The Benefits Of Your Tax & Financial Planning Teams Working Together with Lauren Bakken, CPA – Ep 110

Retirement isn’t only about leaving your career behind. It’s also about knowing what you’re retiring to and making sure the financial decisions you make along the way support the life you want to create. And when taxes, investments, estate planning, and retirement income begin overlapping, trying to navigate everything on your own can become complicated quickly.

In this episode, SHP Financial Lead Advisor Laura Russo sits down with recently retired CPA, Lauren Bakken, to discuss the lessons Lauren learned throughout her career serving individuals and small business owners. Lauren shares her own transition into retirement, why she believes your CPA, financial advisor, and attorney should be working together.

In this podcast interview, you’ll learn:

• How meaningful work and purpose can make retirement more fulfilling.
• The importance of understanding the tax consequences before taking retirement distributions.
• How your CPA, financial advisor, and attorney can work together.
• Why minimizing taxes isn’t always the best financial decision.
• How small business owners can better prepare themselves for retirement.
• Why both spouses should understand the family’s financial picture.

Resources

• New Hope Chapel

Inspiring Quotes

• “My philosophy was that I wanted small businesses to have the same service as the big firms give to the big clients, because big firms would always push the little clients out.” – Lauren Bakken
  
• “A person needs to have their financial planner, their accountant who does their taxes, and their attorney who may do their estate planning all on the same page.” – Lauren Bakken
  
• “If you want your business to be successful, you do want help. Because if you run out of cash, you’re out of business.” – Lauren Bakken
  
• “Sometimes you might be trying to pick up the nickel on the ground, but $1 is flying out your back pocket because you’re trying to pinch pennies.” – Lauren Bakken

[INTERVIEW]

Laura Russo: Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week’s episode of The Retirement Roadmap. My name is Laura Russo. I’m a lead advisor here at SHP Financial, and I am so excited to be your host today, and even more excited, I have a wonderful guest with me today, Ms. Lauren Bakken, who is a local recently retired CPA, and we are going to pick her brain. So, Lauren, let me start and say, how are you doing today?

Lauren Bakken: I’m doing great. Thank you for having me here. It is an honor.

Laura Russo: Yeah, we are excited.

Lauren Bakken: Yeah.

Laura Russo: So, Lauren, I’m going to jump right in and maybe we’ll do some rapid-fire questions. But just to kind of give a little bit of your background, if you wouldn’t mind, can you tell me a bit about your career? You were locally based here in Plymouth, Mass for a long time. You actually were in this building.

Lauren Bakken: I was.

Laura Russo: That we’re in as well at one point in your career.

Lauren Bakken: I was interviewed for view, yep. That’s where I started. 

Laura Russo: I love that.

Lauren Bakken: I subleased an office, small little office, when I started off on my own, which was back in the early 2000s. And I was working at a firm in Scituate, and the partner said to me one time, “You know, you’re doing a really good job, but you really should work more hours.”

Laura Russo: Oh, wow. 

Lauren Bakken: Nice. So, I said to myself, “If I’m going to work more hours, I’m going to work for myself.” So, I took this big leap and just opened up my own firm. I had a friend who mentored me. He had helped another CPA in the past start his business. And so, he helped me to reach out to people who have had tax liens filed against them and helping them out of that with the IRS, and then they became clients, and so that’s how I built my firm. A lot of networking in the area. And so, that was, yeah, quite a long time ago, but my philosophy was that I wanted small businesses to have the same service as the big firms give to the big clients, because big firms would always push the little clients out.

And they didn’t really have anywhere to go to get good advice and to help them with their accounting and their taxes and all. So, I focused on that small business, and it was very rewarding. Very rewarding. And so, it grew, and I hired a CPA, and we put all the processes together, got it all going, and then fast-forward, my intent was always to be able to market my business to other CPAs. And so, eventually, I partnered with somebody. They bought me out. They sold. I stayed with the company because of my clients, because I really love them and wanted to give them the best, and with the transitions it can be pretty shaky. So, I stuck with them for quite a while.

Laura Russo: I love that.

Lauren Bakken: And so, then eventually it was time to go, because I just… The stress of tax season. As you get older…

Laura Russo: You’ve been through quite a few tax seasons.

Lauren Bakken: I have. And as you get older, stress really causes problems in your body, you know?

Laura Russo: Yeah. You don’t handle it quite as well as you used to.

Lauren Bakken: No, it starts to catch up with you. Every age, people should minimize their stress. But anyway, as you get older, it gives a bigger impact. So, that was my intent to back down a little bit. So, I do still help some clients.

Laura Russo: I’ve noticed that with many CPAs. We have a few CPA clients.

Lauren Bakken: You just can’t let them go because I care. I care about them.

Laura Russo: Yeah, big part.

Lauren Bakken: But then now my retirement job is… I’m excited about this.

Laura Russo: So, not fully retired. You’re not sitting on the beach every day. Yep.

Lauren Bakken: No. I can’t do that. It’s not in me. I want to keep giving back. And so, now I’m the treasurer of the New Hope Chapel of Plymouth.

Laura Russo: And that’s pretty much a full-time job feeling, right? 

Lauren Bakken: Heading up the accounting department and making sure everything is done properly.

Laura Russo: That’s awesome.

Lauren Bakken: Yeah. So, that’s what I’m doing, and if I can give back in any way, I will.

Laura Russo: I love that. And we were talking about this a little bit earlier that retirement looks different for every single person. And sometimes, especially high-functioning career people, it’s a big step to take. And finding that purpose is what you said earlier: waking up every morning and being able to know that you’re doing something is the exact retirement that you need, because you don’t have that stress of deadlines from tax season, but more so now you’re doing something that is still utilizing your skills, but you really enjoy it. So, I think that’s wonderful. And who knows how long you’ll keep going with that, maybe forever.

Lauren Bakken: As long as I can. I had this thing. Tetley Tea used to have the little sayings on their little tea tag there. And I actually framed, I did it up and framed it. It says, “Old accountants never die, they just lose their balance.” 

Laura Russo: The fact that that landed in your teacup is amazing.

Lauren Bakken: That was a long time ago too, when I first graduated.

Laura Russo: Yeah. Oh my gosh, that’s awesome.

Lauren Bakken: So, that’s my philosophy.

Laura Russo: Yeah. You’re like, “I can do it.”

Lauren Bakken: As long as I can move my fingers.

Laura Russo: You know, those little teas, they do sometimes, they got little nuggets of wisdom in them. That’s awesome. So, you’re enjoying it, and this is your style, this is your version of retirement, which I think for a lot of our listeners is really important because it’s one of those areas, like I said, where especially if you’re high-functioning, you’ve been in your career a long time, we see it’s such a hard transition to get past that. Either it’s fear that, “Oh, I’m going to run out of money, I don’t have a plan, or what else am I going to do?” And I think the great lesson here is that whatever you want, you can find something that really fits the bill, that fills your cup, fills other people’s cup, but you’re enjoying it, and I think that’s amazing.

Lauren Bakken: It’s key to kind of think about it before you retire, right? So, that you’re not just left in the lurch. 

Laura Russo: Yeah. So, my guess maybe, if you don’t mind me asking, how long did you ponder on this and think about this decision?

Lauren Bakken: Well, as I mentioned before, when I started my business, I structured it so that all the processes of doing the tax returns or doing the accounting for clients all had such a process written down that anybody could do it, so that if someone were to step in as the CPA in my firm, they’d be able to just…

Laura Russo: Take the wheel.

Lauren Bakken: Take it over. And I had always planned on selling my business. That’s how I built it, even though I didn’t think about the impact of what it was going to feel like leaving my clients. I really didn’t. That part I didn’t think about. And it came to pass, so it just kind of dropped in my lap. So, I had been thinking about that part of it. Not what me personally was going to do, but I knew as I got a little older that I wouldn’t just sit and do nothing. I can’t. I mean, it’s nice to go to travel and all of that, but how much can you do? 

Laura Russo: Right, exactly. And you got the grandkids too.

Lauren Bakken: I got grandkids.

Laura Russo: They keep you busy. 

Lauren Bakken: They keep me busy, so yes.

Laura Russo: That’s awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that part of your career and that transition. I’d definitely like, and I’m curious, if you don’t mind, maybe we can talk a little bit more on the tax end of things, because you are definitely infinite wisdom, and I joke, I got your number, and I started texting you maybe some questions here and there on tax questions, and then you retired on me.

Lauren Bakken: No, you can still ask.

Laura Russo: And I said, “It must have been my fault.” I’m kidding.

Lauren Bakken: You can still ask me questions, Laura.

Laura Russo: Oh, I’m already joking. I’m saying we’re going to get her in here as an SHP employee one of these days, where you’d fit right in. But my question for you would be maybe if we can explore more of that tax side of things, some areas that you would say are points of wisdom or things that you could share with our clients that maybe some tax pitfalls or areas that you see people lacking in with their taxes, and areas. I know we talked a little bit about relationship with a client and all of their professionals, so maybe if you could dive into that a little bit.

Lauren Bakken: I will dive into that. What I see as people are getting older and their retirement savings are increasing, whether it’s 401(k) or a simple IRA or a SEP or whatever, they tend to take distributions to pay off bills to whatever, all different reasons, without thinking about the tax consequences. And so, they take it out. They think, “Oh, it’s retirement, so it’s not taxable,” or whatever. So, they really need to be educated, and they need to ask questions before they take the money out. Because now they get into kind of a cyclical situation where, “Oh no! I owe taxes on that money. I have to take out money to cover pay the taxes,” and then repeat, repeat, repeat. So, my advice is always ask questions before you do something.

Laura Russo: Yep.

Lauren Bakken: And that leads into what I call the trifecta, where a person needs to have their financial planner, their accountant who does their taxes, and their attorney who may do their estate planning all on the same page. So, they all need to coordinate what they’re telling the client because the client’s in the middle. They’re on the outside, and we could give conflicting information to the client. Like, I could be giving advice about saving taxes, but yet the financial planner might have another strategy like, “Well, we need to pay this now so that you can take it out of this bucket later,” or whatever. So, people should have or suggest to their financial planner that they have a conversation with their accountant or CPA. And if they don’t have one and they’re doing it themselves, good luck to you. That’s all I can say.

Laura Russo: Absolutely, Lauren. When we touched on this a little bit earlier, I felt like I was like, this is like Christmas for me because there are so many times where trying to explain the importance of a CPA and a financial advisor because we are in different lanes, but we cross over. We have crossed over, and if we’re not using our signals to warn you about something we’re doing, that’s how you get a collision all of a sudden.

Lauren Bakken: And the client is confused.

Laura Russo: Exactly.

Lauren Bakken: So, they will get discouraged with one or the other and decide that they want to go somewhere else because they don’t understand what’s going on.

Laura Russo: And it could have just been some simple communication back and forth. With our clients here at SHP, we are really adamant about wanting to know, who’s your CPA? Can we reach out to them? Do you mind if we have a conversation with them? Or especially, we do a lot of tax planning, Roth conversions, things like that, where if we’re doing all this planning, but we’re not looping in the CPA, the CPA is going to file taxes and say, “What the heck are you doing over there? Why would you take this huge distribution for no reason?” And sometimes, not all clients, everybody’s different, different levels of expertise, but they might not be able to fully articulate what the plan was and why we did this for long-term tax planning.

Lauren Bakken: Absolutely.

Laura Russo: There’s a little bit of, I think, where hope is in the near future because there’s always been a little bit of contention between CPAs and financial planners. And I think you’ve seen that in the past too.

Lauren Bakken: Oh, in the past. In the past-past, financial planners didn’t want to talk to CPAs because we were just trouble to them, extra work.

Laura Russo: They’re the bad boys of the finance industry.

Lauren Bakken: We’re bringing up stuff they don’t want to have to dig up. But it’s gotten better in the years, and people we coordinate and we talk to each other, and we’re friendly now, which is good.

Laura Russo: Yeah. And it’s ultimately the client who is the one that benefits from that relationship.

Lauren Bakken: Yeah, it’s all about the client. 

Laura Russo: Exactly, exactly, and that’s how they get the best level of service. And then we haven’t even talked about having an attorney also in place as well.

Lauren Bakken: Especially estate planning.

Laura Russo: Estate planning, business planning, succession planning. There are so many different facets, and we always say we are dangerous enough in all areas that we can handle this. But I think the best tool that you can use is the expert. That’s the next level of you’re the one who’s filing these taxes every single day. I think anyone would be remiss not to loop in someone who’s got that expertise. And then for the financial planning side, we know our clients so well. We know their goals, their long-term perspectives, and they’re not going to always share that with a CPA either. They might just say, “Oh, hi, good to see you this year. Here’s how the year went,” and it’s a little bit siloed, like, “Okay, I see you for this tax year 2026.”

Lauren Bakken: They don’t know that they should loop them all in together. Right. I know.

Laura Russo: So, you’ve dealt with many, many tax returns over the years. You have filed your fair share of returns. Would you say there are any tips or anything that people can do ahead of time for filing their taxes that maybe set people apart that they come in, you say, “Oh, this person’s done very well, or “This person’s got their ducks in order”? Just what are ways that we, as the ordinary tax filer, can prepare and be better suited for filing our taxes?

Lauren Bakken: Yep, the ordinary tax preparer, I mean payer, is they need to be organized and have their paperwork together timely, to say it as nice as I can. Because if you wait until the last minute, you won’t know that you might be missing something, and then you have to scramble to get it. Otherwise, you go on extension, and then you wait until the next extension, and now you’re procrastinating again. So, my advice is: know what’s on your tax return. You can look at your last year’s tax return and put those things aside. Know that you’re going to need your statements from a financial planner, which sometimes come late. I know, but at least you’ll know you’re aware of it. Your W-2s, interest statements, just deductions if you’ve got a lot of them. You just want to be prepared.

I know it’s hard for clients to think about taxes. It’s very stressful for them. So, people who are stressed out tend to procrastinate. I know it’s just a natural human nature. But we’re here to help. So, you need to get it to us in a timely manner, and then again, taking distributions or doing anything that might be tax-related, you might want to give a call before you do that to the financial planner, to your tax preparer. And then so that’s the ordinary taxpayer, the usual taxpayer. People who are in business for themselves, a lot of times they have the mentality that, well, I just don’t want to pay any taxes, so they will make sure that their bottom line is a loss or very small.

And the thing that happens then is if they go for a loan, and this can happen with just a taxpayer, a sole proprietor with just the individual tax return, or an S corporation or something, they go for a loan. Their tax return looks like they make no money. They’re not going to qualify. So, you need to show a net income, no, show that you’re making money in order to be able to borrow money. So, just keep that in mind when you’re preparing your bottom line.

Laura Russo: Yep. And I also have seen recently, a little bit, this is just coincidentally, I had quite a few small business owners who came up, and they have small businesses, but they still have a large amount of money, like 800,000, a million, a couple of millions, just sitting in bank business accounts.

Lauren Bakken: Oh, yeah.

Laura Russo: And can you maybe speak to that a little bit? I know some of that could be liability for the company not taking it out, or it could also be an area that it’s just not growing either. If you’re leaving it in a checking account, you have a million dollars in a checking account, right?

Lauren Bakken: Right. Well, yeah, they should have maybe in a CD or somewhere. You have to be aware of what your cash flow is. So, you don’t want to put aside too much that strap for cash. But it also should be in a cash-available type of a comp. So, look for short-term CDs. Look for anything…

Laura Russo: Treasuries, bonds. There are so many different things that can be built out within it.

Lauren Bakken: Yep. Even at SHP, right? You could put the money there because you can get it out pretty quick. Doesn’t have to be all in stocks or whatever. As long as there’s a long-term play, you hit the nail on the head. It’s like if you leave, you definitely need to leave cash for cash flow reasons, purchases coming up. But if you have an excess amount and it’s doing nothing, that’s bad for your business too. So, we’re not talking about doing anything too crazy, but you want to have someone take a peek at that and say, “Okay, here’s looking at your bottom line. Here’s what you need to have for cash flow-wise.” We usually work with a CPA on that end as well, and then anything over and above, let’s come up with a safe plan for it. Anything over and above that, let’s get more growth going. Everybody’s situation is different, but it’s amazing how sometimes things that we think about, it’s like, “Oh.”

Lauren Bakken: We take it for granted.

Laura Russo: Yeah, that’s an easy decision. That it’s not everybody’s forte. It’s not everybody’s area of expertise and just having that lump sum in like a big business account feels a little bit safer. But in the long term, you could be making quite a bit more with smart decisions.

Lauren Bakken: Yes, and if it is, say, an S corporation, they could take some distributions depending on their basis. You can’t just do it on your own. You have to get advice and then put it into some kind of savings vehicle. But also, this is another thing that I see with small businesses; they don’t have a retirement set up through their business.

Laura Russo: Because their business is their retirement.

Lauren Bakken: Well, yeah, and it helps. It’s deductible. It’s an expense to have a simple IRA, depending, or a SEP or 401(k) if it’s a bigger business. But that way, they’re putting money away, and it’s reducing their net income. So, I would suggest that any small business should have some kind of retirement. And it’s a good thing if you have employees. It’s to be able to offer that too as a benefit.

Laura Russo: Absolutely. And it’s amazing we have clients that we sit down with that have those small businesses, and we ask them those questions, and they’re like, “Oh, I don’t know what that is.” And it’s like you don’t know what you don’t know, but they don’t realize that’s something that your financial advisor… With SHP, we have those accounts. We can run that. We can help them with that, and we work really closely with their CPA to make sure that at the end of the day, we’re putting in the right amounts and just helping them create that holistic full-stop plan. That’s not just your own personal journey, but your business journey kind of loops into that too. So, I think it’s an area that is definitely underserved for a lot of small business owners because, again, they just don’t know these things.

And until someone tells them, or they happen to stumble upon it on researching late at night because they’re scrolling on their phone and something comes up, it’s an area they could have missed, so much time tucking away retirement money as well.

Lauren Bakken: Absolutely, yep. And a lot of times with the smaller businesses, they don’t have that cash flow for it. So, we try to advise them how to save money. They don’t reduce your expenses, and then you will be able to have the money to put into that retirement. And give it to your employees too.

Laura Russo: Absolutely, that’s great. All right. Maybe a couple others if you can rattle off a couple other pointers for us from a CPA position or maybe for some of our retirees or pre-retirees or anyone filing a tax return. What are some things that you would say, just from again your experience in your career, that you wish more people knew about ahead of time?

Lauren Bakken: Well, one of the things, I wish people wouldn’t always make their decisions based on how much tax is there.

Laura Russo: Oh, that’s good.

Lauren Bakken: Because it’s not always the best move. So, they’ll spend money to save in taxes because they think it’s a dollar-for-dollar trade. Like if you spend, say, I don’t know, we’ll say it’s a small business, and they decide that they’re going to buy new equipment this year so that it lowers their net income, but yet it could hurt their cash flow. But also, they can’t. You’re going to have to time out on that one because I just lost my train of thought.

Laura Russo: No problem. We’ll start at the dollar for dollar trade.

Lauren Bakken: Oh, the dollar for dollar trade. Okay, thank you. Yes, dollar for dollar, where they think they’re saving all this money, but yet it’s really only the amount of savings based on their tax rate. So, it’s not dollar for dollar. And usually that can hurt their cash flow, so that operating some businesses are seasonal. So, in the wintertime, they got to save their money to get through until the spring or whatever. But yet they’ve used all their money, or they’ve taken up financial loans to do it. So, it gets them into trouble. So, that’s why they need their financial planner. They need their tax person in order to advise them on those things. At the end of the year, we try to meet with clients just like you do to show them what their bottom line is and advise them as to what they should be doing. “Yeah, maybe, do you need a piece of equipment? Well, maybe it is a good time to do that, but let’s look at your cash flow.”

Laura Russo: So, are you buying just to buy?

Lauren Bakken: Yeah. So, I know sometimes it’s like you’re a business owner, and you think you can just do it all yourself. I don’t need help. But if you want your business to be successful, you do want help. Because if you run out of cash, you’re out of business.

Laura Russo: Exactly, and it’s funny. It applies to regular households too. People who are non-business owners, same principles apply, which is amazing to think about. We have a lot of people who get tripped up by taxes on distributions, and especially with Roth conversions, who don’t see that long-term picture of like, “Well, I’m paying so much in taxes now,” but we’re in historically low tax rates right now. Who knows what they’re going to look like in 10, 15 years? And I say sometimes we have a little saying around here. It’s like sometimes you might be trying to pick up the nickel on the ground, but $1 is flying out your back pocket because you’re trying to pinch pennies.

So, I think that those same principles really do apply of understanding what your cash flow is. Obviously, we wouldn’t want to do some type of tax consequence move like a conversion without having a plan for how to pay those taxes. But it’s the same thing of like, “Oh, I’ve been doing things for so long on my own, I know how to, you know.”

Lauren Bakken: I can do this.

Laura Russo: Yeah, “I know how to do this,” but you don’t actually have the big picture. You don’t see how these things can play out. And we have a really robust financial planning software where we can actually start modeling these changes out and showing what it looks like and the impact just on today’s dollars. I mean, I guess that’s another good question I can ask you is, do you feel like in the future, from your profession, that tax rates are lower right now? That in the future, can you see them going up?

Lauren Bakken: I never answer that question. I don’t because we don’t know. Really, we don’t know.

Laura Russo: I know. I know. It’s like if we had a crystal ball, right? It would be great. We can make a lot of really good decisions if we had a crystal ball. 

Lauren Bakken: Yeah. The only thing I can say is typically when someone gets older and you’re not working anymore, your tax rate goes down because your income isn’t as high typically. But as far as the tax rates, I can’t say.

Laura Russo: She’s too much. She’s way too on the straight and narrow.

Lauren Bakken: I do not have a crystal ball.

Laura Russo: Yeah, but to your point, it is an area where we usually have. I call it the runway, where we have retirement hits. You’re not quite on Social Security maybe, RMDs haven’t kicked on yet, where you might all of a sudden be in a really nice low tax bracket, and that’s the runway where we might want to do some aggressive tax planning. Another area, though, on the flip side that many people don’t find that they’re prepared for is what happens when a spouse passes away, because you’ve been a joint tax filer, and now all of a sudden you’re squeezed into the single tax filer brackets too, and that’s a very hard pill to swallow, to be honest. And it’s obviously already an emotional area. And then you file your taxes, and the IRS says, “Oh, sorry. Sorry for what you’re going through, but here you’re paying more taxes as well.”

Lauren Bakken: Right. But there’s also something else I’d like to say about that too that I see a lot. Typically, it’s the husband that takes care of the finances. Usually, pay the bills. They do the tax returns. And then if he passes, and now it’s the spouse, the wife that knows nothing about anything. They don’t know where anything is. They don’t know passwords. And they, along with the stress of the spouse dying, has to deal with this. It’s awful, and I’ve dealt with many, many widows that they’re just, oh man, they’re just so stressed out. I feel so bad for them.

Laura Russo: I know.

Lauren Bakken: But we walk them through it and put them at ease.

Laura Russo: Yes. It’s huge to have the right team behind you when you go through that. We’ve had so many. It’s probably the hardest part of our job, but I would say the most rewarding in a way when you can help someone navigate through that and be their advocate and be the person that’s their kind of life flow. But it’s true, there are so many statistics out there alone of women who actually move advisors because they’ve never even met with the family financial advisor. It’s always just been the husband because they never even had that relationship. So, we are really very, very I don’t want to say assistant, but I always said like please bring in your spouse. We’re all a team here.

Even if the spouse is not interested in it, it is so important for them to be aware of everything and just to have a face to go to. Just to have even just that friendly face to say, “Oh, I might not be interested in knowing everything about our finances, but at least I know that my spouse chose this person. We’ve had a longstanding relationship, and I have someone who can go to and a little bit about SHP. That’s kind of I would say different than many other firms out there.” We handle a lot of that administration process as we can. We always say: loop in your CPA and your attorney when it’s needed. But there’s a lot ahead of time that we can help people navigate and just understand of what you need to have prepared, what you need to be able to segment as like, okay, 30 days out, here’s what we need to do. 60 days out, a year out.

Lauren Bakken: That’s good. It’s nice.

Laura Russo: Like I said, it’s kind of one of the hardest parts of our job. I’ve navigated quite the loss of quite a few clients, and it hurts us. You think you would know too. You forge really close relationships with your clients, and when you lose one, it’s like losing a piece of your family. And then just being able to be that advocate and that support for the survivor is huge. It’s a big piece, and I think that’s an area that most people don’t realize.

Lauren Bakken: They don’t. You don’t think about it, especially if it’s sudden. You don’t think about what the consequences of what you’re going to need to do.

Laura Russo: And the amounts of paperwork. The amount of follow-up and digging for things. It’s like the last thing you want to be doing when you’re going through grieving. It’s literally the last thing.

Lauren Bakken: I know, and the other situation too is children when their parents pass.

Laura Russo: You’re right.

Lauren Bakken: So, the parents need to make sure the children know what’s going on, because the children now have to deal with the tax returns, the last tax returns, or a state return, or a trust return, or whatever. They have no clue what’s been going on, and it’s really difficult for them.

Laura Russo: Absolutely. And there’s been, definitely, I think, a shift in the right direction of parents talking and being a little bit more open about finances. But there is a little bit of that awkwardness of mom and dad have never shared this info with a kid. Kids 30 years old, 40 years old, they’re more than capable. And it’s like, how do you navigate that conversation?

Lauren Bakken: No, it’s hard because then the kids has to realize that, “Well, geez, my parents are going to die.” You don’t think about that.

Laura Russo: And then the parents have to realize, “Well, geez, I have to trust that my kid is capable, and that I also am willing to share this part of our lives with our kids.”

Lauren Bakken: I think that parents should want to make it easier for whoever the beneficiary is, because they have to deal with all the funeral arrangements and all of that stuff, and we’re getting kind of morbid here, and all the financial stuff. So, if they don’t know where anything is, I have stories of people who’ve had to go through their parents’ houses and look for stuff, and oh man, that’s tough.

Laura Russo: And it’s common. It’s not like it’s a rare thing. This is a pretty common occurrence. So, making sure people have a plan in place, having those conversations with family members, so crucial. So, I guess, Lauren, we probably are coming close to the end of our segment here, but are there any final thoughts or nuggets of wisdom that you’d like to share with us before we close out?

Lauren Bakken: Well, I do what I do because I love it, and I will always still, as long as my fingers move and I can sit, I will still do some tax returns. But the best thing that I hear from a client after sitting down with them, no matter what the situation is, they get up, and they’re going to go, and they say, “Thank you. I think I can sleep tonight.”

Laura Russo: Oh, I love that. I love that. So, finding the right people, like Lauren, like SHP, that can provide that comfort and knowing that you have the security that you’ve got the right team behind you is huge. Well, thank you, Lauren, so much for joining us today. You are amazing. I am so lucky that I got to be the one to pull you in and get to interview you. So, we wish you the best in your “retirement,” and we’re excited to hopefully have you again soon. And for all of our listeners, thank you so much for joining us. We wouldn’t be here without you, and we can’t wait to see you the next time around.

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