(2025) 6-8 David Carrier Hour 1 Podcast

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier,
your family's personal attorney, and you have found a place
where we talk about a state, planning, elder law, real estate,
and business law. So if you have a question, a comment,
or concern about wills, trust or probate. If you're wondering,
how do we beat the high cost of long term care?
How do we make sure that ordinary Americans do not

(00:23):
go broke? You know, the people who I don't know work, Yeah,
people who work, people who save, people who plan for
the future. How does the middle class go broke? You
ask yourself that question, I've got an answer after thirty
five years. You may be surprised, you may not be
surprised that I do have an answer. But the answer
is long term care. I mean, so many people every

(00:47):
every year, every week, every week, every day who are
going broke for no good reason. It's like, why do
we why do you say? Why do you work? Why
do you plan ahead? And it's especially kind of hit hit,
kind of hit you with the two BAI four sometimes.

(01:08):
And this last couple of weeks has been graduation parties, right,
people sending their kids off to college, and what have
you and you know, you get and it's I can't
say it's like ooh, mutual of Omaha, wild kingdom going
into the you know, far reaches of something you never
saw before. But I mean, it's just like going to

(01:29):
a lot of these places, you know, people's homes where
they're doing the you know, the graduation party and just
talking to the kids and you know, talking to parents
and everything else, and you realize that there's an awful
lot of folks out there who worked really hard, you know,
to pay off the house to have what they've got,
and you know, of course your kids going to college.

(01:50):
You're probably still a little bit younger, but you know,
you meet the grandparents, you're talking to folks and whatnot,
and it's like all of this is at risk. It's
all at risk because of the long term care. It's
not like he didn't work. It's not like you didn't save.
It's not like you didn't pay the mortgage for twenty years,
thirty years, forty years, whatever it was. And now you
see the hopes and dreams are kind of realized by

(02:12):
shooting the kid off to college. Sometimes it's the last kid,
sometimes it's the first kid going to college, but you know,
it's the same, you know, a lot the same idea.
And sometimes they're not going to college. Sometimes they're you know,
it's a graduation party, and sometimes they're you know, there's
one kid in particular I was thinking about who was
started a business in high school and now that's his

(02:34):
that's going to be his thing, and whether or not
he actually goes to who knows, and all kinds of colleges,
whether it's a service academy or local college or what
have you, just a lot of culmination of an awful
lot of work. And what hit me was, what if
all of a sudden somebody just said, Okay, all that

(02:57):
work you did for the last you know, umpty umpy
years twelve years kid, you know, and going through the
grade school and the high school and doing all the
rest of that's all going to be gone like tomorrow
or in a very short period of time, which is
what happens to folks who get involved in the long
term care right. I mean, it's like your work and

(03:20):
your work and your work, and you graduate to retirement
and then what happens And you think you've got enough
saved way, you think you've done it right, and you
really have done it right. Frankly, there's nothing else you
could do. You did as much, you did as well.
You're played by the rules. Okay, you raised your family,
you did all the good things, and now comes the

(03:43):
need for long term care. Whether it's you know, just
meeting with various people during the week. You know, a
couple comes in and you think, you know, everybody's everybody's
doing well, We're just going to revise the documents and
oh no, we've got the diagnosis and now what you know,
what comes next? The good news is and just in

(04:07):
the last week, we've had this happen a few times
where it's either folks that we've worked with before who've
put their plan in place, the got things ready to
go and it's all good news, which which is crazy
to say, isn't it. Let mean, think about this, you know,
and I have to catch myself because I say to people, well,

(04:27):
here's the good news, and it's like, it's not good news. Okay,
my spouse has one of the forms of dementia. It's
not good news, and it's not it's terrible news. That
is terrible news, very common terrible news. According to the
NIH it's a seventy percent bad news for people. Okay,

(04:48):
seventy percent of people get that bad news. But the
good news, I mean, what I'm trying to say is
the good news is you did Unlike most people, you
did play and for this, you know, we do have
a method in place. We do have things that have
been done that you've already done to make sure that

(05:11):
this won't be as it's devastating, you know, and that's
it is devastating, there's no question about it, but not
as devastating as it as it would have been. Which
who wants to hear that? You know? Who wants to
you know, cold comfort? I suppose, But we've all we're
also dealing with families who have not planned to have,

(05:34):
who have not done you know. Now we're scrambling and
they kind of put it off, put it off until
now it's impossible not to confront. I mean, it's confronting
you instead of you confronting the problem. And now we're
scrambling to save what we can. The good news is there, yeah,
see more good news. It's all relative. Okay, good news

(05:58):
is relative. You know, something you're related to and it's
one of those things where there's no good news with demensia.
There's no good news with you know, you get to
the end of your life and now there's a whole
new set of problems and issues, okay, and and and

(06:22):
there are things that can be done about it. I
guess that's the point. And this, you know, you put
together all these things where you're dealing with families who
have planned, dealing with families who haven't planned, and then
you're looking at the kids graduating, which is so cool,
and I don't get to see that till next month,
the next year. Excuse me, you know, my own son's graduating.

(06:44):
But you know, you go into these parties and stuff,
and you see all the work that went into this
and it's coming to fruition and there's a future and
it looks, you know, so positive, so great for the family.
You see that obvious goal setting, obvious work that's been done, preparation,

(07:06):
all the rest of this to go on to the
next step. And then compare it contrast that with folks
who have gotten probably the worst news of their life
right in terms of their spouse or their own their
own situation, and then how do we deal with that
in a way that it is you know, I don't

(07:27):
know if it's trite or a cliche or oh, it's
a new chapter of your life. Well, it is a
new chapter of your life, and you can deal with
it as successfully as you dealt with everything else. But
like everything, like everything else, you have to deal with it.
You can't, you know, you can't put blinders on all, right,

(07:48):
in high school and what have you and expect when
you graduate that things will go as well as they
could have gone. Right, there's no Nirvana on earth, there's
no paradise lost and all that. Right, all we can
do on this side of the great Divide is do
the best, do the best that we can. But we
are charged with doing the best that we can. Right.

(08:12):
It's like I saw it somewhere. I thought it was
really well put about. Your job is not to do
more than you can do something like this, but your
your job is to be all that you can be. Right.
I mean nobody, you know, nobody expects you to leap
tall buildings in a see single bound ben steal with

(08:33):
your bare hands, right, nobody expects that. But you are
expected to do your best. And it seems to me
that there are so many people and you look around,
there's so many people who did their best but lacked
the tools, the knowledge, the whatever to make that final lap,
to make that final graduation as successful as it could be.

(08:59):
And it kills you when you see people who work
their whole life, faithful to each other, faithful to their family,
you know, doing all the good things, and then it
doesn't it doesn't pay off in the way that it should.
And that's well, I mean, if they come and see us,
then we're gonna do the best we can, you know,

(09:21):
to fix that, of course, but it reminds you that
there's awful lot of people who haven't done that right.
And it is very gratifying, I have to say, when
you have folks who come in who worked with us
ten years ago, fifteen years ago, five years ago, whatever,
and now the time has come for the plan to
actually work, and it's like, yeah, you know that thing

(09:43):
you trusted us on fifteen years ago, Yeah it works,
It really does work, and let's get it done. So
just a couple of thoughts on graduations and moving from
one stage of life to another. Preparation, hard work, all
the rest of it is rewarded. But but and but

(10:04):
and I don't know which which one you want to
use and you have to do it. Nobody's going to
do it. Nobody's going to do it for you. It
has to be done. You've been listening to the David
Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier, your Family's personal Well, come
back to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier, your
Family's personal attorney. Yeah, you know, transitions, people changing from

(10:26):
one thing to another, kids graduating high school, some going here,
some going there. Very exciting time, all right, But you
don't get there without you don't get there without planning.
That's a that's the fact of it. Now, how do
you how do you do that planning? Well, you know,
our emphasis is first of all on follow through. So

(10:48):
so often what people will do, you know, you go
see somebody, usually an attorney. But but you know, nowadays
we see a lot of folks, are a lot of
financial users who are claiming to do estate planning. You
see more and more of these online things that are
available online services and stuff, and are they wonderful. Well,

(11:12):
here's the here's the issue that I have with most
of the state planning, the way most the state planning
is done. I include traditional estate planning. You know, the way,
that the way that most attorneys do it, you know,
the you know, even the even the traditional stuff. I
say that there are four things that are problematic that

(11:35):
what I've seen. The first is a lack of follow through.
You get some documents, you feel good because you've got
the documents. Oh, we have a trust, we have a will,
we have this and that. Right, And what you've got
are some documents and yeah, your name is on them,
that's true. But will those documents you know what I mean.

(12:01):
It's not a I solved the problem. It's I bought
the instruction manual put it that way. And so often
there is not a lot of thought that goes into
what does this really mean in our family? Right? And
especially you see this all the time with trust based planning.
People have trusts and they feel pretty good about the trust,

(12:24):
and so you know, yeah, I'm supposed to make you
feel better, I guess. Anyway, the idea is you have
a trust and you think that's great. Now I got
my trust, and that's it. You know, I paid a
bunch of money. Now I have a trust. I'm done. Well,
you're not really done. Everybody knows you're not really done.
But you do have a thing called a trust, and

(12:47):
now you can feel better about that about having a trust.
And because there's no follow through in the process that
you're engaged in. Right, you want a state plan, here's
an estate plan done. Easy. See how easy it took
five minutes? Okay, Well, this stuff doesn't really take five

(13:10):
minutes as a matter of fact. I mean, you wish
it did. I wish it did, but it doesn't. As
a matter of fact. There's a lot more work that
needs to be done, but there is no follow through
because they can cover that by giving you a letter
of instruction. And look, if you've got a trust, right,
and the last time you saw the guy, our gal,
the attorney was when you signed it. Get out that

(13:33):
binder if you can find it in the basement somewhere,
get out the binder and there'll be a letter in
there that says it's on you to put your assets
in the trust. And you're like, what the heck does
that mean? Put my assets in the trust? You know
what am I supposed to do? Put my savings bonds
in the pages or something. No, but there is a
follow through that is routinely not done, not usually done.

(13:55):
And the way that people seehya is by giving you
this letter that says it's on you to do that
follow through. Well, I've never made that's never made any
sense to me. And thirty five years ago, when I
first started doing this on my own anyway, it was
very obvious that people weren't reading the letter. And so

(14:16):
we've always had some sort and it's evolved, but some
sort of way to make sure that there is follow through.
And that's not enough. I mean, you can have something
that's super great, right, it's all setting ready to go
right now. I hope something happened the next couple of weeks,
but then a month, a year whenever something does happen.

(14:37):
But there's been no maintenance of the prom You haven't
changed the oil, the filters, what have you. You haven't
maintained the thing. You know, if if remember the old cars,
you know we're always cleaning and gapping the spark plugs,
right we were. You know, you had to replace the
rotor and the brushes and the the condenser. You know
you had there was a lot of maintenance, a lot

(14:59):
more maintenance on a vehicle than we have nowadays. Nowadays,
spark plugs last for what eighty thousand miles something ridiculous
like that. I just found I just found out that
to replace the headlight in my old pickup truck, I
got to go in and I've got to use all
the you know, those the body tools you've got, you know,

(15:20):
the fiberglass you can't use the metal ones, you know,
the metal pride bars and what. You got to use
the fiberglass ones, you know, so you don't scratch everything up.
But you basically have to disassemble this thing in order
to put a new headlight in. It's not just three
screws on the bezel, pull it out, replace it in
a way you go. And that's because these things last

(15:41):
so long. They're so very they're very very good in
terms of the longevity. Well, the car manufacturers figure it
out that if we rely on people to actually do
routine maintenance, car is not going to last very long.
That's the difference between some of these old cars you
see that have been maintained right along and things that
have not been in which they fell apart, rusted, whatever.

(16:02):
So new cars A're designed not to need a lot
of maintenance, okay, but when you do need to maintain them,
you know, something fail, Oh my god, now you've got
a ton of work to do well. Follow Through means
getting it set up correctly. Follow Up means making sure
that it is maintained properly and a good estate plane off.

(16:25):
It's been done correctly right needs about as much maintenance
as your motor vehicle. In other words, you got to
put gas in it, but beyond that not much. In
other words, yeah, it's good to know that it's out there.
There are things that need to be done as you
go forward. It's not simply I've got it. It's in
the basement, you know, when something happen. When something happens,

(16:46):
I die or whatever, then we can go find it
and everything will be hunky dory. It's not like that,
but it's not. You don't have to be tinkering with
it every weekend like with an older car. You know
what I'm saying. So the idea is number one, when
we get it set up, let's get it set up correctly,
and number two, let's follow up to make sure that

(17:07):
it still meets requirements, that it's still as valuable for
you as on the day that you started. Most of
the state planning, sadly is not effective. You know, when
you put them put the binder downstairs. It's not effective
then to do what you needed to do because of

(17:28):
the lack of well, I'll get into next, which is
the what was the idea here? What were we trying
to do? Okay, it's a you know, there's a confusion.
I think about what the goal should be when we
do this as state planning stuff. It's tough enough, let's
face it, tough enough to go see a lawyer. It's
tough enough to you know, get over that barrier. Oh

(17:50):
now you know the roof's not leaking, my car is running.
I mean, and I'm looking to go on vacation, and
now I've got to spend a bunch of money to
get some documents that someone else is going to use.
What is the point of that? You know, Well, there
is a point in which we'll get to in the
next segment. Six one six seven seven four twenty four

(18:11):
to twenty four. That's the number. Six one, six, seven,
seven four twenty four twenty four. Give us a call
if you've g got a question, comment or concern. I'm
David Carrier, your family's personal attorney. David's got the how
to you're looking for. Just call seven seven four, twenty four,
twenty four. This is the David Carrier Show. Welcome back

(18:33):
to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier, your family's
personal attorney. Now is the time to give us a call.
Sixty one six seven seven four twenty four twenty four.
That's sixty one six seven seven four twenty four to
twenty four. Will get your question, comment or concern on
the air. That's right, easy to do, doesn't cost you anything,

(18:54):
and uh a lot more interesting than what I'm talking
about anyway. So this is where we talk about a
state planning, elder law, real estate and business line. We
really kind of mushed those all together called retirement law.
So if you have retired, if you'd like to retire,
if you know someone who's retired, if you hope at
some point, at some point in life's journey to retire,

(19:15):
well you've got to be ready for it. It's like
no big surprise, right, It's like anything else. You prepare
for it, it tends to work out better. That's why
we call it planning. Do we know what's going to happen? No,
we don't, and that's kind of again why we do
the planning, Because we don't because we don't know. Now
we need to prepare for it. That's the I hope

(19:40):
that makes sense, right. I mean, that's why you buckle
up your seatbelt before you get in the accident, right.
You don't want that to and it does happen. So
how were we gonna make sure? As I was talking
about earlier, you know, you're at high school graduations now,
and uh, you know, for a lot of those kids,
it's a they've done so much work to get here

(20:01):
and now it's time to put that aside and to
move on to the next, to the next phase. Well,
isn't your whole life just a series of moving ahead,
doing it right, moving ahead, doing it right, doing it
as well as we can, let's face it, because nobody
quote unquote does it right. I mean, we're all we're
all trying here. So anyway, one of the things that

(20:25):
I find very irritating when we're talking about a state planning,
and not so much with regular and with Verio Folcus.
It's just the way it is. But so much of
the information that people have about it is like a
total mistake, in my opinion, and I shouldn't say total,
probably ninety percent mistake and don't ask me to justify

(20:48):
that with an algorithm, because I can't do it. But
the focus always seems to be on I want to
avoid probate when I'm dead, right, which is okay, Yeah,
that's a good thing. That's a good thing to do,
avoiding probate when you're dead. You know, of course you're
not around to see it, right, But you have that
you're not going to leave behind a mess, right. That's

(21:10):
why a lot of folks do planning. But there's something
that happens before you're dead, and it's called your life.
And so often people think that this planning thing has
nothing to do with them while they're alive. It's something
nice that you're doing. You don't want to be a
curse when you leave this earthly realm, right. You'd like

(21:34):
things to be fine for the folks to leave behind,
But you haven't left them behind yet, okay, And there's
a lot more living yet to be done, whether it's you,
your spouse, loved ones. Okay, we're not Why don't we
focus on what's happening here? Right. You can't make a

(21:55):
good end unless you have a good beginning, middle and end, right,
I mean, this is the middle part of it, all right.
This is the reason, in my opinion, the primary reason
to do planning is not for the people you leave behind.
It's for you yourself. Okay. The reality is that long

(22:19):
term care it's hundreds of dollars a day, even the cheap.
I mean, I keep asking people, well, what do you
think it costs? Two thousand dollars a month? Three thousand
dollars a month. It's like, are you kidding me? You
think you think a long term care facility costs three
thousand dollars a month? All right? It hasn't been one
hundred dollars a day since I got started in this stuff,

(22:39):
and nowadays, you know, five hundred and fifty dollars a
day is not uncommon, right, it's not unusual anymore now. Yeah,
usually it's around four to fifty a day. But okay,
multiply that times, multiply that times thirty. Okay, it's expensive.
It's it's twelve fifteen, sixteen, eighteen thousand dollars a month

(23:03):
is what it actually costs. And sometimes people will tell me, well,
I've been saving for that, or we just had some
folks in paying, you know, fifteen hundred bucks a month
to maintain long term care insurance. And it's like, really,
you spend fifteen hundred bucks a month with long term

(23:23):
care insurance, yep, which is what it costs. Incidentally, because
and that's not an unfair price. That's a reasonable premium
for long term care insurance. But the reality is like
social Security, like Medicare, right, you're already paid for that
with your taxes, right, think about it. If you you

(23:45):
could buy you could do your four h one k
and hope you hopefully you did, right, that's going to
provide some income. And you can do that. You can
also go out and buy private health insurance. You could
do that. But sixty years ago, in the sixties, nineteen sixties,
which is sixty years ago now hard to believe, that's

(24:08):
hard to believe. But that long ago government said, hey,
look people aren't buying this stuff, right, the industry hasn't
stepped up. We need and of course it's almost one
hundred years now for Social Security. So we've got Social Security,
we've got Medicare, we've got programs right, which are not free.
There's nothing free about any of this. You paid for it.

(24:31):
That's why it's okay for you to get a social
Security check because you paid for it. So it's okay
for you to go get your Medicare right. You paid
for it. It's an insurance program that you paid for. Well,
what they left out was long term care. And I
think it has to do with politics, because when you
get social Security and you get your medicare right, you're

(24:53):
going to keep on voting for another couple of decades.
And if they monkey with it, see you later. If
they may get too hard, see you later. Politicians who
messed with my social security of medicare right. That's that's reality.
But you don't have any political whatever with regard to medicaid, right.

(25:14):
And Medicaid is how America pays for long term care.
That's just what it is. And you're middle class, you're comfortable,
you're all the rest of the stuff. Great, they'll take
your cottage, they'll take your life savings, they'll improverish your spouse,
and if you're single, they'll take everything you got pretty much.
Oh oh, they're going to leave my house because my
house is protected, yes, protected till you die. And then

(25:37):
they get it if it goes through probate. In most
other states, not Michigan, but most other states they'll put
a lean on your house immediately. So how long is
it going to before Michigan figures that one out. I
don't know. I don't want to find out. So I
think that planning involves you, yourself, you your spouse right now,

(25:57):
right here. How do we make sure the goal of
doing this stuff should be, in my humble opinion, should
be preserving your stuff for you, just like we use
Social Security, just like we use Medicare. We got to
use the long term care program that we paid for
with our tax dollars. Now they want to make you,

(26:18):
they want to make you think that you're robbing the
you know, the poor box at church or something, which
is just it's so cynical. It's just you know, it's
this high moral ooh, you know that's for these people.
It's like, what are you talking about when you talk
about these people? Most of the people you know on
the who uh see, here's the thing. We don't want

(26:40):
anybody to be bereft. Right, if you worked and you saved,
and you did all the good things right, even though
maybe bad luck. Maybe medical bill who just had some
folks in they paid thousands and thousands and thousands in
medical bills which should have been covered by something else, right,
but it completely depleted their life savings, all right, depleted. See,

(27:04):
you know, can't do it anymore, all right. You wish
they had come in before so you could have fixed that.
But this is the situation we're in now, the fact
that they get the medicaid right having unwittingly impoverished themselves
in ways they didn't have to do. Well, you can't
fix that now, but you can make sure that it

(27:24):
doesn't happen to somebody else, and you can make their
situation as good as it can be. All right. So
the proper this is my view, The proper view of
doing all of this is not to avoid leaving a mess,
which is important. It's not to benefit the next generation,
which is important. It's not to do the avoid probate.

(27:47):
You to avoid probate. Yeah, that's a good thing if
you're accomplishing a certain goal. What is your goal? How
about have your stuff benefit you during your lifetime? How
about to get a payback for what you paid in
during your lifetime? All right, why don't we make that
the first goal? Why don't we figure out how to
make your life savings benefit you, benefit your spouse, if

(28:11):
you're lucky enough to have one, Okay, how do we
make that happen? That's what I think the real goal
of this whole enterprise is first and foremost. Next segment,
we'll talk about what happens next. But first and foremost,
you got to take care of yourself. You got to
take care of your spouse because if you don't, right,
if you don't, you can't take care of anybody else.

(28:33):
And so many people oh for the kids, Well, ain't
going to be nothing left for the kids if you
don't take care of you, simple as that. You've been
listening to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier, your
family's personal attorney. David's working and working and taking your calls.
Now this is the David Carrier Show. Well, welcome back

(28:54):
to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier, your family's
personal attorney. Now is the time to give us a call.
Six one six seven seven four twenty four twenty four.
That's sixty one, six seven some them four twenty four
to twenty four. Will get your question, comment or concern
on the air right away. Talking about graduation. So that

(29:14):
we've been to a bunch of high school graduation parties
this weekend. My son doesn't seem to be getting tired
of it. But mom and Dad certainly are a lot
of fun to go and see what's going on with
these folks. But like I say, it's a well you
know how many parties can you go to? Answer? Lots

(29:37):
and it's very very nice. And it's the next transition, right,
the transition, and you realize that you don't get to transition, right,
You don't get to move from one level to the
next without having done without having done the work. You've
got to do the work first. Well, what we see
happening a lot is people focused on the big transition

(29:57):
from this dimension to the next, right, older folks, right,
without realizing that, hey, we're not gone yet. We're still here,
still here, right, So how do we make sure that
you remain here? How do we make sure that that
still happens? And the whole idea of planning is kind

(30:19):
of negative, let's face it. I mean, it's like, oh,
you got to do this, or these bad things happen.
So what we're striving to do is to turn it
into a positive kind of thing. Right, This is something
we've been doing for years, but we're really kind of
doubling down on this whole idea. So this past week
we're calling this the twenty twenty five is the Summer

(30:40):
of baseball and summer of baseball for our Red Wagon
club members, our life plan members, the folks that we've
served over the Low these many years. Every month where
you know, it's take me out to the ballgame. So
we had our first one was just this past week
and yay, the white Caps crushed the Lake City Captains

(31:03):
and I think it was the I think it was
like the first pitch of the second inning and it
was a home run, and then there were a couple
of home dingers right one right after the other. It
was it was a home run derby for the for
the white Caps. So that was good. But was also
good was we had a couple hundred people out there
on the rooftop deck and which you can't really see

(31:25):
the game so well from up there, but it's very
convenient for getting people together and you can still see
the game and you can always go down, you know,
take the take seats down on the lawn or bleachers.
But the point was, here's a this is what I'm
talking about before when I say follow through, Yes, follow
through to make sure that what you've got is correct

(31:47):
when you do it. But the follow up part is like,
once you have this done, and this is just observation
three and a half decades of doing this. My observation
is that as soon as you get get it done,
you're happy with it, and then you want to put
it away, typically in the basement, judging from the mildewy smell,

(32:07):
but you want to put it somewhere and not worry
about it again, which I certainly understand. But that doesn't
work anymore than never changing the oil in your vehicle.
It doesn't work any better than you know, I don't know,
not maintaining anything that you're you know, don't take your
shower for a couple of weeks and let's see how
well that works. Okay, that's the point. There has to

(32:31):
be this ongoing involvement. But it doesn't all have to
be you know, terrible legal stuff. I mean, we can
do things where we bring where we bring our families together,
and it's a range of people, but mostly seasoned citizens, right,
But there's a lot of little kids roaming around because
grandma Grandpa brought them to the baseball game, which we welcome.

(32:52):
The point is that if we maintain that relationship with
you over time, right over the years, then number one,
and this is I think the most important part of
this is you're sitting at a table eating hot dog,
hamburger or whatever, watching a ballgame with other people who've

(33:14):
done what you're doing. Okay, lots of times there are
people who have had a loved one in long term
care or somebody who died, or they've actually seen how
the plan actually works in the real world, and that
I think, Like I said, I think that's one of
the more valuable functions of the follow up, which is

(33:39):
not to have me lecture. Well, I do lecture people,
you know. We do have a real element of the
legal technical about things that have changed. Yeah, so there
is an element of that, not at the ballgame, but
there is an element of I gotta listen to this
guy talk about law for you know, we do those quarterly,

(34:00):
you know, but and there's a lot of information that's available.
Oh I got to listen to all that information, right. Well, yeah,
but come for the baseball game, stay for the lecture, right,
Except we don't do the lecture at the baseball game.
But the idea is, let's make it fun. And the
lessons that you learn from people who've already gone through it,

(34:21):
And I don't mean anything in a formal way. I
just mean the informal kind of people getting together and
just talking to each other and you know, relating their
own experiences. That's that's probably the most most valuable because
when you do all this planning, there's an element of gee,
I wonder if this really works. There's an ill Yeah, okay,

(34:43):
you know Carrier said this, but what's the real story. Well,
when you're sitting down across the table, you know, munching
on a hot dog, watching a baseball game, that's not
a bad time for people to talk about what it
meant to them, what actually happened. So by keeping this

(35:04):
whole estate planning thing as just part of what you
think about on a daily, weekly, monthly, basis, occasional basis, right,
I mean, I'm lucky if you think about it, you know,
once a once a year. Okay, But with the follow
through and the file not follow through is getting it
set up. Follow Up is what happens when it's when

(35:25):
it's done. How does this actually work to increase my
satisfaction with life. How does this help you when disaster strikes,
whether it's dementia, car accident, what have you. How how
does all this stuff work? And I think that sitting
down with other people who've been through it is the
way to go. And they don't have an ax to grind, right,

(35:52):
the folks that you're talking to, maybe I do, Okay,
oh yeah, you know you know he's a lawyer. Fine,
I got it. But what didn't you talk to some
real folks? And and that's that community. You know, we're
pushing towards four hundred now life Plan members and well
I've got thousands of Life Plan members, but the Red

(36:12):
Wagon Club members, which is a little bit different. That's
just so important, So that you know, you do. It's
easy to get isolated, Isn't it very easy to get
isolated to know that there's other people in exactly your
situation who are just as friendly, just as nice, just
as outgoing as you are. Right, that's what people are.

(36:35):
I mean, that's that's the report I get back plus plusquord.
During these events, I kind of wandered around and listen in,
you know, as to what people are, what people are
talking about. So that's my that's my takeaway from it
that it's a very it's a very supportive thing. Mostly
people aren't talking about legal stuff, but they are talking

(36:56):
about life, planning, future, all the rest of that, which
can be very supportive, very valuable for the folks who've
done who've done them. But again, like I said before,
we're focusing on you. We're focusing on your situation, on
the situation of your spouse, if you're lucky enough to

(37:18):
have one, to make sure that your life reflects the
work that you've done right justified by the fact that
you paid in Why is it so bad that you should,
you know, get some payback on that. You know, so
many other people, so many other people are which judging
from the news, apparently they're unhappy that they may not

(37:40):
be able to they may not be able to continue
in that exploitive manner much longer you've been listening to
the David Carrier Show, I'm David Carrier inviting you to
a Three Secrets workshop. The Three Secrets Workshop is where
we get all this stuff cranked up. It's very easy
to find them. Go to the website Davidcarrier Law dot com.

(38:02):
There's an AI expert on there looks kind of like me,
and you can actually ask it whatever question you'd like.
It'll give you reasonable answers. You've been listening to the
David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier, your family's personal attorney.