0:00:00.2 Kurt Baker: Live Fully Die Ready. Nikki Weiss, a digital thanatologist founder of ENDevo. Creator of My Final Playbook app and host of the Digital Legacy podcast is redefining how we approach death and legacy planning. Her mission is to normalize these essential conversations, empowering people to comfort the inevitable with clarity and confidence. Through My Final Playbook, Nikki’s holistic approach guides individuals through four key pillars, legal, financial, physical, and digital. Her user-friendly app simplifies complex processes into actionable steps, helping people protect loved ones, and preserve their digital legacy. With a background in healthcare, project management, data governance, and risk analysis, Nikki’s unique expertise addresses the emotional, legal and logistical aspects of end of life planning. Her compassionate guidance provides peace of mind and the freedom to live fully in the present. I’m all about that, living fully in the present for sure, but.
0:01:07.2 Niki Weiss: We fully die ready.
0:01:09.9 Kurt Baker: Yeah, but you bring up a great point. I mean, my father recently passed away, but one of the things he did for me is he just, he made sure I had all the information to access what I needed to access, added me to accounts, things like that, so I can understand how this could very easily have been a big mess if he hadn’t like done that. So, what inspired you, I guess, to become a Thanatologist, which I’d like for you to define for the rest of us, which… ‘Cause the first time I’d heard this word, so I thought it was pretty cool. And then how did you decide to do this? What, connects you to all this stuff? How’d you get started?
0:01:43.1 Niki Weiss: Well, let’s just start with Thanatology.
0:01:44.5 Kurt Baker: Yeah.
0:01:44.8 Niki Weiss: So, Thanatology is the study of death and dying, bereavement. What is the Legacy that we leave behind, right? So, there’s different branches of Thanatology. There’s music Thanatology and the study of Thanatology, people who are very involved with pastoral guidance. They also study Thanatology. Now what made me personally got involved, we all have a story. I have a story always starts with our family.
0:02:12.2 Kurt Baker: Sure.
0:02:13.1 Niki Weiss: So, my father was 42 and my mother was 50 when they both passed away.
0:02:17.3 Kurt Baker: Oh, wow.
0:02:18.0 Niki Weiss: Young 10 years apart both of cancer. And, so needless to say that he’s certainly guided my childhood into what then I stepped into, my first professional career was in actually as a hospice clinician, bedside hospice clinician. And for those that are familiar with hospice, it’s a calling. It’s certainly not something that you find yourself in expectedly.
0:02:49.1 Kurt Baker: That’s a though job. Just as an outsider watching all that they do, it has to be difficult long term. I mean, that’s just my opinion Watching from the outside.
0:02:57.0 Niki Weiss: Yeah. Well, I think for we’re… I’m wired for it.
0:03:02.7 Kurt Baker: Okay. That’s good.
0:03:03.5 Niki Weiss: And I would say, I’m one of four children and I would say as the youngest of my siblings, my other siblings are not necessarily wired for it. Although, I have to say, my oldest brother is an estate attorney, so he does walk people through that experience. But bedside hospice, you’ll hear many people say that, there’s a calling. There’s angels behind some of the hospice clinicians. And as I said, I just feel that, I was very comfortable with that population. I was with hospice for about seven years, and then when I turned 40, I actually wanted to make some money. And so I took on the opportunity to step into project management and knowing that, even knowing I was stepping away from the hospice population, I knew I would get back to it. I didn’t know how, but I had faith that one day I would, and that happened, oh, about a year and a half ago in the summer of 2023, it started, believe it or not, it started with my dog.
0:04:11.7 Kurt Baker: Your dog?
0:04:11.8 Niki Weiss: My dog.
0:04:13.6 Kurt Baker: Okay. All right. I’d have to hear this one.
0:04:14.4 Niki Weiss: And if people who know me personally, they know both my husband and I have a very long dog history. But how does dog and hospice kind of bring it back? Well, even when I was working in hospice, I was in charge of a pet therapy program and I ran a… We had our dogs visit. And then here I am, 18 years later, and during COVID I actually took on a project dog and got the dog certified as a therapy dog. But that was the first opportunity that I was now walking back into nursing homes, memory care facilities, and working with these people and watching their expression with the dog. And then I realized that I missed that. So, I stepped back in. I knew okay, I wanted to get back into this population. I wasn’t sure how.
0:05:07.4 Niki Weiss: And at the same time, my husband and I realized we had not looked at our wills since our children were in high school. And now they’re in their 30s. Lucky for me, I have a brother who is an estate attorney, and I got a good deal. And so, we started walking through our… This is really complicated ’cause it’s not just about our wills. It is power of attorney, medical advance directives for some states now, we are looking at death with dignity laws. It’s available here in the state of New Jersey. I live in Pennsylvania. It’s on the docket, medical aid and dying. So, there were a lot of complicated decisions that need to be made when it comes to end of life planning. And so, I started, it just all started coming together. End of life planning, life well lived. And I’ve been involved with, for the last three years with blockchain AI governance. And I just felt, how can I pull this all together? It’s not just being bedside, but it is how to create this comprehensive end of life plan. And estate planning is just one piece of it. It’s also what do you do with your body, now with the digital piece, that’s when everything kind of started popping for me. Because you mentioned your father. And I would say that I guess we call him the lost generation, right? Or he’s just at the end, the beginning of the boomers, right? He was how old?
0:06:35.6 Kurt Baker: No, he is not a Boomer. 89.
0:06:36.7 Niki Weiss: Yeah. So, he’s the lost generation. So, for them, the digital aspect was really not part of his end of life planning process. He might have had a couple passports.
0:06:47.7 Kurt Baker: He only got a cell phone a few years back. So, I think it was mid 80s when he finally got his cell phone.
0:06:51.8 Niki Weiss: Was it a flip phone?
0:06:56.6 Kurt Baker: Actually, I think he had a flip phone for a little while and we had to get him a smartphone. ‘Cause he was on a trip once and I think they needed the GPS feature and he couldn’t use it. That’s, my third hand information. There may not be accurate, but my recollection was there was a need on a trip for a smartphone. I believe it was GPS. And so, he is finally broke down, but he barely used it. I mean, honestly, compared to what most people use it as a phone basically.
0:07:20.2 Niki Weiss: And, so we’re talking.
0:07:22.3 Kurt Baker: And texting. That’s about it.
0:07:23.2 Niki Weiss: And we’re talking about that digital footprint. So, if we compare your father’s end of life planning and his digital footprint compared to, say, our kids. Who are now, like their digital footprint is just a vast ocean of data that’s being aggregated.
0:07:41.8 Kurt Baker: And a lot of things as you know, a lot of things are held electronically now. Whereas in the old days it was more paper oriented. Everything was pretty much paper and the electronic was kind of the backup. But now it’s kind of like the electronic is there and every once in a while you download a paper copy, maybe, maybe.
0:07:57.2 Niki Weiss: Maybe but now.
0:08:00.0 Kurt Baker: Or you just do an offline copy, another digital copy that’s offline. Just, but not a lot of people even do that. I know I just recently did that. I downloaded my whole Google Drive onto a separate drive and, I’m gonna just keep doing that in cycling because Google’s great. But what if it goes down one day? I definitely want my data.
0:08:20.2 Niki Weiss: So the conversation.
0:08:22.4 Kurt Baker: It’s like.
0:08:22.5 Niki Weiss: It’s complicated now, right?
0:08:23.9 Kurt Baker: Oh yeah, sure.
0:08:24.7 Niki Weiss: This end of life planning. So, you’re asking me how did I come to the fruition? And I would say over the last year and a half, it has just been this, on just discovery of like, okay, it’s not just about my… It is just not about my will or my documentation with my estate attorney. It’s now my financials, right? Did I set my beneficiaries up correctly? Where are all those insurance policies that I know are out there? Because I’ve gone from, different employers, all my retirement accounts. Like everything is getting very spread out. It’s not consolidated. Where are all the passwords? So, as I’m moving through this, wow, this is really complicated. And then I started asking people that one question, if you died tomorrow and your phone died with you, think about multi-factor authentication. How much mayhem would there be? Now for your father, maybe not so much, but for us, You and me, right.
0:09:25.9 Kurt Baker: Could be.
0:09:29.7 Niki Weiss: I have an online business. You have your clients and your passwords. It’d be able to start managing that. And then let’s just take it down one more generation or two and their social media accounts, their reoccurring subscriptions, if something happened. Because part of living is dying, we’re all gonna die.
0:09:49.5 Kurt Baker: So I’ve heard.
0:09:52.1 Niki Weiss: But it’s still a taboo topic, now for you and your family. You’ve met it on head on.
0:09:57.2 Kurt Baker: Right.
0:09:58.4 Niki Weiss: Made it a mission to bring awareness to it. But for many people and cultures, this is something that is still taboo or, coming from my Jewish background, we have an expression, don’t give yourself a kinaha. It’s like, don’t give yourself, if you talk about it, it’ll happen.
0:10:14.9 Kurt Baker: Oh yeah, I definitely heard that. Yeah.
0:10:17.4 Niki Weiss: And that’s actually, very prevalent in many cultures is that if you talk about it, then you’ll make it happen. Yet, if we don’t talk about it and we don’t plan for it, then that becomes the chaos, the mayhem, the conundrum of where are the passwords. And so, over the last year or so, I’ve been talking to professionals in the legal, financial, physical, and digital. Now let’s start opening up to the new emerging profession or space, which is called Death Tech.
0:10:51.9 Kurt Baker: Ah.
0:10:51.9 Niki Weiss: Now we’re gonna get exciting.
0:10:54.9 Kurt Baker: Absolutely. So, what is Death Tech exactly. Other than I can combine it. That’s not like when your phone dies, right? That’s not the death of tech, I’m assuming, right? So, can you define it for us? Like what exactly is Death Tech.
0:11:10.1 Niki Weiss: Just like, it’s the emerging of platforms and solutions that are able to solve the digital aspects of the life we’re living today. So.
0:11:20.2 Kurt Baker: That’s not a whole lot of words that I didn’t really quite get.
0:11:23.1 Niki Weiss: Well, Let me put it together for you.
[laughter]
0:11:24.5 Kurt Baker: Can you explain? Yeah, it sounded great. I’m not just exactly sure what it meant.
0:11:29.0 Niki Weiss: So, let me introduce you to a couple of terminologies. Okay. Digital Vaults.
0:11:35.2 Kurt Baker: Oh yeah. We do you use that all the time in our business absolutely.
0:11:38.7 Niki Weiss: Yeah. So, now we’re talking about digital vaults, but now we’re talking about Digital Legacy Vault. So, there’s a company out there called Presidio. Presidio is in partnership with AARP. They are now offering these digital vaults that enable people to upload their lives and yet set certain parameters and permission sets that in case they die, their data doesn’t die with them, and that they can’t put permission settings in there so people, beneficiaries, executors, trustees can have access. Also, let’s think about, our cryptocurrency. So, now we’re getting into our NFTs, cryptocurrencies, metaverse assets. How do we share those? Especially now that we don’t have necessarily the traditional financial managers like yourself, where you might be able to have access to a brokerage account. Well, right now, as of today, 2024, getting into our cryptocurrencies, our NFTs, our metaverse accounts is a little more complicated. That user experience right now on those blockchain platforms is not so easy today. So, now we’re getting into, well, what are those solutions that are now being developed? So, that is part of that Death Tech conversation. For example, also, believe it or not, there are what they call Bereavement bots or Grief bots.
0:13:03.5 Kurt Baker: Bereavement bot.
0:13:06.8 Niki Weiss: Kurt, I mean, have you seen, Black Mirror like that? The Black Mirror Show, like the Black Mirror Show. There are a couple episodes where people have passed away and then to be able to download their consciousness, download their thoughts, their processes, their thought patterns onto a hard drive, and then somewhere along the way to be able to create this.
0:13:30.4 Kurt Baker: It sounds like science fiction to me.
0:13:34.3 Niki Weiss: Only ’cause we’re Gen Xers.
0:13:34.9 Kurt Baker: Okay. All right.
0:13:36.5 Niki Weiss: So, if you talk to a 20 something year old, they don’t know what science fiction is anymore. Science fiction really is what they’re living today. I mean, that’s kind of a reality check for us as old timers OGs. So, Death Tech, right now, a lot of the funeral homes are now preparing themselves. They’re equipping themselves with, we might call, they’re Telecasting a lot of their services. Their Memorial Services. Well, now, right now it might be on YouTube and where you go into a funeral… Into a cemetery, and now there is technology QR codes that they’re embedding onto the headstones. This is part of that Death Tech space.
0:14:20.9 Kurt Baker: So, what’s on the QR code? The ceremony?
0:14:22.9 Niki Weiss: You Can absolutely.
0:14:22.9 Kurt Baker: Oh, wow. Okay.
0:14:24.2 Niki Weiss: You can scan the QR code and it’ll take you, today it’ll take you to the YouTube channel where it might have shared the ceremony, but maybe tomorrow and this technology already exists. Remember Star Wars, that first episode that we saw in 1977 when Princess Leia popped up on R2D2.
0:14:45.1 Kurt Baker: Oh, the 3D thing? Yeah.
0:14:47.2 Niki Weiss: Yeah.
0:14:48.3 Kurt Baker: That was pretty cool. The hologram kind of thing, right?
0:14:51.3 Niki Weiss: That’s not so science fiction today.
0:14:53.4 Kurt Baker: Oh no, they can do that now, right? Yeah, they can definitely do that now.
0:14:55.6 Niki Weiss: Right? There’s companies out there Replica that is able to start creating those holographic images. So, just imagine you Grandpop Kurt, right? And you have grandchildren and you wanna start, and this technology exists today. You wanna start documenting your life for example, and telling scenarios and stories that you would love your grandchildren to know about. So, even just this conversation you and I are having, well, this is digitized right now. So, it’s gonna live somewhere. So, let’s… I don’t have to fast forward that far for AI, to be able to come in and start scraping the internet for anything, Kurt or Nikki, and then to create a Nikki bot. I have two granddaughters today. Margo, and Ramona. So, Margo and Ramona, maybe they’re little, right?
0:15:47.4 Kurt Baker: So, this is gonna be a good Nikki bot, or is this gonna be… This could go all kinds of directions if you’re talking about AI evolved. Now.
0:15:53.9 Niki Weiss: We can, I mean, well this is, you’re asking about the Death Tech Industry.
0:15:54.5 Kurt Baker: It could be a friendly one. It could be the evil one, It could be.
0:16:00.1 Niki Weiss: Are you a good witch or a bad witch.
0:16:00.2 Kurt Baker: Can I create mine? It’s my best case scenario like that I was perfect, so to speak.
0:16:04.6 Niki Weiss: And this is where…
0:16:05.4 Kurt Baker: No flaws.
0:16:06.3 Niki Weiss: This is where it comes in.
0:16:07.7 Kurt Baker: Get rid all those flaws I had.
0:16:11.0 Niki Weiss: So, wait, let’s talk about the benevolent, right. The benevolent. Benevolent means that yes, there is technology, there are companies out there that I can now document my life to have a conversation to answer 1000 questions of anything my grandchildren might wanna know about me, that already exists. There are companies out there that are providing that service. And then, with an AI agent that my granddaughters could go to that QR code, whether it’s at the cemetery or on a website, and be able to ask GMA, Hey, what was it like when you first met Popup, 25 years ago? And I could pop up either my voice or my actual image ’cause there’s enough of my digital footprint already out there on my social media accounts. And then AI could regenerate that experience. This is all part of that, Death Tech space that we’re stepping into now.
0:17:06.9 Kurt Baker: So, You’re saying we’re gonna be able to talk to our ancestors in the future?
0:17:10.1 Niki Weiss: It’s already happening, it’s already there. I mean, there’s a lot of famous people now that are starting to curate their assets. I mean, Michael Jackson, they’ve already, they reproduce him bot and…
0:17:27.7 Kurt Baker: Well, I know when they started adding, like John Wayne to commercials and things like that, and that was like a little freaky when it first happened. I remember that. You’re like, I think he’s not around anymore. But they had him in this commercial.
0:17:39.8 Niki Weiss: But there’s enough technology that they could…
0:17:42.2 Kurt Baker: That’s going back away too. They’ve been doing that for a while. The commercial stuff.
0:17:46.9 Niki Weiss: Well, now to be able to do it for you and me.
0:17:51.1 Kurt Baker: Right, Okay.
0:17:53.2 Niki Weiss: So, this is where, when we get into that Death Tech conversation is benevolent, will these grief bots be able to help us move through the bereavement process?
0:18:01.8 Kurt Baker: So, Yeah. Let’s get into the grief bot for a minute. ‘Cause I’m thinking grief bot. I’m like, what, I’m trying to understand exactly what that means. I heard what you said. I kind of, I think of grief as one thing and a bot is another thing. So, I don’t know how they… I mean, the bots not grieving. Am I grieving with the, I mean, what’s the basis of that whole concept exactly. To extend the person or transfer the information into this bot or. Is that what we’re doing? Is this… This is the kind of stuff that the billionaires are talking about. I wanna live forever kind of thing. I’m gonna learn how to move my essence into a machine that will capture all of me. So, I will never die.
0:18:41.9 Niki Weiss: All of these conversation.
0:18:43.1 Kurt Baker: To speak all of these kind of deal. That’s the thing we hear about. I don’t know if they’re actually doing it or not. I just hear that these kinds of things are going on with the people who have literally unlimited money. They’re playing around with these kinds of things.
0:18:55.0 Niki Weiss: I mean, this is all part of that legacy building. So, if when we just roll it back just a little bit, so, it really is about our data, data privacy, cybersecurity. And this is where I am so passionate about, let’s have this, can we talk about pre-planning? Can we talk about… Let’s take very seriously our legal, financial, physical, and digital aspects of the life that we’ve built today. And when I first presented this concept of building out of My Final Playbook, at first people were like, oh, that’s for the 60, 70, 80-year-olds. And I said, no, this really is for the 20, 30 and 40-year-olds. This is for people that are living their life today and so busy that they’re not thinking about what if something did happen.
0:19:39.6 Kurt Baker: So, I’m thinking now if I’m doing this throughout my life, that means I can literally in my 60s talk to myself in my 20s, and find out what I was thinking and why I did what I did.
0:19:55.0 Niki Weiss: Well, aren’t you already doing that? Doesn’t Facebook already provide you that look back?
0:19:58.8 Kurt Baker: Well, to some degree, but you’re saying… I mean, I’m going to a little bit of an extreme. So, you’re taking all of the information, all the actions, all the decisions, all the things you did, and why you… ‘Cause we all do things differently. Hopefully I’m grown a little, right? I’m pretty sure I do things differently now than I did in my 20s. And so, that would be a very interesting concept, where a lot of times they ask you, you ask yourself, well, what would your 20-year-old self, if you could go back, what would it tell you now? What would you have done differently? Well, now it sounds like you can actually have that conversation.
0:20:31.5 Niki Weiss: With these bots, you certainly can. And that’s why it’s so important…
0:20:34.7 Kurt Baker: Which would be fascinating, because if you had enough data, that would be a very interesting conversation, actually.
0:20:41.2 Niki Weiss: So, let me just… I just wanna make sure we have enough time, right?
0:20:44.3 Kurt Baker: Oh, yeah.
0:20:45.3 Niki Weiss: So, from a bioethics standpoint, there is a technology that’s being developed to make the determination on… You’re familiar with the medical advanced directives?
0:20:57.3 Kurt Baker: Absolutely, yes. Yep.
0:21:00.9 Niki Weiss: So, imagine that, because now there is a population, they’re called Elder Orphans or Solo Agers. These are people that are living their life, but they might not be married, no kids, they might not have any attachment to a specific family. So, when event happens and a decision needs to be made, but there’s no identified or designated medical proxy.
0:21:26.0 Kurt Baker: So, you’re telling me a bot can then make this decision for them with their authorization? Wow, that’s interesting.
0:21:31.1 Niki Weiss: It is on the table from a bioethics standpoint that, because they would… What the bot does is it will analyze the recipient, let’s say. Their digital footprint to make a determination based on the life they’ve lived, whether they would go ahead and end their life if they were incapacitated, or to keep their life support system going. And it would be AI that would make that determination. It’s on the table. It isn’t decided yet, but that’s where we’re heading when it comes to that Death Tech space.
0:22:11.0 Kurt Baker: Wow. Okay. Now, if I create this Death Tech, what’d you call it, bot? What was the bot called again? That bot, is there a name for it? For medical directive bot?
0:22:23.3 Niki Weiss: Oh, I don’t know if they’ve named it yet, as of today.
0:22:27.8 Kurt Baker: Well, okay. So, I’m thinking of it like even a mid step, right? Let’s say I’ve been tasked with handling that aspect of somebody’s life, right?
0:22:40.7 Niki Weiss: You’ve been assigned as the medical proxy.
0:22:44.6 Kurt Baker: And they’re in a situation. I could literally consult this bot and find out what we think that person… I could obviously override it ’cause I’m the human being, but it would be pretty fascinating to have them input this information, their preferences, the actual loved one into this “bot”. Then you could have a conversation with, based on their personal preferences under different circumstances. And because it’s likely, the circumstances you’re gonna see are gonna be at least a little bit different than maybe anything you can think of. Everything’s always a little bit off. I mean, there’s standard things, there’s basic things, but then every situation’s just a little bit different, right? And it would be kind of nice if you were the one that had to make that decision as the proxy to almost feel like, Hey, I’ve got confirmation from their wishes before, maybe they had Alzheimer’s or some kind of dementia or something where they really can’t communicate that well anymore.
0:23:43.0 Niki Weiss: Data-driven. I mean, that’s where they’re…
0:23:47.1 Kurt Baker: I would feel a lot better, especially if you’re talking about end of life, whether or not you’re gonna “pull the plug” or go ahead and go through these procedures. I know just from the talking to estate planning attorneys, most professionals are on the “pull the plug” side of the thing. ‘Cause they see people living longer and they’re not ha… Like, they’re just miserable.
0:24:12.9 Kurt Baker: Quality of life.
0:24:13.9 Kurt Baker: I mean, basically you’re just extending the body and not really extending the life. And they’ve just seen it too many times. So, I just know that most professionals that see this on a day-to-day basis are like, look, if it’s over, just let me go. ‘Cause I don’t want to be on machines for the next 12 months, with really no…
0:24:28.0 Niki Weiss: Quality of life.
0:24:28.9 Kurt Baker: Hope, nothing really happening, or any real expectation that I’m gonna recover back to a point where I’m gonna be the way I was before, so. But it’d be kind of nice to have the ability to have those conversations, I think.
0:24:40.6 Niki Weiss: And to be able to have, again, data supporting decisions, data-driven decisions. And this is why I am…
0:24:46.0 Kurt Baker: Wow, this is getting out there.
0:24:49.3 Niki Weiss: But let’s bring it home.
0:24:51.5 Kurt Baker: Sure.
0:24:53.1 Niki Weiss: So, this is why it is so important to have these conversations when you are young, when you are of sound mind, when you are building a life that you want to leave that legacy behind. When I do have these conversations, it’s interesting how I’m having conversations with people in their 60s and 70s and older. And I said what is your plan? And their response is, well, debt is dead. I don’t care. And I just take a step back. And because they don’t have that reference to their digital footprint, they don’t understand where, if I talk to a 20 or 30-year-old, I would say, it’s interesting the 20-year and 30-year-olds are way more interested in this conversation and protecting, because they understand the ramifications of the information that’s already out there.
0:25:40.4 Kurt Baker: True.
0:25:41.1 Niki Weiss: And then if they die tomorrow and their phone died with them, when I say that to them, it’s like deer in the headlights. If I said it to a 70-year-old, they have this sort of flippant sort of, ah, debt is dead. So, it’s kind of, as I said, my mission right now is really to change the conversation. And let’s talk about, you’ve spent so much time building this life, making conscientious decisions. So, debt is really not dead. There is a legacy behind, oh, and by the way, let’s talk about your finances. So, we all know, well, for those that don’t know, the only debt that dies with you is student loans.
0:26:19.9 Kurt Baker: Oh, right.
0:26:20.0 Kurt Baker: That’s the only debt that dies with you. So, debt is really not dead. So, if you are making that decision on who is the executor or the trustee, who is gonna manage those assets, whether they’re assets or debt that needs to be managed, it’s gonna go through the… Depending on the state you live in, right? So, probate versus, New Jersey versus Pennsylvania. But either way, the idea is that if you’re spending so much time building your life today, why not off board with as much intention and planning as you have while you’re here. So, we’re back to that legal, financial, physical, digital for those that you’re leaving behind, as an estate planner or as a financial planner. So, for you, what are those big… Like where do you find the conversation with your clients gets a little sticky, when it comes to end of life planning or legacy planning?
0:27:12.9 Kurt Baker: I mean, probably the challenge is, you’re gonna have a couple challenges. One is sometimes people don’t want to have the conversation, period. Or two, they don’t want to have the conversation, way that their heirs can actually carry out their wishes. So, they’ll hold too close to the vest, like their assets, the way they’re set up structurally. Because… And that’s, one thing you work on as a planner is you want to do multi-generational planning. Because in spite of what, especially older generation might think, and it happens in every generation, people just don’t want to talk about their finances. But if you’re disabled or deceased, somebody’s gonna step in your shoes. And the more informed they are about your wishes and how to actually mechanically carry out those wishes, the better that transition is gonna happen. I mean, you talk to people about estate administrators or executives, whatever executive directors whatever it is. And you’ll usually get two different responses. One is, oh, they had everything set up, no big deal, filed a couple things, and within a certain period of time it was just done. And that’s kind of my father. It’s basically, it took care of itself.
0:28:30.6 Niki Weiss: But your father wasn’t divorced?
0:28:34.2 Kurt Baker: What? He was remarried.
0:28:34.9 Niki Weiss: He was remarried?
0:28:36.1 Kurt Baker: Yeah.
0:28:36.5 Niki Weiss: So, there was a little bit of complexity with…
0:28:38.5 Kurt Baker: There was some complexity, but it was all taken care of. So, with exception one item, which was we knew we had to resolve. So, but then the other one is like, what a mess? And I’ve talked to people that thought there was wealth in the family and then the breadwinner passes away and now his spouse is like living in an apartment, barely making ends meet because there was no planning.
0:29:04.4 Niki Weiss: There was no planning.
0:29:05.3 Kurt Baker: There was no planning whatsoever. And that’s sad because one, it’s sad that he didn’t set it up. And two, it’s sad that she didn’t even know that that was gonna likely happen, if something were to happen to him early in his life. And these conversations are really important to strengthening, one your relationship with your partner, first of all. Because the more they understand, even if they don’t wanna be involved, at least if they understand kind of where we’re at, it helps them to support you even if it’s a tough time. And people kind of forget that, that majority of people will come forward and say, Hey, I get it. I’ll help you. It’s better that I know I don’t like it, but let’s figure this out together.
0:29:50.4 Niki Weiss: And that’s why I created My Final Playbook. To be able to talk about those legal, financial, physical, digital. So, legal, it’s the estate attorney. The financial, it’s the financial planners, it’s the insurance, even taxation. So, long-term care. We get into the physical, funeral directors, they really… Do you wanna be buried or cremated? Do you want a service or not? I mean, that’s $25,000 anywhere between to have a funeral, right? There’s a cost involved. You don’t wanna be making those arrangements when you have an event happen. You wanna be able to have those before. And now the digital aspect. Can you somehow preserve, safeguard your digital footprint? So, one example I give is, you have a iPhone or an Android?
0:30:34.4 Kurt Baker: IPhone.
0:30:37.0 Niki Weiss: Do you have your legacy contact set up?
0:30:38.6 Kurt Baker: Because you told me to.
0:30:42.0 Niki Weiss: We did. We had that conversation.
0:30:44.4 Kurt Baker: We had this conversation we did.
0:30:47.7 Niki Weiss: To have those legacy contacts.
0:30:47.8 Kurt Baker: Yep.
0:30:48.0 Niki Weiss: But if you don’t think ahead then that’s where the chaos ensues.
0:30:55.0 Kurt Baker: Agree. So well, why don’t you walk into like, okay, we’ve been talking a lot about a lot of great stuff, a lot of like things we need to address. So, what, from your perspective are kind of the first steps? I mean, I know the basic things that I deal with, the estate planning and all that should be done in a very systematic way, and you address all of the different assets and things that you need to take care of. But you’re talking specifically more about the digital side, which our industry should be involved in. And it does to some extent, but I think you’re drilling even further down into this because of where we’re headed, and I’m learning from you, about additional things I need to address with my clients, which is great. And one of those is, I mean, we do talk about that, but I mean the fact there are tools coming out there now, which was not the case five years ago, and ways that you can pre-authorize these things.
0:31:45.1 Kurt Baker: Just like adding additional people to accounts in case something were to occur, especially like a memory loss, things like that. Somebody that could step in and assist with the management of them, if you’re determined that you can no longer manage your own accounts and things like that. Those are already kind of in place because as many people know that that’s a great place for thieves to come in and pull assets out, when people are cognitive decline and nobody else is there to check it. But if you add somebody to it as kind of the break of the gatekeeper, so to speak, before the money gets transferred out, somebody else has to say, Okay. And some people don’t realize the importance of that. I mean, for no other reason than that, you want to have somebody else involved in your…
0:32:32.8 Niki Weiss: In your accounts.
0:32:33.1 Kurt Baker: Accounts. Because thieves are pretty smart these days and they’re very sophisticated. And there’s no way to get it. Once it’s out, it bounces around the world like four times and it’s gone. And there’s nothing… By the time you realize it, it’s long gone. That’s the problem. It’s fast, very fast.
0:32:48.1 Niki Weiss: 10 years ago. What was your password?
0:32:51.6 Kurt Baker: What was my password?
0:32:53.8 Niki Weiss: Exactly.
0:32:55.5 Kurt Baker: Probably, I don’t remember.
0:32:56.3 Niki Weiss: No, no. But it was right 10 years ago. Oh, my password is my dog’s name 123.
0:33:00.9 Kurt Baker: I don’t think I ever did that. I don’t think I was ever that bad. But they were pretty basic. Yeah, for sure.
0:33:03.1 Niki Weiss: And now our passwords, minimum 12 characters, they recommend 15. And that’s just we are between AI, blockchain, and soon quantum computing. The way we manage our digital assets today is going to look very different, I’m gonna say in the next two to three years. It’s just, we’re gonna be forced to get these digital vaults. The digital password management systems. These are gonna be just like, people are now putting the nests and the cameras on their house in their home and their, the web like that is just gonna be part of our day-to-day way of protecting.
0:33:44.8 Kurt Baker: So, where should people start? I mean, I use password software as well. If something were to happen to me, they would have access to the master password to actually access pretty much anything I have, regardless of whether I had a phone or not, frankly. So, what would be your recommendation? Like what steps they take to make sure they’re protecting…
0:34:05.8 Niki Weiss: What to do today?
0:34:06.3 Kurt Baker: What they’re ready to do now.
0:34:08.1 Niki Weiss: Okay. So now, believe it or not, we’re just gonna bring it down to the basics. Who are the three people in your life that you trust? If something were happen to you, we’re gonna die. We’re all gonna die, one of three ways. Either we’re gonna die sudden and unexpected, or we’ll have that terminal diagnosis or condition. Or like my father-in-law who’s sitting in a nursing home, just waiting in God’s waiting room. Either way, who are those three people that you can entrust? Those are the people that you are now gonna start incorporating into your, in case of emergency card. Like the first thing I wanna say is, you want things to be today both physical, like write it down, physical, but also digital. So, you need to have a duplicate system, physical and digital to create a physigil system. So, for example, and with that physigil system, I know we’re coming up on time.
0:35:02.2 Kurt Baker: No, we’re good.
0:35:05.1 Niki Weiss: Three people. Who are you gonna trust? These three people, you’re gonna put them on your, in case of emergency card, both your physical card and the digital card. Put it in your wallet, put it next to your card registration. But you’re also gonna put them in your legacy contacts in your iPhone has a legacy contact. They’re gonna be… When you start filling out your power of attorney, you don’t just want one person, you’re gonna want a primary, secondary, tertiary, right? Because life happens. These are things you’re gonna have to start looking at on a regular basis. Just like you go to the dentist twice a year, you’re gonna wanna be updating your passwords anywhere between at least twice, if not four times per year. These are things you’re gonna constantly be updating and making sure that the people that you trust are gonna be incorporated in it. And those people you trust might be rotated around on a regular basis because life happens.
0:36:00.9 Kurt Baker: Yep. Okay. Yeah. Life definitely happens. So, having all those contacts in there is really important. You have to really think about that. And I think that’s one of the main things just in general estate planning does. It makes you sit down and really think about who handles my medical stuff, who handles my financial stuff, who’s gonna handle my digital stuff? And they’re not always the same person.
0:36:25.2 Niki Weiss: And it shouldn’t be.
0:36:25.3 Kurt Baker: And many times it shouldn’t be. I’m a strong believer in that if possible you separate medical decisions from financial decisions, because that’s kind of, it can get to be a blurry line. And usually one person’s better at finances, and one person’s better at like understanding the emotional side of somebody as well. That’s just what I’ve found. But it doesn’t necessarily always true, but good.
0:36:44.7 Niki Weiss: And just to kind of close out, to bring it back home is that and advice is when you’re assigning that the POA for financial, you do wanna assign it to somebody that is responsible with money. That does have an acumen to be able to have those conversations. On the other side from the medical advance directive, who you choose as a medical proxy. Believe it or not, it is not advised for a parent to give a child the medical proxy. It is better to give somebody who is less emotionally attached to that person if there needs to be a decision made. So that’s a piece of advice as a thanatologist, as a thanatologist I give to people, is like, if you’re gonna make decisions on who that person’s gonna be, understand and that takes time, what your relationship is with that person and what the person’s relationship is with death and dying. If they’re not gonna be comfortable to make that decision, that to follow your instructions to end your life, then maybe that is not the right person.
0:37:48.4 Kurt Baker: Yeah. That would be a tough decision to make for sure.
0:37:49.3 Niki Weiss: It is. It’s very serious. So, it’s better to have these conversations, whether, like I said, cremation or burial. Like these are conversations to have now today, while you’re of sound mind, knowing that as with building out your Final Playbook, it’s not written in stone. It’s a live document. It’s gonna change. People are gonna come and go in your life. You might give it to a child who then all of a sudden marry somebody you don’t really know or trust. So, you might have to adjust that relationship as well. So…
0:38:18.0 Kurt Baker: And that’s why you need to update ’cause things change over time as well. So, you have like a quiz that people can take, right? That’s my understanding.
0:38:26.7 Niki Weiss: Preparedness score. Yeah.
0:38:28.6 Kurt Baker: So, what does that do? It’s at what, finalplaybook.com/quiz, right? So, somebody go in and take this quiz. What might they learn about themselves or what they need to do?
0:38:39.8 Niki Weiss: We’ll go through questions on the legal, financial, physical, and digital, and to see how prepared you really are, if something were to happen to you tomorrow.
0:38:45.8 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:38:47.6 Niki Weiss: You’ll get a score. And then you’re preparedness…
0:38:49.7 Kurt Baker: What if I fail? What do I do now?
0:38:52.3 Niki Weiss: Well, there’s no failure, Kurt, you don’t fail. We have an opportunity for improvement.
0:38:58.7 Kurt Baker: Oh, it’s not… Oh, my teacher never described it to me that way. Oh, guess what? You have an opportunity for improvement.
0:39:03.4 Niki Weiss: It’s a learning opportunity. And there’s also, again, all of this is based on your beliefs.
0:39:08.9 Kurt Baker: Okay. Sure.
0:39:10.2 Niki Weiss: I mean, some people choose to leave chaos behind, like that’s their choice. They’re gonna leave a hoarded house, they’re gonna leave their finances in a mess. Like that is for some people, like, they wanna stick it to the family or stick it to those, that’s a personal choice. Other people are very partic… They wanna leave everything buttoned up. Well-defined, well-documented, relevant to the point. So, that has really come down to the belief of, how do you wanna leave things behind?
0:39:36.4 Kurt Baker: Well, I mean, you bring up a good point. ‘Cause sometimes people that don’t want to discuss things feel like they’re doing their family a favor by not bringing up their own death, when in fact they’re doing them a disservice because they’re not telling them what they want and how they want things done. And that was a blessing that my father was very clear about his whole life. We knew decades ago what his plan was.
0:40:03.3 Niki Weiss: Wow.
0:40:04.8 Kurt Baker: Exactly what he was gonna do, even when he remarried and things like that. We knew exactly what his feeling was about legacy and about how his assets were to transfer. And so that was kind of nice and it was in retrospect. And this was somebody who, when I was growing up, never talked about finances. So, to see that kind of change over the years where he got very, very specific about exactly what he wanted to have happen and everybody knew.
0:40:32.0 Niki Weiss: Right. But if he had died 20 years before?
0:40:35.0 Kurt Baker: Well, it would’ve been more than that probably. But I mean, yeah. When I was young, so I think when we became adults and we became on our own, my brother and I, so that’s the point where he became much more willing to talk to us. I guess, ’cause we were adults apparently, I think. I don’t think it was anything really particular other than that was just the time. And that was pretty forward thinking for his generation, frankly. So I mean, I have to say, I mean, I give him credit for that.
0:41:02.9 Niki Weiss: And again, some people are wired to have those conversations. One of my brothers is not so wired to have this conversation. He doesn’t necessarily have a comprehensive end of life plan, even knowing that we both share a brother who’s an estate attorney and would do it for a discounted price. And I asked him, I said Barry, I said, why don’t you have this plan? Or what would it take for you to put the plan in place? And his response to me was, when I have a diagnosis. I said, well, both our parents died at a young age. Diagnosis, it’s too late then. Then you’re in the diagnosis.
0:41:37.2 Kurt Baker: And honestly, that’s what I’ve found is, and I don’t know how… I don’t know the answer. I wish I knew the answer to this one, but I found most people get very serious about this, when they see somebody they’re close to, whether it’s a friend or somebody close in the family. When they kind of see this process happen once they’re like, oh, I wanna fix this because I don’t want a big mess. Because until it actually hits you like that. But I’ve never found a good way to explain that to younger people. Haven’t seen it necessarily yet. I wish I had an answer. ‘Cause everybody’s a little bit different. And you can talk about it, talk about it, talk about it, and bring it up until you’re blue in the face. But until they kind of see something occur.
0:42:14.2 Niki Weiss: Talk to them about their phone, talk to them about their social media accounts, talk to them about their reoccurring subscriptions. That those things…
0:42:23.5 Kurt Baker: What if you lost your access to your Instagram account for 24 hours, what would that do to you? Ah.
0:42:30.0 Niki Weiss: But that will evoke emotion and cause… That will allow them to take action.
0:42:33.3 Kurt Baker: I guess that’s true. I hadn’t thought of that. See, for me it’d be like, yeah, whatever. I wouldn’t care too much.
0:42:38.2 Niki Weiss: Generational difference. It is, to me, it is the conversation around this, look, I’ve been in hospice for over 30 years. And the hospice needle hasn’t moved. People are still coming in. It’s six months or less. And people are still coming in six days, six weeks. It is the digital piece that is allowing us to start to have, it’s the reason you and I are sitting here today is. If it wasn’t for this digital component, it probably wouldn’t be as relevant as it is today.
0:43:04.7 Kurt Baker: Yeah. I mean, it used to be pretty easy. I mean you could access things directly if you had to through your authority as the executor of the estate and things like that. But now you literally have something that’s encrypted to the point where the police have trouble getting into it. So, you have to really think about that, that yeah, the encryption is getting better and better and better, but you’re also locking out people that you may want to have access to it. So, you better plan ahead so the right people have access at the right time. And so, what is your solution to allaying the fears of the people? Like, well, if I give my three favorite people access to this, what’s to say I don’t like go away for the weekend and I come back and they’ve done things I’m not really too happy about?
0:43:51.2 Niki Weiss: That’s where these vaults come in…
[overlapping conversation]
0:43:51.3 Kurt Baker: So, I’m just, kind of let’s allay their fears. I want you to go ahead and walk through that. What’s to help with that?
0:43:56.0 Niki Weiss: Well, certainly the conversation. So. Certainly having that sit down conversation that, Hey, I am thinking about this. I am planning, I do have the technology, these platforms like Presidio that allows me to go in and assign certain permission settings and timing on those permission settings based on my wishes. And those…
0:44:18.9 Kurt Baker: So, there has to be a triggering event for them to actually have access to this?
0:44:20.8 Niki Weiss: Correct.
0:44:23.7 Kurt Baker: Okay.
0:44:24.2 Niki Weiss: Also let’s talk about the physical piece. So, now there are medical advance directives that are now available online. So, people can go ahead and put their wishes online and then again, be able to provide those permission sets based on the assignment of the decision maker. And that can be swapped out as needed. I know that pre-planning for funeral homes, that’s becoming a big thing right now is that people wanna know that they have be… Here’s the bottom line. When you don’t plan and there is chaos ensued, it’s time, money, and emotions that is gonna be spent at the end.
0:44:58.9 Kurt Baker: True. True. Well, this has been actually very awesome. Near and dear to my heart, so to speak, in many levels. Personal as well as professional. And I appreciate you very much for coming on and helping us out. You’ve been listening to, Master Your Finances.
