Small Estate Planning Mistakes That Have a Massive Impact On Your Legacy with Keith McManus – Ep 073

Derek Gregoire: Welcome, everyone, to another edition of the SHP Retirement Road Map podcast. I’m your host today, Derek Gregoire, joined by my business partner, Keith Ellis, and legendary attorney, Keith McManus. How are you doing? Everything good?

Keith McManus: Everything’s great. Thanks for the introduction. I like legendary.

Derek Gregoire: Legendary. I’ll go over that. Keith Ellis and I were at a conference this past weekend, there last week in Palm Springs, California. And there was a lot of legends there, like…

Keith Ellis, Jr.: So, that’s been on our mind, legend.

Derek Gregoire: So, you fit right in. We got to hang out with Bo Jackson and Emmitt Smith and Andre Agassi. And then, now we get Keith McManus.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Oh, yes. Yes, so it’s Keith McManus, Bo Jackson.

Derek Gregoire: Yeah. Keith was like, “Bo Jackson, was he a tennis player?” I’m like, “No, that’s Agassi.”

Keith McManus: Yeah, don’t ask me about sports people.

Derek Gregoire: Anyway…

Keith Ellis, Jr.: That was not polite.

Derek Gregoire: Yeah, exactly. So, this episode, obviously, we talked as we’re entering 2025, a lot of folks put off things. We’ve seen it for years in our business and I’m going to get around to that eventually. And we talked a few shows ago about getting New Year’s resolutions in place. And one of the things you want to make sure is everyone has an estate plan.

And just looking at the SHP Road Map process, as you all know, we recommend having an income plan, an investment plan, a tax plan, a health care plan, and a legacy or estate plan. And all those plans adapt and change based on taxes and laws and Congress and market changes. And there’s so many things that go into it, but they all work together. And that’s where we work with amazing people like Keith McManus. And a lot of you work with him as well to make sure your estate plan is up to date and it does what it’s supposed to do.

So, we’re going to get into a few examples of maybe what not to do or things that were done incorrectly. But we’re in Massachusetts, most people listening are in Massachusetts. Some are probably in New Hampshire, but from Massachusetts, Keith, can you just give a quick recap on where things stand, like in terms of like, when an estate’s taxable, what’s changed in the last couple of years? Maybe that’s a good place to start.

Keith McManus: I think so, definitely. So, some of the premises we’ve always had for estate planning are still very valid. We still want clients to avoid the probate court system when people have passed away. We want there to be an efficient transfer of assets at a hard time when someone’s passed away. We also want to look at incapacity planning for folks to make sure that if there is any kind of skilled nursing admission or a hospitalization, that everything’s going to be covered and we know we’ve got a good outcome.

But when it comes to taxation, we have had some changes in the past few years. So, Massachusetts is one of the few states that has its own estate tax. So, this estate tax is sometimes informally just referred to as a death tax or an inheritance tax or something. It’s technically not… it’s an estate tax. So, when someone passes away in Massachusetts, the Department of Revenue is going to examine that estate if it’s over $2 million of net value. So, $2 million of net value, it’s kind of a trigger point and it’s an important number for listeners to bear in mind. $2 million doesn’t necessarily mean $2 million in the bank. This means all of the assets and not now, but when the person’s passed away. So, for a lot of folks, that won’t be for a while, I hope, and assets can continue to appreciate.

Derek Gregoire: That’s properties, 401(k)s, life insurance, everything.

Keith McManus: All of it. And I mean, just think about what real estate values have done in recent years, how they’ve kind of just snuck up on everybody.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Absolutely.

Keith McManus: I’m often talking to clients, I can’t believe how much my house is worth. I didn’t pay anything close to that. So, if you wait long enough, these values just keep creeping up. Investments, if they’re managed properly, they tend to go up. Same thing with death benefit of life insurance, it’s countable, along with contents of property. You may add it together, and the $2 million mark is the mark to bear in mind.

Derek Gregoire: So, $2 million, now, before we get going even further, unfortunately, this happens. We’ve been doing this since 2003. So, unfortunately, it’s part of our business. But we lost quite a handful of clients we’ve had for years last year. And no one knows the value of estate planning until you actually go through the situation.

Keith McManus: Right.

Derek Gregoire: Do you know what I mean? It’s easy to like, any in the estate plan, what does that mean? But when you take a spouse, in all the scenarios in the last year that I can think about top of my head, and there was four or five that I can think of right off the bat and some amazing good people, clients we’ve had for years and missed them dearly, meeting with the spouse and helping get things in order after they passed, it was like, oh, my gosh, you don’t realize. Even us, we go through the emotions, hey, you need an estate plan. We know you need it. When you go through the actual procedure of utilizing it. When someone passes away, it’s like, wow, I’m so glad if this is done.

Keith McManus: And if I was able to wave a magic wand and stress test those estate plans before the people passed away, sometimes we can do that. Sometimes people don’t come in to do that. But I wanted to just emphasize the value of having regular estate reviews. So, when someone sets up an estate plan, don’t think of it as a one and done.

They’re fairly low maintenance. You create an estate plan, you’re setting up trusts and wills and things like that, but they should be looked at. And I think that’s probably one of the number one things I see people just not do regularly.

Derek Gregoire: Yeah, exactly.

Keith McManus: All right, now, McManus Estate Planning, we recognize that that’s not something you do every year, but about every three to four years, you should stress test the entire plan. And sometimes it’s hard to do. I know there’s a psychological effect. People don’t like thinking about this stuff.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Absolutely. That’s so true.

Derek Gregoire: And sometimes, they want to wait until, like, a spouse, oh, well, I can do it when someone passes away. Well, if you’re estate is over $2 million and you don’t do it when you’re married, you could be paying, or not you, I guess, your heirs potentially could be paying unnecessary tax.

Keith McManus: Absolutely. And I can think like you of a number of people who have passed away. And I said, “Gosh, we hadn’t heard from that person in 5 years, 10 years.” If we had only had our chances to sit down with them for review, we could have tightened this up and changed that. And so, number one thing I’d say jot down is do an estate review. Even if you think you have everything nailed down, about every three to four years, laws can change, taxes can change, and funding of these trusts can change. Likewise, the strategies attorneys use change.

Kind of an often overlooked thing that a lot of estate planning attorneys don’t talk too much about is the fact that trusts are not all the same. And if you crack open some of these trusts, you’re going to see something called funding formulas inside the trusts. These things change all the time. Years ago, they were completely different funding formulas than we use now to try and get the best possible tax outcome. And it’s not something that’s going to jump off the page at you. So, those kinds of nitty-gritty details are super helpful.

The other thing I’ve noticed that sometimes people do and where SHP can really, I think, shine and I’ve seen it shine, is the fact that you guys actually know how to read the trusts and you know how to fund the trusts. Now, unfortunately, there’s sometimes tension because sometimes, clients sometimes are do-it-yourselfers and they’re like, ah, I got this, I know how to fund it. Maybe a high-functioning person, maybe they were even formerly into financial services role in their career.

I can tell you what happens, having done this for literally 29 years now, my 29th year practice. Is that crazy? Sometimes, as people get older, they lose capacity to manage all of these things themselves. They need a team that they’ve already talked to, in advance, who knows them and knows the family. And I know that you guys care about these customers and these clients, almost like family. And when you’re with them, you really want to have that good outcome because when we inevitably get the call that someone’s died, we really want it to work. And we don’t have that opportunity unless the clients come in and review those documents every so often.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Yeah. When it comes to planning, one of the things that we do talk about is exemptions. Maybe you could expound a little bit upon that as you build out an estate plan, what type of exemptions you get, how do you save money in taxes, so on and so forth?

Keith McManus: Yeah. So, with regards to estate taxation, it’s fairly straightforward. You’ve got Massachusetts taxation, which is completely separate. The word they use is decoupled. It’s totally separate than the federal estate tax. So, one thing that sometimes, people sometimes conflate is they think that the federal estate tax is the same as Massachusetts, and it’s not. So, the federal estate tax this year has gone up in 2025 to $13,990,000.

Derek Gregoire: Per person.

Keith McManus: Per person, and it’s portable. So, that means it’s very, very few people are going to have to worry about the federal estate tax. And in December 31st of this year, even that is going to change. It’s possible with the new leadership in Washington that it might go away entirely.

But we don’t want to rest on our laurels, for a couple of reasons. Number one, we know that it doesn’t necessarily mean that by the time a particular client has died, we’re going to be in the exact same tax situation. Over the course of 29 years, I’ve seen this estate tax come and go, go up, go down. It depends on who the President is. Not now, but when you’re passed away.

Derek Gregoire: Yeah. Wasn’t like George Steinbrenner, the owner of the Yankees, I think, I could be wrong on this, but I think he passed away in a year where there was no estate tax.

Keith McManus: Zero estate tax.

Derek Gregoire: And then, the year before, it would have been a big number.

Keith McManus: Well, we had a year where it was a $1 million exemption and a 55% tax on everything over that. So, this number has gone all over the place.

Derek Gregoire: Just rolling the dice.

Keith McManus: Now, in Massachusetts, it’s a little more predictable, but not necessarily in a great way. We know we’re at a much higher tax environment than the rest of the country or most of the rest of the country, I should say. So, Massachusetts exempts $2 million. The $2 million number is pretty important. Please don’t get hung up on it if you think that your net estate is less than $2 million right now. We really want to try and predict where is it going. If you’re estate’s growing and you have real estate and values are going up and you’ve got a decent lifespan ahead, you could easily hit that $2 million even if you’re not close to it right now.

If you’re already over $2 million, this is going to increase the need to do estate planning exponentially. Now, once you’re over $2 million, Massachusetts is now going to start assessing an estate tax. Planning can reduce or eliminate that completely. Now, my websites, I actually have an estate tax calculator. I think, there’s only two in Massachusetts.

Derek Gregoire: Oh, I use it all the time.

Keith McManus: Yeah. And it works, it’s great. And it will calculate it to the dollar.

Derek Gregoire: And it’s PlymouthEstatePlanning.com, right?

Keith McManus: So, yeah, you can find it at PlymouthEstatePlanning.com or CapeCodEstatePlanning.com, it leads to the same spot.

Derek Gregoire: Same spot, yeah.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: So, how does that work with spouses?

Keith McManus: So, with spouses, and…

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Because you talked about portability in that type? So, I figured, maybe you can expound upon that.

Keith McManus: Awesome question, because Massachusetts does not have portability. So, this means that without planning, you’re not going to be getting full credit for both spouses. So, married couples absolutely should come in and do the right kind of trusts. We’re able to capture all their tax credits, potentially exempting $4 million worth of the estate. Estates over $4 million, no worries, there’s additional strategies to look at over $4 million. We just need to know approximately what’s the value.

If the estate is solidly under $2 million, that doesn’t mean we’re not doing estate planning. We still need to do probate avoidance. We still need to be able to protect minor children. We also want to try and protect family members that might not be well after you’ve passed away. So, even if everyone’s healthy now…

Derek Gregoire: Keeping the bloodline.

Keith McManus: Yeah.

Derek Gregoire: Keeping the bloodline from divorces, I’m sure is a big concern. So, yeah, I think for most of the clients that we sit down with going through that process, when someone passes away, there’s a lot that can be done with various step-ups in basis and various tweaking of the portfolio. You can hold a couple million dollars in the person that passed away as trust and then still have the additional spouse that’s well, have their trust, and again, through all of this, it sounds like a lot of legalese and language, but you’re just, in essence, trying to reduce what you owe to the state of Massachusetts.

Keith McManus: Yeah, you’re using the credits you’re due.

Derek Gregoire: Yeah, you get those credits, but if you don’t, it’s one of those things if you don’t do the planning when you’re married, right? And the spouse passes away and you haven’t done it, well, that’s gone, right?

Keith McManus: Yeah, it is. Yeah. So, that portability is going to expire upon death if you haven’t taken advantage of it. So, an ideal time is when you have those spouses that are alive and well. Estate planning, by its essence, is going to be meeting with people who can come to the office and communicate. Estate settlement is a different kind of law practice where someone’s died already or we’re dealing with a court situation or custodianships and guardianships and trying to sort things out in a sort of an imperfect plan or a plan that didn’t work so well or in a situation where clients never planned at all. Those are the attorneys they’re likely to be billing hourly. And that goes on for an indefinite period of time, versus planning what I do, I think I got the easier job. I meet with live people and I’m able to meet with them and say, “Okay, here’s what we should do, here’s the cost, and it’s one and done.” And then you just routinely update it as the years pass.

Derek Gregoire: One of the clients we lost in the last year was, both Keith, you and I have worked for this client for… actually, I think it was one of the first time when your firm and SHP started working together. I think that was in 2015.

Keith McManus: Oh, we hit our 10-year mark. We’ve been working together for 10 solid years.

Derek Gregoire: It’s pretty cool.

Keith McManus: Crazy.

Derek Gregoire: And that, if you will, the nicest people in the world, and so, I think for the spouse who’s still alive and well, just seeing someone like her be so appreciative like that, everything was set up that all that heavy lifting has been done. And even when someone passes away, it’s a lot of heavy lifting to be done. So, we always find, like you said, do-it-yourselfers. This financial planning, estate planning, tax planning, there’s so much to retirement that it’s like, even I’m in the business, I don’t think I’d do it on my own, if I retire down. You know what I mean?

Keith McManus: Absolutely not.

Derek Gregoire: There’s so much to be done.

Keith McManus: I can’t agree with you more. And that’s a really interesting point. I’ve seen that happen so many times. I’ve had people that run their own companies, people with tremendous financial acumen, people that are financial advisors. My goodness, when there’s a sickness in the family, when they contract something, when they get older, when they start to get frail, when they lose a loved one, it’s normal. They’re humans. They just don’t think as clearly as they did before.

Having a team in place already is invaluable in those situations, right? I say, look, we’re just going to talk to everybody else in the team and then we can sort it out as opposed to these people trying to do estate planning when it’s too late or trying to do financial planning when it’s too late.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Yep, definitely.

Keith McManus: Imagine looking for a financial advisor when you’re already at that stage.

Derek Gregoire: We have so many, and same thing, a client that moved to Florida, same thing, he, unfortunately, had cancer and passed away, but ahead of time, he was a do-it-yourselfer, he did everything himself. But years before, or I forget the exact time frame, before he had passed, he had to listen, I can do all this, but my wife doesn’t handle this like I do. And I want to make sure if anything happens to me, she’s not like, throw into this new thing. Like, why I got to find an advisor? They want to pick someone when they are both alive and well.

Keith McManus: So smart.

Derek Gregoire: And he was a smart guy, could do a lot. Brilliant guy. But he didn’t want to deal with anymore and he wanted someone to make sure if something happened to him, which unfortunately, he did have cancer and passed away, that they were comfortable. The wife is comfortable. And again, you’re not going to… there’s so much grief. I talked to her when I was down there recently, and she’s doing as good as she can. But at least we know, it’s like one thing she has to worry about is this side. It was taken care of before.

Keith McManus: So smart. What you’re going to do, start interviewing people after he’s passed away. She’s in grief at that point. She’s just suffered a traumatic loss of her spouse and now, she goes looking for a financial advisor. So, if you’re able to do this sooner, great. If you can’t, if it’s been deferred, we can still help. I think that the opportunity, the door kind of shuts when someone no longer has capacity to communicate. And then we’ve kind of lost our opportunity to do ideal estate planning at that point. We’re more in a settlement mode.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: You look at quite a few estate plans, obviously. Folks always come in, they bring their documents, and maybe there’s some older trusts or maybe even there’s some relatively new trusts. I guess, what are some of the common mistakes that you see or maybe some of the things that are often overlooked when people do planning?

Keith McManus: So, some of them are almost visual. When you look at the estate plan, sometimes you’ll see trusts from many, many years ago that have just never been looked at. They’re very simplistic trusts, and the trusts may not even have assets connected to them.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Yeah, maybe they had a couple $100,000 when they set it up and they’ve done really well for themselves and they’ve never made that adjustment.

Keith McManus: Yeah. Oftentimes, you’ll see people that have named siblings in fiduciary roles, and now, their children are old enough to name the children and some of those fiduciary roles. Sometimes you’ll see people whose family circumstances have changed, where they’ve had a marriage and a divorce or they’ve got a blended family and they haven’t updated the plan. And sometimes, they’re naming people in the documents that shouldn’t be in there anymore. Those are examples of people who haven’t kept the documents up.

I think another one is when people don’t have a clear idea of the net value of their estate and the estate tax obligation that comes with it and they think that an old trust or a trust that hasn’t been maintained is still going to do what they need it to do and they’ve really outgrown that. Just like I think sometimes, people can outgrow advisors as their estates grow. They need to get more sophisticated planners, and those planners have to understand the tools of the trade when it comes to taxation and trusts. And that’s why we like SHP so much. You guys understand these things.

Sometimes people, their estates grow faster than they really realize. And they need to upgrade their plan to suit it. Oftentimes, I also see funding issues where clients will name, for instance, minor children as beneficiaries in life insurance or retirement accounts and things of that nature, or individuals…

Derek Gregoire: We’ve seen some old 401(k)s where someone had like their mom as beneficiary and they were married, had millions, like they’re well off. It’s like, ahhh, this probably shouldn’t be the case.

Keith McManus: Absolutely catch it. I mean…

Derek Gregoire: And their spouse looks at it, like, “Wait, what? I’m not the beneficiary? I set this up before we married.”

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Yeah. Never made the adjustment.

Derek Gregoire: Never made the adjustment.

Keith McManus: Another common plan issue that I see in my field, oftentimes clients will have gone to just an attorney who’s just a friendly face and maybe a nice person, but not specialized in estate planning. Maybe they went to somebody who handled a different kind of legal matter for them or an attorney that works in a general purpose law firm that’s not specialized in estate planning. And you can see it reflected in the quality of the document. So, I think sometimes, clients, when it comes to estate planning, they don’t necessarily give it the gravity that it needs to say, you really need to specialize and update this plan, whoever you’re working with.

Derek Gregoire: That’s what we love about McManus Estate Planning is your focus is estate planning. It’s not, if someone’s getting divorced, we’re not sending them to you.

Keith McManus: Right, right. That’s right.

Derek Gregoire: Most, if you look at, and you mentioned, too, outgrowing your advisor, outgrowing a lot of folks, we, Keith and I, see on our team all the time is that like, they’ve outgrown their advisor, meaning they might have a… nothing wrong with a small mom and pop office at all, but maybe there’s a small company and it’s like, they help them save some money in retirement accounts and give them some advice.

Now, Keith and I were just talking, I think, we’re sending out an annual letter to our clients soon. But if you look at what goes on behind the scenes, the reason we built our firm is because people eventually graduate and need more. So, if you look, here at SHP, we’re really going through this, feels like an operations team. They’re running the account and making sure everyone’s getting the reviews efficiently, everything is scheduled efficiently. When folks call in referrals, everything’s, that’s all scheduled efficiently.

We have our events and marketing team with Evan right here and Jamie in there. We’re running all kinds of client events, both fun and educational, and we do a lot of events. You’ve spoken at CPAs, cybersecurity. We have our portfolio team, these two CFAs, analysts, traders. They just, all the time, manage our client’s portfolio. We have a planning team that does all the ongoing planning, tax planning. We work with CPAs, attorneys like you.

Keith McManus: Oh, yeah.

Derek Gregoire: We have… the list goes on. Keith and I and our advisors, each have our own teams that work on individual cases to set things up and monitor and everything. So, when a client working with us, they might be 15, 20 people touching their account at all times because people, at a certain level, need more than just a portfolio. And same thing on your end, which is why we bring you in and your estate planning and your knowledge there. Again, you’ve been doing it for 29 years. I was barely born.

Keith McManus: I believe it.

Derek Gregoire: So, no, but you start the firm back then?

Keith McManus: I did, yeah. I started in 1996.

Derek Gregoire: Wow.

Keith McManus: Ain’t that crazy?

Derek Gregoire: Yeah, we started in ‘03, and I thought that was a long time ago. You got a couple of years on us, maybe.

Keith McManus: I’m so glad that our firms worked together because you’ve been just a tremendous resource to the clients. I’d say the other issue, Keith, too, that comes up a lot. As people start their estate planning, some people are very good. They set the estate plan up. They have loved ones. They want to take care of them. They know life’s short and they do the estate plan.

But then as they get older, sometimes they don’t ever consider the possibility of needing any kind of skilled nursing or what kind of approach they’re going to have. Do they have enough resources and wealth to account for assisted living or for care in their home? Or does it make more sense to try and optimize the estate potentially if there was a skilled nursing admission to have some protection, maybe have a firewall in there to at least protect the family home against the nursing home?

Derek Gregoire: And that might vary based on asset size, too.

Keith McManus: Very much.

Derek Gregoire: Someone with $10 million might not need that.

Keith McManus: Very much.

Derek Gregoire: A million or some other range might need that more.

Keith McManus: I can’t stress how important it is that it’s so custom to that client and their asset level in their family. I’m very upfront with clients when I say, “Look, pretty much everybody needs an estate plan, like your foundational estate plan, everybody.” But nursing home planning, putting assets into irrevocable Medicaid trusts, it could be the best move you ever made. What could be just a complete misfire? It completely depends on that client. There’s so many pluses and minuses of so-called nursing home planning, and you need to know both.

I hear so many times on other companies and attorneys talking on podcasts and radios really overselling this kind of thing, suggesting clients put everything into these Medicaid trusts, losing control of all these assets. I don’t know how they live, but we try not to do that. We really want to do what’s best for the client, and each person needs to try and figure what’s best for you, your family scenario, how we’re going to give you the best possible golden years. We want to increase a patient’s quality of life. I think that’s much more important. And there’s a state preservation, too. But we want to make sure that each individual client is using their assets to keep them comfortable and healthy and well in those times of need, but also to protect assets if we’re able to and if it makes sense. I think that’s often not analyzed well enough for some folks.

Derek Gregoire: Yeah, Keith, you see, since we open the doors almost 22 years ago now, how many folks have come into our office that they think they have a plan, they’re missing a lot with the estate plan being right in the forefront?

Keith Ellis, Jr.: It’s incredible the amount of people, or they’ve done it so long ago, never updated it. And then you start to make the recommendation. And I don’t want to say the wall goes up, but then you have to unpack and really walk through, hey, look, you were here when you set this up in 2010. Here we are in 2025, you’ve contributed to your 401(k), you’ve got the matches, you’ve done some additional savings. You bought that second home, so on and so forth. You have grandkids now than me.

So, what has changed in that 15-year period of time is not accounted for in your legal documents. They really need to coincide. And that’s why what you said earlier really rings true. And as I meet with folks constantly in reviews that you and I have been working with for so long, I always ask them, when is the last time you sat down with Keith for review? Well, this law’s changed, this laws’s changed, this law’s changed, you should probably schedule that review and at least see where your plan stacks up against or what adjustments potentially need to be made because the last thing you want to do is pay all this money along the way or originally here and then have it not work to the maximum. It’ll work, but not to the best of its ability. And that’s the reason why you set it up at the beginning.

Keith McManus: Exactly.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Right?

Keith McManus: Yeah. Optimal planning. There’s another issue that comes up from time to time, but not with everybody. And that’s when clients are also business owners or when they have a business interest. I think that’s a little kind of a niche that I’ve seen SHP feel really well that I haven’t seen a lot of other financial advisors have the level of financial acumen when it comes to business owners that you guys do.

If someone owns a family business, it’s going to open up a whole possibility when it comes to different kinds of estate plans, but also with business succession. Moving that business from one generation to the next, I know we’ve had a lot of mutual clients that are business owners, and some of these businesses have done very well. They’re very proud of it. This was something they put together with their hands. And you can see it when you look in their eyes. They’re like, I’m proud of this.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: As they should be.

Keith McManus: They should be. And we want to make sure that that’s well taken care of. It goes to the person they want in a tax efficient way. That’s often overlooked in plans. People sometimes just have a will and a trust or something like that, doesn’t even really mention it. Sometimes, the stock or the member shares of an LLC aren’t even connected to their estate plan. And so, making sure that work seamlessly is going to make for a better transition.

Derek Gregoire: I think one of the things, too, that we see is like, and sometimes I take it for granted because we’ve done it this way so long, but the clients that come in, they have their own portal and I’ll go through this with folks, they’d be like, oh, my… this is amazing. I’m like, oh, I guess it is. We’re doing it so long.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Yeah, kind of second hand.

Derek Gregoire: They log in now. All their accounts are tied to one spot. They can see everything, bank accounts, everything with us, 401(k)s in one spot with their property values. So, it’s a living, breathing net worth every day. But also attached to that are their goals, so they can kind of project. It helps us forecast. We’re not going to be exact, but okay, if your life expectancy is 90, what do we expect your estate to be based on these expenses, these income sources, Social Security? This is your income gap, and we can project out for their estate and do estate valuations to see what type of planning we might be able to do now, knowing it could change for the future.

And then also, so you have the assets tied together, your goals tied to those assets. Then you have something called the vault. Inside the vault is all the important documents which include their estate plan. So, they know if anything happens to them, we have everything that their beneficiary needs in that one spot, estate plan, assets, goals. So, it just makes it, I think, for… you do it as we know it’s a good value and it makes us help us do our job at a better level. But from a client standpoint, it’s like, oh, this is great because everything’s tied together.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: I actually had a client traveling and something happened to them. And rather than calling their neighbor to run next door, dig out their, what I… I think it was a health care proxy they were looking for, they realized, hey, look, oh, yeah, I have this portal to one of my phones. I have this vault. It’s already in their vault. So, it’s like literally, here you go. You know what I mean?

And sometimes, you kind of overlook that. Actually, I kind of overlook that, I’ll be honest, like, and then you realize, hey, look, that’s such a nice thing because to send somebody’s house, unlock your lockbox, dig through all your personal documents, I don’t know.

Keith McManus: I’ll tell you, what else? What’s the other option? We see the other option all the time when people pass away and they’re not SHP clients, often you see just this junk drawer of assets. You’re piecing it together, like looking for Easter eggs. They’re looking for accounts and they’re trying to piece together where’s the insurance statement. And everything’s all spread out. It makes for the estate settlement to be much, much longer and much messier. So, being able to press a button like that, that’s really valuable.

Derek Gregoire: Well, like you said, the thing that you’re doing, Keith, is building these amazing estate plans, and then our teams and making sure it’s tied to the trust properly. And like you said, if you have an estate plan over here and your accounts over there, but they’re not linked, then how does it… It doesn’t really help you.

Derek Gregoire: Absolutely doesn’t.

Derek Gregoire: So, health has to be linked, certain accounts, ownership might change, sometimes beneficiary, sometimes not. But at the end of the day, as you can see, when you look at the five worlds of planning, we’ve briefly, and this is why I think it’s so important to have a team working for you that can handle all this first, for a lot of you listening to this podcast, make sure you have a team in place because there’s so much we barely, like, scratched the surface of estate planning, and that’s one-fifth of the SHP road map process.

And there’s so many more things in estate planning we haven’t even addressed that. I don’t think we want to bore people that long. But with that being said, I think, for 2025, it’s a new year, make sure you get a second opinion or get your estate plan looked at. I’m sure Keith would do it. Or if you have someone that had you to work with, that’s fine.

But Keith… and the other thing too is to estimate your estate tax, if you go to Keith’s website, it’s either PlymouthEstatePlanning.com or CapeCodEstatePlanning.com, or you can go to our site, SHPFinancial.com. Between those websites, there’s a ton of research, ton of resources available, and we’re happy to help you any way we can. So, anything else? Any closing thoughts, Keith or Keith?

Keith Ellis, Jr.: No, just thank you for coming on in and joining us. Helping everybody else out there.

Keith McManus: I’m so happy. Yeah, this is just invaluable information for folks. And I’m glad you’re doing it. This is just a little wake-up for some people.

Derek Gregoire: Congratulations on a decade of work together. I really appreciate it.

Keith McManus: It’s been wonderful. Thank you.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Almost 30 years in business.

Keith McManus: Yeah, 30 years almost, and 10 years. We’ve been just a great relationship with SHP. We’re thankful for that.

Derek Gregoire: And I’m sure we’ll see you on the show soon.

Keith McManus: Sounds good.

Derek Gregoire: All right. Thanks so much, Keith.

Keith McManus: Thanks so much.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Appreciate it.