[00:00:00] Portia Wood: When we think about the snowball effect of what happens by not having a plan for the inevitable, that’s the reality, like none of us are getting out of here alive. So by not having a plan, we’ve literally said that everything that we’ve worked for, that our family and the people that love, or the people that we care about, we don’t care what happens to them.

[00:00:19] Portia Wood: It doesn’t matter. It’s up to them to decide, right? That’s what keeps us here. Yeah. We cannot close the racial wealth gap without a plan.

[00:00:27] Nicole Pendergrass: Hey guys. So we’re back again. This is the second part of the episode with today’s guest. I need you, if you have not heard part one, go back to the previous episode and listen to that first and then come back and join us here today, but you’re not going to want to miss what they already said, because then you’ll be lost with what they’re about to say.

[00:01:15] Nicole Pendergrass: But in any case you don’t want to miss the whole, you need to hear the whole conversation. It’s why we split it into two parts. There’s so many nuggets, it’s so juicy. Go back and listen to the first part.

[00:01:25] Portia Wood: It’s about intergenerational wealth protection, right? Like my goal is to make sure that everybody who comes down the line from me is taken care of, right?

[00:01:33] Portia Wood: At least I’d have to worry about going to get a higher education with not out having to worry about whether or not they can get a medical treatment without having to worry about whether or not they, they can get seed money to start a business or any of these other things.

[00:01:45] Portia Wood: So they can remove themselves from this toxic and abusive banking society that we live in right now that’s harmful to people of color, as we have seen most recently with Wells Fargo and the refinance rates in 2020, but you know, so then we can, they can create their own banking economy within our own family.

[00:02:05] Portia Wood: And if I want to make sure that that continues because it’s got to make it past his generation to be able to continue, he can’t screw it up. So if you don’t do the steps that I’ve outlined to make sure that you at least have a baseline knowledge for how to him. Then you just don’t get to. And that’s my choice, right?

[00:02:24] Portia Wood: When our kids are minors, it is incredibly important to make sure that we are far more conservative in our planning, because we have no idea who they will be as people. We have no idea what they’ll be exposed to. We have no idea how well they will process this information who might be in their ear and, guiding them down the wrong path.

[00:02:46] Portia Wood: We just don’t know any of those things, right? Because they’re babies. And so we get far more restrictive with their planning in the beginning, because if I die tomorrow, this plan is what’s left, right? This is the only thing that’s left. I’m not here. Yes. You can’t take it with you, right? Like, that’s true.

[00:03:05] Portia Wood: But I can use it to guide him. I can use it to say, here are the things that I value. So if he graduates top of his class from high school, he gets a certain amount of money unrestricted to do whatever he wants with. And I’ve got a provision in there that says, Hey, you know, a line in that, it says, I think you should travel because it’s an important part of a young person’s education and like worldview, right?

[00:03:27] Portia Wood: Like you can do whatever you want. If he gets a full ride to college, right? They just got a boom, assuming he goes to a four year university. So every semester, as long as he’s keeping that scholarship, he’ll get a certain sum of money to do whatever he wants with that. My recommendation is to go, you know, put a down payment on a piece of property and rent it out to his college friends, but that’s on him.

[00:03:47] Portia Wood: Because there’s other stuff in the estate that’s still gonna be there. This is your money to do whatever you want with. That’s me showing my values. That’s me saying to you, I’m proud of you. That’s me saying, I’ve not only thought about you, but that I love you and I am encouraging you. And the only way I can do that and it’s with my estate because I’m gone.

[00:04:05] Portia Wood: If I’m there for high school and college for, right? Which I hope, but assuming I’m there for that, then I get an idea of who he is as a person. How serious are you? Is this something that you have an aptitude for? Is this something you’re even interested in? And then I can amend my plan accordingly. Maybe he’s incredibly talented in financial understanding, right?

[00:04:27] Portia Wood: And maybe he’s great at real estate. And like he understands how all of this stuff works. And at a young age, I’m like, Ooh, at 20 you could totally handle this. I can amend my estate plan and bring it down and make it less restrictive, right? Because I’m like, I know you get it, or I can be like, you are a hot mess and I will never. Remove him entirely from being able to be a trustee, right? And I’ll set like a professional trustee to come in and manage it. So it’s amendable while you are alive and have capacity. And so as your life changes, you’ll change that, that what many people, at least of our generation need to realize. And particularly our parents, right, is that we have more complicated family structures that are accounted for under the law.

[00:05:10] Portia Wood: And you’ve had the issues of, you know, the unequal distributions of GI bill. We’ve seen redlining. We’ve seen all of these things have been impediments to our wealth that have resulted in about 43% of African-American families owning their own homes, which is incredibly low compared to our contemporaries.

[00:05:26] Portia Wood: And it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to do so. We need to look at, you know, our parents and our grandparents who own these homes and make sure that they have trusts in place to protect it. We also need to keep in mind that the 90s and the war on drugs was really a war on black and brown communities, particularly impoverished communities, right, where we saw this older policing happening and people who have been touched by the war on drugs typically have either restitution issues or they’re still incarcerated, or they have substance abuse issues.

[00:05:57] Portia Wood: And those types of things, if someone’s got a judgment against them, the state can come in and attach to grandma’s house and force a sale.

[00:06:04] Portia Wood: And now you’ve lost your asset that could have built generational wealth. If somebody has backed child support from having been incarcerated, right, as a result of some of these, dare I say it, and racist policies, then you’re going to see that those assets can be attached against if left outright, but you can leave them an asset protection trust that wouldn’t allow for that.

[00:06:26] Portia Wood: And so there are methods and mechanisms that we need to be getting out into the community. I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure you’re familiar. The road to 2053. Have you heard, heard about that?

[00:06:37] Nicole Pendergrass: Is that the year that we’re supposed to have like zero net worth?

[00:06:41] Portia Wood: Yes. So the median net worth for black families was set to hit zero by 2053.

[00:06:46] Portia Wood: That was a study that came out in 2017. Now 2020 happened. And the implication of that is that 1 in 555 African Americans died as a result of COVID-19, which has severely accelerated this timeline. And just 2020 alone, it’s severely accelerated this timeline to the road to zero wealth. And so what was, you know, 14 years from now, or 22 to 20 something years from now is probably about 10 years of we have to get people covered.

[00:07:15] Portia Wood: 70% of African-Americans do not have any estate planning at all. Any. Not a power of attorney, not a will. Not in there, nothing. And so we end up in probate court, which is costing families in the United States, $2 billion annually. 2 billion in avoidable process, right? And so we have to do something. And I know we talked a little bit about minor kids, but just between April of 2020 and June of 2021, more than 146,000 children were orphaned as a result of COVID-19. In fact, one in four of the deaths from COVID-19 resulted in an orphaned person and 65% of those orphaned children are in minority communities. So if we don’t have estate plans and we don’t have guardianship elections for our kids, we are literally putting the state and the court in charge of our family, our finances, our minor kids, and then they get to decide who raises our kids. They get to decide who manages their money. And if you’re thinking about the members of your family and who may or may not be good for that, I would be worried, right? They get to decide what happens with our stuff, because we haven’t said. And so the numbers don’t lie. In 2017, there was another study that was done that found that only 13% of college-educated African-Americans are getting $10,000 or more to the next generation.

[00:08:33] Portia Wood: So we say that 87% of college-educated African-Americans are not even getting $10,000 to the next generation. And that is not because we don’t have stuff and it is not because we are not building assets in the states. It is not because of that. It’s because we are losing at the generational wealth transfer game.

[00:08:51] Portia Wood: We are losing every time somebody gets sick and every time somebody passes away by not having plans in place and we just cannot afford to do so anymore. So Nicole, I would say I’m so glad that you invited me to come on. I know I’m long-winded, but thank you.

[00:09:05] Nicole Pendergrass: Oh, my God. You’re not long-winded, you’re captivating. Like I’m just hanging on to every word, everything that you’re speaking so much depth and truth to it. And there’s so many other layers underneath, like every sentence. And what I really want people to get away from is they need to have a plan. You said planning so many times during this conversation because that is so critical. You don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow.

[00:09:30] Nicole Pendergrass: And even when you’re starting, this is not you would decide to have an estate plan, you have one tomorrow. It takes a process. So you need to start it so that at least it’s in the works that you can get it done quicker rather than later. And I think a lot of people too think, oh, well, I’m just going to hurry up and write a will.

[00:09:45] Nicole Pendergrass: I’m gonna write something on a piece of paper, but they don’t realize wills don’t prevent you from probate and from somebody else deciding what’s going to happen with your assets. Even if you have it written down, isn’t that like that judges can still, even if you have a will, they can decide. What to do and to overthrow your will, right?

[00:10:02] Portia Wood: We’ll still need to be certified, right? So if you have a, will, it still needs to go to court. A judge still needs to determine that it’s an actually validly created will. And then, you know, they reach out to the beneficiaries. People can obviously challenge the will if there’s some evidence that’s not it, or like in Aretha Franklin’s case where they keep finding wills in the couches.

[00:10:24] Portia Wood: Okay. You know, there’s all of these different issues that can come in. And now you’re still asking a judge. Yes. You’ve said where you want your stuff to go, but you’re asking a judge to do it for you. And the reason why trusts are so powerful, at least one of the reasons is you’ve already outlined who has legal authority to transfer your assets.

[00:10:43] Portia Wood: And so you don’t need to ask it a judge to transfer your house to your beneficiaries because you’ve already transferred to your trust. And once you’re gone, your trust still exists. And the successors you pick now have legal authority to transact on that property. You don’t need the judge’s permission. Yes. You still have to wind up the estate right. You still got to make sure the final tax returns are paid and do all of these things and do the transfers. But now it’s, whoever you’ve picked is doing those transfers, not a judge deciding what happens. And you know, some people are like, well, let’s just not that complicate it, I mean, a judge can do it. Sure. But in a place like California, their probate ease, or at least the attorney’s fees and the personal representative fees are set by statute. And so based on the gross value of your estate. Gross meaning everything you own, regardless of how much debt there is, right? So if you own a million-dollar house, which is unfortunately pretty common for Southern California, you know, that’s kind of like the bare minimum then, you know, even if you owe $900,000 on that house, your personal representative fees and your attorney’s fees are more than $46,000.

[00:11:52] Portia Wood: Just by statute. Now, if you’re dealing with real estate, you know, attorneys can get extraordinary fees for dealing with the real estate. If people start fighting, we get extraordinary fees on our hourly rate on top of that, and you haven’t even paid court fees, you haven’t paid any of the other fees.

[00:12:07] Portia Wood: That’s just by statute based on the number, right? So even if you’re like, it’s not that complicated to ask a judge, it’s expensive and the results of COVID-19, right, when 2020 the courts in many jurisdictions were shut down for more than six months, you have a backlog of cases. You can’t even get a court date in a reasonable amount of time.

[00:12:30] Portia Wood: And so your family is just waiting. They can’t rent it. They can’t refinance it. They can’t do anything with that property because they don’t have legal authority to. And so they have to wait for a judge. What happens in that time period? Who pays the taxes, who pays the mortgage if there is one? Who’s able to stop a foreclosure proceeding if there is one? Nobody has legal authority.

[00:12:52] Portia Wood: And so when we think about the snowball effect of what happens by not having a plan for the inevitable, that’s the reality, like none of us are getting out of here alive. So by not having a plan, we’ve literally said that everything that we’ve worked for, that our family and the people that love, or the people that we care about, we don’t care what happens to them.

[00:13:12] Portia Wood: It doesn’t matter. It’s up to them to decide, right? That’s what keeps us here. Yeah. We cannot close the racial wealth gap without a plan.

[00:13:20] Nicole Pendergrass: Definitely can’t and there’s so much, what does someone do if they feel just overwhelmed with all the decisions and all the different pieces that they should potentially be thinking about, especially in the future?

[00:13:33] Nicole Pendergrass: And like, how often should you review your plan or you say you don’t know what your kids are going to be like when they get older, but then when they’re 20, like, do you review your plan annually? Or like, is there a certain, you know what I mean? Or maybe even quarterly that may be too much, you know? So I know you can change it as much as you want.

[00:13:49] Nicole Pendergrass: And the same, this there’s just so many different pieces. And just figuring out how you want the life insurance to work for each kid or, and figuring out, you know, like you said, 75% of the fair rental value, which I have never heard anybody even say that before. And I’m in real estate. So that’s, it’s just like, there’s so many different pieces.

[00:14:09] Nicole Pendergrass: And sometimes even if you’re not going to copy exactly what somebody else’s doing, having an example of something that other people have thought about and have in place gives you a good springboard, say, oh, I do like that idea, but I don’t like that. And he couldn’t like pick and choose, like, what’s a good resource for people to go to, to kind of get this kind of information and see how other people like can potentially, or what the options are as far as, you know, just how to put up the plan.

[00:14:36] Portia Wood: Yeah. How to put it, so we have a free resource library on our website that anybody can tap into anywhere in the country to start getting some of those ideas about what exists and what’s possible. And it’s just woodlegalgroup.com and then you could go to the dropdown menu and it’s Access Resource Library, and it’s a hundred percent free.

[00:14:53] Portia Wood: There’s a ton of information there, and that’s a really good place to start the conversation. We also do webinars every month. So if you go to our website, there is a webinar that’s happening every single month. One is just wills, trusts, and generational wealth planning. And that is sort of more of the overarching view.

[00:15:11] Portia Wood: What is the process? What are the pieces? What are some of the considerations? What can you do, right? And then the second one is specifically tailored to parents of minor children because the estate planning considerations are very different when you have minors, because not only do you have to think about what happens until 18, but then you have to think about, well, what happens after 18? And it’s more than just, I’m going to give them my stuff, right? Because there’s a whole psychological element that comes into play when children are orphaned, because you know, they have to go through the grieving process. And they have to do that while going to homes.

[00:15:46] Portia Wood: And how do you pick their guardians? You know, people often pick their parents, but does that mean that our kids are going to make two house transfers? Cause our parents die because they’re old, right? All of these different pieces that come into play are very specific to parents of minor kids then. So we have that second webinar and we’d do both every single month in our office and they’re webinars so anybody can access from anywhere in the country. Federally, the information is the same. Some states do have nuance, but it is a great springboard for people to really get started. I also do strategy sessions, so people can book a strategy session for 30 minutes or they can book it for an hour and we will sit down and map out what a solid estate plan could look like for that person in their family, right? Depending on what their goals are. And if they’re not in a jurisdiction that I service, which right now is California, Maryland, DC, and Virginia, and then I have referral partners really all over the country. But if you’re not in a jurisdiction and that service, I can connect you with an attorney and you can walk in armed with say, Hey, here is the plan that I, you know, want to put into place, which can be incredibly impactful as well. And we just started doing this family dinners where people can actually hire us to come in and talk to a multigenerational family.

[00:16:57] Portia Wood: And so everybody at least has the same baseline of knowledge and starting those conversations around family as a business, because it is, I mean, it’s love, right? Like we love our families, but there are our business, the elders or the CEOs. And as they get into quote unquote retirement, they’re passing the reigns to us to keep this family corporation going.

[00:17:18] Portia Wood: And if we don’t have a plan for how we communicate together, or how three siblings share one house and you leverage it for resources, then we lose them. And so starting those family conversations is important to include all of the generations and answer their questions. And so we just launched that that people could book as well.

[00:17:36] Portia Wood: So we got a lot of resources and it just starts with information, right?

[00:17:40] Nicole Pendergrass: Perfect. I’m going to be digging into your website crazy because there’s so much

[00:17:45] Portia Wood: We have a website revamp coming soon, right around Juneteenth. We should, hopefully we’ll be launching everything live. So you heard it here first. So we’re doing these family dinners and we also do a free estate planning giveaway for Juneteenth.

[00:17:57] Portia Wood: So we always have sort of a raffle that people can tap into in our jurisdictions. And we give away a few estate plans for Juneteenth to really help protect people in our committee.

[00:18:06] Nicole Pendergrass: Yeah. I also saw on your website, something, it was like for women of color, by women of color, the roadmap to legacy planning or generational wealth planning.

[00:18:17] Nicole Pendergrass: So tell me a little bit about that.

[00:18:20] Portia Wood: Yeah. So my girl, Michelle Morton, and I came together and we said, Hey, we really want to create an event that not far from, you know, JPL. So that’s all right. But you know, it’s The FUTURE of Generational Wealth. It’s by women of color for women of color, my friend, Michelle Morton, and I were having these conversations around generational wealth protection.

[00:18:40] Portia Wood: Her brand is Luxury + Legacy and you know, mine, Black Trust Fund Kids. And we said, how do we put together a panel from all of these different areas of holistically to bring women in, to talk about our finances? Because particularly black women, we are much more likely to be impoverished in our retirement than any other group.

[00:18:59] Portia Wood: And so how do we harness the information that we’ve all been learning in our silos and bring it together for a holistic approach? And so the first one we did was virtual. It was fantastic, right? And it was all women of color coming in from their different areas. We had CPAs coming in to talk about taxes and tax based planning, right?

[00:19:17] Portia Wood: Because you don’t have to make more money to have more money. You just have to save and keep more money, right? It’s all about how much you keep. We have people talking about real estate. We had people talking about mortgages and interest rates. We have people who are, you know, wealth and business coaches for the stars, and a lot of the celebrities that, you know, and see who came in and talked about some of those strategies that are put into place to protect wealth.

[00:19:39] Portia Wood: And so from all of these different perspectives, we brought in someone who was top of their game to really come and talk about it. And you can actually get those replays online. Just thefutureofgenerationalwealth.com and you can buy the replays , but it was a really incredible event and we are getting ready to do it again and we are hoping to do it live this time, and we are looking at Puerto Rico. So I will keep me posted when that goes live.

[00:20:07] Nicole Pendergrass: Oh, I hope I can make that. That would be great. Oh my goodness. And then when, you know, it’s funny, when I saw that part of the site, I was like, oh my goodness, this is more confirmation that I had to have you on because like the premise and my idea of this is really like there’s three pillars of wealth building. And one is how to you create and build that initial capital, which is whatever active income, whatever you’re gonna do actively, whether it’s in your W2, whether it’s a side business, you know, whatever to build that capital base.

[00:20:38] Nicole Pendergrass: And then how do you invest it so that you can grow it? And then how do you protect it so that you can pass it on? So, I had all those three pillars. And then I saw that road to generational wealth and I said, oh, this is the same thing that I’m talking about. Yeah. Perfect. Okay. So we, oh my gosh, we’ve talked about so much stuff. We got to wrap it up, unfortunately.

[00:20:58] Nicole Pendergrass: I’m going to figure out how to get you back or do something. We I’m going to include all your links that you mentioned. I’m going to have in the show notes, even to the Clubhouse room, because I would like to join into there and hear those conversations as well. Everyone else is listening. I encourage you. If you’re not in Clubhouse, get on there, or at least access all the resources that Portia has on her website, you would be a fool to not do that.

[00:21:23] Nicole Pendergrass: And I’m yes. Not going to be politically correct right now because it’s just too important.

[00:21:28] Nicole Pendergrass: Okay. So I’m going to ask the last couple of questions that I ask every guest. The first one is Warren Buffett said that diversification is a protection against ignorance. And I mean, I take that to mean that people diversify because, you know, they don’t really know what they’re doing.

[00:22:50] Nicole Pendergrass: So that’s their safety net. But what is your take on as diversification? A good idea or specialization is better?

[00:22:57] Portia Wood: So in your investments, diversification is really key. Markets go up and down. As we have seen, right? We see that the stock market going up and down. We see the crypto market going up and down in a very volatile way.

[00:23:10] Portia Wood: We’ve seen real estate go up exponentially. So if you are not in the real estate game, but you are only in the, stock market game, you were losing. Right because real estate, it’s what, 24% over the last year, even more recently, and there’s low inventory, which is driving up prices, which is great for people who want to refinance and take advantage of low interest rates or what was a low interest rate environment.

[00:23:33] Portia Wood: If you weren’t in that market, then you’ve missed out on a substantial wealth building opportunity. And if you only had a, you know, real estate portfolio loan on your stock portfolio, then you’re hurting right now. And if you’re in retirement years and all you had was that stock portfolio. And you’ve got to take out in a downmarket.

[00:23:53] Portia Wood: You’re hurting right now. So having multiple buckets where you are invested is incredibly important. So, you know, there’s the life insurance bucket. There may even be annuities depending on whether or not that’s right for your financial situation. Everybody should talk to a financial manager or a wealth manager just to get an assessment, right? It’s typically free to sit down and get an assessment with them. But you know, you may want to be in stocks and you want to be in bonds. You may want to be in equities. You know, you may want to be a little bit in real estate. You may want to be in life insurance and X, Y, and Z, because you need to have different financial buckets.

[00:24:29] Portia Wood: And if you haven’t gotten started yet, right, if you’re just getting started and you’re in your fifties or sixties, you can not invest your way into retirement. You can not get the growth on your funds. And so you’re going to have to look at what investments can I make to generate the amount of money that I need in retirement.

[00:24:43] Portia Wood: And that may be real estate. That may be other things, right? So when Warren Buffet, at least to me says kind of diversification is sort of the protection against ignorance. I think that’s very true. If you only put all of your eggs in one basket, then you are subject to whatever happens in that basket.

[00:24:59] Portia Wood: And if it gets lit on fire or it breaks, or, you know, something spills on it, then you’ve lost your entire economic stability and that’s, nobody can live that way, Right? It’s like the same thing. If you’re a whole income it is based on your W2 and your one job. If you lose that job, like many people saw in 2020, how do you pay your bills?

[00:25:19] Portia Wood: You’ve got to diversify to make sure that you are not beholden to really anyone. And that gives you your leverage and your time.

[00:25:28] Nicole Pendergrass: Yeah, no, I have already, that’s such a great point. Okay. Next question. You pay monopoly before, I’m assuming?.

[00:25:35] Portia Wood: I have.

[00:25:36] Nicole Pendergrass: Okay. So I believe your strategy. Are you going for Boardwalk or Baltic and why?

[00:25:44] Portia Wood: Baltic all day.

[00:25:45] Nicole Pendergrass: Oh, okay. Why?

[00:25:46] Nicole Pendergrass: A hundred percent. It’s affordable. It’s landed on more often than boardwalk, right? So you consistently are going to get revenue and I don’t need the luxury penthouse. I need solid, consistent, stable income that doesn’t cost me a ton of money to get into, because that means I now have money to buy the next one and the next one, or to develop hotels or to do this.

[00:26:06] Nicole Pendergrass: But if you buy a super expensive property and you don’t have any money to develop it, you’re missing out on all the income and Baltic and the investments you put on Baltic pay for Boardwalk. Assets should pay for your other assets and your liabilities should not come out of your regular pocket. So I’m buying Baltic all day long and the railroad, I’m buying the railroads

[00:26:31] Nicole Pendergrass: Okay, nice. I love it. Okay. I think that’s a wrap. Oh, my goodness. This was insane. I’m so grateful. I definitely am going to stay in touch with you even more. I’m going to be in your Clubhouse room. We’re going to devour everything that’s on your website. Everybody listening should devour everything on our website too.

[00:26:51] Nicole Pendergrass: And then we will have all those links, like I said, in the show notes. But again, Portia, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate you taking out your time and your backyard is fantastic. I aspire to that backyard.

[00:27:05] Portia Wood: It’s a definite work in progress, but I’m excited that spring is starting to spring.

[00:27:13] Portia Wood: Thank you for having me and for reaching out and for creating this platform. Because, you know, as we’ve talked about the numbers, it is so important that we can get this information out and it is you, right? It’s people like you creating these spaces for really thoughtful and intelligent conversation that’s really going to change the tide because people don’t know what they don’t know and you’re providing that. So thank you so much for including me.

[00:27:36] Nicole Pendergrass: Thank you. Okay. All right, everyone this wraps up this episode. I know you’re going to have to rewind it and take a listen again. I know I’m going to do it and listen to it again and take even more notes and really dig in.

[00:27:49] Nicole Pendergrass: And I’ll probably start annoying Portia. She’s going to be like blocking me. So in any case, peace out and have a good day!