Staying Above Water

Adria Starkey, Naples Trust Company

I read James Redfield’s “The Celestine Prophecy” years ago and I am awed by the role serendipity plays in my personal and business life. Since Dad passed away, I’ve spent several months researching insurance policies, investment statements, and bank records to help my mother find out where she stands financially. My parents are of a generation when women went from living under their parents roof to marry and live with their husbands, never being on their own or working at a job outside the home. The man of the house worked and took care of paying the bills, investing money, and making decisions about finances.

Half a century later, Mom and I are having conversations that boggle my mind.  “Where did you and Daddy invest the money from the sale of the business?” I asked.  “We gave it to that investment advisor,” she says frowning. “I never liked him and when we would meet with him, they mostly talked sports. “ So, we went through the rolodex, found his card and had a meeting that was not about sports, but about where is the money?

Here is the serendipitous part. While in the throes of sorting out my parents’ finances and worrying about overstepping my bounds and upsetting siblings, I am introduced to the amazing and talented Adria Starkey, President of  The Naples Trust Company. Adria has launched a program called WOW—Women, Opportunity, Wealth—a hands-on series of free lectures about What Every Woman Needs to Know About Her Financial Future. Wow.

The very first session was right on target.  “Women’s Unique Financial Needs” talked about how the world has changed and women are now the decision makers and most often, the surviving spouse. Adria asked the 25 women in attendance, “Where are your documents and what should be in place now in the case of an emergency?”

The answer to that question sure would have come in handy this past year. Honestly, we tried to get my father to tell us where things were when his health started to fail. I even bought a booklet that they could fill out, answering questions like the names of financial advisors, the account numbers for banks, and location of paperwork like wills, pensions, and insurance policies. Wishful thinking led us to believe there was plenty of time…

I came across the book with all the entries blank as I invaded Dad’s desk where as kids, we were never allowed to play. Punching numbers into his old-fashioned button calculator, I tried to establish a monthly budget that will allow Mom to stay in the home we all grew up in.  Again, Adria’s WOW Session 3 hit home. “How Much Money Do I Need?” was the very answer I was striving to find now that my mother’s social security benefits would be cut in half. The description of the seminar reads, “All the what-if’s can be overwhelming. How much do you need to live all the days of your life? Hear case studies as we discuss potential scenarios in your retirement years. A hands-on exercise guides you through the process of being your own CFO.” Wow, how things have changed.

Sitting in the audience at Adria’s second session, “Understanding Your Estate Plan and Legacy Issues,” I felt a camaraderie in the room as women nodded when the speaker Alison Douglas, an estate planning attorney with Cummings and Lockwood, LLC talked frankly about issues involving brothers and sisters fussing over what rights they have to family trust funds.  Alison’s frank anecdotes resonated with every woman who has felt the loss of a loved one and the sentimental value of the things they coveted when they were alive.

“You can have the most beautiful estate plan in place,” Alison said to the group, laughing that only an estate planning attorney could describe an estate plan as beautiful, “but if you don’t have proper titling, beneficiaries, and updated documents, it will not serve you or your family well.” She spoke of how circumstances change over the years with marriages, in-laws and divorce. She recalls her anguish at having to tell the children of a client that their mother passed away without signing any of the documents that would have left an estate for them. She deals with questions from worried siblings such as, “If my brother passes away, will the money my parents left for us be spent for his daughter’s future education or frittered away by shopaholic sister-in-law?”

Adria’s WOW series has been a tremendous education for me, if only to help me to ask the right questions of the people who my parents had in place to help them.  I’m not empowered to make changes, but my brothers and I can work through it all with my Mom to help her decide what she wants.

As Adria says when she ends each seminar, “It is healthy to review your finances today and learn how to take care of tomorrow for your daughters, your nieces, and all those women who might get it younger than we did.”