Wealth Beyond Riches: Building Prosperity With Purpose, Values, and Impact

How to Manage Financial Transitions with Susan Bradley, CFP®, CeFT® (Ep. 17)

August 07, 2024 • Abbey Henderson, CFP®

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Financial transitions are challenging, but with the right guidance they can be opportunities for positive growth and transformation.

How do you manage a financial windfall or a major life change? What tools and strategies can help you navigate these transitions effectively?

This week on Wealth Beyond Riches, Abbey Henderson, CFP®, CEO Wealth Advisor & Coach, is joined by Susan Bradley, CFP®, CeFT®, the Founder of the Sudden Money® Institute (SMI), to dive into the complexities and emotional aspects of financial transitions. 

With Susan's vast experience and insights, they uncover practical strategies for managing substantial financial changes, whether due to inheritance, retirement, or unexpected windfalls. 

Abbey and Susan discuss: 

  • The stages of financial transitions and how to navigate each one
  • The significance of pausing and taking perspective during financial changes
  • The science behind how our brains react to financial stress and how to manage these reactions
  • The importance of having a Certified Financial Transitionist to guide you through major life changes
  • And more!


Resources:

Connect with Abbey Henderson: 

Connect with Susan Bradley:


About Susan Bradley:

Susan Bradley, CFP®, CeFT®, is the Founder of the Sudden Money® Institute (SMI), a think tank that created the Certified Financial Transitionist® designation (and the Financial Transitionist® Institute, which now delivers the advanced CeFT® training). 

For 23 years, Susan has been training financial advisors in the unique processes and tools SMI created for managing the human dynamics of financial change. She has served on the FPA’s National Board of Directors, she currently sits on the National Football League’s Players Association’s Financial Education Advisory Board, and she serves as the Dean of Transitions for the Council of Deans of the Purposeful Planning Institute. She is seen and heard frequently in the national media, including NBC’s Nightly News, CNN, NPR, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. 

She is the author of Sudden Money: Managing a Financial Windfall (Wiley 2000), and her TEDx Wilmington Women talk is called, “Change launches you into the next great chapter of your life, whether you like it or not.”

ProudMouth (00:01)

Welcome to Wealth Beyond Riches with Abbey Henderson, CEO, wealth advisor, and coach at Abaris Financial Group. In this podcast, we help generous, fun, and passionate professionals overcome their biggest financial concerns while leveling up their lifestyles based on their values. We do this by exploring the five levers, which represent the diverse resources each person possesses throughout their lifetime. These levers encompass finances, health, mindset,


relationships and time, offering a holistic approach to personal development and growth. Join us on this transformative journey as Abbey and her guests draw from years of experience to guide you in achieving your life goals while staying true to your values. But that's not all. This podcast will equip you not just to build personal wealth, but also to understand how your prosperity can contribute to the betterment of the world around you. By exploring strategies for giving back and making a positive impact,


will empower you to create a life of significance and leave a lasting legacy of positive change.


Wendy (01:11)

and welcome to the Wealth Beyond Riches podcast with your host Abbey Henderson, where we talk about enriching your life in every way. I'm Wendy McConnell. Hey there, Abbey. I'm good. How are you?


Abbey Henderson (01:22)

Hey, how are you? I am very well. It's hot here. What is the weather like for you?


Wendy (01:27)

Well, summer is in full swing, you know, it's, we're going to have hot days.


Abbey Henderson (01:32)

Yeah, and we should not complain because we'll be wishing for them in six months.


Wendy (01:37)

Exactly. Fall's going to be here before you know it. So we do have a guest today. Why don't you talk to us about your guest?


Abbey Henderson (01:45)

Yeah, so I'm, I mean, I have the best guests. I'm just going to say I'm super spoiled and I'm always so thrilled and so excited about all of them. But today we have a thought leader in the financial services industry that I have admired for so long. And I have been lucky enough to train under her as well. We have the amazing Susan Bradley with us today.


And Susan, as I said, she's a thought leader in the financial planning and wealth management space. She founded the Sudden Money Institute 24 years ago to help clients manage a financial windfall, which then has expanded into a think tank on this topic, as well as a training program, which I was lucky enough to be the beneficiary of.


and Susan has served on the Financial Planning Association's National Board of Directors, as well as the NFL Players Association Financial Education Advisory Board. She's frequently appearing in national media. She's an amazing author. She's the recipient of the Insiders Forum Iconoclast Award. And I could go on and on, but Susan, it is so great to see you.


Susan Bradley (02:53)


Thank you, Abbey. It's lovely to be with you. I love the company you have built. So this is, I feel like I'm in great company this morning. Thank you.


Abbey Henderson (03:16)

Thank you so much. So I think your story and how you ended up helping people with windfalls is so fascinating. So would you just tell us a little bit how you ended up here?


Susan Bradley (03:30)

Sure, thank you. It actually goes back to 1995 when I was a financial planner and I was very involved in financial literacy nationally and locally. I was in the West Palm Beach area and I love teaching people about money and I thought, you know, financial planning was really wonderful. I still do. But I bumped into something that I had, I was way over my skis on.


I was not sure what to do and it seemed to be important to know it. And it was a class action lawsuit with women with injury settlements against a large company for complications of breast implants. And my contact was their lawyer. And he was telling me all the stories of how they were future spending. They were buying houses that they would pay off when the money came in. They were making commitments to people.


when the money came in. They were quitting jobs because they were now going to have money. By the way, the amount of money they were going to get was not that much that would change everything, but it feels like it to people. And I realized this future spending was going to create some real problems for them. So they hired me to write a financial literacy piece for women in transition. And that was right.


you know, in my sweet spot. And a couple months later, the company they were suing went into bankruptcy. They called me at the law firm and said, deals off. I said, my gosh, those women are going to go into bankruptcy. And they said to me, I don't worry about that. We handle bankruptcy. And that really wasn't okay. These women were financially, I don't know, some of them probably were temporarily ruined.


It was just a bad scene all the way through and it was, we can handle bankruptcy. Not cool. So I asked around in the industry for help on how, what is the right process when I was actually writing that white paper for the firm. And no one was really looking at it except people who sold annuities. So there was a big gaping hole. And for some reason, Abbey, I couldn't let it go.


Abbey Henderson (05:44)

Mm.


Susan Bradley (05:50)

So I kept thinking about it, thinking about it, and I was writing for magazines and things like that. I'm not the greatest writer, but I have passion, you know? So I signed myself up to write a book and it came out as Sudden Money, and that's very provocative. And it sounds like we deal with lotteries and windfalls, but we really deal with the change, the life change that happens when money changes.


whether it's a windfall or a liquidity event. So we say when money changes, life changes. And we wrote the book as a change management model for financial planning and it wasn't hitting it. We had to learn about financial transitions. And that really became, cause that is the blind spot in our industry that I love so much.


Abbey Henderson (06:23)

huh.


Susan Bradley (06:44)

but we as an industry don't really get the human experience of change in transition.


Abbey Henderson (06:51)

Right. Tell me, give us some more examples, because I think people do just jump to the lottery or the inheritance, but transition really encompasses many other things that are happening to everyone all the time.


Susan Bradley (07:07)

Yeah, it's how life evolves individually. We go through these life events and evolution is not easy. It's really not something that you get to decide. It happens. It's not optional. But it sure is easy if you have or easier if you have tools and skills. And part of the skill is to recognize that something like retirement that


Everybody talks about and you save money. Financial planners would say you're in the accumulation phase. So you save more, spend less, don't do anything stupid. And eventually at a certain age, bam, you're ready to retire. And what we see from the data, retirement is a far more complicated human experience. In fact, there's a whole body of work called the dark side of retirement. Divorce rate goes up.


There can be an increase in alcohol and drug dependency and sometimes suicide. So when you read that as a financial planner, you have to step back and say, whoa, what am I not seeing? What you're not seeing is what we call the passage stage of a transition. So think about like you're getting divorced or you become a widow or even there's you're selling your business. There's a


Abbey Henderson (08:15)

Mm.


Susan Bradley (08:33)

an anticipation stage, time when you know it's happening, hasn't happened yet, you don't know how much or what the deal is, but it's coming. That's where those women were with the settlement and they were doing the absolute wrong thing. They were future spending. But sometimes people make commitments to other people or they may say to their kids, when we sell the business, we will.


Abbey Henderson (08:46)

Mm -hmm.


Susan Bradley (09:02)

And then the kids have a family and they're buying a house or making private school commitment. So it can get really messy if you don't know how to prepare. And you can also emotionally prepare. You can work with the financial transitionists at your firm and learn how to really, how to do your best communication under stress. How do you make your best decisions?


Abbey Henderson (09:10)

Mm.


Mm -hmm.


Susan Bradley (09:29)

you can learn a protocol super easy for sorting through decisions. What is important and urgent? What is just important, not urgent? So you can practice this before it happens. And I think in our culture, we all think that money is good, more is better. And if the money is right, life is right. And it, sorry, just not that way.


Abbey Henderson (09:44)

Mmm.


You


Yeah, it's always. Money changes everything in good and bad ways.


Susan Bradley (10:05)

Yeah, yeah. And change is complicated. We humans have a stress response when our norms are disrupted, when our routines and our responsibilities and the relationships, when all that is shifting, the brain goes into a different mode and we all do it a little differently. So that's why having your training is important.


to not just treat everybody like, you're at week two of this event, therefore. It's not like that. It's a really deep human skill. And what could be happening is you could be connecting, the client could be connecting with someone who gets them. And that lowers that stress level. And you could understand that


the way they were before when they were your client is not how they are right now.


Abbey Henderson (11:04)

Mm. Yeah, that that's really important to remember. I think whether it's your fan, whether it's your client, in my case, or if you see family members going through big changes, like, I think that's something important to remember for all of us, because it affects the whole community someone is in.



You're absolutely right. There's a ripple effect. So we have to study the family dynamics. When one person goes through a major change, everyone has an adjustment in time. So we've learned through some really great scientists how to lower our own or our client's stress level. It's a mindset reset. Dr. Carol Dweck, Dr. Kelly McGonigal,


Abbey Henderson (11:25)

Mm -hmm.


Susan Bradley (11:52)

These are people that gave us practical information that we can weave into the relationship that you have with a client. And you're not becoming their therapist. You're not going to do something way out of your norm. It's just good, universal human stuff.


Abbey Henderson (12:04)

Mm -hmm.


So if a friend or a client is approaching a life change, sort of that beginning stage, what tips would you give them in terms of maybe how to not step in the, step on the landmines, I guess I might say.


Susan Bradley (12:36)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The first thing I would do is help them name it.


Abbey Henderson (12:44)

Mmm.


Susan Bradley (12:45)

It's a transition. I have a good friend who left a large company to start her own company and the stock options that she was using to redo her life went down the sewer in 2008. Her timing was just perfectly horrible. And she had to shuffle all kinds of things.


She was in a transition before, but now she's in a tough one. As soon as we mentioned transition, it gave her a new platform to stand on. So what is a transition? Tell me more about that. So you tell someone that there are kind of stages. There's the before, where we can do some things to prepare. There's the ending, when all the pieces need to get put back together. And then to help them understand, there'll be a time for adjustment.


Abbey Henderson (13:20)

Hmm.


Susan Bradley (13:42)

and will stick with you during that time period. And that can last years. Some transitions, we mark transition time periods around five years, but it could take longer. Most widows would talk about a five year time period when they look back. It's hard to see when you're in it. Retirement has an implied three years. Now these are just,


Abbey Henderson (14:06)

Mm.


Susan Bradley (14:12)

It's just data, experiences, it's all individual. But some things can take eight, nine years, complicated family situations, you know, to deal with all the pieces. So it's about giving yourself some grace. Be kind to yourself. Listen to advice. It's okay that you don't know what to do. That's normal. So just pause. You'll figure it out.


Abbey Henderson (14:13)

Mm -hmm.


Susan Bradley (14:41)

you hire the right person, they help you figure it out. But you don't have to know everything right away. In fact, you can't see everything right away.


Abbey Henderson (14:51)

Yeah, I love what you just said about pausing, because I feel like sometimes people think they can rush through all of this, and oftentimes it's the worst moment to rush a decision of any sort. And I think that's one of your tools really speaks to that when you divide the to -do list into different time periods of when to do it.


Susan Bradley (15:17)

Thank you. Yeah, it was important to figure that out because when I was writing the book, I was trying to see into the situation and I was looking at it from a financial literacy point of view because that's what I knew. What I didn't know then was transition literacy and that's quite different and timelines change.


And this idea of pause, you need to kind of get a feel for when you need to pause over and over again. It's not one time. Transitions take a long time. And so many little things can trigger a stress response. And you don't want to make long -term life -altering decisions.


Abbey Henderson (15:54)

Mm -hmm.


Susan Bradley (16:07)

when you have stress brain or the amygdala, the short -term fear -based kind of part of the brain. When you see it, that's when you pause. And you have to, you and your team are trained to see it. Most people can't see it. And so you, then you can help them be productive and safe in pausing. It's, that can be tricky sometimes, you know that.


Abbey Henderson (16:37)

I mean, I can relate. If I'm in a stressful situation, I do want to get to the other side. So I can understand the impulse to try to rush through things, but I have rarely seen that work out for the best.


Susan Bradley (16:52)

Yeah, yeah. Some people want to take care of every single detail before they deal with how they feel. We call them gunners. They just, bam, plow through it. And then they kind of check out and they have to live with all those decisions. Many of them, you don't turn around and say, my bad, let's do something else. You're there. And then you have to deal with


Abbey Henderson (17:00)

Yes.


Okay.


Susan Bradley (17:21)

with that too. We call it from the financial planner point of view, you probably remember, we say, is the client stuck or do they need to rest? Because sometimes people become immobilized, but they have to do something. Then they're stuck because there's some timeline, some corporate or government or timeliness, they have to move. So you get them safely through that and then let them


Abbey Henderson (17:32)

Mm.


Susan Bradley (17:51)

and help them rest.


Abbey Henderson (17:53)

Hmm. Could you say a little bit, the other concept that I think is so useful and will resonate with people, could you say a little bit about looking at things from the balcony?


Susan Bradley (18:03)

yeah, the balcony. You know where that came from? That came from Harvard in your backyard. Harvard Business School looked at why change management was so difficult. They had had a fairly shockingly high failure rate in their own words. And they realized there was a difference between a technical challenge and an adaptive challenge.


Abbey Henderson (18:11)

Mm -hmm.


Susan Bradley (18:32)

when you as a financial planner are prescribing what to do, it's boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. You've done it over and over and it's details and you could, not your firm, but people would rush through it. The balcony is what they came up with at Harvard, which was to step away from the details, step away from the doing, try and get a big broad view of the overall landscape.


and to see the different pieces. So anytime you're moving through a transition and you hit a challenge and you, er, you know, I thought I was done with this kind of, the concept is to step back, take a bigger view. You may find a very different approach to get you where you want to go than what you can see when you're in the details.


Abbey Henderson (19:28)

And I love it, that fits right in with the pause thing, because it's almost a way to kind of take a pause.


Susan Bradley (19:33)

Yes, yeah, yeah, it's good language for that. And then what we had to do is think about, well, what do you do in the balcony? So you look, but then what? Then what we had to do, and we've done it for 25 years piece by piece, figured out when we see this kind of challenge, what could be an approach? So sometimes it's just communication. And someone was...


okay with everything to a certain point and their brain is overloaded. They're just tired. They can't go for it or they're really distracted. They don't have the persistence to keep, you know, the tolerance for the uncertain is really what happens. So when you're up on the balcony and you're talking about different ways to approach


Abbey Henderson (20:11)

Mm.


Susan Bradley (20:29)

the situation. It could be communication. It could be expectations have shifted and you thought by now or you thought this or you thought that. And just to name it, you can start to work with it. And like Dr. Carol Dweck, we would say, you know, you're just not there yet. You're moving in the right direction. You're not there yet. Just that helps to slow things down and calm the brain a little bit.


Abbey Henderson (20:44)

Mm.


And I think people feel a sense of, what word am I looking for? A sense of maybe security, knowing that there's science behind like what their brain is doing and how they're feeling and that it's not just them. And they're certainly not crazy by any means.


Susan Bradley (21:21)

Yes, yes, yes, yes. People do feel there's actually there can be some shame. I should be better at this. And women are great at shaming themselves. I'm just not smart enough. I know I'm going to make a mistake, so I don't want to make a decision. Men, and this is again generalization, are more hardwired to tell me what to do and I can do it.


Abbey Henderson (21:29)

Yes, yep.


Mm -hmm.


Susan Bradley (21:46)

And if I make a mistake, I'll clean it up and I'll move again. If I lose money, I'll make it back. Women are not necessarily hardwired like that. It's a tough space to be in. The science is interesting though. I was studying science as some science while I was writing the book. It was more in the behavioral finance realm, which is really important, but it does not.


Abbey Henderson (22:11)

Mm -hmm.


Susan Bradley (22:16)

generally hit transitions. It didn't teach me anything about transitions. And it didn't teach me practical application, but I had it in my head. So then I found from a sociologist that I knew that I was talking about something called social anomies. Like, cool, what's that? I had no idea. Anomie means a place without rules. Social means in a social setting.


Abbey Henderson (22:24)

Hmm.


Susan Bradley (22:43)

you are someone who doesn't have to apply the rules to you. You're bigger and better and you're the exception. And it's a hardwired part, excuse me, of sociology, but it explained behavior. In the NFL world, we talk about peerlessness. A professional athlete of that level doesn't have many peers, right?


Abbey Henderson (23:09)

Mm -hmm.


Susan Bradley (23:09)

They have the locker room peers, but they're friends and family, they're different. So you don't see it so much anymore. I think NFL players have just, they're great human beings. But in the earlier years, there was a lot of acting out and a lot of just silly, you know, knucklehead kind of stuff. And that goes back to this social enemy, peerlessness. But when you study neuro -psychology, we have Dr. Moira Summers,


Abbey Henderson (23:14)

Mm -hmm.


Susan Bradley (23:39)

neuropsychologist from Winnipeg. She's unbelievable. And she helps us interpret what's going on in the neuropsych world into the one -on -one relationship with a client. So much of science stays out here. We want to bring it in to the relationship with a client. You're acting as their, as you know, as more as their thinking partner.


Abbey Henderson (24:01)

Thank you.


Susan Bradley (24:07)

You have the expertise that allows you to be a good thinking partner, but you're helping them decide what's important, finding their own words, finding their way and keeping them safe as they go along. And there's a lot of neuropsychology in that, but it would be really hard to study neuropsychology and then all of a sudden do that in financial planning. So we're just science -based and we're very grateful for all of that.


Abbey Henderson (24:37)

So one thing I do appreciate so much about your trainings is that it does give financial advisors really concrete tools they can use with clients. But could you, in case some of our listeners are going through a life change of their own and would be interested in finding or learning more about the...


Certified Financial Transitionist designation. Could you just speak a little bit about the program and what's involved and then also tell us or tell our listeners how they could find someone that has this training.


Susan Bradley (25:17)

Thank you. Yeah, in the beginning, we didn't set out to be an institute and to have a certification. That evolved. And it was really after 2008, the financial crisis, that we realized, wow, we just need to get on it. And we had tools that were coming along. So our community of financial planners who had been members of our group voted.


to have a full -on certification, which is a really big commitment. It's not a drive -by. It takes 12 months. It takes four to six hours a month. And it's experiential. So the people that are candidates have to do work with their clients and upload their experience, certainly keeping privacy.


Abbey Henderson (25:53)

Mm -mm.


Mm -hmm.


Susan Bradley (26:10)

So they go through a program where they meet monthly, they work with coaches, they get feedback, and then they have to take an exam. And it is a six hour exam. And then after that, we want people to stay current. So we have CE requirements and we're pretty good with CEs. All the other like certified financial planning, that board, they always approve our CEs and all, but we...


have never stopped developing. And I can't explain that except that it just kept being needed. So like pandemic gave us a whole new view and we rearranged some things. So to find someone, it's actually still at the suddenmoney .com website. That's our public facing website and our


Abbey Henderson (26:50)

Mm -hmm.


Susan Bradley (27:09)

People who have completed the training are listed there. We do get, and there is a chat box there, we do get requests, all kinds of interesting requests. And I tried to answer those because that's how I learned.


Abbey Henderson (27:26)

Mm -hmm.


Susan Bradley (27:27)

But if not me, we have coaches and we have faculty. So you can also put in a request in the chat. Maybe you're just not even sure if you need a certified financial transitionist or you have a specific question. Lottery winners tend to like that because it gives them the privacy. They don't have to say who they are.


Abbey Henderson (27:49)

Right. Right.


Susan Bradley (27:51)

And we respect that too, you know? That's actually one of the harder ways to have a windfall. That's a tough one.


Abbey Henderson (27:59)

interesting. Say more about that.


Susan Bradley (28:02)

You know, you've all of a sudden you're the one person out of gazillions and you're getting this money and it has taxation that people aren't used to. The way you claim the money, every state is different. What happens in that first year? How do you maintain some order and privacy? People want to share, but how do you share?


We usually spend months on that before someone claims so that they get a sense of it because it can be more than a sideshow in the first couple and it's exhausting and they're typically sleep deprived for the first couple weeks or for first couple months and that's no way to make important decisions. So it's tough.


Abbey Henderson (28:36)

Mmm.


And that's, you know, that's I think an important tip for lottery winners that just to draw attention to what you said. Find help before you claim. Don't try not to do it. I mean, afterwards is better than not at all, but sleep out before. Yeah.


Susan Bradley (29:06)

Yeah.


Yeah, find help before you claim in and set up your inner circle so you have people to talk to. Talking is important. Community is important. You don't want to be isolated.


Abbey Henderson (29:24)

So I'm thrilled that your trainings continue and evolve. My team member here at Abaris is part of one of your trainings, I think, as we speak. So I hope that our listeners will consider going to the website and looking at the list so they can work with a certified financial transitionist. And also, if we have other advisors out there listening, it's a great program.


Susan Bradley (29:33)

You heard him.


Abbey Henderson (29:53)

great toolbox to have. Of course. So since we're getting to the end, what would you like our listeners to take away from this episode more than anything?


Susan Bradley (29:56)

Thank you.


would like to see a cultural shift which starts with an individual and to look at change and transition because it happens. It's happened in your life. If you're able to listen to this, you've had them. If you're still alive to listen to this, you're going to have some more. So I would like people to approach it with allowing the complexity to be the complexity. Deal with it, but don't miss the possibilities.


Abbey Henderson (30:25)

Yep.


Susan Bradley (30:36)

These are opportunities to transform your life into what you want next. So don't miss that opportunity.


Abbey Henderson (30:36)

Mm.


I love that. What a perfect way to wrap up the episode. So Susan, if people want to learn more about you, you mentioned it earlier, but tell us again where they can find more information about your institute and also about you.


Susan Bradley (30:50)

Thank you, Abbey.


SuddenMoney.com would be a good start and if there's something personal, you can always try the chat. You know, if I'm not traveling, I'm usually available, but we have a great staff too.


Abbey Henderson (31:16)

Thank you so much for joining today. It was such a nice opportunity for us to reconnect. It's been a little bit since we've seen each other on video. So thank you so much for joining.


Susan Bradley (31:24)

Yes.


Thank you, Abbey. It's an honor to be here. I really appreciate the work you and your team are doing.


Abbey Henderson (31:35)

Thank you so much.


Wendy (31:36)

So Abbey, how do people get in touch with you if they want to learn more about you?


Abbey Henderson (31:41)

So there's the website, www.abarisfinancialgroup.com. You can reach me at email, abbey@abarisfinancialgroup.com, and that's A -B -B -E -Y. I'm also on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all the places.


Wendy (31:58)

All the places. Okay, well thank you both so much. Thank you for listening today. Please like, follow, and share this podcast with your friends. Until next time, I'm Wendy McConnell.


ProudMouth (32:13)

Thank you for listening to the Wealth Beyond Riches podcast. Be sure to visit our website at www.abarisfinancialgroup.com. And don't forget to click the follow button to be notified when new episodes become available. The opinions voiced in Wealth Beyond Riches with Abbey Henderson are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine what may be appropriate for you, consult with your attorney, accountant, financial or tax advisor.


prior to investing. Guests on Wealth Beyond Riches are not affiliated with CWM LLC. Investment advisory services offered through CWM LLC, an SEC -registered investment advisor.