Jules: There is nothing that's going to stop us from gathering and celebrating our love, gay, love our friends. Uh, now more than ever it feels important to do that.
Jamie: Meet Jules. She was recently engaged to her girlfriend Shea, and they're also beginning to merge their lives and their finances.
Shay: I think we're pretty similar in our desires and goals and, how to use money and how to think about money and yeah. I think our philosophies are super similar.
Jules: I would say with love that Shay is a bit more type A than I am. Um, her Excel sheets would amaze you, but we really do come at it with intention. So how do we approach finances knowing that we might not have the same income. Our savings are different. Um, our experience with credit cards are different. So how do we take a look at what we both have and see where we are proficient, where the gaps are, and. It's all coming to a head, right?
Jamie: What's all coming to a head as both Shay and Jules are about to turn 30, are there many goals and dreams?
Jules: So we are thinking about a wedding. Um, but at this stage of life we are also considering what, um, it would be to buy a home. And then because we are a queer couple, two women, I think that children is a big topic for us. Considering our ages, we are aware that if we were to harvest eggs, that having the harvesting done earlier on in our life might give us a better chance of the healthy babies that we want for later in life.
Jamie: This episode is about helping Shay and Jules plan for all these big dreams and expenses, but it's also about building a relationship with a financial advisor together. You see, currently they each have their own advisor. Jules had been working with an advisor she'd inherited from her parents until she heard about Carolina.
Jules: She had posted something so wonderful around Pride Month and it made me realize that working with a financial advisor who shares the same values, has a similar identity as me, um, understands kind of the different hoops I might have to jump through because I am a queer woman. It just all aligned so perfectly. And when we met, it was a pretty instant connection because we had those similarities
Jamie: and so Jules Hired Carolina to be her financial advisor and she hopes Shay will also switch fas and start working with Carolina too.
Shay: Similar to Jules, I was kind of grandfathered in to my parents financial advisor. And while it was it is extremely convenient. And I didn't really have to think twice about it. Hearing how Jules met Carolina and the connection that they have there's you kind of don't realize what you don't have until you see it and someone else. So I'm really looking forward to meeting Carolina and speaking with her.
Jamie: And that's where we'll start today. I'm Jamie Roô and welcome to What Should I Do With My Money? an original podcast from Morgan Stanley. We match real people asking real questions about their money with experienced financial advisors. Here at Morgan Stanley, we work with a range of clients. Some are experienced investors and others are new to working with a financial advisor. On this show, you get a front row seat to hear what these initial conversations are like and get answers to some of the questions you might have yourself.
In order to start thinking about if and how Jules and Shay can afford to realize their dreams, here's a snapshot of their finances. They each have about 50,000 in taxable brokerage accounts, and when it comes to retirement, one has about 40,000 saved while the other has about 250,000. Plus, they have a shared emergency fund of around $40,000. It's not a bad nest egg for two people under 30, but it's probably not enough for a wedding IVF and buying a new home in New York. So what's the plan? To help them answer those questions we have Carolina, a financial advisor at Morgan Stanley, who's been working with Jewels for about six months. Bringing your whole self, your whole identity to work is fundamental for Carolina.
Carolina: Being a first generation Colombian American, something that's not culturally the norm for the Latino community is being comfortable with talking about money. And I'm still the first and only person in my entire extended family that works in this industry. And so for me, it was something that just happened over time of being able to represent clients and that don't typically represent what this industry looks like.
Jamie: Carolina's parents, unlike many in her community, did talk openly about money at home.
Carolina: So I remember growing up and you know, something as simple as, oh, well, you know, somebody in my school, their parents bought them a car and my parents didn't buy me a car. I will never forget a day where my parents kind of called me over and they just took me through all the finances and they're like, well, this is how much money we make. This is how much money we spend. This is how much money we have saved in our emergency savings. If we wanted to buy you a car, we would, we can, we have the power to do so, but it's important to have money for in Spanish you say, uh, vacas flacas.
Jamie: Vacas flacas means lean cows, so times of extreme scarcity. And there's another term that Carolina uses that's full of meaning: it's chosen family.
Carolina: When it comes to lgbtq plus families, we have this concept of a chosen family because maybe. Your families weren't as accepting of your identity, or some people lose family members because of that or lose touch. And so when it comes to just something as simple as basic estate planning, if you don't leave instructions behind, what it will essentially happen is like the auto default is just whoever they think is next in kin, but they might not have the context that the people who would be your beneficiary are actually the people who no longer. See you as a part of their family because of how you identify.
Jamie: Well, Carolina, I know that Shay and Jules are looking forward to talking with you, so. I'll let you get started.
Carolina: Thanks so much, Jamie. . And hi Shay, it's so nice to meet you.
Shay: It is so nice to meet you as well. I've heard all, um, amazing things about you.
Carolina: Yeah, I've heard so many things about you as well. And um, Jules also congratulations on the recent engagement.
Jules: Thank you.
Carolina: How are you all feeling?
Jules: Great. It’s exciting.
Shay: Amazing. Yeah.
Carolina: Oh, well, I'm so excited that you all are finally in motion with this. I know that when Jules and I first started working together, just being a part of the conversations about buying engagement rings and now seeing that that's all, uh, coming together and you're moving on this next stage of your journey together is really exciting.
Jules: You helped Carolina. I was certainly lost when I came to you. Um, two women, two rings, and I had a lot of questions. So you helped me tremendously and I'm very excited that now you and Shay can connect and we can all talk about what's coming next.
Carolina: um, so, you know, Shea, I'm sure Jules told, told you that when we first started our conversations together, we spent a lot of time just really trying to understand, you know, what your financial picture looks like and really trying to understand what it is that we're actually working towards. Um, so I've heard a lot from Jules directly but since this is the first time that we're actually meeting, I just wanted to hear from you like, what's going on, like what, um, what's top of mind for you right now from a financial perspective?
Shay: I think overall, I feel in a pretty good place with the basics. But as you age and we're kind of like embarking on this journey of, of getting married and kind of combining finances. I think just the things that you're setting goals for, get bigger and feel scarier and with goals like planning a wedding, we've never done that before. Buying a house. We've never done that before. And family planning, we've never done that before. So, it feels a little daunting and foreign. And, we just want to be in a place where we feel really financially stable
Carolina: Um, and I'd, I'd love to jump into that a little bit more with the both of you.
Jules: Um, so we know that the wedding is the most immediate and we're thinking what does budget look like? But it's a very quick next question of are we really going to spend that much of a wedding when we also have to consider what family planning looks like. And if that's going to be perhaps a year after we get married, we want the reserves there. Um, so the idea of depleting all of our savings and our funds, for our wedding when we have other things on our mind is it's kind of a difficult barrier for us to cross. And at the same time, we are renters. We do have a good situation, but we would like to stay flexible if possible. And perhaps if the right home opens up, we would like the idea of acting on it. If we felt comfortable doing that, which of course goes back to the reserves and the funds, right? So how do we balance all three?
Carolina: Okay. So, all right, so let, let's jump into it. Whenever it comes to financial planning or really just thinking about building out your wealth strategy, you wanna think about your wealth fitting into three different buckets.
So you have your short term bucket. Your midterm bucket and your long-term bucket. So for example, when we're thinking about the short-term bucket, these are the goals that are happening within the next five years. So the next one to five years. So with that, your emergency savings and making sure that we're covered there. Wedding planning is on that list as well. Family planning is on that list as well. And then potentially buying a home. Does that sound about right? That's all goals that are in the next five years.
Jules: Yes. And how daunting they're so big.
Carolina: Yeah. Yeah. Other things for you to be thinking about in that midterm bucket is typically when we talk about family planning, we also think about education planning, which I know is wild to think about because you don't have human life yet. But that is something that we would be looking at in the future. Then that long-term bucket can be, um, your retirement savings. So really, we wanna make sure that we have something moving in every single one of these buckets. All right. So let's jump into that short term bucket.
Shay: In preparation for this conversation, I pulled up the costs for family planning and like just having like, does it feel great or fair that, you know, in order for us to have two kids, like it's looking like a hundred thousand dollars, while, for a heterosexual couple, it could be zero, no, but just having that figure is helpful, how we should be thinking about this and, and what the value is and, how much we truly want and, care for it and, you know, then we can make it happen.
Jules: You know, the cost of having two children for us could be a hundred thousand dollars, and then a cost for a wedding in Brooklyn for five hours would also be a hundred thousand dollars. And there's no way I would much rather prioritize our children or future children than a five hour event. So yeah
Shay: I think our, our dream or like our, our goal would be able to split it in thirds, that Jules and I would be able to contribute a third, um, that my parents would be able to contribute another third and, and Jules's family would be able to contribute the, the last third there. I think that's our, our goal.
Carolina: If you think like you're gonna be spending 75,000, then that means 25,000 coming from the two of you. 25. 25. Okay.
Shay: correct.
Carolina: Okay. All right, cool. So let's talk about this. How much money does it take for Jules and Shay to live every single day and live your life in Brooklyn and take care of your beautiful dog, like making sure that we have those expenses covered then from there, um, we have to solve for 25K. What have you all done to actually start saving towards that number? Are you thinking about pulling from your emergency savings investment accounts? Like how are you thinking about getting that 25,000?
Shay: So the goal is to not touch our emergency. A year doesn't sound that far away, but it, it is a good amount of time to be putting a little bit from every paycheck. So, and I think we both started doing that around the time of, uh, setting aside money for engagement rings and essentially just transitioning that engagement ring fund into a wedding fund. So I think we're about like 30% of the way there, now that we have a date in mind, need to look at that like amount per month and like seeing if we need to ramp up savings for that goal as it gets closer to the event itself.
Carolina: Yeah. Okay. So essentially like if we were, if you were, to be starting from zero and you're planning a year out, you you need 25,000. It's roughly about $2,000 a month that you would need to be saving for this goal. Another little hack something that I saw that one of my clients was doing, you know how a lot of, like millennial weddings, they have those wedding websites where you essentially can just do the honeymoon fund or the house buying fund or whatever. Those come into your bank account. The second that people actually, put in the payment and process it. Yeah, I know, I know. So like that, I don't know if you all are thinking about doing something like that.
Jules: Um, that was some Tea Carolina. Fabulous. I will admit that when we do think about our wedding website and gifts, we really do envision it being cash, but we actually wanted to be for, uh, IVF. So we were thinking, help us create a family fund.
Carolina: Okay. So family planning. Let's talk about this. So just walk me through what your game plan is and what you're thinking about and how you envision starting your family.
Jules: So, uh, I work at a financial firm and I know that we have a really wonderful benefit that helps cover, I believe, up to $70,000 worth of IVF treatments, which is great. Ideally, we would do reciprocal IVF, so we would harvest sooner than later, and when we're ready we would swap. So I would carry Shea's egg. Shay would carry my egg. We would not get pregnant at the same time. And that's probably right at five years, if not more. But we do realize the significance of harvesting sooner and then having the storage, which is a fee that we also would need to consider as well, for whatever the duration would be.
Carolina: And have you started the process of looking into how much this is gonna cost?
Shay: Yeah, we've looked at some rough numbers. And so per our research, it's looking like it's about $30,000 a person for egg harvesting and freezing. And then for IVF, something between 15 to $20,000 per round, but it actually takes 2.7 rounds on average for each pregnancy. So just doing that math, it's basically about $50,000 per pregnancy. And, again, like our goal is we would love to have two kids.
Carolina: , I'm so glad that you brought this up because it's not a fun conversation to have with clients, is knowing that it could take multiple rounds for. For it to happen. So something that I do want you all to think about, it's not, nobody wants to think about the bad things that can happen, but it is important as your advisor to just kind of talk you through this. You know, if you go through this process and you're going through multiple rounds, how many rounds are you willing to go through before you to look at other options, whether it becomes like adoption or surrogacy. But when it comes to game plan here, you're, you're spot on on what you're projecting. From a numbers perspective, what we wanna do is be a student of our employer benefits to make sure that we're maximizing every single dollar that we can there.
Jules: Quick question for you, and thank you for that. I actually had not thought of how many rounds are we willing to do? So I appreciate that. Question about the benefit though from work. Do we have to be married? Um, and we will be married probably by the time we start this, but the benefit I'm assuming would only cover me until Shay and I get married and then cover both of us?
Carolina: That’s a really good question. Yeah. So I mean, the easier answer is yeah, if you're married, you're likely gonna be covered. Another thing that you could look into is domestic partnership. So let's say if you wanted to establish, uh, and we're in the state of New York, so we do have some of those benefits there. So I think it's important that we look at the fine print together but if Shay isn't covered because you aren't married, you could look at something like just having the domestic partnership as a, as a possibility.
Another thing, um, that's worth thinking about is looking at your HSAs, your health savings accounts. Um, that is something where fertility benefits, as long as they're considered qualified medical expenses, you could use something from there. But I really think that from, um, Jules's employer benefits alone, that's gonna give you a big leg up on the majority of the expenses that that will come from family planning.
Jules: All right. Um. Carolina, thank you. But you know, that third pillar that we think about is our home. So right now we're renters. It's a one bedroom, it's a box. Uh, we live in Brooklyn. We love where we live, but the rent is high.
And we also are aware of the current mortgage rate environment. And there aren't too many homes that we find for sale. But when we do eventually conceive, um, our two twinkles, we would need a bigger home to house them in. And so another big question that Shay and I have is, well, when do we know when the right time is to rent versus buy?
Carolina: Yeah. When it comes to the rent versus buy debate, I always like to ask clients like, why do you wanna own a home? Where is that the root of why you want to pursue this financial goal?
Shay: I was gonna say, I think we have a really, like a shared value for home and that physical place that we call home and wanting to build and create that together and really invest and love the place that we live.
Jules: I agree, especially a space that feels like ours. Um, if we're renting, we're not gonna be, um, worried about something breaking down and paying for that cost. But if we continue renters, is there ever a scenario where the owner turns around on us and says, Hey guys, you've been great, but I'm selling this unit. Sorry.
Carolina: All right. So, in Brooklyn, really you're gonna have like two different options. You're either buying an apartment or a town home, like that's the Brooklyn market for you, and so what I typically try to do with clients is, you know, when you're looking in New York City, you're at least looking at a million dollar purchase price.
Typically you wanna be thinking about doing a 20% down payment. Something that I like to advise clients is kind of just be a little bit more conservative there. You're better off having more liquidity to be able to move that cash faster.
So let's assume that we're planning really for 25%. That's gonna help us think about closing costs and other like attorney fees, all these other fun things that come with the realities of buying a home. So really you're looking at $250,000 is what we have to solve for.
So really like what we wanna make sure that we're doing is that we're saving and starting to build our wealth to get there. Now it's a very delicate dance. Sometimes people will be like, oh, like should I invest my down payment? Well, it depends on what your time horizon is.
So like if you're looking to buy something in the next one to two years, then no, you shouldn't be investing because the reality is the market can move 30% on the downside, or 30% on the upside. So like when it comes to investing your down payment, all you're doing is gambling your own purchasing power.
So with this, I would say like really it would be important for us to just kind of sit down and, and talk about how you're thinking about financing the down payment. Is your family looking to support for your down payment as well? Is that something that you all have talked about with your family members?
Shay: Yes. And the number fluctuates, but based on how much the, the wedding costs.
Carolina: If the grandchildren come, come next, they might be more motivated.
Shay: That would definitely convince, uh, Jules's father.
Jules: Oh.
Carolina: Yeah. Yeah. So, so like, look, like here's the reality too. Like one of the benefits of working with a wealth advisor is we have so many different solutions that we could look at, right?
So through Morgan Stanley, we have the ability to do something called, um, a liquidity access line, all it is, is a security based lending. So let's say if you continue to accumulate your brokerage assets and your investments are growing over time, something that's really cool and exciting that we can do is we can actually pledge your taxable investments and be able to create a line of credit, which will just give you more flexibility and options.
So there is a possibility with some of the solutions that we have that your parents can support you on the down payment itself and/or giving you access to their mortgage pricing. So that might be something that we look into a little bit more together.
Jules: Perfect.
Shay: Mm-hmm.
Carolina: All right, so we covered a lot of information today , so I think in terms of next steps, what would be really important for us to do is just really come up with an action plan on how we're gonna fund the wedding.
I gave you the little hot idea of, uh, using a wedding website to help you kind of get to that wedding planning goal a little bit faster. Um, the second thing, when it comes to family planning, let's make sure that we're being a student of our employer benefits as well as our insurance coverage.
And then when it comes to buying a home, you know, the way that this becomes more accurate is really looking at the market, looking at the inventory, getting a sense of what you think your range is, and then going through the pre-approval process with one of our private bankers here to just get a sense of what you can actually afford.
And then from there we're gonna figure out what we need to do in order to get to your down payment to be able to buy your first home.
So in terms of our next steps together, what we'll do is we're gonna run a first version of your financial plan to account for all of these different goals that we're solving for. How does that sound?
Shay: Awesome. Thank you so much Carolina. That was an incredible summary of all of the next steps and to dos and we're so excited to get started on those.
Jules: Thank you, Carolina. I'm so glad you and Shay got to connect. My heart feels so full. I feel like my worlds are coming together.
Carolina: No, I'm I, I am so fired up for the both of you. I'm really excited to help you on this next chapter of your lives together and, you know, definitely fun, uh, meeting you Shay over a podcast for the first time. I think that's a one for the books to remember.
Shay: A first. Yeah.
Jamie: A first, but not the last, I'm sure. Thank you, Carolina, for all the takeaways and super focused advice. Now, I wanna ask Shea, this was the first time you met Carolina. You've had experience talking with your family's advisor. what was different about this for you?
Shay: The experience was great. It was great to have like a really clear defined, starting point and like get to know each other and really build that relationship.
Again, just being able to connect on a deeper level than just financials, you know, just not only trust her as an expert in the space, but trust her really as a person. Someone that has similar experiences as us.
Jamie: You both came in with a very clear idea of what your short-term financial goals were paying for your wedding, starting a family, thinking about buying your first home, but you didn't have as clear ideas about how that was all gonna come together. How do you feel about that now after your conversation with Carolina?
Jules: We have a long way to go. It feels less daunting knowing that she was able to break out. While there are benefits and there are opportunities other than just emptying the current savings that we have, which made me feel better.
Shay: Yeah, I think she was able to break it down and make it feel really accessible to us.
Jamie: What are your immediate next steps?
Shay: Going and becoming a student of my benefits. Yeah, I'm, I'm definitely gonna be sending a nice email to my HR team. I think we have a really great goal in mind with the the wedding. And so I think we need to take a look at, you know, if we're one year away. Roughly about a thousand dollars a month and, and how we're achieving that together.
Jamie: Makes sense. Well, best of luck to the both of you. There's such exciting things to look forward to and so many great milestones ahead. I wish you both all the best.
Shay: Thank you so much, Jamie.
Jules: Thank you so much.
Jamie: If you'd like a deeper dive on what was discussed today, including our financial checklist for newly engaged LGBTQ+ couples, come see us at morganstanley dot com slash my money. I'm Jamie Roô. Talk to you soon.
DISCLAIMER: This material has been prepared for general reference and educational purposes only. It does not provide individually tailored investment advice. It has been prepared without regard to the individual financial circumstances and objectives of persons who receive it. Please see our show notes for a full disclaimer on the information provided.
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