Retirement account consolidation is critical for protecting aging parents and simplifying their financial lives. In this episode of Metcalf Money Moment, hosts Jeb, Ethan, and Eric discuss why consolidating multiple retirement accounts helps reduce the risk of missing required minimum distributions, which carry a 25% tax penalty. They explore how scattered accounts across multiple banks and advisors create unnecessary complexity, increase paperwork, and heighten vulnerability to financial elder abuse and scams. The hosts share real client case studies and provide actionable strategies for protecting aging parents from financial scams, streamlining beneficiary designations, and ensuring smooth asset distribution after death through proper estate planning and coordination with a single financial advisor.

What you will Learn in this Episode:

✅ How retirement account consolidation prevents missed required minimum distributions and costly tax penalties of up to 25% on overlooked withdrawals.

✅ Warning signs of financial elder abuse and common scams targeting seniors, including government impersonation, grandparent scams, and tech support fraud, plus protective strategies like trusted contact designations and power of attorney.

✅ Why streamlining accounts with one financial advisor simplifies beneficiary designations, reduces paperwork, and ensures faster, cleaner inheritance processes for your family.

✅ Practical communication strategies for families to protect aging parents, including establishing family code words, setting up account alerts, and having early conversations about estate planning while mental capacity is strong.

Tune into the Metcalf Money Moment podcast for expert insights on wealth management and retirement planning! Join Jeb, Ethan, and Eric for practical Estate Planning strategies that you can implement to unlock financial clarity and confidence. Listen now to inspire your financial journey!

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Protecting aging parents through account consolidation, understanding required minimum distributions, and avoiding 25% tax penalties

05:16 Real case study: Client with scattered accounts across multiple banks and advisors

10:02 Common scams targeting seniors: government, grandparent, and tech support scam prevention

14:03 Red flags of financial elder abuse: unexplained withdrawals and spending pattern changes, and protective measures to take

18:25 Post-death logistics: simplifying inheritance through retirement account consolidation

23:44 Four tips for aging parents or caretakers

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

💎 Retirement account consolidation with a single financial advisor dramatically reduces the risk of missing required minimum distributions, simplifies qualified charitable distributions, ensures accurate beneficiary designations across all accounts, and minimizes the 10-15+ tax forms scattered across multiple institutions that increase audit risk and filing errors.

💎 Seniors face escalating vulnerability to scam prevention challenges, including government impersonation, AI-cloned voice grandparent scams, and fake tech support—families should implement protective measures like trusted contact status, power of attorney, transaction alerts, credit freezes, and simple stalling language scripts.

💎 Proper estate planning through account consolidation enables faster inheritance settlement, prevents years-long probate delays, protects beneficiaries from missing market gains during estate limbo, and requires early family conversations about asset locations, plans, beneficiaries, and advisors. At the same time, cognitive decline hasn't yet impacted decision-making capacity.

DISCLAIMER:

This information is not intended to be a substitute for specific individualized tax or legal advice. We recommend discussing your particular situation with a qualified tax or legal advisor.

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Metcalf Partners - Website

Jeb Graham - LinkedIn

Ethan Hutchison - LinkedIn

Eric Wymore - LinkedIn

Now your hosts[00:00:30]

Jeb Graham: welcome back to Metcalf Money Moment podcast. My name is Jeb Graham, here with Ethan Hutchinson. And Eric, why more? How you guys doing today? We're here

Jeb Graham: We're here. That's right. Another month, another podcast. This one I'm pretty excited about. I think, um, you know, every once in a while we'll have, go through a month and we'll have kind of a case study and we'll, we'll hit on this a little bit where, uh, we run into something that just kind of spurs the thought [00:01:00] of something that we want to talk about on the podcast that we think is maybe a good message to, to send out to our clients.

A lot of 'em have already retired. Some of them will be retiring. [00:01:30] Uh, they've worked hard, they save well, they've accumulated accounts all over the place. You talk about old 4 0 1 ks, old IRAs, multiple custodians, banks, CDs. Brokerage accounts, you name it, they've got it out there. Uh, with age, they become increasingly vulnerable to [00:01:45] confusion, complexity, and unfortunately to scams.

And just talk about, um, you know, consolidation of not only someone's accounts, but kind of, of their life, uh, makes a lot of sense, specifically as people begin to age. And then Eric's gonna [00:02:15] talk about protecting your assets and avoiding scams. And guys, I know. All three of us have had a client that has run into a scam that we've either found out during, uh, or after.

[00:02:45] Absolutely. Well, very good. Well, let's, let's first talk about consolidation and why, uh, we feel like that matters. And specific, I say that consolidation kind of matters, uh, throughout somebody's life. I think it's easier to streamline your life that way, but I think [00:03:00] specifically as people get into retirement and as they get older.

So aging clients often have accounts everywhere, and that can create several problems. And I'm gonna go through a few of these, these issues. Uh, and things that I [00:03:30] think consolidating and choosing one advisor can really help with, uh, for an aging client. And, uh, number one is as you get older, most people, most boomers have required minimum distributions or they have IRAs out there that then eventually require a [00:03:45] required minimum distribution.

You have to pay taxes on it. And the reason the government does that is because you got a tax break to put money into that IRA and now they want to get that tax revenue back, [00:04:15] you know, as much as they can during your lifetime. Well, what happens to someone when they have multiple IRAs in multiple places is that each one of those IRAs has a required minimum distribution associated with it.

And if you miss all or a part of whatever part of your RMD that you miss, you have to pay a 25% excise tax. So by consolidating. What we're hoping to do is number one, you know, streamline that for you so you're not having to go to four different [00:05:00] places to figure out what your RMD is. Number two is hopefully help you reduce the risk of having to pay an unnecessary tax.

Was married. Who, who now her husband has passed away, but [00:05:30] he had his own advisor. Right. And they, they liked that separation, which was totally fine with me. Totally fine with everybody. Well, he passed away a couple years ago and she doesn't have a great relationship with this other advisor. Right. And so, however, she still has the [00:05:45] account there and we're talking about consolidating.

Tax statements that she gets from that. She gets it from three different banks. She gets it from us, she gets it from the other person. She also has an IRA here, an IRA at the other place. So she's [00:06:15] got just a lot to keep track of. So when you think about come tax time, the less 10 90 nines in paperwork that you're gonna get during that time, the less the chances are that you're gonna overlook something and that you're gonna end up having to go back and refile taxes or even worse pay [00:06:30] pet.

They still want to get those paper statements right. Well, so you think about that particular individual. How many different paper [00:07:00] statements they're getting. They're getting three from, from us. They're getting two or three from the other advisor they're getting, uh, 'cause they have multiple accounts at all these banks.

Go, you know, getting [00:07:30] online and paperless versus getting paper statements. You know, I think a lot of people want to get paper statements because they feel like it's more secure than being online. And I would actually be the contrarian there and say, I think that you're probably better off getting online statements than you [00:07:45] are getting paper statements.

So, and then, you know, LA lastly, and I, I'll, I'll finish up here, but I also think that General Organa organization with. Human beings declines with [00:08:15] age, right? Like it's, it's easier, you know, when you're younger and you're working, you have a lot of things going on in your life. It's easier to stay organized when you have more going on, which sounds kind of contrary to what it should be.

And if you, it's not that you have all your money with one advisor. You have one advisor that knows where everything is, right, that knows where everything is, and that can help. Kind of quarterback the entire situation. But I think what that's gonna help do is it's gonna help you coordinate your RMDs, [00:09:00] like we talked about.

It's gonna help you make sure you, your beneficiaries are correct on every account. Think about that one individual that has 30 different accounts out there. Are we sure that the beneficiaries and the TODs are correct [00:09:30] on all those and up to date? And if you make a, if you decide to change your mind, man, that's a heck of a process to go through at that point in time.

Eric Wymore: Yeah. Ab [00:10:00] absolutely. And again, you know. What we're seeing and, and, and what we're seeing out there is one of the most overlooked risk aging clients face is financial vulnerability. You know, seniors by far and away are one of the most targeted groups [00:10:15] for scams. And, and I'm, I'm gonna share a few scams that we see out there.

I mean, this is a situation where an individual will receive a phone call from the IRS, in quotes, [00:10:45] social Security Administration, or the Medicare or Medicare, and they're claiming that there's a problem, right? Claiming that there's a problem that demands immediate attention and immediate payment, um, or some kind of personal information, you know, that should set off a red [00:11:00] flag, right?

But this is a grandparent scam, or the family emergency scam. This is where you're gonna, you know, grandparents will receive a call from a [00:11:30] grandchild or if. Friend of a grandchild saying that they've been in anju an accident or they're they've been arrested, or they're hospitalized or they're stranded somewhere, and.

Um, one way that you can, you know, counter attack this is just to have a family word. A family code word. Right. That only the family would know. And then if that family code word is said, then you know, it's a real event. Um. [00:12:15] Another one scam that happens a lot is tech, right? Tech support. Uh, where all of a sudden you'll just see a popup that says you've got a, a virus or you got an email that you looked at and it's a virus, and, and, and you need to, to protect your [00:12:30] computer.

Um, they're gonna be behind the scenes, draining your financial accounts, finding your passwords, all of that stuff. So be wary of that. Um, we say a lot of fake charities, [00:13:00] honestly, it's awful, but it happens. A lot of fake charities pop up. Uh, people will send money to them. They're not real. Um, they might have a, a, you know, pretend documents or a 5 0 1 C3 that they say they are, but they're not.

Well, really in reality, it might be $150 part, right? Those are scams that happen to people and get taken advantage of just because of their age. And so you gotta be aware of that. And I think, you know, if, if you're dealing with [00:14:00] financial elder abuse, here are some things that you need. To be aware of or, or, or some, some red flags, um, that pop up.

What are those unexpected withdrawals or checks? Uh, if there's any sudden change in spending patterns. That's a, that's another caution flag that we look for. So, if an individual has a monthly withdrawal of a thousand dollars and they've [00:14:45] had that for years, and then all of a sudden they start taking 5,000 out.

There also becomes a time where they might be, feel pressured to change beneficiaries, feel pressured to change the will or trust, um, or who, who becomes the [00:15:30] ownership of the account. That's another caution flag that needs to be, be, uh, investigated. Um, and Jeb, you mentioned this earlier, you know, all of a sudden maybe the senior, maybe the, the, the, the, uh.

Definitely a red flag and, and, and to be aware of. Um, so what can you do? What can families do? What can advisors do, uh, to help protect? Again, that [00:16:15] we've kind of touched on those, a few things, but have regular reviews with your parents, advisors, financial advisor, right? Uh, go to the meetings, ask to go to the meetings.

It's not. Or suspicious transactions. It's, they don't get access to the accounts. They don't get a, you know, [00:17:00] authorization to do any, you know, act on your behalf. Um, just they get to be allowed to be notified if there's some suspicious behavior. Um, the other thing you can do is add a POA power of attorney.

And, uh, there's also simple language that you can tell your parents or your elderly to, to say when they get contacted by this. And [00:17:45] just use stalling language. Simple as I don't give financial information over the phone. Let them remind them to say that, or my advisor handles that. Or I need to check with my son or daughter or financial advisor [00:18:00] first before I do anything like that.

And that's, that's something that Ethan's gonna take on.

And while you have that mental capacity, um, you don't [00:18:45] want to be. You know, 85, 90 years old, losing that capacity and then have those conversations with your kids. You, you can share as little as much information as you want, but have the conversations and, and that that will take you. Miles, uh, beyond, beyond [00:19:00] anything.

You're gonna need to open, um, accounts under your names. That you can properly inherit some of these, uh, accounts. Um, you're gonna be working with cost basis on, uh, taxable monies, um, selling property, real [00:19:30] estate. Um, you're gonna be collecting, um, goods. There might be jewelry or stuff in lock boxes across many banks or however that works.

Now, if that. Parent or, or client has five advisors or to jeb's, uh, situation I was talking about earlier. Three banks, two [00:20:15] advisors, cash at home, whatever it is now, there's just more complexities that are involved and it's not as easy as just opening that one account. You're really having to hunt things down, making sure the beneficiaries are in line, and then you've gotta give death certificates to another 12 people that you probably didn't have to [00:20:30] do before.

We can do that for you. We don't have to call six other banks to make sure that your [00:21:00] TOAs and things are, are, are in place over there faster and cleaner. Uh, is is one huge benefit from, um, consolidation. Inheriting money's not clean. It's not easy. It, it, it, there have been in cases where [00:21:15] it's gone quicker than others.

Time is money. If money is sitting in limbo between, um, inheritance and we've got a. Three year bull market, uh, and you miss out on a 30% return because the money was sitting there [00:21:45] inside of an account that you couldn't trade because the beneficiaries weren't aligned or whatever. That is that, that, that can add up over time and become real money, um, clear instructions.

We can reach out to those individuals and we can have [00:22:15] that clean conversation. Um, coordination between retirement and non-retirement assets. This one's pretty big. Um, as far as consolidation goes, and this, this can go. Pre, um, death as well as post death if you've got taxable money between [00:22:30] multiple advisors.

Let's say you only wanted to realize $50,000 in a, in a particular tax year. Well, you told your other advisor the same thing. Now you're realizing 50, sorry, a hundred thousand dollars in gains that year. That [00:23:00] can be huge. You could have a really big mistake in that tax year because those advisors typically don't, don't communicate.

Make sure you are aware where your parents' assets go and make sure you're aware where [00:23:30] your assets go. And a lot of this can dovetail all the way back, uh, to our conversation with Eric Rome a couple months ago in estate planning, but make sure it's buttoned up. And the less problems and the less cooks in the kitchen, the better it is for everybody involved.

Nice.

You gotta either [00:24:00] communicate to your, your children, or, uh, if you're the child, you need to know it's where are the accounts, what's the plan? Who are the beneficiaries and who is the advisor? And what we'll say in these circumstances is that [00:24:15] silence. Creates confusion and communication will create clarity.

If you're sitting down with us in conjunction with the estate planning attorney and possibly the accountant, uh, those are great ways to just start off that conversation and make sure that everybody's on the same page. So, but I think this has [00:24:45] been super good information and, uh, really productive and, uh, this has Metcalf money moment signing off.

Disclaimer: Jeb Graham, Ethan Hutchinson and Eric Wymore are registered representatives with and securities offered through LPL Financial Member FINRA SI PC Investment advice offered through W CG Wealth Advisors, a registered investment advisor, W [00:25:30] CG Wealth Advisors and Metcalf Partners Wealth Management is AR separate entity entities from LPL Financial.

The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual to determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you. Consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a decision.