Join Michael Bailey in this enlightening episode of Mobile Estate Planning, where he reflects on the complexities of life, the importance of looking towards the future, and the practicalities of estate planning. Michael candidly shares personal stories, weaving them with philosophical musings, painting a picture of how past, present, and future intersect in unexpected ways. Throughout the episode, listeners are invited to consider how they can better prepare for the future through thoughtful estate planning, with insights into managing assets and overcoming life’s uncertainties.
Welcome to Mobile Estate Planning with your host, Michael Bailey. Over a decade ago, attorney Michael Bailey turned his attention to estate law after he recognized the unacceptable number of adults without proper end of life planning. Michael recognizes that many of his clients have difficulty finding the time for making a proper estate plan. That’s why he became the Mobile Estate Planner. He will go to wherever you are to assist you with your estate planning, including writing wills, trusts, and giving you the information you need to avoid probate. Now, ATX, Ask the Experts, presents Mobile Estate Planning with your host, Michael Bailey.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right, good afternoon. Welcome to Mobile Estate Planning, where we’re trying to do something besides just leave your family alone. You are listening to 560 KLZ AM, 100.7 FM, possibly the KLZ 560 radio app. Or if you’re Luke, you get to listen before everybody else. Because as fast as radio signals travel, they do not travel instantaneously. So Luke gets to hear it first. I mean, everything we do is in the past. Because as soon as I say something and it gets to you, it was spoken in the past. So we’re all living in the past. It’s very terrible. It’s horrible. It’s not really that bad. But I’m looking out here, looking out the window and watching kind of some rain or something roll in. So if you’re listening… to a replay of the show, I think it plays on the weekends on Sundays or something like that, there may not be rain rolling in because it’s in the past. So there’s different pasts that are available. You know, if I’m looking at Luke, I can see Luke. But whatever Luke is doing, by the time I see it, it’s already in the past. So we’re not to become too philosophical about things, but people are like, oh, you need to live in the present. I’m like, ha-ha, I can out-argue with you. You’re living in the past. It’s not a good way to make friends or influence people, so don’t try it. But it’s a silly, funny way to start the show that I didn’t even think I was going to do until it came up just now. So phone number to talk to me on the air is 477-5600. And again, that’s 477-5600. And my direct line is 394-6887. And once again, that’s 394-6887. So if we’re all living in the past, But we’re looking forward to the future of what do we need to do in the future. That’s estate planning. Because living in the past, you can’t see everything. But we look towards the future. We’re like, oh, what do we want to do in the future? How would we want to accomplish things? It’s part of why when you’re growing up and learning how to set goals and accomplish things, you get to learn what you need to do to make things happen. I mean, I don’t… I don’t know that I had necessarily a timeline for my entire life. It wasn’t, oh, well, I’m going to graduate high school at 18. Well, that was easy enough to do because there were the years and I didn’t get held back. So I just kind of kept going. Like, oh, well, you know, I’ll graduate from college. But, you know, my college journey was going to be different from most people’s. Partially because I knew that at age 19, I would take two years to go as a missionary for my church. So start college at 18, do a freshman year, two years as a missionary, come back, three more years of college. So let’s see here, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23. at graduate college when I’m 24. And at that point, when I was in high school or freshman, I thought I wanted to be, my freshman year, I was a chemical engineering major. So I thought I would be a chemical engineer and go do all the things and apparently save the world through chemical engineering, which I don’t know if that’s really possible to save the world through chemical engineering. It might be. My now 16-year-old daughter, when she was very young, she was talking about how they were going to take over the world. And maybe she’d been watching a cartoon where somebody thought they were going to take over the world. I don’t know. But she’s like, we’re going to take over the world. And my wife said, well, how are you going to do that? She thought about it for a minute. She said, trigonometry. Now, I do know that trigonometry is usually the preferred methodology for taking over the world. I mean, you know, that’s usually how, that’s all that Genghis Khan did was, you know, he performed trigonometry and he practiced the ancient art of trigonometry, you know. And that’s what Alexander the Great used. He just rediscovered trigonometry. And then the Ottoman Empire and, you know, even the Soviets tried to use trigonometry. The problem is that the Soviets did not understand that the United States also understood trigonometry. So in a battle of trigonometry, you come to a trigonometry stalemate. And a trigonometry stalemate is a lot less dangerous than a nuclear stalemate because in a trigonometry stalemate, you just kind of stare at a triangle and don’t quite know what to do with it because it’s a triangle and it’s not going to do anything. Now, if you take a triangle and use it properly, it can become a ramp or it can become some sort of fulcrum or something like that. So you can use a trigonometry stalemate. to create things that may in fact help you take over the world. But, you know, two triangles staring at each other is a little bit less dangerous than two world nuclear powers trying to, you know, going for, trying to not destroy each other. So, you know, trigonometry may not have been the best strategy to take over the world. Now, I mean, a cartoon from when I grew up, the Pinky and the Brain, there were two lab mice. One had been genetically enhanced and had a super brilliant brain, and one was crazy and insane. It was Pinky and the Brain, the brain supposedly being the brilliant one and Pinky being the crazy one. But if you watch it often enough, you can convince yourself that they might switch roles from time to time. But every day, every episode, Pinky would ask Brain, so Brain, what do you want to do tonight? And Brain would respond, try to take over the world. And they always had some sort of scheme when they were going to do so. Well, my schemes to take over the world, I don’t know that I ever thought I would take over the world. It just wasn’t my thing. I figured the world was large enough and there were also other people and they could live here too. But, you know, maybe I did. I don’t know. Maybe I thought I could take over the, you know, when I was young and dreamed of taking over the basketball world and being the next Michael Jordan. Because, you know, clearly Michael Bailey and Michael Jordan, hey, we’ve got the same first name. And as Spike Lee taught us, it’s got to be the shoes. But I never did have Jordan’s shoes. So apparently I was not talented enough to take over the basketball world. And taking over the law world, man, I don’t even know how you’d begin to do that. The law is supposed to be designed so that we don’t take over everything. We can all live our own lives. But in the future, my plan was mostly to make it through school. I hoped that I would find somebody who would like me enough to marry me, which did happen, so that’s exciting. And then I could have children of my own, which also did happen. Woo-hoo! And, you know, kind of got to that point. And then I was like, well, you know, now that I’m in the midst of having children and raising them. And, you know, a few weeks ago I went and picked up my 19-year-old from college and brought her home. And last Sunday we put her on an airplane so she could fly down to Florida to spend a week with her roommates because they’re about to go on missions for the church. And she’s going to go back to school tomorrow. So she’s off, you know, exploring Florida and enjoying her, you know, her time as a 19-year-old that doesn’t have some of the same obligations that I found out exist for adults. You know, I mean, I think growing up you’re like, oh… While I grow up, I’m an adult and I can do anything I want and the adults can’t tell me what to do. And then you become an adult and you’re like, oh, there’s other people who tell adults what to do. And I mean, if I say, hey, I can do what I want. I’m like, I can live in this house if I want. I can not pay the rent, the mortgage if I want. I don’t have to buy food. But there are consequences to those decisions. So if I don’t pay the mortgage, the bank will probably come and take the house and tell me that I can’t live there anymore and kick me out. If I don’t buy food, here’s the easy consequence, I can’t eat. I suppose we can grow food in the backyard and all that type of stuff. But still, there are these consequences here that come along with life. And so as I look towards the future, some things I had planned out, some things I didn’t have planned out. some things have gone the way i expected some things have not gone the way i expected but as you plan for the future you look at it and you say okay well i want it to go this way and sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t so we may be talking about the future but you are listening to mobile estate planning with michael bailey here on 560 klz am also heard on 100.7 fm or the klz 560 radio app Phone number to talk to me on the air is 303-477-5600. And again that’s 303-477-5600. And my direct line is 720-394-6887. Once again that’s 720-394-6887. So if you want to talk to me in the future on that direct line, you can. If you want to talk to me in the present on that direct line, I’m sorry, I’m busy talking on the air, so I’m not going to be able to answer your phone call and talk on the air. If you want to talk to me on the air, you have to call the studio line. It’s just how it works. So as you look towards the future… I look at the future, and I’ve gotten my 19-year-old to become an adult. And she went off to school. She’s done great. Off to Florida and done great. She’ll come back and start. She’s finishing up her education. But I also have a 16-year-old. We’re trying to get my 16-year-old to become an adult in a productive member of society. She is well on her way. She’s doing great. My 12-year-old is still in process, and he’s well on his way, too, but not quite the same level of development that I have from a 16-year-old. He’s still got four years, right? So hopefully he’ll be 13 in June, so three years. But still, you know, I… So that’s kind of what I’m focused on right now is helping my kids learn how to succeed in school and life and whatever sports they happen to play. My 16-year-old’s a volleyball player. My 12-year-old is taking a liking to basketball. He’s been a little bit disappointed in the outcome of the last two playoff games for the Nuggets. You know, just watching them kind of, you know, you know giving hope and then dashing it you know that’s that’s that’s the wrong way to do things you know and i realize that my well-being does not depend on how the denver nuggets perform in a in a basketball game but it is more fun when they win that’s for sure I’m not like, oh, no, I’m so sad and depressed today. I was listening to a sports talk radio show as I was driving this morning. And he’s like, oh, I don’t understand how you’re not just mad and angry. I’m like, probably because Denver Nuggets basketball does not dictate how my life will be lived. And I realized he was saying he was upset. I’m like, yeah, you do sports talk radio. That’s what you do. That’s what consumes you. That’s what you’re all about. So I can see how you would be more disappointed and more angry than someone like me who just enjoys watching the game. But I’m trying to get my kids to grow up to be good, productive members of society and just good people all around. And I think I’m doing an okay job with that. Fortunately, I have my wife to help me with that. So we’ve got both of us together and there’s certain things that She can do really well in certain things that I can do really well and we recognize that we are much better together as a couple trying to do that than figuring it out all on our own, all by ourselves. But when we went to pick up my daughter, she apparently had been following our progress because my wife’s phone has Snapchat on it and so she could follow, my daughter could track her location via snapchat and so she saw us coming and knew where we were going and knew when we’d gotten to the so then we parked and we were walking in to help her you know pack up some stuff and clean and such things and she came out of her dorm room and as we were walking up the sidewalk there was a like a little grassy hill that came from where her the entrance to her dorm was and the direction we’re going so And she came and she saw us and she kind of ran down the hill as fast as she could. And it was kind of cute. And she came and gave us a big old hug. And we hadn’t seen her in four months, so I can see why that was a good thing. But it was kind of fun to have my fully capable, functioning 19-year-old child want to run down a hill as fast as possible to hug her mom and her dad. I’m like, yep, that’s cool. It was kind of a neat thing. I’m like, well, gee, I haven’t upset her too much, and she still likes me, so that’s a good thing. But fully, this is a kid who, for the eight months that she was off at school, I mean, she came home for Thanksgiving and came home for Christmas. But for the rest of the time that she was there, she… bought her own food. She made her own meals because she was in a cooking dorm. You know, she navigated her way through college. She, you know, her freshman year, she got a job as a research assistant where she was doing a research project on the professor she was working for is doing some sort of cancer research. So she was working on that, all of these things that she’s learned how to do and learned how to accomplish and all those wonderful things. But still, when my wife and I got there, she wanted to come give us a big hug because she was still our little girl. And that’s fair. I don’t think of her as being, oh, you’re just my little girl. We can’t ever do anything. I’m like, no. You want to go up to Florida? Cool. Go to Florida. Have fun. Your roommate who lives in Florida, her parents will pick you up from the airport, and you’ll be fine. It’s not like we’re sending her off going, hey, good luck. Have fun. Navigate Florida. Fortunately, they still speak English down there. It’s part of the United States. Good luck. We sent her, too. Europe last year as part of a senior trip with her uncle who they spent a lot of time in Spain and then in Italy and in Spain, the uncle who speaks more or less fluent Spanish could have a Good conversations. My daughter, who doesn’t speak Spanish quite as well as the fluent uncle, she could get some. In Italy, there was less Italian to be spoken since they don’t speak Italian. But still. So that’s the current focus of what I’m trying to do is get my kids raised and everything. Part of that is that we need to have money to pay for the house and pay for food and things like that. So my chosen business is estate planning. But estate planning, we’re looking more towards the future of what happens to our stuff that we’ve accumulated when we die. And we’re planning for the future of, I would like to leave those assets that I managed to accumulate to my children because they’re my children and I’d like to benefit them. That’s for everybody out there who’s a parent, I think we do a lot of things that benefit our children. That’s just kind of the nature of being a parent is you do things that benefit your children. So estate planning is one of those things that benefits our children. And we look at the future and we say, okay, well, in the future, I would like to have my house paid off. It would be a good thing. And so if my wife and I die in the future, which we most certainly will, then the value of the house, hopefully by the time we die, my kids will have their own houses. and their own spouses and possibly their own children. But I would like to have what I have been able to accumulate and been able to gather over my lifetime, I’d like to be able to pass that on to my children and my family. Now, it’s because if all three of my kids have their own houses and their own spouses and kids of their own and then I die, I don’t necessarily think that they need to be like, oh, well, let’s go move into mom and dad’s house. It’s the one we grew up in. We should live there. Wow. the spouses will not have grown up in that house so it might not be the same to them so in that case we take and we sell the house divide the money three ways among the kids and pass it on to them and then they could probably use the proceeds and the money to help pay off their own house you know craziness weirdness amazingness here but you know in my case the Because I have the three kids and because I want to do everything I can to teach them how to be good people and how to be productive members of society, and I think I’ve been decently successful with that, I think that I would rather give them the assets that I’ve been able to accumulate if I have any left over. It’s not always assured that you’re going to have assets left over. Right now, I’m still in the accumulating assets phase of life, and I’m trying to grow those assets and I’m trying to save them and use them wisely. I’m paying off the house so that eventually I’ll have a paid off house and not continue to have to pay on it all the time. At least that’s my goal. But sometimes it doesn’t work out that there’s a lot of assets left at the end. And if that’s the case and there’s nothing to give away, then you can give away all the nothingness. But for those of us who, if we do manage to accumulate assets and want to pass them on, then we put that in an estate plan. That’s something we do in the future. So you are listening to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey here on KLZ 560 AM. Also heard on 100.7 FM or the KLZ 560 radio app. Phone number to talk to me on the air is 303-477-5600. And again, that’s 303-477-5600. And my direct line is 720-394-6887. And once again, 720-394-6887. So… And why would you not have any assets when you die, you ask? Well, there’s any number of reasons. One, you never had the opportunity to work and accumulate anything, so you didn’t have anything ever. Or maybe you’re the proverbial lazy bum that didn’t do anything, where you thought that you should just kind of skate by in life and you know you’d be you should you maybe sometimes you go stand on a street corner with a sign that says need money or perhaps you you know any number of reasons perhaps you had bad luck And sometimes I’ve seen this with lots of people that I know where they owned a business and then the business kind of dried up or I’ve seen it with people who are like they do. flipping houses business. So they’re like, okay, well, I’m going to flip a house, you make money, flip a house, make money. And then, you know, the most recent kind of economic downturn, where suddenly, interest rates were much higher, and people weren’t buying and selling houses as often. And some of these house flipping people got caught with a couple of flips in progress, and then suddenly they went to sell the house, and they couldn’t sell it for money that they’d bought it for, plus the work they’d put into it, so they were losing money on selling the house. And then suddenly they’re like, oh no, now I’m out of money. Or I have a friend who he had a kind of a water business. It was like they were cleaning. They had technology where they were cleaning water. So people would buy it either for a swimming pool or then for drinking water. And they had all these cool contracts all lined up. And then the housing crisis hit. And all of the water systems that were supposed to be put in for the 10 to 12 different… communities that were going to be built, suddenly those housing communities were not built. And so all of their contracts that they had, everything that they were ready to go with, that was gonna make them a million or two dollars over the next two years, ended up costing them a million or two dollars too, because they’d kind of invested in all this infrastructure and inventory that just never, and so they were kind of, so that’s what I would call bad luck. Then there’s what we call poor planning, where everything you make, you spend. And I realize that for many people, living paycheck to paycheck is just kind of how life goes. And I’m not here to say, oh, well, you know, if you’re… if you’re out there you know barely making a buy and barely scraping by and living paycheck to paycheck well just find a cheaper apartment or just find a you know just eat less or just you know i’m not saying that at all but if uh you’re if you’re the kind of if you’re out there and you’re like oh well you know we i got a you know thousand dollar bonus at work well gee we should go buy a you know brand new tv well your brand new tv is not going to last for forever And so there’s that possibility. And then there’s just the expenses increase beyond what you thought they were going to. And as an example of this, I think of my paternal grandmother. So my grandparents built a house in Palo Alto, California in 1952. I think they paid like $4,900 to build it. So my grandfather died when I was in eighth grade. And grandma had had a series of strokes, and so she was kind of paralyzed on one side of her body, and grandpa helped take care of her. But then when grandpa died, grandma didn’t have anybody who could take care of her. So the house that they built for $4,900 They sold for something like $750,000. It’s in Palo Alto, California. This was before, you know, tech, you know, the Silicon Valley and tech revolution. So suddenly the house they had built there was way more valuable and even the $750,000 that they sold it for, the first thing that the people did who bought the house was they came in and they bulldozed it to the ground and built a new house that now if you look at, you can go on like Google Maps or Yahoo Real Estate and notice that the lot with the new house on it is worth like $4.5 or $5 million. So, you know, California real estate lottery. If you could have bought and held for a long time, you’d be rich. And those who did, they probably are. But $750,000. Now, $750,000, especially in the mid-1990s, was a decent amount of money. We were like, hey, that’s going to… Somebody had said to me, oh, well, in 1992, they’d been like, here, here’s $750,000. I would have been like, hey, I’m rich. I never have to work again. I can use this money and live forever off $750,000. And, you know, that would have been awesome. Well, grandma needed long-term care. Grandma needed skilled nursing care. So the $750,000 that grandma needed or that grandma had, she didn’t pass away until I was a senior in college. So it was another like 10, 11 years. And that $750,000 was all spent on medical expenses for her by the time she died. Now, it was grandpa and grandma’s money, and they had earned it. They had benefited from appreciation and land values for certain. But that money was there to help take care of grandma. That’s what the money is for, is to take care of you. So when grandma died, there was no money for her kids to inherit. And that is perfectly understandable because the money was there to pay for her care so that she could be cared for. And her living in a skilled nursing type of facility meant that she did not have to come live with us or one of her other kids, or have her travel between all of the kids so that we would take care of Grandma. Now, my parents’ house didn’t quite have the right number of bedrooms. They had the right number of bedrooms for the kids and for the adults, but not an extra one for grandma. So it made perfect sense. But had grandma died with money, that’s why you have an estate plan to distribute that money out. So you plan for the future. Future may not always go the way that you think it was going to go or that you would want it to go. And that’s okay. But you plan for the future and for the possibility that you’re giving things to your kids and uh you know if it doesn’t turn out that way okay but at least you’ve got a plan in place and that plan can change and be flexible so thank you so much for listening to mobile estate planning with michael bailey here on 560 klz am john rush and rush reason up next so stay tuned and i’ll talk to you next week thanks and bye
