In this special episode hosted by Michael Bailey, embrace the holiday spirit with stories of family, gift-giving, and the lasting legacy we leave through estate planning. As Christmas trees brighten homes and families gather, Michael discusses not only the cheerful excitement of holiday traditions but also the profound impact of planning for the future. Tune in to learn how you can ensure your family’s security with Michael’s insightful estate planning advice.
00:25:00 Holiday Reflections and New Year Resolutions
SPEAKER 01 :
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 with Michael Bailey. So we can do something besides just leave your family alone. You’re listening to KLZ 560 AM, 100.7 FM, possibly the KLZ 560 radio app. Or if you’re Luke, you’re listening right now and making everybody feel… Just awesome because you can send this out, Luke. And without Luke, I would just be talking into a microphone in this little room that I’m in doing nothing. But fortunately, I get to talk to all of you. If you would like to talk to me, you can call me on the studio line, which is 303-477-5600. And again, that’s 303-477-5600. and my direct line my work line is seven two zero three nine four six eight eight seven and once again that’s seven two zero three nine four six eight eight seven and that’s the number you use if you want to call me to talk about your estate plan not on the air or you know actually get something set up So I walked into the control room and Luke asked me today, is anything, anything fun and exciting happening? And I said, does it have to be both fun and exciting? Because if it’s fun and exciting, if that’s our criteria of fun and exciting, I don’t really think there’s anything I can say about estate planning. I mean, I find estate planning fun and exciting, but I don’t know that everybody else does. And perfectly, completely honestly, it’s not supposed to be fun and exciting. It’s important and necessary, but fun and exciting are the wrong words to describe estate planning. I mean, I find it fun and exciting, but then I’m this weird warped person that enjoys things like that. So, yeah, it all shakes itself out. But fun and exciting would be this evening. I get to go pick up my daughter from the airport. She is done with her in-person finals. She might have one or two that she needs to take online, but she can do that from our house. So we’re flying her home this evening, and I get to go pick her up at the airport and see my daughter. And, you know, I’d say for the first time in four months, but we did get to see her at Thanksgiving. So, you know, this semester is just always a little bit, you know, you see somebody at Thanksgiving, you’re like, hey, we’ll see you in three weeks when you get home for Christmas. But, you know, it’s not quite – last winter semester went from January to April. That was kind of a long four months for her. And I feel like – I hear, like, that this has been a long three months and then a long three weeks since we last saw her. She’s kind of – through all of the, you know, she’s now a sophomore and she’s taking some harder classes. She’s taking an organic chemistry class, which, you know, it’s always, everybody loves organic chemistry. It’s their favorite class. Everybody loves it. Everybody gets a D, I mean, an A. I mean, what? No, it’s not exactly known for its high grades that it goes through. But, you know, she’s, so she’s kind of in the midst of some tough things there, some tough classes. She’s doing well, but still, you live away from home and you miss your family, and I remember that. It’s been a few years since I was in college, but I do remember that. When I got to law school and my first semester of law school, I was living by myself. I was engaged to my now lovely wife, but she was finishing her last semester of school. And so she was off at school at BYU. I was at the University of Denver for law school. So we were 500 miles away. And any time there was a three-day weekend, I usually had a class at 10 a.m. on Friday morning. That was my only class. So if there was a three-day, so if it was the kind of thing where I wasn’t going to have school on a Monday or something, and there were plenty of those that happened, I’d go to my 10 a.m. class and I’d get in my car at 11 o’clock. And I drive over to see my fiance. It’s about a seven or eight hour drive. So I’d get there about seven o’clock on Friday night so we could go out and then, you know, we’d spend Saturday, Sunday together. And then I drive back, you know, worked out very nicely. But, you know, so you meet your family and, you know, of course, it’s. It is the holidays. It’s Christmas time. And, you know, we’re going to do all sorts of family things. We have our, you know, we’ve got the tree up. We’ve got plenty of presents underneath it. Because before we put the tree up, we had a pile of what had been delivered from Amazon. Because, you know, Black Friday has changed how we shop things. And, you know, everything is cyber. And it’s like, oh, well. I mean, I remember getting up very early on Black Friday. I get up at like 2 in the morning. I’m like, I’m going to go. You know, get in line at Best Buy or Circuit City so we can get a, you know, $50 digital camera that’s normally $199.95 or something. You’re like, yeah. You’re like, hey, we’re going to get this deal. And now I’m like, oh, look, there’s a deal. Cool. We’ll hit the buy, ship, send. And, you know, here it comes. You know, Amazon Prime is a wonderful thing for that and, you know, all of those type of deals. So we go, all right, well, but we, because we had ordered things to be delivered, we kind of had this stack of presents by the front door. And, you know, I would grab it and be like, oh, this is for me. This is for my wife. This is for the kids. You know, so I’d mark it. But then we put the tree up a week or so, week, week and a half ago, because we just didn’t get to it until then. And then we started wrapping presents. So now all those presents are wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper instead of just being in boxes. I have some friends who, they’re the, oh, well, you don’t need to wrap presents. That’s just wasting paper and killing trees and hurting the environment. And I’m like, you know… Everything we do is hurting the environment. My mere existence is part of but also harming the environment. And although I’m perfectly fine with saving the planet, I don’t think that I’m going to save the planet by not wrapping Christmas gifts. That sucks a whole lot of joy out of things. I’ve seen comments where it’s like, If you give up drinking coffee and switch it for just plain water, you can suck 98% of the joy out of your morning. And I feel a little bit… I’m not a coffee drinker. I do just drink water. My drink of choice is just water. But… I feel like Christmas morning, you’re like, oh, look, we have everything in the shipping boxes that they showed up in. You can suck 97% of the joy out of opening Christmas presents by not having them wrapped. I mean, okay, maybe it’s not 97%. I mean, you still get the joy of being together as a family and distributing things. And for me, somebody asked me the other day, they’re like, well, would you rather give a present or receive a present? I’m like, at this point, give. I personally derive so much more joy from watching my kids and my wife be excited about what I’ve managed to find for them. Even if it’s exactly what they wanted and told me and possibly even ordered it for themselves and I just wrapped it up. It makes me happy to be able to give something to my spouse or my kids for Christmas. That’s so much more fun for me than… Oh, hey, I’m going to get a present. Cool. Mostly because if I need something throughout the year, I just kind of end up buying it for myself. I’m like, oh, yep, my shoes are wearing out. I should probably get some new shoes. So I buy some new shoes and I don’t have to wait for a special occasion like Christmas or my birthday or Father’s Day or something like that. So, you know, I derive a whole lot of joy from being the gift giver as opposed to the gift receiver. That’s just I’ve kind of arrived at that spot. And so it’s one of those things that I enjoy that. And it’s so Christmas morning for me is, hey, how excited can my kids and my and oddly enough, my puppy dogs. So I’ll talk about the puppy dogs in just a second. But I’m going to remind you that 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 my puppy dogs, they know what Christmas is. The first dog that I got, who left me almost seven years ago now, she liked to go underneath the Christmas tree and she’d almost pet herself or scratch her back because she’d walk around underneath the Christmas tree. We are those who have artificial Christmas trees because real Christmas trees just aren’t great for family allergies and things like that not that i have anything against real christmas trees it’s just not what we do so but she would walk underneath the tree and scratch herself and she’d lay under there and sleep and stuff and then christmas day came and christmas day i opened up a present that was a squeaky toy for her and i opened up a present that was a chew toy for her and so she understood what christmas presents were so she would uh Every year that she was alive, when we started putting Christmas tree up, she would go start checking out the presents and sniffing at them. And a couple of years, she would open them up. She’d grab the present and kind of scratch it open with her paws because she thought it smelled like something that was for her. And so she could figure that out. And then the next set of dogs, they learn from her. So they know what Christmas is. They know what Christmas presents are. Um, I have managed to switch to, I put the dog’s presence in the stockings and not underneath the tree. So they’re not under there trying to scratch open the presence, but every Christmas morning they are so excited and they will jump and jump and bark and woof and, you know, turn around in circles and do all the things that dogs do when they’re excited. So that, um, The dogs can, until we, and so one of the first things we do is we’ll open up the Christmas present that’s for the dogs. So we’ll open up their bone or their toy, and then they can be excited and go off and play. And especially if it’s a chew toy, they’ll go off and chew it and eat it throughout the day so that they are, or throughout the morning when we’re opening Christmas presents, because we’ve got to get the dog super excited about Christmas. And so, you know, again, you know, I mean, every once in a while, you know, if my wife and I will buy something for ourselves, we will then go and we’ll, we’ll buy something for ourselves and we will, um, we’ll say that it’s from the dogs that the dogs gave it to us, you know, and that’s perfectly fine to do. But, um, And so it was – so as we’re going through Christmas and giving out the exciting things that are super fun – Or we go, yeah, that’s what we want to do. We want to have that happen. We want to make sure that that works out so that we can have the… And so for me, it’s so much more fun and so much more exciting to have that be done. and have it be, have it work out and just have the, and, uh, you know, so, um, I have a, uh, I have a suit that has is red and it’s fur lined and it comes with a red hat that’s fur lined and has a white ball on it. And it comes with a fake white beard and it comes with, you know, all of those things that you would, uh, expect you would have. Um, and so sometimes I wear this suit and I go play a character. You’ll notice that for anybody, for anybody listening, um, who knows what I’m talking about, I’m trying to not say the actual, um, you know, name of this character that I might play in a Um, so we, we have a, you know, we have that all set up and, um, one of my, so my 16 year old who knows the deal about that character that I play in the big red suit, she said to me, she’s like, so do you have fun playing that character? I’m like, it’s great. It’s awesome. She’s like, well, why? I’m like, there’s just a bunch of annoying little kids who’d want to come up. And I’m like, yeah, but there’s a magic about that red suit and the beard and everything. And there’s a magic about that there’s something. Sure, it’s there so that you’re naughty and nice so you can try to get your kids to behave well during December, especially December. during Christmas break when they’re home and can be fighting with siblings. And I, I get the entire reason why we have the whole cultural deception that goes along with this particular character. But, uh, You know, it’s all in good fun. And it’s not like, I mean, there are worse things that we’ve told our kids than that. And it’s all harmless fun. And we all figure out the truth at some point. But the deal is that so, you know, I enjoy going and playing that character. And, you know, I give out candy canes or I give out the last one I did. They had like these little Christmas hat things that we gave away. And, you know, you can ask people, they’re the little kids, what they want for Christmas. And there’s just kind of a magic to it. And I said, you know, the thing is that when you become that character and when you play that character, it becomes so much more real than it ever was when you were a kid and believed in that character. And, you know, at least that’s for me is the switch to helping and, you know, giving a gift as opposed to receiving a gift. And you may wonder, why in the heck is this guy talking about Christmas on an estate planning show? And the correct answer is because it’s December and because this show is going to re-air on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, because I’m not coming in those days. And, you know, so it’s the holiday season. We should enjoy it. How does it relate to estate planning? Oh, I don’t know. Let’s make an effort, shall we? As an estate planning attorney, I do really enjoy helping people get their affairs in order. Does it benefit me? I get paid, yeah. But I found going through law school and all the things that we could do as attorneys and what type of jobs we would have and whether or not we wanted to be criminal prosecutors or criminal defense attorneys or civil litigation attorneys or regulatory attorneys or any number of things that we could be. A lot of the possible options I kind of looked at and I’m like, you know, I don’t think I’d enjoy that because I don’t know that I feel like I would really be helping somebody. Now, I read a friend of mine who posted on LinkedIn the other day about how he was, you know, he had just won a case against some landlords who were doing terrible things to their tenants. And, you know, so they were going to get a nearly million dollar check for from the landlord because he had defended them against the horribleness and i’m like okay i can see how that would be a good thing but you know i’m also one that i own a an apartment i own a townhouse and i’m renting it to somebody and i try not to be a terrible landlord so i’m like well you know i try to do things the right way so that there’s not that but for people who do the wrong way and you’re correcting injustice i can totally understand that But I feel like as an estate planning attorney, I’m helping people get their affairs in order. I’m helping people get ready for the inevitable end of things. And frankly, I derive a lot of joy from that, too, being able to help people. put things in order and know what’s going to happen or be able to say, oh, well, you know, grandma is, you know, she had a stroke and now she’s going to be in, um, you know, rehab and possibly long-term care. And, you know, where we don’t know what’s going to happen with grandma and like, Hey, we’ve got all the things in place so that you can take care of grandma and you don’t have to worry about it. And I mean, obviously you’re going to worry about grandma and obviously you’re But you have the legal things in place so that it’s not fighting somebody or somebody won’t let you do something along the way because you’ve got the legal stuff in place. And so you go to grandma’s bank and say, hey, we need to pull out some money for grandma. And the bank says, well, who are you? And you’re not grandma, so we’re not sure we can actually give this to you. And then you go, well, hold on just a minute. We still want to take care of, you know, we still do need to get this money to pay for grandma. Grandma’s just in an assisted living facility and she can’t get out to get to the bank. So how are we going to be able to take care of her and things like that? And so you have a, in that case, you have a financial power of attorney. You’re like, hey, look. We are authorized to get things for grandma and the bank looks at it and says, okay, all right, fine. We understand that you’re authorized. So now you can access grandma’s account and pull the money out to take care of grandma. Well, that’s good. That’s a very good thing to have. And that’s what I can do for people is to set that up. Or, you know, the kind of the final gift of people is what they give them in their will or their trust of, you know, what assets are there. and somebody passes away, and you’re going to pass on the money to your kids or grandkids or nieces or nephews or somebody completely separate, whoever you choose, it’s perfectly fine. So 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. And once again, 720-394-6887. So your will or your trust is kind of that final gift that you can give people. You’re like, okay, I’ve worked my entire life. I’ve accumulated assets or I’ve accumulated stuff or just all the things that you’ve done. And now that I’ve passed away, Whatever I have left over, I’m going to pass out to different people and just distribute. So like my dad’s grandma died and left him something like $8,000 or something like that. Most of it went to the kids, but some went to the grandkids. So $8,000 got sent to my parents, and it was right about the time that the car that they had was dying. And so they use that $8,000 to buy a new to them car so that we could have a working car and a reliable car to get people all around where they needed to go. So it was my mom’s car that she drove for a long time. I’ve had people who, you know, $8,000, you’re like, as $8,000, that’s not really a lot of money. Well, $8,000 is quite a bit of money to somebody who doesn’t have any. $8,000 is quite a bit of money to somebody who needs a new car that’s going to cost five or $6,000. And you know, $8,000 is quite a bit of money. I mean, so as a college student, When I would make $3,000 or $4,000 a year working in the summer, $8,000 was incredible money that I could never barely even comprehend what it would be. For those who are paying mortgages and have children like I do, I’m like, $8,000? Mortgage, food, everything, school expenses, and with my daughter playing club volleyball, $8,000 is… A low dollar if not a typical month because playing competitive sports is not cheap as pretty much everybody who has children who can play competitive sports knows. But that $8,000 made all the difference to my parents at that point. And I’ve seen it happen with my clients where somebody dies, they leave $10,000, $20,000 to their kids. I had one family where one person had just gone through a divorce and they had $10,000 worth of legal bills. It’s like, oh, here’s $15,000. Oh, cool. I can pay my legal bills. Someone else was behind on their mortgage and just needed to have that money in so they could get caught up on their mortgage payments. Hey, $10,000 to someone who owes $8,000 on past due mortgage payments. You’re like, cool, now we’re solvent again. And then the final sibling in that particular group, they were in a decent financial situation. So they took the $10,000 and went on a wonderful vacation to celebrate the life of their parent who had passed on. So final gift of will or trust, it’s not quite necessarily the same magic of Christmas and Christmas tree and what’s underneath the Christmas tree. I’ve noticed that some of the Amazon boxes have a little label on them that says, no, you can’t find out what’s in me by shaking me. And I’m like, yeah, that’s a very kind way of saying, don’t shake the box, okay? It might be fragile. It might break. Yeah. Or you could put a big, they usually have a fragile stick alarm on them too, but still. So you have Christmas, and then you have New Year’s, and of course with New Year’s you’ve got all of the fun and be with family and friends, and we get into New Year’s resolutions, and we’re going to do all these things. wonderful things and this is going to be the year that I get in shape. And I’m like, well, round is a shape, so I’m already in shape. This is the year that I’m going to finally get my financial affairs in order. Cool. Go for it. This is the year that I’m going to exercise and actually feel healthy. Cool. That sounds like a great thing. A lot of people do that early in January. This is the year that I’m going to finally and tell that person that I’ve had a crush on for six months that I like them and see if they will go out with me. Hey, go for that too. This is going to be the year that I finally get my retirement figured out. So I’m going to call Al Smith and we’re going to talk about that. Hey, cool, do it. This is the year I’m actually going to set up a will or a trust, and I’m going to call Michael Bailey and do that. Hey, I’m happy to be here, happy to answer the phone. Phone number 720-394-6887. Again, 720-394-6887. There were times, my dad growing up, he worked for Hewlett Packard. There were times where the company was doing really well, and they would basically say, hey, So the two weeks around Christmas and New Year’s, why don’t you just take those off? We’ll pay you your vacation time so you’ll get paid full time, but then you can go spend it with your family and everything will be good. There were other years where the company wasn’t doing as well, and so they needed to be in and working to try to be productive and push through products and all those type of things. It’s just how it goes. And we all understand that, that there are some years that are bigger and better than other years, and there are some years that are more down. And there are some years where the Christmas bonus comes through and is great. There are some years, the only year that I got a Christmas bonus was my first year working at a different firm before I went out on my own. They gave me a Christmas bonus of $40. And I was like, I don’t think the people who had been there for longer got more. But it was my first year being there. I’m like, yeah, $40. I’m like, you’ll forgive me for not being super enthusiastic about $40. But, you know, $40 when I was working for that firm allowed me to take my wife out to a nice dinner. So I’m like, okay, we can do that. But everything we do for the holidays and, you know, Christmas, New Year’s, you know, for those who celebrate it, Hanukkah. Hanukkah just doesn’t happen to be my holiday. particular holiday of choice, but I know people are out there that do, or Kwanzaa, or to borrow from Seinfeld, a Festivus for the rest of us. All of that, it’s so that we can meet with our family, take care of our family, enjoy our family. And estate planning, it’s also about taking care of your family. Don’t bring up estate planning on Christmas or New Year’s. It doesn’t need to be done. Enjoy Christmas. Enjoy New Year’s. But talk about it with your family some other time. Get it done, and then you can enjoy your Christmas and New Year’s knowing that it’s all set up and ready to go. So, again, Michael Bailey, Michael Bailey Law Office. This is Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey. Stay tuned for John Rush and Rush Reason coming up next. And I will see you in the new year since I’m not around. Thank you very much and have a great day. Bye-bye.
