Last weekend I wrote about the Fiscal Fridays taping and how Hayes ran the show for the first time. I said the room was warmer and the show was tighter. I stand by that. Now I get to tell you the part I could not see from my chair: what he did with the footage afterward.
Episode 8 is up on YouTube. A taping that ran past two hours is now thirty-two minutes, and I will say something I did not expect to say. It was a great show live. It is arguably better now. If you only have time for one thing, skip to the panel's answers below. If you have thirty-two minutes, press play.
What is in the thirty-two minutes
It opens like a show, not a seminar. Hayes cut a cold open out of the lightning round, so before my dad says a word you have already seen the squirt bottle, heard "did I just squirt a $1,700 camera," and been promised a nonzero chance of chaos. Then the music drops and there he is.
His opener is the best two minutes I have heard him do. Every dollar you own is going to change hands. Every single one. That is not a maybe. The only thing you get to pick is who is standing there when it happens and how much of it survives. Then he introduces the firm the way he actually thinks about it: born in 2001 out of the back of his car, about eighteen thousand people who have sat in rooms like this one, and the lesson he took from all of them. Nobody comes for information. You can get information off your phone in four minutes. People come because a friend told them to, or because there is a problem they want solved, and you do not solve it alone.
Then the film. Three generations of my family in one room in Boston, arguing about where everyone is supposed to stand. He had never seen it. Neither had I, cut that way. Mr. Edge is in it, because Mr. Edge is family.
The grandkids game is in there too. Florida, Indiana, Georgia. Indiana won the Easy Eddie plushie, and you get the short version of where Eddie came from: a summer job between high school and college, a choice between writing our first book or folding shirts at the mall, and a mascot who is now a registered trademark.
Greg in the hot seat
The middle of the episode is Greg Frantz sitting down with my dad, and it is the reason this one is worth your time. Greg has spent thirty years in Medicare. His father was an insurance man for sixty-eight years with the same company and drove all over the country to see his clients, and Greg copied him, with clients clustered out in Mohave County, Kingman and Lake Havasu. He came to Arizona on Christmas Day, left Kansas at minus twenty and got off the plane at a hundred degrees, and he is still here.
Twenty years ago he and my dad were branch managers across town from each other. When my dad left to start American Retirement Advisors, Greg stayed laser-focused on Medicare, and he brought his own clients to this show for one reason. In his words, he refuses to let his people be "in the ozone" on the things he does not do. He would rather they have the information and not use it than never have it at all.
The line I keep thinking about comes when my dad asks what his biggest aha moment has been after thirty years. Realizing how much people really do not know, and how much they count on him. Because who else are you going to call? In Greg's words, you can wait on hold with Medicare for hours, and when someone picks up, they are not there to give you advice.
The lightning round
Kyle Jacobs and Jason Tweet join the panel, and my dad springs a quiz none of them had seen. Thirty seconds per answer, timed on his 1878 Rockford pocket watch, with a bright red squirt bottle for anyone who runs long. Four real situations, read out loud. Here is each one, and what the panel actually said, so you do not have to take notes.
How do I find the accounts my late husband never told me about?
A widow in Mesa whose husband handled everything found four accounts after he passed that she never knew existed. Kyle's answer: gather the statements you do have, take them with two forms of identification and the death certificate to each bank or brokerage, and let each one start its process. It will be slow, but it starts. Then get everything you find into one place, so what transitions to your family arrives as a gift and not as a mess.
I sold my business at 68 and felt nothing. Now what?
Everyone told him how to get here. Nobody told him what to do now that he is here. Jason's answer: a business owner's identity is tied up in the business, so the exit has to be planned three to five years out, not just for the tax-efficient way to sell but for what you are going to do all day afterward. Most owners have their heads down and never learn the options inside the tax code until the money has already landed.
Is an estate plan from 2004 still a plan?
A couple did everything right. A will, a trust, a whole folder, last reviewed twenty-two years ago. Kyle's answer: it is a plan from 2004. It is almost certainly not the right plan for today. You may have grandkids or great-grandkids now, you may have a lot more money than you did then, and the question is whether you still want it going where it was going, and whether it gets there without your kids being hit with a large tax bill. My dad added the house rule: families who go through inheritance planning with us get a review every three years, and our staff reaches out about thirty-five months after the last one.
How do I keep three kids speaking to each other after I am gone?
A woman with three children already knows one of them will make the inheritance difficult. Kyle's answer: have the conversation today, while you are here to have it. If the family knows your intentions now, meaning you have held the family meeting, the fights that destroy families do not get their opening. The difference between a document in a folder and a family meeting is that nobody knows the document exists, and after the meeting everybody is on the same page. Record it on video if you want. And a plan in your head is not a plan.
What is the one thing everyone in the room should do, have, or ask?
Ten seconds each. Greg: ask for help on anything you do not have an answer to. Kyle: plan for today, and do not let your future plan for you. Jason: have one coordinated plan, not a pile of pieces, so your intentions actually follow through to the next generation. My dad went over his own time limit and took the squirt. The camera survived.
Jump to the part you want
- 0:00 Fiscal Fridays like you have never seen it before
- 2:39 The reason this company exists
- 4:44 What is your plan for your grandkids' inheritance?
- 7:01 Laser-focused on Medicare answers with Greg Frantz
- 20:34 Twenty-two years since they last checked their plans
- 28:38 Ask for ____ when this happens
- 30:53 The place to store your stories
Two things to do after you watch
First, subscribe to the Fiscal Footnotes channel. That is where every Fiscal Fridays episode lands, along with the short history-of-money pieces my dad records between shows. Subscribing costs nothing and it is how YouTube decides whether to show the next one to anyone. My dad joked on stage that who needs a subscribe button when you have a real live audience. He was kidding. Please push it.
Second, get on the list for the next taping. Fiscal Fridays is now a once-a-month show, and the next one is planned for mid-October, date to be announced. The people on the list hear first, and the room fills from that list. Put your name on it at americanretirementadvisors.com/fiscal-fridays. If you came through Greg, his page is here.
The show closes where it always does. It is not really a box, my dad says. It is a place to store your stories, so that if someone ever needs to help you, the answers are in there and somebody has already checked that the documents do what you hope they do. If that sounds like a conversation your family has been putting off, that is the Beneficiary Box, and it is what the whole episode was quietly about.
Thank you, Hayes. This one is yours.