Jamie: Welcome to a special bonus interview from “What Should I Do With My Money?” I’m Jamie Roô, and in our podcast episode Money, Motherhood and Menopause you heard from Dr. Kim Henderson, Head of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management Health and Wellness Education. She talked about the intersection of physical health and financial health, but we wanted you to hear my entire conversation with Dr. Kim because she has even more insights and tips to share for women at this particular stage of life. Here she is.
Dr Kim: So I am a doctor. I spent 20 years at Mount Sinai, uh, in the emergency department. I came to the firm during the height of the pandemic. Like many of our peers, they were looking for physician talent to help navigate these choppy waters. Uh, I came on as the associate medical director. But what we learned very quickly during the pandemic is not only did colleagues have questions about health and well wellness, so did our clients and we didn't have any great way to answer that. So, you know, knock on wood, when the pandemic, uh, sort of changed to more of an endemic state, I had the opportunity to move from a colleague facing role into a client facing role. So now I lead our health and wellness education for our ultra high net worth clients in private wealth management, answering any question under the sun from questions about longevity, helping people navigate devastating diagnoses, helping clients understand, you know, how do I take care of my elderly parents, providing education about children with special needs, because clients, they have real people problems, and one of them is health and wellness. And we talk about it early and often.
Jamie: Is it unusual for a wealth manager like Morgan Stanley to have a role like yours? Why do you think it was important for Morgan Stanley to carve out this role?
Dr Kim: Yeah, so I think it is an excellent example of how Morgan Stanley is here for the entire journey. They're not interested in being in a transactional relationship with the client, they deal with the good and the bad, you know, all of the issues. They're not just here to work on their financial wellness, which is important, but people have financial needs, they have medical needs, they have mental health needs, they have societal needs. Like a client is an entire person. And the fact that Morgan Stanley made the investment in the health and wellness piece just is part and parcel of the fact that we put clients first and we're here for, for all of it.
Jamie: Let's dig into that piece a little bit. Why is it important to include personal health and physical health and emotional health when talking about your finances?
Dr Kim: Because there is no separation between physical health and wellness, mental health and wellness, and financial health and wellness, it is all in the same stew. If you show me a client who is stressed out about their finances, I'll show you a client that's not sleeping that well. I'll show you a client that is struggling with interpersonal skills. I'll show you a client that probably has a little bit of high blood pressure because of all of that stress. It really does all hang together. We did some research early on our own colleagues, and one of the things that they say keeps them up at night or gives them anxiety is their finances. It is, it is not uncommon for people to be stressed out about finances. So if you are worried about that and that worry interrupts, you know, how you sleep, how you eat, you're not getting enough exercise, you're not doing all the things that keep you healthy. You're not gonna be healthy. You won't be healthy mentally, and your finances are not healthy. So, I'm working on a white paper right now with one of my other team members that we hope will bear out the fact that people who have a financial plan in place are more confident, they are more calm about the way things will be because they have a plan, right?
You people who failed a plan, plan to fail. We know that's true. So these financial plans give people the ability to know that everything has been, you know, worked out and that we know where we're going because that's in the plan. And then as a result, you won't have all of this stress in your life that can manifest as, you know, stress mentally, as stress physically, because you've taken care of the financial piece. It's all in the same stew.
Jamie: It sounds like that this isn't a scenario that's unique to people in a certain wealth level, right? It's not just people who, you know, may be starting out or living paycheck to paycheck or this type of anxiety that you describe can really impact people at any level.
Dr Kim: That's correct.
Jamie: Diving a little deeper into some of the demographics around this, do you see a connection between menopause or experiencing the symptoms of perimenopause and menopause and money and financial wellness?
Dr Kim: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
Jamie: Tell us.
Dr Kim: I, I say this all the time too when I, when I talk about this subject, so believe it or not, women, we think differently. We react differently. The things that are important to us are not necessarily identical to our male counterparts.
And you will see as women get closer to perimenopause and menopause, one of the, one of the first signs or symptoms that many women develop is a sense of overwhelming concern or anxiety about things that will happen in the future, right? This becomes paramount and front and center. Even though everything you know, up to this point has been going swimmingly, there is a lot of concern about what's going to happen to me when I get older? What is going to happen to my children? What is going to happen to my family? Like, just all of these new concerns that become more prevalent in their daily thoughts, right? And the, the ones that don't have a plan moving forward, you know, it, it's kind of like building a house with no blueprint. You don't know what you're doing, you don't know where you're going, and it is very, very unsettling. You see this with patients in the hospital, right? Many patients don't want to go to the doctor and get their blood pressure checked because they don't, you know, well, what if it's high? Or you know, what if it's not right or what if my cholesterol is not right, or what if I get a mammogram and I find something on it?
It's just this overwhelming sense of dread and fear of the unknown. And the best way to deal with those patients is to give them a plan. You're gonna go and get your blood pressure checked and your mammogram, and if the blood pressure's abnormal, we will put you on medication for it, or we will change your diet or we will address it. People need to know what is going to happen next. It is exactly the same with finances. When people don't have a plan, they don't know what is going to happen next, and that is the source of the anxiety and that's where the financial advisor's relationship with their client is so important. So I've said this before, financial advisors are like the doctors of their client's financial health, because the advisor is really many times the first person that will experience their client's concern. The family might just be like, oh, you know, that's just mom or she's, you know, it'll be fine. She's just, that's how she is. But the advisor's like, nope, I've been this person's advisor for 10 years or 15 years. She was never like that before. This is new. So what, what else is new that's causing this inflection point? You know? When I met her, she was 25. Now she's 40 or 45. So it, it really does dovetail with all that can go along with perimenopause. So you have a woman who's not maybe sleeping as well as she used to. She's got hot flashes. She's got brain fog. She might break out in a sweat while she's walking down the street. Like all of these things are very disconcerting and then you sprinkle on in a little bit of financial concern, then you have a perfect storm.
Jamie: How has our understanding and treatment for menopause changed and what's important for women to know now about it?
Dr Kim: So menopause for a long time was one of the great big black boxes of medicine, right? You just, you didn't know about it. There was nothing you could do about it. You just had to, as a woman, you just had to tough it out.
Jamie: Yeah.
Dr Kim: And that is just not true. There have been so many breakthroughs in therapies and non-hormonal therapies, and almost more important than the new therapies, the look back to the old information. When, when I was in medical school, there was all kinds of scary information that came out about women going through menopause that, you know, no matter what you do, don't go on the hormonal therapies because you're going to get cancer. They scared an entire generation of women from getting treatment because they had, in their mind, if I get treatment for it, I'm going to develop cancer. And all that's been debunked. So there, there's definitely a subset of women who are at increased risk for cancer, but not all of us. It, it, it just, it was, the studies were not designed well. The, the data collection was poor and the ultimate teaching was wrong, and it's been revisited. So that's number one. Number two, you would never tell your friend with hypertension or diabetes, you're just gonna have to deal with it. You never say that. You say, oh my goodness, you have high blood pressure. You should go to the doctor, you should take your medication. You should follow up regularly, right? You don't hear that with menopause. Because, because there is such an emotional component to it there is, people with menopause symptoms are treated differently. It's kind of akin to the way a person who has, you know, you're depressed. That's not so real, right? You know that you have, anxiety. No, you're not in the real column anymore. That's not true. And, and the reason why menopause is so complex is that it's not just physical complaints or just mental complaints. It really is both at exactly the same time, and it is important to address both the physical and the mental complaints in your patient that you're going to see regularly to make sure she gets better.
You would never go to a doctor one time in your life, see the doctor, get the blood work done, get a good report that, okay, you look healthy today, and you're like, great, I'm done. I don't ever have to come back again. I had a good visit. I'm done. I'm, I'm, I've, I've done it. No, that sounds ridiculous, right? Because medicine is iterative. Things change. You course correct, you revisit, you retest, and then you sort of go on that theme. So is a financial plan. A financial plan, like a medical plan is iterative. You start at one spot and then maybe you have a child or maybe somebody gets sick or you know, maybe you decide you want to move to a foreign country.
Like things change and the best advisors will change with the client and support those changes. So, it has to be an ongoing dialogue or relationship, like a doctor's appointment. You check in every so often to make sure you stay up to date and your plan stays up to date with you.
Jamie: That makes so much sense. What are some of the ways that you've seen in working with our clients who may be experiencing this or at this stage in their life, what are some ways that you've seen that they have wanted to change their plan or circumstances that arise, that drive them to, you know, wanna come back and address something with their advisors?
Dr Kim: As a woman progresses and, and she gets older, I feel like the, the clients that I've met with are very interested in what is going to happen later. In particular, women are very interested in who is going to take care of the family? What is going to happen if I need long-term care? Like these are the, the very specific questions they ask about, you know, what happens if I can't stay in my home? And, they're important questions because if you think about it from a physiologic perspective, nothing's a hundred percent in medicine, but typically women live longer than their male partners, right? They usually get married maybe she's a little, a few years younger, but physiologically, we live longer than men, so there is likely going to be a time where he's gone and she is still here by herself and needs to fend for herself, needs to make sure everything has been ticked and tied to make sure her healthcare is taken care of, her long-term care concerns, anything that needs to be taken care of. She may be in the position that she has to see to it herself. And again, this is where the financial advisor comes in with the updated plan. Right now, the plan is just for her. Before it was for him and her. Now it's for her or and her, her legacy and her dependence. Like it has to be a living, breathing plan to be useful.
Jamie: Yes. Right. And be willing to come back and revisit things as needed when circumstances do change.
Dr Kim: Yes, and it's, it's really a team base sport like medicine as a team base sport, you go to your primary care provider and she does your exam and says, oh, you know, I really don't like the way that mole looks. I wanna send you to a dermatologist that, that seems reasonable, right? Because you have a healthcare team. It's just like that in Wealthcare and it, it's like primary wealth care. You have your advisor who is your primary care provider, and maybe she wants you to get some more specialized information from an estate attorney, right?
That's part of your wealth care team. Or other people who have other areas of expertise to round out the relationship. Just like you would have multiple providers on your healthcare team, you need to have multiple providers on your primary wealth care team.
Jamie: Going back to this, the woman who is starting to experience or is experiencing perimenopause, menopause symptoms. We know that there's been a lot of progress in how we talk about it, how we treat it. I don't know if we would say we've, across the board in the profession, we've all caught up with the latest information. What happens if a woman goes to her doctor and she's still not getting the answers that she needs or they kind of adopt this maybe what we might categorize now as a bit of an old fashioned perspective on it? There's so much information available to us today. Some of it's reliable, some of it's not reliable. What's a good way for women who may be experiencing these symptoms who might not be getting satisfying answers from their doctor’s to get information.
Dr Kim: So the first thing she needs to do is if the doctor is not up to date or is not answering her questions, she can call me and I'll find her another doctor. You need to have a healthcare professional who is a partner, right? This is not a thou shalt do relationship, you know, this is, we will learn and do it together. So that's number one. Number two, women have to talk about this. You cannot fix anything that you can't talk about in medicine, in finances, in life. You need to be able to talk about it early and often to understand what's out there and really have an understanding that you're not alone in this.
I think there's a lot of stigma. That still remains around menopause because these things are happening to your body and you're, there's shame and, you know, lack of understanding and all of that, but the community around the menopause space really is growing. The first place I would look to is, you know, a trusted resource like your OBGYN. Like your primary care provider to get, try, um, trustworthy and true information. But this is a conversation that has to happen beyond the four walls of the doctor's office. You need to talk to your friends who are the same age, talk to your mother, you know, understand if that's available to you or other women in your life, so you understand that you're not going through this alone.
It's very much like the conversation that I had with my mother when I was pregnant with my first child, because I was beside myself. I was like, why? Why are my feet swelling? Like, why, what is happening now? She's like, no that's part of it, because if you don't have the conversation about it and you never know, that's again, like the lack of a plan.
You don't know what's going on, so you think that you're experiencing this by yourself and, and that's just not the case. So that's number one and number two. Number three, the, the other piece of vital information for, for these women in the perimenopausal or menopausal stage is that they have to, and it's hard because many of these women are type A go-getters. They're always, always on, always successful. You have to give yourself some grace, right? It's very easy to think like that for the young pregnant woman, right? Like, oh, you can't be running around. Tou are pregnant. You have to take some time. You need to, you know, you need to take it easy. It's important because you're in this phase. It's no different. It's no different, but there's always been sort of shame and short shrift associated with it. Like people …
Jamie: It's hard to do, like these women at this stage in their life, many of them are at the pinnacle of their career. They're crushing it. They're also have, may have children at home of various ages, maybe older, maybe younger, who need attention and parents presumably home and parents. I was gonna say, so they're sandwich in the middle of all these things. Maybe they feel like they have just sort of started to figure it out. And then Whammo mother Nature says, I'm gonna do this. And there's all these other things that they suddenly need to contend with and you know, take care of your body, eat the protein, get the steps, make sure you're getting sleep, like blah, blah, blah. And it's hard to find grace for yourself with all of those demands. What, what kind of advice can you give to the woman who's like trying, but there's like legit a lot of things to try to manage and, you know, care for including yourself.
Dr Kim: Right. And I've been a doctor for, for 25 years at this point, and in the 25 years I've been practicing medicine, I have never heard a patient come to me and say, Dr. Kim, this is the perfect time for me to not feel well. This is a perfect time to be sick like this couldn't have been be, you know, I couldn't have planned it. It's never a good time, right? Menopause will never come at a good time. But here's what I know as fact. If you stay on this planet long enough as a female, you will more likely than not go through menopause. It is going to happen just like the sun is going to come up there. There's no, there's sort of no denying that. Then the question becomes how do we set ourselves up for success?
And everything you just enumerated, even though it's not the sexiest thing. People are interested in, again, because these are type a, go-getter kind of people, they wanna know the best way, I need the best way to deal with menopause. I need the best, the, the tried and true, you know, what's the absolute a hundred percent way and, and medicine's just not that advanced.
Especially not as it relates to perimenopause and menopause, because it can be different in different women. Some women struggle with it for years and some women like, did that even happen? I think I was hot for a day and then it was over. You know, it just, and there other symptoms. Maybe it's less of the hot flashes and it's more of the brain fog or more of the difficulty word finding or more of the frustration. It can be different for every woman, but one, you have to accept the fact that these changes will likely come and prepare for them.
So how do we prepare for menopause? You focus on sleep. Sleep is typically the first thing that goes. Think about how you, how you feel when your sleep is disrupted, right? Not good. You're not, you're not having a great day at work, right?
You probably, you know, are not. At your best at work, maybe you're a little short. Maybe the fact that you can't get your computer to boot up right away upsets you. You know, it just, it, it goes into everything. So the sleep is real and you can't cheat sleep, so you might be able to cheat it for a night. A week, but eventually the sleep debt comes due, and unfortunately, sleep debt usually comes due at the worst time, right when you need to be on your game at a meeting or you're on a call or you need to turn something around and you just can't focus because you haven't been sleeping. Sleep is important. Water. If you don't remember anything else I say today, drink the water. And we're used to telling people, you know, drink the water if you're pregnant, or drink the water if you're… We are primarily water as humans, and dehydration will exacerbate all kinds of different symptoms like headache, like brain fog, like just overwhelming fatigue. If you are dehydrated, so you need to drink the water. You need to get your sleep. And believe it or not, those steps that are so hard to fit in are so important for the perimenopausal and menopausal women. Because being your best in your best physical state before you start experiencing perimenopause and menopause will lessen the symptoms in many patients.
And help you navigate through it, right? If you're going into menopause with insomnia and your diet is not good, you're not getting any exercise, you're not practicing mindfulness, it's only gonna be harder.
Jamie: There's a lot of good tips in there, Dr. Kim, we've got drinking the water, getting the sleep. Try to get your steps as best you can. And prepare. Whether it's preparing for your emotional, physical symptoms that might be ahead, preparing for the financial questions that may come up, they wanna talk to your advisor about and develop that plan.
Dr Kim: The last thing I would add is that the one thing that I would want every woman who's in that stage of life to do is to reach up to her collar, undo the bow and take the cape with the S off and put it on the floor. We cannot be super women all of the time. All the, we just, we just can't. And this, this is going to probably make my mother's ears burn, but it's okay if there are dishes in the sink when you go to bed. It really, it, it's, it's, it's okay if that happens. It's okay if the clothes are not folded up as soon as they come out of the dryer. It really is okay to give yourself just, you know, a little bit of grace.
Jamie: What a good point. We need reminders sometimes to give ourselves that little bit of grace. Dr. Kim, thank you so much for taking all this time to speak with me today and to cover this really important and underserved topic. I know I found it all so incredibly helpful.
Dr Kim: This is, this is great. Thank you so much.
Jamie: At Morgan Stanley, we have a lot more resources to help you plan toward your goals. You can find the link right on this webpage to financial planning for women in every stage of life, or go to morgan stanley.com/women. I'm Jamie Roô. Talk to you soon.
DISCLAIMER: This material has been prepared for general reference and educational purposes only. It does not provide individually tailored investment advice. It has been prepared without regard to the individual financial circumstances and objectives of persons who receive it. Please see our show notes for a full disclaimer on the information provided.
