Stansell Wealth Planning Podcast

Keep It Saved

• Cody Stansell • Season 2 • Episode 6

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0:00 | 26:06

We explore how a secure digital vault can remove chaos from loss, protect families from financial friction, and preserve stories that define a life. Gerard Ibarra shares the personal event that led to building Keep It Saved and demos features that turn intent into action.

• Why a centralized, secure vault reduces stress for survivors
• The real costs of scattered passwords and two-factor locks
• Who benefits most, from families to employers
• Key features: critical data, free accounts list, permissions
• Farewell wishes, contact groups, and prewritten messages
• Using photos and videos to shape your legacy
• Practical scenarios: disasters, medical needs, funeral planning
• Pricing, access options, and how to get started

Search Stansell Wealth Planning on YouTube to watch the full demo

https://keepitsaved.com/



To learn more about Stansell Wealth Planning visit:
https://www.StansellWealth.com
Stansell Wealth Planning
5550 Granite Pkwy, STE 270
Plano, TX 75024
469-606-2040

Speaker 2:

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Stansell Wealth Podcast. Cody Stansell here, certified financial planner and founding member of Stansell Wealth Planning. Thank you so much for joining us. I have a special guest for us here today, Gerard Ibarra. Gerard, how are you doing, man?

Speaker:

I'm doing very good. Thank you for asking. It's uh certainly much warmer out there today than it was a couple of weeks ago, so I'm doing really good now.

Speaker 2:

Yes, so for everyone, anyone listening uh or watching, it's uh early mid-February right now, and we just got through the the ice. What do they call it? Dalaska is what people are throwing around. I think that's so offensive of people actually in Alaska that have six feet of snow and ice.

Speaker:

Yeah, like okay, let's you guys have t-shirt weather for us. Stop being such a wimp.

Speaker 2:

Yes, exactly. So I thought that was kind of comical. But yes, Gerard, uh, we're about to walk through. You have a company, it's called Keep It Saved, right? And we'll walk through the details. But I thought it would be great for my listeners, especially anyone that's ever been an executor of someone's estate, or maybe had a recent parent pass away that have gone through the task of we got a bank account over here and we have assets over here, and just the process of finding people's uh details and wishes. And I know you will you'll go into it a little bit more, but uh let me officially introduce you and then we'll dive in. I have a few questions and we'll just go from there. So Keep It Saved is a secure digital vault for family continuity and legacy planning. The platform is designed to design to reduce the stress and confusion families face during difficult times by giving them clear access to the documents and information they need most. Users can store essential items like wills, trusts, and death certificates, and also leave guidance for heirs, executors, and beneficiaries on how to access and manage online accounts after they're gone. Beyond the practical side, keep it saved also gives families a place to preserve cherished memories, letters, and personal messages, the stories and moments that help loved ones feel connected long after someone has passed. Okay. So besides that, of what I read, walk me through what keep it. Thank you. You you wrote it, so let's I don't want to take credit for that. Tell us what keep it safe is all about.

Speaker:

So if I brought it all down to a nutshell, imagine you leave work today or you're on your way home and you never make it home. Will your family know how to access your accounts, close out your social media, and honor your farewell wishes? And that's what we do. We have a legacy planning, family continuity planning, digital vault. All the critical data that you need to continue life, to continue moving forward, is stored in our system. So that's what keep it safe is, and what brought that about, if I can say that, is my brother-in-law passed away unexpectedly. So he's of the era where if when you're sick, you don't go to the doctor. Unless you're dying, you go to the doctor. So he was dying, he really was. Uh he had to go to the emergency room, and apparently he had an appendix that erupted. So he was he had an appendix erupted for three days. He was living with that. So they took care of him, they operated, and they, you know, he felt much better. As a matter of fact, 24 hours later he left the hospital. So about three days later, he started getting a little bit uh sick again, and he was starting to feel a little bit of pain. And then to make a long story short, after about three and a half weeks, he was sending my wife a picture of his hand, and it was completely swollen. I mean, it was like completely swollen. And I told my wife, I said, you know, you better tell him to get his ass to the doctor here. That is not right. That is just not right. So after about a few days, he finally made it out to the doctor. The doctor wouldn't return his call, so he had his wife drive him from where they at with where they live. They live in Salt Lake or a suburb of Salt Lake, so they had to go into Salt Lake, and the doctor didn't even come out to see him. He just told his RN to tell him to go to the emergency room. So he went to the emergency room and they had to do another operation, and then they found that he had pancreatic cancer. So they gave him about six months to live. They asked him, you know, you need to get your affairs in order. And then five weeks later, he was no longer here. So, with everything that was going on when they got that news, his wife didn't want to spend any time trying to figure out how things are done at the house because they've been married 47 years. And he just took care of all the bills, she did everything else. So, after all the grief and having to bury him, she was having a very hard time trying to get the accounts to pay her water bill, to pay the cable, uh, whatever uh bill she had. And she actually found the passwords to get into accounts written down on the desk, so they were written down, just hands handwritten on a desk, had the passwords, but it didn't say what accounts they went to. So after she was able to do trial and error, and she says, Great, I found one. What happens next? She gets a two-factor notification, say, We just sent you a pin. Just give it that pen, you could get in here. So she's looking at the phone that buzzed, but she has no access to it. So it took her about a year to get all the data finally squared away. And as of today, there's still one account she doesn't have access to. It's paying the cable. She just says once it runs out of money, it runs out, and we'll just go from there. But it's just too much pain for her. And during all this time, my wife said, wouldn't it be good or wouldn't it be great if there was a way of having all this stored in one location? And that's where Keep It Safe was born. So that's what we're doing. That's what Keep It Safe is all about, is uh helping families focus on their loved ones' uh memories, not trying to focus on what am I going to do next, how am I going to pay the bills. Honor their legacy, then worry about the logistics because you have all the information readily available to you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and that's a and God bless you. I'm sorry to hear about that. But yeah, we we all go through, you know, I've been married 13 years. And all the clients I sit down with, if they're married, naturally there's one one spouse that is the CFO of the family, you know, pays the bills, knows the money going in, going and out. And the other spouse, in my particular case, is kind of clueless, right? Like she couldn't even tell you how like where money goes and what we like where where's our retirement accounts? I don't think she'd be able to answer that. So, which, you know, she has her focus, the house and the kids and all that, right? And there's certain strengths that we both have. But then there's even it goes a step further, and you brought up a good point, like the password to her phone, even if the login, the username, the password, and these certain like social media sites. I know that's a big one now that if you pass away, someone has your password and username so they can go in and erase your account or do the things that are needed. So yeah, that's definitely in the in the tech age becoming more common as as a need and not necessarily as a as a want. Walk me through who do you see keep it saved is for? Like what type of person would benefit from this?

Speaker:

So the people who would really benefit the most are really anybody. Um, those people who it's more about thinking about your family than thinking about yourself. So, for example, it's for those individuals who like you and like me, a certain part of the family takes care of everything, but if something was to happen to you, you don't want your spouse, your significant other, going through all the pain and agony of how do I do this, how do I do that. So it's for individuals who really want to look after their families, who think a little bit more beyond just, you know, we'll let them take care of it after I'm gone. We use it specifically right now for uh employers that want to give this as an employee benefit as a perk, because you don't have to pass away the use of the system. If there's a tornado that destroys your house, for example, having all the documents readily available, and I'm not just talking about the insurance, I'm talking about, for example, the interior of your house, the exterior of your house, pictures, flat, a survey, a diagram, your elevation. Having all that information readily available will help the recovery process go much, much quicker. So for the employee, they don't have to spend more time out of work or thinking outside of work when they have a plan to say, okay, I know I have everything I need, I'm ready to go, and it allows them to get back to work sooner than later. So it's more than just that, and and it's also for people who want to continue their legacy. So I did my mom's gonna be turning 100 years old in a few months. I hope I have her genes. Happy birthday, mom. That's great. I'm telling you. And we did an interview of her, and I asked her questions like, okay, tell me about World War II, you know, what were you doing? When tell me about JFK, the man uh men landing on the moon, uh, Martin Luther King. And she was telling me, well, you know, these are the things that were going on. But one of the things that we always did at uh my mom's house, we would all get together there because she was always cooking. You know, she was making these homemade tortillas, she was making uh Mexican food, you know, rice beans, uh, fajitas. And I asked her, I said, you know, and then we had the family back there, and said, okay, I asked her the question. I said, so tell us why did you like to cook so much? And without missing a beat, she just looked at me and says, I didn't. And everybody behind me started yelling and stuff, and I said, Shut the hell up. We're in the middle of an interview. So I asked her, I said, So what do you mean you didn't like to cook? I mean, you were always cooking for us. We'd come over, my friends would come over, and you're always cooking. She says, Well, you didn't know how to cook, no one else was gonna cook, so I cooked. And it was you just matter of fact, and we were just all stunned. So something like that that we never knew is now recorded. So, and keep it safe, you have a session called Videos and Pictures, you could actually store that information so that generations later could see that. I'm not talking about their her grandchildren, I'm talking about her great-great-great-grandchildren. You can leave messages such as when I graduated high school or when I first got married, just so that you have an idea of who your great-great-grandparents were. So it's about legacy planning as well. It fits anybody who wants to really continue the legacy and be prepared in case of an emergency.

Speaker 2:

Wow. That's yeah, that's great. So that that's a great segue. Walk me through, if you don't mind sharing your screen and kind of give us a little demo of, you know, realistically what does it look like? How does it operate? What are the capabilities here?

Speaker:

Let me know if you see the screen.

Speaker 2:

I can see it. And real quick, yeah, if you're listening to the podcast, you may you may want to pause and switch over to watching it on YouTube. So if you just search Stansell Wealth Planning on YouTube, a podcast, uh, it'll come up. So yeah, we're about to go over a visual, so listeners may want to become viewers. Go ahead, Gerard.

Speaker:

Certainly, thank you. So when you log on, and by the way, everything is uh just so that you know, this is uh more secure than a a uh like a digital Dropbox or a Google Drive. Uh we use the entire platform was built from the ground up with security in mind. So even before you can get onto your account, you're forced to do a two-factor authentication. You don't, you're never given the option to trust this computer or anything like that. So when you log on, this is your dashboard. And real quick on the top left, you'll see this little box here. It's called my vault. I'm 73% completed. I'm on the premium plan. I've got uh 0.05 gigabytes out of five gigabytes storage, and I have three representatives. To the right is this section that's called critical data. If you were to click on the critical data, this is where you would enter all that information. And I just got logged out. There is a timeout here, by the way. So give me one second here to get back on it.

Speaker 2:

If if I had a nickel for every time I had a client meeting, and okay, let me show you the screen, and I go to it and click on a button and have to re-log in.

Speaker:

Yes, so it was working just perfectly here. Give me one second, I'm getting the two-fact authentication. So at least now you know that it does work.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you're you're showing us the encryption here.

Speaker:

I am just showing you that you have to do this. No, that's great. All right. Oh my gosh. Now I had the wrong invalid code.

Speaker 1:

Sorry, one more try here. Okay.

Speaker:

So the critical data up here is the information where you would put in like your PIN code for your phone number, your email address, passcode, and your computer PIN as well. So all this information is very critical. And then, of course, to the right, you have the license, social security, passport, military ID. You could even upload a picture of the license here. So it kind of gives you an example of what uh you're seeing there.

Speaker 2:

You look good, Gerard. I'm sorry? You look good in that driver's.

Speaker:

Okay, yeah, that's me about 45 years ago.

Speaker 2:

Sorry, not to throw you off your game. So that I'd yeah.

Speaker:

So that's the critical data. That's something that when you set up your account, it'll ask you to fill that out. You don't have to fill that in. You could uh do whatever you want with this account, but under accounts, this is where, and this is free, by the way. This one section here is free. So this is what we're giving back to society. The typical family, when someone passes away, they lose on average $2,000. And that's because they know of some bank account, IRA, insurance, uh 401, whatever the case may be. So this is what we're giving back. You could go on and sign on for this portion of the uh keep it saved, and there's no uh there's no credit card required, so it's not like we're gonna bill you after two weeks for the uh yearly subscription, but you put in all your information here, banks, for example. You could click on here and you see the banks, you could edit them and delete them. And when you add a bank, and just so that we make this clear, the only thing you need here is the name of the bank. You don't need the account, the URL, passwords, any of that information. You could put as much or as little as you want. The thing that we want to make sure in that we force is you're gonna put in information, give us the name, because at least if something happens to you, there is a starting place for everything that tells you that you're doing there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And if I can at least you can at least call the bank if you don't know any of the other information, you at least know that they have a bank account there. Exactly, exactly.

Speaker:

So the one thing that really separates us from our competitions, what we call the farewell wishes. So if you go on here, you'll notice I have funeral organ body disposition, logistics, all the way to farewell messages. So, real quick, like under funeral, you could actually plan everything out, you know, uh what attire you're gonna have, burial information, flowers, funeral music, all the way down to prayers, chants, and religious spiritual leaders. Now, under pictures and videos, this is where you would put a picture or video that you want to use when you send out information, and I'll tell you what that is here in a second. So if I go back to this group here, you'll notice I have logistics events. It's also important. This tells you what are some of the things that you gotta make sure who do you need to notify, what tasks you have to complete after you're gone, what services you need to cancel. So it goes into real details of it of that. But what really separates us is this here contacts. You could actually put in contacts here of all your friends and families, and I'm not talking your LinkedIn network, but just people who are close to you, and you could group them by cycle, family and friends, you could manage the groups, you could add groups, and what you end up doing with those is you'll come to your farewell messages and you could actually create very specific messages like for your family, for your friends, for your coworkers, and your representative will just come in here and hit one of these action buttons and send the message. So you notice that this was sent back in September. So and this went out to um if you click on here the edit button, you notice that it's uh going out to my school's friends, and here's the message. If you're reading this, I'm no longer here, and I included a video, I mean a photo. So that's what you can do to really uh help in the process. And one thing that happened here that happened to me just recently, when my older brother passed away, we didn't have this product finished yet. It was about two to three months away. And what ended up happening is that I was group texting everybody about the funeral arrangements, and I happened to miss one group. And of course, they were a little upset, and I could understand why, but I just had a lot going on. So under the farewell section, you could actually send out a message to everybody, make sure no one is forgotten. So it kind of helps with that process in the end. Then, if you'll notice here, I have legal documents, medical. Here under medical, I have all my mom's medical information, which is really important because she's in a nursing home, so they need information. And the last thing I'll show you here is video and pictures. This is where I talked earlier about saying that he could put in I guess those videos or pictures of your family so that the loved ones could cherish them for uh years to come. And you notice here I have one that's called Birthday, and you could actually go in here and see what the that is, but and I'm not gonna show you on this because it might be eating up too much bandwidth, but uh it's it's all about planning there. So if I go back to my dashboard and I'll finish up here, and these are the people here that you give access to. You can give as much or as little access as you want. So if we go in here and view these individuals, you know, let's go into this one, the sun. If I go into edit, this is the person and it's the sun. But if I go into this little widget here, permission and access, if you remember critical data, this person has no access, they cannot read or write anything. But if I go to accounts, you'll notice that this individual, Jerry, he could see what's on the banks, but he can't write, he can't download. Under IRA's, he has no visual, he can't do anything. But for these last two annuities and retirement plans, he can actually go in there, download, upload, change passwords, what have you. So that's the uh thing about our product. It really allows you to create that uh legacy and give access to those individuals that need access. So my lawyer has access, my CPA has access, my uh my so my wife has access to the accounts, and here you can see everything that's going on, what they've been doing. So if something's taking place where someone's doing a lot of things, you could go in there and say, Hey, why you know, Jerry, what do you keep on doing here? You know, I'm gonna go ahead and revoke you. So you could actually come in here and revoke them. So that's it in a nutshell. Uh, I'm gonna log out here. Of course, you have the uh information here, all the data. You see what kind of subscription they have, and that's it in a nutshell. So hopefully that kind of paints an overview of what we're able to do with the product.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's incredible. And obviously, from a financial standpoint, you know, my mind goes to my clients, and I have a slew of clients that they're in their 60s. Yep, mom passed away, she was late 80s, and just going through the you know, she had two bank accounts over here, they had a piece of land over here, they had a CD, you know, certificate of deposit over there. Like from the financial account standpoint, this would be super nice from two standpoints. I'm just coming to the realization like this, so I'll just speak what's in my brain. You can obviously have this on you. You know, I want my spouse and my heirs and anyone involved, but then also, yeah, mom's in her mid 80s. Let's go ahead and start this for her account, right? And that way we can upload photos and go through her accounts and her wishes and just start. That now, that way it is kind of set up. So I can think of it as twofold. But anyways, yeah, as a financial planner, my mind just goes to the accounts and assets. But really, this is like a sentimental, you know, your wishes, your desires, memories, all the qualitative things as well. Whereas my mind goes to the quantitative, but it's really both.

Speaker:

It certainly is. That's why it's family continuity for those times that you need access to data to your accounts, but that family legacy as well. You store love letters, pictures, old family photos. You know, and you were you made a comment here, and during my research, I was talking to this uh lady who works for a funeral company, and she was telling me where people spend most of their time when it comes to funeral planning is in pictures and videos. She says they spend almost half of all their time putting together a slideshow of their loved one that passed away. So, you know what I say is if you have that, why not do it yourself? Because your family is gonna think of you one way, and you say, No, that's not how I want you to remember me. These are the pictures I want you to use. So be in control there. Tell them this is what you are, this is who you are. Don't let them second guess what. Well, I think he would have liked this or he would have liked that. No, this is what I like.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, that's a really good point. Um, last thing. So walks through just basic pricing. Where can we find more information?

Speaker:

So you could go to our website, keepitsaved.com, and you could go into pricing. It's ten dollars a month, or you could do one hundred dollars for the year, and that gets you the uh platform and all the upgrades that we go along with it. So it's uh very robust, and like I say, it's it's about the individuals really trying to take care of their family and loved ones when they're no longer there. I guess some of that responsibility falls on us to make sure that we do that and take care of our family when we're not here.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, absolutely. So would you prefer, would you like to give us your information where like where people can find you, or do you prefer them go to the website and submit an inquiry?

Speaker:

They could certainly, they could uh they could reach out to me specifically. So the email address would be Gerard G-E-R-A-R-D at keepitaved, S-A-B-E-D.com. You can send me an email, or you could actually go to the website as well. We have a contact, or you could call me at 972-696-9176. So three ways of reaching out to me. And of course, you could go into my LinkedIn profile. I think you'll find me there.

Speaker 2:

So what's your address? Uh, what's your fax number? We'll we'll go through all the means of communication. No fax number. No, I'm yeah, I know I'm joking. No, Gerard, this was fantastic. Thank you for walking us through this. I I think there's a lot of people that certainly benefit from this, either from the emotional standpoint, from the financial standpoint, or from both. For yourself, for the generation above you, generation below you. I think this is fantastic. Thank you so much for every time having me on your show.

Speaker:

I really appreciate it.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Stansell Wealth Podcast. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is general in nature and may not apply to your specific situation. Please consult with a professional before acting on any information shared in this podcast pertaining to financial, investment, legal, or tax advice. The views expressed by Cody and his guests do not necessarily represent those of Charles Schwab, Victory Financial Group, or any other organization.