Ep 242: Drama-Free Finances: Taking Control of Your Money with Brooke Dean

So, um, so Brooke, let's talk, um, let's talk about the three separate areas.

So you, you help people with investments, you help people with retirement and which is sort of the part of that, but, um, and you help people with their trusts and estates, um, for people who feel like I don't really need to set up a trust because I don't have enough.

I mean, what would you tell those folks? Because I hear that a lot.

Yeah.

Trusts are a hard one, especially because in Canada, depending on what province you live in, a lot of the times it doesn't make sense to set up a trust.

So, yeah, I would say it absolutely depends on what your situation is.

But if you have, you know, a certain amount of money, I'm not going to even put a number on that.

But if you have enough wealth that you're worried about it.

I think it's really important to meet with a lawyer along with a financial advisor who does help with trust and estate planning and make sure, okay, does it make sense to have this? Would we have it before we pass away or would it happen after? And again, that would be set up in the will and everything like that.

So I think just having those in place is really important.

And I know in the U.S. like trust, there's a lot more that goes into trust planning, which is fantastic.

I wish we actually had more of that up here.

Yeah, that's interesting.

I didn't know that.

And you're bringing up something important because obviously here, anyway, if you have real estate, you want to have a trust so that that can be just passed on easily.

But if you don't, there are some things like your 401k because there's a beneficiary there.

So if you didn't have a trust, it will go directly to that person or an IRA.

But some of these things I found were important in the context of a trust and some less so.

Can you comment on that at all? I mean, am I going down a weird path? Am I not even making sense? I don't know.

no no it makes sense again i think it depends on the state you're in um again with countries depending on that so it's more depending on the certain situation but yes you absolutely want to make sure like check your beneficiaries because that's the number one thing i always hear is like someone passes away or they have a breakup and all of a sudden they haven't updated their beneficiary And then all of a sudden they pass away.

That goes directly to the beneficiary and you go, oh, well, in the will, I had it like this.

And again, depending on state and everything, sometimes the beneficiary will override the will and go outside of that.

So depending, you want to make sure like that's so important.

Have your beneficiaries up to date.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great tip.