Even though it’s been over thirty years, I still remember that night like it was yesterday. I had just taken a flight after work from Tampa, FL into my hometown of Huntsville, AL. It was an early spring Friday night, and I found a cozy corner on the floor of Crestwood Hospital, where I nodded off to sleep. My mom was in the next room fighting, but slowly losing, a brutal battle with cancer. This was a semi-normal Friday night in my life during that time. Every couple of weeks she would go back to the hospital, and I would come in late and crash on the floor of the empty room next to her.
As was our routine, I had sent my father home to shower, get the mail, and bring some fresh clothes. I put my fifteen-year-old sister in charge of watching our mom, and I dozed off to dreamland.
After what seemed like two minutes, my sister woke me up to tell me Dad was not back. I don’t remember my exact choice of vocabulary, but I probably couldn’t repeat it in public anyway. I think I said something like, “Get out of here. I’m sure he’s fine, and I’m trying to sleep!” Did I mention that I was cranky from air travel? And that was back in the old days before you had to take your shoes off and spend an hour on the TSA line!
Another few minutes went by, and my sister returned and poked me awake again. “Byron, Dad’s still not back!” Before she could finish her whining, I threw the little cushion-like thing that they call a hospital pillow at her. I don’t even know if I hit her with it or not. I fell asleep mid-throw.
A hospital telephone has a distinct and very loud ring. I knew it was the phone ringing and not my sister bothering me, but at this point I was so disoriented that I turned toward the door to hurl another brotherly insult. She had run into my room when she heard the phone ring, and there was fear in her eyes.
The voice on the other end of the phone turned out to be the emergency room downstairs. They had my father. My heart sank. He had been in a head-on collision.
Many things flash through your mind when you hear devastating words. I guess I wouldn’t make a good poker player, because my sister saw the look on my face and took off down the stairs to the ER.
She was my younger sister—I felt I was supposed to keep her from seeing things that might scar her for life. I had to catch her before she got to the emergency room, which was four long flights of stairs down. As I raced from floor to floor, my denial over the fact that my mom might die turned into a horrific thought of losing them both. My mom’s mother had just passed not that many months before, and we weren’t the type of family that spoke about death. I wondered where my sister would finish high school. Would she move to Tampa with me, or would I move home to let her finish there? Would I even be able to get a job? While the country was not in a full-blown recession, hiring squeezes were definitely a thing. How would I support her, and what about my upcoming wedding? Was there money set aside for a funeral? What type of arrangements did my parents want?
By the time I got to the ER, huffing and puffing, she had already seen my dad strapped to a board and covered in blood. He said he was OK, and that he didn’t want my mother to worry. He didn’t look OK. My sister and I now had parents on two separate floors of the hospital. I was no longer in denial. I feared that the worst was going to happen.
By the grace of God, our father walked away from that accident and was able to come up to the room a little while later. Growing up, I was always taught to look for the positive in all situations, but for the life of me, I was having a hard time finding anything positive about this particular night’s events.
A few days later, we went to retrieve my dad’s belongings from the tow yard. After seeing my dad’s mangled minivan, it hit me like a ton of bricks. For the first time, I was able to find the positive. That day, I realized many people lose loved ones in an instant and never get to say goodbye. I had been so full of pity that I was wasting that opportunity with my mom. During her final days, I said my goodbyes, spoon-fed her when she was too weak to eat, and held her hand. For that, I will be forever grateful. She was there when I took my first breath—and I was there when she took her last.
I tell this story because it changed my life. That night, I realized that I could have lost my two parents, and I had no clue about my family’s financial situation. I had no idea if I would be given custody of my sister or how I would pay for her college. Most of these thoughts were flashing through my mind on my sprint down four flights of stairs. I share this story with you in such detail, because my hope is that it inspires you talk to your loved ones about the specifics of your estate and your wishes, and don’t wait to tell them how you feel. Tell them now, and often. If you can’t tell them, write it down and put it with your will to be delivered to them at your death.
If that one night had changed my life forever, the following weeks would prove that nothing would ever be the same again. I buried my mother and had my family’s financial life opened up before my eyes for the first time. With my maternal grandmother passing away shortly before as well, in less than a couple of months two generations had passed, and I began to understand just how short life really is. I was twenty-two, and because I had chased the biggest paycheck out of college, I wasn’t following my dream profession. As I began to realize that the future is promised to no one, I vowed to start following my dreams then and there.
In sitting down with my dad to wade through all of the financial literature for widows/widowers and beneficiaries, it was plain that my study of wealth was incomplete until that moment. I had always concentrated on accumulation, not preservation. My father had an accountant, an insurance agent, and a stockbroker—but he had no coordinated plan to protect what he had accumulated and intended to pass on – and no way of knowing if it would even be enough.
As I poured over my family’s financial plans, or lack thereof, I realized that my college finance professor was wrong. He had told me that trying to get licensed as a Certified Financial Planner® right out of school would be a mistake. He recommended that I take the best job I could find, get some gray hair and some “real world” experience, and then hang a shingle as a CFP® once I had my retirement and benefits guaranteed. I’m sure he meant well—and that may be the “typical” path. However, after burying two generations, I realized that my family could have benefited from my knowledge no matter my age.
I listened to that inner voice. Some people go through a horrible experience and swear to themselves they will live for each day, follow their dreams, etc. But they don’t always follow through. I, on the other hand, was truly changed. I created a five-year plan and began studying to follow my dreams the very next week.
A year later, I passed the Series 7 stockbroker exam and was hired by a large nationwide financial planning company. Five years later, I was a licensed CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™, was ranked in the top 20 percent of my company nationwide, and had won the President’s Recognition Award for Quality of Advice for outstanding planning and recommendations made to clients. I began teaching night classes to those interested in becoming financial planners, and that led to becoming a manager and eventually being in charge of the Memphis, TN office for new advisors.
Then, 9/11 happened and the market crashed. My gut told me to move everything to cash, but the company that I worked for didn’t agree. I left 6 months later in search of an alternative to “buy and hold” portfolio management that meant riding out the bear market crashes that have occurred regularly throughout history. I formed Studdard Financial in Memphis, TN with the goal of using active management to help smooth out the ups and downs of stock market volatility so that clients can enjoy their retirement and not have to worry about the next bear market crash. In 2007, we opened up an office in Sarasota, FL to serve our growing Florida client base. Today, we serve clients from coast to coast, many of them are children and grandchildren of clients that took a chance on a kid over 30 years ago that came into this profession with nothing more than a dream and a deep desire to help other families avoid the mistakes his family made.