Estate Planning Reimagined with Adam Zuckerman

Adam Zuckerman has a unique and varied background, holding both a law degree and an MBA. His path took a different turn that led him to his current work, which revolves around estate planning and end-of-life organization.

Despite his accomplishments in law and business, Adam uses his expertise in a less conventional but deeply impactful way through his company, Buried in Work. The service focuses on helping people simplify and organize their estate information, ensuring a seamless transition for loved ones when the time comes. The company doesn’t draft wills or trusts but instead prepares individuals with a comprehensive structure to work efficiently with legal professionals and save money.

The idea for Buried in Work originated from a personal experience. Adam’s father, a leukemia survivor, passed away after a swift decline. As the executor of his father’s will, Adam managed the estate and documented every step of the process to help his family. When a financial planner praised his detailed work, it sparked the idea to share his knowledge. The website Adam created gained rapid interest, attracting over 10,000 visitors in just a week, proving the significant need for accessible, user-friendly estate planning resources.

Now, Buried in Work offers a variety of tools, including interactive guides, state-specific checklists, and even games like “One More Story” to prompt meaningful conversations. Adam emphasizes that effective estate planning isn’t just about having a will or trust; it’s about preparing so that loved ones can manage everything seamlessly. This preparation covers details as simple as paying bills and as vital as managing digital accounts or making health-related decisions.

Adam’s mission is to reduce the burden and confusion that families face during emotionally challenging times, making estate planning proactive rather than reactive. His story highlights the importance of planning ahead, both to protect loved ones and to make the most of the time we have.

I’m thrilled to share my new line of death-positive apparel and items; a great way to bring meaningful conversation into style and support a small, death-positive business.

These shirts are designed for those of us who believe in open, honest conversations about death, dying, and grief. 

And if you’re a regular listener, I know you’re already death-positive and not afraid to spark these conversations. 

Transcript

[00:00:00] Adam: What do you want your legacy to be? Because the odds are no one's gonna remember you in 300 years. 

[00:00:05] Jill: Welcome back to Seeing Death Clearly. I'm your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula and end-of-life coach. Here on my show, I have conversations with guests that explore the topics of death, dying, grief, and life itself.

[00:00:18] My goal is to create a space where you can challenge the ideas you might already have about these subjects. I want to encourage you to open your mind and consider perspectives beyond what you may currently believe to be true. In this episode, Adam Zuckerman shares how his background in law, business, and finance led him to create Buried in Work, a company focused on simplifying estate planning for families.

[00:00:44] Inspired by his own experience managing his late father's estate, he realized the need for clear, user-friendly resources in estate planning. Adam explains that estate planning is more than just legal documents. It's about preparing for smooth transitions, covering everything from bill payments to digital accounts.

[00:01:05] His mission is to alleviate the stress and confusion families face during emotional times, making planning a proactive and empowering step for everyone involved. Thank you for joining us for this conversation. Welcome to the podcast, Adam. Thank you so much for coming on today. I'm really looking forward to hearing more about you and your business because when I was reading through it, it's.

[00:01:30] It's really interesting. It's really needed. So thank you. I appreciate it. 

[00:01:33] Adam: It's great to be here, Jill. 

[00:01:34] Jill: Can you just tell me a little bit about you, where you're from, where you live now, any of that? 

[00:01:39] Adam: I grew up in Montgomery County, Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC. If you're familiar in an area called Potomac, it's actually where I live now.

[00:01:47] When I was growing up, I did not expect to be back in the area, but during COVID, we ended up moving closer to home, which turned out to be very nice. I still have family in the area too. 

[00:01:56] Jill: I used to go to college in Virginia Beach and coming from New Jersey, I drove through that area a lot. So I actually do know that area.

[00:02:04] Adam: Next time you're in DC, come say hi. 

[00:02:05] Jill: I love it down there. It's a really great place. Just the traffic around the city can be a nightmare, but that's how it goes. And so you are a lawyer now, is that correct? 

[00:02:17] Adam: I'm a lawyer. I have an MBA. I have worked in big companies like Fortune 500s, Anheuser Busch and Discovery.

[00:02:23] I've worked in finance at a hedge fund. When I was there, it started at 250 million under management and went to 1. 2 billion about the time when I left. I've worked in startups and a bunch of other things in between. So kind of a weird background, especially for the industry that I'm in today. 

[00:02:37] Jill: And did you always want to be a lawyer?

[00:02:39] Or was that just something that you ended up doing somehow along your career path? Because I hate to say like, when we're teenagers, they're like, pick a career. Oh, yeah, sure. Like, I know what I want to do when I'm a teenager. 

[00:02:51] Adam: I started off at Miami in Florida, I transferred to Wash U in St. Louis my junior year, I ended a little bit early.

[00:02:58] I had one class once a week at night and a friend taught my last semester. I started working, I had a full term job, had a job at night. And security at concert venue, which is a whole different lifetime ago. And I ended up getting a job and realized, you know what? While architecture firms and others is great for some people, I think I want to do something else.

[00:03:16] And ended up starting grad school at a great university, WashU again. from a law degree and ended up tacking on an MBA as well. One thing just organically led to another. 

[00:03:26] Jill: What type of law do you specialize in now? 

[00:03:29] Adam: I'm actually relying more on the MBA today than the law degree, but I am definitely legal adjacent in Buried in Work, the company that I started.

[00:03:38] We're focused on helping people organize their estate information. Deal with end of life tasks and simplify them, both for themselves and for their family, and then understand how a state transition happens. So it's very much legal minded, but we don't want to create people's wills. We don't want to create your trust.

[00:03:55] We want to help you get organized so when you do work with a service provider, you have a much better result and save some cash along the way. 

[00:04:03] Jill: I just assumed that you were doing the legal paperwork, but just doing it in a different way. So you actually don't do the legal paperwork. You do more of the planning and helping people get clear on what they want before they do the paperwork.

[00:04:16] Is that correct? 

[00:04:17] Adam: So the background story of how things came together, let me frame it in a helpful way. My father was over at my house quite some time ago and we were doing some woodworking in the basement. He walked up the stairs and said, I'm tired. When he says I'm tired, it's different than if you or I say it.

[00:04:31] When he says it, it means I have to go to the doctor. Six and a half years prior at that time, he was diagnosed with leukemia for the first time. I donated bone marrow to him. We got him some extra time, a lot of extra time, six and a half years. And he got to meet my nieces and nephews, his grandkids. Fast forward to then he walks up the stairs.

[00:04:47] He says, I'm tired. He goes to the doctor. He checks into the hospital. That was on a Thursday and 12 days later, he passes away. Far too quickly. Because I have the legal background, the business background, I was executor on his will. I helped my mom out with the estate and hopped in, hedged first. I was taking very diligent notes of everything that I was learning, that I was doing, the entire process, not only for my mom, but for myself, for my, my sisters.

[00:05:09] We're interested as well. And when I met with my mom's financial planner, the conversation ended with her saying that it was the most comprehensive estate transition she's ever seen in her life. And then I had to give it away to other people. On the one hand, I was going, no, you just don't want me to move my mom's money.

[00:05:24] I understand that. Thank you very much for the compliment. But on the other hand, I was like, that's pretty organized. Let's talk to some people. So I showed it to a few people, my friends and my parents friends, and overwhelmingly the response was, I absolutely need this information. It's going to be easier for me, for my spouse, for my kids.

[00:05:39] Please take out your mom's information, write up a few notes, and put it online so we can use it when we need to. So I made a website because I'm a A technologist in some degree in, in just a few days. And what was surprising is that in about a week we had over 10,000 visits to the website. And what I realized was is that there is just as much need for people to understand what the process is and to organize their information as there is actually creating their wills and their trust and their advanced directives and everything that goes into that mix.

[00:06:08] And we can talk about that as well. So what we, we decided to do was expand the resource for do it yourselfers, give as much information as we can, and there's a lot of it there now, to help people get organized. And then we also have products that if you need a little bit of help along the way, you can purchase some of the, the products and offerings that we have.

[00:06:25] And in that mindset, we want to introduce people to service providers if they need it. We've got directories for that. But it doesn't make sense for me. I borrowed it in DC. I took the bar in Illinois. It doesn't make sense for us to try and get barred in every single jurisdiction across the country because that's a lot of work.

[00:06:41] Instead, we're creating that foundational element that people can utilize on their own and then they can go off and create their will. They can create their documents as they need it. So that's the short background of how our team would be. 

[00:06:51] Jill: That is really interesting. Sorry about your father. That's actually super cool because as much as I've learned over the last Four years since I've had my business, I've been trying to learn what we need to get in place to prepare our families.

[00:07:07] for our eventual death, right? Whenever that is. And I like to work with people in the space of, let's talk about physically and emotionally what you want at the end of life. Do you want to try different treatments? Maybe you just want to be kept comfortable. Do you want to be home? Do you not want to be out?

[00:07:22] Like that's kind of my area when it comes to the law stuff and the money. I know you need it. I can probably help you figure out who to talk to, but as far as what you need, I really don't know. And I do worry about that with my mother, with my husband and I, you know, God forbid, hopefully nothing will happen to either one of us anytime soon.

[00:07:44] But since I've become aware of these things, I realized how much I don't know about our money and bills. It's not that I'm clueless. Because I'm the woman kind of thing. It was more that we decided it makes more sense to have one person kind of handle it than both people trying to do this. And did you pay that bill?

[00:08:04] I forgot to pay. So it was just like, okay, he'll just take care of it. I trust him and I know that it's getting done. But God forbid if something happens to him, I'm gonna really be a little lost for a while trying to figure this all out while I'm also in the process of grieving. Thank God she had you that you were able to take care of it all for her.

[00:08:23] A lot of us don't have that person and it can be really just a stressful, sometimes traumatic experience for people when they're not prepared. So that's really amazing. I love it so much. 

[00:08:39] Adam: You are exactly right. The reality is that a comprehensive end of life plan, a state plan has to include the collection and management of information so your loved ones, your heirs, your family can step in and not only carry out your wishes, but also take over the daily tasks you didn't expect.

[00:08:56] A lot of people think, Oh, I have a will or I have a trust. I'm good to go. But the reality is, is you need to set them up that if you were to disappear tomorrow for six months, they can step in and pay your bills. They need to be able to advocate for you. They need to take care of running your daily, you know, events and chores, because if not, you're sending them on a scavenger hunt.

[00:09:15] And what you said about that time of mourning and time of stress is exactly right. The absolute last time that anybody should be figuring this out. is when it is in a situation like that. So the, the estate plan, the comprehensive estate plan, we're not just focused on creating a will or creating a trust and helping people understand what that is.

[00:09:35] We want to help you really get everything in order. So what is the information about my family members? What about my pets? We work with local veterinarians to create pet profiles for the estate preparation package. Your citizenship, your identifications, your residential history for finding your own clean property across the country.

[00:09:52] Your digital profiles, your email and online accounts and passwords, your computers, phones, devices, such a big part of our lives these days. Your business interests, your insurance, your tax returns, there's so many different things that when you think about it for the first time you go, Oh, it's not really that big a deal.

[00:10:08] But then when you dive into it, you realize that the average estate takes 570 hours to administer. It is really a lot of time and it's accurate. 570 hours, it's a lot of time for a lot of people. And what we found is that if you get everything organized now, before somebody needs it, and it's not just debt, it's also incapacitation because you want people to be able to advocate on your behalf and carry out your wishes if you can't speak for yourself.

[00:10:32] It saves so much hassle, stress, work, and quite frankly, a lot of money too. 

[00:10:37] Jill: Yeah, and that is one thing too, you know, you mentioned incapacitation. How often does that happen where somebody maybe doesn't die? But if something were to happen to my husband and he couldn't take care of the children the way that he does anymore if he couldn't do the things that he needs to do, then I need to figure it all out, right?

[00:10:57] I also need to figure out an income and all these other things. When you work with people, you said you have stuff online. How does that work out? Do they hire you and you sit down with them and go through it all? What's the process look like? 

[00:11:10] Adam: We have the full gamut. So if you're a do it yourselfer, we have checklists, guides, facts, thousands of articles.

[00:11:16] We have state specific information. It is organized into three sections. So one is a state organization and planning, one is end of life tasks, and one is a state transition. So if you just want to come in and download all the information for free, Go do it. We want you to do that. If you need a little bit of help, we have some really nice, innovative products as well.

[00:11:33] Some of them are actually fun. They're games. We have one product that is called the Estate Preparation Package, and that's what you get if you literally want to just fill in the blanks and have all your information in one place. It comes in two binders with a critical document storage system. It's pretty, pretty neat.

[00:11:50] You can fill it out by hand or by PDF. My mom can fill it out and so can I, which is nice because my handwriting is pretty bad. We've got games on the site. One is called One More Story. That was born out of a conversation my family had with my father when he was in the hospital. He's in his bed. And it's probably a week and a half before things, you know, took a really bad turn for him.

[00:12:08] We were saying, tell us one more story about when you were a kid. Tell us one more story about grandpa. Tell us one more story about your greatest loss, your greatest memory. And we realized that if we put these into quick cards for people, when you're sitting around in a room, And you don't know what to say, this is a great way for people to connect not only with their friends, but their loved ones.

[00:12:26] And surprisingly to us, people have actually picked it up and used it on dates, which I think is kind of strange. 

[00:12:31] Jill: I think that sounds great. It could be fun. 

[00:12:32] Adam: We have people that are buying them for road trips who are just in a Father's Day gift guide. So you can use these cards when you're driving around in the car.

[00:12:38] And we even have businesses that are buying them as thank you gifts for their clients. And even hospice that wants to have a deck for every single person that they go and meet. If there's family just waiting around the room, what better can you have instead of people staring at their phones than that?

[00:12:53] We have another game called Nothing Left Unsaid. Similar style, 126 cards, 6 categories, definitions too. I didn't have enough time to get the estate preparation package complete. Do you have a will? Do you have a trust? Where is this document? How do you feel about grief? What can we do to help you? The things that just make this really quick, it's not legally binding.

[00:13:12] You're not going to create a will with these documents, but at least it's going to help you understand where it is. The reason why that's so important is, if I invited you over to my house to bake a cake, and I had all the ingredients in one place, and you know that there's a party tonight, and we know we have a time limit, and we know what the recipe is, it's pretty easy for us to do that.

[00:13:29] But if I invite you over to make a cake, and you don't know how my kitchen's organized, that I keep my flour in the basement, for example, it's going to take you so much longer. You can get through it. But you may have to go to the store to buy things on your own, get your information organized, whether it's your will, trust, living will, healthcare proxy, power of attorney, medical, financial, we have templates, guides, checklists, and a whole host of other stuff on the site that we just want people to use and take advantage of.

[00:13:55] Jill: That's awesome. I'll put links to your website. Right in the show notes. Anybody that's listening and wants to see it, it's easy. Just go to the show notes. You could click the link and find it. I love the baking analogy. I came from food service. I used to be a pastry chef. What we actually call that is mise en place.

[00:14:13] Getting everything in place. One of my old chefs used to say, it's getting your mess in place. That's one of the first things they teach cooks. Get everything in place before you even start a recipe. Don't start it and then be like, I need to go find the flour and find out you have none, right? And so I drill that into all of my students heads, anybody that's ever worked for me.

[00:14:33] Get your mise en place in order. Get your mise en place in order because it really saves so much time, so much energy. So I really like that analogy. I'm like, Oh, that's a good way to think of it. You got to get your mise en place in order for the end of life. 

[00:14:46] Adam: That is an article for our website, the mise en place of a state organization.

[00:14:50] I love it. 

[00:14:51] Jill: And so the card decks, have you heard of the death deck? 

[00:14:55] Adam: Yeah, it's somewhat similar to the death deck. I think what they're doing is absolutely fantastic. 

[00:14:59] Jill: It's actually funny because my episode with Lisa came out. So depth deck is really on the mind, but yeah, I love that idea of having a deck of cards because it does make it a little bit less intimidating for people to start the conversation.

[00:15:16] I really love that idea of like, tell me one more story. Because when my grandmother was dying, that was one of the things that she, you know, Would not always be completely lucid. She kind of thought she was other places But when she was there, that was all I wanted I was like tell me another story about growing up on the farm Tell me another story about you and grandpa like tell me all the stories because she used to tell them to me when I was a kid as bedtime stories.

[00:15:42] And you know, you hear the same story and eventually you're like, all right, I already heard this story. But then when she was dying, I was like, no, no, no, I want to hear it one more time. Like, please, I just want to hear these stories and the ones that I maybe didn't hear. And it's one of the things that I try to tell people is.

[00:15:59] Have these conversations now while somebody is healthy, you know Get these decks of cards where you can just sit down with your loved ones and just ask them the questions Hear the stories because like you said about the phones Oh my gosh, and like I'm addicted to my phone as much as everybody else I'm not judging I promise but I just did a tick tock actually this week where I was talking and I'm still mixed on social media.

[00:16:22] The whole thing drives me crazy But I'm trying. I had this realization, back to the kitchen, my daughter and I were making crepes together. We were making the batter. I had my phone because I needed the recipe. And she had her little Kindle and she was watching something on YouTube. And I was like, can you put that down though?

[00:16:39] Like just, Be here with me. We need to make this together. I realized how many of us are going to get to the end of life and have no actual memories because we're so, and again, I'm, I'm guilty of it myself. We're so consumed by what's happening in these little boxes that what's happening around us. We're really not there for it.

[00:16:59] We're not paying attention to it. And so. We're not going to have any real memories. I kind of said something like that to her without putting the end of life part, but just like, you're not going to remember much of childhood. If all you do is stare at a screen, she said, yeah. And honestly, I don't even remember most of what I watch.

[00:17:13] And I was like, that's almost worse because then you're not remembering what you watched, but you're definitely not going to remember making the crepes with me because you're not, you're looking at a screen. And I. don't know what to do about this, just like as the broader scale. Because again, my husband and I, with my mom, with our kids, we're doing the same thing.

[00:17:32] I'm trying really hard to stop, like put the phone down. And we do actually have a couple decks of cards that are like family editions of questions. And I try to make sure Malice sit down for dinner, that we ask some of those questions. It's, you know, Better than sitting there staring at each other. Cause we don't know what to talk about with 13 year olds.

[00:17:51] I'm like, how was your day? Fine. Okay. Good. Glad to hear it was fine. 

[00:17:56] Adam: No, that's exactly right. And it's funny. We've talked to a lot of people and the results are tangible in the financial section, we helped somebody say 403, 000 by following one of our checklists. 

[00:18:06] Jill: Wow. 

[00:18:07] Adam: Their life insurance policy was literally about to expire.

[00:18:09] The husband was in the hospital, wasn't paying. By going down the checklist that we have, it, they caught that it was about to expire and it was the last payment and they got an extension and got their check in and literally got the check three weeks later. It was a very quick timeline. And there's, there's practical senses of, yes, that's the type of benefit that if you're organized, you can take advantage of.

[00:18:30] But the reality is that. The thing that this really prepares you against is it gives you back more time. Time is our most valuable asset. You can always make more money later. You can do many things with your life, but that's within that construct of time, and nobody knows how much time they actually have.

[00:18:46] What we're trying to do is create the system and resources so, in the event something does happen, you don't have to face that question of, should I be asking them what their username and password is to their email, or what their bank accounts are? Or, should I ask them how they're doing and let's talk about something and get those memories and those stories and have that different experience.

[00:19:07] And, the reality is, is that a lot of people, unfortunately, the final moments of their lives, speaking with their parents, their friends, their loved ones, their spouses, sometimes even their kids, is, Hey, what about this? What about that? What do you want to have happen at your end of life funeral? What do you want to have happen at your memorial service?

[00:19:23] Do you want it to be religious? Do you not? And it's not the time or the place. That it's convenient, you have to do it sometimes, but it's better if you don't have to. And, and that's what we're trying to solve. 

[00:19:36] Jill: Yeah, and I tell people, I don't care how old you are, right? I'm 45, right? I'm like right in that mid range where I'm not young anymore.

[00:19:44] But there's still so many people I know that we're all like, but I'm not that old. Like, I don't have to worry about this yet. And I'm like, yeah, the 40 year olds drop dead all the time. 

[00:19:51] Adam: So I'm 44 right now. Because of what I'm doing, I get phone calls and emails from friends and people I've never met before.

[00:19:57] Hey, how do I do this? 43 year old, three kids, he didn't wake up. What happens? This person, car accident, what do I do? And the reality is everybody has an estate plan. If you don't have a will, you don't have a trust, guess what? You have an estate plan. The state has laws that will dictate what happens to your assets.

[00:20:14] So if you don't want the state to take control and dictate what happens and what goes to who, you should put something in place. You never know. What's going to happen, you should be revisiting it. Life events, when you have kids, when you move, when you sell a car, when your kids get older, if you get pets.

[00:20:30] One of the most frequent coda sales or updates to wills that people have when they're over 55 is to include provisions to look after their pets. They've already taken care of their kids and most other things, right? It's an update. But it's a strange world out there today. We got to account for eventualities and it doesn't have to be a bad decision or a difficult conversation.

[00:20:49] The difficult part is just starting it. 

[00:20:50] Jill: Yeah. And that is everybody's fear that it's going to be really hard. It's going to be sad. And yeah, I mean, of course there might be a little sadness. But life is made up of happy things and sad things, right? It's just the way it goes. And I have found that A lot of times, that's when you have the best conversations with people.

[00:21:13] When you're having real, raw, vulnerable conversations, so what if it's a little bit sad? It's not going to all be sad. It's not all so depressing because, I mean, I have so many people that when I'm like, I'm a death doula, they're like, well, that's depressing. I'm like, is it really? It's not. Honestly, it's beautiful, not depressing.

[00:21:32] It's depressing because you can spend your entire life ignoring the fact that you will die one day, and so it seems like it would be depressing, but it's honestly not morbid, and it doesn't have to be a big, heavy conversation. You don't have to call your whole family and be like, all right, we're going to talk about my death today.

[00:21:50] I've had people that'll say, oh, I had a dinner party, or I had like all these different things to have my family over to have the conversation. Amazing! Hobbit be fun! Play games! Just have the conversation and get the paperwork done. 

[00:22:03] Adam: We actually created a quiz online on the website. It's free to take.

[00:22:07] Takes two and a half minutes and you can do it for your estate or someone else's, like a family member or a parent. If something were to happen to them, how organized are you? It gives you a score of one to ten and says, oh, you're in good shape or you got a little bit of work to do. It's uniquely personal and people handle it differently.

[00:22:21] The reality is the only bad thing you can do is nothing at all. You can really have a lot of fun with wills, if you want to. There's a lot of stuff that you can do that can make the experience better for other people. Or you can actually make it pretty hard if you do absolutely nothing. Think of your two family members that argue the most, and then imagine planning your funeral.

[00:22:41] And then imagine them in that situation going, I They wanted this to happen, and the other person going, I don't think so, I think that there should be a different person that's doing the eulogy. Or these people should be the pallbearers if there's pallbearers. Or no, they didn't want cremation like this, they wanted a green cremation with water, alkaline hydrolysis.

[00:22:58] Or, yes, alkaline. There's just so many different variables, and it takes you down this rabbit hole where you go, okay, it happens to everybody. You know, death and taxes. Let's figure out how to actually wrap my head around it. Get prepared and then you can move on to more important things. It's just part of life.

[00:23:13] Jill: Yeah. And it's not like it has to be a one time conversation. You don't just have to sit down for the four hours and be like, all right, we're going to talk about every single thing. And the more that you talk about it, the easier it gets. Like I talk about. I talk about death now to especially my family all the time, right?

[00:23:29] Even my children who are 10 and 13, I try to keep it age appropriate, but at the same time I want to make it normal and natural for them. I talk about it all the time with my husband, my mom, my kids, and my family. It's just normal now for us. 

[00:23:48] Adam: It's easy. There's a three step process that people need to follow.

[00:23:50] It's very simple. Obviously oversimplified for three steps because it's a lot more stuff you can do. But here are your three steps. First, get organized and get the documents in place that you need. If you do it yourself, that's great. If you involve a service provider, that's great. If you're going down the road of having a trust.

[00:24:03] Highly recommend using a lawyer. If you're going to do it yourself, come to our website. We've got a list of every single state requirement. You don't want to create a will and realize that it's invalid because your witnesses were related to you and you're in a state where they can't be, for example.

[00:24:17] Once you have all that in place, tell your lawyer. A minimum of three people that you trust that will be involved in the process if you're incapacitated. This is what I've done, and this is where the documents are. You don't have to tell them the contents, but if you do a lot of work and people don't know about it, guess what?

[00:24:32] Those documents don't exist for all intents and purposes. They'll find it eventually, hopefully. But you don't want them not knowing what your wishes are because sometimes people need to know things very quickly. And then the third thing is you have to update them. Create your estate plan today, but you have to recognize that your life is going to change and with those changes, your estate plan has to change too.

[00:24:52] So, what does that mean? How often do you go back? Anytime you have a major event. Every five years, every ten years. There's some people that we speak with and I think it's great, not everybody does it, but every time when they do their taxes, every April 15th, they sit down and they take an hour or two and say, is there anything here that needs to be updated?

[00:25:10] You just make it part of your process and then, hey, guess what? You're done with it, move on, and then you can focus on it again when, when the time comes. 

[00:25:16] Jill: I was just thinking, I have a Facebook group, End of Life Clarity Circle, because I gotta keep all the depth and clear and all that in there. But in my Facebook group, I ask a question every day and people talk about it.

[00:25:29] The question I asked yesterday was, why is it important to have your will in place and why should you have the conversation with your family? And one of the group members was like, it just feels so overwhelming and so expensive. We can't afford it right now. And I was like, no, it doesn't have to be overwhelming or expensive.

[00:25:45] So now I'm definitely going to throw that link in there tonight to your website and be like, sorry, everybody check this out. I think that's a misconception that so many people have. It's going to cost me thousands of dollars. I don't have that money. I don't even know where to start. The thought of it is overwhelming and scary.

[00:26:00] I love that you have checklists and tools that make it easy. Here's the checklist. Just start at the top and work your way down. And it doesn't have to get done all at once. It could take a little while. Ideally, you want to try to get it all complete, but it's not like you don't have to sit down one weekend and be like, I'm going to get this whole thing done.

[00:26:19] Adam: Yeah, that's right. Let me give you some stats to help people understand how much a will and a trust in the state plan can actually cost to in case some of those people actually listening. So on average in a state. lawyer in the United States cost between 150 and 400 an hour. There are attorneys that cost way more than that, and some that cost less, but on average that's what it costs.

[00:26:40] You can probably get a very simple will in place, or a state plan in place, for somewhere between 500 for a very low end boilerplate, just sign on the dotted line, we didn't change anything, upwards of 6, 000 for a detailed plan. If you have very complicated trusts and there's dozens of different types, it can get very expensive and complicated.

[00:27:00] But, if you get all of your information organized, that's why we have the estate preparation package, you will pay for the time saved easily and you have that end product that your family can utilize. So what we say is, Write down, whether it's with our stuff or someone else's, these are my assets, these are my accounts, these are my relatives, this is what I want to happen to my assets in the event that something happens to me.

[00:27:21] You go to the attorney, and the attorney spends a lot less time with you trying to get this basic information that you can bring to them in advance, and it'll save money on the back end. It doesn't have to be a difficult process. It doesn't have to be an expensive process and you can do a lot of that leg work.

[00:27:36] Something you said earlier about the relationship of your husband doing finances, you not, that's very typical for a lot of families. There are plenty of spouses, male or female, and they just pick one. You're going to be doing the finances for the family. Division of labor makes things in a house run a lot easier.

[00:27:53] Your generation, which is my generation too, I think that we're a little bit more flexible on that mix. What's really scary today. Is that 10, 000 Americans are turning 65 every single day, which means that by the end of the decade, there will be twice as many people over 65. That means there will actually be more people over 65 than under 65, which is crazy to think about.

[00:28:14] And what really hit home for me is there's a stat that says, on average, women outlive their male counterparts by 5. 8 years in the country. If you are in a traditional value family, which is more likely in our parents generation, you know, 75 and above, that means that there's about to be millions of people out there that just have no idea what to do with their finances.

[00:28:36] And if somebody can help them step back and say, these are the accounts that I have, these are how I pay my bills, these are the most important bills, these are the benefits that you're going to get if I pass away, it's just going to make them be in a much better spot. And if you don't want to go through a will, if you don't want to go through a trust, because some people are just closed off and they don't want to have any of these conversations, in the estate preparation section of our website, we have something called Ask Three Questions.

[00:29:05] And this is something where it's three very simple questions to ask. There's actually a form that you can print out. It's for free. And if you do this with every single one of your accounts, it'll leave them in a better spot or encourage them to do it. And effectively what you're saying Actually, let me load up the website real quick.

[00:29:19] I don't have it open. But it'll take me 20 seconds to find it. So go to barrydemark. com. Resources, I'm going to estate planning. I'm scrolling down, ask three questions, and I just found it. So literally six seconds to get to it. The first question is, what will happen to this account and or policy when I pass away?

[00:29:36] So that means if something happens to me and I die, where does the money go? What happens to the account? The second thing is who's authorized to access and communicate with the institution regarding this account or policy when I pass away. Because you may find out that you have a power of attorney financial and you can communicate on this person's behalf while they're alive.

[00:29:56] But the second that they pass away, guess what? You no longer have power of attorney. So nobody can actually talk to them until they get the letters of administration if they go through the processes. So you want to have somebody designated that they can actually call in and deal with the account.

[00:30:08] Someone you trust. And then third, what benefits or entitlements are available to my designated beneficiaries when I pass away? Because a lot of accounts, credit cards, insurance policies, you get benefits if something happens to you that you might not be aware of. So by asking those three questions, you're going to have that person know what accounts exist, Where they are and all of the most important things that happen to those accounts if they don't have a will if they don't Have a trust you're at least going to help Marshal the assets which is a very big time suck in that 570 hours that we talked about earlier 

[00:30:41] Jill: Yeah, that's a lot of hours.

[00:30:44] It's not like life stops and you're like, well, I'm just gonna focus on this one thing You still have normal life And you're grieving and you're potentially dealing with other people that are grieving and then you have to deal with this other thing that is really important that it gets done and it gets done correctly and you probably have no idea how to do it.

[00:31:03] If we would all start now, we could really save our friends and family a lot of grief. And that's where in the past, I always used to tell people, you want to have an end of life care plan in place so that you get the care you want at the end of life. Then I started to realize that the. Bigger selling point is you want to have these things in place because it's easier for your family.

[00:31:25] Most people are like, well, I don't care what happens to me, whatever. But when you're like, no, think about your family. They're going to have to make medical decisions. They don't want to make, they're going to need to deal with all this stuff, figuring out the financial stuff that they don't understand.

[00:31:38] It's for your family. It's a gift that you give them. It's not even as much for you. 

[00:31:43] Adam: On the side of the estate preparation package box, a quote told us by a former deputy chief technology officer at NASA, after we reviewed everything, was leave your heirs the gift of organization. That's the quote that's literally on the side of the box.

[00:31:59] And while it will give you peace of mind, this is something that your family is going to thank you for if they could thank you for it. 

[00:32:05] Jill: Yeah, because it is, you know, they want to be able to deal with their grief. And I, you know, sometimes I think that's partially why so many of us had so much unprocessed grief because it's like, well, I can't think about this grief right now because I need to do all these other things.

[00:32:20] And some people do that on purpose, right, to avoid feeling their grief. But for some people, it's just necessity. I can't be in my grief right now because I need to focus on all these other things. And then life just keeps moving and we never give ourselves a break. the time or the permission to feel the grief.

[00:32:39] And I feel, again, this is just my belief that a lot of the pain and suffering in the world comes from people that are grieving that don't even understand that they're grieving and they're avoiding their grief and they're angry and they're making poor decisions because they're Spending so much energy avoiding feeling the grief.

[00:33:01] There's a lot going on in the world right now that's kind of a mess. I think that some of it is even grieving things. I talked to somebody today whose dog died unexpectedly last week. They said to me, have you ever talked to anybody that's really grieving a dog? And I was like, yeah, all the time. And I was like, there's people that grieve animals more than they grieve people.

[00:33:21] And then that's when they were like, yeah, I think that's me. My dog died suddenly last week, and I'm overwhelmed with this grief. I was like, totally normal, totally natural. There's nothing wrong with that. Yeah, our dogs, they're our babies. But if we don't feel the grief, then it comes out in all these other weird wonky ways.

[00:33:38] Adam: Absolutely. There's a reason why people call them fur babies. Our pet profiles are are just as long as the profile for children and grandchildren. It is so important, and it's the same responsibility, if not more, for your pets. And that's one of the things that I think was very surprising for me after my dad died, was figuring out all of the different steps that had to be taken after he passed away.

[00:34:03] And one of them is literally, Who's going to look after the dog? Who's going to look after the cat if you have a cat? The pets. You know, you have to go to the house, water the plants, empty the fridge, and inform the appropriate authorities. There's just so many steps. We've got a checklist for it on the website.

[00:34:17] You can go and find it. There's one before someone dies, after someone dies. But it's that type of thing that unless you've gone through it, You don't know what to expect. Grief sets in in different ways for different people, and each step can hit people differently. I mean, still, I can drive to Home Depot, think of my dad, and start crying.

[00:34:34] It stinks, but it's something that we all have to deal with. 

[00:34:37] Jill: Yeah, and I know people really do avoid grief. They avoid feeling that sadness. They avoid feeling that pain. There's the shame that comes with crying over, you know, driving to Home Depot or you're in the grocery store and you hear a song and you start to cry and it's part of being a human, right?

[00:34:55] The year of firsts. Yeah. 

[00:34:57] Adam: The year of firsts. It's the first Father's Day. It's the first this. It's the first that without, you know, and I think that one of my friends really helped out and there's a quote somewhere on the website for him as well. He said, it will never get better, but it will get easier.

[00:35:11] And the way it gets easier for me is to take the learnings and help other people, you know, go through the process to prepare so they didn't have to go through all the stuff that I did. And what we're doing now, and this is what I think is really neat. A lot of people are offering suggestions to add content to the website that they learn from their experiences.

[00:35:31] And sometimes it's people that are reaching out that aren't even the person going through the problem. There was somebody whose mom fell, who was very close to me, and she hit her head and she had a brain hemorrhage and she had to be airlifted to a hospital. And while he was in the hospital, in the waiting room, he was overhearing a conversation of the person next to him.

[00:35:48] They were complaining that they were trying to shut down an Amazon account for someone Because they were incapacitated, they They weren't going to be using Amazon anymore and couldn't figure out what to do. Within a week, we had a resource, it's on the website now, Closed Online Accounts, where we had reached out to the CEOs of over 100 companies in the country.

[00:36:08] You can say, Amazon, click, here are all the steps you need to take to shut down your account. That entire section was born out of somebody else's pain and challenge, and now we have something that helps a lot of people. It's fun to watch the metrics of seeing who's hitting all the different accounts. But a lot of people are using Amazon, but anybody that's listening needs resources.

[00:36:27] We've got templates. If you need something, reach out to us. If we don't have it, maybe we can create it for you. 

[00:36:32] Jill: Yeah. And that's the thing too, is everybody's experience is so different that we don't know what somebody else is going to need because it's so different than our experience. But then if they tell us if it's something we can help with, cause I've done that too.

[00:36:45] I would have never thought of something and somebody is like, I need help with this. And then I create a worksheet or whatever that works for them. And then it also helps other people because there's so much to think about. You know, I was thinking about the grief. When my grandmother died, I miss her a lot, but I don't feel that I ever get overwhelmed by grief.

[00:37:08] And I think a lot of that is because we had a really good relationship. I don't have any regrets. I don't have any feelings of like things were left unsaid or things were left undone. And it doesn't mean that there's not people in my life that I'm not going to feel this with because I'm not ready to deal with the relationship.

[00:37:27] But I think so many people, we get so lost in grief oftentimes because we have the regrets over the relationship, over not having the conversation we wanted to have, over not having, you know, closed up an argument or whatever it is. And. It can happen to any of us at any point and so for real if you have anything you want to say to somebody And this is where sometimes now i'm like people probably think i'm crazy where it's just like hey, you know what?

[00:37:55] I just want to tell you how much I love you I want to tell you how much I really appreciate this thing you did for me when we were in high school I don't even care anymore and i'm like you can think i'm crazy. I don't care But if you were to die, I'm not going to feel like, oh, I really wish I would have told them.

[00:38:09] Or if I die, I hope that the last thing people remember from me is something positive, that I didn't ever leave on bad terms or saying something bad to them. I try really hard now to make sure. That the last thing I say with people is something that's positive. So if I were to die, they wouldn't think, Oh, I really wished Jill and I would have made up or whatever it was.

[00:38:34] Adam: Do you have an ethical will or legacy messages? 

[00:38:36] Jill: So I have emails that I started for both of my children when they were born that I've been sending them messages. I should actually have letters written for people because I think handwriting is different than emails. I don't always practice what I preach if I'm going to be real honest.

[00:38:54] It's hard. And again, life, right? There's times that I'm like, I need to do this thing on top of doing all these other 18, 000 things. And so it's easy to put these things off because as much as I know, I could die tonight. It's going to happen to somebody, right? Somebody's going to die tonight. There's still that part of me that's like, I'm going to be 98.

[00:39:14] It's fine. I got plenty. 

[00:39:15] Adam: It's interesting there. So. For a lot of people they don't want to deal with it until later because they're going to die when they're 98, and of course not everybody lives to 98. I did hear a really interesting stat yesterday I learned, and this is a quiz I'm going to put you on the spot, you're going to get the number wrong because everybody gets the number wrong.

[00:39:32] How many people do you think are 100 years or older in the United States? 

[00:39:35] Jill: I don't know, probably not that many, a few hundred at the most. 

[00:39:39] Adam: 89, 000. What? I thought it was crazy. I, I, Oh, wow. I probably missed that. And this is what I found online. So do all your own research to fact check me. And if I'm wrong, please let me know.

[00:39:49] I thought, 89, 000 people are a hundred years or older and that number is only going up, which is amazing. So maybe people do have a lot of extra time, which is fantastic. If you don't and you want to get ahead of the legacy messaging and you have really bad handwriting like me because I could take time and write messages to my nieces, my nephews, my wife, my mom, my sisters, nobody would be able to read anything at all.

[00:40:10] They'd be like, great, I have a message that is literally chicken scratch. One way that you can do it really easily is you can just do quick videos and dump them into a drive on your hard drive or on a thumb drive. And you can update those and it can almost be a legacy thing of once a year, here's the messages, the things that I want you to remember where I am.

[00:40:26] And it gives you something to look at. One of the things I did with my dad, which I appreciate a lot for doing, and it's a weird thing to do, like, I did something and I appreciate. Was I kicked everybody out of the room in the hospital and I had to record a message for my mom It was one of the most heartfelt Genuine just wonderful.

[00:40:44] You're gonna be okay messages. I love you very much type of things when my mom was having a really hard day About three months after passed away. She was at my house and hey, I have something to show you just thinking in that video It's like hair standing up on my arms legacy messages of leaving the hospital What you believe of helping people connect after they're gone is something that can take many different shapes, many different forms.

[00:41:06] If you want to write it down, you can write it. If you want to make a video, you can do that. If you want to type it up and edit it, you can do that. Maybe use a Google Doc and see track changes and they can go in and figure that out later. But, if you do it, it becomes this really cathartic and nice gift for, for your family and others.

[00:41:21] But you don't have to. So that really goes into the advanced directive side of things. Is it a living will? What do you want your legacy to be? Because the odds are no one's going to remember you in 300 years, no one's going to remember you in a thousand years. So if that's the truth of the matter, you know, obviously there's some people that will be remembered, but most people won't.

[00:41:38] What is your legacy? And that's really the impact that you leave behind you. And you can make an immediate impact on the people that surround you in a very positive way by sharing your thoughts and your prayers. You know, what, what goes behind you if, if you are that type of person. So just a thought, an idea.

[00:41:54] Jill: Yeah, I love that. And videos would be fun because I also have terrible handwriting. My grandmother had written a poem that I found in a drawer after she died. And I tattooed like three days after she died. I found it. I went right to the tattoo place. I was like, I want this over my heart. So having something handwritten, I've seen people, you know, just like signatures on a card.

[00:42:18] So something handwritten, even if you think your handwriting is terrible, don't let that stop you because you never know, somebody might want to tattoo it on their body somewhere. 

[00:42:29] Adam: There's some really neat stuff there. You can get tattoos of sound waves now. So you can scan it and play it. I've seen QR code tattoos.

[00:42:36] I've seen images of people. I've seen paw prints of somebody's cat before. You get to grieve. You get to move on. You get to do what you want in your own way. You only live once. Correct. 

[00:42:46] Jill: I agree. And we're just about at time. So again, tell us the name of your business. If the website is different than the name.

[00:42:54] If you want people to reach out to on LinkedIn, whatever it is you want to share. 

[00:42:58] Adam: That's great. Website's very easy to find. Buried in work.com. So buried in work, we're on LinkedIn, we're on Facebook. We're not nearly as active there as as we could be, but come to the website, say hi, get the card games, utilize our resources, tell us what you don't like so we can make it even better for you.

[00:43:14] We've got a lot of information. If we went through everything today, we'd probably be here for another two, three hours. Find unclaimed property. Start the conversation with your parents. We've got templates, a glossary, directories of service providers. There's a lot of stuff there. We just want to make things easier.

[00:43:29] So buriedinwork. com. And if you need to reach me directly, adam at buriedinwork is my email. 

[00:43:34] Jill: Amazing. And I'll put links in the show notes so people can easily find all of that. This is really interesting. Thank you. I know if people are like how interesting could end of life planning be, but it really is.

[00:43:45] I think it's really interesting. Thank you so much for taking your time tonight to talk to me. 

[00:43:50] Adam: Jill, I appreciate it. I enjoyed it as well. 

[00:43:52] Jill: In my next episode, I talk with Kate Carson, a love, sex, and relationship coach that supports couples dealing with grief and intimacy challenges. After experiencing the devastating loss of her baby late in pregnancy, Kate discovered a lack of resources for navigating the impact of grief on relationships and sexuality.

[00:44:14] She trained in Tantra and developed a unique coaching practice that bridges grief, love, and intimacy. Working with clients worldwide, Kate discusses society's limited approach to both death and sexual energy, explaining how these stigmas create barriers to emotional and physical connection. She offers insights into how unresolved trauma can affect intimacy and the power of sexual healing.

[00:44:40] as a restorative process. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or family member who might find it interesting. Your support in spreading the podcast is greatly appreciated. Please consider subscribing on your favorite podcast platform and leaving a five star review. Your positive feedback helps recommend the podcast to others.

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[00:45:16] You can find a link in the show notes to subscribe to the paid monthly subscription, as well as a link to my Venmo. If you prefer to make a one time contribution, thank you. And I look forward to seeing you in next week's episode of seeing death clearly.