Women's Money Wisdom

Episode 236: Financial Planning for People without Kids with Dr. Jay Zigmont CFP®

• Melissa Joy, CFP® • Season 4 • Episode 236

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Discover the unique financial landscape of child-free living with Dr. Jay Zigmont, a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® and founder of Child Free Wealth. Together with Melissa Joy, CFP®, CDFA®, they unpack the nuanced financial strategies tailored for those who choose not to have children. From rethinking the legacy you leave behind to understanding long-term care planning without relying on the next generation, Dr. Zigmont offers profound insights that challenge conventional financial wisdom. 

 

Explore the complexities of long-term care insurance and the critical timing for acquiring coverage, especially for child-free individuals. They delve into the cost implications, the necessity of standalone plans, and the crucial role of early planning in supporting aging parents without jeopardizing your own financial stability. Dr. Zigmont sheds light on Medicaid’s limitations and the importance of setting boundaries to avoid financial strain. 

 

In a world increasingly leaning towards living child-free, they discuss the multifaceted reasons behind this choice, including financial, political, and environmental considerations. Embrace the growing trend and learn how to navigate life and financial planning without children. Featuring insights from Dr. Zigmont’s book, "The Child Free Guide to Life and Money,” they emphasize the importance of recognizing and respecting diverse family structures.  

 

Listen and Learn: 

 

  • How child-free individuals need to plan for end-of-life expenses, such as long-term care insurance, as they may not have children to rely on for support. 
  • Why estate planning is crucial for child-free individuals to ensure their wishes are carried out and to designate someone to make decisions on their behalf. 
  • The reason why child-free individuals have the advantage of being able to optimize their spending and make life decisions without the financial constraints of raising children 

Resources:  

 

Links are being provided for information purposes only. The information herein is general and education

The previous presentation by PEARL PLANNING was intended for general information purposes only. No portion of the presentation serves as the receipt of, or as a substitute for, personalized investment advice from PEARL PLANNING or any other investment professional of your choosing. Different types of investments involve varying degrees of risk, and it should not be assumed that future performance of any specific investment or investment strategy, or any non-investment related or planning services, discussion or content, will be profitable, be suitable for your portfolio or individual situation, or prove successful. Neither PEARL PLANNING’s investment adviser registration status, nor any amount of prior experience or success, should be construed that a certain level of results or satisfaction will be achieved if PEARL PLANNING is engaged, or continues to be engaged, to provide investment advisory services. PEARL PLANNING is neither a law firm nor accounting firm, and no portion of its services should be construed as legal or accounting advice. No portion of the video content should be construed by a client or prospective client as a guarantee that he/she will experience a certain level of results if PEARL PLANNING is engaged, or continues to be engaged, to provide investment advisory services. A copy of PEARL PLANNING’s current written disclosure Brochure discussing our advisory services and fees is available upon request or at https://pearlplan.com/

Melissa Joy:

Welcome to the Women's Money Wisdom Podcast. I'm Melissa Joy, a ertified financial planner and the founder of Pearl Planning. My goal is to help you streamline and organize your finances, navigate big money decisions with confidence and be strategic in order to grow your wealth. As a woman, you work hard for your money and I'm here to help you make the most of it. Now let's get into the show.

Melissa Joy:

One of the topics we don't talk about enough is your family structure and how that can impact the considerations for your financial plan. If you're in good hands or you're researching things yourself, you may already know some of these topics, but today we're going to be talking about families who are child-free and important financial considerations for them. We're joined by an expert, dr Jay ZygZmunt, who is a certified financial planner. He's also a PhD and MBA and the founder and CEO of Child Free Wealth. That is a financial and life planning firm which is dedicated to those who are child free or permanently childless.

Melissa Joy:

Child Free Wealth is the first life and financial planning firm dedicated to child free people, so an important and special niche, and I think that it is going to be a conversation. For those of you who are listening who do not have children. Of course, it's relevant to you, but also I think it provides context with some of your assumptions that you may have about your child-free friends. I know that my family has kids, but many of our best friends don't, and so this will help you give you perspective about their financial life. Hey, jay, welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

Thanks for having me.

Melissa Joy:

Well, tell me first, I'm assuming there might be some personal reasons, but why did you decide to focus on the financial life of child-free people?

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

Yeah, and let's start with the definition. So when I say child-free, I mean people who don't have kids and aren't going to have kids ever. So I don't mean like the kids are gone for the weekend or it's an empty nest or I don't have kids yet. There's about 25% of the US are child free or permanently childless and when I was studying to become a certified financial planner I didn't know that. You know, I just knew my wife and I didn't have kids. But I was surprised.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

In the CFP literature it's never once mentioned the concept of not having kids. All the planning, all the life cycles, all assume you're going to follow the state of life script to have kids. It's the American dream two and a half kids, the house, the white picket fence, that's what's built in. So I really started on this path and the question I really started with is very simple is how weird are we? So? My wife and I are both PhDs. We're both a little weird because we'll sit around at night talking about research studies. But like, how weird are we for being child-free and our life, our finance, all that? Come to find out. There's a whole lot of us out there, but nearly all financial advice assumes you're going to have kids. So if that's the case, how do we make sure we have a financial plan that fits them?

Melissa Joy:

We have software that fits them, structure systems rather than just being built in, that you got to follow the standard plan. I love that and I agree I think there's so many nuances. The financial planning curriculum is quite standardized and it's academic but it sometimes is devoid. It's getting better, but when I did my CFP curriculum it was a lot of textbook and not as much life, and you know we find these nuances and corners that are, you know, the standard wisdom isn't being addressed and the reality is, for every one of you you have a unique and personal circumstance. It doesn't make you weird, but it makes you you Right.

Melissa Joy:

So I love that you've been able to focus in this area. So I love that you've been able to focus in this area. We will send people, jay, to your website, because there are some great details and information resources and, in fact, your own podcast that is discussing these topics. But there are some common themes that need to be considered. When you are childless, what are some of the shared circumstances that you've found for this cohort of people, including yourself and your wife?

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

Yeah. So let's start at the end. So most child-free folks don't have a goal of passing on money to the next generation. So the way we say it for me and my wife is our nephews get what's left over. If they get 10 grand, 100 grand, that's fine. If they get a million dollars, we probably made a mistake Because really, I mean, if I'm going to die at 90, they're going to be 60. And it's going to be one of those things that they might not need the money then versus now. Can we help them? Can we do things in our life?

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

So when you're going to, either they call it die with zero or wind down your wealth, that starts changing all the assumptions. So if you look at like in a software, we have these Monte Carlo simulations which are the chance that you don't run out of money. Well, a 99% success on that is a 99% failure for a child-free person. It starts flipping everything and then we pull it back, say, okay, we've got to figure out a plan for long-term care. We often get these questions well, who's going to take care of you when you're old? Well, the answer is my financial plan is and old? Well, the answer is my financial plan is, and my long-term care insurance and all the other things. But there's just these assumptions that having kids fixes that. I'm going to tell you right now. By the way, the data says that's not the case. The US Census looked at childless adults over 55, and they found that 2.5% got any financial support from family. So that's like nothing.

Melissa Joy:

But it usually goes the other direction, right, like it's going downhill to the kids and the retirement plan needed to accommodate adult children, instead of the opposite, like the kids are saving for mom and dad.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

Yeah, we actually have that. Part of our plan is what's your plan for parents? In that same study they looked at parents and saw if you had any financial support from your family After 55, it was 1.5% of parents got any financial support from their family. So we all need to have a plan for long-term care. But us child-free folks know it. We have different options around estate planning and who becomes next of kin and all that.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

A lot of child-free folks don't want to retire. They want to cut back on work and really the way we say it is, living a life of child free wealth means you have time, money and freedom to do what you enjoy, which really means the plans change all the time. You know, if you look at two parents financial plans, there's kind of a standard script that falls through and the numbers and the speed change, but it's kind of like a a standard process. Child free people. You know I get a phone call from my class and they're like, hey, by the way, I'm moving to Australia and I'm like, all right, that wasn't on the list, let's figure that out. And that's just a Tuesday for me. You know, like these random things, hey, I got a job offer, I'm going to change this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to awesome where that is just not the norm. If you got kids and you're raising them and you're in the school system and all. It's just a different life. It's not better or worse, it's just different.

Melissa Joy:

I love that and there's so much to unpack there. So you're starting at the end of you don't want to end up with too much money. The 99% probability of success I agree with you is probably difficult to explain that you don't want an A-plus when it comes to your financial planning percentages. But absolutely in most kind of modern financial planning theory is probably a problem for the planner's practitioner, at least for the discussion. And nonetheless, though sometimes I know of child-free families because they don't have that safety net of you know whether you can depend on them or not, a next gen that can pick up the pieces. Sometimes there's a scarcity mentality where there's a bit of an you know a bit nervous about being more. You know grandiose with the spending or spending or dreaming bigger. I don't know if you ever run into that.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

So, interestingly enough, we actually spend more time with our clients talking about spending money than saving money. So how do you optimize For child-free folks? There's a point in their life I often see it kind of 40s-ish where every dollar they earn is going to their estate, which is not a priority. So instead we figure out what we call a die with zero safety net. So come mid forties we want to have a plan for long-term care, set aside money for it or insurance or something, and then we will optimize for how much they have to spend to bring their net worth somewhere down towards that zero not literally zero, but like to a safety net amount. And it kind of messes with people's heads because they've been really good at saving money. But when you're like, hey, you should spend it, it gets hard, whether it's giving or travel or whatever it is.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

And that's where we do our work. You know the way we say it is. We plan for their life first, then their finances, then their taxes. So it might be that they're 40. We're like, hey, you hate your job. Doing it for another 10 years is not going to make you any happier. How about we quit it and start that cupcake shop? You've always wanted to start. You know it's probably not the best financial decision, but it is the best life decision and we can do that because of all this plan and the structure and the safety net we built, and you can optimize for joy.

Melissa Joy:

Well, there is that shared. There's a higher percentage, I find, of people who are childless, who are more prepared earlier for retirement, just like you're describing, and it is that because if you've been that diligent saver, then turning on the spending spigot is unnatural and that's the case for everyone. But it's a lot easier to simulate it when you're closer to required distribution ages and our social security is about to turn on than when you're 40s or 50s and it's going to be the unnatural reverse where you're withdrawing from your accounts. And that is something I agree with you. If you're working with a financial planner who is not prepared to counsel you on your withdrawal strategies, who is not prepared to talk about what realistic dates and options are for you with retirement which I find so many people are just managing the accounts, not the people, or not consulting on people in their lives then you probably need to be seeking outside counsel, because that is just not the right spot.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

Yeah, if I'm going to go one more step. So child-free folks tend to approach something we call FILE financial payments live early rather than FIRE financial payments, retire early, where they're cutting back on work but retirement's not a goal. They're like, hey, I want to. I don't know why. I've got a lot of therapists as clients, but I got a lot of therapists and they're like, hey, I'm going to move from four days of client meetings to two and I'll do those two as long as I can.

Melissa Joy:

Till 70s, yeah, right.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

Retirement is not the goal. So if retirement is not the goal and you want to dive with zero, it completely changes all the assumptions. You know I'm with you, melissa, that I think that you know a lot of planners just manage the investments and that's just. You know, as long as it's going up to the right, it's fine. I'm going to pick on hopefully you don't mind, I'm going to pick on one of the big companies. So, and I went well, not really for child-free clients, because for a child-free client the net worth going up constantly for life is not doing better. So like there's this conflict of interest in there. There's other things and it's just, if you're just focusing on the investments, you can completely miss your life.

Melissa Joy:

It's so true. Well, let's talk about some of the more specific. So we brought up. We went to end of life first, because that's something you definitely want to make sure you have planned for, and the psychology is different when you don't have junior in the house down the street who you think can come and take out the trash. Talk to me about how you counsel people on long-term care insurance.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

Yeah, so kind of interesting. I had a client at 29 asking me how do they get long-term care insurance? And I'll be honest, that's really weird. Usually people are talking about it, they're 50s and 60s and I actually had to have this client wait a year because you can't even get a quote for long-term care until you're 30.

Melissa Joy:

Very few insurance companies even insure between 30 and 40, because we're just trying to do the same for somebody who's 38 in a child-free family.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

Yep. So for long-term care insurance, I only will do the standalone plans because the hybrid plans have life insurance in there that doesn't have a value to the child-free person If you actually look at the prices of that. I had somebody price out the two and the hybrid plan to get the same coverage is going to be out a third more because they're buying other sides being the life insurance they don't need. But the problem is long-term care insurance is stupidly expensive. Let's just be honest with that. The numbers are it costs about $115,000 a year for long-term care Men 2.2 years on average, women 3.7 years and the highest rate is for single women. We call them our soloists single, no kids and I mean it's hundreds of thousands of dollars for that coverage. But it might be worth it just to get rid of that fear and that worry and have the protection For our soloists. It's a really big deal because they may have no other income to rely on. They have nobody else that's going to bail them out. They need to get that policy in place. But they also have the highest rates. So it becomes this debate about when to do it and what we try to do is we try to quote it by. We don't sell life insurance but, you know, get quotes on it at about 45. And the reason is at 50, it gets more expensive. But also, your long-term care costs are based on your parents' health too. So if your parents have a dementia or Alzheimer's checkbox, your cost just went up 50%. If both of them have a dementia or Alzheimer's, you can't get any coverage.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

So it's like this big thing and people go well, what do I do? I just had a conversation with somebody this week. They're like that number is huge. I go yes, it is. The other option is Medicaid, which is after you have no assets. And let's be real, medicaid care sucks, like I'm just trying to call that out. It's not ideal. So you have to have a plan. Yeah, you can self-insure, but it still means putting a whole lot of money aside to do that. But it's something we have to do, and early on. If you wait to your 60s, it gets so expensive to get insurance. The only option there becomes self-insurance in many cases, or Medicaid, and it starts being less and less attractive.

Melissa Joy:

Well, it's so interesting too, because once you've experienced the parent who has the long-term care needs, that's the first time where people are just adamant Like I want this because I don't want to go through the same things that mom or dad went through, or else they're just like you know, whatever it takes, I'm never moving into a home, you can, I will just just dig a hole, please. And. But so many times people experience that at a point in time where they become insurable because either they have preexisting conditions, you just naturally tend to be in your sixties or seventies when you you know, when the boomer parent or a boomer, when the parents are the silent generation that have gone through the event. So, ironically, you need to consider it earlier to make it affordable than when you've been able to contemplate it from a firsthand experience.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

Absolutely, and that's also why so we have a program we call the Eight no Baby Steps. And step seven is plan for parents. We're trying to get our clients early on in their life, like in their 30s and 40s, to figure out what are their boundaries around. What are they willing to help their parents financial mom going to move in? You know, because you're child-free, we get this. We call it the child-free bingo, which is well, you don't have kids so you can take care of mom.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

You hear people talk about the sandwich generation, where you take care of kids and your parents at the same time. We're the open-faced sandwich taking care of our parents, but we don't have any kids, and it can completely derail somebody's financial plan. I was just meeting with a couple and they're like, hey, I would do whatever it takes for my parents, I would pay for their care, and they had between the two of them, they had three parents. They had between the two of them. They had three parents they had to plan for. I'm like, cool, so you're going to put a million, $1.1 million, which is what it added up to. You know, on average they're like, no, no, no, that wasn't what I meant. I'm like, well, like that's what it's actually going to cost. You know, if you run the odds out and they're like, oh well, what can we afford? What can, what are the boundaries? And those are important conversations to have before mom and dad break a hip or, you know, move it in. You know I had somebody.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

Mom broke a hip. They moved her in to recover. Six months later she's recovered. Well, a year later they're like mom, are you ever moving out? And she wasn't planning on it. Like it's it's people talk about. Like the boomers are going to be sending all this money to the next generation. It's people talk about. Like the boomers are going to be sending all this money to the next generation. I don't believe that. I think it's all the long-term care.

Melissa Joy:

That's interesting and I'd have to think about, you know, I. I also think, though, people are being told to spend enough sometimes, and you know when people spend less and less in their 70s and 80s, but there's an assumption that they'll spend more and more. It's interesting. Interesting because it's bulky outcomes, right, so you can't predict which part of the lottery you ended up with, whether you were with the losing or the winning ticket. Let's talk about estate planning, though, because there are additional considerations.

Melissa Joy:

It could be easy to overlook estate planning when you are childless, because one of the initial prompts that a financial planner planning textbooks would tell you is okay if you have minor children or a spouse that needs something. You need to do this right away, but especially on the children's side. That immediately, you know, results in life insurance conversations, estate planning conversations that get skipped over, but it's still very important to plan. Whether it's a life insurance or estate planning is a little different, because you need to decide. You know, with the last to die, where the money goes, but you also need somebody who's not going to be, you know, maybe in the same age cohort as you who can make decisions on your behalf, perhaps if you are incapacitated but living Yep. So let's start with the life insurance.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

For child-free folks there. Let's start with the life insurance for child free folks. There's very little need for life insurance. You know, unless you have a serious amount of debt, you're going to leave or something or a business you have to buy out. Most of my spouses are working.

Melissa Joy:

Sometimes you're child free, but only one spouse works. And then, and in thirties and forties, that still could be relevant.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

It's possible but, like for my soloists, it has zero. You know very little value Absolutely.

Melissa Joy:

Like probably overinsured if they have even the employer plan.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

Yeah, I mean I'll take the $3 employer plan Like cause you know, it's three bucks, but disability insurance is a must for my child. Free folks.

Melissa Joy:

You know, it's like it flips it.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

But when the estate planning, the thing to remember is the system being either the government, financial or healthcare systems are always looking for an ex-deficit. That's kind of the default choice. If you don't have a piece of paper saying who makes decisions for you and you don't have an ex-deficit, the government or healthcare organizations may make decisions for you, which I don't care what you believe on politics. I don't want the government making decisions for me, I want somebody who knows me doing that. So it becomes an issue of how do you find somebody you trust to be your executor medical power of attorney, financial power of attorney and it's hard. I'm just going to be honest with that.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

Most child-free folks will start with well, my parents can be in. I'm like well, that's going the wrong direction. That's not what we're trying. If you're in California or Arizona, you can pay a professional fiduciary to do it. I felt one attorney in Georgia that's willing to do it. In most of the other states there's not a great answer. Our company's working on a solution, hopefully about the end of the year. We're partnering with a trust company to do it. Trust companies can do it, but they usually will only do it if you have a large number of assets and, by the way, they don't want to do the medical part, you know.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

So, like the way I look at it my wife and I get in a car crash. The big questions are who's going to make decisions for us medically, who's going to make our financial decisions and who's going to let our dog out? That sounds silly, but like my wife will be in the hospital worrying about who's letting the dog out more than probably anything else, Absolutely of course, yeah.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

And these are the things that you hope if you have kids, that they will take care of for you. I mean no guarantees, but if you're child-free, you don't have that safety net. I mean no guarantees, but if you're child-free, you don't have that safety net. So if a client comes to me, we have a safe plan as part of our core plans, because we're like no matter what age you are, we have to get some paperwork in place. And if you look at it, even in couples, something like 32.1% of childless or child-free folks will never marry. So they might be in a couple, they might not be married, they might be single, they might be in alternative family structures. Well, if you're in a couple and not married, that other person it might be your spouse been there for 10 years, no paperwork, they're nobody.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

You know like these are the things that people don't think about until they're later in life. We're like nope, we got to do that early, we got to get something on paper, we got to have a structure. And the other problem is child-free folks move all the time. You know the editor for my book. She and her dog would live in a different Airbnb each month, traveled the whole US. Just I'm like, where are you now? Oh, I'm at Joshua Tree, oh, where am I? Like you know, like that's normal. Well, your paperwork now has to be able to survive, whatever random state you're in, and they have to get support. I mean, it's all of these things people don't think about. It's a huge issue.

Melissa Joy:

It is definitely a big issue. I think that it also you need to be thinking about. Hey, if you do have somebody identified, whether it's friend, family member, niece, nephew, something, try to make it easy on them. If they have to be the administrator, it's burdensome to take care of your own legal stuff. Taking care of somebody else's is the next level of complexity. And so do be thoughtful. Do tell your financial planner, your estate planner, like, hey, I want to have this all shored up so that I'm taken care of, but also I don't have, you know, someone who has to quit their job in order to manage my life. And I think sometimes the documents get drafted quickly there's, you know, maybe you forget to do the beneficiary designations exactly right, or you forget to say where the paperwork is and it just like it's. It's already a bad time when somebody needs extra help. So, do you know, be considerate of needs, and you may even compensate that person if they need to manage your affairs over time.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

Yeah, and you have to be able to trust them Because, remember, this is the person that literally is going to be like deciding if you stay at home or going to home. Like that's a big deal and, by the way, it's a long-term investment. So I've I have some folks creating kind of like the golden girls homes, you know. So they all live together, they have like their own French circle, so they have four people and they each are the power of attorneys for each other. It works for all but the last person.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

But the last person's out of luck because they're the last one standing and you need some different generations in their structure and the system and you've got to trust that they're doing the right thing. You know, if you look at AARP is doing a lot of work on fraud of elders. Then they come out of folks that are being, you know, by their own family or others put in like a cheaper nursing home so that that the person in the wheel can get the money that's left over. You wouldn't think that happens. Oh, it happens all the time. Like you've got to make sure they're going to follow it, which is why I like higher professional fiduciary to serve those roles, if at all possible.

Melissa Joy:

And oftentimes they can be co so that there's a fiduciary involved as well as a related family member. So it's kind of divided. So what, you're writing a new book. It's coming out at the end of the year.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

Yep, the new book, the child-free guide to life and money, on pre-sale now comes out. The end of the year the publisher reached out to me and they're like I had done my first book. And they're like do you have a second book? Yeah, of course, yeah. If you ask an author, do you have a second book, the answer is always yes. Or research. I'm like why is there no book about child-free finances? And I'm like I don't know but let's try to fix that.

Melissa Joy:

Well, what did you find surprising that you were focusing on? Or where do you think this area, which I'm sure, if it hasn't been growing, will be growing? Where do you think it's going next?

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

If you look at and I don't want to get too political on this, but if you look at the overturn of Roe two years ago, you look at the statistics since then, the amount of people getting sterilized young in their life I mean like talking like early 20s has gone through the roof. So the amount of people choosing a child-free life has just gone through the roof.

Melissa Joy:

I just have to tell you. One of my friends texted me and said her 13-year-old son said I'm planning to get a vasectomy as soon as I am, you know, 19 or 20 years old. So there's the anecdotal proof.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

Absolutely. You know, I mean that is absolutely the case. And you ask people why they choose to be child-free. I asked this question. You know there's a percentage about a third they're like, just, they didn't want kids. But then it goes to other issues like finance and healthcare and the politics and the environment and like all these really well thought out reasons where the younger generations, rather than just having the default choice you get married, you have kids, you do that, they're going. Do I really want that life? And I'm not judging Like I don't get a vote in them having kids. They don't get a vote in my life. You know it is how it is. But you're seeing more people.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

Well, if that's the case, we need to figure out how to serve them and help them. You know, we need to figure out how to get past. Hey, everybody's got a financial plan, that's the same. I actually did a survey on this and asked child-free folks what's it like working with a financial planner and the answers were very bad. I mean, you and I probably would could have assumed it, but the number one thing they said was they said the planner just said well, you'll change your mind. Like, well, that completely disregards their life or oh, it's the same, we'll just plan as is. Like these are just what people are getting out there, so we got to make sure they're embraced. You know I look at child-free folks as an underserved, unrerepresented minority group.

Melissa Joy:

Well, and I'm just thinking through my client list, I think I'm in the same zone as the national statistics. 25 to 30% of clients are child-free or soloists, as you described, and there's so much that is inappropriate about assumptions for families that they will all be the same and there are so many nuances in addition to what you described. There's families going through grief because they wanted to have children but had fertility issues or challenges. Every person's life is different and there are so many possibilities for this cohort of people as well. I think that you know. I hope that the people listening if they are in one of those dissatisfactory engagements where you know they're you know, none of us are the nuclear family nowadays, but they're being put into a square peg when that's not their shape or size Know that there are people who start with the person, the family and the relationship, and people without children are families, whether it's your group of friends, your community or your partner or other family members like you, it's not a afterthought to think of that as a family as well.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

Yeah, the society for human resource management put out a study on this and they were looking at child-free folks in the workplace and they found that child free folks are disadvantaged as far as holiday time. It's like oh well, you don't have a family, so you don't need Christmas off. No, we've got a family. It just looks a little different than yours, you know, like it. And it's all of these assumptions. I had a conversation with somebody and they were talking about the employment side and they're like yeah, I always end up covering when somebody has to go away for something or whatever Cause. My boss is like, well, you don't have a family, or you don't have kids, you can cover. And she's like no, I still want my afternoon off too. Like, you know, like it's these things that are just built into the system we don't even think about.

Melissa Joy:

Well, this conversation, I know, will be continuing. I think that you're doing great work, both in the broader community in terms of resources, as well as the work with your clients. Tell, both in the broader community in terms of resources, as well as the work with your clients. Tell us about the book and when it will be out and where people can pre-order. And then where else can people find you?

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

Yep. So the Child Free Guide to Life and Money available all your bookstores. Go to the small ones. Preferably it's on Amazon, but like I love the Indies, Support local.

Melissa Joy:

Yeah, I agree.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

Exactly, you know. Go there and if they don't carry it, ask them to carry it. Um comes out in december. Childfreewealthcom. Child free wealth podcast. Child free on all the child free wealth on all the uh socials, except for twitter, because he said that childless folks should not have a vote.

Melissa Joy:

You know like give me new yeah, there's a little bit of a difference in philosophy between elon musk and and people who prefer not have children yeah, there's a new, new child announced in the tabloids every six months there.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

Yeah, I think he's on number 12.

Melissa Joy:

Well, we will make sure to have links to those socials, and this conversation is important and I'm so glad that we created some space to have it today. Thank you so much, dr J.

Dr. Jay Zigmont :

Absolutely, and I really appreciate you being willing to dig in and I appreciate you understanding different family structures. That's kind of a huge thing for us culturally to get to.

Melissa Joy:

Absolutely. We all deserve respect and a place in inclusion. Thank you for listening to the Women's Money Wisdom Podcast. If you found value in this episode, the best way you can support the podcast is to forward an episode to a friend or leave a review. Go to pearlplancom and the podcast link to get all the resources and links mentioned.

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Melissa Joy, CFP

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