Childfree Life by Design

Lemon Price, a civic leader, leadership coach, and women’s leadership advocate, explores how to turn meaningful interests into real community influence. She unpacks the difference between volunteering and nonprofit board service, the responsibilities of governance, and practical ways to earn a board seat. They also discuss building a leadership reputation, navigating evolving passions, and designing a life with intention and joy.

Explore intentional giving through money, time, skills, and meaningful experiences. The conversation covers choosing causes that reflect your values, supporting mission-driven businesses, testing charities before major gifts, and helping friends or family without creating dependence. Learn how to set generous boundaries, make local gifts responsibly, and create lasting impact through scholarships, services, shared adventures, and more.

Jordan Grumet, MD, an internal medicine and hospice physician, personal finance writer, and author, returns for a candid look at America’s healthcare machine. They explore corporate incentives, inflated drug prices, electronic records, and the divide between patients and doctors. The conversation also tackles direct care, insurance appeals, long-term-care planning for childfree adults, and how financial freedom can support a purposeful life.

Childfree estate planning gets a technical but practical makeover. Explore why standard trusts and inheritance plans can create conflicts, how to choose trusted decision-makers or professional fiduciaries, and why pet trusts matter. The discussion also tackles long-term-care costs, Medicare’s limits, Medicaid, insurance, self-insuring, and matching care funding to your net worth.

Money talks can make or break a relationship, but the real conflict is rarely about the price tag. Explore shared, separate, and personal finances, the surprising power of “fun money,” and why one partner should never manage everything alone. Discover practical rituals like credit report dates, weekly money dates, flexible spending plans, and a code word for pausing heated conversations.

Nobody wants to picture the version of later life where their mind or body stops cooperating, so most people file long-term care under "deal with it later." Jesse Vickey built a whole company on the belief that later is exactly the wrong time to start. The founder of Long Term What? joins Bri Conn, CFP® to make one of the most avoided money conversations feel clear and even a little hopeful, walking through what long-term care actually is, the four ways people pay for it, and why roughly 70 percent of adults will need it while the average long-term care bill already runs about $129,000 a year. For Childfree adults especially, who can't assume an adult child will step in as the default caregiver, the planning window and the health that lets you qualify for coverage are everything. The throughline is one Jesse comes back to again and again: the best time to plan is while you're still healthy enough to have all your options open.In This Episode, You'll Learn:What long-term care actually means, the two triggers insurers use to define it, and why 70 percent of adults will need care while costs climb around 5 percent a yearThe four ways people pay for long-term care, from relying on family to Medicaid to insurance to self-funding, and how to think through which fits your lifeWhy insurance can act as a psychological "permission slip" to actually accept care, when self-funders often deny it to themselves to preserve their savingsWhy a health pre-screen before you formally apply is critical, how a single recorded decline can follow you across insurers, and why your healthy window is the time to actWhat to look for in a policy, from benefit length and cash versus reimbursement to rate-increase risk and the new coverage that finally follows you abroadEpisode Guest:Jesse Vickey is the founder of Long Term What?, a company built on the belief that long-term care is one of the biggest untold stories in America. After graduating from Duke and beginning his career on Wall Street, he left banking to found two mission-driven companies, one using humor to teach college graduates the life skills school never covered, and another connecting busy families with in-home meal prep. Through Long Term What?, he now helps people cut through the confusion of long-term care, learn their options, talk with their families, and build a plan, guiding them through insurance when it's the right fit.Connect with Jesse Vickey:Website: longtermwhat.com YouTube: Long Term What?Episode Host:Bri Conn, CFP® is a Childfree Wealth Specialist® at Childfree Wealth® and Customer Experience Manager at Childfree Trust®. She specializes in financial management, life design, and estate planning, with particular focus on LGBTQ+ individuals and couples, drawing on her own early financial challenges and recovery to fuel her work in personal finance education.About Childfree Insights:Childfree Insights focuses on planning for solo aging and later life without children. It offers trusted education on financial planning, estate planning, and building support systems for people aging independently. Home of Childfree Wealth® and Childfree Trust®.Connect with Us:Ready to work on building better financial habits? Connect with our financial planning team at childfreewealth.com or learn more about estate planning at childfreetrust.com.Follow Childfree Life by Design on your favorite podcast platform and join the conversation on social media:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/childfreeinsightsFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChildfreeInsights/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/childfreeinsightsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChildfreeInsightsDisclaimer: This podcast is for educational & entertainment purposes. Please consult your advisor before implementing any ideas heard on this podcast.

Real-life tax horror stories expose the pitfalls facing childfree adults: fake write-offs, ignored IRS notices, passport trouble, student-loan payment spikes, and taxable rent from an unmarried partner. The discussion also explores marriage penalties, estate and gift-tax risks, foreign-account reporting, and why complete honesty with financial professionals matters.

They unpack how the tax code is built to reward parents and why that matters for people without children. They debate real estate tradeoffs like step-up in basis and when a charitable remainder unitrust makes sense. They cover Roth versus pre-tax choices, pitfalls of Roth conversions and backdoor Roths, and timing tactics using donor-advised funds and coordinated CFP/CPA planning.

Most people first hear the words guardianship and conservatorship in a moment of crisis, when an accident, illness, or cognitive decline has already taken the decision out of their hands. Melissa Holcombe, DSW, LCSW has spent years inside that court system, conducting the capacity assessments that decide whether someone keeps the right to manage their own life or a court steps in to decide for them. She joins Bri Conn, CFP® to pull these intimidating legal terms apart and draw a clear line between the reactive path and the proactive one: guardianship and conservatorship are what happen when no plan exists, while a power of attorney set up ahead of time keeps every medical and financial choice in your hands. For solo adults who may not have a default next of kin to name, they talk through how to build that safety net on purpose and how Childfree Trust® can step in when there is no obvious person to list.In This Episode, You'll Learn:The real difference between guardianship and conservatorship, why guardianship is best understood as reactive, and how a court process gets triggered when no plan is already in placeHow a guardian or conservator actually gets chosen, who can file the petition, what the two-professional assessment involves, and how the role can fall to a stranger or the state when no one you know is willing or able to serveWhy guardianship is so difficult and costly to reverse once it is granted, and what the ward has to go through to try to reinstate their own rightsHow a power of attorney for both medical and financial decisions keeps your choices in your hands, why it never requires a court, and why naming a backup is just as important as naming your first choiceWhat belongs in your care documents, from doctors and billing details to your wishes on treatment, facilities, who to notify, and even who cares for your pet, and how Childfree Trust® can serve as the power of attorney when you have no one to name by defaultExplore Childfree Trust:Explore Childfree Trust & start protecting your future today: https://childfreetrust.com/ Episode Hosts:Bri Conn, CFP® is a Childfree Wealth Specialist at Childfree Wealth® and Customer Experience Manager at Childfree Trust®. She specializes in financial management, life design, and estate planning, with particular focus on LGBTQ+ individuals and couples, drawing on her own early financial challenges and recovery to fuel her work in personal finance education.Melissa Holcombe, DSW, LCSW  is a Senior Advisor at Childfree Trust® with three decades in social services across child welfare, public schools, and guardianship and probate. She is also one of the nation's first Certified Veterinary Social Workers, with deep expertise in the legal and emotional terrain that vulnerable individuals navigate. She has conducted guardianship and capacity assessments within the court system for many years.About Childfree Insights:Childfree Insights delivers education for financial and estate planning without children. It supports people with no kids in making informed decisions about retirement, legacy planning, beneficiaries, and long-term care. Home of Childfree Wealth® and Childfree Trust®.Connect with Us:Ready to work on building better financial habits? Connect with our financial planning team at childfreewealth.com or learn more about estate planning at childfreetrust.com.Follow Childfree Life by Design on your favorite podcast platform and join the conversation on social media:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/childfreeinsightsFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChildfreeInsights/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/childfreeinsightsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChildfreeInsightsDisclaimer: This podcast is for educational & entertainment purposes. Please consult your advisor before implementing any ideas heard on this podcast.

There's a particular kind of quiet worry that comes with being Childfree, the suspicion that everyone else received some piece of wiring you're missing. Dr. Amy Blackstone spent her mid-30s certain she was broken as a woman, and she went looking for the research to explain what had gone wrong with her. What she found became her life's work. There is no maternal instinct waiting to switch on, and the majority of Childfree people she interviewed had opted out for a reason that genuinely surprised her: they watched their parents do it well, understood exactly what good parenting asks of a person, and chose to put their energy somewhere else. She joins Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP® for a conversation that runs from the political noise around falling birth rates to what the research actually says about regret, and lands on the thing that reframes everything. If you feel wrong, it may be because you've been measuring yourself against the wrong population.In This Episode, You'll Learn:Why there is no scientific basis for the maternal instinct, and how the absence of that supposed pull leaves so many people convinced something is wrong with themThe biggest surprise in Dr. Amy Blackstone's research, that most Childfree people she interviewed had good childhoods and opted out precisely because they saw how much good parenting requiresWhat the research actually shows about regret, why the distinction between Childfree and Childless matters so much, which group does report unhappiness later in life, and how that compares to the share of parents who regret having kidsWhy measuring your life against the standard life script guarantees you'll feel like you're doing it wrong, and how comparing yourself to the right population changes the entire pictureHow stigma around the Childfree choice has shifted over the decades, what today's pronatalist politics and policy fights look like, and why roughly a quarter of the country remains almost entirely underservedResources Mentioned: Laura Carroll, Childfree author and advocate who revitalized International Childfree Day: https://childfreeinsights.com/resources/podcast/episode-74/ Marcia Drut-Davis, author of Confessions of a Childfree Woman:https://www.amazon.com/stores/Marcia-Drut-Davis/author/B08429L4CL The Childfree Path to a Healthier Planet | Jay Zigmont, PhD, MBA, CFP® | TEDxWilsonPark: https://youtu.be/ltZpfHCpHPg?si=38LrZlkf4oMGWyE8 Episode Guest:Dr. Amy Blackstone is a public sociologist who studies and writes about reproductive justice, population trends, workplace sexual harassment, activism and other forms of civic engagement, power and politics, and any other topic that strikes her fancy, hits the news, or gets myopic dingdongs with too much power riled up. In recent years, much of her focus has been dedicated to the COVID-19 pandemic and what's been left in its wake: a silent but no less crushing aftershock, an illness known as Long COVID, that has claimed millions, snatching her from public life, while the world carries on as if nothing has happened. Her book, CHILDFREE BY CHOICE (Penguin Random House) enraged pronatalists the world over, a career highlight. Dr. Blackstone worked as a professor of sociology at the University of Maine for a quarter century and she now looks forward to a future of retirement and troublemaking.Connect with Dr. Amy Blackstone:Website: amyblackstonephd.com Instagram: instagram.com/a.maria.blackstone/ Childfree by Choice by Dr. Amy Blackstone https://www.amazon.com/stores/Amy-Blackstone/author/B07T7TM4DT Episode Host:Dr. Jay Zigmont, CFP® (he/him) is the Founder of Childfree Wealth, a life and financial planning firm dedicated to helping people simplify their finances so they can live an amazing Childfree life. Dr. Jay is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER®, Childfree Wealth Specialist, and author of the book "The Childfree Guide to Life and Money."About Childfree Insights:Childfree Insights focuses on planning for solo aging and later life without children. It offers trusted education on financial planning, estate planning, and building support systems for people aging independently. Home of Childfree Wealth® and Childfree Trust®.Connect with Us:Ready to work on building better financial habits? Connect with our financial planning team at childfreewealth.com or learn more about estate planning at childfreetrust.com.Follow Childfree Life by Design on your favorite podcast platform and join the conversation on social media:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/childfreeinsightsFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChildfreeInsights/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/childfreeinsightsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChildfreeInsightsDisclaimer: This podcast is for educational & entertainment purposes. Please consult your advisor before implementing any ideas heard on this podcast.