Discussing the "M" Word with Lori Sackler

Your Working Life with Caroline Dowd-Higgins

LORI R. SACKLER is a financial advisor, senior vice president and family wealth director at a major financial institution where she leads a wealth management group. Her team is dedicated to helping individuals and families keep up with change, satisfying their financial security, addressing lifestyle and legacy concerns, and successfully guiding them through life’s transitions. Sackler is a certified investment management analyst, a certified financial planner and non-practicing certified public accountant. She is the author of The M Word: The Money Talk Every Family Needs to Have about Wealth and Their Financial Future, published in 2013 by McGraw Hill and The M Word Journal: How to Have the Money Talk released in 2016. She is the creator and former host of the radio show “The M Word” on WOR in New York City.

Book: THE M WORD: The Money Talk Every Family Needs to Have about Wealth and Their Financial Future, 2nd edition

MONEY. It’s still the elephant in every family’s living room. Planning for a family’s future often prompts a total breakdown in communication, causing lasting damage. Statistics show most families fail to successfully transfer assets from one generation to the next, resulting in not only a loss of assets but a loss of family harmony.

In THE M WORD (Meridian Editions; April 4, 2023) first published in 2013, radio personality and financial advisor Lori Sackler introduced the concept of “Money Talks:” mindful conversations that help families communicate dispassionately about money matters through all of life’s transitions — changes in financial circumstances, remarriage and merging families, retirement, preparing heirs, and transferring wealth. Since she introduced them a decade ago, Sackler’s “Money Talks” have become widely accepted throughout the personal finance industry as important and necessary. Today, the need for improved money communication has even become a meme in popular culture, finding its way into films and songs. But increased awareness of the problem she highlighted still hasn’t resulted in widespread adoption, and the public discourse only touches the surface without providing real actionable solutions.

In addition, the dramatic societal and economic changes that have taken place in the past few years have made the need for solutions even greater. In this new edition of her classic book, THE M WORD, Sackler has updated not just her exploration of the problem but her solutions in light of the rising costs of living, the pandemic-related changes in many industries, the prioritizing by many young people of work-life balance over income, the historic levels of anxiety among our youth, the stressful polarization of American society, and the increasingly uncertain global environment.

THE M WORD will change the way families view, spend, and transfer assets, wealth, and family values. Readers will learn how to approach the thorniest of subjects without anxiety or stress, and families will reap the benefits of secure financial planning for generations to come. Using the author’s five-step action plan to successfully prepare for, initiate, and execute the “Money Talk,” families will:

· Understand why the money talk is so important and so hard,

· Determine the transitions your family is facing and the topics and issues that need to be addressed,

· Overcome the roadblocks that can keep families from communicating,

· Prepare yourself and your family — logistically and psychologically — for the money talk,

· Pick the right professionals to guide you through a complex financial world,

· Create a process for repeated talks that can keep your families and finances intact.

THE M WORD destigmatizes conversations around money and provides a blueprint for families to communicate honestly and calmly about financial planning.