that, the money and the benefits that maybe go undiscovered because they don't know everything to look at at that point.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Some of the landmine, well, first off, let me start off with some of the things that I always encourage people to do is get a notebook. Just the old-fashioned pen and paper, get a notebook where everything is you're gonna have to be able to keep track of stuff in one place. Because in this first three to six months, your mind is gonna fail you. It's not an if, it's when it will fail you. Is I just tell people, write everything down. If you got questions, write them down. If you've talked to a customer service rep, write it down. If one of your friends tells you you should do this, write it down and then let's talk about it. Then let's talk about it and go through these things that you're hearing and that who you've talked to and stuff like that. Because I've seen people you talk, you're on hold for 30 minutes. Well, most people don't have the energy. I don't have the energy to be on hold. I don't have the energy either. Yeah. I don't have the energy to be on hold for 30 minutes sometime, let alone someone that's going through some of the most heavy emotions in their life to have the bandwidth to even cope with that. I always say, get a notebook and let that be your command center, let that be your memory outside of you to keep track so that way you can physically refer back to stuff. You can actually go, yeah, I did have that conversation with him yesterday when your mind's questioning whether or not you made that phone call. Because that's what happens. And even driving during that time in the early season is difficult. I've seen studies that talk about that. The number of accidents that goes up after a great loss is huge. Our mind is just so distracted, just trying to get through that. It doesn't leave much room to make decisions. And we're talking about stuff like some of the landmines, health insurance. I've seen people here, we had one in my office the last few months. She canceled her Cobra insurance because it was too high after her husband died. Then she went to the Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act was going to be more than the Cobra. And so then she can't, so then she didn't do that and tried to get back on Cobra. They wouldn't have her. It was just chaos. I was trying to work through, like, well, just take time making sure that the health insurance aspect, because there's a grace period in there with all of that stuff that allows you to not make those mistakes. I've seen people make bad investment choices. I'll see people come in, they've already done stuff, and I'm like, well, okay, what was going on here? Well, so-and-so said this was a good idea and this and that. And the next thing they've got their money locked up for seven to ten years. They didn't even really know what they had done.

SPEAKER_02 16:42

How does it factor into that that maybe they hadn't been looking at the investments? Maybe it was their spouse that was handling all that, and now all of a sudden they're responsible and they've got family members talking to them about their investment ideas.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Yeah, and that's what happened. Again, it's like a lot of that unsolicited advice that people get and with good intentions. It's always with good intentions. But yeah, it's just it's making quick decisions that don't need to be made quickly. I see spending mistakes a lot of times early on. That's one of the landmines. I'll see people come in my office after the funeral. They've just already spent $20,000 on prepaying their own funeral expenses. And I'm like, whoa, you needed that money right now. $20,000 was not it could go a long way. You don't maybe plan on passing away for 20 or 30 or 40 years. Why we don't need we didn't need to spend that. I see two types of widows. They bounce between these two types of to what I call one a river widow. And a river widow is one that's just got to be immediately starts making decisions and doing things, right? Like a river. Just constantly if I if I stop or slow down, I'm gonna have to deal with the grief. And it's a protective mechanism. I'll see them run out and buy a car. I'll see them go but do some stuff. It's constant activity. And what happens is as they go through the grief process, that's when they look back and go, man, what was I doing? Why did I make those decisions? I was trying to keep myself so busy that I didn't have to cope with it. And then on the other side of that is the what I call the root widow, like a tree root. I think it's a beautiful thing. I used nature examples of roots and rivers because these are not bad things. This is just what exists. And there is beauty in being a river widow. There's a beauty in being a root widow because I like to think of a tree's roots that are running right beside a river or stream, that there's a little bit of both that goes on. The root widow sometimes is so paralyzed by the grief that they make no decisions. In fact, they'll be the type of client that I'll work with that they won't answer the phone. They won't call in, they won't return emails, they really just go and isolate. And that's a normal thing with grief for some people at a level of all of us. I think it's knowing, okay, hey, I've got somebody that's paralyzed here. Hopefully they're willing to come out at some point and interact at some level. Again, trying to force somebody through that process when they're in that phase and that's how they're experiencing their grief. That's where that traditional financial planning doesn't work. There's just recognizing what type what's going on with the person you're working with and then trying to help them through that, some of those landmines and just where they're at early on.

Hidden Benefits And Found Money

SPEAKER_02 19:23

Brandon, what about hidden money? I've been paying attention. Are there things that maybe they would miss if somebody isn't helping them to find out?

SPEAKER_00 19:32

Years ago, I was working with this a younger widow, and her husband tragically had died in a car accident. And it was just a terrible story. She had two younger daughters. That in itself was just tragic. And she was working part-time. He was an engineer, had a good job, handled most of the financial stuff, but both highly intelligent couple, wonderful people. We're working through this, and I think she was in her 40s at the time, early 40s, and we're going through, we're we're taking our time. We're probably six or seven months past his passing. I asked her, I said, Do you happen to have a uh one of his old pay stubs? And she was like, Well, I might. We were able to dig through a lot of the stuff that I had her bring in. And sure enough, I had suspected it because a lot of times with employers, they'll give you, like for one dollar a month or something, they'll give you accidental death and dismemberment insurance, or they'll give it to you free. If you buy the group insurance, they'll tag on the accidental. They had paid her out the normal life insurance, but they hadn't paid her out the accidental death and dismemberment. I got on the phone with them there, with her in the office, and we called up and we said, Hey, I think she's entitled to this benefit. And we sent them the death certificate. And sure enough, they were very surprised because they were right. It was an additional $500,000 that she had coming to her. And it really was life-changing for her and her daughters. It allowed her daughter's college to be paid for, allowed her to stay part-time work. It wasn't somebody was trying to take advantage of her. Is the system's not set up for HR department of the company you worked for, said call the insurance company. The insurance company says call the HR people. There's not necessarily an advocate in either of those places looking to make sure you get everything you're entitled to. And so that's where it's really important is to just like you almost can't take everything at face value when you're gathering all the information, looking what's out there. All the way from your husband was part of the horticulture society when he's paid his $150 dues. There might be a $5,000 life insurance policy going along with that. That's one of the things I help people with in part of that process is just really just taking the time to go over everything that's out there. In this case, there was an extra $500,000. And I see a lot of times $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, $25,000, $50,000 of money that was just not necessary. No one knew about until after the death. And a lot of times it gets stumbled upon. I take the time to go through tax returns and I have them bring in their mail and all this stuff because a lot of times in some of that junk mail, there's actually really something in there. I help my client. I'm just kind of played detective in that way.

SPEAKER_02 22:17

Without that detective work and without you going through and looking, it seems like the companies aren't going to call and say, hey, you had this. It could really literally be missed, couldn't it? At a time when they need it more than anything.

SPEAKER_00 22:31

Absolutely.

Passwords Digital Accounts And Access

SPEAKER_00 22:32

And not only is it missed, and I think today, and I'll transition a little bit here, is one of the things, especially because we're in such a digital world now, is that you can sign up for stuff and you have maybe have benefits or something that come to your email and you don't get a newsletter. You don't get a piece of mail about it anymore. If your spouse has passed away and they're getting emails, and if you don't have access to their email account and you don't have access to their phone or you can't get into their phone after they passed away, that's a real roadblock that today's widows have that, like my mom didn't have. There were some cell phones back then. So everything that's where I go back to having that notebook, keeping those electronics going, the phones, the emails, making sure there's a place where we have got usernames and passwords and stuff. I had a client that her husband had a Bitcoin account, a cryptocurrency account. Well, she didn't know anything about it. The good thing is he had put it on his notebook. He had made a notebook that we had talked about, and he was prepared. Now trying to get cryptocurrency transferred over to her name. It actually wasn't that difficult once we were able to identify it. But she didn't know it existed. But he had made a notebook. I see stuff like that all the time. You know, sometimes there's PayPal accounts, there's online accounts that even just have money sitting in them that one person in the family's been using, and they don't necessarily share that, oh, hey, I got $300 worth of benefits sitting in there. It maybe is irrelevant.

SPEAKER_02 24:00

Just from you saying that, it makes me think that I need to go and make sure everything's listed in a notebook. And so if anything ever happened to me, my kids would have access because PayPal account, they'd have no idea to get to that.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

Yeah. And with the the amount of you got Zell, you got plaid, you got PayPal, you got Apple Cash, you got Apple Pay, you got we live in a digital world. And a lot of vendors want to use one way, one type of so you end up opening three or four different accounts and tied up. The digital aspect is so important to have it have written down somewhere, and then having your key person or your trusted person, your spouse in this case, know where that information is. That becomes an anchor, not only to the spouse that's passed, but to the surviving spouse. They can see their handwriting, they can see their scribbles, they can see their passwords. I don't know about you, Gabe. A lot of my passwords have meaning and they have to do with my family. You know, those are sweet little nuggets that might seem like you know, nothing, but when you're going through that part of life, that's the those are some of those things that you're glad you've got a hold of. Having that notebook and having some of that information down is is key before and when then obviously going forward after

Helping Parents Without Taking Over

SPEAKER_00 25:20

that.

SPEAKER_02 25:20

Such an important point. Brandon, tell me about this. When adult children are trying to help a widowed parent, you say that protection can become problematic sometimes. So tell us what healthy support actually looks like.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

Healthy support, this is a tricky one because and I say tricky because I it's always done out of love. And maybe once or twice over 20, 40, 30 years of doing this, have I seen a family member come in with an axe to grind. But what they come in with is that protective love. If I'm a father like you gave, I can be very protective and it's coming from love. The protective side of that from someone seeing that from the outside doesn't always look loving. What happens is this is a time of tremendous emotional pain for the family. So not only do I have the spouse that's hurting, but maybe it's the son or the daughter that's now lost her father. And they're hurting, they're grieving too, but then they're also seeing their parent grieve. They're seeing their parent vulnerable, maybe the most vulnerable they've ever been. And it's scary. I can remember seeing my mom when after my father passed away. I can remember seeing her grieve and her vulnerability. And as a teenager, that's terrifying because the one that's supposed to be strong is falling apart. I was fortunate mom was able to hold it together during the day, but her grief came at night. I see the adult children come in with their parent, and I can see that the look in their eyes, like, oh my gosh, mom or dad can't function. Mom or dad is, I need to step in here and protect them. I've got to start doing this stuff for them. I've got to make these decisions for them. And it's all done out of love. Unfortunately, sometimes that protective love crosses a line, and it crosses a line because uh I think a lot of times you'll see, I'll see adult children almost make the same mistakes that the spouse will make. They just jump into action. Hey, we've got to change this, we've got to sign up for this, we've got to move that, we've got to do this. That's not healthy. I was talking to someone the other day, and after had read the book, and they were like, I need to apologize to my mother-in-law. And I was like, What the what do you mean by that? And they said, after I read the section on adult children in your book, they were like, My wife and I did that to my mother-in-law. We saw her grief and saw it as her incapable. And so we just started doing stuff for her. We started getting everything together and doing everything. And he said, Now, four years later, she's incapable of doing anything for herself. And that's where good intentions end up turning up bad in a bad way, because when I've seen it done right, is you get a child that's in there to say, Hey, I'm gonna stand in the gap right now and help you get this stuff done, but this is still your stuff. This is still your decisions. These are the things it's helping, but with the intention of handing it off or being a part of, not taking over.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

So it's moving towards independence instead of creating dependency.

SPEAKER_00 28:28

That's exactly right. It's easier said than done, right? We're talking about a situation where sometimes the strongest member member in the family's past, and everybody's scrambling around. And like I said, it comes out of the love. But a lot of times it's just I try to explain to people, hey, this is good. Let's have this is a great way for you to be present and part of this, but let's talk about where you're at now in the process, where we want to be, how that can change. And that book, the book explains that. I talk about that in the book about is looking at the different phases of where that relationship is and how it evolves with your parent. Because children can be a tremendous help. In fact, they're almost a necessity early on to help get through some of those simple things in the beginning, changing account titling and getting online or doing some stuff. Or the biggest thing is helping in the digital aspect. My mother's 81 years old now. She's as sharp as they come, especially and she challenges herself to stay on top of technology. But I was working with her here a couple of years ago on Venmo. And I thought she was going to lose her top trying to get her Venmo account set up. We were able to work together and she got her Venmo account and everything like that. But I think that's where the adult children can really help their parents a lot of times if they see them struggling with the digital aspect, is to really be able to jump in there and quiet some of that, gather some information, look through the junk folders, look through the emails, and try to start gathering information that that the surviving spouse just doesn't have the capacity or energy to deal with.

SPEAKER_02 30:00

Yeah, I could see that being very needed, necessary, and helpful support.

Solo Widows And Trusted Allies

SPEAKER_02 30:05

Yeah. Is what about widows who don't have children or family support? And so what vulnerabilities are they facing and what safeguards are you recommending to help them?

SPEAKER_00 30:15

To call it the solo widow is that's the tough one. The solo widow is the one probably keeps me up at night. They typically don't have that inner circle to lean on. With the solo widow, they've got the complexity of the decisions and everything weighs on them heavier. I'm the first one to recommend people have someone that they can trust, be involved from the beginning with them. I had a client the other day over the last six months after she lost her husband, they were bringing a couple from their church that she was close friends with. The church couple sat with us, the five of us met for probably three, four, six months over the last three or five months together. And I loved having them there because, and I loved the fact that she was willing to, like, hey, I just need some eyes and ears. Because that's what I'll tell people, especially a single widow is that doesn't have family around. Who do you trust? Who's somebody that you trust their decision making and that you can trust? And let's get them involved in this here. Not to help you make decisions, but just to provide that support to here, be another set of eyes and ears and involved in this. Because again, I said grief has a voice and that lies. Right. What somebody thinks they hear or what they thought they understood is very difficult in the early stages. And having another third party around to be a good set of ears and eyes for somebody is invaluable in that for a solo widow or someone that doesn't have family involved.

Scams Catfishing And The Gold Trap

SPEAKER_02 31:44

For somebody that doesn't have family or somebody around them that's involved, I feel like that could lead to some pretty scary vulnerabilities and scams that might come up. Can you tell me something about the things that people should be aware of and watch out for?

SPEAKER_00 31:59

This is the one that really is not only is it sad, but it's sickening, is there's organized crime out there. Gabe, honestly, if you told me this was real probably 10 years ago or 15 years ago, I'd been like, yeah, whatever. That sounds sounds like a good movie or a novel or something like that. But in today's digital world, technology with what it is, organized crime has how has found a way to prey on widows. And it's sickening. And it really is. And honestly, I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it firsthand with the people I've worked with and our clients in our office. The organized crime, what these characters, bad actors do, they'll scan the obituaries. They'll scan the obituaries, they'll look for these widows and that are vulnerable. They'll play the long game. They will spend months investing in a relationship with this new widow. And they know the psychological space that they're in. Um, so they feed on it with the end goal is to get money out of them. I've had clients lose 50, hundreds of thousands of dollars by giving it over to these scam artists, these criminals. It's terrible. Yeah, it is. It's usually they're approaching them because they know they're lonely, they're vulnerable. They also know in the fact that if a new widow is engaged in some type of online relationship with the opposite sex, there's a bit of shame that goes with that. How can I be talking to someone after I just lost my spouse?

SPEAKER_02 33:23

Even if they recognize that there might be a problem, they don't want to tell anybody or admit it.

SPEAKER_00 33:27

Yeah, they don't want to tell anybody about it because they're ashamed. They're like, oh, I'm gonna dishonor, or people saying, I know I'm not ready, and I do know I'm not ready, but I still, this is the only thing that feels good in my life right now because everything else feels like crap right now is falling apart. Criminals, they prey on that. They know that. We had a client that's here in the last year, and this is the sophistication of what they'll do. We had a client call in, wanted to buy gold, wanted to transfer to buy physical gold in their IRA. So they had opened up an IRA at this gold company, a legitimate gold company that had IRAs. So we transferred out, I think it was $100,000 or $150,000 to this gold IRA company that was a legitimate gold company. This gold company then part of their stick was that we'll send you physical gold. They send it to you that much gold? We'll send them the physical gold, right? So it would still be titled in an IRA, but they would send the gold to them and so that they could hold it and keep it in a safe place. So they actually had it. This is all legitimate. The scammers in this are talking this person through this process or having them buy the gold out of fear. The market's gonna fall, the world's gonna end, you need gold. They get them to transfer. Then they are communicating with our client about when is the gold coming in. They know the gold's coming to my client's address, physically being mailed to them to sign off on. They meet them at the door. This happened here literally 15 miles from my office. They met the delivery person at the door with the already the conversation with our client is we're gonna hold this gold for you because you don't need this much gold in your house and it's not safe. The scammers are at the house. The scammers were physically at her home to take the handoff of the physical gold from the legitimate IRA gold company, and she gives it to them because, again, she's developed a relationship with them, she trusts them, they're there. They say, Hey, we're gonna hold this gold to keep it safe for you. You don't need this in their house. They walk out of well, they walk off the porch with $150,000 in physical gold.

SPEAKER_02 35:45

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00 35:46

Never to be seen or heard again. They got away with it. They got away with it. I've had clients on the literally start to get scammed on the phone and are looking at their bank account, watching the money go out of their bank account when they realize they're starting to get scammed. I've had them drive to the bank and keep the scammer on the phone so the bank can stop it before they get off the phone and kept them on the phone just to keep the conversation going so they could get to the bank and have the transaction in reverse and shut it down. The organized crime that goes after widows is unbelievable.

SPEAKER_02 36:21

Brandon, that is terrifying because it makes me think of my mom and how if she believed that something was legitimate, how easily it would be to go down that path and to think that this is just what you do.

SPEAKER_00 36:34

The human mind is a tricky thing. I talked to one lady two weeks ago that had just read the book and she was talking to me about the scam part of it. Because the catfishing is what it's called, is where basically these fake people create an online romance and blah, blah, blah. Well, she's telling me that basically she knows that she's involved in a catfishing scheme with somebody that's online. She knows that she's not going to give them any money. She knows it's a crook. She knows it's a criminal, but they flatter, they communicate with her. I'm okay with that being part of the deal. I know they're fake. I know what, but her desire to have that attention, to have those feelings after a loss of a loved one, that's how real it is.

SPEAKER_02 37:16

That's the vulnerable side because you wouldn't normally make that decision, but all of a sudden you're in this completely new situation.

SPEAKER_00 37:23

Never. I had another client that literally was in my office. She had already given them $50,000 from her bank account. She comes into my office unexpected. I need to talk to you. She sits down, she's in tears. I said, What's going on? She said, I just left the bank. I've got myself in trouble. She said, I was just about ready to take out a $100,000 loan and wire the proceeds of this person I've been talking to on the phone, emailing with the last six months, and I know I'm being scammed. I said, Let me see your phone, what's going on? And sure enough, I read the emails and everything. And my goodness, it was a love story. And she was in love with this person, this supposedly person, right? Because they're never in person. They're always overseas or doing something like that. I said, You gotta block this, we gotta shut this down. She was like, right. She owned up to the $50,000 she'd already sent him. She was doing this. Literally, Gabe, two weeks later, she calls my office to make a withdrawal for $10,000 or $15,000. And I'd already warned my people in the office, like, look, she's vulnerable. She's a vulnerable client. If she calls in with a transaction, let me know. Don't execute right away. So they came in and said, Hey, she's trying to take some money out. I said, Okay. So I called her. I said, Hey, what's going on? Well, sure enough, she was going to send him another $10,000 or $15,000. And I said, Hey, this is a scam. We went through online. We did everything. She was like, Brandon, I know I can't help it. Oh my gosh. She couldn't help. I worked with Turner, her husband, for 20 years. I know this woman. This is a strong woman. But that's the lies that grief will tell us. That even when we know something that's so wrong, that our desire to feel at peace and feel love and to feel that make that pain go away will allow cause people to do just irrational things. And eventually I end up having to call the Department of Safety on her. I had to get the police to go out to her house to get her to stop. And that was actually finally what caused it. Is I had them do a wellness check on her. And I told them why. And sure enough, that was having the wellness check was the finally the kind of the straw that she was like, okay, I need to get help here. I've got to tell somebody what I'm doing. I need somebody to hold me accountable. I can't keep doing this.

SPEAKER_02 39:33

That's it's unreal that somebody that's just lost their spouse is having to deal with those things too. But you also show how important it is to have somebody that's looking out for you and that understands and that's on your side.

SPEAKER_00 39:47

Yeah, and the solo widow, it's easy to see an obituary how many family members someone has, and they know it. These criminals, they're good. It's sad, it's sickening.

SPEAKER_02 39:57

Brandon, I'm glad that you're getting the word out on all these different issues to help people that are facing this situation.

How To Reach Brandon

SPEAKER_02 40:05

For somebody that would like to get in touch with you or to get a copy of your book, how should they do that?

SPEAKER_00 40:10

Uh the website is www.ynabook.com. There's content on there. We'll continue to have more content. And then if you want to email me directly, the Brandon at ynabook.com is you can also email me through that.

SPEAKER_02 40:25

Brandon, so good speaking with you today. And I learned a lot and lots of things to think about for my loved ones and how to help in different situations. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks, Gabe.