Protecting the Suddenly Single and their Money with Simon Brady

Episode Transcript

Pete: Welcome to How To Split A Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships from True Story FM. Today on the show, protecting your toaster’s money.

Seth: Welcome to the show everyone. I’m Seth Nelson and I’m here as always with my good friend, Pete Wright. If you’re newly divorced, this episode is going to hit home because today we’re dealing with one of the central questions that forms the overall arc of your divorce story, how do you handle the money? This week on the show, we have a guest seasoned in helping the quote suddenly single end quote, through the uncertainty, a financial educator for his clients, and how to avoid the financial vultures that circled the divorce process. Simon Brady, welcome to The Toaster.

Simon: Thank you for having me guys.

Seth: Okay. Right off the bat. Financial vultures, he’s not referring to the divorce attorneys, right Simon? I want to just get this out of the way.

Pete: Are there, I just want to know if they’re divorce vultures, too. Divorce vultures, and financial vultures.

Simon: I can speak to the financial side of things. I’ll be very diplomatic about it.

Seth: That sounds like a yes, they are.

Pete: It did sound like a yes to me too, your honor.

Simon: All the divorced attorney I’ve met have been very, very nice people.

Seth: Yes. In his British accent with his stiff upper lip. Look at this.

Pete: So diplomatic. Look, Simon, I’m really glad you’re here today because we’ve about money issues before, but you bring a vast experience in just markets and the broader economy. And somehow you landed on this, helping people to relate to their financial situation at a very individual level. And I’m curious if before we start, how did you get here from there?

Simon: Well, there you’re referring to was a 20, I guess, goodness, 25 year career, essentially on Wall Street. So if you’ve seen the Wolf Of Wall Street movie, it sort of was me, I’m a little ashamed to say, although we were dealing with institutions rather than individuals, I’ll just say that in my defense.

Pete: I have seen Wolf Of Wall Street. And now all I can think about is which part Simon? Which part was kind of like you? We’ll let that go. I just want you to know it’s in here right now.

Simon: [inaudible 00:02:42] what the 30% is.

Seth: You can see already he’s a financial guy. Well, it’s 70%. We’re going to have this all day long.

Simon: So it was very much not with individuals. It was traders at banks, it was very disassociated from personal finance, but it did give me a peek or a very long peek behind the curtain of how the financial markets worked, what drives them. I worked in derivatives as well, which is a little more complex area. So it was very good from that perspective. But 2008 came and destroyed everybody’s dreams down there. The business model was broken. I was a little burned out anyway. So I got certified as a CFP, a certified financial planner, originally with the idea of going to work for a firm. And I that for a year at the UN, where I worked as a financial advisor at the UN.

Seth: As people do.

Pete: As you do.

Simon: What the UN is set up for. It was the staff of the UN, were the main with the main clients. But then in 2016 I pretty much thought I would set up my own firm, make my own rules. And most importantly, determine my own target client audience. At the UN and actually prior to the UN, I developed a bit of a specialty in dealing with foreign nationals and the issues that they have living in America, financially.

Seth: Large sums of cash and suitcases, stuff like that.

Simon: What do you do with those envelopes afterwards? And a couple of the first clients I had who were actually not foreign nationals at all, were in a relatively recent post divorce situation. So I got to see firsthand what was top of their mind. And those clients were very different than the regular clients. They were focused on the financial fallout from what, in one case I think was literally a matter of weeks since the divorce decree had been issued.

Seth: Let’s talk about that for a minute.

Simon: Yeah.

Seth: Because now you’re in there and you’re helping these people, Simon. People say, "Seth, what’s the hardest part of your job? Is it the emotion? Is it this, it’s that?" There isn’t one that I think is hardest, I think it’s all hard and depends on the day and the client, but my best day in court, I’m going to get you half your stuff, right? So they just feel like and people I think have this psychological mindset, I have an IRA, it’s my IRA. Now they’re married, they’re growing it, it’s intended for the family to live off of and your spouse to live off of. But right when you get divorced, boy, it’s my IRA. What do you mean I have to give half of it away? Okay. And you explain the law to him and they’re shell shocked it because it’s a total mind shift, right?

Simon: Yep.

Seth: And that’s what you’re dealing with, with someone that either, I’m assuming, just lost half their net worth, in their mind. Or the person that never handled the finances and just got X number of dollars and they don’t know what to do with it. Is that the two broad categories we’re dealing with here?

Simon: Yes. And I actively seek out the second of those two, the person who did not necessarily handle finances during the relationship, the person who in some cases it’s stay at home moms, but not always, but the one who is completely and utterly overwhelmed, not so much by the divorce process, because I don’t get involved until the decree issued, the people who get involved prior to that are CDFAs, certified divorce financial analyst, that’s a different skill. I don’t do that. But coming out of the divorce, yeah, as you say, maybe there’s half a million sitting in the bank account that this person has no idea what to do with. And this is what I find so compelling about this situation is that everything is in motion, absolutely everything, estate plannings in motion, you have got to redo that will.

Seth: Right. But before you get that to the will, and we’ve talked about this before, Pete, you just went through a divorce, you’ve just been dealing with lawyers all this time. And then the wise thing to do is to redo your estate plan, your will, your power of attorney, your healthcare surrogate, your living will, they call it, right? I call it the trip over the plug document, not pull the plug, like trip over the cord, because my family’s very clumsy. We don’t want to have to pull the plug. But to do that, you have to go talk to a lawyer, just what they want to do.

Pete: Yeah.

Seth: Right? Or they’re afraid, now they have this money and some people are embarrassed, they don’t know anything about the financial markets or what to do. And so they have to ask for help and asking for help is hard. And that’s who Simon’s dealing with, Pete.

Pete: Yeah.

Seth: Right?

Pete: Well, and that’s what I’m wondering. If you get into that emotional state, you’re finally done with the lawyers, at what point do you say, "I just want to do it myself for a little while. I’m tired of have people poke around." And yet you still have to learn how to pick up the pieces. I imagine there are just a lot of pieces.

Simon: You need to have a good bedside manner here. You can’t impose yourself, exactly what you just said. They’re coming out of what might have been an absolute nightmare. They’re probably emotionally raw. The last thing they want is someone like me coming in and acting in a very bossy fashion, "This needs to be done the next three weeks." So I am very, very conscious of the stuff that you guys have said. And I think I will put together an agenda in my own mind, but as far as the client is concerned, we’re just moving along at the pace that they are comfortable with. I mean, there are some things that need to be done relatively quickly. There’s usually a real estate event following a divorce, a house being sold and apartments being bought. One thing I do find is people are very, very, I don’t use the word desperate, but very keen. If they’ve come from an owned property, they owned with their spouse, the idea of going and renting is abhorrent, so many.

Seth: Nauseating.

Simon: But that’s exactly what they should do.

Pete: Wait, wait, wait, you both said that at the same time, and I’m very curious why, my instinct would have said something different.

Simon: Because If you come out of a divorce and you sell the family home, probably, and Seth will know all this, there’s going to be conditions and there’s children involved. There’s going to be conditions in the decree that say, the children can’t be moved out of state for long periods of time, certainly not out of the country. So you initial place that you live is going to be somewhere nearby, but your job situation may change, locking yourself in or completely boxing yourself in by buying immediately doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. In a clean slate situation, I would say to somebody, "Look, rent for a year, you’re going to be living in a different place, you’re not living in a four house anymore. You’re probably going to be living in a two bedroom apartment. See how you like that. Don’t commit. A one year lease is a very, very low commitment. A 30 year mortgage, half a million dollars is not."

Pete: Well is that why they’re looking at is trying to protect themselves from the crazy change and feeling like a transient if you’re in a rental place, you just want stability or?

Seth: That’s absolutely some of it, Pete. Other people feel like, "Really, I’m going to an apartment?"

Pete: Yeah.

Seth: Right? And so then I’ll tell them, "Rent a house. I’m not saying that you have to be in an apartment with 20 year olds."

Pete: Yeah. We’re talking about a financial obligation, not necessarily a living situation.

Seth: Exactly. And they’re trying to have something comparable to what they had during their marriage, especially for the children. They want to each have their own bedroom, if there’s two kids. And what about this? And so there’s all this emotional stuff of feeling grounded, safe, and secure with home ownership. The flip side of that is some people are like, "I’m keeping the marital home." So they’re not worried about moving, but they’re also worried about, "How am I going to do the maintenance? How am I going to do this?" And I’m like, "Well, are you good with tools?" They’re like, "No." And I said, "Are you good with any tool?" They say, "No." And I said, "Yes, you are. It’s called a phone. There’s maintenance guys. There’s maintenance companies and all that shit that your husband." Just being stereotypical here, sorry. "That your husband hasn’t gotten done. I bet you, you can get it done in two hours with the right maintenance company." And then it is liberating. Like, "Oh, I can handle this." So it’s just emotional and stuff. But from a financial perspective, if you’re moving out of the house or it’s being sold, in Simon’s example, it’s not a bad idea to take a breather and just think about it for a year.

Pete: That’s what I was thinking. Just trying to put myself in that position, I’m like, "Anything to not tie my tie me down to something." I’d feel like I’d want to be more nimble. I’d want find a way to be agile.

Seth: It’s just the opposite. It’s because your life has been on this boat that has been out at sea.

Pete: Yeah.

Seth: Through the storm and you don’t want to be nimble and agile. You want to be in the harbor.

Pete: Okay.

Seth: Secure and safe.

Pete: Okay. All right. Well that leads to this next angle, which is let’s take your perspective, Simon, what does it take to rebuild? What does it take to pick up those pieces and what are the things that you should be looking out for?

Simon: Seth alluded to it there, to an extent, it’s a mindset, trying to replicate or mimic the life you had before, except minus one person can be a mistake. What I find is that people tend to spend, particularly people who have been on the receiving end of financial payouts in the settlement, tend to want to spend like crazy.

Pete: Oh sure.

Simon: Because partly it’s retail therapy, but partly it’s we’ve always had a $100,000 maybe in liquid assets, suddenly I’ve got $500,000, so that’s $400,000 of free money, so let me go spend it. Now, the is that if it’s $500,000, that’s because of court and accountants and CDFAs have determined that that’s of money that you need to get through the rest of your life, in this situation. Not to get through the next four weeks. And I do find, I don’t know, Seth used-

Seth: Wait a minute. So we can’t go by the Rolls Royce that The Queen used to use?

Pete: Four weeks.

Seth: Come on, Simon. Yeah. I mean, I got 500 big ones sitting in the bank, burning a hole through my pocket, buddy.

Pete: But what if I use it to drive Uber? Is there a tax advantage?

Simon: So we move straight onto the financial vultures then.

Pete: Yeah, that was the next question. Look at you.

Simon: So that is definitely one thing, but it is particularly, as I said, with what I would call the financial junior partner in the relationship, in terms of experience with dealing with money, suddenly you have someone who maybe is 40 years old and doesn’t know how to pay the gas bill. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done there.

Seth: But let’s be clear. All this hard work is learnable. And it’s really not that complex. It’s not that difficult to get your banking account set up online and pay your bills online. You can get text notifications, you can do a lot of things to make your life easier and setting up a little bit of time to get it set up, saves you immense amount of time in future. So these are all learned skills and money, which Simon’s talking about, okay, you got 500 grand. Let’s not blow it. It’s not as complicated as people make it. People will say, "I don’t know anything about money. I don’t know anything about taxes." With some basic information, that’s what you need to get yourself going and the ball rolling. And when you’re working with someone like Simon, who can explain it to you in ways that is simple, your E in elephant, one by at a time, that’s really key and it will bring you comfort. It will bring you comfort to know that you’ve socked that money away for your retirement, and you’re going to live within your means now and potentially even save some money.

Pete: That is a really great point, I think from the emotional part of it, like being able to get comfort in that stability and not seek comfort in spending this $400,000 in four weeks, right? There is a different kind of long term sustainable comfort that comes from making wise financial decisions, but conditioning yourself to be that person, I imagine, is a real challenge when you’re coming out of the emotional lows of the divorce.

Simon: And that’s very much the role that I see for myself. I don’t see myself being deeply involved in this person’s life for three or four years. My job is to take a snapshot of the situation as it’s now, do exactly what Seth just mentioned, which is get this person familiar with all the things that he was talking about. It is so much easier for this generation of people now to organize their finances in a highly automated fashion. I do that with all clients, not just suddenly single clients and the point really is to put everything into place, get that will redone, look at the life insurance, at least have a conversation about real estate and get them straight on that. And then almost to step back and let them back into the wild as it were, when all this work is done, but to the person coming out of divorce and I’ve been told this by the people themselves, that list of tasks that Seth just laid out, which to us doesn’t sound particularly intimidating, is very intimidating to certain people as they come out. And my job is to ease them into that. That’s what I was saying earlier that I don’t go piling in with a to do list day one, but with a view very much to stepping away when the time is right. And just being someone they can check in with whenever they feel like it.

Pete: Let’s talk then about the financial vultures. You make mention to the financial vultures and I am gathering that that is a representation of some of the pitfalls, the ways others can take advantage of your money. How do you define a financial vulture and what do you do to help?

Simon: If you are interacting with a financial advisor or interviewing a financial advisor or considering a financial advisor, the most important thing to understand about that advisor is how they compensated, because that will tell you exactly what the relationship will look like and feel like. So essentially, I’m paid by the hour. I’m probably paid very similarly to a lawyer. I create an agenda with people. We go through the agenda every month, I send a bill, says I worked six billable hours for you this month, my hourly rate is this, please pay me that. So clients are paying me for my time. I’m not receiving any money from any other source, such as an insurance company to sell policies or an investment company to promote particular type of investment, particular fund, or anything else. So I am, what is called a fee only advisor, a hundred percent of my compensation comes from the client. And that’s either in terms of invoiced fees for time or for asset management fees, if choose for me to directly manage the assets.

Seth: When Simon’s compensated that way, he has no financial benefit to put you in one life insurance policy versus another.

Simon: Or any.

Seth: Or any for that matter. Very good point. So he’s getting paid by the hour. You’re asking his advice and counsel, he says, "Here are your options, no life insurance, term life insurance, which is for a set period of time. You pay your premiums. If you die in that time, whoever your beneficiary is, gets the money. If you outlive the term, the policy ends and no one gets anything, but you don’t pay the premium anymore. Or whole life insurance, which goes till you die and somebody gets it, but you pay for a long time." There are financial planners that have contracts with life insurance companies to put the financial planning client into those life insurance policies as a step. And then the financial planner gets compensated for that. There’s nothing technically wrong, it’s not unethical or anything of that nature, but it changes the dynamic. Especially if your advisor is not letting you know, that’s how they’re compensated. It’s one thing to say, "If you go to this policy, this is what I’m going to make. There are other policies out there that I won’t make money on. We can look at those too." So that’s what we’re about to talk about next, but Simon doesn’t get any benefit, if you want to buy all Apple stock, buy Apple stock. It doesn’t matter from a financial perspective. Did I get that right, Simon?

Simon: Yeah. Essentially yes, thanks. It’s a legal obligation. My recommendations have to be in what I believe is my client’s best interest at all times. So if there’s investment A versus investment B, my only criteria for recommending A over B or B over A, is that I believe it’s in the client’s best interests. Among the other 90% of financial advisors, anyone who works for a bank or a broker or a credit union or anything like that, those people are paid to promote as much of product A as possible. They’re not going to even talk product B, because it doesn’t make any sense, financial sense to them. And the important distinction here is that those financial advisors who are paid transactionally like that, they can’t make money, unless they’re lawyers, they can’t make money out of a three hour conversation with a client about why they need to change their will, because there’s no transaction there. So they’re not going to do it. They have no incentive to talk about debt management to clients, because they can’t monetize that. In most cases, they can’t even monetize college planning. So they are going to talk about the things that generate them income. Whereas I can bill for a three hour conversation about why you need to change all your estate planning. I can talk to people about life insurance, if they need it.

Seth: I don’t mean to take money out of your pocket, Simon. But the main reason to redo your will is because your ex is probably your beneficiary and you don’t want them to get the money, there got it done in 30 seconds.

Simon: There is that version.

Pete: There is that.

Seth: All right, just trying to save us a little money, move us along here.

Simon: But there’s the new guy down the street who you got your eye on as well, but essentially they cannot talk about things that they can’t monetize. Whereas I can talk about student loan debt, what happens to that? Because if they’re on an income based repayment plan, they’re suddenly not married, that changes everything when it comes to student loan debt. So the other kind of financial advisor is not going to talk about that. And that’s important. So when I talk about vultures, people who are potentially at their lowest, emotionally affected, suddenly with a million dollars sitting in the bank account, they have no idea what they want to do with, need to change all their documents are red meat to these kind of people.

Pete: Why is that split so different? 90% of the market is compensated as effectively, and I don’t know if this is derogatory, but effectively as sales agents to the funds and the financial products and only 10% act in this-

Simon: Fiduciary manner.

Pete: Yeah. Fiduciary manner.

Simon: Yep. Because the system was set up. I mean that 10% number is higher than it was 20 years ago. The whole system was set up on a commission based plan. And the way to determine it is, again, find out how someone’s compensated. If they have a series seven, you can look these up online. If they have a series seven, the series seven is not a competence exam, series seven qualifies you to take commission.

Pete: Interesting.

Simon: If they have a CFP designation that is an extremely difficult exam and that imposes fiduciary obligations upon the holder of the designation. If they work for a registered investment advisor, as my firm is, that imposes a fiduciary obligation on the advisor you’re dealing with. If they work for a bank, if they work for a credit union, if they work for a broker, Merrill, Morgan Stanley, et cetera, they are compensated on commission transaction. That’s the way it is.

Pete: Of course. Sure.

Seth: One thing I was thinking, Simon, is we keep having these hypotheticals with people having 400 grand in the bank, 500 grand in the bank. And a lot of financial planners won’t work with people unless they have a certain amount of liquid assets that they can invest because that’s how financial planners then can make money off of amount under management. If it’s a 1% fee, that’s how they get paid. But with you, you could be dealing with someone that doesn’t have a lot of money to invest, but needs to still learn how to handle their finances. And for you that doesn’t change your equation or what you do, is that a fair statement too?

Simon: That is absolutely fair and very, very important to understand, because if someone’s willing to pay my fee, I don’t care how much they’ve got in the bank. I can manage their assets if they want me to. I don’t impose that. Sometimes it’s just easier, particularly with younger people to say, "Look, I’ll manage the assets for you. I’ll set up this IRA. So you don’t have to go to do it yourself." But if they want me to manage the assets, I will, if not, I mean, I have clients who I’m managing $5,000 for, literally. The system I’ve got, the platform I’ve got, is so scalable, it doesn’t matter whether it’s 5,000 or 5 million, frankly.

Seth: Okay, Pete, I’m in for my five grand. You can put your five mil with him.

Pete: Five mil. I got 50 bucks ready for you right now.

Seth: Well, I’m wondering where all the podcast cheques are going.

Pete: Yeah. Where are those sweet sweet podcast money. Right?

Seth: All right. Just checking.

Pete: All right. All right. So tell us then, Simon, as we lean into our home stretch here, what are some red flags that people need to be worried about? We’ve already talked about the fiduciary versus the commission based. What are the things when you’re in that emotional low, that you want to make sure you hit up eight o’clock Monday morning, day one, make sure you resolve this first so you can sleep well that night?

Simon: To an extent, I think you need to not call me right away or a vulture, I think there is obviously some time required for decompressing, the time to be spent between talking to the likes of Seth and talking to the like of me. But once you’ve had that-

Pete: The Seth Simon gap, that’s what we’re going [crosstalk 00:27:21]. The Seth Simon.

Seth: People take a long time to decompress from talking to me.

Pete: That’s the truth.

Seth: That’s the truth.

Simon: Yeah. Not just too long. I mean, I think the real estate situation needs to be addressed, obviously reasonably quickly, just on a practical logistical level. Everything plays into that, the kids’ schooling, whatever came out of the divorce decree.

Pete: This is Maslow, right? It’s health, safety, shelter. Right? You want to have that one locked down first?

Simon: Bingo.

Pete: All right.

Simon: Bingo. Then I think, and this is a little more perhaps psychological, if there is $500,000 sitting in a checking account, I think that needs to be addressed, at least in part, just because I think that is something that somebody will feel a very good sense of accomplishment for. If they can get that money, I constantly hear this, "I want my money working for me." This is obviously being generated by 9 years of a bold market or it’s 11 now I’ve been saying that for years, now it’s 11. But I think-

Seth: It’s not like Simon’s a number guy, don’t worry about it.

Pete: Yeah, no, right.

Seth: Yeah.

Simon: I’m going to change my spiel. There’s clearly a sense of a sense of accomplishment when there is that feeling of money and also what it tends to do, once you get it out of the checking of account, it becomes that tiny bit harder to spend.Even if there’s a small step between.

Pete: Checking account feels so fragile to me, it feels like it’s just begging to be spent when it’s in the checking account.

Simon: It’s screaming at you. Spend me.

Pete: It’s screaming. Yeah.

Seth: Not nearly as much as dollar bills in your pocket at a strip bar though, Pete.

Pete: That’s true. No, that’s true. I wouldn’t know, but I assume, from movies and watching your life.

Seth: Yeah, right.

Simon: Obviously been a long time since you were at one.

Pete: The inflation impacts everybody.

Simon: Yes. I don’t think whipping out a $1 bill gets you very much, these days. Not that I’ve been. Very long time. Are we back to the Wolf Of Wall Street?

Pete: Yes. I think we just turned on the Wolf faucet.

Seth: But let me just ask you this.

Simon: Yeah.

Seth: If you could just take us, we’ve talked about people who are just started the process. What does it feel like from your perception? How do they feel a year out, after they’ve met with you? What’s different about them a year post divorce, when they’ve learned these skills and maybe they have a little bit of money working for them or your client that has five grand that you’re managing for them but that’s five grand more than they had before? And there’s no judgment here, every dollar is important. Can you tell us what those clients look like, feel like, sound like, different if at all, than they were coming out of the divorce?

Simon: It’s wonderful. It really, really is. If you’re going to put a year timeframe on it, in the course of that time, they’ve sorted out their real estate, they’ve maybe got a plan in their own mind about what the next real estate is. As I mentioned before, the money is working for them, it’s in places where it should be. It’s not in a place maybe where their ex spouse used to put it and not bother telling them about out, or they feel very much in control because I’m not going to just ask them to give me the keys to their investments and go and do it. We’re learning along the way, because as I said, the idea is that I step back at some point, I want to know what they’re invested in, how to put money in, how to take money out. And there’s a great sense of accomplishment from these people, again, especially the junior partner in the previous relationship, financially speaking, the will is usually redone, the life insurance if needed is in place, the kids are happier. I’m really glad you’re asking that question, actually. It’s really, really gratifying to see these people a year later. It’s wonderful.

Seth: Well, I’ll confess to you. I asked it because I went through it. I mean, my son’s 17. It was 15 years ago, but when I got divorced and I set up the new will for my son and got a life insurance policy that I thought was beneficial for him, I felt better sleeping that night.

Pete: Yeah.

Seth: After I had that stuff done, knowing that God forbid, if something happened to me, at least he was taken care of financially and I’ll share this and I know we’re coming up on Thanksgiving, Pete. And I’m actually spending Thanksgiving with my son and my former spouse and her family. So I’m hoping they don’t listen to this podcast, because I’m going to get in trouble here. I called my former spouse when I was changing some life insurance around and I said, "Hey, can I have your daughter’s social security number?" It used to be my stepdaughter, because if something happens to me, I want to leave some money for her in my life insurance. And she goes, "Yeah, but you don’t need to do that." I said, "I would really like to do it though, if that’s okay with you." And she goes, "Of course, it’s very generous. You don’t need to." And I said, "Listen, for the amount of money I’m getting for Kai, to add some on for her. It’s like, I have to like pass on one beer. Another $10 a month gets me plenty to leave for her."

Pete: Yeah.

Seth: And I said to my former spouse, I said, "Please don’t ask me how much life insurance I have for the kids, because I’ll tell you and I’m afraid that I’m going to get whacked by you." And Pete, she paused and said, "Oh, the time for that has passed."

Pete: But isn’t that funny how quickly we can go from sleeping soundly at night to having too much insurance and realizing you’re not sleeping at all.

Seth: Exactly. So that’s why I shared it though or asked the question, Simon, because it makes a difference and it’s not easy, nothing is easy to get over the fear factor, but it’s not as hard as you make it out. The worrying about it is worse than the doing it. So I would encourage people to reach out to guys like Simon and get it done.

Pete: Simon, do you have a jurisdiction to check or do people just have to be in New York to work with you?

Simon: I can work with people, actually, in any state other than Texas or Louisiana, who have their own little rules for their own financial advisors. I can work with as many people in New York as necessary, that’s why I’m registered. But also there’s a de minimis amount of people you can have in every other state. So I can work with most people.

Pete: Okay. Well because you know, Seth is in Florida and I am in Oregon. And we’re talking about it, if we put your link in the show notes, we want to make sure we can send people to you legitimately and we should very much do that. So check out the links in the show notes for Simon. You want to talk a little bit about your firm? Where are they going to find you?

Simon: I’ve actually just redone the website, which is angliaadvisors.com. A-N-G-L-I-A Advisors.com. Pretty much everything is up there. Prices are there. Everything’s transparent. There’s a bit of a background on me. The different services I offer. I can deal with people for a shorter period of two hours or we can go into a deeper engagement. I did just start putting a few things out on Instagram, Anglia Advisors. I don’t know how that’s going. I do, do a weekly market report, which anyone can sign up for on the website.

Pete: Do you do that as like a TikTok dance video or you not gotten into that? No, not yet.

Simon: You’re like the third person to ask me that in the last two weeks. No I don’t do, what’s it called? FinTok

Pete: FinTok, that’s a thing.

Seth: Let me tell you, I subscribe to that every night, Pete, puts me right to sleep.

Pete: Fascinating. I think my life is worse actually knowing that that exists. I’m sorry about that, for everybody in the field.

Seth: But Simon, I got to know, you grew up in the UK, I’m assuming.

Pete: Yep. Yep.

Seth: And where in the UK?

Simon: I was born and went to school in London, north part of London.

Seth: And I’m done. Did you play rugby? Did you play cricket? Any of those things growing up?

Simon: Keep trying.

Seth: Football.

Simon: There’s only one sport, football. Yeah, exactly. I didn’t do the rugby, cricket thing. There’s only one sport. My parents didn’t have the money for that.

Pete: Seth’s in Tampa and he rides a Flamingo to work. So as long as we’re going, we’re leaning in and I actually ride a horse into the woods wearing my flannel here in Oregon.

Seth: I was first in my age group in the Flamingo races.

Pete: Were you.

Seth: really? How about that? I.

Pete: That’s amazing.

Seth: The Flamingo was a lot younger than me, but you know.

Pete: All right, well, Hey Simon Brady, you’re a champ. Thanks for joining us on the show this week. We sure appreciate you sharing your wisdom with The Toaster audience.

Simon: It was a real pleasure. Thank you guys.

Pete: And thank you everybody for downloading and listening on behalf of Simon Brady and you know him, you love him, America’s favorite divorce attorney, Seth Nelson, I’m Pete Wright. And we’ll catch you next time right here on How To Split A Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships.

Speaker 2: Seth is an attorney with Nelson Coster Family Law And Mediation with offices in Tampa, Florida. While we may be discussing family law topics, How To Split A Toaster is not intended to nor is it providing legal advice. Every situation is different. If you have specific questions regarding your situation, please seek your own legal counsel with an attorney licensed to practice law in your jurisdiction. Pete Wright is not an attorney or employee of Nelson Coster. Seth Nelson is licensed to practice law in Florida.