Episode Summary

Every good advisor wants to ensure a client’s legacy is protected, but many struggle with reviewing estate plans and motivating clients to act. In this episode, we get to the heart of the issue by speaking with Christina Lynn, PhD, CFP^®, AFC^®, CDFA^®.

As a Practice Management Consultant at Mariner Wealth Advisors, she understands the challenges financial advisors face when discussing estate planning with clients. Many clients are uncomfortable talking about their mortality, and advisors often struggle to navigate these sensitive conversations with confidence. Christina shares how techniques like motivational interviewing can improve your conversations, offers valuable resources, and shares her top estate planning takeaways. With the so-called Great Wealth Transfer underway and trillions in assets being passed down, this episode is essential listening.

Here’s What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

How Christina recommends approaching estate documents

Why you should look for creditor and predator protection in an estate plan

How advisors can address client resistance to creating or updating an estate plan

How a conversation style adopted by coaches and educators can help you connect with clients 

What resources and books Christina recommends for advisors

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Christina Lynn, PhD, CFP^®, CDFA^®, AFC^®
• Candid Conversations: Estate Planning
• Rick Kahler
• Meghaan Lurtz, Upping Your Question Game
• CFP Board’s The Psychology of Financial Planning
• Dr. Sonya Lutter
• Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change
• The Psychology of Money

Quotes:

• “So just simply opening up those PDF documents and reading through them, after you do that a dozen or so times, you start to become more familiar … You’re really looking for two sections that are pretty small sections. You’re looking for who do they name as fiduciaries and are those appropriate for that client. And then you’re looking at what happens to you after you die. The rest is more or less boilerplate language. And so you can just skip to those sections and get really comfortable with those two things. I think that can really bridge the gap with what we’re talking about.”
• “Important estate plan lessons that I always like to talk about are one, the importance of creditor/predator protection. I think it really helps avoid family conflict, hurt feelings, and resentment if you can plan ahead by avoiding any of that family money going outside the bloodline.”
• “There is this mysterious side to financial planning, which is when clients don’t do what we tell them to do. Sometimes they’re kind of nice to have, like, ‘Oh, you could make more money or save on tax if you do this.’ Other times, it’s like, ‘If you don’t do this, you’re going to create a huge problem and you really need to do this right away for the benefit of your loved ones and yourself.’ But they don’t do it. Right? The psychology of financial planning really deals with that side.”
• “There are two points why I think more advisors are not embracing estate planning as part of their repertoire of what they’re doing. I think it first starts with the self-confidence that they can effectively do this. So, I do think some extra training is needed. Personally, I learned the most from mentors. So if you can find a mentor to help you learn how to identify red flags and what an ideal plan might look like and what the options are to customize it based on a client situation, that’s really the starting point. And then to blend in the psychology of financial planning piece, that is being sensitive in a meeting, reading people—so much of communication is nonverbal.”

Full Transcript:

Sasha: Welcome to the Heart of Advice Podcast, presented by eMoney. I’m Sasha Grabenstetter.

Connor: And I’m Connor Sung. We’re your eMoney experts. Today on the podcast, we have Dr. Christina Lynn. Christina has a PhD in personal financial planning from Kansas State University and is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™, a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst^®, and an Accredited Financial Counselor^®, and her current role is practice management consultant at Mariner Wealth Advisors. Some of her specialties include estate planning and the psychology of financial planning. Christina, before we jump in, would you mind giving us a quick rundown of how you were introduced to the profession and ultimately how your journey has evolved and how you got here?

Christina: Yes, thanks for having me. Happy to be here. So I am a career changer. I got started in financial planning a little bit later than when I would have liked in life. So I decided to really focus on going back to school to get a leg up. Started in financial planning, specializing in divorce finances, bounced around from firm to firm a bit trying to find the right fit, kept going to school, worked with some amazing mentors along the way that really helped shape the focus of my career. Now I am at Mariner, and I work in advanced estate planning and training on the psychology of financial planning, and I’m a happy camper.

Sasha: That’s awesome. Christina and I met just by random chance when I was looking for individuals who not only had earned a CFP^® designation, but also their AFC^®. She was one of very few individuals. I was really excited to meet her, probably a little overly excited, but it was a really awesome experience. I’m so happy to have you on the podcast today.

Christina: Yeah, those AFC roots are pretty special.

Sasha: Yes. Definitely. So obviously, you talked a little bit about how you have a real passion for estate planning. So according to our Candid Conversations: Estate Planning guide, only 38 percent of planners are extremely comfortable discussing legacy planning. So I just want to ask you, why is it such a struggle for advisors and how do they overcome those obstacles so they can help their clients have updated estate plans?

Christina: Yeah. I think there’s two pain points that contribute to that statistic. One is the uncertainty around estate planning. People just in general don’t like uncertainty, and estate planning is just surrounded by uncertainty. Nobody likes to deal with talking about what would happen to them if they were to pass away. It triggers a lot of emotions. Advisors typically aren’t trained with how to handle those types of complex emotions.

Second, I think that the schooling that we receive as financial planners isn’t sufficient to do a proper estate plan. And so you have to go fish out the training or mentorship to really be able to conduct a proper estate plan review. So not having the proper training around estate planning, I shouldn’t say proper, but enough to make you feel comfortable with it doubled with the uncomfortable emotions that are triggered in clients when you talk about estate planning, I think those things contribute to why, planners can be so proficient in other areas of wealth management, but maybe kind of shy away from estate planning.

Sasha: I definitely agree with you there. Even from my own experience of dealing with estate plans for my parents and then other people, that conversation is just an uncomfortable one. So we definitely have lots of estate planning conversations here.

Connor: You bring up a good opportunity, I think, there. What do you think is the gap on education? Is it actually how to build the financial estate plan or how to have the conversation? Is it the positioning of the topic, asking the questions? Can you just fill in that hole a little bit?

Getting Familiar with Estate Plan Reviews

Christina: I should start by saying that everything I say here is just my opinion. It doesn’t represent Mariner. But I do think that it really starts with the avoidance of reading the estate plan documents themselves. My mentor, Scott Lunow, he’s an estate planning attorney. He’s the one who really helped me get over the nervousness about tackling estate planning. And he always says that you do not need to be an estate planning attorney to be able to do a good estate planning review.

So just simply opening up those PDF documents and reading through them, after you do that a dozen or so times, you start to become more familiar with, OK, this is generally what these things look like. And you can start becoming pretty proficient with reviewing them. You actually don’t need to go through the entire document. You’re really looking for two sections that are pretty small sections. You’re looking for who do they name as fiduciaries and are those appropriate for that client. And then you’re looking at what happens to you after you die. The rest is more or less boilerplate language. And so you can just skip to those sections and get really comfortable with those two things. I think that can really bridge the gap with what we’re talking about.

Connor: Super helpful. And I know we hear a lot about celebrities who didn’t have an estate plan or you hear horror stories about families. Unfortunately, my own family had some financial disruption because of lack of clarity in the estate plan. But aside from just opening the documents, are there any important lessons that you’ve learned about estate planning?

Protecting Assets for the Next Generation

Christina: I’d say the top two important estate plan lessons that I always like to talk about are one, the importance of creditor/predator protection. I think it really helps avoid family conflict, hurt feelings, and resentment if you can plan ahead by avoiding any of that family money going outside the bloodline. So if you plan ahead by incorporating predator creditor protection, you can prevent the family money from going to, like, a new spouse if the surviving spouse remarries. Or it’s pretty universal that people don’t want the inheritance they leave to kids to go to an ex-spouse if their marriage doesn’t work out. Of course, everyone has different opinions about that, but in general, that is a wish for people. And this is a simple solution that you can just incorporate into your estate plan documents. So that’s one I really think is important to talk about and address.

The second is who you name as fiduciaries, primarily for your successor trustee. I think that in general, people think that whoever you name as successor trustee is really, like, a position of honor because you trust this person so much and respect their financial capability that you’re naming them as this important role in the estate administration if you were to pass away. What the average person doesn’t realize is all of the stress that comes with that position, the workload. It’s a lot of administrative work. And the family conflict that can brew, based on just the various scenarios of how whatever family is left after you pass away, it can cause fights between siblings, aunts and uncles, and stepsiblings. Every family is a little bit different. But by simply naming a corporate trustee, a professional third party that’s neutral to be the successor trustee, it really just removes that potential for family discord and all of the stress that goes with being a successor trustee. So, again, two really simple solutions that I think are often not given enough attention when doing estate plan reviews.

Sasha: Those are big pieces.

Connor: And I’d almost imagine it’s tough. I feel like most people look at their trustee as somebody that’s close to the family that could deal with some of those family ties, but maybe not foreseeing some of the stress that comes along with it. And I totally agree that getting intermediated there with a third party, that can be a trusted role. Before we go on to the next section, I do want to just have you define so I think fiduciary may be a little bit more of an expanded definition here, but as you talk about fiduciaries across the estate plan, can you just explain what you mean?

Christina: Absolutely. So that’s just a general term for who you’re appointing to be in charge of your stuff or your decisions if something were to pass away, if you were to pass away or become incapacitated. So I’m talking about the agent named in your powers of attorney, medical financial powers of attorney. I’m talking about the executor of your will, personal representative. I’m talking about the successor trustee in your revocable living trust, for example, or the trustee of an irrevocable trust that you create.

Sasha: Thank you. I really want to roll into this next piece because I think it does kind of play in together, but you describe yourself as a behavioral finance enthusiast, which I love. I might have to use that term now. But when it comes to discussing topics like estate planning, how does behavioral finance come into play?

Dealing with Client Resistance

Christina: Yeah. So, again, my focus in my career is really on incorporating the psychology of financial planning into all these different traditional financial planning principles. And traditional financial planning, I typically see that advisors are really good at those technical expertise areas. They’re good at tax planning. They’re good at investment planning. There are some are good at estate planning, but there is this mysterious side to financial planning, which is when clients don’t do what we tell them to do. Sometimes they’re kind of nice to have, like, “Oh, you could make more money or save on tax if you do this.” Other times, it’s like, “If you don’t do this, you’re going to create a huge problem and you really need to do this right away for your benefit of your loved ones and yourself.” But they don’t do it. Right? The psychology of financial planning really deals with that side, the mysterious side of financial planning that we typically don’t talk about. It’s just sort of falling through the cracks in the CRM or the note taking system, like, client didn’t do this sort of thing. So one of my passion projects, like I said, is really building in the psychology of financial planning into all those different areas of financial planning, the other seven domains. And the psychology of financial planning is really predicated on an advisor’s emotional intelligence level. That’s where it starts. If you don’t have high emotional intelligence, you’re not going to be able to apply psychology of financial planning techniques and exercises.

And so what I often see in existing training is that leaders will tell the advisors, “Well, you need to work on active listening,” or “If you just do more reflections or ask more questions, that will really be the solution.” Well, I think that it’s much deeper than that. It’s about developing EQ skills, emotional intelligence skills. And the good news is that EQ skills are not like IQ skills, which are sort of more or less finite. You’re born with a certain amount of IQ skills that no matter how much Sudoku I do, I’m not going to really improve my IQ. Whereas EQ skills, there are evidence-based techniques that can improve your EQ skills. So let’s focus on that to be able to utilize the psychology of financial planning principles. So, yes, that’s one of the areas that I’m working at in at Mariner is developing workshops for our advisors to go through to develop these EQ skills. And I do get some, like, puzzled looks. They, a lot of times, the response is like, OK. This is unrealistic. I wouldn’t go only talk about, like, the softer side of communication because I need to focus on the technical stuff. Well, the problem is that all we’ve done so far is focus on the technical stuff and really ignored the EQ side of it. So kind of what I’m doing is over focusing on the EQ side of it for this standalone training. And then at the end, hopefully the message is that, OK. Now that we have isolated these skills and worked on them in a safe environment for you to practice and receive feedback and learn some evidence-based techniques, now you can go back and put them into practice with your workflow in a financial planning meeting where you’re talking about the technical side of financial planning.

Sasha: I love that you’re talking about emotional intelligence. My colleague Chris Mauriello and I have done three webinars on emotional intelligence just this year at eMoney. We’ve looked at it from “what is emotional intelligence?” to “what is it with holistic planning?” And then with Summit, we have another one coming up really focusing more on that relationship management piece. But I want to ask you about the self-awareness piece for advisors, especially when it comes to estate planning, because I’ll be transparent with you as a financial professional myself. It took me five years after my son was born to finally put my estate plan in place. So I’m just curious, like, is it a self-awareness issue with estate planning? Is it more like just figuring out how to really move it forward? Because it’s just a scary topic in general.

Christina: Well, going back to the two points why I think more advisors are not embracing estate planning as part of their repertoire of what they’re doing. I think it first starts with the self-confidence that they can effectively do this. So, I do think some extra training is needed. Personally, I learned the most from mentors. So if you can find a mentor to help you learn how to identify red flags and what an ideal plan might look like and what the options are to customize it based on a client situation, that’s really the starting point. And then to blend in the psychology of financial planning piece, that is being sensitive in a meeting, reading people—so much of communication is nonverbal. Like, is one of the spouses avoidant? Giving them the space to think about what’s going on for them and then allowing them the platform to finally speak when they’ve had a chance to gather their thoughts. Not pushing them to action, but just trying to understand their perspective. OK. I’ve made this recommendation. What’s going on for you? Tell me where you’re at. What are your thoughts? That sort of thing. So I don’t know if that really answers your question about being self-aware, but it’s definitely in the camp of developing those EQ skills.

Sasha: That building of the confidence I think is one of the biggest pieces. But speaking of mentors, I wanted to ask you about your experience working with Rick Kahler and what learnings you kind of took away from his practice, because I do feel like he has a very unique style, especially with financial planning and his background with financial therapy.

Christina: Yeah. Rick is larger than life. He’s such an amazing financial planner and really an OG in the psychology of financial planning space. You go to read a text on the psychology of financial planning, you’re probably going to see his name as one of the authors. For me, what he taught me was to normalize the incorporation of financial therapy techniques and exercises into traditional financial planning. He made that just normal. Like, this is part of the intake process. This is part of annual reviews. Also, what I learned so much from him, but another highlight was that he really drove home the point that financial therapy, psychology of financial planning, expertise in that starts with doing the work yourself. You can’t facilitate any of this stuff with somebody else if you haven’t done this on your own first. So he really emphasized attending classes and doing your own therapy, doing your own work, going through the exercises yourself, practicing these skills at home with your family, getting comfortable with them before doing them with a paying client. The last piece I’d say about why his work is so inspiring, is he really focused on developing expertise in a modality called internal family systems, IFS. I did study that. I still use parts of that in my daily work.

I chose to focus on another modality, but it’s just so inspiring that here’s the guy, super smart, very successful in traditional financial planning. He did not come from a mental health background, but really just embraced this intersection between mental health and finance like wealth management and financial planning and found a way to ethically navigate that by bridging that gap. And that’s through his work with IFS.

Sasha: Rick is just a pioneer in the field to me at least. But speaking about that self-awareness piece, that doing the work yourself, that’s really where it is and where advisors can really learn their own biases, the things that they’re uncomfortable with, and just become better advisors or as Connor says, better humans. I’ll hand it off to Connor though.

Connor: I had the pleasure of moderating eMoney’s Summit panel in 2023, and Rick Kahler was one of the panelists for the two parts. And I know he had an impact on me, and I took a few different things away from just speaking to him via that format. So normalizing inclusion of these different techniques just into the financial planning process, I think, is key. Starting doing it yourself, that’s literally the way that we actually train most people to use eMoney as well is build your own plan, figure out how it works, and then move on to helping other people with it. And all of these different ways of getting to understand either yourself or the technology, whatever it is, before moving forward and trying to apply those learnings to other people’s situations, with the inclusion of additional personalities and additional biases and different things. We haven’t talked about it yet, but you said that motivational interviewing is a really important tool for an advisor to use. Can you just give us an example of what that might sound like in practice?

Trying Out Motivational Interviewing

Christina: Yeah. So first, what is motivational interviewing? It’s an evidence-based conversation style that’s proven to help clients or people move toward positive change in their life. And that can take a variety of different applications within financial planning. It might be positive change toward implementing an estate plan or addressing an issue, a glaring issue with their investment plan, things like that. Why I’m drawn to it, one of the reasons why is it that it is not meant for only mental health professionals. It’s a conversation style that can be adopted by any helping profession. You see parole officers, you see a lot of people in the medical field, you see teachers, educators, coaches—lots of different professions that utilize this modality to make their communication more effective with their clients. And because a lot of pushback that I hear from financial planners when we start talking about different financial therapy techniques and exercises is they say, “Wait a second. I’m not a therapist. I’m a wealth advisor. I don’t want to be doing this sort of thing. It’s outside of my comfort zone and outside of my job description.” Well, on the spectrum between financial planning and financial therapy, there’s this, there’s a middle ground that you can tap into in learning these counseling skills, these communication skills.

So, anyway, you didn’t ask that, but I wanted to give that background why I like motivational interviewing. Hundreds of peer-reviewed studies have been published showing positive results in different fields. And I’d like to see a lot more in financial planning because I think that it has the capability of doing that.

So getting to your question, an example of what motivational interviewing can do, one of the key principles that motivational interviewing addresses in one’s communication style is the tendency to use the “fix it” reflex. What is the “fix it” reflex? It is a person’s natural tendency to fix a problem when they see a problem. So if you see, like, this happens in all areas of life. It happens in parenthood with spouses. It happens in financial planning a lot because we are trained to spot issues. We can see them as soon as you look at a net worth statement address. As soon as you see them when you look at a beneficiary designation. And they’re paying for our advice. So it’s very natural for advisors to respond very quickly in conversations to present solutions when they identify a problem. They’re like 40 steps ahead of the client who’s solving for problems that the client doesn’t even know is a problem yet. And so reigning in that “fix it” reflex is one of the key principles of motivational interviewing. It teaches the interviewer or the advisor in this situation to just slow down and be more curious about understanding the client’s perspective, employing accurate empathy, and what they call rolling with resistance. When a client says something that’s clearly against traditional financial planning advice, instead of pointing it out right away, you just kind of roll with it. In order to do your job really well, you don’t need to abruptly correct a person. You can let them explore it and get curious about it. Eventually, you’ll have the right opportunity to give information and give advice, but just not come in too quickly to resolve problems was one example of how motivational interviewing is a helpful communication style.

Connor: I definitely do that “fix it” reflex in my own personal life, and I know it doesn’t work very well for me there. So I can imagine it’s definitely an easy win as you think about going through an initial discovery or even rediscovery at some points where people bring up some stuff that they may have forgotten about and you don’t want to jump on top of them and ask why or start to fix it. But, yeah, it’s good stuff.

Christina: I definitely practice it at home. This is a skill that constantly needs to be developed and sharpened. I mean, you think you get somewhere and then you go home and totally stick your foot in your mouth, but, yes, it’s a journey we’re all on.

Sasha: I just want to ask you about the power of questions for a minute, because I think that you’re the one to ask about this, especially when it comes to like these complicated topics, motivational interviewing, as you said, like there’s hundreds of studies of the success of it. But I think at the heart of it, I just want to hear what are the best ones to ask. I’d love to hear that.

Christina: Actually, this is a little bit surprising, but according to the motivational interviewing style, you should use two times the reflections as you do questions. So there’s actually more emphasis on utilizing reflection. So rather than when we’re talking and you say something to me, rather than respond with a question, even if it’s a really good open-ended question, I respond to whatever you say with a statement that ends with my voice dropping rather than my voice elevating.

So when you’re saying something, it’s the tip of the iceberg. I’ll then respond with a reflection with my best guess as to what’s going on below the surface. So that is a good use of reflection. So it’s not really an answer to your question, but it’s a really good opportunity to bring up how reflections are actually way underutilized by financial advisors. We always just default to the question, “What are the good questions?” Absolutely. There are a lot of good questions. I know, like, Meghaan Lurtz has a list of really great questions on her website, and lots of people are good at those. What I would like to see us get better at is using reflections because when you’re asked a question, sometimes subconsciously, it can trigger defensiveness. But if I respond to you with a reflection, it’s sort of an unsaid acceptance of whatever you say. Even if I don’t agree with it, I’m making you feel comfortable with your position, and I’m inviting you to say more about it, to correct me, to add on top of it. And that makes for really great financial planning conversation.

Sasha: As I reflect on what you just said, I also think about the reflection tool of having a large summary, like your client has just gone off topic and they’ve been talking for a while. I love the idea that you are putting a bouquet of flowers together. Right? To be like, oh, you said this and this and this, and like, here’s your bouquet back. So, all wonderful things.

Connor: I know we talked about at the very beginning that you decided to use education to try and get a leg up for your somewhat later start to the industry. But as you think about financial professionals trying to get better at what they’re doing, what resources, books, recommendations do you have for financial professionals looking to get more information as it pertains to the psychology of financial planning?

Recommended Resources

Christina: So it’s expensive, but the CFP Board’s Psychology of Financial Planning book that was published just two years ago, 2022, is really good. It has chapters by different authors, and all the authors are the OGs in the financial psychology space. So not only can you hear a little bit or read a little bit about what their take on the psychology of financial planning is, you can also, like, start following those people. Dr. Sonya Lutter, Rick Kahler, Dr. Megan McCoy, Dr. Emily Koochel, things like that. People like that are a really great resource to get you kick-started in this space. Also, if anybody’s interested in learning more about motivational interviewing, a really great resource is the book. That one is inexpensive. It’s written by the founders of motivational interviewing, Drs. Bill Miller and Stephen Rollnick. And it walks through all the principles, and you can then take courses and get training live training on it too. And then lastly, I think a really good kind of consumer-facing book is The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel.

Connor: It’s a great book. That and, I would say, track down Dr. Christina Lynn, and she’ll be able to help you out too.

Sasha: Yes, definitely. We have one final question for you. Christina, how would you define the heart of advice when it comes to financial planning?

Christina: I think it goes back to what I was talking about with the traditional financial planning and the mysterious backside of the traditional financial planning. Like, what’s going on under the surface for your clients? Be really endlessly curious about what’s going on for them and make it your mission to really understand their perspective without any ulterior motive. I think that ultimately, you’re going to give really great advice because you’re trained on the technical expertise side of things to do that. You know how to use eMoney well, for example. Those are all really great tools. Now what we need to do is build out the other side by really connecting with clients, building that human connection, which starts with building your EQ skills.

Sasha: Well Dr. Lynn, I’ve had a wonderful chat with you. All these things made me so happy to talk about: emotional intelligence, motivational interviewing, estate planning. All these things that I love, and I’m glad that our listeners could hear it from you as well.

Christina: Thank you so much, Sasha and Connor. It was a pleasure to be here with you.

 

DISCLAIMERS: Please be advised that this podcast contains purely educational information, and nothing discussed may be construed as legal, tax, or financial advice. Please consult a financial advisor for any financial investment or money management questions. All views or opinions represented in this podcast are solely the opinion of the speaker, and do not represent those of eMoney Advisor, LLC, or any of its affiliates.

This podcast is provided for informational and educational purposes only. Any opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. Mariner is the marketing name for the financial services businesses of Mariner Wealth Advisors LLC and its subsidiaries. Investment advisory services are provided through the brands Mariner Wealth, Mariner Independent, Mariner Institutional, Mariner Ultra, and Mariner Workplace, each of which is a business name of the registered independent advisory entities of Mariner. For additional information about each of the registered investment advisory entities of Mariner, including fees and services, please contact Mariner or refer to each entity’s Form ADV Part 2a, which is available on the investment advisor public disclosure website. Registration of an investment advisor does not imply a certain level of skill or training.

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