Elliott Appel: Caring for My Father Put My Life on Pause for 7 Years. Here’s What I Learned

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Christine Benz (0:33)

Hi and welcome to The Long View. I'm Christine Benz, Director of Personal Finance and Retirement Planning for Morningstar.

Amy Arnott (0:39)

And I'm Amy Arnott, Portfolio Strategist for Morningstar.

Christine Benz (0:42)

Our guest on the podcast today is Elliott Appel. He's a financial planner and the founder of Kindness Financial Planning. He's also an author. His latest book is called How to Help Your Parents As They Age, A Financial Planner's Guide to Caregiving, which is a chronicle of his father's last years and the key lessons he learned along the way. He's also co-host of his own podcast called the ME and Money Podcast.

I really loved this conversation because Elliott provided so many tangible tips that people can use to help their parents. And his personal story really provides a lot of color.

Amy Arnott (1:19)

Yeah. So one of the concrete tips that I really liked was putting your parents on your own cell phone plan and why that can be really helpful if there's a lost phone or other issues that come up. So, you know, my husband and I both have aging parents. So I've added that to my to do list for the future.

Christine Benz (1:41)

So let's get into the conversation. Elliott, welcome to the Long View.

Elliott Appel (1:48)

Thanks, Christine. I appreciate you having me.

Christine Benz (1:50)

Well, we're really glad to have you here and excited to talk about your book, which is wonderful. We want to talk about the book in the backstory. But before that, can you talk about your work as a financial planner and what initially attracted you to that profession?

Elliott Appel (2:06)

I loved financial planning because it married sort of the technical expertise of living in spreadsheets and planning and tax planning and estate planning with the real world and working with people. And sometimes you would find the most common thing in a spreadsheet and maybe the most likely outcome isn't what someone wanted to do. And so I really loved when you got into it with people and you could sort of have the pros and cons of how is this actually going to work in the real world for people with emotions.

Amy Arnott (2:34)

Your firm, which is called Kindness Financial Planning, focuses on widows, caregivers, and people affected by major health events. What made you want to home in on that as your specialty?

Elliott Appel (2:47)

Yeah, so I worked for 10 years at a larger wealth management firm. And when I launched my own firm, I thought about the client conversations that I enjoyed the most. And there were there are many types of different folks I enjoyed working with. But in particular, widows are people going through major transitions.

It just you could directly see the impact in real time of what sort of conversations and planning topics you were talking about. And see sort of for the next generation to I like working at the stage of life because you can start setting things up for that next generation and see the impact of that. And people are thinking about sort of what I would call maybe larger than life issues.

Christine Benz (3:26)

So legacy issues, like what do I want my impact to be in this world, those sorts of things?

Elliott Appel (3:31)

Exactly. Like how do I set my kids up? How do I make sure that they're well taken care of, but maybe not, quote unquote, spoiled and just make things easier for them, too? Maybe they had difficulties with their parents in settling their estates or not knowing what they wanted. And how do I make that easier for my heirs?

Christine Benz (3:49)

OK.

So we want to talk about the book, which really elegantly weaves your personal story with some really concrete advice about how people can help manage their parents' affairs. So let's start with your personal story. And maybe you can describe your relationship with your dad. It sounds like it was difficult in a lot of respects in contrast with your relationship with your mother, which was very good and loving. So maybe you can talk about your dad a little bit.