In this episode, I chat with fellow financial planner, Danielle Seurkcamp. Together we dive into our definition of the sandwich generation, how we think about it, how we define it. And then Danielle generously shares her personal lived experience as a sandwich generation member. Without further ado, let's get into the episode.

Thank you everybody for tuning into another episode of the Sandwich Bread Podcast. This episode is actually airing quite early in the journey of Sandwich Bread Podcasting. But I thought this was an awesome opportunity to do some table setting for future episodes to come. As a reminder, the Sandwich Bread Podcast is conversations about life and money for the sandwich generation.

My guest today is a friend and she's also impressive. So it works on a couple levels for a conversation.

Thanks. I respond to flattery, so please continue. 

She's the best. Danielle Seurkamp she's been a financial planner for almost 20 years. Yes, that's terrifying to say, but yeah, I got started in 2006.

That's awesome.

You've got, you got the chops, but you're not so old that you're like, looking at properties in Boca Raton.

There's something really awesome about kind of building up your confidence and getting to that point.

Danielle has a master's in financial planning, a master planner of advanced studies, financial behavioral specialist, and the creme de la creme, in my view, CFP certified financial planner designation as well. Did I miss any? 

Well, not to be annoying, but I did just get my certified college financial consultant designation too, which goes into student loans and financial aid. Some of this college stuff is getting more more prevalent.

And I love the designations you pursued. mean, particularly the behavioral specialist one, I find that in my work, clients wanting to validate what they think about their finances and particularly with couples where they're looking to come together with an impartial party sitting in the middle for the sake of the health of their relationship in a lot of cases.

Yeah, how do we actually live and interact with money and how does it make us feel on a day to day basis? Because nobody makes the purely rational financial decisions every single time. And so it you you sense resistance to putting money in the market or holding too much cash or spending money or saving money or whatever it might be. These things get difficult. I think it's important that we understand as advisors, what do we do when there's discomfort so that we're still honoring those feelings, but also sort of growing that idea of, is there another side of this that I might not be thinking about?

That's powerful. Obviously everyone has their own journey with money. haven't filled out a risk tolerant questionnaire and I'm shocked at the results at times. I'll see people that are way different. And then you, you, you ask them about it and say, tell me about this. And you learn there a little bit of trauma or a little bit of weirdness or, friction in their background around money and either too much of it or too little And it really sets them on a path for the rest of their life.

Yeah. And sometimes it's a push and say, you got to spend, you got to spend on this. You got to do it right now. 

Yeah, exactly.

Well, we always feel like our decisions are logical and it may not always be the optimal thing in that moment And so that's where we in But at the same time, I think it's important to honor that people are not irrational Like you have a reason, you have a story.

Yeah, this is a good work. This is the stuff I love, being empathetic, and impartial, really like I have to really check my values at the door You have to like separate yourself from the advice and be impartial and be be pro client.

I could chat about that forever. yeah,

The main reason though I wanted to have around this week was when we were talking about who you serve, And really it seems like it skews toward 30s, really that fit that sandwich generation avatar.

So let's get into that. 

Let's do it. 

All right. let's start with by acknowledging, and you can challenge me on this, that it's not really a cohort, the sandwich generation, It's really more of a rite of passage. Each generation experiences the sandwiching effect. But I want to start by asking you how you define sandwich generation. 

Yeah. I mean, I think like bottom line, my definition is a family member, right?
But ultimately, it is the idea of having yourself to take care of and potentially your children and then potentially an aging parent or another family member

that's the sandwich, right? And that can really happen at any age. Yeah, yeah. I've researched the buy the book definition and it seems to have this immediate family connective component But I've shifted away from that in part by doing this podcast and having these conversations to more of a caretaker generation phrasing, it's so much more broad than your own personal immediate lineage, if you have someone in your life, a neighbor, or a dependent. Right. It doesn't have to be your child. could be a niece. It could be a nephew. It could be any other dependent in your life. because it doesn't take much beyond your own personal needs and finances

before the burnout and the stress and the strain is real. Definitely extend it to that chosen family that we all have that goes beyond kind of our own bloodline, like anybody that we want to take under our wing to some degree. Yeah. I love that.

⁓ and in your own clients or people in your life, know, ⁓ maybe share a little bit about what you see, it's, it's a lot to take on.

it's almost like...taking on an unpaid part-time job on top of your already busy life. And it's also things that most people haven't necessarily dealt with a lot. It's hospital visits, it's assisted living.

I went through it myself, taking care of my grandmother who was diagnosed with lymphoma. And then shortly after that, my cognitive impairment, which is sort of early stage dementia. ⁓ in my case, you know, I had already been pretty involved with my grandma's finances. She was kind of my closest parental figure in a lot of ways. And so I had already done her taxes manage her investments and I'm her power of attorney, so I'm paying her bills. It is forwarding all her mail to my house. It was cleaning her house out and putting it on the market, choosing a long-term care facility for her, navigating the long-term care policy, and then even dealing with some elder abuse that was going on within my family. of her sons, was really in there sort of isolating her and then also really tried to circumvent the estate plan to take her house. And so there were a lot of things going on during that time. ⁓ I think one of the things that, you know, we just need to be prepared for in this situation, if you're going in as a caregiver is just expect that there's going to be an emotional toll and a stress toll because, I get calls at work and she will have, you know, thrown the whole health date out in the 90 degree heat and throw in her purse out the door and locked her out, you know, deal with that, you know, or which now I can think about that and giggle a little bit, or something less funny would happen, I'd have to go the hospital in the middle of work. you just sort of have to have some flexibility in there, and that is hard, but I think it's good to talk to your employer and stuff about that if you can, because it's just inevitable that that's gonna come up. So I think that's a piece of it.

There's a lot of newness that happens. I had never sold a house before. I had bought a house, but I had never sold a house. The first house I ever sold was my grandma's house for her. So there's learning there. And I think the recommendation is just lean on professionals. Like when I was selling her house, we got a really lowball offer from somebody that wanted to flip it.

Instead, I had my realtor come in and do like a little once over on the house and say, well, what do you think? And she's like, no, you know, spend a couple thousand painting it and then we'll put it on the market and you can get this price for it. embrace the people around the home health care, the realtor, the estate planning attorney, all of them. You know, really bring in your team to some extent and have people you can lean on for that stuff that you don't know.

one thing that I mentioned to clients a fair amount of the time now is I was the financial power of attorney. My uncle, who was the one who was more taking advantage of her was the healthcare power of attorney. I am very grateful she had both of us in the mix there. A lot of times people will assign the same power of attorney to do both. had he had complete control, we probably would have never known that he was doing some of the untoward things that he was doing. it presented challenges in other ways, no doubt. but having more people getting eyes on things, I think can be a really good way to protect an elder going through something like this. is awesome.

And appreciate your willingness to share that story. in some ways it seems like a happy story that you were able to do some proactive planning and, really honor her wishes in even in some challenging times. At least that's what I'm hearing. And, and it's tough, obviously, because you don't want the final stages of someone's life causing family strife and challenges, you know, obviously that's not what she would want.

And I would assume the estate plan didn't say like, let's stir this pot. Right. Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed. Let's mix it up. it's hard. mean, you know, people don't always get along and people have different opinions and, you know,

That's to be expected, Don't add to that by feeling shame, like, my family is such a mess, or this, or I'm not doing right, You just have to do the best you can and I knew I was doing the best I could for her at the end of the day, that's all you can do and frankly She had good care all along the way and she didn't run out of money and it all worked out So that's the best you can really hope for Yeah, I started to notice that in in my conversations with elder law attorneys in particular. They're like there's gonna be challenges and you just proactively plan to just shrink them as much as possible, but you can't expect perfection. And it's just such a rare minority of cases where if there's multiple kids or multiple family members involved, it's just never perfect. And you have to be okay with that. You do a lot of things to mitigate those challenges, but there's gonna be, you just have to be okay with that friction.

And If you want something, put it in writing. That way, people don't have to argue about it and it's not 10 opinions. 

Document, document, document. Yeah, absolutely. And, and especially in the estate planning side, there are mechanisms you can put in place to bring in impartial third parties to the mix. If you really think there's going to be some serious family challenges, establishing type of corporate or independent trustee, to reduce the friction to the extent possible. There's obviously cost and complexity that comes with that too. So that's not legal advice, by the way. But I really appreciate you sharing that. And I've got a whole list of really powerful takeaways that you shared as well.

You really hit on all the key tenants of the elder specialist curriculum. went through long-term care, in-home care, burnout, pre-planning with the state planning, legacy document building, family meetings, selling assets, end of life care. I appreciate your willingness to share that story.

It's challenging, but it seems like it's benefiting your client base and your friends and family as well. So that's cool. it does, kind of like puts a point on the challenge of what people go through. Right. And like I came from a little financial planning background. So some of this was not completely foreign to me, but I've become an expert through experience and that's what a lot of people go through.

Just don't expect yourself to know everything as you're going in. That's just not fair to put on yourself. Yeah. one thing I want to put a highlight on is your comment about trusting and leaning on professionals. that was actually a big takeaway from my experience going through this training was there's, there's qualified professionals to help with everything. Don't own it yourself.

I'm spending a lot of my time curating an A plus team that I can bring in and say, yes, there's costs for these different things, but here's the benefits of engaging with them, be it an attorney, an accountant, a healthcare professional, somebody who can help with nutrition and diet I'm not helpful in that regard.

God. there's an inverse correlation between the busyness of work and nutrition in my life. but yeah, it's bringing in great professionals and that's not an easy task necessarily. And so that was my goal as a financial planner was to really curate a list of all-stars that I can trust and have client friendly business models where I think at least they're roughly aligned with the fiduciary concept, roughly. 

So that'll be maybe one of the takeaways I'll put together from this episode. would be things to consider and maybe a first step to take to try to find a professional that can help and specialize ⁓ in a specific area. And I will just add, if you're looking for all new people, I think a financial planner is a great person to go to as sort of the quarterback of the relationship to give you those names.

But if you're also dealing with a situation where your parents already have a financial planner, they already have an estate planning attorney or whatever that they work with, meet them, get to know them. You know, you don't have to be best friends with them. You don't have to hire them, but go to a meeting with them. You know, lot of advisors have trusted contacts on file so that if they have a concern, something's going on with the parent, they can call you.

Those things matter because you might not be the one seeing some of these things or in my case, going back to my grandma, the estate planning attorney is actually the one that flagged some of the questionable behavior because we had a relationship together. know, even if you're not finding new people, just make yourself known to the people that are already in the mix.

uncomfortable having these conversations and guiding this journey for somebody who might be resistant to it. So meeting them where they are with their professionals is a great idea because they've already put in the time and energy to build trust with those people. So why disrupt that? Danielle, this has been incredible having you share your story. And then from that, we've really transitioned the dialogue to good takeaways and things that you can do.

But this has been really cool because we've taken a minute to define Sandwich Generation, how we view it, and that sets the table for future podcast episodes. dug into Danielle's story, which I think is really cool and powerful and have some good takeaways. But ⁓ Danielle's, is anything else you wanted to add?

while it got to your valuable time. No, I mean, obviously we talked a lot more about the parent side, but we also want to acknowledge the kid side can be just as stressful if not more. So, you know, this isn't to say that that end of the sandwich is any less stressful.

But I think it's just great that we're identifying this and it's important that you guys know that we see you, we see the stress, we see the opportunity, we see that people are just trying to take good care of the people around them. And that's what this podcast is all about is helping you do that in the best way that you can. Awesome. I love it. Well, thank you so much for spending time with us today and behavioral episode is next Danielle.

Teaser, come back. You're in the workflow. You're in the system. Yeah.

Should we like eat a sandwich to kick off the episode or talk sandwiches for a minute or two? like, I was like, I can't draw a clear enough connection for me to be. How do I get to eat all the sandwiches that I want to eat? then we'll pivot to aging parents. I'm still working on that, connective component,

There's there's a teaser for the next episode, but thank you so much Danielle. This has been really great I've loved having you on and hopefully we can get you back again and Thanks for being so open again with your story. I know that's not always easy and but it's certainly helpful for the audience so Thank you awesome. All right

Thanks so much for tuning in to today's episode. As mentioned, be sure to check out the show notes at SandwichBreadPod.com for your very own copy of a caregiver's contact list. We'll be back again soon with another episode. Have a great day.