#141 – Financial and Business Planning When You Don’t Have Children with Childfree Wealth Specialist® Bri Conn

Shannon Mattern (00:01.838)

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Profitable Web Designer podcast. And today I am excited to introduce you to my guest, Bri Conn. She is the Chief Experience Officer of Child Free Wealth, which is a life and financial planning firm dedicated to helping child free and permanently childless people. And when she reached out to me to be on the podcast, I was like, this is fascinating. I didn't even know this was a thing.

I don't have kids. I'm excited to talk to you about like how financial planning is different and all of the things. So Bri, welcome to the show.

Bri Conn (00:42.45)

Thank you so much for having me today. I'm very excited to be here and talk about this.

Shannon Mattern (00:46.274)

Yeah, so tell me a little bit about your backstory and like how you find your way, how you found your way to becoming the chief experience officer at Child Free Wealth.

Bri Conn (00:58.93)

Yeah, I always tell people it was kind of an accident. I was not planning on working with child free people or really in this space. So I have a background in marketing, worked in marketing for about five years and I just hit the point. had done, you know, I was, did the company thing, worked with them, went and decided I'll do it on my own. And I just hit a lot of burnout and decided this was not for me anymore. And I wanted to go into finance. I've always loved finance.

and really kind of gravitated towards it. And I was the friend who everybody would go to and say, Hey, I need like, I need help. What should I do with my money? And so that's what I would do. And I decided finally that, you know what, let's make a career out of this. And I met Dr. J who founded Child Free Wealth. It was a few years ago now. And we went in a Facebook group for people who didn't have kids. And there were two posts one night, one said, what do do now? And the other one said, what do you want to do? And I commented on both of them.

and he said, I'm a certified financial planner, which is what I said I wanted to do. And if you have questions, let me know. So we chatted. It was supposed to be 30 minutes. It was two hours. Did another time. And I just said, can I have a job? And he goes, let me think about that. And so after that, he called me back. I don't remember if it was the next day or a couple of days later, but he said, I think we can make this work. And now we've been at it together for a couple of years now and it's going great.

we're working together well. We've got a team people now and it's been really, really fun. So I'm always, I always tell people, know, it wasn't where I thought I would be or what I thought I would be doing or specializing in. I had an idea in finance of who I wanted to work with and I'm not working with that, that sort of category or group of people at all. And that's okay. And I love what I do every single day.

Shannon Mattern (02:53.272)

So good. So I had no idea that like child free financial planning was a thing. I didn't even realize that like there was a name for people like me. Like I've never really thought of myself as a demographic. I've never really thought too much of like, you know, someone calling me child free by choice or anything like that because

Yeah, I don't know. Like it's just, it's just such a natural part of, like I always talk about on this podcast, like I don't have kids. So therefore, you know, I made this decision and maybe someone who had kids would make a different decision. you know, so I, and, you know, I use examples of like our web design, web designer Academy students who do have children and how maybe they navigate those,

their lifestyle decisions differently, but ultimately like at the core of what we do here is that whether or not you have children, don't have children, caring for elderly parents, whatever your life looks like, our whole like stance is that you get to design life to look the way you want it to look like based on like what you're

situation is. And so with that perspective, there are different differences in like, I just think this makes me think of my niece, who's always like, Aunt Shannon, you're rich. And I'm like, actually, I'm not, I just don't have kids. So I said, your mom and dad like make more money than me and your uncle.

It's just that like, they have you and your brother to take care of. So it just looks like we're rich, but actually, like you guys are, you know, you guys are doing just fine. And it cracks me up. But that's kind of the conversation that we're having here is like, there's just, it's different. It's just different. So can you tell me a little bit more about like, this whole concept of like, financial planning for child free wealth?

Bri Conn (05:09.63)

Yeah, absolutely. And it's funny that you bring up your niece like that because I had a child for aunt and you know, when I was younger, she is the reason she bought us a Wii. She would come visit us. She lived far away and she goes, I just love playing guitar here. So I'm going to buy you a Wii and I still have the Wii to this day. But it yeah, I was like, oh my gosh, she's rich. And then I realized, oh, she just doesn't have kids to spend her money on. So she can make different choices.

And it's that difference of the way we see things and the way we assume things because you're right and you know, your If your sister or your brother your niece's parents could could make more money and that's okay life just looks different because when you're child free you have a lot more options. You're not making You know, you're planning for yourself. If you're in a couple you're planning for the two of you

and you're not planning for a couple kids. So whether or not you decide to stay working for a while longer or to cut back on work or, you know, take sabbaticals, I think one of the biggest things that we have for our clients is because there so many options available to them, it can be really overwhelming to even make the next step because you don't know if that's the right step or not. And we'll often say, it's okay if it's not the right step, just take it and try it.

You know, don't know if it's going to be something you enjoy or not enjoy until you try it. And I think that's for me anyway, I realized that I liked marketing. I liked it enough and I went off on my own. Then I just realized I was tired of the field entirely. And I took the next step into finance and we have clients who do the same thing, you know, try it on your own or try it with another company and decide, actually, this is not the field you even want to be in anymore. And you make a complete change and you can do that and have that flexibility.

Well, it requires some planning. You're able to do that without a lot of sense of guilt when it comes to being the sole provider for other people. And that's something I'll have a conversation with. And just I love going out to dinner with people and having different conversations all the time. And one of those things I was talking to a parent, said, you know, I really don't like what I do, but I feel like I can't change because I'm responsible for my children.

Bri Conn (07:34.332)

And that's another conversation that I'm having with my clients because they're going, I'm not responsible for anybody else. I can just do whatever I want. But then they have, they have guilt as if they, they almost tend to have this feeling of, they should, they shouldn't be doing that. They shouldn't have all this flexibility and freedom because they kind of get in that comparison trap, which isn't, isn't a good trap for anybody to be in. know, we say,

When you're child free and you made that decision, you're no longer following the standard life plan. The standard life plan is you go to school, you get married, buy a house, you have kids, you grow your wealth, you retire, and then you pass on wealth to the next generation. That's not what a lot of our clients want. Now, one of the first questions we ask is, do you care about how much money you pass on when you die? And many of them say no. They say, who am going to leave it to? No, I don't need to do that.

and sometimes they'll leave it to whatever's left over, to nieces or nephews or charities, but oftentimes they're not working for that so they can make different choices sooner and with more flexibility, a little bit more freedom, and hopefully when we work with them, a bit less guilt too.

Shannon Mattern (08:50.999)

Yeah, like as you were saying that I was just thinking like, you know, I was following the traditional life plan as well, just without the like have kids, like send them to college, you know, etc. part and a lot of our, a lot of the freelance web designers that we work with that have families, they also don't want that traditional life plan. They're like, I don't want to work for someone else. I want it to look different.

Bri Conn (09:13.256)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (09:18.826)

And there are absolutely different like considerations for someone in terms of like how much risk you're willing to take or feel comfortable taking in terms of like, you know, maybe you're starting your web design business as a side hustle on the side of your day job. What that looks for you, like for you to leave and when and how comfortable you are, just like what you said when

when it's you and your partner and you're, and that's it. And you're the, or just you and you're the only two people impacted by that decision. It becomes a different conversation than when, you know, you're, you're wanting to, you have all of these other variables in place. And so I think that we're all chasing like freedom, flexibility and autonomy and

you know, whether, whether we have kids or not, lot of the people that like that's, that's at the core of what we really want. And there's just different ways of getting there, depending on, depending on what your life looks like. So I'm super curious. Cause like, yeah, that question about like, well, do you care about leaving money to anyone? Like my husband and I joke about like,

you know, whatever job we have at the time is going to be whatever. But of course, then we're like, we'll leave it to our nieces and nephews. And it's like, they won't care anyway. you know, their parents are going to take care of them. They'll be fine. So like, what are some of those like big differences that you see like in financial planning for people like ourselves who are 45 years old, no kids, lots of life ahead of us, you know,

What are some of those things we get to think about differently than maybe the conversations out there that are being had about finances that we don't really fit into?

Bri Conn (11:23.004)

Yeah, so in that case, you know, our first question, when we do ask that and they say, no, we don't care about much money is left behind. We say, all right, let's work on a plan for you to spend down your wealth over time. So that way you can utilize most of your money. And we take a very die with zero approach and really focus on winding down that wealth, utilizing your time, money and freedom at different points in your life, because you have different, different amounts of each one of those, depending on

certain time in your life. So one thing I want to ask you is have you ever worked with a financial planner before? Okay, so many times when you go talk to a financial planner and they're working and they're doing their numbers, they're looking and seeing we have a call it to Monte Carlo simulation and what that is it's tons and tons of different simulations and this probability of success is what they spit out the end.

Shannon Mattern (11:59.714)

I haven't, no.

Bri Conn (12:21.406)

100 % probability means that, okay, you're not going to be running out of money anytime soon. And you're definitely gonna have some leftover. When we're working out with our clients, we'll show them, hey, this is a path you're on. This is where everything looks. And if you keep working at this pace, you're going to be just making a ton of money. And then you're going to pass this much on when you die. And they go, no, that's not what I want. It's not what I want at all. And so

Then we'll work through, let's bring that probability of success down. And we do this with ongoing planning. And we really, really stress that if you are doing Daiwa Zero and you want to utilize your money over time, you need to go through and go through ongoing planning because it constantly needs to be monitored. Sometimes you can spend more, sometimes you might need to spend a little bit less. It just depends on the market conditions. But with that, we'll often say, okay, so you've hit the number that you would need to live out the rest of your life and not work again.

Why are you continuing to work? Is it because you enjoy it? Is it because you feel like you need to hit some magic number? So many times the clients will have some sort of magic number that they need to hit before they can retire. And I'll ask them, how'd they come up with that? And they'll have some rule of thumb that they followed to get that number. And it's like, that's great, but we haven't considered, okay, do you have a plan for long-term care? Because that's not always included in magic numbers. And if you have a plan for it, great.

If you don't have a plan for it, we need to work on that. All right. Are you also trying to preserve that wealth? Well, you told me at the beginning that you're not. So we don't really need to look towards that number. We need to look towards what numbers fit you. And he was a person. So with your business, do you mind if I just kind of like run you through as I would a client? Okay.

Shannon Mattern (14:06.882)

Yeah, go for it. I'm an open book, so you can ask me any and all questions. I will tell you all the things. Yeah, nothing off limits.

Bri Conn (14:13.15)

Okay. So what I would ask you is, hey, you know, imagine I just since I have no idea what your finances are. But imagine you were set and could retire today. And why are you continuing to work?

Shannon Mattern (14:29.794)

I don't see a day that I am not doing some version of this, which is empowering women in some capacity to design whatever life they want to live, whether it's like what we're talking about here or like for, you know, for their greater family. Like I have a strong desire to help them have freedom, autonomy and flexibility into like

create whatever they want. Right now I happen to be like talking to women web designers, cause that's me, but I can see I'm 45. I can see at 75 still doing this, still having this conversation in whatever format it might be, but from anywhere in the world too, cause I have that flexibility right now with what I do. So I just can't see a day where I won't be excited to talk about it anymore.

Bri Conn (15:28.54)

Yeah, absolutely. And that's beautiful. have that. That is such a wholehearted answer with so many different things. And when we have an answer like that, it's OK, great. Keep doing what you enjoy doing. Then are you making enough money and you have extra? Can we maybe spend more on the things that you enjoy, whether it's doing things, whether it's giving to charity, whether it's treating your nieces and nephews to different experiences, all of those? How can we utilize that?

to allow you to spend more time on the things that you enjoy. do you have any hobbies outside of web design and the podcasts that you enjoy?

Shannon Mattern (16:06.07)

Nothing that really like nothing notable, nothing that would be an expensive hobby. I don't know if that's what you're getting at, but yeah, I mean, love hanging out with my friends and family. I like spending time with them. We do like to travel. We like to go just, yeah, be together and have new experiences. But I'm not like a, I don't have any like.

Bri Conn (16:15.07)

Anything.

Shannon Mattern (16:35.464)

I like to go fly fishing. I just made that up. But they're like, no, I don't have anything like that. That's, yeah, I haven't either. But yeah.

Bri Conn (16:37.63)

Yeah. Yeah, no, that's a flat station can get expensive. hear I've never done it. But yeah. Yeah. So, you know, with that we say, okay, we you mentioned like to travel, you can do a lot of your stuff remotely. Is there a possibility in which you can travel a few months out of the year, you still work, but you go rent Airbnbs in different locations and try different places out and just

see what's there and explore a little bit of the world.

Shannon Mattern (17:10.434)

Yeah, mean, that's definitely something that is on my, I wouldn't call it my bucket list, but I guess that's what people call it. Like that's definitely on my vision board, maybe, call it that. Yeah, so, and I love where I live too. Like if I didn't, I'd be fine. And if I did, I'd be fine. Like I'm kind of.

Bri Conn (17:21.022)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (17:34.872)

Breezy like that, I guess. Yes.

Bri Conn (17:36.924)

Yeah, I like that descriptor, breezy. Yeah, so like trying different places out and just seeing and you know, I do need to ask though, the winters, how do you handle the winters? Because we live close together and I cannot handle the winters.

Shannon Mattern (17:44.715)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (17:54.366)

So I have unpopular winter opinions, but I love winter. Like I am, you know, I'm not trying to get out of Ohio for the winter. I love to bundle up. I love to take my dog for snowy hikes. yeah, have, my travel dreams are Iceland, Alaska, like places like that. I'm not like, take me to the beach. can go to the beach anytime. I want to go on like adventurous.

Bri Conn (17:57.534)

Okay.

Bri Conn (18:09.949)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (18:23.896)

type of things, yeah.

Bri Conn (18:24.134)

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I like snow winter. These Ohio winters, man, I did not realize. They're just so gray. And I think that's why I don't like about them.

Shannon Mattern (18:27.79)

you

Shannon Mattern (18:35.694)

Yeah, so right now this gray hazy misty with like yellow grass, this is not doing it for me. But like, winter winter. Yeah, bring it on.

Bri Conn (18:42.76)

Yeah.

Bri Conn (18:46.706)

Yep, exactly. it's just, it's so, so, so weird to me, but I was like, I need to know. Do you, are you enjoying this? Cause I am not enjoying this right now. And so, yeah.

Shannon Mattern (18:56.75)

Like I said, I have unpopular opinions. Nobody likes my answer to that question. Yes.

Bri Conn (19:02.718)

I can get along with the snow and the snowy hikes. Love doing those. It's just, I need the gray to go away.

Shannon Mattern (19:11.252)

Yeah, well, so I feel like I'm in a unique situation, which is awesome that like, I really love my life now. Like, I feel like there's, there's not things that I feel like I'm putting off, like, someday when I have this magic number, then I will, I will do these things. And I think I'm in a unique position. I don't think that that's like most people.

Bri Conn (19:18.173)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (19:39.822)

most people, and I think that's a lot of why people want to, the people listening to this podcast want to run their own business because they want to be their own boss. They want to have this lifestyle now. They don't want to wait until they're 65 to start living. And like, that was me too. That's why I started this 10 years ago and was like, yeah, I'm done with this like quote unquote, like success ladder.

that we tell people to have here in the US.

Bri Conn (20:13.704)

Yeah, absolutely. And that's a lot of what we what we work on with clients is how can we get off of that and pursue pursue what they want to pursue because we have so many clients who are very entrepreneurial minded, or they, you know, want to write a book. I feel like that we have so many people who write books we work with. And many times, they feel like, I can't do that. I can't do these things. Yes, you absolutely can. We need to do some planning on them.

and really build that out to your life. But there's no reason you can't go ahead and give it a try and at least see what it turns out to be. You know, just like I said that I asked for this job and now I'm here. I think having that attitude of just try it and let's see what that looks like is super important. You know, there are big considerations, of course, we want to make sure that everybody has a solid financial foundation when we're doing this. So

getting that paid off and that way you just have a bit more cash flow. Any money that's coming in is going to you and the things you want. Making sure you have a solid emergency fund. Usually when we say we see somebody going the self-employed route, we say let's aim for six months of expenses and having that set aside. So having those really strong solid foundations there so you can go ahead and make a leap and try different things. know, you know, when you start businesses, you're not necessarily profitable from day one.

it can take a little bit and you know every business there are different expenses that you don't you don't necessarily realize you have until you're actually running it and it pops up and you go didn't know that because when I was w2 that was not a thing so there are a lot of just little things there that are that are super important but we oftentimes I don't know if you've seen this people you work with but they're kind of

to get away from that. You said like jump off that career ladder and there's the FIRE movement which is financial independence retire early that so many people will talk about. Well if you're living a life that you really enjoy we say let's go for FIRE. We call it financial independence live early. How can we still strive to be financially independent but how can we live the life that you really enjoy and do that earlier so you're not having to grind really hard for a few years at a job you don't really like?

Bri Conn (22:39.194)

and then you retire and then you have to figure out what you're gonna do next with life. It's like why can't we just switch that and let's aim for financial independence but also add in the things that you enjoy and it sounds like that's kind of what you did with your life is you said I'm getting off of this grind and I'm gonna go and do the profitable web center so that way you can do things that you enjoy.

Shannon Mattern (23:06.956)

Yeah, for sure. I think, you know, as we're talking, I'm like, I love that financial independence live early. And, you know, I'm looking at like my sister who has two kids, one just graduated high school, opted not to go to college. The other one is a freshman in high school. It remains to be seen what she's going to choose to do. And my sister like financial plan for their college and all these things. Now,

Personally, I'm working on, I have two plans for my golden years. And I'm sure they're probably not ones that you would recommend. But I'm curious. And I laugh at these plans because we joke about it all the time. I'm like, I'm going to really work on my niece to take care of me when I'm old. I'm already trying so hard to be her favorite aunt.

Bri Conn (23:47.454)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (24:04.526)

that, you know, when I require care, she'll be like, of course, Aunt Shannon, all of those, all of that spoiling that you did of me back in my teenage years, I can't wait to drop my whole life and probably my kids and my family to come and take care of you in your golden year. So that's plan one, which I'm 100 % positive will work out. She'll want to drop everything to come take care of me.

plan two is to Golden Girls it with some of my friends. Like we'll all move into we're all basically like joking around like we're gonna outlast our husbands like that's just a thing. And so we'll just like move into a beach house together somewhere and pool our money together to hire people to take care of us. So, you know, that's the other plan. So

Bri Conn (24:38.067)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (25:01.538)

Both of them probably aren't very practical. I am at the age where I probably should start thinking about what is it going to look like when I am in my golden years. My grandmother recently fell in broker hip, broker hip and fell, who knows, but still needed like a surgery and.

nursing care and is now like living with my mom, and we're all like helping out to take care of her. But being child free means I don't have kids or grandkids to help with those things. And so that's kind of one of those topics that you're like, I'm too young to worry about that. And now I'm like, okay, but like now I'm 45. And that's not as far off as I think it might be. So like, what are some of the

different things that I need to be thinking about while I'm living life early, but do need to think about what's it going to look like when I'm 85 and maybe can't be living on my own.

Bri Conn (26:10.482)

Yeah, you're right at the perfect age. Mid 40s is always when we say we need to make a plan for long term care. There are different options. There are, you know, you can go insurance, long term care insurance and get that to cover the cost of long term care. There is the option of self funding. So depending on the amount of money you have, you could always pay for long term care out of pocket on your own. And then there's Medicaid spend down, which is

where you spend down your assets and then you rely on Medicaid to cover long-term care. And now there's a couple of annuities too that also you can buy into when you're age 50. And then they have what's called a healthcare multiplier. And if you need to go into long-term care, then it essentially doubles and gives you more money to pay for those costs. But those are really in the event that you cannot do some, the bed cot. bathing, eating, dressing,

continents and then on and off toilet and transfer. So if you can't do any of those things, that's when the costs like long-term care would kick in. But you know, the golden girls are out. We have people who talk about that and you can do what's called CCRC, so continuing care retirement community. And you go in there and you typically need to move in pretty early because a lot of these will have

what's like life lock or life care, which means you buy into it. It's a, it's a big upfront price and then you pay a monthly amount. And if you run out of money, you can still stay there and they'll continue to take care of you. And it goes from like independent living to assisted living to then this full care. And that might be an option. I mean, there are some pretty dang nice ones out there. And so you and your friends all go in and all buy in at the same place. That's definitely, definitely an option. But with those,

It can be incredibly nice because as people age, they're like, I don't really want to do all this maintenance that they maybe have been doing on their homes over the years. So you're not having to worry about maintenance. Usually they'll cook too. So you've got somebody there to cook meals for you. And a lot of those things are provided. There are so many different activities. I know I have somebody in my life and they go to chair yoga Tuesdays and Thursdays. And it's always so fun. Like, you know, you can't talk to them Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Bri Conn (28:29.822)

because they will be at yoga. And so a lot of them will have different activities, but figuring out a plan for who's going to take care of you and where you want to go is super important. Along with that is making sure that you have your estate plan in place. And so oftentimes you think, oh, estate planning, we don't need to worry about that until we hit our later years. estate planning is for everybody. If you are over the age of 18, you should have your estate plan in place. What that is is a will.

and the will is determines like after you pass, what do you want? Where do you want your stuff to go? So who gets the things that you have? And then the next thing is going to be a power of attorney. You have both medical and financial power of attorneys. That allows you to name somebody to make decisions for you on your behalf in the event that you are still alive, but unable to make those decisions. So let's say something happens and you know, I'm unconscious in the hospital.

can't make decisions for me. Okay, but I've named a person to go ahead and make those decisions for me and also do what's called a living will. And it's sometimes called a healthcare directive as well. Just depends on the state, they call it. But with that, you can call out the different things that you want. So if you want to be hooked up, like there are some people who say, I wanna have every machine possible, keep me alive as long as possible. And there are other people who say,

let me go. Like when it's my day, it's my day. And that allows you to really write all those things out. So those are going to be some incredibly important legal documents that you're going to want to get in place just so you have peace of mind that you're the one who is making the decisions and saying what you want done in the event you can't make those decisions and sort of having the state that you're in make them for you.

Shannon Mattern (30:20.814)

Yeah, or like burdening a family member to try to like think about what would she want and trying to like navigate all of that on your behalf, which I don't even know if that would be legally possible. if, you know, like depending on what state you live or whatever. It's interesting because I'm like, yeah, like I know all of those things exist, but because I don't have kids, I'm like, eh, like.

Bri Conn (30:27.368)

Yes.

Bri Conn (30:38.557)

Yeah.

Yep.

Shannon Mattern (30:48.738)

there's no sense of urgency. There has been no sense of urgency to like really put any of that in place. And so I think that that's just kind of one of those things that is like, you you are just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. But at the same time, it's like, yeah, no, we should probably do that.

What about like business continuity for someone that's not going to like leave their business to a family? Is that to a family member, like pass it down or like, you know, have it be like a family business or their considerations there as well that you guys talk about over at Child Free Wealth?

Bri Conn (31:29.308)

Yeah, and it really depends on the business. So some people, their business is just them. They're really kind of doing the solopreneur thing and they're like, no, I don't really have anybody. And if I quit working, there's not a whole lot left to it. In that case, they might just cut back hours and keep doing it because they enjoy it and just take on a project or two a month. know, I always say like my retirement thing is I'll take on one or two clients.

every month, maybe every other month, but otherwise I'm out living my life. And then there's other people who say, you know, nope, I'm going to really build it to a certain point and then I want to sell it. So it just depends on what it is for each person. I think, you know, if you're at a point where you're like, hey, I kind of want to get out of my business. I'm not sure that I want to do this. If it's something of value that has, you know,

You've got employees, you've got a team and you could sell it. We often say sell it while you're making the most so you can get the highest business valuation. And then if you want to duck out and do something else, like I, you know, when I eventually hit my point in life where I only want to work with a client or two a month, who knows if I'll still be here or where I'll be doing. I'm sure I'll actually still be here more than likely. I will probably die here just because I really like what I do.

But it's always like a, need to sit down and think about what you want out of your future. And do you want to be doing that? You know, we have people who will say, Yep, I do want to keep doing this for a long time. Great. It's when you're getting ready to sell it, it's so kind of dependent on the person of what that conversation looks like, because you can sell it, you cannot sell it. It's just

what's right for you and what's right for your life. And then, you know, if you're counting on a large amount of your net worth coming from selling a business, you need to sell it at a time when the valuation is going to be higher so you can get more for it versus cutting back. You know, I've seen times where people will say, hey, I have a business worth this many million, but I actually want to cut back to half the number of hours.

Bri Conn (33:52.574)

but if I cut back, then my business evaluation is going go down. But I was counting on that. You know, just those like mental kind of gymnastics that we have sometimes. So it's, okay, you can cut back. But first, you need to sell it and then become an employee of the business. That's an option too. So that one's hard. That's really hard to answer in a podcast because it's just so dependent on the person of how we go about that route.

Shannon Mattern (34:22.062)

Yeah, mean, sounds like, you know, all of these decisions are so personal and unique to each person. Just as like for child free people, just as they would be for people who have children, like, you know, everybody has different goals, dreams and desires, wants different things out of life has has different situations.

What I think is super interesting about what you all do is like start the conversation, create the space for people to have it, create the containers for them to really like even think about and consider these things. when life events have not, like precipitated that, right? So like, you know, when I think about like,

you know, a big life-changing event of having children would compel most people to be like, we need to figure out a plan to ensure that they're okay and we're okay and like all of that. Whereas I don't think I don't ever think about like, I need to make sure that I have a plan that I'm okay and that my husband's okay. And like, we're just like, we're just.

I wouldn't say moseying along and we do think about our future, but like not in at the level and capacity at which you're talking. And I could see a world where it's like, we're 55, 65 and we have no plan for long-term care or, you know, what we're going to do as we age and we don't have, family to take care of us and things like that. So I think it's just an important conversation to have.

that I didn't realize wasn't being had. And I don't know if other child-free people have the same experience where you're just like, that's just not for me. And I just don't think about it. moving on with my life, it's not like I feel like I'm being left out of any kind of conversation. Like I said, I didn't even know this was a thing. But I see where you all are like, there's a big conversation happening over here that you might want to be a part of.

Bri Conn (36:32.285)

Yeah.

Bri Conn (36:38.662)

Yeah. And you know, I think a lot of it is cultural. We are, in general, as humans, very death denying. And so oftentimes, you don't want to have the conversation. And I think it can depend on your upbringing, you know. For me personally, I've been to, at this point in my life, a little bit more than one funeral per year, I average it out across my entire life. Whereas my spouse has been to two funerals, and both funerals were for my family members.

and we got married and I said, okay, guess what? We're gonna go get our wills done. We're gonna go get our power of attorney's done. And that's another conversation everybody's having. You even when we're going through and when I went through all my financial planning education, one of the things that stood out to me is they'll say like, what are the correct order of things that need to get done? Typically, it's paying off, paying off debt and getting the emergency fund, but it would always stay in there.

If there are parents of children, the number one thing that needs done is estate planning and naming guardians for those children should something happen. But it did not mention that people without kids also need to have some sort of estate planning. In fact, it rarely mentioned people without kids at all. It was mainly, you either don't have kids yet, you have kids, or your kids have grown up and you're now an empty nester. So it was very rarely even a conversation of somebody being like,

child-free in there or single. That still sticks out to me so much that, you know, that conversation isn't being had or isn't being out there. And then you sit down and you think about it. And after you have the conversation, you go, yeah, I really need to make a plan for myself. And regardless of whether or not I have kids. you're, yeah, you're not the only person to be like, I didn't even think about that.

Shannon Mattern (38:29.774)

Well, and it's really never come up. OK, I can't say that that's true. When I was in my, my husband and I were in our 20s and we were dating and getting married and people are like, so when are you going to have kids? And we're like, we're not. And the common response is like, oh, you'll change your mind. And we're like, whatever. Like you can think whatever you want. And then.

year, like then we get into our thirties. They're like, when are you guys having kids? We're like, we're not. And then like they just, people just stop asking. Now in our mid forties, like people finally believe us because they, cause they look at me and they're like, she's like, now she's quote unquote, too old to have kids. And so it was just kind of like, because

Bri Conn (39:15.569)

Mm-hmm.

Shannon Mattern (39:30.008)

We were never taken seriously with our answer. No one ever took the next step to say, and not that it's their responsibility at all, but it was just like, okay, well the conversation stops here because how little do they know that they will change their minds. And we always like.

Bri Conn (39:34.195)

Yeah.

Bri Conn (39:46.504)

Yeah.

Shannon Mattern (39:52.642)

both of us were just like, yeah, no, would check in every so often to be like, hey, are we still on the same page? Yep, we still are. And so it's like the conversation was never continued to be like, well, do you have a will? What are you going to do? How are you going to take care of, know, it just ended there. And we were happy for it to end there too, go along our merry way, but.

Yeah, this is important because now you've got me thinking like I probably ought to like, we probably ought to do some things to just plan for when we're not here to make it easier on our family. I can imagine if my nieces and nephews are listening to this, we have anything left if we didn't spend it on you while you were alive, we'll give it to you after we're gone. Like, don't worry, it's okay. But we would prefer to spoil you while we're here.

Bri Conn (40:47.056)

Yep, exactly.

Shannon Mattern (40:47.086)

And, but also you have to come visit me in the nursing home because like, you know, I won't make you take care of me, but you have to at least come visit me unless I can't remember who you are. And then that's okay. You don't have to come, but at that point, like if I, yeah, but, no, this is, this is a really interesting conversation. So can you tell me more about, about

Bri Conn (41:02.238)

You're like, at that point it's fine.

Shannon Mattern (41:16.364)

childfreewealth.com, like what you all do there, where people who are listening to this episode who are like, that's me or that's my sister or my best friend or, you know, my someone that I care about and share this episode with them, even if they're not a web designer, they're going to get a lot out of it. But like, where can they go to learn more and just tell me more about like what you all do?

Bri Conn (41:42.142)

Yeah, absolutely. So we do, what we say is life and financial planning. So when we meet with clients, our first step is a checkup. It's on our website, you can book it, it's paid. And we send you a bunch of, well, not a bunch, we send you a form and then access to our financial planning software. And we ask for different information from you. We're gonna go through and review it from both a life and financial perspective and just say like, hey, these are some things that we think are going good. These are some things that are okay.

And then here are some areas that we just need a little bit of work on. And we do it from a child-free perspective. So really, what does that look like because you're child-free? What are those extra considerations on there? That's always the first step for anybody to talk to us from there. We do offer ongoing financial planning and we work with anybody who is a US citizen living in the United States. So you can be wherever, we're all, our entire team is remote and virtual. And so it's really nice because you can...

meet with anybody and it doesn't really matter where you live. That's one of the great things about you know being virtual is we can work with so many people and really work with anyone that fits the fits the criteria. We have a podcast it's called Child Free Wealth and you can search that find a ton of episodes on there and we're on socials it's all child free wealth but really we just want to help you make your finances simple so that your life can be amazing.

Shannon Mattern (43:11.096)

So good. Well, thank you so much for reaching out and asking to be on the show to talk about this. don't know if that you knew that I was like, hey, that's me when you reached out. I was curious. And it was like, yes, let's talk about this. Because I know I have a lot of students in our program that are child free.

I'm sure that I like have people in the audience that are listeners that are interested in that. And it's just a, it's, you know, as we're thinking about our lives and our businesses and what we're, what we're doing and why we're doing it. And like kind of what you were talking about with the, for everybody listening here, that's like building a business, like

Do you have secret magic numbers? Are you not living now because you feel like you're trying to get to this magical place in your web design business or everybody here wants like $10,000 months? And I always ask like, why? Like design your life first and then you get to like build the money around the life that you want to have. And I love that you're like, and there are different considerations for you if.

Bri Conn (44:16.923)

Thank

Shannon Mattern (44:34.336)

you don't have children versus if you do. And yeah, so you just have my wheel spinning and I'm thinking a lot about like these, you know, conversations that I get to have with my husband and you know, all of those things. So just thank you for being here and thanks for spreading, spreading this conversation. It's an important topic.

Bri Conn (44:55.942)

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's been fun to chat about it.

Shannon Mattern (45:00.556)

Awesome. So I'll link up childfreewealth.com in the show notes. You can check out the podcast, check out, check out Dr. J's book and all of the things. So Bri, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it.

Bri Conn (45:16.99)

Thank