Intro: Royal Standley of Oregon Pacific Financial Advisors offering securities through United Planners Financial Services. Member FINRA, S I P C guides clients with empathy in discovering and reaching their financial goals and creates financial plans for clients so they can live their lives by design. In these episodes, he relates his financial insights and discusses timely topics.
Royal strives for excellence and has a passion for sharing his knowledge and supporting his community. Now onto the show.
Aric Johnson: Hey, Royal, how you been?
Royal Standley: I'm good. How are you doing, Aric?
Aric: I'm fantastic. I'm so excited to get into today's podcast, but you are in a highly regulated industry.
Royal: Yes, I am.
Aric: And because of that, sometimes we have a disclosure that needs to be read, so let's do it.
Royal: All right. Here's the disclosure for today. Discussions in this show are for educational purposes. Information presented should not be considered specific investment advice or a recommendation to take any particular course of action. Always consult with a financial professional regarding your personal situation before making any financial decisions.
The views and opinions expressed are based on current economic and market conditions and are subject to change. All investing involves risk, including the potential for loss of. Securities offered through United Planners Financial Services member FINRA, S I P C, advisory service offered through Oregon Pacific Financial Advisors, Inc. Oregon Pacific Financial Advisors and United Planners are independent companies, and neither Oregon Pacific Financial Advisors nor United Planners offers tax or legal advice.
Aric: Okay, now that we've taken our medicine, can we get on with the show?
Royal: Let's go.
Aric: Hello and welcome to Life by Design with Royal Standley of Oregon Pacific Financial Advisors. Royal - You're looking good. What's going on, man?
Royal: Uh, I I'm, I, I appreciate that. I'm feeling good at least Aric, how are you doing?
Aric: I'm doing fine, man. This is, I'm, I'm excited to be back with you. You know, I know a little bit about what you're talking about today. We spoke just before we hit the record button, and I shouldn't be smiling this much with, you know, with, with what's going on.
Royal: Oh, is something happening in the news?
Aric: Oh, no, I, I don't, I I literally just don't listen to it anymore. But you, you can't help. It kind of works its way into your life. And you know, there's quote, you know, it depends on what channel you're listening to, right? Because some are gonna say, we've got this banking crisis, everything's falling, blah, blah, blah. And then there's others that are like, ah, it's not a big deal. But I think it's somewhere in between, right? With the, the whole banking thing. And you're gonna touch on that today. I know we're not talking about that entirely, but I'd love to hear your perspective.
Royal: Yeah. I, I, I really agree with you, uh, that it's in between, you know, that this is the second biggest, uh, bank failure with the Silicon Valley Bank, and I think Signature Bank is the third biggest banking failure we, we've had in the, in the US. Uh, Washington Mutual back in 2008, still holds that title.
Aric: Mm-hmm.
Royal: And hopefully will forever.
Aric: Yeah. Right.
Royal: You know, we never want to, want to have a larger failure. But I think it was also a very unique circumstance that took down Silicon Valley Bank. Their depositor base was so concentrated in the tech sector and in tech startups that, you know, the, the amount of liquidity they lost in those final days was just astounding.
Aric: Mm-hmm.
Royal: Um, $43 billion I think in that last day of business was, uh, taken out of that bank. That's, that's a bank run in a way that I don't think bankers have ever considered something that large.
Aric: Yeah.
Royal: Um, and coordinated by depositors. So, with that being said, it's definitely a concerning thing. It's definitely, uh, a big deal, but is it a banking crisis that's going to affect the entire system? I really don't think so. I think a lot of banks are gonna get really serious right now about looking at their balance sheets and making sure that they don't have any, any landmines or surprises in there. and start shoring those things up, which I think is the, the right thing you want from your banker.
You want them to have those risk controls and that balance sheet management to make sure, you never have to say, well, the FDIC's running this, this bank now.
Aric: Mm-hmm.
Royal: We're all out of, out of a job. So, the, the more interesting thing I think is, you know, talking about this as a bailout. I really don't feel like this is a bailout of the bank. This is a bailout of the depositors who are just trying to do business and make payroll and really run their business without worrying about, Hey, can I trust the place I have my money deposited? You know, the equity holders in the bank have been wiped out. Anybody who owns the stock wiped out. The bond holders are going to have very little comeback to them there.
Aric: Mm-hmm.
Royal: So, that's capitalism. That is capitalism where you make investments and there's a risk of loss and, you know, that's exactly what should happen.
Um, so we'll see what happens as this develops. There's talk now of raising FDIC limits you know, what kind of follow-along effects that has to the banking system. You know, I'm, I'm all for people being able to trust their bank but I think we also need regulation to make sure the banks aren't doing anything that they shouldn't be.
Aric: Mm-hmm.
Royal: Um, and I think that's the interesting case with Silicon Valley Bank is they weren't doing anything necessarily risky on its face. Um, they just made some very poor decisions on how they're matching up the durations of their investments of depositors' money and not really realizing how skittish, uh, those depositors can be and how coordinated they can be within a matter of a few days.
Aric: Yeah. Well I've got a couple friends that, that are in banking and I know a gentleman, and we were speaking last week. They were watching it. They were concerned, obviously, and one of 'em said that he did have just a couple longtime clients come in and withdraw a lot of money from their bank. In fact, it was too
much for one bank to handle. Um, they had to have, they said, okay, you gotta give us six hours or eight hours, because they had to draw money from other, other branches put that together. And within two days, the, the, the woman who had done that brought it all back. Uh, but she was really concerned that it could happen to her. And that's what I was wondering is if, if that would happen across the country with other banks, if people would, you know, begin to see this. But I don't think it was, I don't think a lot of people took it as a huge panic button mode.Um, just a few on the outskirts. And, and again, within two days she was back. She was like, nah, it's safe. She was fine.
Royal: Yeah. Yeah. And, and you know, I think the, the FDIC is doing what it should be doing, which is reassuring the general consumer banks are safe.
Aric: Mm-hmm.
Royal: Your money's still safe. It's not the end of the world. And, you know, bank, bank failures happen all the time. You know, there's usually a couple each year we'll probably see a spike this year just with higher interest rates is going to take down the banks that aren't managing those risks appropriately. But in the grand scheme of things, this isn't a 2008 and it would take, it would take a lot more than this to take down the economy, like what we saw in 2008.
And the good/bad news is the largest banks, the Bank of Americas, the Chase, the Wells Fargo, they are in such a stronger position now today because of the regulations that the government rightly put on them to make sure that, uh, they're gonna be there when when called upon.
Aric: Yeah.
Royal: You know, those two big to fail banks are in a better position than ever. Take that with a grain of salt.
Aric: Yeah.
Royal: They now have a lot more power over the general consumer.
Aric: Mm-hmm.
Royal: Um, but we'll, we'll see some consolidation there and, all the reports I'm seeing are these big banks are seeing massive inflows of customer money because they do have that too-big-to-fail stamp of approval from the US government there.
So, yeah I think we're, we're in a good position overall in the banking system, but we will definitely see more bank failures before the end of the year.
Aric: Got it. All right. Good to hear. So what else are we talking about today?
Royal: Is it? I don't know, is it good to hear?
Aric: It is, it's good to hear that, in your opinion, because I value your opinion, Royal...
Royal:Thank you, Aric.
Aric: If it's, you know, if it's something where you're saying, look, I think the bigger ones are stronger. Well, first of all, I've got my money in one of those bigger ones. So, when you named them, I'm like, yeah, I know it's, you know, it's one of the top five. So that, that's good stuff. Uh, but I, I think that's a positive, right? If there's anything out of this that, that came out of it, and I'm sorry for those that lost, but that's a tremendously small percentage of people, you know, with their money in banks around this country. So, yeah. All right. What else are you talking about, Royal?
Royal: Well, I heard those sirens there in the background.
Aric: Oh?
Royal: Did you hear that?
Aric: Must be on your side? No.
Royal: Oh goodness. Okay.
Aric: You guys are okay, right? There's nothing's on fire in your office, right?
Royal: No, no, I, I was wondering if someone was, was if they were at the door breaking into your basement studio?
Aric: Oh, well I'm on the second floor now, so
Royal: Oh, great. Great.
Aric: We're gonna have climb stairs and most of 'em are lazy, so they're not gonna do that. Yeah, no, we're, we're, we're good over here. As long as you're good, .
Royal:Perfect. So let's get into what I really wanted to talk about today which is really describing the story of someone being our client.
Aric: Okay. And, this is really kind of a, a longer-term story, so we're just gonna kind of take some time and dig into it. And if we have time, we might talk about a couple of other clients, but I wanted to kind of sit back and put some perspective on things because in the day-to-day what we do might seem a little repetitive, might seem a little boring. But if we start pulling back that perspective and looking uh, what, what is it like over a 20 year period of time working with a client? And what are those outcomes that we're working towards? You know, what does that really, really mean to someone?
So, you know, we're, we're gonna change the, the names to protect the innocent
Aric: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Royal: Uh, so I have a client Darlene, uh, she came to us, uh, about 2004. She had just lost her husband. Um, she was pretty devastated and really didn't have a good sense with money and where things were at. And, you know, the, the husband had handled everything.
Aric: Yes.
Royal: So, uh, we were referred to her by, by another client and, uh, we sat down with her and began just pulling things together. Debbie, who, uh, just retired from our firm after, uh, 21 years, was kind of the point person there to sit down with her and really go over all of those statements saying, okay, there's an account here, there's money, you know, what can we do there? And working through that, countless hours going through that process with, uh, Darlene to number one, kind of pull things together, reset things after that loss of a spouse.
Aric: Mm-hmm.
Royal: And kind of set her up, so, okay, I can move forward now. Uh, Darlene was still working. She was a social worker, you know, really big heart, really wanted to help her community. Help where she felt the, the needs and where her heart was pulling her but didn't wanna spend a lot of time on investments and that sort of thing. Uh, that was really her heart. So we, we helped her through that process.
And that's, that's sometimes most often where we start engaging with someone. Is not necessarily in a crisis moment, but when there's something eating at them, you know, it could be that concern for, hey, I need to get ready for retirement. Hey, I’v got something coming up. I've got a job change, I've got an inheritance coming in, you know, that's where we start working with clients. Uh, most clients we would love it if, okay, I got my first job, I need to sit down with a financial planner and figure out the next, you know, 40 years of working.
Aric: Yeah.
Royal: To really put myself in a good spot. We would love to get those calls and we would be happy to sit down with those people. I'm gonna tell you it's happened once or twice.
Aric: Mm-hmm [Laughter]
Royal: And, and we love those clients. We absolutely, you know, we have a special place in our heart for those clients who are, I, I've got a paper route working my way through college. Let's, let's put 20 bucks into a Roth IRA and keep building it.
Aric: Yeah.
Royal: And you know, those are our, our great success stories. But most people have that crisis moment of, I need to get advice, I need to have a third-party perspective, take a look at things and. really help me evaluate what am I looking at here and what does this mean for me.
Aric: Mm-hmm. Yep.
Royal: Uh, we worked with Darlene for a number of years there, just kind of helping her stabilize, get into a, a nice routine, you know, managing her through the 2008 crisis, which was just fun for everyone involved.
Aric: Oh, I'm sure.
Royal: Yeah. You know, where, where the, it seems like we're, we're going through the end of the world. Um, you know, that's a that's always a fun part of what we do is being able to put things in perspective there and walk alongside clients during periods of time. Like what we're going through right now, what we just talked about with -
Aric: Mm-hmm.
Royal: Uh, this, this, this small banking crisis is, hey, let's put these things in perspective. Let's, let's look at the long term. And let's evaluate what's gonna be best for you and, and keep an eye on the long-term plan of what's going on. Uh, a few years after 2008, I think it was 2011 or 2012, Darlene's father passed away.
Aric: Hmm.
Royal: Uh, after a couple months of being in the hospital and she inherited a, uh, chunk of money from her father. You know, she was already in a good position, but this really gave her, uh, a lot of extra capital.
Aric: Mm-hmm.
Royal: And it was fun to have conversations with her because now we were having the more interesting conversations of yes, you have enough to get through retirement. Yeah. But now it's that conversation of, now you can start doing things to really affect your community.
And so she, she really had a, a, a heart for her local community. She had a heart for the people she was working with and, and her friends who may not be in such a financially stable place. So she was always making gifts, you know, buying a bike for a kid. You know, uh, loaning a friend money to, to get back on their feet. So that was something she really had a heart for, and that's something we really encouraged with her because we knew it was important to her. And that's, that's one of the great things I get to do in my job, is I get to have conversations with people about what's really important to them.
Aric: Mm-hmm.
Royal: And then help them understand how their wealth and what they've accumulated over time, how they can leverage that to improve their lives and improve the lives of those around them, whether that's in a charitable capacity and a giving capacity, or if that's just taking the time to take your family on a vacation or go see, you know, that brother on the east coast that you haven't seen in years.
Aric: Yeah.
Royal: Really encouraging those types of things that people say, well, I'll do, I'll do that tomorrow. I'll do that later. I'll do that when I'm in a better financial position. And by doing planning and really having a good solid handle on what's available as far as resources go to do those things, gives people the freedom to do them. And that's, that's just something that we are ultra focused on. Is the idea that you have two forms of wealth. The first is, is what we all think about. Okay, what's your bank account balance?
Aric: Mm-hmm.
Royal: You know, what's in your, what's, what's the, the income you have coming in from your, your pension or rentals. The other form of wealth is time. And that is a much more limited resource.
Aric: Yeah.
Royal: So we wanna have that balance of listen, we wanna make sure you're taken care of. We wanna make sure you're not gonna run outta money and you don't have any concerns when we're planning for your future. We also need to be very aware of how much time do you have left and what are those things that are important to your life? And that's something we come back to over and over again with clients.
Aric: Yeah.
Royal: I was sitting with a client uh, she's turning 70, uh, next year. Her husband is in his mid eighties.
Aric: Hmm.
Royal: You know, he's in fantastic health. Fantastic health, but he's in his mid eighties.
Aric: Mm-hmm.
Royal: And it was that question of, you know, I'm, I'm looking at next year to, to plan this great vacation to Hawaii. Bring the whole family, do everything, and my encouragement to them was, that sounds like a wonderful idea. Don't wait until next year. Do it this year. You know, your, your birthday is in the first half of 2024. Do it now because we don't know if tomorrow's guaranteed.
Aric: Yeah.
Royal: And so if there are those things that are important to you and that are on your heart, we want to make sure that you can do those things without hurting yourself financially or putting yourself in a, in a position you can't recover from.
And that's the beauty of what we do in financial planning and the beauty of what we did with Darlene, of, Hey, you can do these things.
Now, the other things that we were doing was kind of the, the blocking and tackling of financial planning, you know, what are the other things we need to worry about? You know, do we need to put in place different insurances?
Aric: Mm-hmm.
Royal: Life insurance, long-term care, that sort of thing. So in Darlene's case, we knew that long-term care was gonna be an issue. You know, just from the standpoint of 50% of people are gonna experience long-term care, some at some point in their life.
Aric: Yeah. Yeah. That's not a gamble you won't take.
Royal: No. No. So we were able to put in place a long-term care policy. We were able to get her, get her in front of a good attorney, to have a trust done up so that, you know, when the time came, she had the right legal documents. You know, not only that estate planning document of a trust to say, Hey, after I'm gone, you know, where does this money go to, but also the things you don't think about are maybe you don't wanna think about, which are you know what happens when I can't make decisions for myself?
Aric: Mm-hmm.
Royal: You know, who do I want to give the power to, to make those decisions? And so we were able to do all of those things and make sure that we had kind of wrapped our arms around her to make sure that, you know, when the time came, that was gonna be a smooth transit. So in 2018, uh, she had been dealing with, with a number of health issues up until this point, but in 2018, she was, uh, diagnosed with ALS.
Aric: Mm-hmm.
Royal: Which is just a devastating disease. It is one of the cruelest disease diseases because you just lose your ability to physically function in this world.
Aric: Yeah.
Royal: Just there's, there's so much, much loss of movement. and the ability to speak and communicate, and it's just, it's a very, very cruel disease. Now, luckily, we had done a lot of this planning. We had put in place that long-term care policy to cover her.
Aric: Mm-hmm.
Royal: We had put in place the trust documents and the power of attorney to make sure that her partner, uh, had the power to take care of everything, and was able to step in there and do what he had to do to make sure she was taken care of. You know, she had the, the resources to move closer to, you know, the best medical care here in Oregon.
Aric: Mm-hmm.
Royal: She had the ability to do all these things. And the beauty of what we do is we get to work with these people over the course of 10, 20, 30 years. and really celebrate with them during the good times. We get to celebrate with them as they retire.
Aric: Mm-hmm.
Royal: We get to celebrate them as you know that you have those family developments, you know, a kid graduates from college, first grandchild, you know, grandchild, graduates from college. All these wonderful things that we get to go through. But we also get the honor of helping these people and their families navigate the end of life from the financial end. You know, there's, there's a lot of different pieces that go into the end of life. Um, we're one small part of it. And the impact you can make there is, I think, pretty substantial because it's, it's, it's a piece that we get really squeamish about.
Aric: Hmm.
Royal: And it's something that unless you go through it on a regular basis, you don't understand the mechanics of how best to transfer these assets and more importantly, how best to transfer your values to that next generation. So, you know, that's why we've always encouraged people, Hey, write a letter to your beneficiaries. Communicate them to them what's important in your life, not just what your IRA balance is that they'll receive.
Aric: Yeah.
Royal: So we want to be that advocate. We want to be that resource. to help people along as they move through their lives and all of these different transitions that we go through on a very regular basis. But for them, you know, you, you are only gonna go through that experience once.
Aric: Mm-hmm,
Royal: depending on your religious beliefs. So that that's really where we want to be is we wanna be walking alongside people to help remove that fear and uncertainty. We do that through our financial planning. We do that through, uh, our recommendations of building a team around you. Uh, a good estate planning attorney, uh, a good tax preparer to help navigate those things.
And we get the honor of being. throughout the most difficult part of their lives in a lot of cases, which is what does this transition, which we're all going to go through, look like for ourselves and for our families. So, you know, that's, that was our experience with Darlene. Uh, she passed away in, uh, 2000 and, uh, uh, 20, you know, after a long fight with ALS. Um, you know, we've spent a lot of time working with her, working with her, uh, caregiver, uh, to make that transition. And, you know, not everything went perfectly. We, we tried to, um, we tried to make it as easy as possible.
Aric: Mm-hmm.
Royal: Um, but we also had some challenges there of you know, some, some, uh, outside accounts that we just couldn't get rolled over and retitled into the correct manner. And so we had to walk through those issues. Uh, and we've still been dealing with this, you know, 18 months after she's passed away, helping the family get those, uh, issues sorted out.
So that's what we do, and that's, you know, I think the, the greatest honor we can have is really helping families and individuals go through that transit.
Aric: Yeah. Well, again, you, you, you worked with her for so long that you, you got to see those different stages and, uh, I talk to my kids about different things. I've of, uh, clients as well that I've worked with in the past as coaching is as, I hate the phrase, money can't buy happiness. because although that's true in a way, and the way I termed it to my kids was when stuff, right, if you buy stuff that's not gonna make you happy, you're not gonna have a memory of, oh man, I can't, you don't remember that time I was laying in bed watching that TikTok Just, that's not gonna be one of the memories, the memories that she was able to build because she had that freedom of her finances, right? Whether it was the, the bicycle that she bought a a, a young person or helped a friend out, or a trip that she took. Money can't buy happiness. But those, those events that you're able to do with that money can bring you so much joy. Right. And the freedom that you have with that. And then in, in the later stages of her life, money can buy comfort. And, and people don't seem to realize that a lot of times, is that when you have that insurance in place, like you were saying, she went through a terrible disease, she went through terrible health issues.
The bottom line is that because of that planning, because of, of having those finances freed up to be able to do that, she was in a more comfortable place. I can only imagine what would've happened if she hadn't had that insurance. You know, where would she have been or what, what would she have had to go through? Or how quickly would she have depleted any of those other finances that she had if she hadn't had that type of protection?
So, I mean, I think people think about money wrong in a lot of ways, and it takes someone like you to kind of open their eyes to say, hey, look, if you do this, this is the possibility. If you don’t, here's what could possibly happen. I mean, you're, you don't have a crystal ball, but you know, like you said, there, there are statistics. 50% of people need long-term care. It's no joke. It's nothing to mess with. So, um, I, I appreciate the story because again, I'm not that old yet, Royal , but I have things in place to make sure that my family's comfortable if anything should happen or that things are taken care of, if anything should happen. Um, and it's just a good reminder.
Royal: Yeah, and I think the, the thing that people don't appreciate about what we do is our perspective.
Aric: Hmm.
Royal: You know, we sit down with you a, a young 45 year old man, and we're thinking about what does it look like when you're 85?
Aric: Mm-hmm.
Royal: you know, what is that going to look like? What are the things that we're doing now that will affect this individual 40 years down the line. And I think that's, that's one of the great things about this job is we get to have those conversations with the 85 year olds and we can look back and say, okay, here, here's the areas where they could have done this, or we could have recommended this to put them in a better spot now or, on the, on the other side, that just wasn't as important as we thought it was.
Aric: Mm-hmm.
Royal: You know, uh, so we really want to have those conversations with folks as much as we can to help give them the perspective into, um, what does this mean over a lifetime? Because that's really what financial planning is, it's planning over a lifetime.
Aric: Yeah.
Royal: Not just today. Not just to get you to retirement, not just to get the kids through college, but it's planning over a lifetime. And for a lot of people it's also planning for someone else's lifetime.
Aric: Mm-hmm.
Royal: Maybe you're planning on leaving your wealth to your kids and you want to pass on that wealth, and that's important to you. So we wanna do that intergenerational planning, and that's what we can do is say, you know, we, we've worked with mom and dad, we've worked with the kids, we've worked with the grandkids, and we start seeing three generations of folks in what can happen from, you know, grandpa and grandpa's, uh, grandma and grandpa's, um, decision making of how to pass down their wealth and the decisions they made. It gets really, really powerful.
Aric: Yeah. That's fantastic. Great story. Royal, anything else for today?
Royal: You know, I think the biggest thing is, is, you know, if you haven't sat down and really had a conversation with a financial planner who's not just gonna look at your investment statements, we can all do that. We're, we're all really good at building a well-diversified portfolio. You know, that'll get you, you know, six to 8% depending on your risk tolerance, et cetera, et cetera. We can all do that. But sitting down with a financial planner that has that perspective of we're planning for a lifetime. I would just really encourage all of our listeners to, uh, sit down with someone and have those conversations of, this is where I want to go. This is my dreams for my family. This is my dreams for my community. How can you help me achieve those? Along with all the other stuff of, you know, making sure we don't run outta money.
Aric: Mm-hmm.
Royal: Making sure that, you know, I don't, I don't worry too much about what's going on in the, in the markets or the economy. That's something really special that, um, financial planners who have that lifetime, uh, perspective can bring to your life.
Aric: Yeah, absolutely. Well, folks are listening to this saying, Hey, this is something I need. I need to sit down with somebody. I think it should be you because it's your show. So how did they get in touch?
Royal: I appreciate that.
Aric: Yeah, yeah, no problem.
Royal: So you can go to our website www.opfa.com. You can check, take a look at all of our bios there. Um, you can schedule an appointment with myself or any of the other advisors here who have that, uh, perspective and, you know, uh, have that initial conversation at no cost to you, no obligation. Um, and I think it'll help redefine some things in the way you're looking at your life, your money and your time that can really benefit you and your family.
Aric: Yeah, absolutely. Royal, thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it.
Royal: My pleasure. Good to talk to you, Aric.
Aric: Good to talk to you as well. And our last thank you goes to your listening audience. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening to the Life by Design podcast with Royal Standley. If you have not subscribed to the podcast yet, please click the subscribe now button below. This way when Royal comes out with a new podcast, it'll show up directly on your listening device, and we'd ask you to share this with your family and friends. Rate the podcast and leave a review as this actually helps others find the show. Again, thank you so much for listening today. For everyone at Oregon Pacific Financial Advisors, this is Aric Johnson reminding you to live your best day. Then we'll see you next time.
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