68. Using Technology to Make Estate Planning More Accessible with Martha Underwood

Voiceover: 00:06

Welcome to the tech money Podcast the place where tech workers come to get smarter about their money hosted by certified financial planner, speaker, blogger and self proclaimed personal finance nerd, Malcolm Ethridge. Each episode aims to take you beneath the surface level, and cover traditional personal finance topics in a way that is both approachable and relatable, all from the perspective of the tech professional. Without further delay, here's your host.

Malcolm Ethridge: 00:38

Hey there, listeners, Malcolm here, and on today's show, we're talking about financial planning. More specifically, we're talking about the ways in which technology has evolved to help make things like settling an estate and transferring property to heirs much easier than in years past. The process of assets changing hands from one generation to the next within a family is what we mean when we use the term generational wealth. But in actuality, the next generation may not be equipped to manage the money that they inherit. However, it's also true that family wealth can be diluted as it is divided amongst children and other heirs, especially if each has a different stance on how to invest or manage their individual finances. And to make matters worse, if the proper legal documentation and instructions are not in place, it can be difficult for families to protect what they've worked so hard for in the end. That's why estate planning is so important. It provides a mechanism for transferring assets from one generation to another without costly tax implications or legal complications. By establishing an estate plan, individuals can provide clear instructions of how to divide their assets and ensure that their wishes are carried out in the end that can help ease both the emotional and the financial burden and create much needed peace of mind for all parties involved. So my guest today is Martha Underwood, co founder and CEO of prism, a company dedicated to leveraging technology to help ensure wealth transfers appropriately. At the end of her life. Her focus is on taking a creative and innovative approach to handling documents and assets using best in class digital practices. And with more than 25 years working in tech, Martha is putting her enthusiasm and passion for technology to work developing products and services that help people manage the often daunting and tedious administrative tasks that require attention when a loved one passes on. So with that brief introduction, welcome, Martha Underwood, to the tech money podcast.

Martha Underwood: 02:32

Hey, Malcolm, it's great to be here.

Malcolm Ethridge: 02:35

Yeah, I appreciate you making the time to do this. This should be fun. Oh, it's going to absolutely be fine. As fun as the conversation about estate planning can actually be I guess I should say it that way.

Martha Underwood: 02:45

Yes, indeed, it can be boring, but it's a needed conversation.

Malcolm Ethridge: 02:50

Yeah, well, I think listeners of this episode will understand what I mean when they make it all the way to the end. But I think your passion and enthusiasm for this topic also helps make sure that the folks in the back aren't falling asleep and are actually engaged in the conversation as well. So that helps to make sure that it actually gets across to the folks that need to hear it. But I breezed through your resume very quickly in my intro just now. What else should I have included about you that listeners should know? Well, something

Martha Underwood: 03:20

fun is that I'm a children's author, as well. Okay. A lot of people don't know that during COVID. While I was building prism, I wrote a children's book with my my little one. It's a Christmas book because he thought that Christmas was going to be cancelled because of COVID. And I was like, No, it won't. So we just started drawing things. And he said, Maybe we should make this a book. Being the entrepreneur I am I said, Let's research it and see how to do that. And we did. And so we created a

Malcolm Ethridge: 03:49

children's book. It sounds like your son might be a little entrepreneur too. Yeah, I'm trying

Martha Underwood: 03:54

to build to other entrepreneurs, because it's really about being producers. Yeah. And not always consumers. And so they see mommy do that. And I'm showing them how you can do it,

Malcolm Ethridge: 04:03

too. Okay, so you came right on into this episode preaching the sermon, I see what energy you're coming in.

Martha Underwood: 04:10

That's right, we talk about generational wealth transfer, right. But it's teaching our children how to generate wealth themselves.

Malcolm Ethridge: 04:17

So I mentioned in my intro, that you've been working in tech for a couple of decades, I won't date you by saying any more than that. But, you know, you've worked for some really big companies, right, like IBM and SAP and BBVA, and a bunch of other three and four letter, you know, acronyms and words and names and everything else in there. And these are companies working on some really big problems that require tech solutions, right. So what was it about estate planning that made you decide that this was the place you needed to take those talents and go solve a problem?

Martha Underwood: 04:51

Or personal need? Right? My parents are what 82 and 83 and they live in Florida, Miami, Florida, and I'm in Birmingham and it's So true when they say the parent becomes the child, because as a genetic Sir, I'm finding myself having to always get on the phone with them to help them to fight for documents, talking to credit card companies on the phone. And then it dawned on me, unless something happened to them. And I'm in Birmingham, and they're in Miami, like, how quickly can I get to them? And what documents will I need to be able to have quick access to to help them through whatever it is that they're going through. And so because of that, I thought of digitizing all of their information so that I can access it from anywhere, especially if I'm traveling, I can get it to my siblings to say, here's what you need to do from a health directive perspective, all of those things. And because in being in tech, I understand how critical it is to be able to get to that type of information quickly. Yep. So that's what really motivated me. And that's always what necessity is the mother of invention.

Malcolm Ethridge: 05:55

So you mentioned at the top of this, that you've got your own kids. And you mentioned that you're also parenting your parents. I'll say it that way. Yes, that's that whole sandwich generation gift and curse of being Gen Xers that I think a lot of people listening to this will identify with hear you say Amen six times and a few more shouts.

Martha Underwood: 06:17

Absolutely. Yeah, cuz it is difficult, right? Having to take care of your own children and have your own life, and your own family and husband or wife. And then making sure your parents who given so much I know my parents have given so much to me, have what they need, and I'm able to take care of them. And so I'm thinking about, if anything ever happened to them, especially when they transition life, I'm going to be grieving, the last thing I'm gonna really want to focus on is having to go rummage through a whole bunch of documents to find what I need in order to handle their affairs. And most boomers have their papers in a box somewhere, maybe two or three or four different places. And that's going to take some time to sift through. So I was looking at how do I make this process much easier for myself and others who are going to have this issue?

Malcolm Ethridge: 07:05

Yeah, in my day job as a financial planner, I can attest that helping clients settle their parents Estates is becoming a more and more common thing that we end up having to help people work through, I think you're being super generous and saying that their parents documents are in three or four different places, I think, double digits, you know, 1011 12 different places are really the answer. Yeah, especially where there's multiple siblings involved in one sibling has a piece of information, the other sibling has a little bit info, another sibling has a look, because you know, you had conversations with mom, my brother had a conversation with my dad, that my uncle told me something once upon a time about some land, we own somewhere that in, you're trying to piece all that together after the fact. And it just becomes a nightmare. second job, at the same time that you're grieving a loss of whoever this person is, as you said, so no, I completely understand the scenario that you're talking through. But to go back to that sort of origin story you just shared, as far as I know, you're not an estate attorney, right? Like your backgrounds, not in estate planning or the law even. So I understand wanting to build something as a solution for yourself. But still, why bother creating a product that other people use

Martha Underwood: 08:20

should make sense? I'm a techie. And I always want to solve problems anyway. Right? And I've done that for those large corporations that you described. And so I said, How can I use those talents for myself, and then also thinking about my sons and making sure that they get the wealth that I have acquired to pass down to them? Because we're a lot of us are doing the right things? Like we have 401 K's we got healthy savings. We have life insurance policies. But the one thing that's missing is we're not telling people where it is. We have one or two people that may know but that's being told in passing, like, how are we documenting and making sure we close that loop and share that information so that people can access it when something happens to us easily. And so that's what I was thinking about, like, I don't want my money to go to the government. But again, as a techie and working on the bank, I've seen firsthand how money gets left behind. Because a lot of people don't know about a sheet man.

Malcolm Ethridge: 09:22

Yeah, it's a curse word. As far as I'm concerned, it is a curse

Martha Underwood: 09:25

word, right? And what is meant is, is in different states, if you pass and you have a bank account, depending on what state you're in, the banks are required to leave it in that account for three to five years, they will rape it for fees, they will lend off of it. And then at the end of that period, it will go to the state and then thinking about COVID And it's a line in the state's budget line and they expect that money absolutely they do. Right. And I certainly don't want them to have my money. Just think about 2020 and COVID How many people unexpectedly passed asked, like, there's gonna be several states that get rich in 2024 and beyond, right. And so that's another thing that motivated me because I saw firsthand how much money flowed from organizations, from these banking organizations to the state. And I certainly did not want to be one of those people that have that money flow to the state, because I know how hard we work.

Malcolm Ethridge: 10:23

I wrote something a while back for the blog called how to keep your state from taking your money, I'll make sure we add a link to that in the show notes. But it's all about exactly where you're talking about that achievement process. And how the bank is disincentivized to help you find lost money, correct. So they are the registries for each state that allow you to come in and type your name, social, maybe any addresses you've had in the past, and it'll pull up information. But you've got to be super proactive and super accurate in your search to go and find it. Because as I said, states live off of this money, that it's expected that it's a line item in the budget that every year, we're going to be able to count on this much revenue from the achievement process that we can look for years out and say, you know, if we know 50% of the money we usually confiscated is the word I'm going to use? No, no, I know the folks that work in that business will have a heart attack, when they hear me say, if we get to keep 50% of the money we confiscate in year one and year four, we get to keep 50% of it, then we can put that in our budget and start to expect it and plan around it. So I'm with you, 100%. And I appreciate you bringing that up and us going on that. That little bit of a tangent. But to bring it back real quick, you were talking about the origin story of the platform. And if I understand correctly, like in its simplest form, prism is a digital vault, right? Where I'm supposed to be able to store my most important documents related to my finances and such right, that the story you just gave about your parents being in a different state from you and you needing access to their documents to do things on their behalf? Did I describe that appropriately? Or is there more to it that I'm missing? You

Martha Underwood: 12:04

described it appropriately, because we wanted to make it as simple as possible. There are a whole bunch of complex applications out there. And there are other competitors and different vaults that that are out there, but they're trying to help you manage your life. Prison doesn't want to do that. What prison want to focus on is making sure you have your trusted people know where your critical documents are in an emergency, they can get to it quickly. It's as simple as that. Yeah. And the other thing is not only documents actually, as I think about this, it's also where is your money, because one of the unique things about prism is think about mint.com, where you can centralize all your bank accounts in one place. So we use that model, and use an asset aggregator to be able to pull in all of those bank account informations. Because what a lot of people don't know is estate planning, estate attorneys typically have to subpoena within a 20 mile radius of your home all banks, if someone doesn't know where you bank to find where your assets are, right? And that's one of the things that we want to avoid. We want to be able to share, this is where all of my money is. This is where my properties are. This is this land in North Carolina, that I told you know, your brother about? Yeah, but I didn't tell you about. And then you're all the documents. And so as a family, you can go to one place and see everything and be able to handle it appropriately.

Malcolm Ethridge: 13:28

So is this vault, sort of set it and forget it type of strategy? Am I Am I having to come back in there and make changes on a regular basis? Or update information? Or how do I interact with it?

Martha Underwood: 13:40

Sure, what we say is we'll send you messages twice a year for you to check on it. But really, it's you set this up, you put all your information in, it might take you but it takes you about three to four minutes to set the account up. Then as you gather everything and load it in, it's pretty maybe about an hour for you to do all that if you have already prepped and have everything there. Yep. And then from that point, you just forget it. But we will send you a message every quarter, to just prompt you to say Has anything changed. Because we know that life moves at the speed of change. And it's always changing. But prism isn't made for you to put everything in there. It's made for these critical documents. So we would recommend that you check it twice a year to make sure that any big things that may have changed, is included in there.

Malcolm Ethridge: 14:26

Got it. So another thing that comes to mind as you're talking about this, I'm putting my most precious documents into this vault, right and I'm syncing it to the cloud, I assume and it's there until I need it. Hopefully 10s of years down the road right? decades in the future. Wouldn't security be an issue here? Like why would I trust a digital safe instead of storing you know, physical paper in a safe at my house like I can go visit it when I need to?

Martha Underwood: 14:56

Well for one natural disasters, so If something happened to those original documents that you have in your home for tornado comes or fire or hurricane, you can lose it. And the beauty of having me be the founder of prism is my background and experience in banking, I understand how critical security is. And so with that in mind, we approached it from that mindset to say that we need to have security as the forefront. So we use bank level encryption, we encrypt in rest, and we encrypt in transit, whenever we're capturing your information. And so that's one of our top of mind things because we know what type of documents and what type of information we're storing.

Malcolm Ethridge: 15:41

So end to end encryption, then end to end encryption. Understood. So since this is the place, you know, tech workers come to get smarter about their money, one of the reasons I wanted to have you on is that your platform, it sounds like allows folks to digitize just about anything, right all those important documents and makes it available whenever I actually need it. But I have to imagine the older crowd, like our parents, and grandparents would have a really hard time even listening to me talk about storing their documents in the cloud somewhere, right? Like just the conversation about quote unquote, V cloud, I would lose 99% of everybody you and I know above a certain age. So who is actually the target audience for this product.

Martha Underwood: 16:27

So ideally, a Gen Xers and women, okay, because, again, we talked about a little earlier, the sandwich generation, so myself, so we're tech savvy, we're comfortable in tech. And we would basically facilitate creating the account for our boomer parents and manage it. The other thing is, most women are caregivers. And we like to be organized. And we know that a lot of times it always falls on the women. And so again, because I am a woman, I'm thinking of myself and a lot of my friends, it's we are the target market, because we want to be able to be organized and have the time to grieve And take care of everyone. And then say, I know I need to go into prison and get all of these documents later. And I know it's there. So I don't need to do that right now. So it's extras in women,

Malcolm Ethridge: 17:12

I did get I mean, from my own personal experience, my wife is the list maker. And I'm the one who swears they can store all the data in my brain. And I don't need a I'll remember it when the time is right. Sounds like my husband, a lot of times I get there. But there's always that one thing that I get caught up on that just, you know, hurts my argument. So I take your point. And as far as I know, you guys, this isn't like in beta or anything you guys are already live out there, have active users all that good stuff. So if I'm listening to this right now, like, it's available to me to go and use, you

Martha Underwood: 17:48

can go sign up today. So we have a enterprise level version that financial advisors, youth and banks use. And we also have a direct to consumer side, but you can go log on to the website, and sign up.

Malcolm Ethridge: 18:02

Got it. So let's talk about estate planning in general, for a moment, I'm going to pivot the conversation in a little bit, because you and I in the past have talked about the fact that, you know, parents, grandparents, they can do all the saving and investing and planning and everything else that they want. But if they haven't done anything to mentally prepare their next generation to inherit those assets, right, basically what I was alluding to in my intro about why estate planning is so important, then they haven't really done anything to ensure that their assets actually flow to that next generation the way that they intended. You know, statistically speaking, that money is going to end up spent in under, I don't know, 18 months, I think it is more than likely. Yeah. Do you think there's a way to use a tool like a prism or any other form of technology out there to assist gen one and having those sorts of conversations with gen two and Gen three? Because that's another place that I, you see, I'm already adding work for you to do but like that's another place that I see as opportunity.

Martha Underwood: 19:02

Yes. So prison can help everyone talk about it, right? Because Gen Z, Gen X, millennials can say, Hey, grandma, grandpa, or parents, like I know that you have this home that you want to transfer to me or you have this healthy savings that you want to transfer. What does that look like? Where can I find that information? And typically, what we find is, like you said before, they don't want to store anything in the cloud. They are very tech averse. They don't want to have anything to do with tech. And so I when I'm coaching or talking to people who are trying to get their parents or grandparents on the platform, I tell them don't talk about the fact that they're losing their privacy, because that's really what they're thinking about is oh, I'm putting this all out there and anyone can see it. And what techies like us know is we can get information anywhere. It's really about consent. That's the key How do you make sure that you have a say, in where your wealth is going and give that consent before you can't give that consent? And I'll use the analogy of the Hey, you guys, if you have Facebook, or Instagram, and you're looking at the grandkids pictures, you have given those platforms consent to all of your data. So why wouldn't you want to make sure that you give the consent where it really counts, where you're passing on this wealth to the next generation that you've worked so hard to accumulate? And that's how we start to have the conversation and everyone is engaged, because the beneficiaries of it wants to know where it is. And then the parents and the grandparents who's leaving behind are making sure that everything I worked for is going to the family that I care so much about?

Malcolm Ethridge: 20:50

Yep, I get that one. from a logical perspective, I completely understand where you're coming from, from the perspective of a person who thinks in ones and zeros. My concern listening to that, as the 35 year old millennial is how do I have that conversation? How do I start that conversation with gen two, let's say my parents, right, without seeming like I'm trying to get rid of them, that would be the part that I think makes it a little tough, that using the conversation around this is you giving consent versus it happens without you, in the end, I could see that as a good way into that conversation.

Martha Underwood: 21:32

The other thing is, every family is different. And so it's gonna take one or two or three or four conversations, right. But the other thing is, a lot of our parents are, again, back to the privacy, because now you're going to see my wealth, and now you're gonna see my information. That's why in prism, we created a feature to say you can look, you can see it now. Or you can see it after I passed. And that's key. Because I have control as a subscriber, over what permission levels of what you can see now or later, I can say, you can see all my assets. Now, you can see all my property now you can see all of my documents now, or No, I just want you to be able to see my documents, I don't want you to see the property or my assets yet until after I transition. And it doesn't matter. Because we understand that people still want to be able to keep their privacy. And so it's how do we time privacy while also giving consent? We don't really smart, yeah, we're gonna leave this earth. And so it's making sure I can capture that consent, and then time when I can release that information in the platform. So that's one of our differentiating features from our competitors. Because we thought through that,

Malcolm Ethridge: 22:47

yeah, it makes perfect sense. It also, you already answered one of the questions I was going to ask from a, how does this work? Why should I trust it perspective, I was thinking about the fact that as I mentioned, like with financial planning clients in my day job, one of the reasons that it's so tough to facilitate conversations between G one and G two and three is I don't want them to know what's there yet, right. And that really gets back to the point I was making in my intro about the fact that like, if you don't mentally prepare your inheritors for that influx of cash before it comes, the percentage likelihood that that 18 month time frame that I was talking about those dollars flowing out, you've just increased the likelihood that that happens to your family, however, x, right, right. So that's my thinking about it, right, from the perspective that I sit as a third party who doesn't have the emotional attachment to any of the things inside of the family and that sort of thing. But that would be the concern that I would come at this with. And so I appreciate that you guys have already solved that problem in advance, which makes it easier for me as mom and dad or grandma grandpa to feel comfortable starting the conversation there.

Martha Underwood: 24:03

Right? Right, because you don't want them to see it and be like, okay, mom, and dad, I know you got a million dollars, you can you can give me 20,000 to fund this, you know, harebrained idea. So that's the key because again, we really want to make sure we pass on the wealth and you don't just churn through those dollars, just because you have access to it. It's for us to be able to pass it on when we transition.

Malcolm Ethridge: 24:25

So I'm going to ask you a little bit of a loaded question here. But an important one nonetheless, what happens if I don't do this? Right? Like what's the penalty for deciding not to act at all, not necessarily saying I don't sign up for prison, but I don't actually use some sort of tool to help me start to put one foot in front of the other and build a place to have those documents, those important pieces not even putting together a full fledged estate plan, right. That's a separate conversation to an extent. But just putting the important documents and records in one place where they're easier to find Well, you

Martha Underwood: 25:00

risk leaving chaos, right? And that's what happens today. It's chaotic and the family, where are the passwords? Where are the dollars? Where do I go? What bank Do I go to, to make sure I can pay for X, Y, or Z, right. And on top of that, you're tearing families apart, because they're grieving. And then life continues to go on. And I don't have the information needed to help facilitate life going on so that I can move forward with grief or my life, right. And the other thing is you risk letting your money go to the government. And that's the key. That really is the key, because if we start talking about us trying to build generational wealth, the first order of business is making sure that the people know where to go, to get that wealth, and make sure that you have all of those documents in place that it transfers properly. If not, you get tied up in probate, I have a friend who it's a year later, it's still tied up in probate, it becomes a second job. And I think you mentioned this earlier. And that's the consequence, and you're long gone. And you don't see that aftermath where it's just chaos that you've left behind. And so whether it's prism or something else, I always encourage someone make sure that you close the loop, that you store those documents, and you have the conversation. I know it's a difficult one to have. But it's one that we all need to have. Yeah.

Malcolm Ethridge: 26:29

To me, it's not that difficult when I think about it in the context of I spent 3040 5060 years accumulating these assets. Yep, I did all the right stuff that I was supposed to do. I didn't go buy the Bentley that I could have bought, I didn't go buy the mega mansion that I could have bought. I didn't splurge on, you know, all the stuff that I could have done to enjoy this money a little bit more while I was here, all to just have somebody else do it after I'm gone on my behalf. Because I didn't want to do the one or two simple things that button it all up. Right. So that, to me is what makes it sort of a no brainer and an easy decision to make. But I also have that engineer brain similar to you where things are a little more binary, right?

Martha Underwood: 27:18

I was just gonna say that. And I said, so I'm gonna take off my engineering hat, right? And put on my my mom and emotional path, where it's hard, because when you talk about it, it forces you to think about your mortality. And that's a hard thing.

Malcolm Ethridge: 27:34

What's life gonna be like when I'm not here? Correct.

Martha Underwood: 27:37

And so that's the difficult part. And that's why we typically avoid it. And so it's hurdling that. And then having the conversation and then doing it and being done with it. Yeah, now you have it done. And now you can go on and continue with life.

Malcolm Ethridge: 27:52

For my folks that are a little bit more binary in their thought process, though, because, again, this is a podcast for folks who work in tech. And so a lot of tech professionals tend to be binary in their thinking that way. Yeah. What I have started doing for some people, sometimes when I just I can tell I'm not really cutting through, is actually go in Excel and just model loosely, what is there today versus what your inheritors actually stand to end up with? If things stay the way they are today? Yep, so all things remaining equal, here's how much is gonna go to the Fed. Here's how much is gonna go to the three states that are involved here. Because you own property in multiple states, here's how much time is going to be wasted and dollars are going to be wasted. No offense to any attorneys here. But here's how much is going to be wasted and attorneys fees, just to help your kids settle your estate where you could have paid a few dollars had a will drafted eight, a few more dollars at a trust drafted, spent probably two hours organizing key documents into one place where people knew how to find them, where to find them and called it a day and moved on, you know, and made sure that however much money we're talking about 10s of 1000s, hundreds of 1000s in some cases, millions of dollars don't end up going back to the state that you again, did all the work you did to keep from paying anything more in taxes each year than you absolutely had to. Yeah, and then turned around and did it at death anyway. Yeah.

Martha Underwood: 29:24

And that's a great motivator. Because when you see it, it's a different thing than hearing it versus when you start to see the numbers and really start to impact because then it starts to become real for you. And you're like okay, I got an x so so if

Malcolm Ethridge: 29:37

that doesn't drive the point home then I don't know what else I can do. I just have to shut up at that point. Let go and let God but that that to me is the thing that makes it like such an obvious decision at that point. But as we get ready to wrap up here, the last question that I have for you, is just what would be your main message to anybody who's listening to this knows they need to be getting there. fears in order just in case knows they need to be talking to mom and dad, grandma, grandpa to get their affairs in order, just in case, but doesn't know where to begin. What do you say to them? Sure. So

Martha Underwood: 30:11

I would say a good place to begin is one, start the conversation, start getting the documents ready and putting it somewhere, somewhere secure digitally, because that's where we're going, we're moving towards a more digital world. And of course, look at get prism.com. And look at how you can leverage that platform to one facilitate the conversation, because we have a lot of educational videos out there, we have videos that you can send out to just drive the point home of why you need to do this, and just start storing that information somewhere, close that loop. Also talk to an estate plan or talk to a financial planner like you to start having those conversations. What does it look like if I don't? Because, you know, we're talking in general terms, but specifically for me, what does that look like? And I would say start there. Start with organizing your documents, putting it somewhere digitally that someone can store preferably get prison, you know, but that's where I would start.

Malcolm Ethridge: 31:13

Got it. So my last last question actually has nothing to do with prism. And I assume, and probably not to do with anything else that we've talked about today. So you can kind of take that hat off for a second, relax your shoulders and sit back in your seat a little bit. But let's say for a moment, you never found your passion for educating people and providing this guidance or the solution to help solve some of these estate planning issues. So you had to find a different way to occupy your days. But money wasn't a factor in your decision making at all, what do you think you'd be doing right now.

Martha Underwood: 31:49

So I love to write, and I love to travel. So I would probably be overseas somewhere, writing a novel or poems because I used to do that in college, whenever my my college roommate would be looking for me, I'd be under a tree somewhere. Writing is just a way to get my thoughts out and to use my creative side. And so I think that that's what I would be doing, I'd be Jetsun somewhere off on the beach, maybe Maldives, or south of France or someplace.

Malcolm Ethridge: 32:19

So I thought you were gonna say you'd be writing about your travel, not that you would travel just so that you could be able to write in a beautiful place, but I liked your version better.

Martha Underwood: 32:29

Well, because the thing is, you know, being from the Caribbean, I just love being outside. Growing up, my parents always took us to the beach, we're always outside with palm trees. And there's just beauty and being outside. And that's where I found my love of writing. And I draw a little bit, just a little bit not much, but that's where I find my inspiration from nature. And so I think that I'm an explorer too. So I would travel to see what can inspire me in other places and what will come out of my writing for me.

Malcolm Ethridge: 32:58

Awesome. Well, thank you Martha. I appreciate you being so generous with your time I think this conversation was great. Where can people find you if they want to learn more about you and or prism after this goes live?

Martha Underwood: 33:09

Sure. So they can find me at get prism.com That's GE t p r i s m.com at get prism on all the socials on Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook. And then you can find me Martha Underwood on LinkedIn. I'm always happy to connect with folks.

Malcolm Ethridge: 33:28

This has been yet another episode of the tech money podcast. Thank you for listening. If you liked what you heard, please be sure to subscribe via your favorite podcasting platform. That way, you'll be alerted immediately each week when a new episode is released. Maybe even consider sharing the link to this week's episode with your friends and colleagues. And if you really liked what you heard, be sure to leave a review. This will help make sure that more people just like you are able to find the show organically. You may connect with me your host on social at Malcolm on money, and feel free to send us any questions, comments, or kudos to podcast at Tech dash money.com. That email again is podcast at Tech dash money.com. And as always, we hope that this episode of the tech money podcast has helped to make you just a little bit smarter about your money.

Voiceover: 34:17

This has been the tech money podcast for more information on today's topic. To review the show notes or to catch up on past episodes, be sure to check out tech dash money.com. And if you have an idea for a show topic that you'd like us to cover, or you want to send us feedback. The web address again is tech dash money.com. You can also find Malcolm across all social media platforms at Malcolm on money. This episode was written and created by Malcolm Etheridge with the production the editing and the sound controls powered by tech money LLC. Thank you for listening

Voiceover: 35:00

The information shared in this recording and by its guests represent the views and opinions of the guests and does not represent the views or opinions of the host. This content has been made available for informational and educational purposes only this content is not nor is it intended to be a substitute for professional financial advice. It is always recommended that you seek the advice of your financial adviser or other qualified financial service provider with any questions you may have regarding your personal financial situation.