Episode Takeaways
Family conversations about money are rarely just about money. They’re about expectations, relationships, and decisions that can shape generations.
In this episode, Danton Troyer and Kyle Luetters share real stories from guiding families navigating complex financial and emotional dynamics. They explore what separates families who move through these situations with clarity from those who struggle, and why communication, flexibility, and respect often matter more than any strategy.
Key Takeaways:
- Clear, early communication helps avoid confusion and family conflict later
- Family meetings create space for alignment, not just decision-making
- How wealth is built often shapes how decisions are made
- Flexibility is essential; plans should evolve as life changes
- Respect and shared understanding are critical in multi-generational planning
- And more!
Connect With Danton Troyer:
- Moneta Group
- LinkedIn: Danton Troyer
- dtroyer@monetagroup.com
- (314) 735-9087
Connect with Kyle Luetters:
- Moneta Group
- LinkedIn: Kyle Luetters
- kluetters@monetagroup.com
- (314) 536-8297
Transcript
[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most with Danton Troyer and Kyle Luetters from Moneta Wealth Management. In this podcast, we help corporate executives and business leaders navigate the real life uncertainty around new financial life stages, from complex benefits and career changes to retirement and legacy planning.
Join us as we explore these career and life-shaping moments with our guests, helping listeners find clarity so they can focus on what matters most to them.
[00:00:32] RJ Malyk: Hello and welcome to Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most Podcast with your host, Danton Troyer and Kyle Luetters. I’m your podcast producer RJ Malyk. Danton, and Kyle, so good to see you. How you guys doing today?
[00:00:44] Danton Troyer : Yeah, it’s good to be back. Had some St. Louis Barbecue for lunch, so we were talking, I might need a nap in the middle of this, but I think we’ll be all right.
Kyle Luetters: And I am definitely not going to be getting a job at Geek Squad anytime soon. I’ll just say that. We’ll leave it at [00:01:00] that.
[00:01:00] RJ Malyk: Well, we did have a little bit of trouble. We wanna let people know that, yeah, Kyle had a little trouble getting hooked in and on, but he sounds great now.
[00:01:07] Danton Troyer : Happens to everybody.
[00:01:10] RJ Malyk: Okay,, so on this edition of Wit, Wisdom, and what Matters Most podcast, what are we talking about today?
[00:01:16] Danton Troyer : So today we wanted to really just share some stories,
this is why we don’t have a guest, about families that we’ve seen just navigate different complexity, whether as it relates to financial topics, obviously, but it always stems into other areas as well. So just talking through different stories that we’ve seen, and hopefully some people can relate to those as well.
[00:01:36] RJ Malyk: Okay, Kyle,
[00:01:39] Kyle Luetters: Complex family dynamics are one of the hardest things for anybodyo navigate and they’re hard enough on their own. You start applying some dollar
signs to ’em, they become a million times harder to navigate. So really in this episode, wanting to go through some of the things we’ve [00:02:00] seen, some of the successes, some of maybe the pitfalls, and just what were the lessons learned from wisdom as we go through some of these unique stories that we’ve been privy to over the number of years we’ve been doing this.
[00:02:13] RJ Malyk: All right. Let’s start off then with what patterns show up in successful families navigating this complex situation.
[00:02:21] Danton Troyer : Yeah, so I was trying to think of what we see across the board for families. I don’t know that there’s this one thing that everybody’s gotta do, and we’ll talk about some of this a little bit further, but the families that get through these complex situations, it’s communication and being able to have those sometimes tough conversations.
And honestly, I mean we get brought in half the time,ot that we even know what, but just someone to facilitate that conversation and lead it down the road so there’s not that, there’s just some awkwardness with family and money, and the more you can remove that [00:03:00] and we can be just tha. traffic cop, if you will, to help facilitate those conversations.
That the biggest thing I see with families is just being able to communicate generationally, what does this look like? Because especially with the more zeros and dollar signs you add, the harder it gets, also the more complex. And just the consequences- the bar raises higher and higher, the more dollars you add to the situation.
[00:03:26] Kyle Luetters: The stakes get raised. Yes, especially as the dollar figure goes up, the stakes get raised. And going back to the original question – patterns that show up in successful families, when we were preparing for this episode, there is one family I can think of that we work with very closely, and they’re wonderful people.
Mom and dad have raised four fantastic kids. Those kids are now starting to get married. So the family is growing and you’re adding in additional folks from outside the bloodline as a part of these conversations. One thing I think they’ve really done extremely [00:04:00] well, at least from my seat, is they are all very respectful of one another.
There is a very clear delineation of right now who’s in charge, mom and dad, and they brought the kids in early to make them feel the weight of wealth so that it’s not just a, Hey, you’re 25 now I’m gonna pull back the curtain of Oz and show you all of this stuff. It has been communicated over the years and mom and dad have been very intentional about explaining what this means and the responsibility that this carries long-term. And the kids, – I asked them for parenting advice personally – all the kids are extremely respectful. And
they get it. And so to Danton’s point, the communication’s very important. I think setting expectations is extremely important as well, too, family meetings where everybody’s in the room and not just, Hey, dad told me about this, [00:05:00] or Mom pulled me aside at Christmas.
No, every year at least, officially, we all get together and we sit in the room with the family. By the way, there are other family meetings going on throughout the year, but at least once a year we all come together and basically discuss the family’s business, if you will. So that was one thing that I thought was extremely successful, and these folks are very clearly passing on this wealth to the second generation in a very tax-efficient way, but also a very responsible way to where the, you don’t really see a bad egg in the carton, so to speak.
[00:05:39] RJ Malyk: Okay. Then how did their approach with the decisions, how did that differ than other situations you’ve dealt with?
[00:05:51] Kyle Luetters: I think Danton and I have both been in situations where we’ve seen wealth appear out of nowhere, and [00:06:00] in this instance that I’m thinking of, and other instances when it is communicated well in advance, and what the weight of this means, and having a set of values around that too. And communicating the values well before you communicate specific dollar figures, that I’ve seen make a.big difference. And basically like having a framework to drive this wealth down instead of, boom, there it is. Now what do we do?
[00:06:28] Danton Troyer : Yeah, and I mean there’s so many just variables that go into how these families are making decisions, and part of our job too is to understand how they’re making these decisions and what those inputs were.
As Kyle’s example, if it was a family that all of a sudden just had wealth that didn’t before, they’re gonna be making decisions much differently than a family that grew up with money and just saw how that life worked. And so we’ve seen that time and time again where you know, there’s an inheritance or you know, it was just the first [00:07:00] generation that got to college, worked really hard and like actually came into some decent money through their hard work as well.
So that how they got their money definitely plays a very strong role in how they’re making those decisions as well. And so that’s one of the unique things we’re able to do. Maybe share some perspective from both sides with both sides, because neither one’s right or wrong necessarily, but there’s just a different mindset and thought about how they’re making those decisions.
And so I think taking a step back sometimes and thinking about what is influencing those decisions really helps people versus just going in like this is the way we do things. It
probably is the right thing because that’s your bias and you’re gonna feel most comfortable there, but at least thinking about a different way of doing things is huge.
[00:07:46] Kyle Luetters: I’m gonna piggyback real quick on something Danton just said right there. There is a time and place that these approaches evolve. Okay. Earlier on, and especially, and I know right now we’re talking [00:08:00] maybe a little more closely about multi-generational wealth, but there is a time where there needs to be a sort of benevolent dictatorship at the top saying, this is the course, this is what we’re doing.
Because really what you’re waiting for on the second generation possibly is a maturity in that generation. And as they come along, it becomes less about a benevolent dictatorship and more you’re invited into the decision-making process. And so that again, allows you to feel the weight of some of that responsibility when it’s appropriate.
And I think that’s one big thing that Danton and I have both seen this, is that there are different seasons when different rules and different sets of expectations are required based on the maturity of those in the room and how we got to this point.
[00:08:50] RJ Malyk: So it’s important, and it’s probably a delicate dance for both of you to try to find the [00:09:00] history of the family and the relationship, the history of the relationships of the family, because you could walk into a minefield.
You’re not 100% prepared as far as how people get along with each other, siblings get along; is there a sibling rivalry also? Is there a spouse, an in-law, who is whispering in someone’s ear and is influencing…these are things, do you, are you aware of that? Are you watching for things like that, how do you approach that dynamic?
[00:09:34] Danton Troyer : Certainly just trying to get out in the open is always. It’s the best policy, but that’s not, that’s easier, especially with families,easier said than done, but I know I’ve been in a meeting where the parents have the two kids and they’re trying to decide who’s gonna be the trustee for taking care of everythingwhen something happens to them. And the reality is, that’s not a great job. Everyone thinks, oh, I wanna be the trustee. This is like this prestigious…
[00:09:57] Kyle Luetters: It is not a pedestal job.
[00:09:59] Danton Troyer : No, it’s [00:10:00] awful. You basically have to read the documents and do what your parents told you to again. So there’s a little bit of that, but also it’s not like you get to really make a lot of choices,it’s already lined out. You just have to execute on them and get those done. So I always think it’s funny when like siblings are fighting over that job. If I ever had that, I’d be like, you just go for it. But as a financial advisor of the family, I’m usually stuck with that duty, which is fine. So I mean, we’ve seen certainly
siblings,I won’t say duke it out, but I mean there was certainly some animosity there. But I think the way they handled it was perfect. They got everybody in the same room, they talked through it. They came to a decision and at the end of the day, it wasn’t what some people wanted, but they understood at least why the parents saw it that way and ’cause the other thing is, they’re gonna be gone and the kids are just gonna get the documents out and that’s what they’re gonna find out. Then you’ve basically set those kids up for a lifetime of hating each other. They at least now know the reason. They understand the reason. They may not always agree with it, but it helps them get through [00:11:00] that, especially when something does happen and they do have to act on those documents.
[00:11:04] Kyle Luetters: I’ll give you a personal example real quick. To Danton’s point, like because of what we do, we normally get tasked with the financial side of things for our families personally. And on our side of the family, my sister is in the medical field, so good news, you take care of all the medical decisions; I would be completely useless in those.
I will handle everything on the other side of the house. I wanted and requested at a certain point that my folks sit down with everybody in the room, spouses, so on and so forth, and said you don’t have to share numbers, but I need you to share your wishes with everybody in the room so that they hear it from yYOU, it’s communicated from you.
So that way when the time does come,. there’s no curtain anywhere. There’s no thought of, was this really what mom and dad wanted? Here’s a document, you can read it. That’s fine, genius, I don’t understand what anything that’s in here. [00:12:00] But if you still heard it directly from those folks, then it was a, if you have a beef with it, go talk with them while they’re still here.
Don’t, let’s don’t try to assume what they really meant when they’re no longer here to defend themselves or to speak on their behalf.
[00:12:15] RJ Malyk: Just listening to the both of you as you are talking about this scenario, communication and planning seem to be at the top of the list that needs to be done. Is
there an order that needs to go? Is communication the first thing you need to do? Or is planning the first thing to do? Or is it 1A and 1B? Can you play out what you think the perfect situation is as far as getting everyone on the same page?
[00:12:45] Danton Troyer : Yeah. I don’t think there is a set playbook for this.
Certainly in this situation I was referring to, I, we had a plan going into the meeting. But we’re flexible in that plan. I think that is probably the biggest takeaway is just having some [00:13:00] flexibility. Certainly having a plan is, I would say part one. Maybe the Part A though is understanding that we’re gonna change the plan., and then B, coming into the
family kind of communicating what they were thinking about why, how, and then getting some feedback and being open to that feedback’cause certainly, especially in that generational, they’re gonna know if you’re just telling ’em, this is how we’re gonna do it, that doesn’t feel good either. I, at least from a good way to do things – I’ve seen it both ways. certainly there has been the dictatorship and there needs to be a little bit of that, but certainly getting the feedback from the kids and understanding their perspective on it as well, and maybe understand why they wanted to be the trustee.
And also from our perspective, we’re able to share what that actually means and sometimes, oh, I don’t want to do that, actually. I thought it was something else. So to your point, that communication, getting everybody to the table and explaining the roles, explaining what they mean, but you gotta have a plan certainly coming into that, or it’s hard to communicate what that plan is if you don’t have one.
So coming with a blank slate, that doesn’t usually work either, [00:14:00] because then it just is haywire. No decisions could be made.
[00:14:04] Kyle Luetters: They’re almost intertwined because the first big step is to getting to the point of having a family meeting, and that requires a little bit of communication. That requires a little bit of planning and foresight, especially for those that are in charge, quote unquote, of the family.
From there, communication, respectfulness, I would say out of everything, respectfulness of everybody in the room, setting some ground rules. That’s a lot of what we help with in these discussions, candidly, is making sure that, I hate to say it, we’re like a teacher at recess, but in a certain way we are.
We do remember though, who the principal is. But we are aware of that. But making sure that everybody in there is getting equal airtime, so to speak. Making sure that everybody’s heard. If giving an avenue or a lane if somebody wants to talk about something, whether that’s in front of the group or maybe going back to, we’re spit balling here, but [00:15:00] maybe mom and dad later and saying, Hey, we noticed this in that family meeting and perhaps this warrants like an offline conversation.
‘Cause maybe they didn’t feel comfortable to say it, but communication and planning are really intertwined because these family meetings, these plans are ever-changing and they’re ever -evolving, not just from a legislative standpoint, but from a family dynamic standpoint. And that is why they’re never done, like until there are some finite things.
And finite things usually means death, which is not a fun thing. These are ever-evolving and things change. And that’s why the communication and the planning constantly change too. And that’s why I think to me, at least they’re intertwined.
[00:15:38] RJ Malyk: And Danton brought up a good point using the word flexibility, right?
And if it’s ever-changing, then you gotta make sure everyone is understanding that an. is flexible that we have to change. You just can’t say, okay, this is the way it’s written and that’s it.
[00:15:53] Danton Troyer : Yeah. as I was talking through flexibility, I mean, I think that is probably one of the biggest things, underrated as far [00:16:00] as just the financial complexity is, a lot of folks think they’ve gone down a path and that’s it, we have to do that. And the reality is no you don’t. We are awful judges of what we’re gonna be like in 10 years, like personally.lWe all think we got it all figured out, but if you think back where you were 10 years ago, you had no idea where you’re gonna be today. Like you’re probably pretty far off.
There’s certainly exceptions, but the reality is most of us have no idea where we’re gonna be in 10 years. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t plan. Otherwise, you’re just drifting along; you have no idea at all. But the reality is, there’s gonna be some variables that come up that we gotta make some changes and then move in a different direction.
So allowing yourself to be flexible. And we’ve been talking about a lot about estate planning because that is complex, but the reality is we have executives that need to make a job change and they have to move to a whole other city, right? That’s not very flexible, but how can we accommodate that?
And we’ve talked through my kids a senior in high school, am I pulling them out of high school so I can go take a job? That’s not an easy decision. It has nothing to do with money, right? But it [00:17:00] does, because then we can go back…if you take the job, you’ll be able to retire five years earlier…inda the pros and cons of what does this do for you financially?Is it worth pulling your kid out of a senior year? And that’s a huge decision to make. And really the dollars and cents, they matter, but it’s not the only factor at all. And I’ve seen clients where they decided they were gonna commute for a year. State-to -state commute, and so that’s a whole other decision and but the good news there is it’s flexible.They don’t have to sell their house. If the job fails, they can always just go back. That’s the hard part is you make all these decisions a lot of times you’re like, I need the financial numbers. But there’s a whole other side of this; we’re only in one input into the decision making process.
[00:17:41] Kyle Luetters: Very much like the dollar sign is not, is not everything.It drives a lot, but it is not everything. Danton’s example was very beautiful in the instance that are you gonna pull a child out of an environment that they were very happy in? Another thing that we’ve seen over the years and the way plans change is clients.,[00:18:00] I’m thinking of one client in particular, that when we started working with him, he was very leery of
charities. And so next to nothingwas being left in his plan to charity. Over the last five years, complete script flip, like the planning has changed and the m.o. of the family has completely changed and he’s communicated to his kids. He goes, uh, maybe I showed you some numbers back then. Not probably gonna happen the way that I thought that, because what I am gonna do is leave some money in this vehicle and then all of you are gonna get together and make decisions based on the family as to where you wanna give this money.
So that client had a change in their life over the course of five or so years. That something that wasn’t as important, I’m not gonna say it wasn’t important at all, but something that wasn’t as important moved its way up the priority list, and the planning [00:19:00] adapted to fit that because we found a vehicle that allowed for his kids to come in and act together once he’s gone, to continue on a family legacy of giving.
So there was some adaptability in that.
[00:19:14] RJ Malyk: So it’s safe to say that your jobreally consists of more than just numbers and that really reading people and guiding people to do what you know is prudent for everyone involved, in a way you, as I’m listening to both of you talk, I’m thinking they need striped shirts and a whistle.
[00:19:39] Danton Troyer : Some days.
[00:19:40] RJ Malyk: Some days you do, some days, you’ve gotta get the calculator out and you’ve just gotta throw numbers at people. And then there are some days you are like a psychologistor a counselor. How difficult is it? You’ve gotta read the room almost all the time with your clients.
[00:19:59] Danton Troyer : Yeah, and just [00:20:00] watching body language and are they engaged? And especially, we typically aren’t doing meetings by ourselves. When I was early in my career, it was just me and then it’s a little more difficult to focus on the whole room. But now when we’re working together, like Kyle and I will do a meeting together, I can sit back sometimes and look at how everybody’s receiving that message
from a body language standpoint. We can see like the son doesn’t, he’s checked out, he is on his phone, he is doing something else, and you can start to see what is important to certain people just based on their body language in those meetings. So yeah. I did have a meeting where afterwards they’re like, you’re kinda like a money psychologist.
I was like, that’s probably true. A lot of these conversations, we’ll get done and they’re almost surprised that they just had that conversation with us. Because it’s a very personal conversation that may not even feel like it has to do with money, but good news or bad news, pretty much everything comes back to money at some point.
And it’s, and I don’t mean that as in it’s the most important thing, it’s just it does dictate a lot of [00:21:00] our lives. So to think that the psychology of it isn’t going to be in there and all of this stuff doesn’t matter when we’re having financial conversations, just isn’t reality either. We do need to know those things, and we do like to know those things because it helps us just deliver better advice to the client.
[00:21:15] Kyle Luetters: You can’t see it right now, but there is one of those long couches for someone to lay on the other side of this. I’m kidding. I’m kidding.
[00:21:21] Danton Troyer : We’ll put those in the office.
[00:21:22] Kyle Luetters: Exactly. It does feel that way. And also too, there are a lot of smart people in our industry. Selfishly, where we work, there’s a lot of smart people, and I’m talking about the type of knowledge we get from books and just knowing numbers and everything off the top of our head.
What makes truly good and effective advisors, in my opinion is what Danton just said, is the ability to read and understand the room, pick up on very subtle nonverbal cues. I will say for the rest of my career, the most important thing I ever did was not getting a CFP®
or any other industry [00:22:00] credential. It was remembering back to a class I took in college called interpersonal communication, and that understanding people, having the ability to talk to people, read the room, help them see things in a different way
is one of the biggest things that we do. Because the money touches everything, to what Danton said, we all have ties to something with a dollar sign, like the way it made us feel, how we’ve seen it used, how we’ve seen it abused, the whole nine yards. It’s so emotional. That’s where a lot of our work comes in, trying to understand what triggers people as well as what makes them feel secure.
You hear a lot of the word security in our business and it’s a feeling usually, people want to feel secure.
[00:22:51] RJ Malyk: Absolutely.
[00:22:52] Kyle Luetters: And at a certain point, like Danton and I can show you all sorts of numbers on a calculator, but if you don’t feel that, [00:23:00] it’s completely different and that’s just goes beyond numbers.
Security’s a different number for everybody.
[00:23:06] RJ Malyk: Sure. Gentlemen, this has been an interesting conversation as we are starting to wrap things up. What, I guess the last words in this, what do you think is the
most important thing to leave a person who’s listening to this with? Danton? [00:23:25] Danton Troyer : I think. The biggest thing I would say is just don’t avoid these conversations.
e see that all the time. It’s just one of those things that sometimes it can be perceived as not fun to have these conversations, but most of the timet, it is not as bad as you think it’s gonna be. Most people are respectful and understand what’s going on and, and especially I just talk about the multi-generational, but most of the time there is respect there and there is an ability.
Where it goes wrong is when somebody’s blindsided. They have no idea this was coming. So I think overall, just having that communication [00:24:00] and then obviously being flexible in your planning, so that way when the big thing comes up, it’s always something. You’re able to pivot and you knew you were gonna have to pivot something, you just didn’t know what it was gonna be.
And when I say pivot, sometimes that’s a good thing, something worked out better than even intended. So it’s not always a bad thing, and I think that’s the problem is everyone thinks it’s negative and it’s not.
Overall, I think the two things we see, if I had to pick two from complex families is just that communication through multi-generations and then also just being flexible with their planning.
[00:24:34] Kyle Luetters: I think any lessons that we learn from complexity, Danton’s two points were really good. I’m gonna have to work on trying to come up with some additional ones. Yet I would say that families who navigate this well are opportunistic. And what I mean by that is that, that the tax law changes more often now than it ever has.
So the set of rules that are in place for a lot of this stuff from [00:25:00] the dollars and cents sign is constantly changing, so being opportunistic to take advantage of certain things, different opportunities that might present themselves.
And last, but certainly not least is it sounds so simple, but following the golden rule, just treat others the way you wanna be treated, especially in these conversations, because there can be a lot of emotion, a lot of passion, a lot of guilt, resentment, and pick any word that you want to.
But it comes back to treat others the way you’d wanna be treated; if you treat one another respectfully, these conversations through complexity will be navigated fairly well if we can level set on that.
[00:25:37] RJ Malyk: Excellent, excellent. All right, gentlemen, how about some contact information? Danton, we’ll start with you.
[00:25:43] Danton Troyer : You can find us and all of our podcast episodes at witwisdomandwhatmattersmost.com. And if you’d like to connect with us professionally, you can find therest of our contact info on the website as well.
[00:25:55] RJ Malyk: Okay. That sounds good. Danton and Kyle, thank you so much. This was a fascinating [00:26:00] conversation.
Looking forward to your next podcast, and thank you for listening to today’s Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most Podcast. Please follow and share this podcast with friends and family and until our next Wit, Wisdom, and What Matters Most podcast, I’m your producer, RJ Malyk..
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