Online Estate Planning with Renee

Michelle (00:32)

Welcome back to Decluttering 55 Plus with Michelle Passoff. Here we address conventional clutter such as papers, clothes, and other stuff, but we do it in an unconventional way, not only to be neat and tidy, but to open space to move and manage life goals without obstructions so we can achieve what we want and need and dream. Moreover, at Decluttering 55 Plus with Michelle Passoff, we take on next level clutter.

Next level clutter are areas of life that are confounding and confronting. So we sweep them under the carpet, put them off another day or forever. These areas of life include resetting health and fitness regimens, digital decluttering, preparing your side of your life story, healing, letting go, and creating relationships, deciding where to live and what to do next in retirement, and even pre-planning your final arrangements.

Also, we want to get our financial and legal matters in order. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Our intention is to motivate you to take the initiative to leave a legacy, not a mess. So let’s get busy making room for what matters. Today’s topic is online estate planning. We’re delighted to have with us today, Renee Frye, the co-founder and CEO of Gentrio.

Gentrio is an online software provider of estate planning tools. We will explore with Renee the many ways this online entity can not only make doing your estate planning accessible, but affordable. Also, we take a look at what other features are available through Gentrio to help us plan ahead and move forward responsibly. A graduate of Penn State and Harvard Business School, Renee has had an illustrious career in business and politics, and she brings all of that

to help teach us today what she has learned and perfected. So welcome, Renee.

Reneee (02:32)

Thank you, Michelle. Nice to be here.

Michelle (02:35)

Good. Can you elaborate on what Gentrio is?

Reneee (02:40)

So first the name Gentrio. So we chose the name Gentrio to me because to us it means three generations. So many of us are caring for maybe aging parents, but we also have children as well, as well as taking care of ourselves. And so we wanted to be able to help people plan for life. People ask us about, was it to estate planning? And it’s like, well, okay, but it’s life and estate planning because

All of our lives change. We have all kinds of new things that happen to us, and that’s why you have to care about going across generations and being there for everyone that you love throughout life.

Michelle (03:20)

Yeah, it’s a lot. ⁓ It’s broad. ⁓ Before we dive into all of that, you have a lot of talents and a big resume of different companies that you have worked for and things you have done across your career. How did you land on an estate planning online tool for people to do their estate planning? How did you land on that?

Reneee (03:45)

a lot of people start companies because they see a problem and they decide, well, no one else has fixed this problem. So I should be the person to do that. And that’s literally what happened. My sister and I went with our parents to do their estate planning and they paid $10,000. And so when we walked out of the meeting, the two of us were talking and we said, wow, it’s amazing. Someone hasn’t started something online to do this. And then two seconds later, we looked at each other and said, we should do that. And then it turned out that

It really was the culmination of so many things we both had done across our careers. So I had done a number of startups. My sister had worked as head of marketing for the National Association of Home Care and Hospice. And so given our background, we thought, wow, okay, this is something we really could do. And then we met our CTO who we worked with for numerous years, but he had just paid $10,000 to close his grandmother’s estate, which was only worth about $5,000.

And then next we met our state planning attorney and she said, I’ve always thought there should be an online solution for this. And so all of that kind of came together with perfect timing. And so that’s how Gentrio was started.

Michelle (04:58)

Well, it’s a practical solution to a problem. If you only have in a state of 5,000 and you’re spending 10,000 to express your wishes, it doesn’t make sense. So that begs the question, what’s the difference in price and otherwise of going to Gentrio versus an in-person attorney?

Reneee (05:19)

So we at Gentrio, we only charge $150 for the first year, and that’s all of your documents. So whether you need a will, living trust, and forever will, your healthcare proxy, your power of attorney, all of that’s included because we know that people don’t necessarily know what they need, but once they get started, they learn along the way. And then what we do is we help them save all of those documents and other important information in their digital vault. And so,

That’s why we have a 92 % retention rate over three years because people now use us as that home for not just all of their documents, but the help for when they’re facing things like moving to a new state, caring for aging parents, or maybe getting married. And so, where we’re different is that you can update your documents anytime because life does change. And whereas a lot of lawyers, they do fantastic work and we work with a number of lawyers.

But you’re probably going to be paying in the thousands of dollars for documents. And then when you need updates, you have to pay again as well. And so what we work with people to do is be able to become that one home for them as her life evolves. They keep coming back to Gentria.

Michelle (06:30)

You make a point that your will is a living document, is something that can be changed and should be changed or reexamined over time ⁓ while you’re still alive, is that right? How often should you reexamine what you’ve already decided on and see if it’s still relevant?

Reneee (06:49)

So common advice is maybe every three years, but we actually suggest people take a look at things yearly. And the reason you want to do that is that, I don’t know about you, when we were fun at dinner parties, when we go out and talk about estate planning, if you’re like, oh, I did a will 20 years ago and my kids were born or, oh yeah, they’re actually now, you know, 22, 23, they’re adults. And so we try to encourage people to understand that, you know, this is something that our life is fluid.

So if you have new assets, maybe a new home, maybe a new car, things like that, those type of things go into your estate plan, maybe new bank accounts, something like that. And so we encourage people, just like your taxes, you do that every year. At the same time, maybe take a look at your estate plan just to make sure you have to, if you do have to update it, you do that. And then also one thing that’s really important is a healthcare proxy.

It’s part of an estate plan and a healthcare proxy just so that it’s accepted at the hospital or by the doctors should be updated every two years. And so that’s important because if you take in a healthcare proxy that’s 10 years old, the hospital may not accept that for legal reasons because yeah, and people don’t realize that these organizations, if it’s your bank and it’s a power of attorney, they want to make sure that that’s the most.

up-to-date document that you can have because if you walk in with a 10-year-old power of attorney, there’s probably a really good chance it’s not going to be used because you’re dealing with people’s money and the bank or the credit union is in charge of protecting that. So they want to make sure all of your documents are up to date. So it’s really good incentive for making sure that you do check on things yearly.

Michelle (08:37)

I did not know that, so I’ve just learned something I hope everybody out there has too. Can you explain for those that don’t know what is, so you have your will, which, what is the contents of will include? And then what is a healthcare proxy? And then there’s a financial proxy or what do you call it? A financial surrogate. A power of attorney. So could you explain those three entities and are there other entities that go into the body of documents that you should have?

Reneee (08:56)

attorney.

Michelle (09:07)

in preparation for anything that happens to you.

Reneee (09:11)

Yep. So first there are documents that you use while you’re alive because people, when they hear estate planning, they think, it’s just when I pass away. Not true. Not true. Not true. So the healthcare proxy, that would be the document that probably your doctor, when you go in says, okay, we need you to assign who your healthcare proxy is. And the healthcare proxy for Gentrio has a number of different things in it, like your living will, your HIPAA compliance. And so

That’s the document that you’re allowing other people to see your medical records. You’re allowing someone to make medical decisions for you if you are unable to do so. So if you go into surgery and you can’t make those decisions for you and something happens, that’s where you want that health care proxy. And also during COVID, that was a document that became really important because so many people were having to go to court to say, okay, well, I want life sustaining measures. want

a ventilator for my mom or dad, and there was like a five or six day wait, which was too long and people, it was just a mess. So having that one document while you were alive will allow people to make healthcare decisions for you the way you would want to make. And then the financial power of attorney, it’s often called a power of attorney, that’s to allow someone to make financial decisions for you. And so a lot of times, ⁓

where we see it used as if an aging parent. Like we used a financial power of attorney as our dad was developing Alzheimer’s. Thankfully, while he was still a sound mind, he named us as powers of attorney so that we could help our mom with making sure that the house payments were getting made, making sure that all the assets that they had worked so hard to build were taken care of. This is a very powerful document. So the one thing we always tell people is that when you name someone as a financial power of attorney,

you’re giving them access to being able to use your assets. And so this is something where you want to make sure that those documents are always up to date, that you have a good standing relationship with the financial power of attorney, they know what they can do, what they can’t do. And so those are two of the documents while you’re alive.

Michelle (11:28)

And

moving over. When should you start to create these documents? I know I talked to a lot of baby boomers, people over the age of 55, and they do all the right things. And then it comes to, well, what did you do with your essential paperwork, like your will and your proxies and your power of attorneys? And they stop there. What is the reason people don’t complete those documents? What do you find? What stops people?

That’s all!

Reneee (11:59)

People always think they have till tomorrow, right? And people are like, I don’t want to think about death. And it’s like, okay, death and taxes, they’re going to happen. And so what we tell people is like, while you’re healthy and hopefully happy, get your things done so that you can tuck them away and just check on them and make sure they’re updated. Because too many people, can tell you, Michelle, we get emails every single week from people who didn’t prepare.

And then there’s a word called interstate. And if you die interstate, the state’s laws decide how your family, relatives, who gets your money, who gets your house. And so instead of you making those decisions, the state just made those decisions for you. And so when we tell people that, there aren’t too many people who want the government making their decisions for them, right? We’re like, you’re doing great.

Michelle (12:49)

You can be under 55 and start to create your will, right?

Reneee (12:54)

And we tell people life inflection points are a great time. and say if you just got married, now you probably want to name your spouse as, you know, who might inherit things, make your healthcare decisions. If you just got divorced, those folks tend to be very inspired to make sure that person is not the person getting those things. It’s those life inflection points that we really encourage people to tackle. But we tell people, like, look, everyone over 18,

needs to do something like this because even during COVID college kids, but for those over 55 in the folks that you reach, really what we tell them is, look, you’ve worked super hard for all the things across your life. Make your decisions so that someone else is making those decisions for you and get it done.

Michelle (13:40)

You know, that’s really the thing to stay focused is on. You work hard, work your tail off, creating a great life for yourself and then not to manage that properly so that it can be passed down to your loved ones or that you can be taken care of when you’re sick or unable. There’s a job into when you’re talking about ⁓ estates and wills and trusts and proxies.

Reneee (14:01)

once

Michelle (14:08)

and it changes from state to state. And this website will address the state changes. And I think everybody should go to Gentrio, have a look around, see what it has to offer you, ⁓ don’t sweep it under the carpet like we talk about here. So the best thing you can do is get in action, go to computer, Google it, and have a look. We don’t have a lot of time left for today.

Renee, but maybe we can have you back and we can talk further about all the ⁓ other ⁓ assets there are on Gentrio so that you can have all of your paperwork, so to speak, or your non-papier work in order and who you should give access to so that ⁓ if anything happens to you, you’re covered.

Reneee (14:58)

I’d

love to. That would be fantastic.

Michelle (15:01)

Well, that’s all we have time for today. So I want to suggest that this is just the beginning of a conversation that we hope will get your legal house in order. There’s something to be said for dotting those I’s and crossing those T’s. And here’s an incentive. If you go to gentrio.com and use the code DECLUTTERING55, you’re in for a big discount on your first year with Gentrio. Next, go to www.

55plus.com and sign up on the Let’s Connect page so that we can send you notifications about news you can use. We also want to hear from you, what you’d like us to cover. We want to hear about your successes and challenges. Let’s go grow younger together. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram and subscribe to us on YouTube. Check out RHSTV.

Please encourage your friends and family to do the same. Let’s grow this community and invigorate our lives. Tune in each week wherever you get your podcasts. My new book, Decluttering 55 Plus, Wisdoms to Create a Legacy, Not a Mess, is now available finally on Amazon and at www.layitflat.com. Buy one for yourself and a handful of gifts for your friends, and by all means, buy a couple for your parents.

It’s a beautifully illustrated motivational book of prompts to learn new things and get things done. Well, that’s all for now. This is Decluttering 55 Plus with Michelle Pasloff signing off. Have a clutter free day.