Estate Planning Events, with Scott Schomer

0:02 The process of inheriting can be a roller coaster of excitement to find out or disappointment to lose a loved one. The excitement to find out perhaps that you're coming into a large chunk of money. And then the frustration that comes from seeing how much of the money goes to attorneys' fees, legal fees, court costs, and perhaps even battling with other people who shouldn't get any money of the money or as much as they do. And that's why we want to avoid probate we can. I'm really excited to talk today with attorney who I met in court pre-COVID, one of the leading attorneys does litigation as well as estate planning. And he has really pivoted his firm to Schomer estate and wealth advisors where I focus on helping prevent probate and help people keep as much of the wealth as possible. Attorney Scott Schomer, Scott, thank you so much for joining us today.

0:46 Well, Bill, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. One of the things that put me in put you on my radar early on was pre-COVID you were really committed to doing estate planning events to the public. And I went to one in El Segundo. I want to say about 5 6 years ago. COVID obviously made live events for all of us much more difficult. I know you do both some online as well as live events on estate planning. Talk a bit about as attorney how you offer that to the public, how that works for you, and how that works for them.

1:15 Thanks for thanks for bringing that up, Bill. I you know, I spend so much of my time in my day educating people on what it is we do, how you want to protect yourself, how you want to protect your assets, how you want to grow and develop your assets. To me seminars and the webinars and my teaching at Loyola Law School are really just sort of a growth and an extension of all of that. Even the most experienced people in this field need to be learning, need to be keeping up with the latest laws, need to make sure they're they're doing things correctly. And I really look at education as sort of a communal event. Let's all get together and talk about the things that are impacting us that could impact us. And let's figure out best way cooperatively to find a way through and to make it as easy as with the least amount of stress for your family and for your loved ones. That's the most important thing. So, I probably started doing what I call long-form seminars to the public about 15 years ago. And it's not unusual that I'll do upwards of 25 to 50 a year. What we typically do we'll we will reserve a space.

2:38 Sometimes we do them in our conference room. Those are smaller crowds, usually about eight to 10 people. Or we'll go to a larger hotel facility or sometimes a realtors organization and we might have upwards of 60 to 70 people in a room of that size. And I have lots of PowerPoints. I have lots of what I affectionately refer to as dad humor where I try to basically educate you, entertain try to come at the material in several different ways including describing it as a series of stories that you might relate to. So, stories such as, okay, here's Bill and Mary. Here's a typical client for us. Let us show you what they do it wrong. Let's show you how we do it right and how it all turns out. And the hope is that you see some of yourself in there. Realize, gosh, you know, I haven't really thought about this. Gosh, I put I put more time into thinking my thinking about my vacation this year than I did to I think my estate. Maybe I ought to spend a little bit of time thinking about my estate to protect my family. but it's it's a delight to do them. There's nothing that makes me happier than watching eyes light up when I explain to them how all how some of these concepts work and love the ability to take really arcane stuff that really we inherited in part from jolly old England and the king back way back when and bring it into the modern day and make it current and interesting and relevant you.

4:18 Right? That's the most important thing. I've been to [unclear] events over my last 6 years in particular and I would say it is a spectrum of on one end it's just purely a lead generation, hard close, you're in the room and they're going to close they want to close you for a contract right then and there. To I would say yours are more at the other end of the spectrum which are more educational and for those people it's appropriate, they're there, they can ask questions, they can step forward. And those who aren't know they're not it's not for them, they're going to move on somewhere else. talk a little bit about how do you structure the events and how you try to use that both to I you know, one hand help people who are interested and I think also give people space to make a decision on their timetable.

5:02 Great question, Bill. I mean, this is this is the old adage about you can you can bring a horse to water but you can't force them drink. Right? So, I don't I don't cotton well to hard sales pitches. I never have. And you know, I'd much rather empower you and educate you so that you understand what you're doing and let you let the choice be yours. When client comes to this naturally because they see it's in their own best interest that's where we develop what I affectionately refer to as raving fans and nothing makes me happier. So, the way we basically structure our seminars is we invite people in the room. We'll have some light refreshments. Try to mingle with them. We try to take a little survey just sort of one-on-one. I'll I'll call somebody like you and say, "Hey Bill, what brought you here today?" And is there anything in particular that you'd like to hear about or like to discuss? And I'll I'll gather some of that information, but the seminar itself is structured is I start with the basic idea of spend a few minutes in my chair. See carnage that comes through my office on a on a on a daily and a weekly basis.

6:22 Let me give you a flavor for some of the things that are bad. Right? including the fact that you know, LA County has the single largest, busiest probate court system in the world with an with an estimated 85,000 annual filings if you can get your head around that.

6:40 Mhm. all of which are essentially losses. So, let's start with let's talk about what the problem is. Let's talk about who we are and what we bring to the table. But talking in sort of those 10,000-ft view statistics and numbers and problems doesn't really sort of give you sort of well, what does that really look like? How does it translate into my life? Right? So, that's where I shift to the story telling part of the story. Okay. Bill and Mary have a choice. You're the couple they have a choice. They can they can do nothing. They can just leave their state as it is and hope all for the best. Or they can plan. So, let's see what it looks like if some things go wrong. If they do nothing, if they rely on the government's plan, on the government's system, which is the law of intestacy and probate court.

7:34 What could go wrong with that? How could that How could the state of California possibly cause a problem with that? Yeah. And again, I come back to my simplest saw of all and that is most of us would like to leave our assets to our loved ones when we're not here anymore. And when you do it through the probate system, when all you do is a will or you do nothing, probate is a lawsuit. Why do you want to sue yourself? Why do you want to file a lawsuit and get your kids involved in a lawsuit just so they can receive your legacy and your wealth and your wisdom? It ends up being just a colossal mess. So, I try to show folks here's what that looks like, here's how long it takes, here's how here's what it costs, here are the 15 ways that it can go wrong, here's what a mess it is. And then I basically just posit the question to them, question to them, how do you feel about the government system? Do you like the government system? Do you want to leave your wealth in the hands of the government to make sure that it gets handled correctly? Now, let me show you what it looks like if we do it in a different way. So, we talk about the alternatives, we talk about especially if you own real estate, a living trust, talk about powers of attorney, health care directives, all these things, how they avoid all this stuff, how it saves you money, how it saves you time and effort, how especially if you are blessed with I was just at a fabulous fundraiser this weekend for the autistic community. If you're blessed with an autistic child or special needs child or maybe a child that is just challenged and not good with their money, and we set up an amazing structure to protect that child, to make sure that the money is being supervised, and they always have a place to live. You have so much more freedom when you just sit and do a little planning in advance.

9:30 So, I here I can contrast, I again I start with here's the chaos I start with. Let me show you what it looks like through the government system. Let me show you what it looks like better. And then I lay it on the line. Our preference when we do planning for people is I have one of the worst things in the world the hardest things that we struggle with is at the end of the day a lawyer only besides his expertise or her expertise only can sell his or her time. And that usually translates to the billable hour. What we do with a with planning is we try to do it almost always on a flat fee basis. Quote you a fee, we tell you what it is coming up front. if you look at our fee and you say to yourself, "Nah, I think I can do this by [unclear]." Well, God bless you. I've told you the things you need to think about, but God bless you if you think you can do it. as I like to say, I'm a I'm a shade tree mechanic. as I like to say, I'm really good at taking my car apart.

10:29 [laughter] I'm not so good at putting my car back together. But you want to do it, I'm glad I'm giving you some free education, but if you'd rather handle it correctly, here's what our fee is. It's going to be a flat fee, and we do that cuz we want you to come to us as much as possible. We want you We want to be your first phone call when there's a problem. When you walk out my office in 4 years from now, you buy a place in Palm Springs, and you go, "Oh, was I supposed to put that in the trust?" Call us up. Call us up, we'll talk to you. We'll take your call. We're not going to send you a bill. we're going to we're going bring you back in, and we're going to review your trust. So, we very want it We think of our planning clients in particular as our family, as our as our protectorate tribe. We want to be there for them. We want to make sure the plan works correctly. So, we lay out sort of our whole ecosystem. Here it is, and we would like to help you be your protectorate. We would like to help make all this work smoothly. We would like you to have the confidence it's going to work. We would like to meet your children. We'd like to educate your children how to run this trust. Do seminars on that as well. Trusty School we call it. and if nobody understands financial investing or advising, we like to educate you in the academic fiduciary system we use

11:53 Mhm. to protect and preserve and grow your wealth. We can we can basically be a whole spectrum and really be one of the first calls that you think about. it's a really lovely place to be when we have clients and we have them come back which most of them do with updates or when somebody dies and we're able to pass this along absolutely nothing makes me happier. we've basically taken care of your family. By the way one of the things that I did not discover as a little sort of random little side until later in my life. not too religious, but I was raised Catholic and I've I served as a deacon in the Presbyterian church I belong to now. But I discovered about 25 30 years ago that my last name in Hebrew means guardian of the realm.

12:50 For sure. Shamir is the guard. Shamir is the guardian. That's exactly right. And so that's really a big part of what we see sort of baked into my soul is I'm here to protect you and your family and help you with things go better. You know, I love probate court but I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. I mean, I love Shamir seeing somebody like you, professional that's there to help other people.

13:13 Mhm. Saying hello to people and working with the judges and all those folks but it's not a journey that I want most people to go through. Again, why do you want a lawsuit? Imagine well, it's just silly if you think about it.

13:27 I agree. clear for me cuz I can't make this statement cuz I'm not an attorney. If I was a law professor and you are a law professor at Loyola Law, I put this like first question, first quiz, and it's pass or fail the whole class we get it wrong because customers all the time say to me, "Oh, I don't have to go to probate court. I have a will." So, true or false, a will keeps you out of probate court. True or false?

13:52 False. Primary purpose of a will is that it is a set of instructions to the probate judge about how to administer your estate in probate. By definition, if you have a will and you have assets in excess of the small state range, you are going to visit probate judge.

14:18 And is I think that's the most common I see this all the time. People don't worry, I did a will. What I mean, that's it's better than not having one, I guess, if you do it properly. You know, it can also open other problems, but let's assume most of it's better than nothing, but So, the part about the estate planning and the reason why again you know, I'm so proud to have a chance to talk to you is I feel so passionately that you know, we all do like 80% of the preparation and we don't close the deal. And I can talk to customers and say, "Hey look, I see you have this property. It's not in a trust. There it goes. Your name is going to go to probate court. I don't really mind that. I mean, as a real estate agent, I'm better at that than most other agents are, but and really if it's in a trust properly, it's not much than a regular sale, you know, in terms of what you have to do. But you know, let's talk to an attorney. Let's let's get involved. Let's get educated on that. And it just seems that the gap from okay, I need to do something to actually doing it and executing it is so great. and you're obviously in the business of closing that gap, right? You put on seminars to get people there. Is this really you let people kind of self-process when they're ready or is there some encouragement? I feel like if I was in the back of the room with a stick and I hit the ones that didn't go forward,

15:35 [laughter] we help people protect their wealth and a long run we'd be their heroes, but I don't think that's legal in the legal world to hit people who don't stand up. So, how do you see yourself as that on one hand you want to encourage people, you're a father, I think a grandfather as well, I think you shared. So, you want to see people do the right thing. We're we're used to having to push people to do the right thing. How do you see that at the same time though you're an attorney, you don't want to be salesy, you don't want to cross that line.

16:01 Yeah, I mean that that's a that's a hard one and a struggle and I get I get frustrated with folks just like you do, Bill. I again, I'm just I've never been a big fan of the hard sell. I've always been let's meet the client where they are. Let's find out what's weighing on them.

16:21 Yeah. I mean, most people if they if they spend a little bit time reflecting on this stuff, know they need to do something. They know they need to protect their family. and they want to do the right thing. They want to protect their family. So, sort of the way that we try to break that procrastination lock for lack of better description, is first of all, again, making the education easy and free. So, come. Come have a cup of coffee, come have a cookie or a snack with us and hopefully you'll find I mean, I spend a lot of time speaking and talking. I try to be entertaining. I try to be both educational and funny. If you don't If I don't have an audience laugh at least a couple times during the seminar, I don't feel like I've done my job well. So, turn off the boob tube, let me entertain you for an hour and a half. So, that's the start. Second start is a little bit of a carrot is if you come to one of my seminars, we will open up our door and give you a private consultation. So, you know, we have attorneys in our firm that are billing from, you know, $400 an hour to I'm at $850 an hour. this is what we sell, but we will waive that fee if you're serious about wanting to do something.

17:41 Come on in, sit down, we'll serve you coffee again, chocolate's on the table, let's have a deep conversation that's all about you, not about us. Let's find out what's going on in your life and how I can be of assistance. so, those are our big things. And then, you know, the other thing I try to sort of boil it down statistically and you're you're in this business. When you look at probate fees in California not only has, besides the busiest court system, Los Angeles does, also one of the slowest. It usually takes a year to a year and a half, but also one of the costliest. So, the average cost to run a simple residence through a probate court is about 4 to 8% of the gross value of the asset. So, simple math calculation is you look around the South Bay, most houses are around about a million dollars of gross value. Look them up on Zillow on your basic reports. Well, to run that house through probate court for a year and a half, you're going to spend about 52 to 55,000 dollars. Right? I can do an estate plan for a fraction of that cost.

18:57 Right. Keep far away from the probate court. So, and that's a that's a million dollar house. If you have a two and a half million dollar house, you know, you're looking more like 75 to 80,000 dollars. So, why do you want to why do you want to subject your family to a lawsuit? And you know, I've had some families that have literally gone through multiple probates where you leave leaves the house to one person. And I've had cases where the beneficiary has died in the middle of the probate good having open up multiple probates.

19:28 Yeah. Just to process all the assets and get absolutely absurd ridiculous. So that's you know, your question was carrot and stick how do we get people to do this? By being kind, by educating them. by encouraging them come. Last opening of our free last point is when you come in for your first consultation. One of the things that we find that really kills that that drive come see us is that a lot of my colleagues will give clients giant piles of homework.

19:59 Yes. I want all this. I want all this. Not my attitude. My attitude is I'm sit down. Let's talk about what you're going to do. Right? Now we're still going to have to do some work together. And in fact, one of the things we pride ourselves on is we will bend to do it an average estate plan about five meetings. Make sure that we have every detail correct. We have every asset. So it'll take time, but for step one just come in and sit down with me. Right? You don't need to don't need to rummage through your house or gather everything. Just come see us. That's

20:33 I think for those I'm sorry. I think for those real estate agents watching this and who want to help encourage your customers participate one of the roles we can play is helping to gather information that we know through public records. You know, I've had clients who have you know, a house. They might have three or four rental properties, a second home. There's no reason why they should be pulling that together. We can pull the public record information and send the attorney the you know, the APN, the public record I mean the legal description of the property. we know an estimate of the value of the properties for them. These are things that we can help our customers just to speed up the process and be of assistance. And I also feel like we can kind of ride in the sidecar to helping curse them to go back to that second and third meeting and get the work done. Maybe sometimes when that the enthusiasm wears down a little bit, that we should be encouraging and helping people to see this through to the finish line because if we care about customers, we want to see them get the result they want, not just the paperwork done. You know, one of the things that I've seen as a real estate agent, I know you've seen as an attorney because you see this as [unclear] petition work that comes to you, I'm sure as an attorney, or you see in court from other firms that didn't finish the job, is are cases where somebody's created a trust and they haven't put the properties in the trust. They haven't financed it. So, they didn't maybe transfer the deed of property into the trust initially. I see it very commonly where a client will show me a package of a beautiful trust with a beautiful binder and on top of the letter from the attorney, "Oh, don't forget to notarize this and get it recorded." [laughter] The letter is right there in the blank the blank forms there. It doesn't happen. Or they buy property later as you mentioned or they refinance property, take out the trust, and don't put it back in. And so, one of those things is you know, you know, how do we make sure the customers execute that initial package and follow up? You mentioned it's five meetings or so.

22:23 And as a real estate agent, I often will call people and say, "Well, how's it going with Scott? How's he Is he taking care of you? Is this Is he moving forward? Do you have questions? Can I help in some way?" You must have a system as well. Again, you don't want to drag people in, but you want to nudge them a little bit. You want to encourage them. What does that look like? You have staff members, emails, reminders process? What does that look like to help people finish cuz it is a it's a lot of work. It's not It's not you know, it's not without doing some of the paperwork to get an effective plan.

22:51 You asked an absolutely perfect question, Bill. And really, I think this is one of the biggest problems even in profession. it's it's what I shorthand I affectionately refer to as funding. Okay? So, you made a comment about, you know, maybe you've seen or you have or seen another professional that, you know, send you off with a beautiful set of buying documents and they say, "Make sure you get that notarized and recorded." No. We record right here in our office, right? We are notaries. I'm a notary, my wife's a notary. half of my staff are all notaries. We keep our notary licenses up. We are going to notarize all the documents. We're going to hold the title. We're going to make sure you have all your assets. we're going to make sure all of that stuff gets funded and transferred. We don't feel like we've done our job until that certainly with the real estate. second big thing is that this is part of what led us about a decade ago to add and move into the area of financial wealth management. So, I can't tell you how many times I have seen people come in like a child a son will bring me "My mom just died. Here's her trust." He'll drop the trust down.

24:11 And I'll look at the trust and I'll say, "So, what's in the trust?" And he'll go, "I don't know, her property." And I'll and I'll say, "But there's nothing listed here." Right? There's nothing described in the trust. And this is the essence of Heggstad, right? is you have to have a you have to have the assets titled in the trust and then you Heggstad says you have to have a some type of description pointing to the asset. Or one of my other favorite ones is I'll get a trust and it'll say, "Oh, I got three accounts at Washington Mutual." Well, Bill, you and I have been long enough to know that Washington Mutual is a distant memory. There aren't any accounts at Washington Mutual anymore. And what happened to these assets? And so we end up with nothing and then we end up having to look at doing a probate plus a trust administration and it makes it just all that much easier. So, what's our system? How do we attack this? How do we deal with it? So, first of all, we start with a with really a five-step meeting process. It's really a six-step process. So, start with just come in and see if we're going to work together, right? It's no use. See if you like us, see if we like you, if we can put plan together. If that makes sense, you're going to come back for a second meeting, which can happen by phone or Zoom or in person, where we're going to make sure we're going to hand you a Redwell, we're going to make sure we have an account statement for every single one of your financial assets.

25:36 Third step is we're going to come back, and we're going to give you an outline, okay? meeting three. Here is what we see as the schematic of your plan. Do we have everybody's name spelled correctly? Is this everything you want? Here is a complete list of your assets, and I can't tell you how many times I've one of my team members will sit in one of those meetings and go, "Oh, you spelled Billy's name wrong because I gave it to you wrong." Or I forgot Susie got married. Or oh, I forgot about those three annuities I have over here. Or you didn't mean the place in North Carolina, did you? Is that supposed to be part of this? Yes, all of those things. So look, it's you know, we all do it, but that's part of why we built the system.

26:21 Mhm. Right? Meeting four, we're going to come back, and we're going to take a hard look at your assets. I'm going to give you my two cents as a financial professional of what I think. And then the beautiful thing is is if you choose to work with us, we are essentially the bank. We can open Schwab accounts. I custody my clients' money. The custodian that we use is Charles Schwab. So, we can literally open up accounts and initiate transfers. And the beautiful thing is that brings it all together. You're we're a one-stop shop. So, if you ever have any issues, you need money, you need transfers, one phone call, we got a whole team here that's ready to help you. We can deal with all of it. Last step, when we sign and you walk out the door with that beautiful binder and everything seems to be up to date, we don't quit there. At a minimum, we're going to reach out to you, Bill, in 3 years and say, "Hey, Bill, we'd really like to see you back." We don't charge you for that meeting. Just come on in. Bring your binder. Let's see how you're doing. Tell me you talked about your grandchildren last time we were here, Bill. Do they still live a couple of blocks down the street? Do you still get to see them as much? How are they doing? What's going on? By the way, last time we got together, you had these accounts, you had these this real estate. Have there been any changes? Is there anything we need to update? Let's make sure that we do this correctly.

27:47 The only reason we would charge you in these later meetings is if you say to me, "Oh, Scott, you know, last time I was here, I left everything to my brother, but I we had a fight. I hate him and I don't want to give him any money." And you don't plan. Okay, that's an amendment. We'll talk about that. Generally, we want to stay connected to you. We want to have a full picture of everything that's gone on. We want to help guide you to minimize your taxes. We give you tax advice. Think about best asset strategies. Make sure all of this stuff works together. With the goal here of first and foremost, we want to preserve, protect your wealth. More importantly, we want to grow it so that it's there to protect you in your old age, but also to leave a legacy to folks that you love and care for. Get them the education they need. Make sure their health care is provided for. Whatever's important to you.

28:48 Just to go back a little bit on what you said about the handling the wealth, which I think is great because one of the toughest people to get to retitle assets are wealth managers who aren't involved in that process cuz to them it's just a small administrative action that they don't get paid for. And unless you have a you know if you have your money split amongst numerous institutions, I find you're like a small fish in three or four different ponds where you're treated as a big fish in the one pond where you really have most of your assets, it's almost always a problem. And I've been guilty myself of discovering, "Hey, I never got I retitled what? Why did I not do that?" Well, because I talked to the guy who told me how to do it and I just I never followed up and he never saw it through. When you talk about Charles Schwab, I think that people need to understand that you're talking about the money is being institutionally held by Schwab or often LPL or there's like two or three major companies are like the banks to the big banks. Doesn't mean you're getting all Charles Schwab assets or Charles Schwab mutual funds. It means that they're the ones who hold the securities and bank the securities and then you can make decisions as what's best for you know where you want the money divided in essence and but Charles Schwab is acting as the holder of the securities from a banking point of view. Talk a bit about your service. What where how deep do you get involved with people as far as asset allocation, types of investments, you know mutual funds, stocks, ETFs? How detailed do you get involved or do you refer them to somebody who does that plan and you administer it or how's that look what's that look like?

30:16 Yeah, so let me let me start with that sort of the easiest place in it. even though I've been a licensed real estate agent and broker, I don't advise on real estate investments other than titling and helping you coordinate buy and sell. So, somebody comes to me and says, "I want to buy best apartment complexes." That's the type of thing that I would reach out to somebody like you for that way. I focus on securities, bonds, and stocks. So, I have a very It would be no surprise to you that I have a very systematic way to guide clients' investing. And it is a system that arises out of the academic side of the world, out of the University of Chicago.

31:01 Mhm. and it's based on a series of academic articles and principles that resulted in Nobel Prize-winning research. Some of it you sort of know instinctually, but it involves modern portfolio theory, it involves rational market hypothesis, it involves rebalancing, and something called the factor model. So, all these things have resulted in Nobel Prizes. What it means from a practical standpoint is that what I do is I build broad-based portfolios that are cut and tailored to my clients. On average, we invest in 13,000 different equity holdings both in the United States and internationally. it's it's really it's it's close to an index-style investing, but it's much more sophisticated. And on average, about 5,000 different bond holdings. So, on out of modern portfolio, we get the basic premise that diversification is your friend. We have 100 years of history. We can go back and show you if you build a portfolio like this over the last 100 years, this is what it's done, and here's how we can protect you.

32:21 So, but all of it is is designed and tuned to the individual person and their risk tolerance and their situation in life. So, for instance, I get somebody that comes in and says, "Well, I have $100,000 to invest, and I need I'm going to use it to buy a house in 6 months." Well, I'm not putting it into equity. Cuz equities are too volatile, right? that's that's something for a much more stable money market or maybe a diversified bond fund. but this is the approach and by the way when a court of law evaluates whether or not a trustee or fiduciary is is handling investments correctly the approach that we advocate and that we use, the academic approach that I sort of generally described is exactly the standard that they apply. they're looking for broad exposure, broad diversification. exposure to the to the proper factors including some small caps and US international holdings yard. So, I sleep very well at night and maybe the easiest way I can tell you this, Bill is the way that I guide my clients on how to invest is exactly the way that I invest, I invest my family's money and essentially everybody that works here. We follow the same system because I truly believe that it works based on the just on the vast amount of data that's available.

33:53 And just to clarify cuz I enjoy learning about that topic with you, but that's not necessarily part of the estate plan, that's maybe something that they can get the plan done with the assets they have currently through other institutions and I imagine it gives you an opportunity to look at that and say either A, that's close enough for now, let's put that in the back burner or B hey, we have some problems here we should talk about and make sure you understand that. Maybe today's not the day to deal with it, but at least let's get on your radar and we can follow up when we're done. Does that is that a fair assessment how it works or is it something that's required to do the estate plan with you?

34:25 No, Bill, you put your fingers on it exactly. That's exactly what our approach is. And a things to point out is that some of our referrals come from existing financial advisors.

34:36 Sure. And we play as I like to say we play nice in the sandbox. So, if you got somebody you like, they're not doing something reckless or crazy, Yeah.

34:44 We'll support that and we'll we'll we'll make sure your financial advisor gets the thing funded correctly. but one of some of the proudest moments I've had is I've had some very serious I've had some economic PhDs in my office. I had a senior vice president of very large financial institution and we spent part of meeting for and going through and saying, "Here's what I like about your portfolio. Here's what I don't like about your portfolio. Here's what you've done correctly. Here's a few tweaks I would make." And I've gotten incredible feedback on how correctly they are with our approach. they decided they're fine carrying on their on their own, but they listened to me, took a few tips. and that's okay. We don't have to work together, but the beauty of this approach is again, you're not familiar with either the planning or good investing and you're worried about being sold on stuff, we bring these things together. We make sure they all work together and we make it as smooth as silk for your family and your loved ones.

35:44 I think it's important to have somebody take a second look at things almost everything I you know I know I've had clients give me assets maybe buying a house or I looked at the statements out of curiosity or with the mortgage loans. I would get people's assets and I would say, you know, I know nothing about financial planning you know, other than my own assets, but I know this isn't right. I know you need to get somebody to take a look at this cuz there's just too much commission and churning for somebody in your circumstance. I don't understand why there's all these pages of activity for what you have and so I think it's important that you have that that knowledge and then the ability and then as I said, you know, most people will find that if you have your money at several you know, financial institutions, it's difficult. If all you're doing is try asking to change the title they're not easy to work with and I think that either you can pay an attorney you know or paralegal to do that it's expensive or do it yourself it's mind-numbing or sometimes having it in a place they can handle it for you like Scott offers is it's helpful. So again thanks for walking through that I appreciate that.

36:47 Yeah and I'll I'll give you a couple of quick examples before we leave. So I had two clients that came to mind recently is I had a lovely lady came in and she was about 75 78 years old and I looked at her and I said you know do you know what you're invested in? What do you think of your portfolio? And she goes oh I'm very conservative. I'm almost all in bonds. Have you looked at your statement because you're about 90% in stocks and by the way do you realize that a portfolio of this structure historically could drop as much as 50 to 60% in a given year? Well that's when she turned pale and went holy crap and nobody told me this. I had another couple in their 70s that came into my office recently and they had all of their retirement money in 11 stocks. I mean compare that to my $13,000 $13,000 stock portfolio. I mean and of course they were all the high flyers tech stocks so they're they're getting some good performance but you know you just need some bad news to come out of one of these stocks and your portfolio can take a major hit. So nothing else you're going to get my two cents on what I think. You take that advice we can work better together but if you want to do it yourself or you have somebody you love we play nice and we will help support that relationship.

38:08 The most important thing as you started this conversation with them to get home is making sure these things work together to funding. Are the assets inside the fund? We don't want to do [unclear]. You don't want to [unclear]. You They'll to make sure that the trust you wrote actually works. That's what it's all about.

38:28 Well, obviously you guys you cover a wide range of this space. We could obviously go on for a long time. I've I've kind of gone over time with your time. I appreciate so much your time. For anybody who wants more information, the website's schomerlawgroup.com [spelled out on air]. And if you want more information, just contact us down below. Phone number [phone number shown on screen]. And if you're you're driving and can't write that down, feel free to reach out to me. I'd be honored to make the introduction and make that work for you. And then lastly, before we go, on your website, you have a attend a free event. Talk a bit about somebody who does it. What does the rhythm of events? I know you offer some online, you offer some in your office. What does that look like? Somebody who attends a free event, what does that look like for them to participate?

39:13 Yeah, we have an on-demand webinar that's there now. It doesn't cost anything. You just click and you can watch me give a presentation. In addition, on a regular basis, we will post live events. So, we'll go to a hotel, we'll go to a conference room, and you know, you can register there right online. You can also call us. We're old school. We'll pick up the phone and it does not cost anything to attend. And like I said, we'll serve you some coffee and refreshments. And we'd love to have you. So, come get educated.

39:48 Well, I guess I met your firm or initiative just after meeting you to one of your events locally. It was very interesting when your associates ran it. Very informative. I think anybody would benefit from it, whether you need to redo a plan or do a plan for the first time. The more you learn, I think the more effective you can be. So, Scott, thanks again for sharing and really appreciate your time today and we'll continue the conversation in the future.

40:09 Well, Bill, I can't thank you enough and you know, the service you provide, getting education on a wide variety of topics out to the community. And for you to reach out and invite me is an honor and it was we had fun. I had a good time.

40:23 Thanks so much, [unclear]. Thanks so much. And for the rest of you, this was Probate Weekly. We get together every week with a new episode. Most usually from probate attorneys, though not as often with attorneys as accomplished and I think wide-ranging skills as Scott has, both in terms of probate and estate planning, avoiding probate, and wealth management, which is part of that package as well. But we do an episode regularly. Please let me know your feedback. Like it, dislike it, send me a note. If I can help in any way, please reach out. Call, text, or email. Or see me on social media at Bill Gross Probate. As always, make today your