Don't Just Make Money— Keep It: Tips for Protecting Your Money with Law Mother (Pamela Maass-Garrett)
34:38 Share

One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was in credit card debt. I got to a point where I just knew that I had to get it under control for my financial future and also for my mental health. We've all hit a point where we've realized it was time to make some serious money moves. So take control of your finances by using a time checking account with features like no maintenance fees,

fee-free overdraft up to $200 or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at Chime.com/MNN. When you check out Chime, you'll see that you can overdraft up to $200 with no fees. If you're an OG listener, you know about my infamous $35 overdraft fee that I got from buying a $7 latte and how I am still very fired up about it. If I had Chime back then, that wouldn't even be a story. Make your fall finances a little greener by working toward your financial goals with Chime.

Open your account in just two minutes at Chime.com slash MNN. That's Chime.com slash MNN. Chime. Feels like progress.

I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash.

But I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests.

Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look...

guest-friendly, I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. Money rehab.

When it comes to our hard-earned money, we all need to keep it. We all need to protect it, which means we all need Law Mother. You may know Pam Moss Garrett, aka Law Mother, from her Instagram account, where she posts these fun skits with legal and personal finance tips. But Pam is a legit lawyer. She runs a law firm, also called Law Mother, and wrote a book, Legally Ever After, which I've linked in the show notes. Today, Pam gives me her tips around protecting money. Plus, she also weighs in on some celebrity legal news that taught me something.

Pam Moss Garrett, aka Law Mother, welcome to Money Rehab. Thanks so much, Nicole. Glad to be here. Let's do some law mothering and talk about what you do best, money protection. Thank you for doing that. There are so many ways we can lose money by not knowing the rules of the financial game. One really common one, and I know you talk about this, is inheriting a house. You say never let your parents give you their house. Why? Why?

Yeah, so when it comes to passing on real estate, the idea is you want it to go in a way that's protected. We don't want to have it go to the wrong people. We don't want to pay unnecessary taxes. We don't want it to go through probate. And so when we say don't give your kids the house, there's an asterisk there, right? And the asterisk that a common mistake people make is they had their children to title on their property while they're still alive.

And the reason they do this is, hey, they found out about probate and they want to avoid probate. Hey, I'm going to go ahead and add my child to title while I'm alive, avoid probate, make things smooth and easy. And the reason we never want to do that is it creates a tax issue. By adding your children to title while you're alive, you're creating a capital gains tax issue. What that means is while you're alive,

it's going to continue to increase in value. And when you pass away, they're going to be taxed on that gain between the time you added them to title and the time that you pass away. So the reason you don't want to add them to title from the tax purpose is that reason, because you want to preserve the step up in basis.

So what should people do instead? Yeah. So what people should do instead is put their real estate in a trust and name their kids the beneficiary of that trust. That avoids probate and saves our kids time and money. It avoids that hassle of probate. And then they receive it capital gains tax-free, meaning they don't have to pay those capital gains tax because it's from the time that they pass away that the value is counted. And

And what kind of trust are we talking about here? Revocable, irrevocable, and what's the difference? Yeah, so we're talking about a revocable living trust.

And for the majority of listeners, that's going to be where they're going to put the majority of their assets. And that's where they're going to stay, what they're going to stay with. A revocable living trust is revocable, meaning you can change the terms of it throughout your life. And the reason you want it to be revocable, the reason you want to change throughout the rest of your life is, you know, in a few years, you might have more kids or you might change who you want to receive things.

Living, you're setting it up in life. So for most people, a revocable living trust is the all they'll ever need.

Irrevocable trusts are non-changeable trusts. You can't change the terms of them once you set them up. And so most people, while you're alive, it's revocable. And when you pass away, it converts into irrevocable, right? It converts from changeable to not changeable after you pass away. Some people listening might fall under a scenario where they might want an irrevocable trust in addition to a revocable living trust. Irrevocable

Irrevocable trusts come into play when you have assets that you don't care about controlling anymore. So for those who are high net worth, who want to minimize their estate tax after they pass away, those in higher risk professions that are worried about lawsuits, you have some amount of your estate or your net worth that you don't care about anymore, you don't want to control, and you're putting it in that bucket in an irrevocable trust. So you

So you could have both. You can have both, yes. What about a lifetime asset protection trust? When would you want to use one of those? Yeah, so lifetime asset protection trusts we use for our clients. Their revocable living trust flows to a lifetime asset protection trust. So when you set up a revocable living trust, when you pass away, you have a few options. You can have it distribute to your beneficiaries outright.

So you can have them receive it over ages and stages or outright, or you can have it flow into what we call a lifetime asset protection trust. What that does is protect their inheritance from future creditors, future divorces.

So many trusts, all the trusts. No wonder I have trust issues. So basically, bottom line, keep in mind that a revocable trust should go for protecting your house. Don't put the house in the kid's name. Do it through a revocable trust. Most likely, maybe an irrevocable trust if you have a lot of money.

Yes, I'm always about keeping it simple. For most people, a revocable living trust is what they're going to set up in life. They're going to want to control their assets. And when they pass away, they're going to decide where it's going to go, if it's going to flow to another trust or if it's just going to flow outright. That's the simplest way for the majority of people listening.

And there's really two main types of trust, like we talked about, revocable and irrevocable. And then when you get into higher net worth individuals, there's lots of different types of irrevocable trusts for different types of goals. And for most people, when you get over right now about $13 million in assets, that's when you're going to want to think about irrevocable trusts immediately.

Irrevocable trusts. There are exceptions. Folks listening who have special needs beneficiaries, you know, we have special needs trusts because you want to preserve their assets, make sure they're still eligible for government benefits. But yeah, trying to keep it simple, but it's a lot of information for sure. I think those are really important best practices, right?

for inheriting a house, for figuring out what that flow looks like. What's another big mistake that you see people make that leaves their money unprotected? One of the best ways that I tell people to get started because this is a common mistake, the common mistake I see is whether people have a plan or they don't have a plan. They don't have a list of what they have and

And where everything is. So I always share a good friend of mine, her father passed away unexpectedly a few years ago. And he had nothing in place. And so she had to go through all of his mail, computer files, boxes, trying to figure out what he had and where it was. And she was a young mom with kids, worked a full-time job. She felt like this was a full-time job.

job just finding everything. And this is how assets get lost. The big mistake is just not having everything organized in one place and telling people where it is. And so whether you have no plan or you have a plan, but then you put it on a shelf and forget about it, those are where I see people making mistakes. So is there a system that you would recommend to put

All of your accounts, all of your assets, maybe all of your passwords in one place. A simple way to get started is just grab a file folder and put the first page of your real estate deed, your life insurance, your bank accounts, your investment accounts, put it all in one place physically and tell someone where it is. And then every year when you're doing your taxes, take a look at it and update it.

For those that are digital, it can be a digital file. As soon as you get into the digital world, right, then we start getting into password protecting it, making sure that someone can't get access. So for assets like your bank accounts, your life insurance, your retirement accounts, that's one category. And then there's this other category, which you alluded to, which is

passwords, like our digital legacy, everything besides that? Do we want people to have access to our phone, our Facebook, our social media, all of that? For those, I really think digital account managers make things much easier for a lot of reasons. Being able to use a password manager. Password manager works really great as a business owner just in general. If you're off on vacation and someone needs to access things, I have a password manager. I

So definitely recommend using technology if you're comfortable with it. If you're not comfortable with it, we do have plenty of clients. Do the good old-fashioned password book. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So you mean password managers like Dashlane or LastPass or those types of services? Yeah. OnePass, all of those. In your book, thank you for writing it, Legally Ever After. It's so important because we work so hard for our money to protect it. You give a lot of great best practices around asset protection. And one you say to avoid is fraudulent conveyance.

which is legalese. So what does that mean? Yeah. So fraudulent transfer or fraudulent conveyance is once a harm occurs, you start moving assets. You can be accused of making fraudulent transfers. And every state has a fraudulent transfer statute, and then we have a federal fraudulence asset statute. And the idea is

If someone has a legitimate grievance against you, you've caused a harm. And then after the fact, you start moving things to try to avoid paying it. The government says, hey, the law says you can't do that. That's fraud. And in some states, you're penalized for it. You can get increased damages against you. You can get your assets frozen. So I had a client who was injured. Actually, she was on the back of a motorcycle, to give you an example.

And she was going through an intersection with this group of motorcyclists and a woman in a car ran a red light and crashed into her. Young mom of three, badly injured, had to have her leg amputated.

And I got the case right before trial. I was a trial attorney on it. So I argued the case at trial. And I was looking into the woman who hit my client online and saw that a week after the accident, she had transferred the deed to her home to her brother for $1. And red flag went off, fraudulent transfer, fraudulent conveyance. So

So the prior attorney hadn't noticed this. The reason this had gone to trial was because it was a she said, she said situation. The driver of the car said she had the green. My client said she had the green light and there was nothing about the accident where they could tell there was no cameras. There was no other witnesses, all of that. So that's why I went to trial.

I was able to file a separate lawsuit against her and her brother for fraudulent transfer. At trial, the jury got to hear evidence that this woman had made this transfer to show consciousness of guilt. And at trial, the jury agreed with my client and awarded her $4 million in damages. And so that's that worst case.

Case scenario, right? You have done something, something has happened, and you start moving things. The law allows you to start protecting your assets before something happens. You can do legacy protection. You can create that generational wealth. You can put plans in place to protect you from fraudulent lawsuits. All of that, the timing is important. You can do that now. But once the harm has occurred, it's often too late and you can be accused of fraudulent transfer.

I mean, could it be done by accident? Let's say you're being sued, but it just happens to be at the same time that you're putting your life savings into buying a home. Would that be fraudulent conveyance? I mean, the $1 transfer is very sketchy. So that doesn't look legit. But could it be legit?

It can be legitimate. It can be legit. And ultimately, it's going to be up to the judge to decide. Anytime clients, you always want to work with an attorney to get the best advice for your specific situation. So I always got to throw the disclaimer out there, Nicole, because I'm a lawyer, right? This is education, not advice.

But yeah, it's very fact specific. Are there situations where you can be doing it and it's not fraudulent transfer? Absolutely. But I have clients that come to me for exactly the same reason. Like they're in litigation, but they just have never gotten around to doing their estate planning. And they want to do estate planning. They want to do it for the right reasons. They still want to pay the lawsuit. They're not trying to do anything. And I'm always weighing that with them of what the jury is going to perceive.

And what can we do now? And how can we start having the conversation with the other side while the litigation is pending? Because it's all about the optics, right? How do people see it? So yeah, there's absolutely legitimate reasons for making those transfers, buying homes, things like that. You just want to be advised in that situation. Makes sense. You also say that insurance is key to asset protection. It gets a bad rap as being a non-sexy topic, but I think the

There's nothing sexier, Pam, than keeping your money safe, in my opinion. Oh, yes. I don't sell insurance. And I'm with you, Nicole. I think insurance is sexy. Before I became, when I started off as a lawyer, I worked in the government sector as a DA. And then I worked on the defense side, representing developers and different type of subcontractors against lawsuits. And then I worked on the plaintiff side, representing consumers who were injured. So I've worked on...

both sides and everybody, the complaint after the fact is I wish I had had better insurance. So anytime people are coming to me asking me, they see some video on YouTube and they're like, I want to get a trust. I want to do asset protection. They want to do all these things. I'm always saying, Hey, I don't sell insurance, but your money is best spent. If we start with insurance first,

That is the foundation. Your money is going to go farther. So I'm a big proponent of insurance in different ways to protect. And I know right now insurance is more expensive than ever, right? But it's still the best use of your money. So, you know, there's a few things for people to keep in mind when it comes to insurance and protecting the people they love and protecting their money. If you're at a stage in life where you don't have a nest egg,

If you were to pass away tomorrow and your spouse and your children don't have the money from your estate to be able to live, right, that their lives would need to change, that they wouldn't be able to pay the mortgage. Life insurance and term life insurance is a no brainer.

And term life insurance is affordable. It has low fees. And you're really securing your loved ones, protecting them during your wealth building years. If you were to pass away tomorrow, what amount of money would allow them to get by? So I always say start with term insurance, term life insurance. When we get into whole insurance, I don't know. It's much more controversial. A lot of people have different opinions on it.

I would just say, work with your team of professionals, make sure it's the best use of your money. There's some good products out there. There's some high cost products out there, but term life insurance is pretty much for most people a no brainer. And then when it comes to other risks, it really depends on who you are and what's going on, right? Getting, if most of us are driving vehicles, getting a good auto policy, good underinsured motorist policy is very important. If you're a business owner, having good,

liability protection, having good umbrella policies. If you own real estate, all of that is also important as well. Yes, underinsured and uninsured motorist coverage really helped me. I got in a car accident and it covered everything

So much from the guy that slammed into me on the highway that he didn't have. And so my insurance, it took care of that. So yes, that is important coverage. You call that out in your book too. You also say that when it comes to insurance, sometimes the biggest mistake people make is get a million dollar umbrella policy and think they're good and they're covered. But that's not always the case.

Yeah, absolutely. I always tell people to look at the exclusions page of their policy with whatever type of insurance they're doing. I own a property that's a corner property here in Colorado. So I'm always concerned about slips of falls on snow and ice. I know it's not the same where you're at. And so I spoke with my insurance provider and told him that and he said,

Really nice guy sent me a policy and I turned to the exclusions page. Exclusions page just says, hey, this is not covered. And I'm one of the few people that read it and read down to where it's read. Of course you did. Slips and falls aren't covered. So I called him back up. He was very apologetic. He was just going through it quickly. He didn't even notice. It didn't cost me anything in addition to get that coverage. So I'm always telling people, one, work with someone that is a professional that understands your business, understands your investments, understands your risks,

And then go through the actual exclusions page of the policy line by line and make sure you have the coverage, you understand what's not there. It's really going to save you in the long run. And when it comes to umbrella policies, that's where people get in the biggest mistakes is they get this umbrella policy, they think umbrella, umbrella covers me for everything. And then those same exclusions are there and it's not there for them when they need it. It's so important to...

try to read the exceptions page. It is so dense, but there are things that you think you're covered for like flood or in California, we don't have like the slips and falls on the ice, but earthquake insurance. And so that might not be covered, which is just it kills me when I hear stories about people who thought they were doing the right thing, but got screwed because there was like some thing that it didn't cover. And that's the thing that happened to them.

Yeah, absolutely. I have friends and family in California that have had the same experience with flood and fires. And it's unfortunate with what the options are. But being prepared, knowing it about in advance, knowing what your options are, so you're not surprised. How often do people come to you with YouTube videos and questions?

Instagram reels and say, oh, I need this or somebody told me to get this. All the time people come to us. And I think part of it is when I tell people it's the, if it sounds too good to be true, just the common sense that we were all taught by our parents, if it sounds too good to be true. I think the big one that I see out there is this idea that putting things in a trust means you don't have to pay taxes anymore. Yeah.

And trusts are expensive to set up. Yeah. So like, hey, I'm going to set up a trust and I won't ever have to pay taxes anymore. And no one can sue me. And it's like, yeah, whatever.

And then you go on the website and the person isn't licensed. And yeah, the IRS usually shuts those operations down. It just takes some time. Yeah. So a lot around misconceptions around taxes and asset protection for what's online for sure. So many asterisks, as you say, and asterisks don't play so well on YouTube. It's very quickly. Hold on to your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back.

One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was in credit card debt. I got to a point where I just knew that I had to get it under control for my financial future and also for my mental health. We've all hit a point where we've realized it was time to make some serious money moves. So take control of your finances by using a time checking account with features like no maintenance fees,

fee-free overdraft up to $200 or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at Chime.com/MNN. When you check out Chime, you'll see that you can overdraft up to $200 with no fees. If you're an OG listener, you know about my infamous $35 overdraft fee that I got from buying a $7 latte and how I am still very fired up about it. If I had Chime back then, that wouldn't even be a story. Make your fall finances a little greener by working toward your financial goals with Chime.

Open your account in just two minutes at Chime.com slash MNN. That's Chime.com slash MNN. Chime. Feels like progress.

Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancorp Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A. Members FDIC. SpotMe eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Boosts are available to eligible Chime members enrolled in SpotMe and are subject to monthly limits. Terms and conditions apply. Go to Chime.com slash disclosures for details. I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash. I love hosting on Airbnb.

But I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests.

Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host.

And now for some more money rehab. Pam, I would love to get your take on some celebrity news stories as a legal expert. Okay. Cool. All right. Let's go through a few. Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly announced that they're pregnant. I saw that. Yes. Congratulations to them. If you were their lawyer, what would you tell them that they should have in place before their baby comes? Ooh, are they married? I think they're engaged.

They're engaged. Okay. The first thing that I tell all my pregnant mamas is to get incapacity planning documents in place, which is very emotional to go through. I know with my last pregnancy, I updated all of that. And even being doing this every day, I really did enjoy doing it. Thinking about if something were to happen to me in the hospital, what do I want, right? What do I want? End of life decisions. Who do I want to control things? Hopefully I would recover just fine. So I'd say that's the first component.

Yeah, while you're pregnant is a very emotional time to be going through that. I can vouch from firsthand experience. But yes, so advanced directives and those types of... Advanced directives, who you want in control of your financial and your medical decisions if something were to happen. And hopefully you'd recover just fine. But if something were to happen, either way, what do you want to have happen? Who do you want to manage and control everything? What are your end of life decisions? All of that, getting that in place. Yeah.

So when a kiddo comes into the picture, you also want to think about wills, life insurance, less fun topics too, but still important. Yeah. So I would say for everyday people, right, the conversations should be around life insurance. For those two, I think financially, they're probably okay if something were to happen, right, for those kiddos.

guardianship documents. If something were to happen to the two of them, who do they want to step in and take care of their kiddos is a good piece. And then as soon as you do have children, depending on their marriage timeline, a lot of our clients choose to never get married and they have children and they don't realize that

What would happen if one of them passes away? How the law would see their partnership, right? And so making sure both of them have estate plans in place, recognizing what they would want to do financially for each other if something were to happen to one of them, all of that great stuff too.

Okay, Taylor Swift wore a diamond and ruby encrusted ring when she was out with Travis Kelsey, of course. So rumors are that they're engaged. If you were Taylor's lawyer, is there anything that you would tell her to do to protect her assets before getting married? Yes, definitely get a prenup or premarital agreement for sure. It's not the most romantic thing for a lot of people to talk about, but I do think that

There's nothing sexier than being financially transparent, right? Having those honest questions, conversations around money and doing it when you're in love and happy makes things much easier down the road. And so I feel like a lot of prenups and premarital agreements get a bad rap because people feel like, hey, you're saying that the marriage isn't going to work out. But it's the opposite. It's true. We don't get health insurance hoping we get sick.

We don't get a premarital agreement hoping we're going to go through a divorce. And the flip side is you have a default premarital agreement. It's just a state that you get married in and you live in. It's that agreement. And it's not going to be something you like, right? So you might as well set something in advance that will save legal fees down the road, have that clear understanding, and get that protection in place for sure.

Yes, you don't get car insurance hoping that you're going to get into an accident. I think it applies to all kinds of insurances. If you reframe it that way, I think it changes the conversation for sure. Priscilla Presley is claiming that her former lawyer committed elder abuse. Now, this is just an allegation. Nothing has been proven yet, so allegedly. But this story made some people nervous about finding a lawyer they can trust.

If someone is interviewing a prospective lawyer, what are some of the questions they should ask?

Yeah, I haven't read that full story. So I definitely think when working with an attorney or looking for an attorney, some things to keep in mind are getting referrals from people you already know, love and trust. If someone you know is already working with someone, great. Look at the Google reviews, look at the online reviews, look at the bar association in their state, see what's there as well. And then when you're meeting with them,

go through some questions to understand how they practice and if it's aligned with your values. I think one of the big things is talking to them about how they charge and is it transparent. I'm always conscious of in the estate planning world, conflicts of interest or perceived conflicts of interest. So when you said that story, the first thing I thought about was, ooh, was there an

a conflict of interest from the beginning. So I'm always thinking about that when we're bringing on clients. I personally won't serve as a trustee for a plan I've written because I feel like it's a conflict of interest. If that is a concern for you and trust and protection, have those conversations with the attorney up front. What do you do to make sure there isn't a conflict or interest or that my interest is protected? If down the road I was to become incapacitated and things like that, how are my loved ones protected?

And then you can always bring in third parties to create some extra layers of protection, right? So if you're working with one attorney to draft everything,

You can have a third party fiduciary that's overseeing things. So I think there's a lot that you can do if you, especially when you're talking about larger estates, to have checks and balances to make sure no single person has all the power. But for everyday people, I think the things of getting good recommendations, looking at the reviews, speaking with them upfront about how their fees, how their process, and then the good old fashioned trust your gut is...

If the person isn't explaining, I'm big on this. If someone's talking over you and talking down to you, if they're not taking the time to explain it in a way that you'll understand, then it's not really a good relationship, right? And I think a lot of, unfortunately, attorneys, we get a bad rap because a lot of attorneys want to seem smart. And so they'll just

talk in legal ease. You know what I mean? And the real test of intelligence is if someone can, I firmly believe at least, if they can break it down and explain it in a way that

My four-year-old would understand, right? Amen, sister. Then they really get it. Without the jargon. Yes, absolutely. Hiding behind the jargon is always a red flag. You mentioned fiduciary. For financial planners, we want to make sure that they are fiduciaries. Is there another standard like that for the legal world?

Yeah, so lawyers are automatically your fiduciary as well. I think normally if they're acting in dual roles that create a conflict, they're supposed to have you sign off on a waiver saying that there's a conflict that you're waiving. So that should provide some protection. But when there's situations like this, I'm always following the money. Where is the money coming from? Who's the person making decisions? Is it in their best interest to make decisions that are aligned with them or you, right? And for most of the time for estate planning,

for everyday people, we're creating plans where I don't have a role, where I'm actually going to be the trustee. I'm not going to be the beneficiary. I feel like that creates a conflict of interest. If you are creating that, I would consider having a second person in that role so that you're not creating that for sure. And do you ever suggest to have a couple of friends of mine recently are going through divorce and had

a mediator consultant that they would talk to and vent to instead of doing it with the lawyer when the clock was ticking and billable hours were happening. How are you mindful of the billable hours? Because you said one of the first things you should do is really get clear on what

lawyers are billing and understand that every time you're talking or venting about whatever the situation is, and you go to a lawyer during emotional times, right? So there are going to be feelings. But how do you how do you safeguard yourself from getting billed for those feelings?

Yeah, that's a great question. I think for estate planning, we do everything flat fee, agreed to in advance, so there's no surprises. So we're not billing hourly at our firm, and a lot of estate planning firms don't bill hourly. So I think if you're working with an estate planning firm that does bill hourly, understand that. There are a lot of firms that will do flat fee, so it's upfront. When it comes into litigation, family law, civil litigation, there's a lot of

There's a sect of civil litigation, like when you're in your car accident, where it's contingency fee, right? So for most civil litigations, if you're injured in an accident, if you're injured on the job, if you have an employment dispute, if someone's hurt you, those are contingency fees. Meaning the lawyer- No, vent your face off. Yeah, you can vent your face off because you're not paying hourly because the lawyer is going to charge you a percentage at the end and there's no fronting of fees.

anything where you're paying hourly. So divorces, any type of transactional work. Yeah, you really should hire a therapist or a counselor or a life coach and chat with that person about all of that. And then speak with your lawyer about what needs to be done on the legal end, for sure. Such great advice.

Pam, as you know, we end all of our episodes by asking our guests for one tip that listeners can take straight to the bank. Do you have one last tip to share about protecting your money? I would say when it comes to your legacy and estate planning and all that, I do think putting a plan in place is the greatest gift you can give your loved ones. But I do think they want more to remember you by besides your estate planning documents and your legal documents.

So I always tell people to take the time, especially in our day and age, to think

Record those insights, those stories, those values. That's what your loved ones, that's your true legacy. And so taking the time on Zoom to call your parents. I do it for my kids, the conversations with them about their advice for my kids because I have young kids and they're getting older. Their advice for me and them. Those stories. Take the time now. Those are the things that I hear about after the fact with our clients that they're

while they're glad that the estate plan was done, they miss out. They miss their parents. They miss their grandparents. And I think while we're alive, we just don't think it's going to happen. So with our clients, we always do that. We do these legacy interviews with our clients before they leave our office. And it's the thing that our clients' families love the most. And so I would just encourage you to do that for the people you love. It's really sweet and priceless.

Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Levoy. Our researcher is Emily Holmes.

Do you need some money rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your money questions, moneyrehab at moneynewsnetwork.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me. And follow us on Instagram at moneynews and TikTok at moneynewsnetwork for exclusive video content. And lastly, thank you. No, seriously, thank you. Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.

I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash.

But I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-host

Guests can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work. But sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host.