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Financially Free!
12 Plays5 days ago
What would you do if something happened and you were suddenly on your own?
What are the steps you can take as a mom to be financially free NO MATTER WHAT?
And How much do we really need to survive?
After losing her husband in 2013 unexpectedly, Donna found herself navigating widowhood with 3 young children. The impact of this inspired Donna to relaunch her career as a financial planner, as she had found that role to be so impactful for her during that time, and she was on a mission to help support families in transition. She founded Sephton Financial, LLC as a certified financial planner and a certified divorce financial analyst. She remarried in 2022 and has a beautiful blended family with 6 children between them. She lives in Springfield Township, Wyndmoor, PA with her family and their Mini Golden Doodle as a modern day "Brady Bunch".
Find Donna here -
https://sephtonfinancial.com/
IG - https://www.instagram.com/sephton_financial_llc/
FB - https://www.facebook.com/sephtonfinancial#
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Mom Tabulous' and Donna Kendrick
00:00:01
Sharla Mandere
Hello, and welcome back to Mom Tabulous. I'm Charla Mander, your host, and with me today is Donna Kendrick. I'm so excited for this. Donna is a financial planner. After losing her husband in 2013 unexpectedly, Donna found herself navigating widowhood with three young children.
00:00:21
Sharla Mandere
The impact of this inspired her to relaunch her career as a financial planner, as she had found that role to be so impactful for her during that time, and she was on a mission to support families in transition.
Donna's Journey: From Widowhood to Blended Family
00:00:33
Sharla Mandere
So she founded Septon Financial LLC as a certified financial planner and a certified divorce financial analyst.
00:00:41
Sharla Mandere
She remarried in 2022 and has a beautiful blended family with six children between the two of them. She lives in Springfield Township, Pennsylvania with her family and their English Bulldog as a modern-day Brady Bunch. I love that. Welcome, Donna.
00:00:59
Donna Kendrick
Thank you so much. And I have to say the English blog passed and now we have um a mini golden doodle.
00:01:05
Sharla Mandere
oh
00:01:06
Donna Kendrick
So we are a doodle family now. I never thought I'd be one, but we are.
00:01:08
Sharla Mandere
um We
00:01:10
Donna Kendrick
She's so smart.
00:01:12
Sharla Mandere
We, I'm seriously considering and our house is too small for like a big dog. So we were talking about the mini golden doodles cause they are, they're hypoallergenic, right?
00:01:21
Donna Kendrick
Yeah.
00:01:24
Sharla Mandere
But they're sweet.
00:01:26
Donna Kendrick
so sweet like this one she doesn't shed but she's black and gray she's a blue merle so her poodle dad was a blue merle and so there's no like you can't see that she's golden but she's just awesome and sweet and probably the smartest one in the house so
00:01:29
Sharla Mandere
Yeah.
00:01:44
Sharla Mandere
but yeah We have a good friend that has ah a golden doodle and named Bauer and he is the, I mean, I brought him home with me one day because she was like, I need someone to watch him for an hour. And I brought him in that my cat freaked out. But and he was kind of like, what's that? He didn't go after her, but he was just like interested. It was a very interesting hour. But my kids, I was like, this is kind of.
00:02:08
Sharla Mandere
kind of, um, we've been walking friends, dogs a lot. I'm like, I'm not a dog.
00:02:11
Donna Kendrick
It's borrowing.
00:02:12
Sharla Mandere
I'm a dog owner, but my, it's like when I taught, I taught a stroller fitness program and I was like, I can hold your babies because I'm done having them.
00:02:16
Donna Kendrick
That's a good way to get the dog fixed. And it helps others. So it's all good.
00:02:25
Sharla Mandere
So I will hold it. You can work out. And then I give it back.
00:02:30
Donna Kendrick
Love it.
00:02:30
Sharla Mandere
but
00:02:31
Donna Kendrick
It's a good plan.
00:02:32
Sharla Mandere
This is my favorite part of the job, was holding
00:02:34
Donna Kendrick
Love
Career Shift: From Pharma to Financial Planning
00:02:35
Sharla Mandere
your baby.
00:02:35
Donna Kendrick
it.
00:02:35
Sharla Mandere
um So Donna, tell me a little more, like tell us a little more about yourself and and your story and how you you know got into all all of this. What were you doing before?
00:02:45
Donna Kendrick
Yeah, but definitely.
00:02:47
Sharla Mandere
Yeah.
00:02:47
Donna Kendrick
So like finance wasn't not known to me. So my prior career, I did financial forecasting for the pharmaceutical industry. My degree is in statistics and for my relationship with my first husband, Greg, I handled all the everyday money.
00:03:03
Donna Kendrick
And he handled the bigger savings from his employer, right? His 401k, 403b, and why? Because I gave up my career to follow him abroad to help expand his career.
Navigating Widowhood: Life and Finances with Young Children
00:03:15
Donna Kendrick
He wound up working for Homeland Security. We lived an international life, almost almost like a military life.
00:03:21
Donna Kendrick
And when I came home stateside and moved back to the Philadelphia area, that's where we're both from, he passed away suddenly. And my kids were eight, 11, and 12. And so all of a sudden you're thrust into managing life, managing kids on your own, I call it soul parenting, because there's no weekends, there's no getaways, there's no other person to bounce something off of, which is a plus later in years. so but At the same time, like I was doing it and understanding all the finances. Push comes to shove. Greg and I had a financial advisor when we were younger.
00:03:55
Donna Kendrick
and they gave us some great advice on investing, but also great advice on life insurance and having our estate documents done, our will, healthcare care directive, power of attorney. So when Greg died, I had that life insurance as almost a safety net, right? Still didn't know exactly what I was doing because the grief was real, parenting was real. We had just moved into a new neighborhood after living so many years away and my kids were the new kids who just lost their dad, like, oh, come on.
00:04:24
Donna Kendrick
And I leaned on the help of another financial advisor, not the original one that gave us a great advice, but one that could really match for me as a widow. and hold my hand and he really slowed the role and what decisions I had to make immediately, which ones I could make intermittently and then which ones were were long on play long term.
Motivation to Help Others: Donna's Book and Community Support
00:04:42
Donna Kendrick
Because when you just lost a spouse and your kids are little and you have to get back to work and you don't know how benefits are going to be paid, you don't know social security, you don't want anyone talking about it. If you had a magic wand and you could dream, what would life look like? That, I'm from Philly, you just give them the middle finger and you move on, right?
00:04:59
Donna Kendrick
And so he knew very easily, like, just to give me enough of what I had to make decisions on, life insurance applications, social security, where the benefits going, understanding my income, and then pause and breathe.
00:05:02
Sharla Mandere
And.
00:05:13
Donna Kendrick
And where could we do investments, but investments light, right, and really make long-term strategies later. And that, after two years, I knew I had to go back to work. My husband was a breadwinner. um I kind of took that little risk in life and asked that advisor, like, how do I do what you did for me? I want to help other families in transition, these divorcees, these widow people in widowhood, and now ultimately blended families, because that can even be a bigger bite to chew.
00:05:41
Donna Kendrick
because I think I shared just a little bit ago. Sometimes when we make decisions on your own. It's really easy. It's my way. No one else's way. um And when here I am blending families, we have to make decisions on finances together.
00:05:52
Donna Kendrick
We have to make decisions on parenting together. And that's a whole different ball of wax. So um share that journey through authorship. I have a book called The Guide to Woodahood. I have one a guide to blended families to really kind of help other people very quickly put that into perspective. What's that role? How do you have these discussions? Where can you pause for a little bit? What has to happen in both scenarios?
00:06:16
Sharla Mandere
Yeah, wow. I mean, it what an amazing story, first of all, and and, you know, yeah your kids were so young, and that had to be such a different and then especially moving and being brand new kind of in the community.
00:06:29
Sharla Mandere
Like, I can imagine there wasn't a the book that I'm working on right now. It's a lot about community and moms need community and the kids need and they're probably I'm assuming may not have been a big community in that.
00:06:40
Donna Kendrick
Yeah, I will tell you though, that is where some of my long standing friends are. Greg passed, and this year it'll be 12 years, and the people that surrounded themselves around me when they didn't know me, I'm gonna cry. But I was just that family, like that they heard about, and how are they gonna help me? Are my long standing friends for life? It is literally that mom with the Vinnie van that I kinda didn't know, and was like, hey, I have three kids, one's in lacrosse, one's in football, um and this one has to go be at theater practice. So can you take my kid home?
00:06:40
Sharla Mandere
So
00:07:10
Donna Kendrick
They're like, oh, of course.
00:07:11
Sharla Mandere
Yeah.
00:07:13
Donna Kendrick
They didn't even know how to ask. They knew my story, but never one's polite. They don't want to bring it up. And so, yeah, you whisper down the lane. You ask a few trusted souls. Is she a good driver? Is she OK?
00:07:24
Donna Kendrick
Do you know where she lives? Have you been to a birthday party at her house? OK, I'll let her car pull my kid. And then these are the people that become your tribe, your resource. I have my office now in this community. I raised my kids here because of that impact, of the moms from baseball, from the teachers that reached out to me, from people that referred financial advisors to me, accountants, estate attorneys. like I didn't quite know many people, and these were the people that were trusted resources, that word of mouth, and it worked. It worked.
00:08:01
Sharla Mandere
Yeah. And it's so, that that community is so important, you know, and and we're seeing that with, you know, my youngest, I've talked about this on the podcast and she's in school avoidance and a lot of anxiety and and and sometimes just does that hiding the, you know, the other night.
00:08:16
Sharla Mandere
some friends came over walking their dogs. And I was like, can you bring the dog in the house and get her out of bed? And then we'll come like walk the dogs with you. And um and they did. And like it was it took another mom coming into her room.
00:08:33
Sharla Mandere
with this little dog and was like, come on, I need your help. It was so upbeat and and and I'd never really seen this mom that upbeat. She was very extra and she and she got her and out of the bed and then we went and we walked for like two miles and it was like,
00:08:49
Sharla Mandere
then she was totally reset. That community is so important. so and And some of the community members right are friends, and some we pay for. but ah us like i we We work with the same coach, you know and I have i have a coach i have coaches.
00:09:04
Sharla Mandere
I pay for that community well worth it.
00:09:05
Donna Kendrick
Yeah.
00:09:06
Sharla Mandere
right And so when we're looking at women and financial planning, right like there's a lot of unrest right now with women. And so how how can we set ourselves up
00:09:19
Donna Kendrick
Yeah.
00:09:20
Sharla Mandere
that kind of, no matter what happens here, you know, kind of in the future, there's no one.
00:09:25
Donna Kendrick
Yeah, and it's it's a little pun on like the role of women's traditionally like ladies get your house in order, right? Well, it's ladies get your financial house in order.
00:09:30
Sharla Mandere
Right.
Financial Advice for Women: Net Worth to Cash Reserves
00:09:33
Donna Kendrick
And a big thing of that the first one is like really understanding and ah and thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about this because these are just some of the small steps that we can all take to feel more control over finances.
00:09:33
Sharla Mandere
Yeah.
00:09:44
Donna Kendrick
or to understand where we feel a little out of control and where we need to lean on that community, right? um So the first one is understanding what your net worth is. And that's really what do you owe, right? And what do you have leveraged, right? So I own my house, but maybe I have a mortgage on the house. The house might be worth $200,000. My mortgage is $50,000, right? Therefore, my net worth is $150,000 because we take that liability off.
00:10:08
Donna Kendrick
that goes for our cars, that goes for our investments, our retirement. But for many of us, a lot of times we've never sat down on a piece of black paper or with the help of a financial advisor and said, this is everything I own, this is everything I owe. What's that bottom line? Once we understand what our net worth is, we can take a big, deep exhale and figure out, okay, where do we have to go next?
00:10:32
Donna Kendrick
The big thing we want to make sure is that we have enough cash on hand in case there's an emergency. When my husband, Greg, passed, we were highly leveraged. Our net worth wasn't very big outside of maybe what he had in his retirement fund, but we couldn't touch that at that time.
00:10:50
Donna Kendrick
without huge tax penalties. What we could without huge tax penalties.
00:10:54
Sharla Mandere
yeah
00:10:54
Donna Kendrick
But what we didn't have was was that cash reserve or cash on hand because we just bought a house and at the same time we still owned another house. And so all of our cash was put down on the down payment.
00:11:06
Donna Kendrick
So when I actually had to pay for Greg's funeral, I didn't have any money. I also didn't have any credit because the credit cards were in his name, kind of old-fashioned.
00:11:15
Sharla Mandere
Right.
00:11:15
Donna Kendrick
I was an authorized user, right? When I gave up my career, we moved abroad to Italy.
00:11:18
Sharla Mandere
Yeah.
00:11:20
Donna Kendrick
I really didn't have need for credit in my name, so we just had our one or two accounts, and I was an authorized user. So when someone dies, they close down. So I had no access to cash.
00:11:30
Donna Kendrick
We didn't have any, and I didn't really have much credit. One credit card kept me. I always be lawyer loyal to them. I can't share their name, but they're big. It starts with an A. The next word starts with an E. So there we go, but I will always be low loyal to them. But at Cash Reserve, we have our net worth. We want to find out what our flows of income are. Where's our income coming? Is it coming from alimony? Is it coming from our own income? Is it coming from Social Security? If we're retired, do we have a pension? Is there a disability somewhere? Where are our flows of income? And again, where are our flows of outcome? Do we owe a mortgage? Things like that.
00:12:06
Donna Kendrick
And I want someone to track that for three months. They have their net worth over here. They know maybe where their pots of resources are. And then we want to understand what their flows of income and outcome are. And then we want to highlight what are have-to money and what's discretionary. Eating out. Discretionary. Have-to money. Mortgage. Heat. Water. Right? A little bit of food. Even our food bill can be discretionary. Like I always say to my kids, we can eat oodles and noodles with a little peanut butter, or we can eat a pot roast or a steak.
00:12:36
Donna Kendrick
$2, $12, that's gonna be discretionary. But when we figure out whether those are basics, I call them the money of what we need to be us, if you have two incomes or maybe a pension and an income, but you have two streams of income, you want that money to be three months of what it costs you to be you. So if it costs you $6,000 a year for the bare bones necessities, not quality of life, bare bones, three times that is $18,000. That's what cash reserves should have been.
00:13:06
Donna Kendrick
At the time that Greg passed, he was really the one working. I was trying to recreate myself of working part-time in the kids' schools, right? Like as a TA, because we had just moved to the area, right? There was nowhere in my wheelhouse of anything I'd done before, um but loved it. Then with my kids' schedules, I was making $17,000 a year, right? So really we have to count that as one income.
00:13:28
Donna Kendrick
We should have had, if it was six months to be us, we should have had six times that number. So we should have had $36,000 put aside. And therefore, I could have paid for a few months of keeping the kids in my float. I could have paid for his funeral. These are the things that we should have had in cash reserve. So you want to make sure what your net worth is. You want to see your flows of income and you want to support that cash reserve.
00:13:51
Donna Kendrick
And many people will ask, well, what if I have credit card debt? Why should I have a cash reserve sitting at a small, high-yield savings account when I have APR on this credit card at 12%?
Understanding Life Insurance
00:14:01
Donna Kendrick
You're right. Head your bets.
00:14:03
Donna Kendrick
As a mom, I say that because sometimes I know I make better decisions when I have cash aside, when I have an umbrella, when I have a little bit of what I consider a safety net. When a tree falls in the house and homeowners said, oh, not my tree, you don't have to take it off, right? Then I have the cash to pay the tree guy. Those are those things. I would have had the cash to pay for.
00:14:26
Donna Kendrick
Grides' funeral. A few months of being on my own, right? Instead of trying to lean on donations from people in the area, begging for a higher credit line, or praying that life insurance came in soon enough so I had some cash.
00:14:40
Donna Kendrick
These are the things I had to learn from experience.
00:14:40
Sharla Mandere
Yeah.
00:14:43
Donna Kendrick
Once we have all of that information down and we have our cash reserves set, then we can start thinking about the bigger picture, like making sure that we're saving for retirement. That's our biggest goal in life and that we don't know it. But we need that short term. Many of us are trying to raise our kids paying for private schooling, right paying for maybe saving for college.
00:15:05
Donna Kendrick
trying to pay off the mortgage or at least afford a new car at a 7% interest rate. right that I call them lean years. That feels really tight, but we can't forget about that long-term retirement. So then we have to start thinking, how do we use our employer-sponsored plan, 401Ks, 403Bs? Well,
00:15:22
Donna Kendrick
versus if we have businesses of our own, how do we save for ourselves? And that's when we start to bring in that community. Wait, how do I do all of this? Because it seems pretty complicated, ah a little overwhelming, right but how do I use use it best?
00:15:35
Donna Kendrick
But I always say, let's start with your employer benefits. That's probably the best way to start to save for the future.
00:15:45
Sharla Mandere
Yeah.
00:15:45
Donna Kendrick
Can I share a little bit more about life insurance?
00:15:48
Sharla Mandere
Yeah, yeah, first, that's a lot of info. So let's take that in.
00:15:51
Donna Kendrick
It is.
00:15:52
Sharla Mandere
And I was, you know, I was gonna say like, as as someone who is mostly been a stay at home mom for the, you know, the last like, or worked like very part time, like, what do I teach fitness three hours a week right now, you know, I don't have a 401k, I don't have a, you know, I don't, I don't, and I work for myself now.
00:16:11
Sharla Mandere
So, you know, as someone who may not bring in that much or someone who is a stay at home mom, where, you know, Again, the book I'm writing, it's like the, what, and this was three years ago, what a stay at home mom would get paid if she was paid for all the things she did would be almost 200,000 a year. Now that'd be even more, right? I think that statistic was from like 2022. So like what we're worth is not at all. Like, you know, if, if, if I was president, I would pay moms, stay at home moms, right? Because it is such a big job and it's, it is important, but like,
00:16:49
Sharla Mandere
How do you find that money to save when you're not like bringing it in?
00:16:54
Donna Kendrick
Yeah.
00:16:54
Sharla Mandere
And the mortgage, maybe it's in both of your names. And you know this is a conversation with women that I have all the time in coaching is like, well, without my husband, I wouldn't. you know Yeah, we have the mortgage, but it's in both of our names.
00:17:07
Sharla Mandere
He makes most of the money. So really, his paycheck is paying the mortgage.
Estate Planning Essentials
00:17:11
Sharla Mandere
So I feel like I'm not contributing. I hear i feel like I'm not contributing financially. um So how do we, how do we find that?
00:17:20
Donna Kendrick
Yeah. And I love that you bring that up because it kind of translates right into it.
00:17:21
Sharla Mandere
you know
00:17:24
Donna Kendrick
Um, life insurance rule of thumb, right? And this is what Greg and I use life insurance to cover two years of his missing salary. So I could get on my feet. Life insurance to cover the cost of educating our kids for a state school because that was really important to both of us. We were both the first generation to go to college and we just wanted that for our kids because we felt like it opened doors for us. Not saying that our kids wanted to go. They might have been tradespeople. They might have been just brilliant on their own and not been able to sit in a classroom. But if they wanted to go, we wanted them to have the opportunity for that.
00:17:56
Donna Kendrick
And then we also want to pay off the mortgage, right? So that's what we use life insurance to cover. And that goes quick. To your point of life insurance, as I always say for my clients that come in and maybe there's a mom that works part-time, starting her own business, stay-at-home mom.
00:18:12
Donna Kendrick
I mean, that was kind of me for seven years. What if something happened to me?
00:18:16
Sharla Mandere
mhm.
00:18:16
Donna Kendrick
We did have life insurance on me because my husband Greg worked and traveled all the time. So like when he passed it was sad that the kids didn't notice he was gone. It felt like he was on a trip because he'd be gone detailed for months at a time at times, right? So that was a blessing even though as a wife I hated it, right? It was a blessing that the kids were okay with the quiet house of just me and them, no big daddy in the house, right? But we had life insurance on me because if something happened to me he would have had to either give up his job or taken a downplay in his job, like, stepped away from this travel. So he would have to afford to hire a nanny, right, to come, would have to live in the house if he was going to keep on his job moving forward. And that would cost a minimum of 30 to 50,000.
00:19:06
Donna Kendrick
back in 2013 when he passed. So we had life insurance for 150,000 on me to try to get our kids to the point where they could at least be latchkey kids, right? We moved around all the time. So we didn't always have family close by. We couldn't lean on that. So that's where we used life insurance to support what if something even happened to me so that Greg could keep working.
00:19:31
Donna Kendrick
So really important. And the one thing I always share too, when you're talking about like the mortgages and like it's in both our names, but his income pays for it. Making sure that we have mortgage insurance, right?
00:19:41
Donna Kendrick
If there's a, we call it PMI, but it's a whole different wheel.
00:19:42
Sharla Mandere
Mm hmm.
00:19:45
Donna Kendrick
But one thing we want to make sure is how's everything titled. is the title of that house in your name and his. Because if not, if it's not in your name, it then will settle according to the will. And if you don't have a will, because many of us when we're young don't, Greg and I had it because he was law enforcement and he traveled all the time. That's why we had a will, right? The risk was high. If you don't have a will, then that house will settle according to the rules of the state.
Challenges in Women's Financial Planning
00:20:12
Donna Kendrick
It's called being in test state.
00:20:14
Donna Kendrick
And that house where you would think would automatically go to you as a spouse, depending on where you live, it might not. That house might all of a sudden become yours, and if you have grown children, a third, a third, and a third, a third. Like, who knows? So always making sure that things are titled well, including that 401k, including life insurance. That settles outside of your will, so it has to be what we call beneficiary designated. You have to make sure the name is the same.
00:20:38
Donna Kendrick
It can't be the old girlfriend from 15 years ago from that policy they got from their Gerber life insurance. It needs to be your spouse. And so you need to sit and have that open conversation of, okay, how is everything beneficiary designated? How is the house titled? And do we have a will? Your will, your healthcare care directive, and power of attorney over your finance and your assets. Those are key.
00:21:01
Donna Kendrick
and blending my family with Jim. Do you know how many different life insurances we had here, there, and everywhere? And we had to make sure that things were titled correctly, not in my late husband's name, not in my kid's name, and Jim's name. Do we need more insurance because his kids are full-time with us? So do is Jim going to be able to support life if I pass?
00:21:21
Donna Kendrick
vice versa. Am I going to be able to raise his kids if he passes? It's intimate conversations, but making sure that your name is somewhere, make a map, make the visual map. And if it's not there, then that's the conversation of equity in the marriage that we have to have. Financial equity.
00:21:38
Sharla Mandere
Yeah. There's such hard conversations to have. These are such hard, you know, like I'd lost both my parents in the last four years and, you know, they did have trusts and all of that. And my dad had a life insurance policy that I didn't even know he had set up. And that was, you know, really nice. But like,
00:21:56
Sharla Mandere
my in-laws were like, we want to show you where the documents are. And I was like, I can't have this conversation right now. I cannot listen to, I can't lose anybody else. And you're all we've got left. And so this conversation is Sean.
00:22:08
Sharla Mandere
I'm like, I couldn't, I was at a place that I was like, I got to walk out of the room or I'm going to fall apart because I just lost both my parents.
00:22:11
Donna Kendrick
No.
00:22:15
Sharla Mandere
We needed to know where the stuff was, but I wasn't in a place to hear it at that point. I was like, I can't, I can't do this right now.
00:22:19
Donna Kendrick
Yeah.
00:22:22
Sharla Mandere
I'm going to, I'm going to fall. a part, a puddle of of mess right here in the kitchen floor. So um yeah, like they're hard conversations to have with your spouse, right? You think maybe we're in our 30s or 40s and we're young, and you know but yeah, they're important to have for sure. Life insurance is a good. um Is it expensive? like In general, is life insurance
00:22:45
Donna Kendrick
There's all different types. You have term insurance, which is something that you get medically underwritten for. There's going to be an exam. You're going to weigh in. You're going to pee in a cup. They're going to come take your vitals. It's going to happen. and ah Most of the time, it's going to happen. um But you will actually see, like what are we trying to ensure for? You don't have to ensure for the education for your kids. It could just be the mortgage. It could just be missing income. um It could be for much more than that. You're looking at for the moneymaker.
00:23:13
Donna Kendrick
Don't think. But these are the things. um But you'll get underwritten and term policy will say, according to your age, how long do you want to have this policy, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, and the amount, this is how much you're going to pay each and every year. That amount is locked in. Should you not need that policy after 10 years and you're contracted for 20, you can say, I'm done. We're going to let this policy expire. The other way you can have life insurance, that is a savings feature, of like a whole life or universal whole life.
00:23:41
Donna Kendrick
So it has a savings feature as well as a benefit feature. The other way you can get life insurance that's usually the most affordable is your employer benefits. For most of my clients I work with and my friends and family, we sit every year during open enrollment. It's usually around October. And we look at what their employer is giving them as benefits. It doesn't apply to many of us small business owners, but the bigger corporations. And they will often usually give you, especially when you're on board with a new company, like one time your salary.
00:24:08
Donna Kendrick
And then for X amount per month, maybe you can up that by two or three times the salary, right? So we had a combination of Greg's employer benefits as well as a term policy that he had within there.
00:24:19
Donna Kendrick
We have such a variable policy, um but they come at a cost, right? And you have to remember, if you switch employers, the life insurance goes away.
00:24:24
Sharla Mandere
Yeah.
00:24:29
Donna Kendrick
So when you're looking for a new employer, make sure that you're understanding
00:24:29
Sharla Mandere
Yeah.
00:24:32
Donna Kendrick
what their life and insurance coverage is. I am a big fan of term because I feel like it just covers the immediate needs in these lean years that we have. And it's usually affordable for middle-class Americans in decent health.
00:24:46
Sharla Mandere
yeah so Such a good ah good point and a good like idea, at least it's like something that you can leave if you're a stay-at-home mom, right?
00:24:56
Sharla Mandere
You can leave to your family and and all of that.
00:24:56
Donna Kendrick
Yeah. Yeah.
00:24:58
Sharla Mandere
um This is so great. This is so much information. There's so much on pipe.
00:25:03
Donna Kendrick
i Yeah.
00:25:03
Sharla Mandere
I've lots of questions, but we don't have a lot of time. um what was What was that? Is there, what else like, is there, how can a like a mom, like what's, I guess maybe what's the importance of specifically like financial planning for women?
Financial Independence and Symbolism of Pockets
00:25:19
Sharla Mandere
Like, You know, we kind of have historically had this. I i saw a thing, was it a reel on Instagram or something that basically was like the history of pockets for women? And that like in the 1800s when women's clothing didn't have pockets, it was in order to keep women from having a wallet and holding money so that they couldn't walk around with this stuff in a pocket.
00:25:43
Sharla Mandere
that they were gonna be more dependent. So the invention of like pockets in women's clothing is actually like our independence and our financial independence. And I was like, holy wow. I never really realized that.
00:25:55
Sharla Mandere
I mean, we always are like, oh, it has pockets. We get excited. But I never realized that that was like, it was a way to like hold women like back, right?
00:26:02
Donna Kendrick
Thank A lot of what we talk about is, yes, there's a pay gap, right? And we're making a lot of strides in meeting that, right? And there's a lot of new industries that we can now tip our toes into that we couldn't before, right? And the roles of women in the workplace have changed dramatically since our parents. We know that. We feel it.
00:26:24
Donna Kendrick
um But oftentimes we take breaks to raise our kids. Oftentimes we take breaks to support our husband's careers and vice versa. I'm very lucky to be married to a man now that took a break from his own career to support mine. right So I'm feeling this shift. I am really dedicated to make sure he is protected if something should happen to me, as well as if he knows where everything is, right? So the other thing is too, we often take care of the sandwich generation. We have young kids here and we have parents that we're caring for here. So even if we're still in the workforce, we're either distracted or we can't take that trip or we can't say yes to that weekend because that's the shift we give the nanny off who takes care of my mom 24 seven. Like these are those things that
00:27:08
Donna Kendrick
naturally as women as caretakers, we do. It does work on both gender roles, but we do. So we do have to make saving for ourselves or understanding our financial strength a priority because we take sometimes these pauses, right? And so with that comes a pause in our ability to save for retirement, our pause for compounded growth. These are the things that can really impact us. So I always say, one, have that conversation with your significant other or spouse. And even if not, make sure that you understand where your net worth is, flows of income, all the passwords, how are things titled, your beneficiary designation.
00:27:48
Donna Kendrick
understand your credit. That's really when the first place is not just your FICO score. Go on annualcreditreport dot.com. You're eligible for three free credit reports. Don't take them all at once, my friends. Scatter it throughout the year, but really understand what is my credit? How many accounts do I have open? Do I have good credit history?
00:28:08
Donna Kendrick
That is one of the things that pulled me up after great past was getting my own credit number up It helped me with getting a mortgage buying a car years to come being able to get a loan to start a business These are the things get really impact us and free us So yeah, really getting a holistic picture of where am I right now? And where do I want to be understanding your credit and your ownership of assets big thing?
00:28:34
Sharla Mandere
Yeah, no, it is super important. Yeah, I think credit credit in your own name is super, super important for sure.
00:28:40
Donna Kendrick
Yeah.
00:28:42
Sharla Mandere
Where can people find you and get more information
Resources for Financial Planning
00:28:45
Donna Kendrick
Yeah. That's one thing I was going to say, too, if you just kind of even Google my name. like so buy I have Sefton Financial, which is my financial planning. And then I have Donna Jean Kendrick. And that is more of these soft feelings about finance. When you're a family in transition, um that's where our books are. That's where our podcasts are. So you can go on either, and there are tons of free resources. But on the seftonfinancial.com, that's S-E-P-H-T-O-N. There's under Resources. It's called the Personal Document Locator.
00:28:45
Sharla Mandere
and all of that?
00:29:16
Donna Kendrick
That is a great place. Download the PDF. It's free. It might ask you to like put your name and email in to deliver it. Go ahead and get off the subscriber list. I'm not going to be offended. I don't want it. But go ahead and get that document um and then start that. Start filling in the blanks there. Start filling in what are the passwords. Do I even know this? um And use that as a launching board to have that conversation if it's with your spouse or if you're on your own with who's going to be the executor of your will. Who's going to handle things if something happens to you?
00:29:45
Donna Kendrick
um Make sure someone knows where all of that is. And that would be a really good starting point to understand where all of our accounts, where all of our assets, um and then you can put that in with your state documents as a roadmap if something happens to you.
00:29:59
Donna Kendrick
So, yeah, personal document locator, step in financial, download it up.
00:30:04
Sharla Mandere
Awesome. I'm going to go do that
Conclusion and Encouragement
00:30:05
Sharla Mandere
right now.
00:30:05
Donna Kendrick
Good girl.
00:30:05
Sharla Mandere
um
00:30:08
Sharla Mandere
This is so good talking to you, Donna, and hearing more of your story. And thank you so much for being on. This was packed full of information. I hope people kind of grow like rewind, listen to it again.
00:30:20
Donna Kendrick
I thought, Beth, I'm from Philly. You might want to slow it down, not 1.2. so
00:30:24
Sharla Mandere
No, I love that. Like i'm I'm from the Bay Area, but I'm very like, I've been told like, no, you got the like, my mom was like Irish big. My dad was from New York. I've got the like, no nonsense, get it done.
00:30:37
Sharla Mandere
Just tell it to me straight.
00:30:38
Donna Kendrick
oh East Zest, we call it.
00:30:38
Sharla Mandere
I don't want to be asked around. but
00:30:41
Donna Kendrick
so
00:30:42
Sharla Mandere
yet but I resonate really well with that. I love it.
00:30:44
Donna Kendrick
ah that
00:30:45
Sharla Mandere
So thank you so much for being on done. I appreciate it. And we will see you in the next episode.
00:30:50
Donna Kendrick
Thank you so much.