09.29.26 Ask An Advisor With Wes Moss

Secret to Giving Yourself 'Permission to Spend' in Retirement & Are Pensions Back? Wes dives into new research showing that median-wealth retirees underspend their potential income by 8% – and wealthier retirees underspend by a staggering 47% to 53%. Wes breaks down the psychological difference between spending assets versus spending income streams, and the little-known shift that can give you the "license to spend" without locking your money away in an annuity. Plus, are pensions making a surprise comeback? Wes explores recent Wall Street Journal data showing thousands of companies adding pension-style plans, why workers want them back, and what this means for the future of retirement. Mentioned on the show: What Is an Annuity, and Why Does Clark Think They Stink?⁠ ⁠How Two Clark-Approved Annuities Can Reduce Retirement Stress⁠ ⁠Annuity Calculator: Is it Worth It? - Clark Howard⁠ ⁠How To Turn Part of Your Nest Egg Into a Pension - Clark Howard⁠ ⁠What It Would Take Each Month To Build Your Own Social Security Check From Scratch⁠ ⁠The Biggest Investing Lesson From Trump Accounts - Clark Howard⁠ ⁠Best 529 Plans by State: How Clark Howard Picks the Top College Savings Plans⁠ ⁠Pensions Were on the Brink of Extinction. Now Companies Are Bringing Them Back.⁠ All this and more on the September 29, 2026, Ask an Advisor episode of the Clark Howard podcast. Submit your questions: WesMoss.com/ask Discover the research-backed path to a happier retirement – order The Retire Sooner Method by Wes Moss today at retiresoonermethod.comWe hope you enjoy our weekly Ask An Advisor episodes. Let us know what you think in the comments! Learn more about Wes: BOOKS BY WES MOSS Wes Moss, CFP® Wes Moss - Clark.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 0:49Speaker 03

  Welcome to this week's Ask an Advisor. I'm Krista DeBias here with Wes Moss, our advisor on The Clark Howard Show.

• 0:56Speaker 04

  Hi Krista DeBias.

• 0:58Speaker 03

  You've talked in the past about how we're afraid to spend money in retirement. A good problem to have. And there's some new research around that, right? Which says we maybe should be spending, what is it? Eight to?

• 1:10Speaker 04

  According to this research, and this was from Chris Browning and researchers Michael Fink and David Blanchett, that we could be spending 8% more all the way up to 100% more.

• 1:25Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:27Speaker 04

  I mean, I want to see if people agree with this.

• 1:29Speaker 03

  Okay, that'll be interesting to hear about. And then something's coming back that we thought was gone forever, right? Pensions.

• 1:36Speaker 04

  Pensions, there has been a surge of new pensions and new people being covered. There's some nuances around it, but I very often get, oh, well, don't even talk about pensions and nobody has them. That's just not true. And they've been climbing and I don't want younger folks to totally dismiss that that'll never be an option because people have been getting new pensions established. Interesting.

• 1:57Speaker 03

  Okay, and we definitely have a lot of questions for you, Wes. You can send those in at Wes's website, wesmoss.com/ask.

• 2:06Speaker 04

  Here's where I got this idea. So I was at a financial conference a couple of weeks ago. I sat down with Jean Chatsky. She has a new book called The Forever Paycheck. And in that book, she makes the case, looking at a couple of different research studies, long-term research studies. It was called the, the Health and Retirement Study, decades-long research from University of Michigan, and essentially looked at what people are spending relative to what they could be spending. And the research says, again, this is where I'd be interested to hear what our folks think about this. Median wealth retirees, she claims, underspend by roughly 8%.

• 2:51Speaker 04

  So that could be a few thousand, it could be $8, $10,000 a year underspending. And then wealthier retirees underspend by 47 to 53%. That's a big, that's a big number.

• 3:03Speaker 03

  Now, is that relative to if they?

• 3:06Speaker 04

  And I'll tell you why.

• 3:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, let's hear that.

• 3:08Speaker 04

  Cause she gives the example, and I've seen this a million times, or many times. Her own mother had a million six when she retired. Her husband had passed away. She was very comfortable spending her social security. She had a little bit of a pension that he left behind that was monthly. And she was totally fine to spend that. However, she did not want to spend anything else. So barely ever took, didn't want to take any other money out of her accounts.

• 3:36Speaker 03

  And a lot of people feel like they want to leave money to their children or charities, and so they purposely do that, right?

• 3:42Speaker 04

  Well, this study from, I'm glad you brought that up. This is Michael Fink and David Blanchett. They dug into the numbers even more. They used the same 2020 Health and Retirement Study data that University of Michigan did. And they found retirees spend about 80% of income if it's coming in as an income stream. They're not going to spend money from assets, the same amount, but they'll spend it if it's coming into them as an income stream.

• 4:11Speaker 03

  Makes sense.

• 4:12Speaker 04

  According to these researchers, which is saying that they're only spending about half of what the traditional 4% guideline would allow them to. Isn't that interesting?

• 4:20Speaker 03

  It is interesting. Hence Jean Chatsky's mom with the social security.

• 4:24Speaker 04

  Right. And by the way, when she passed away, 20 years later, she had more than the 1.6 million she started with. So she feels like there's more things her mom could have done. More spending, she could have done more trips, less worry around never touching the principal. Then you follow that up with these other researchers. Really, that's the premise of her book, is that people don't, they're totally fine spending income, they're for some reason not find spending assets that otherwise would be income. Here's a line from one of the researchers, having more of your money in the form of income rather than assets seems to give retirees a license to spend.

• 5:04Speaker 04

  Now, what they propose is that turning some of your money, and I'm going to use the four-letter word here on, on The Clark Howard Show, in some sort of fixed annuity, some of your retirement, turn it into a payment stream so you know you won't run out and you will spend that money, you'll be more willing to spend that money. Now, there are downsides to that because when you pass away, your heirs don't get any of that money. So there's some real limitations around, and you can't access the money. So I look at this, I go back and I think, okay, well, I've been an advocate for such a long time around this equation that we all are faced with. It's total return is growth plus income. And when you're young, maybe you lean 90, 95% on growth.

• 5:49Speaker 04

  Maybe it's 100%. So all you're worried about is appreciation. Then when you get into retirement, if you're only have a portfolio that is going up in value, that's great. But psychologically, again, if she's right, and I would agree, I see this in real life, there's a real hesitancy to say, well, even though I started with a million and now it's worth 2 million, I still don't want to touch any of that appreciation. Enter the power, and not just from an investment standpoint, but from a psychological standpoint in shifting that equation so that maybe it was 90% about growth and only a little bit about income. In retirement, perhaps that shifts to 70% growth, 30% income, perhaps it shifts 30%

• 6:34Speaker 04

  to growth and you lean more heavily on income-producing assets. Yes, we're still going after the same total return equation. We want our money to grow, whether it's going up in value or we're getting cash flow from the assets that we hold. But at the same time, is there a real psychological benefit that we now give ourselves permission that, hey, I'm getting a dividend and I'm getting interest, I might as well go ahead and spend it because it feels like a paycheck and we're more willing to do that. Now, I don't think you need to do an annuity.

• 7:06Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 7:07Speaker 04

  I don't. I see her side of this. I see what the researchers are saying. I get it. I don't think, now, if you look at, what does an annuity give you, Krista? If you're 60 and you do a single premium annuity, I've looked at various numbers, it comes out to around 6%. All right, well, that's not a whole lot better than the 4% rule. And plus you can't touch the money.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  Right.

• 7:33Speaker 04

  Instead, you could just lean into a world where there are lots of different options to generate income, to unlock the power to some extent, not just in the expansion of the price of the securities or the funds of the ETFs you have, but unlock this idea that, hey, I'm going to trade in some of the growth for more consistent income. And if you look at where we are in the world today, and I want to give some examples here, the S and P 500 yield is only about 1.2%. Not a lot of dividends from that. On a million dollars, you're going to get 12 grand in dividends. But if you start going up what I called the yield ladder, and I used to do this on my radio show almost every week. It's like, what gives me 1%? What can I get paid 2%? How do I get 4%?

• 8:18Speaker 04

  You just look at the landscape and I'm not advocating or recommending anybody runs out and buys these, but if you look at the utility ETF, a basket of utility companies, now you're talking about 3% approximately in just in the cash flow. That's helpful. You go up the yield ladder and you look at some of the energy companies, the big US energy companies, you're going to probably get closer to 4, 4.5% just from dividends. Again, permission, license to feel okay about spending. You get into REITs, real estate investment trusts or closed-end funds, you're in the 7, 8% range in just in income. And we've got a lot of questions from our listeners here and our viewers around some

• 9:03Speaker 04

  of these ETFs that are designed to have higher current levels of income. And to some extent, I see the psychological side of how that can be helpful over time. So again, very simple. We're very scared to spend if we're total growth investors. I don't think you need to run out and buy an annuity just to turn some of your money into income, because you can go out into the wide world of investments. And if you want to have a higher level of income, and you're going to sacrifice some growth for that. But in my book, I would rather have higher current income, still control the assets, not turn it over to an annuity company. And I think you solve both of those problems.

• 9:45Speaker 03

  And you avoid the high commissions that often come with annuities, right?

• 9:49Speaker 04

  Well, that's, yeah, that's another huge argument against annuities. But when you're looking at a fixed annuity or a single premium annuity, yes, there's all of that baked into this black box. And then the annuity company has control of your money forever. And that to me is the really tough part.

• 10:04Speaker 03

  Right. Okay, we're going to get to some questions. This one came in from, I love this, Financial Freedom Fanboy.

• 10:11Speaker 04

  I love it.

• 10:12Speaker 03

  I'm 51 years old and will have our mortgage paid off in a few months. The plan is to retire in about six years, maybe seven, if we can find an around the world cruise that looks good. I'm lucky enough to have a pension and I currently have about $900,000 in my Roth 401k, contributing around 18,000 a year. I'm also maximizing contributions to an FSA that that just started last year. My question is, where should we put the money we've been using for our mortgage? Once it's paid off, about $3,500 a month excluding escrow? I'm thinking maximizing the 401k is the best move, but then what? Also, once I retire, which apples should we start eating first? We want to delay collecting the pension until 2040, if at all possible.

• 10:56Speaker 04

  How much was Fanboy putting into the 401k right now, the Roth 401k?

• 11:01Speaker 03

  Uh, let's see, 18,000 a year.

• 11:04Speaker 04

  Okay. The simple answer is that now you've got more room because you've got 3,500 extra a month. Now the mortgage is paid off. That is money green zone when it comes to housing. That's awesome. But because you're over 50 or 50 plus, you can do 32,500, I want to say, 32,500 minus 18. You've got a lot of room. You've got another 14,500 you could put into the Roth 401k. Divide that by 12, that's 1,200 bucks a month extra that can be going into that. So you're maxing that out. That would leave you with another 2,200 bucks a month. Where does that 2,200 go?

• 11:47Speaker 04

  This is where, yes, it would be great to put everything in a Roth and the Roth is the king of all accounts because it's tax deferred, then tax free. It's, it's hard to beat. Maybe the, the next level down, the prince is a brokerage account. So now Fanboy, you can take that $2,200 a month. 2,200 times 12 is 26 grand a year. And if you have seven years left in retirement, you're going to be able to save another 180 and that'll probably double over that period of time. Or let's say it doesn't quite double. Now you're talking about another 250, maybe even $300,000 in a brokerage account,

• 12:27Speaker 04

  which is not as great as a Roth, but it's still a nice cushion for retirement. That's what I'd be looking to do.

• 12:35Speaker 03

  Okay. Curious parents in Illinois say, hi Wes, longtime listener of Clark and now you as well, I haven't missed a Clark Howard podcast in years. We know Clark has advised against the new Trump account, recommending a 529 instead for kids' education due to less favorable tax treatment. Our son is seven and we have $78,000 saved in his 529 plan. We also max out our Roth 401k and do a backdoor Roth IRA every year. Two questions. One, when should we stop contributing to the 529? At what point is it enough since we don't plan on having another child? And two, we know our son won't qualify for the $1,000 seed money in a Trump account, but we're thinking this could be a good crock pot, letting $5,000 a year sit and grow for him until he's 18.

• 13:19Speaker 03

  Once it converts to a regular IRA, could he then convert it to a Roth IRA during his early, low income years? And what happens to the cost basis on our contributions during that future Roth conversion? We've been trying to find reliable information on Roth conversions for Trump accounts, but haven't had much luck finding it from a legitimate source.

• 13:39Speaker 04

  Here's why curious parents in Illinois, there's not a lot out there is because that hasn't happened yet. The Trump accounts are so new that nobody has had them for years in order to convert them at age 18. That's why. Everything that I've read about them, and again, this would, this is going to be way out into the future for a lot of folks and for you guys 11 years from now. They, at 18, they turn into an IRA. And if they in fact turn into an IRA, then they should be able to be converted into a Roth. And I've read that over and over and over again. So I don't see why that couldn't be the example and why that wouldn't happen. Number one. Number two, that is a window from 18 to, until your son starts working, he's going

• 14:24Speaker 04

  to have zero income. Well, what a great time to convert the Trump IRA or the Trump account, which is now an IRA into Roth. I don't see why that would be an issue. And you don't want to necessarily, you can't do it before 18. So it gives you a great window to be able to have tax free retirement money that was accumulated inside the Trump account. Now, your question, I believe, and she asked it too. It should, if that's the only asset he has, then the contribution should not be taxed and just the gain would be taxed when it comes to the conversion. At least that's how I think it should work, but this is something that's going to happen way out into the future.

• 15:07Speaker 04

  I think on the 529 plan, you're almost on coast FIA. You know what I'm talking about? You already have almost, let's say you have $78,000 in 10 years, even at 7%, that would double. And now you're looking at almost 160K. Now, if you're going to Duke, that's like a semester.

• 15:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:30Speaker 04

  But at a state school, you may not even need the whole 160K. So when I say you're on coast FIA is you already have a big chunk in there. And I'm looking at real life, parents don't end up with 300 or a half a million dollars in 529 accounts. It's, I think it's, there can be an overkill there. Getting to 150 to 200, just by the growth, I think that takes care of a whole lot of college, unless you pick the most expensive schools in the nation.

• 15:59Speaker 03

  And if you're wondering what coast FIA is, Wes talked about that on a previous episode.

• 16:04Speaker 04

  FIA is in fire.

• 16:05Speaker 03

  Right.

• 16:05Speaker 04

  Coast, because you've already have some financial independence for that particular educational savings account.

• 16:12Speaker 03

  Marta in West Virginia says, my 403B is a combination of pre-tax contributions and post-tax Roth contributions. When I start to withdraw from this account, who decides how much comes from the pre-tax money and the post-tax money? And how will this be calculated for income tax purposes?

• 16:29Speaker 04

  Marta, you do. It's up to you. You get to say, you have essentially, if I'm hearing you correctly, a regular retirement account and a Roth retirement account. There are two separate buckets. So if you pull money out of the retirement account, when you've stopped working, that's going to be taxed at ordinary income. If you only take money out of the Roth, that should be tax free. You may do a combination and you say, I need 10,000 from this and 10,000 from the other. That 20,000 comes in, the taxation would be on half of it. When you get to the point, you can leave it in the plan, or if you want to roll it over, the regular 401k or retirement account would go, likely you could go into, move that into an IRA and the Roth side could go into a Roth.

• 17:13Speaker 04

  And then you get to choose, and this is the great thing about managing your bracket of taxes in retirement is that you get to choose how much income you want to take for the year. You get to be in control, Marta, on how much you take out of each basket, the very different tax scenarios.

• 17:32Speaker 03

  All right, we're going to take a break right there. We'll be back and we'll answer more of your questions and you're going to talk about pensions.

• 17:38Speaker 04

  Pensions.

• 17:39Speaker 03

  Having a revival.

• 17:42Speaker 00

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• 19:58Speaker 04

  Welcome back to Ask an Advisor. I'm Wes Moss. Wait a minute. Pensions are coming back? A pension revival? Now, let's not get overly excited about this, but there's an article in the Wall Street Journal recently detailing the rise in pensions. We've gone from over 30% of Americans had a pension, and then over the last 40 years, that's gone down to, let's call it around 10%. But if you look at how many employers offered pensions back in 2020, it was about 23,000 employers. Today, that number is 26,000. So that means 3,000 companies are now offering a pension-type plan that they didn't offer before. Is it a pension surge?

• 20:41Speaker 04

  I don't know if we could really call that, but certainly the trend has gone in the other direction. And the reason I bring this up is that pensions have gotten to the point where people just totally dismiss them. And they say, oh, nobody has a pension anymore. There's no such thing. Well, there are younger employers with companies like, and here's a list, IBM, PICO, which is, I believe, the Pennsylvania Energy Company from my days in Pennsylvania, JBS Foods, Northwell Health. There's been new movement for airline pilots, as an example, over the last couple of years. New agreement, a Delta introduced a market-based, what's called a cash balance plan, that is a form of a pension. This is a story. Now,

• 21:22Speaker 04

  some of this is coming from unions, but there's a story about one of these union representatives going around to different bars in Pennsylvania, talking to the different constituents while they're in these labor negotiations, and asks, hey, what do you want out of these negotiations? What did he say? Everybody said, not just at one bar, but every bar, "We want a pension." "We want a pension." So people still, if it's a maybe out there, then I think Americans understand that it can be a really big deal and a really nice supplement. We talked earlier about income. Well, that's one of those income sources that people feel really good about spending. Why did we get rid of them? Companies didn't like the liability. People were living longer than their actuarial models had put together to begin with, so their pensions

• 22:06Speaker 04

  were getting underfunded. And that's why companies have tried to go away from pensions. But we've had a couple of things happen. IBM, as an example, their existing pension has had pretty good returns, so it's now overfunded. So companies have come back and said, well, maybe we're able to do this. And why would they do it? Well, retention, getting new employees, keeping employees, it's a real benefit. And the reason I bring this up, I don't want somebody in their 20s to totally discount that that would never be on the table when it comes to looking for work. It might be on the table. Now, something like 86% of government workers, municipal workers, et cetera, public servants have access to a pension.

• 22:50Speaker 04

  But the companies that I just mentioned, those are not government companies. Those are private sector companies that the executives are looking around saying, well, wait a minute, maybe we could do a form of a pension. Now, some of these are just the good old fashioned, traditional, I call it a black box pension. They are putting money in, and they're going to give you some money over time, once you retire. The other version of this pension is what called a cash balance plan. And a cash balance plan is a little bit of a hybrid, maybe a 401k with training wheels and extra support, where they're contributing a certain amount of money to this pension. You get a statement that shows how much it's growing, and a projected amount that you might be able to get into the future. There's a little

• 23:35Speaker 04

  bit more transparency around a cash balance plan. But again, it's another benefit that companies are trying to implement, that you can ultimately take advantage of down the road when you're in retirement. So don't, I don't want us to totally discount that there's no such thing. These are not extinct. They're still very real. Something like 11 million people have a pension now. They're still very real, and they've been growing in popularity over the last couple of years.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  All right. Hopeful. Here's a question here for you, Wes, from Brian in California. He says, "Wes, I enjoy your show. Recently, I converted $30,000 into a Roth IRA. It's sitting in cash, and it's not money I'll need for an extended period, 10 to 15 years. I'm looking to invest that cash in six Vanguard growth-focused ETFs. I have a knack for buying stocks and funds and watching them quickly drop in price."

• 24:26Speaker 04

  I knew, I literally knew exactly what he was going to say when you were starting to read that.

• 24:31Speaker 03

  But eventually, they usually come back, and over time, I realize some gains. My question is, with this $30,000, which has greater potential for a higher return, investing $5,000 in each fund now, all at once, or dollar-cost averaging over time? And if dollar-cost averaging is the better approach, how long a period would you spread the investments over?

• 24:53Speaker 04

  Brian, if you really have a horizon that is 15 years, then history suggests, and these are all probabilities, Krista, there is no black and white on this, but more times than not, so let's call it two-thirds of the time, you would have been better a year out, putting all the money to work right away. Because the market tends to go higher more often than it's going lower, the probability leans toward not dollar-cost averaging your money here. And now, this is what makes investing so hard. A third of the time, you would have been better off putting it in over the course of six months or a year, because the markets

• 25:35Speaker 04

  did go down. So I can't tell you what the next 12 months is going to be. What I can tell you is that when you have 15 years, I think I'd probably be playing the probability that doing it at once is a, I have a higher probability that it'll be worth more a year from now, and of course, longer term. So I can't tell you what to do, but if I'm playing the mathematics of history, you're better off doing this earlier than later. Now, if it makes you nervous to put such a big chunk to work all at the same time, then by all means, if dollar-cost averaging gets you invested, again, good plan versus perfect plan, then that's fine, too. You do want to be invested, because you have a huge, long-time

• 26:19Speaker 04

  horizon. So if it takes you DCA to do it, then that's still pretty good.

• 26:26Speaker 03

  Okay. Ed in California says, "I have a question about an answer you gave when asked how the government pushes money out into the system. You said one government agency does this by buying bonds from another agency, but where does the first agency get the money to do that? And what does it do with the bonds afterward? Sorry if I'm being a little dense here, but I don't quite get it. At the end of the day, does the government cause inflation by putting too much money into the system? Did we effectively pay for all that COVID money that we received through the inflation spike that followed? Thanks again to Wes and Clark for your invaluable information."

• 27:01Speaker 04

  Ed, you bet. And the reason why, you're not dense, it's that it's almost an unfathomable thing that we have here in the United States. And it's because we're the reserve currency. You can't do what we do in the United States and quote, "print money." It's really a digital creation of money, if you're not want either the reserve currency or one of the main reserve currencies. So not everybody can just do this, but here's how it works in the United States. And maybe, let me try to give it a numeric example. Let's do a round number. Let's just say the whole pool of money in America is a billion dollars. That's the whole monetary system. Well, let's say the government would like to increase that money supply, because we've got a terrible economy, or we're shut down for COVID, as

• 27:44Speaker 04

  a real-life example. Well, the government then can issue, let's say, $250 million worth of bonds. Okay. Well, who buys it? Well, the banks, the money-center banks, the giant banks in the United States, and there's, let's say, a couple dozen of them, they're obligated to buy bonds from the Treasury. That's part of the deal. That's part of being one of the big money-center banks. So the banks buy the bonds. All right. The Treasury gets the cash. Well, now, we still haven't created any money, right? We still, we're still have the same billion dollars. Well, now, the Federal Reserve comes in, and they

• 28:26Speaker 04

  create the money. They literally say on a digital keyboard, "I need an extra 250 million, and I'm going to pay the banks for that $250 million." Now, the banks have liquidity. Now, there's another key step here. The Treasury or the government's got to get the money out there into the system. Well, usually, they do that, and it takes some time, and they do it through government spending, and they're paying people, and they're doing contracts. But what did they do during COVID? They literally sent checks to our home. They sent money out directly and immediately, and it took like, a month. And all of that extra cash was immediately into the system. So now, you've got a monetary system, the

• 29:07Speaker 04

  banks are whole, the Fed's paid for the cash, because they just created the money. And now, by the way, the Fed is increasing their balance sheet. That's what that means. So now, they have more bonds, because they bought those bonds from the bank, that the bank bought from the Treasury. And now, instead of a billion, we have a monetary system that's 1.25 billion. And it happened in a really short period of time. By the way, I picked that 25%, because that's about how much extra cash came into the system. And by the way, it's about how much inflation we had.

• 29:38Speaker 03

  Okay. All right. Nicole in Georgia says, "I'm wondering about something that I think is becoming more common. What options does someone have if they're aging alone and don't have children or family members they'd feel comfortable naming as their financial power of attorney? I've heard you can name a CPA or financial advisor, but I'm concerned about what happens if that person retires, becomes ill, or is no longer able to help. I'd also want some kind of checks and balances, so that individual isn't completely responsible for everything. Are banks or trust companies really the best option in this situation? Or are there other professional fiduciaries or services that can provide this kind of help? And if someone does need to hire a professional or institution, what should

• 30:20Speaker 03

  they look for? And what questions should they ask about continuity, oversight, fees, and accountability? Are there any other particular resources and types of organizations you'd recommend someone look into? I'm less concerned with finding someone I trust today than with creating a system I can trust years from now." And Nicole is not alone. We get so many questions from people wondering this.

• 30:45Speaker 04

  It's a very real problem and there's a good answer for it. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's the perfect solution, but normally I, if I have a family member and I trust and we get along and I have no, there's no trust issues whatsoever. We know people like that in our lives. You know, who could be your trustee and who shouldn't be. And you usually want to choose that person, but you're exactly right. What happens 30 years down the line? And maybe they're similar age to you, but they pass away. Well, you can have a successor trustee, but who, who is that going to be? And that starts to get to be impossible. So if you have a trust that may, you think will last five, 10, 20

• 31:27Speaker 04

  years, then maybe it's totally fine to have a human person because they're not going to last and be able to do it forever. But let's say it's a big estate and it's lots of money and you think it might last 30 years, 50 years, maybe for a hundred years. Well, there's no lineage of humans that you can, that you can list out with, because they're not, they're not even born yet. You kind of have to go back to an entity like a trust company or a big bank that has been around for a really long time and should continue to be around really kind of in perpetuity. And there's lots of these trust companies. So most of the big banks also have trust divisions. Those trust divisions are the

• 32:11Speaker 04

  place where they have three or four people or five people around the table. And when your beneficiary, that's your great grandson that you don't even know, 30, 50 years later says, Hey, I'd like some money from Nicole's trust, my dear, sweet Nicole and our grandmother, great, great grandmother. The committee decides, they read the trust and they say, okay, yeah, this says that you're allowed to have a certain percentage every year and they grant access to the money. Or little Johnny, great, great grandson comes and says, Hey, I'd like to buy a brand new wakeboard boat that's 500K. The trust company says, um, your great, great,

• 32:56Speaker 04

  great grandmother Nicole's didn't, didn't have any place for that. So Johnny, no boat. That's what a trust company is supposed to do. And the thought behind it, and I've seen this in practice now for 25 plus years, the same trust companies I was working with decades ago are still trust companies. Now, there's a lot of turnover. I've had trusts, this is through, let's call it Schwab Trust or Fidelity Trust, Northern Trust, there's JP Morgan, I believe has trusts. There are smaller, local trust companies. I think Arden Trust for smaller trusts. There's a company out of Tennessee called Truxton. These are smaller trust companies as opposed to like a Northern Trust, which is a massive trust company.

• 33:40Speaker 04

  And I'm not recommending any of these per se, but they should be around for a really long period of time. But the trust officer that's overseeing the kind of the conduit gatekeeper that takes it to the committee, that may change almost every year. So there is turnover, but it's turnover by employees, but they're still working for the same trust company and they're still trying to execute on your wishes that you wrote many years ago.

• 34:10Speaker 03

  All right. Well, that does it for us on this episode of Ask an Advisor. Again, if you have a question, go to wesmoss.com/ask and submit it to us. We really appreciate everyone who subscribes and shares these episodes with a friend. It helps us out a great deal. Thank you, Wes.

• 34:29Speaker 04

  Thank you, Krista.

• 34:29Speaker 03

  Have a great rest of your day.

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