[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to Start to Finish Motherhood, a.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Podcast for those thinking or already single mothers by choice.
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Just looking for practical advice for navigating life's relationships. When you decide to have children on.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: Your own, it doesn't mean that you're completely alone.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: I'm Aisha Jenkins and I'm partnering with you every step of your journey.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: I have come so far with my estate planning, and I still feel that I have further to go. I need to pull out my documents and look at them, see if anything needs to be revised.
So back in 2021, I got an attorney and I got my will drawn up. And so in 2023, I began looking for and working with a first financial planner, which was a woman financial planner. And now I'm working with another financial planner who is just a pit bull. I love him. And so after speaking with two financial planners and working currently with one financial planner, I really started getting serious about my financial life. And so that means looking at my numbers, understanding where I stand, understanding where I am and where I want to be, especially with this career shift. What can I do? And then what do I need to do to make that happen? I personally want more freedom and flexibility in my life. I have enjoyed this time with my family. I have enjoyed this time kind of flexing my muscles and understanding what my skills and what I bring to the table outside of a corporate entity.
And so it's been a really good place to be. And then I got to steer my career from predominantly white spaces into predominantly black and brown and more diverse spaces. And so I am loving it. I am thriving, I am healing.
So.
But I'm getting my financial life in order. So it was not until earlier in 2025 that I was able to clearly articulate the what I actually needed in terms of a financial planner. In terms of the plan for my life, I was essentially going from a 9 to 5 employee into being an independent consultant. And one of the best pieces of advice that I received from my financial planner is that I should always treat myself as the company.
And then I am lending my time to various corporate entities and various individuals and with the realization that these other entities, they get to rent my time, but I should always be in control of steering my financial vehicle and steering my own career.
And after being at a company for almost 25 years, I could say that I got complacent, but then I also got uncomfortable and that is what forced me to move.
So I changed guardianship of my children.
[00:03:16] Speaker C: When I got my new will.
[00:03:18] Speaker B: So I went from having My brother and sister in law as the guardians to a family friend who I felt was in better alignment with how I wanted my children to be raised. And I had more access to this person and this person has more access to my children.
And they're proactively building relationships with my girls, which I love. My oldest now has a phone, so they get to call each other and talk. And she's one of the people that I would. I use to counterbalance me.
So if I'm. If I've gone like somewhat crazy in the moment, I'm like, go talk to your godmother. Right? This relationship is going well between me and the person and between my children and their godmother. And so all in all, I just, I love watching their relationships blossom.
The children spend at least one week a year with their godmother, which is sweet because they get to build memories, they get to have pictures, and I get time off. Okay, so the rest of the advice in this episode is still relevant now more than ever, as society and the safety nets that people thought they had are in a dangerous state of no longer existing.
So let's jump into this throwback episode.
[00:04:46] Speaker C: We're going to discuss estate planning, which is pretty much a necessary evil for an smc. I say necessary evil because no one wants to really think about the possibility of not being here for these babies that we work so hard to bring into our lives. But it's so important that we do exactly that.
So, as always, do your research. You follow up any advice that we offer with a consultation with an actual lawyer, because this information can vary state by state.
So this topic is particularly timely for me because my doctor, during my annual, found what she thought was a lump. So I had a health scare. And for a couple of weeks I was just like, should I go ahead and just get the mammogram? Because I'm still nursing my youngest. She's toward the tail end of it. But my primary care physician gave me the impression that I could not get a mammogram until I was three months past nursing. And so I took it to the group. I'm like, hey, mama, help me with this dilemma. And so a few of the more experienced moms told me that I didn't have to wait until the baby was weaned, that I could just pump before and still go get my mammogram. And so I verified this with a lactation consultant who verified it. So I finally went this week to get my mammogram. I pumped and dumped. And it's all clear. But that was a scare. And the thing that made me a little bit okay with it was that I knew that I had a solid estate plan that was executable upon my untimely demise.
Estate planning is the process of making sure that all of your legal documents are in place and executable before you become disabled or die. And so it tells the court how you want your monies and your assets and your children handled after your death. Right. And so for SMCs, you want to make sure all of that is taken care of because you're the only parent. When I was going through the trying phase, I was actually on the national forum and they're pretty militant about this checklist to this. And like many going through and having to plan out my death as I am gestating this child is a bit nerve wracking. But what I did was I knew that I wanted something in place with my specifications before I went into delivery with my first, and so I did just that. So I quickly hopped on to Legal Zoom to get something set up up that I knew would be executable. And it was a step by step, fairly simple process once you're done with stating all of your requirements, and some of them were quite funny looking back at my 37 year old self. But then you just get the documents, they draw them up for you, they send them to you, they're executable. You just need to go get it notarized and get the signatures. And so I did that and I had that in place before I delivered my first daughter, and then I updated it before I delivered my second daughter just in case I didn't return from the hospital. So I did get the long list of the questionnaire to fill out and that's a process. So that took me about two weeks to sit down, get all my documents together. I got an estate plan package which included a will, an advanced medical directive, a general power of attorney, and then guardianship. And then also what I would add here with a big star in terms of estate planning is you want to make sure that you have life insurance as well. And so those would be the top five things that I say you definitely want to have in place in case you don't return from delivery. So, yeah, I'm just going to leave that there. Okay. So I will be a bit transparent in terms of what I paid. I talked about going through legal Zoom for the first two deliveries, right? And then after I had the babies and the dust settled after maternity leave, I was like, okay, now let me make sure this is fully executable in the court of law. So I moved from just making sure that I had my intent stated, signed, documented, still fingers crossed. Then when I was ready and everything had settled, I went to an actual law firm attorney and got that estate plan, the bells and whistles on the east coast that cost me about $2,400 and the amount of time it took me to get my documents done. My engagement with the attorney started in May of 2020 and everything was put together and executed by August of 2020.
So that was how long it took for me to get my documents. In terms of life insurance, rule of thumb is that once you start trying to conceive and you know that you're on this path to motherhood, you should probably get a life insurance policy put in place.
So I was a bit short of that time frame. I got my life insurance policy in early 2014, the year that I had my eldest. But all of my blood work and everything came back fine. There's a range that you can get in terms of your policy. So what I did was I kept calculated what I would get from my job and then I calculated what I knew was in my 401k and then I calculated what I would then need for the duration. So I ended up getting a half million dollar policy for 30 years, which and which ends up covering both my girls until my youngest is about 25. And so I'm thinking my 401k will only appreciate more. I have a mortgage that will start to taper off. I am working to get rid of all my debt. So pretty much they will my assets.
So I want to zero in on something. And this is one of those fraught conversations. Once you enter into the space of an smc, there's a lot of conversations you have to have. So being self aware, being mature to have those conversations because you're going to have to settle some people down, you're going to have to dispel some people of their myths and you're just going to have to be frank about it, right? I'm going to be dead. Y'. All duke it out. I had a guardianship that I had set up when I executed my will for Noah, my daughter, the oldest daughter. And then I changed guardianships because my situation had changed by the time I had my second daughter. And the first set of guardians were my brother and his wife. And mainly because if Noel was going to be only she was going to be around other kids that were around her age. And so my brother and Sister in law have three children and the youngest was about, I'd say seven. And so I was just like, yeah, that's fine. And if something happened to me now, she would fit right in. And then by the time I had my second, I started to think differently about the burden I might be placing on that already large family and adding two children and then the age span would be larger between their kids and my youngest. And so then I needed to do some different things. And so I watched to see who in my circle was really vested in my kids and things like that. And so then I chose one of my friends to be a guardian. Okay, so we have the will in place. We pick the guardians. We have a life insurance policy. I don't have a trust fund to outright give to you, but I do have $455 a year that it costs for my life insurance policy. I can make that investment. I do have the $2,500 that it would take to set up an estate plan in one fell swoop. Those are two things that I can do. I don't want my kids or my family to have to set up a GoFundMe account for my funeral expenses. I don't want to be like that, fam.
Die without a will and you lose most of your wealth in probate court. Right. I just really want to ease their loss in any way I can and then offer them opportunities going into the future. And so that's one way that we can do it. And it's just small things. We're not going to hand out a trust fund, but we can start to hand them a little bit of wealth as I go out the door. And if I could just summarize what the financial situation would be if you have an estate plan in place is that you are factoring.
If you die before they're 18, they get Social Security. You also have your 401k if you work at a job that has a 401k or 3B. And then you're going to have life insurance from work, which is typically like 2 to 2.53, your annual salary, plus whatever life insurance policy you have in place on top of whatever other assets you are handing down. So if you think about it that way, you want to just go through and check the boxes and make sure that you're setting your kids up right.
I know it's morbid to talk about your end of life plan, but as SMCs, we really have to make sure that our kids are taken care of. When I die, I really want to make sure that I'm able to rest in peace knowing that my girls are taken care of, and that will hopefully lessen the loss just a bit. It's been a real pleasure to discuss this often hilarious journey of being a Black smc.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to Stark To Finish Motherhood with Aisha if you want to keep the conversation going, follow Start to Finish Motherhood on Instagram or email
[email protected] if you love this episode, please share it with anyone who's thinking of becoming a single mother by choice, anyone who's already parenting as a single mother by choice and just looking for advice on navigating it all, or a friend or family member who's looking to support someone else's single mother by choice journey. Until next time.
[00:14:15] Speaker C: Bye now.
