Join Michael Bailey as he delves into the nuances of estate planning, emphasizing the significance of preparing for long-term care and unexpected life changes. From his wife’s journey in health and fitness to the complexities of legal documents, Michael provides a holistic view of how to safeguard your family’s future. Whether you’re young and just starting out or planning for later stages in life, understanding how to effectively manage your estate becomes crucial. In this episode, Michael shares personal anecdotes and professional insights, touching on the importance of amending estate plans as life evolves. Learn about the potential costs
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 01 :
All right, good afternoon. Welcome to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey. So we can do something besides let’s just leave your family alone. You’re listening to KLZ 560 AM, 100.7 FM, possibly the KLZ 560 radio app. If you would like to talk to me on the air, phone number is 303-477-5600. And again, that’s 303-477-5600. And my direct line is 720-394-6887. Once again, 720-394-6887. So last night, my wife was telling me that we could see the Aurora Borealis from… Our house, well, maybe from people who live a little bit further north, but our house itself might not have been. So we, because I was out, I went out, basketball season’s coming up, I actually got some assignments for basketball yes last night and this morning so apparently somebody still thinks that I can referee basketball and I’m not gonna tell him any different than I’m you know blind and incapable and just to start and I get worse from there but as we were out it’s like we have some friends who live up in Niwot and Longmont they were sending pictures of the Rory Borealis and was super cool and you know bright We got a little bit of kind of like a faint. We could see a little bit of faint color, but not a whole lot of. So, you know, tonight, apparently it’s supposed to be even more prominent. And so tonight, you know, we might have time to take a little drive up a little further north and be up towards the Greeley area and maybe even get to see it a little bit better. So we might be able to do that. It’s so exciting. But, you know, we went out and actually I went out running again and my wife, she, I said, well, you could come with me, but, you know, I don’t necessarily want you to do that because when we did that three weeks ago, you fell and broke your elbow. But she surprised me. She said, well, I’d like to go. And I was like, whoa, this is craziness because I thought she wouldn’t want to be walking in the dark and maybe tripping again. But we got her a nice flashlight because we have some flashlights, and they’re not too heavy. So she walked and had her flashlight, and she was thrilled to death to be able to be out and walking because she’s spent a long time getting herself kind of back in shape and rebuilt after having – when we first started our marriage, she was the one that was working, so she worked – She worked full time. She worked for one of the big four accounting firms and they worked long hours. I would take her downtown. Well, first we’d start driving towards the light rail train station. She’d be like, so I could drop her off at the train station. And she usually say something like, oh, I don’t really want to ride the train today. Can you just drive me downtown? And since it was like seven thirty in the morning. We’re like, okay, we’ll go ahead and do that. We can, uh, you know, do 7 30 AM and I drive her downtown, drop her off at about eight o’clock and then I’d come back and, um, you know, I scheduled my, um, Um, I had scheduled my classes so that I didn’t have to be at class until 10 or 11 in the morning. So we didn’t have to be at a eight o’clock or nine o’clock class. So we were good and it worked out well, but it was, uh, Um, one of those things that we had where, um, so I take her downtown and then, you know, I’d go get her, um, on a normal day. Um, I would usually be home from school and either have been finished homework or working on homework or something. And our little dog knew that when the phone rang about five, five 30 or six o’clock, then And so the phone would ring, and it was usually my wife calling me to let me know that she was on her way home. And our little dog would jump up, and she knew the sound of the phone at that time in the afternoon. So she would jump up and be all excited, and she’d be like, I’m going to go see mom. Because I’d take her with me to the train station, and we’d go pick up mom. Well… And it was always kind of sad when somebody else would call me about that time, and I’d be like, I have to look at the dog. I’m like, no, it wasn’t mom. We can’t go pick her up. But so I’d take her downtown, and then I’d pick her up five or six in the afternoon, except during busy season. During busy season, she’d work like 8 a.m. to 9 or 10 p.m. So it would be getting towards bedtime, and I would get a call, hey, I’m on my way home. So I’d go pick her up from the train station at 9. 9 30 or 10 and then we’d come home we’d go to bed and do it the next day and so she worked long hours during busy season because that’s what people do who work for big four accounting firms and trying at least in the tax division and so he just worked long hours and trying to get things done and uh So it was right after college when all of our metabolism starts to slow down. And so she was college campus and you walked all your classes and walking around. It’s amazing how you don’t quite realize how much of a sneaky workout and exercise you’re getting as you’re walking around all the time. And, or in the case of our college, on the south side of campus, there was a whole bunch of stairs that you would climb to get up to the campus from, you know, so there was a street and then you’d climb the stairs to get up to campus. And we all knew the south campus stairs and we’d all, so if you live south of campus, you’d have to walk, you know, climb the stairs and I don’t, maybe there were people who loved them. I’m not sure who those people are. You know, they’re the kind of crazy people who go around the stairs at Red Rocks for fun, you know, and, you know, crossfitting people. And I’m like, hey, if you, good for you, I’m okay. I mean, I run a couple miles a day. day just to get in the stay and keep being in shape for a basketball season. And also it’s good for me because I’ve stopped growing vertically and now, you know, there’s a horizontal component to things and we hope that it doesn’t, it’s always expanding. Sometimes it shrinks, you know, that type of thing. But so the combination of those things meant that she was working long hours at a desk job. Metabolism was slowing down. They would order in meals for them. So like they’d order in dinner. And so she was eating kind of richer food and not getting as much exercise. And so she could tell it was affecting her. And then she went ahead and we had three children and, you know, having growing a child is apparently a, difficult thing on a body and so you know i mean i’ve heard guys say oh you know i’ve gained my sympathy weight when their spouse is pregnant i’m like i don’t think that’s i don’t think that’s a thing but you know once she was done having kids we started kind of the process of trying to rebuild her um rebuild her endurance, rebuild her, you know, physical being strong and, you know, kind of, and so we, you know, it’s been the last, you know, I mean, my youngest is 13, he’ll be 14 next summer. So it’s been 12, 13, 14 years that we’ve been you know getting back into we you know we started walking around the block and then we’d walk around the neighborhood and then we’d run around the block then we’d run around the neighborhood and then she got a little bit of tendonitis in her knees so she didn’t want to be running anymore so we ended up getting her um an exercise bike that she works you know that she can ride and things like that but she you know these last three weeks with a broken elbow she has She had gotten into doing like body pump and high fit classes and things where you’re lifting weights that don’t exactly work when you don’t have the grip strength for broken elbow. So you are listening to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey here on 560 KLZ AM or 100.7 FM. 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. It’s been a process to get there. I’ve gone back and forth. I feel like I had one of the trainers and one of the supervising officials say, once somebody once asked him they’re like well how do you get in shape for the season he’s like i have reached the age where i can no longer get in shape i must stay in shape because if i don’t you know don’t work out and don’t run and things like that then it’s probably not coming back and that’s a problem you know this is a guy who he’s worked you know decades worth of college basketball and he’s a he’s now a grader so he grades the officials and grades each call during a game so you know all of the all of the college basketball games that we watch there are people who will go through the game tape they will watch every single play and they will grade every single call or non-call of good, bad, or was it correct, was it incorrect? And I’m like, yeah, that’s a level of scrutiny that I don’t know that I’d really welcome and relish. I’m good to be a high school official if someone offered me a college game. I probably wouldn’t turn it down, but I’m okay working the high school level. It works better with my schedule. It’s a good thing. It’s a good place to be. I feel like I’ve reached the stage where I have to stay in shape, not get in shape too. Because it’d be far too easy for me to, this spring I got a cold or something, maybe a sinus infection. And, you know, so I didn’t go out running for two or three weeks. And when I got back to it, I was like, oh, my gosh, this is so much harder. How can my legs feel triple as heavy as they did before? And, you know, this, you know, they don’t really want to go in front of each other. And, you know, just, you know, once I felt better and had recovered from my illness, then I was back to running. Being able to run normally. But, you know, all of these things happen. And, you know, my wife, you know, tax stuff and then having kids and we’ve built her back up and she she doesn’t want to lose all of it. And I totally understand that. But we were talking as we were out last night, even about tax stuff. And she no longer works in the tax world. She has her degree in finance. She was supposed to finish up her master’s of accounting and be an accountant. But then we got engaged and she decided she didn’t want to spend an extra year in college away from me. So she didn’t finish up the accounting degree. She finished in finance, but… So she doesn’t have her master’s in accounting. She just has a degree. But coming from BYU and everybody seems to know the Marriott School of Management there and then how good the accounting program is. She doesn’t quite have the hours to take her CPA and having worked for one of the big four accounting firms. She’s not really keen on getting her CPA. She’s like, yeah, maybe this isn’t what I want to do. I think she was excited about it when she was in school and it was interesting and fun. But then working the hours of a large CPA firm and all of that, she’s like, yeah, maybe that’s not what I want to do with the rest of my life. And I totally get that. Things change. And, you know, things change over time. I actually have this week alone, I’ve written a couple of trust amendments and a couple of will codicils to make changes to things. And, you know, clients like, oh, you know, unfortunately this happened. And so I need to make this change and I need to do this. And I’m like, cool. I’m happy to help you with that, but it kind of got me thinking a little bit about changing things. And when we write an estate plan, everybody wants it written to apply to their situation. And I totally get that. I encourage that. I endorse that. It’s what I want. But then sometimes people will get hung up on some other language like, well, but why do we need this here? Why is this here? And I say, OK, well, let’s talk about this. Let’s talk about your situation. Let’s say, you know, right now you’re working, you’re good. And so you don’t you don’t you’re not worried about long term care. You’re not worried about long term care costs. You’re not worried about whether or not you would need to disclaim an interest in something that’s being given to you. But I have plenty of clients who are in their 80s or 90s and in their 80s or 90s, they’re worried about long term care. They’re worried about, you know, what am I going to end up in nursing home? You know, what’s going to happen to me? And so as they’re contemplating those type of things. Sometimes there are different programs that help pay for long-term care for veterans. There’s VA benefits and there’s wartime veterans, so World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War, War on Terror, et cetera. There are benefits that help pay for long-term care for people who need it. For people who are running out of money, there’s a Medicaid. Medicaid can come in and help pay for your long-term care. For people who are ridiculously rich, like Luke, our multi-billionaire, because I know at least five billionaires called you and gave you all their money over this last week.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, we had a really good turnout. Incredible response. I think now the wealthiest man in the world.
SPEAKER 01 :
Are you? Yeah. You’re more wealthy than Vladimir Putin, who just kind of takes half of the wealth of the billionaires in his country? well i mean to put it into perspective i did buy the moon oh fair so now you’re um the you’re like the evil villain from despicable me yeah i’m thinking of putting a dollar general on there okay are you gonna leave the moon where it is are you gonna try to take it and put it somewhere else i think i’ll leave it where it is we’ll turn it into like a resort yeah i mean you’re leaving where it is seems good for like tides and all the things that go along with living here on earth and you know not creating problems so
SPEAKER 03 :
Exactly, exactly.
SPEAKER 01 :
Okay, well, that’s very kind of you to leave your moon-ness where it’s supposed to be. It’s the least I could do. It really is, especially since you don’t actually own it. Anyhow, if you’re a multi-billionaire, you’re not worried about long-term care costs. You can afford them. But then if you’re like the rest of us, where you go, okay, well, I’ve got a house. I’ve got some maybe IRA or 401k money. And yes, you accumulate those assets, and then those assets are there to help pay for long-term care. But sometimes long-term care can get a lot more expensive than what our assets pay for. And that’s just kind of, you know, we could have a whole discussion about, healthcare and how expensive healthcare is or healthcare is not expensive. All of those things, that’s a whole separate discussion that probably doesn’t apply a lot to estate planning itself. But my grandmother, she had a series of strokes when my dad was in high school. And then she was paralyzed on her right side and grandpa took care of her until grandpa died. And then grandma had to go to assisted living and memory care. And they lived in Palo Alto, California, sold a house for about three quarters of a million dollars. So, you know, the house they built for like less than 5,000, they sold for more than 750,000. And then when grandma was in long-term care, uh, That $750,000 got spent. By the time she passed away, there was nothing of it left because all of her $750,000 went to pay for her long-term care. It went to pay for, you know, she was in assisted living and things for close to a decade. So it was like 10 years of paying for assisted living and memory care. Well, assisted living in Colorado usually is $50,000 to $75,000 a year. Memory care can be $150,000 to $200,000 a year. So even if you had $750,000 a year, you’re like, oh, well, I need memory care at $200,000 a year. Well, now you’re out of money in four years, and so that can be problematic. So there are some planning techniques where you can move assets and do things with them so that maybe you don’t have to spend the full $250,000 at $200,000 a year. And you go, okay, well, you know, maybe we need to do that. And part of those techniques involve gifting or transferring assets or moving assets around or, you know, having an asset go from where it is to somewhere besides just in the name of a surviving parent. And all of those things that don’t apply then don’t seem to be relevant to those of us who are just working and trying to accumulate assets and pay for our kids’ lives and everything. Okay. But we anticipate this might be a future situation that we need to deal with. So we’re going to put it into the estate plan or the powers of attorney or the will or the trust, anticipating that that is what might come up in the future. And we want our kids or our agents to be able to handle that for us. 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. My phone number is 720-394-6887. And again, that’s 720-394-6887. So if you wanted to call me directly, you can. Probably not for the next 10 minutes because I’m here on the show. So that’s just one example of things that are in there because we’re anticipating potential future events and the common things that happen and things that need to be done. And I totally get that there are definitely people who are… They look at that like, oh, but that doesn’t apply to us. Why is it there? I’m like, because it might apply in the future. So one of the things we’re doing in estate plan is we’re trying to have the estate plan work for you now, but not have to be replaced every couple of years because things change or because your life changes. We anticipate, okay, there’s some future changes coming. This is what we think we can do with that. And this is how we can make your documents flexible enough so that they work for you now and tomorrow and next year and 10 years from now. And if your life is mostly the same 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 years from now, you know, we just, we don’t want to have all of those things that happen become so problematic that you would have to change your will or your trust every year or two because it was so specific to everything that you were doing. So there’s a balance between being specific and being flexible in general. And I think a lot of people, whether it’s you were writing in school And so if you’re writing a report, you’re writing a paper for school and you include irrelevant information, your teacher, your professors can be like, well, why is this here? This doesn’t have anything to do with anything. And that doesn’t make any sense in the business world when you’re writing a memo or a position paper or whatever. trying to communicate with people, you tend not to include irrelevant information or things that don’t apply. And so people get used to that over the course of their life and over the course of a career. And then when they come to an estate plan, they’re like, well, wait a minute, why is this here? This doesn’t apply to us. Why are we doing that? I’m like, well, because we’re anticipating future situations. I’m like, if we’re writing things that don’t apply to us right now, I would question why we’re doing estate planning at all. Well, I’m not incapacitated. Fortunately, right now I am capacitated, or at least I have capacity. I don’t know that I am capacitated. That doesn’t quite seem to… Maybe it’s correct. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem… It’s not really what we say, though. But I have the ability to make my own decisions. I have the ability to decide for myself within reason. Sometimes my… If we’re talking about volleyball things and what we want to do for volleyball, my daughter has some strong opinions. And I’m like, well, I will be able to defer to her. We went to volleyball regionals on Saturday and we were down in Pueblo. And so we could either get up early on Saturday morning and get up at five and start driving at five. 6.30 to get down to Pueblo in time for a 10 a.m. match, or we could drive on Friday night down to Pueblo, stay at a hotel, and get up at a more normal time. We chose that option because that would work better for my daughter. Other of her teammates, they were like, no, we’re fine getting up early and driving down. When I was that age, I probably too could have ridden in a car for two hours, gotten out, stretched, and been ready to go. Now as more of an adult, you get out and you’re like, the old legs are a little bit stiff after two hours of driving. Just sitting in a car. So my opinions were influenced by the kiddo who wanted to go down. And just today we were trying to set up where do we want to stay for a volleyball tournament in Kansas City. And we have some very good friends in Kansas City. We’re like, oh, we could go stay with them. I’m like, I think… our daughter probably would want to stay at the hotel with all of her teammates. Now, if there’s an afternoon or an evening where we don’t have other stuff going on, we could either leave her at the hotel to stay there by herself and we could go see our friends, or we could all go see our friends and we could stay with them one night and then come back, whatever we need to do. But putting her in a situation where it’s going to be best for her to be with her teammates is kind of a big consideration for us. And so if I’m not incapacitated, why do I need a power of attorney? Why do I need a financial power of attorney? Why do I need a medical power of attorney? Well, what happens when somebody does become incapacitated? Somebody is injured in an accident or someone has an illness, someone has a heart attack and ends up in the hospital and needs somebody to be able to make decisions for them. Somebody gets a protracted illness and my grandmother who had Alzheimer’s the last 10 years of her life and She probably didn’t quite realize that she was needing somebody to make decisions for her because, I mean, early stages of memory loss, you’re kind of aware of it. But when you get further into the stages of memory loss, you have no clue that you have memory loss. Because your memory loss means that you don’t know that you have memory loss. And so when you reach that point, then it’s too late for somebody to come in and for you to designate somebody to come in and take over. Now, if you are in that spot, there’s a court process called a guardianship or conservatorship that allows somebody to come in and get court permission and court’s blessing to take over and make decisions for people. But that can be a longer, more involved, and therefore more expensive process. It can also be a very unsettling process for someone who has memory loss to be sitting in a courtroom being told, oh, you can’t make your own decisions. We’re appointing this person for you. One of the symptoms of that is you get people who are very paranoid and think people are out to get them. Well, if you’re paranoid and you think someone’s out to get you and then you’re in a courtroom with a judge saying, well, your kids are going to make decisions for you, it almost confirms that they’re in fact out to get you. And so if you set up your powers of attorney now, then you can avoid that type of thing. And yes, it doesn’t apply to you right this second, but it might very well in the future. If it doesn’t and you never are mentally incapacitated and you die and you’re like, well, I guess I did extra documents. Cool. It’s much better to have them and not need them than to need them and not have them. So thanks so much for listening to Mobile Estate Planning with Michael Bailey here on 560 KLZ AM. My phone number again, 720-394-6887. Stay tuned for John Rush and Rush Reason next, and I’ll be back next week. Thank you very much and have a great day. Bye-bye.
SPEAKER 05 :
Mobile estate planning with Michael Bailey will return to ATX next Wednesday at 2.30 here on KLZ 560, AM 560, FM 100.7, and online at klzradio.com.
SPEAKER 02 :
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ Management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
SPEAKER 04 :
Rush to Reason with John Rush is coming up next on KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 07 :
John Rusher on the next Rush to Reason. Dr. Scott Faulkner will be your host, and he’ll talk about his new biomarker promotion, the benefits of plasmapheresis, and special one-time pricing that goes with both. And then jet lag travel tips, couples getting healthier together, update on peptides, and Dr. Scott is expanding to a second location. That’s the next Rush to Reason, weekdays from 3 to 7 p.m., brought to you by one of our great sponsors, Cub Creek Heating and Air Conditioning. Find them at klzradio.com or download our free app. KLZ Radio.
SPEAKER 06 :
The big game hunting season is upon us, and archery season is in full swing. Hi, this is Scott Whatley with Sportsman of Colorado. Join us Saturdays from 1 to 2 p.m. We’ll bring you local outfitters, experts in archery, muzzle loading, and rifle hunting, and much more. Looking for a place to hunt pheasant and waterfowl? We’ve got you covered. Want to book a trophy deer elk hunt with a reliable outfitter? We can help. If you like the outdoors, you’ll love Sportsman of Colorado. Sportsman of Colorado, Saturdays at 1, right here on KLZ 560. As a dad, you probably taught your son how to hit a baseball. But have you taught him what not to hit? Teach him early that all violence against women is wrong. For tips, visit EndAbuse.org, brought to you by the Family Violence Prevention Fund, the Wade Institute,
