Protecting and Caring for Elderly Parents
Invested Podcast | Season 1, Episode 3
We talk with Dr. Chris Pierson and Jessica Bell about supporting elderly parents in a digital world.
In This Episode
Jessica Bell
Vice President, Senior Estate Planner at Baird
Jessica joined Baird in 2022 as Vice President and Senior Estate Planner, entering private wealth management after 15+ years as a practicing attorney. Jessica has extensive experience in estate planning, estate and trust administration, elder law, and estate litigation.
Chris Pierson
Founder & CEO, BlackCloak
Chris leads the strategic vision & mission for BlackCloak, a concierge cybersecurity protection platform that protects corporate executives and high-net-worth/high-profile persons from cybersecurity & privacy risks and attacks on their personal lives.
Jaleigh White, CPA, CPWA®
Director of Baird Family Wealth, Baird
Jaleigh is an expert within Baird’s Private Wealth Management business. She’s made it her life’s mission to ensure multigenerational families can access the resources they need to navigate major life transitions.
Moderator:
Angela Pittman Taylor
Director of Corporate Communications, Baird
Since joining Baird in 1998 as an intern, Angela has held various roles in our PR and corporate communications teams. Today, she leads Baird’s PR team and Chicago-based brand strategy and also advises on Baird’s inclusion & diversity initiatives.
Transcript
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Meet Our Guests
Angela Pittman Taylor: Welcome to Invested. We're hosting a five-episode miniseries on the sandwich generation. My co-host for this miniseries is Jaleigh White. Jaleigh, how are you today?
Jaleigh White: Doing good, Angela. Thank you. I'm so excited for today's episode.
Angela Pittman Taylor: Me too. So that brings us to the topic of our conversation, which is caring for aging parents.
Jaleigh White: Such an important topic. It's something we all hopefully get to experience, having parents around as they age and we get to help shelter them through that last stage of their life.
Angela Pittman Taylor: Absolutely. It's such an important topic and we have two very esteemed guests joining us today to talk us through it.
Jaleigh White: I'm so excited to introduce both Jessica and Chris. I have had the pleasure of working with them on different types of client scenarios and there’s nothing that they're more passionate about than this topic in particular.
I got to know Jessica Bell in 2022 when she joined Baird as a Senior Estate Planner. Prior to that she spent 15 years as a practicing attorney, so she's got great experience in the estate planning area. We're going to talk about how this is such a big passion for her as well.
Dr. Chris Pierson is the CEO and founder of BlackCloak. He and I recently met in Chicago and spent some time talking about all kinds of things. Dr. Pierson leads the strategic and vision for a concierge cybersecurity firm, helping people with privacy issues. Chris Pierson, this has been a very active time for you and we're going to talk about one of those areas in particular, but welcome to you both.
Chris Pierson: It’s great to be here.
Jessica Bell: Thank you, Jaleigh, I'm really excited to be here.
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Welcoming Dr. Chris Pierson, BlackCloak
Jaleigh White: To start, we'd like to hear a little bit more about your roles. You both have some unique aspects to this topic that make this important to you.
So, Chris, let's start with you and just share a little bit about your role at BlackCloak, how you got there and what makes this a topic you're passionate about.
Chris Pierson: I'm the CEO and founder of BlackCloak and BlackCloak is concierge service security and privacy protection. My day to day as the CEO is working a lot on strategy and vision. We're always trying to stay one step ahead of the cyber criminals and one step ahead of nation states. Anyone looking to compromise family offices and compromise folks with a lot of assets under management. So, we’re really focused a lot on strategy and vision and focused on our product. How can we build something better?
BlackCloak is a product company. We build and source our own software and technology to make sure we have the highest levels of security and privacy there. A lot is on brand and a lot is on our reputation. A lot is on what's actually happening out in the market in terms of private wealth management firms, banks, private wealth banks, and what's actually happening in corporate America. We have a great team of really passionate leaders that we've built up over the years here at BlackCloak. So, I get to and enjoy a lot of the mentoring aspects of that and helping folks as they're on their career journey and on their path.
The biggest thing I try to focus on is making sure our clients have peace of mind. That they're delighted each and every step of the way and really try to play a hands-on role where I can.
Jaleigh White: Part of your career before starting BlackCloak was around fixing problems. As you created BlackCloak, it was more to get in front of these problems – being more proactive and identifying risks and mitigating them before they happened.
Chris Pierson: That’s absolutely correct. Back in 2002, I started a cybersecurity practice at a large national law firm. It was all data breach and response related, which is massively needed but we were running to a fire with an extinguisher, after it's already been burning.
When I moved over to the Royal Bank of Scotland as a Chief Privacy Officer there and moved over as Chief Security Officer for two different FinTech's, it was always focused on incident response. But can we change the equation or change the game so that we're proactive with protecting people before bad things happen and before they're a target. You can't prevent everything, but can we greatly mitigate the chances of an impact of cybercrime, or a privacy risk, or a generation skipping privacy and cybersecurity harm? So it becomes a lot in terms of movement on prevention. Once again, BlackCloak will absolutely put out the fire and make sure everyone's good in responding to the incidents, but we'd rather be on the front end.
That's what excites me about today's conversation. For the folks here, this is a great time and opportunity to be thinking about how this applies to me. How does this apply to my parents? How does this apply to the ones that I love and what can I do proactively there?
Jaleigh White: Great. Well, we can't wait to discuss some of those topics and some of your insights on that.
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Introducing Jessica Bell, Baird
Jaleigh White: Jessica, one of the things I learned about you that I hadn't realized was how early on in your career elder care became important to you. That there are some personal family reasons behind that.
Can you share a little bit about that?
Jessica Bell: At Baird, I work in the estate planning realm, so it's really a delight to talk about my Elder Law background. I'm a graduate of Wake Forest University School of Law, and one of the reasons I chose Wake Forest years ago was because of the Elder Law Clinic that they had at the time. That was just a fantastic opportunity for me to learn more about the subject and I was interested because I had a close relationship with both sets of grandparents growing up. By the time I got to law school, I had one set left and they were getting older. I wanted to help them.
I have always had a heart for seniors. I remember my parents taking us to nursing homes and we would go sing for nursing homes. So, I think that was instilled at a young age and somehow, over time, that became what my passion was.
So, the Elder Law Clinic was probably my favorite class in law school. We got to learn how to work with clients with diminished capacity and how to actively listen during a client intake conversation. We provided pre-legal advice to seniors, folks over 65. So it was just a fantastic opportunity, and certainly had many classmates that took it, even though they weren't interested in elder law, just because of the great practice that it gave. I bring all that background with me to Baird, and it's been really fun to work with advisors.
My job here is to help them with wealth transfer techniques and to answer questions about trusts. I get emails and calls all the time, “Hey, Jessica, what does this trust say?” “The trustee wants to do X, Y, Z. Can we do that?” So, I act as a coach to the advisors and their clients and it's fun because I get to see advisors provide the best experience possible to their clients. Anytime I can be a part of that and help them look good and help them win, it's a great thing.
Jaleigh White: Well, Jessica, we're excited to have you here.
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What issues exist today for elders that didn’t 20 years ago?
Jaleigh White: Angela, we want to inform women who are often in that ‘CEO of the family’ role, and taking care of not only their children but also their parents. We're looking forward to providing some good information around this particular topic and how to really help protect the elderly members of our family.
Angela Pittman Taylor: Absolutely.
Jaleigh White: Chris and Jessica, when you think about the elder members of our family out there and the world we’re living in currently. What are some of the biggest issues that our elders are facing now, that 20 years ago, may not have been there? From an elder care perspective, what should we be aware of?
Chris, let’s start with you because when I say, ‘things that didn't exist 20 years ago,’ that's your whole world.
Chris Pierson: It is. If you believe it or not, the iPhone just started in 2008 and things have really changed technologically speaking.
When we think about elder care in the realm of cyber security or privacy, the number one topic is going to be – How do you help harden your loved ones against scams, fraud, swindling, and everything else?
We’re all taught early on how to answer the phone. ‘Hi, Pierson residence, this is Chris Pierson speaking, how can I help you?” When people call on their cell phone and when people text, “Hey, how you doing?” we respond. And our parents are responding to the email messages and phone calls as well. The number of scams that we see each day reaching out to this older population knows no boundaries. It really preys on people that might be a little bit behind and lagging on technology. It preys on people that have a wholesome heart and are willing to listen, willing to pick up the phone and not really willing to hang up the phone immediately on folks – and that really puts them at risk in terms of at some point in time, their mind will shift from that hardened, rational thinking view into that passionate, fight or flight view. The elderly are potentially susceptible to these things, whether it is a voice phone call, and it's some type of scam. Whether it's a smishing message – something that comes over a text message and is sent to them. Whether it's a phishing message and it's by email. Even when they do a Google search.
We just had someone, this week do a search for a HP printer 1-800 number because things weren't working for them. Well, the cyber criminals buy those ads to the 1-800 number and it was literally calling the cyber criminal directly. How do you possibly think about those types of things?
So the scam portion of this is, how do you take a generation of people that rely on tech help and make sure that they're not scared to ask for help, not scared to ask questions, not scared to reach out amidst these criminals.
What you don't want is a cyber criminal spending a lot of time with them; “Oh my gosh, that guy was so sweet,” “Oh my gosh, they were the best helpline ever.” It's incumbent upon all of us to understand we're not just responsible for our parents with their health care or helping out on trust and estate matters like Jessica is doing. Or helping them with financial matters and home matters. We are also their tech support system.
Second thing we see a lot of here is on the financial side. How are we talking to people about financial accounts, financial account access, financial account management and learning new systems and all the rest?
Once again, it’s incumbent upon us to help move them from post-it notes in the old expando files and filing physical tax returns and physical bank statements that come each month to the digital world. How do they understand how it all operates?
The third thing is how can you be a steward to them and your brothers and sisters and even into Gen 3, in terms of account access and for those future stages? Who has account access? Who knows who's the name of the insurance person, the trust and estate person, private wealth manager, etc. Who knows who the attorneys are? How is it all digitized? Preferably not in a book that nobody knows where it is. How can you help out on that other planning for wills, trusts, and estates, and kind of family planning when all the accounts are digital. It's not as easy as going into the back closet and pulling out the physical statements – the energy and electric bill, and whatever else for the home. All of those things are digitized so you should formulate a plan that is holistic around all those future life events, and how you are going to navigate that digitally.
The key thing there is, it's not just family partners that should be involved. You got to have external partners that also have your back. That understand the situation. That are there for you and you rely upon.
It's all about thinking of those things ahead of time. I'm going to stop there at the three things and this is just such a great topic.
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How can I help familiarize my parents with new technology?
Angela Pittman Taylor: You know, it's interesting to hear you talk about this because when I was helping my dad through some of these details, one of the biggest stumbling blocks we ran into was, shifting from the old way – the paper way – to the digital way.
The challenge of doing the new thing is trusting now, that everything is just in the air and it's not in my hand anymore.
How do you help your parents navigate from that old way into the new way? Can you talk us through getting our elders into the newer way?
Chris Pierson: Yeah, I feel like the heart of this comes into that personal hand holding relationship. What I mean by that is literally spending Saturday, staying overnight on Sunday, and spending that day and a half talking through, the electric account, the cable account, the phone, the gas line, whatever it is. Talking through all those accounts, and then talking through the financial accounts, through the health care record accounts. These key financial accounts – we don't necessarily need to spend time on the Amazon account. I mean, you could if you have bonus time to spend, but let's focus on the main ones.
Let's actually log in and get the username and password into a password vault. Let's show them how to navigate the page. Let's make sure the email addresses are correct. The phone numbers are correct.
One of the most comforting things people want is the ability to print if they decide to do so. On almost everything, you can go up and print the PDF right there. You can let them know, “Hey. Once a month or once every three months, you can go in and print out these statements.” And if it provides comfort, put these documents in a nice safe place in the home and shred them at the end of the year.
You can even come over during the holidays if they agree to get you a new pie or something, but actually do it with them and for them, together. That day and a half that you spend setting things up, you don't only need to do the maintenance and all the rest, but it will take out the scariness of the tech.
And if they’re not on computers as much as they are on iPads you can drag and bring all the icons together for all the utilities. Bring all the financial icons together in one folder. Once you have them there in the folder, you can show them once again how to do things. They can print from their iPad and see the PDF and all the rest. These are all really easy ways to not say, “No, you got to do it my way,” so they can do it in a way that makes sense to them. What I will tell you is that reducing the number of bills that come in a hard copy to the mailbox is going to reduce the chances of identity theft.
So, if they love the paper and they love being able to access the paper, then let's show them it's not that big of a deal. And doing it in person couldn’t be a better time and place to do it in my mind.
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Starting tough conversations with your parents
Jaleigh White: Jessica, you've been a great facilitator of conversations between families. How do we start those family conversations with siblings and with our parents in a way that still fosters their independence while keeping them protected? How do those family conversations get started?
Jessica Bell: Yeah, great question. And that is, I think, one of the hardest things for people to do is know how to start those conversations.
As a baseline, open and honest communication between you and your siblings, and with your parents, is key. We want to try to have that baseline as much as possible. Treat each other with respect, with dignity, even if you don't agree with how someone else would do something. Try to look at it from their perspective.
One of the ways I try to open up conversations with people is by thinking about what motivates that person. What's going to speak to mom the most? What's going to speak to dad? And start your conversation from that angle.
For some people, that may be bringing up a story about a celebrity. Celebrities are notorious for failing to do estate planning and so they get in the news for all kinds of reasons. That could get you started. Bring that up and say, “Mom, did you hear about so and so?” And talk about it, open the door to, “Hey, that makes me think, what have you done? What do you have in place?”
Another way is the sandwich generation. You may have friends who are going through issues that are a few steps down the road from where you may be. Bringing that up, especially if it's a friend or someone your parent knows, or your siblings know, you can just say, “hey, I heard this story and it really made me think, we should probably talk about this mom, let's talk about it.” That's another good way to open the door.
The final way is to just use yourself and say, “You know what? I just revisited my own estate planning and it made me think, what do you have in place?”
A lot of seniors are concerned about losing their independence, losing their dignity, or having people think that they are less capable than they used to be. So, a lot of times I'll come at it from the situation of, everybody should do this, no matter what stage of life.
One thing I use right now is, our eldest daughter who just turned 18. So, we have her do basic estate planning right now, which is a good thing. No one’s going to argue with the 18-year-old about having to do estate planning when they’re 75 and doing it. So, using examples from your own life can be a great opportunity to open that door.
Jaleigh White: Sounds great. I know in our family, one of the things we've done to make them feel comfortable with asking questions, is assigning topics to certain family members. For example, our son – he's the tech person for the whole family. Our daughter's a real estate agent. When anyone's buying a house, they talk to her about buying a house. So everyone has a role in the family. My sister is the healthcare expert. She'll help with anyone's health insurance claims.
We not only told our parents, “Feel free to ask us, but we've actually assigned topics of who in the family is responsible for what topic” and then we all use them for that topic. It's not just my parents. Family is family, and we all have our roles, and everyone plays to their strengths.
As I was just talking to my mom this morning. She was going to go visit a friend of hers who's 95, and she just moved out of her house into assisted living. And how, what a difficult conversation that was. When's the right time to start that conversation?
Jessica Bell: I think having that conversation as early as possible and as often as possible is helpful because that can be at a stage where it's not threatening. If you start seeding it into the conversation regularly, then it's not so much of a shock and a threat when it does come up. Sometimes though that's not always possible.
Not every parent wants to talk about that, but the examples I gave earlier about just trying to find what motivates them and what speaks to them to open the door to that conversation is really useful.
In my law practice, a lot of times it would be when mom or dad had a fall and children would come to me not knowing what to do. In that situation or much closer to the time when someone may need to make a change in their living situation, I think it's really helpful to have a third-party step in.
One of the resources that I would use regularly was a care manager. They're also called aging life care managers or geriatric care managers, or just overall care managers. That person would come to do an assessment of the senior. They will complete an assessment of the home and with their knowledge and background in geriatrics could pinpoint the threats in the home and any safety issues, and offer ways to mitigate them. They might suggest putting in a handrail or modifying a step so that mom or dad can stay in the house longer. Or they might tell you the current situation just won’t work anymore. Either because of where the parent is cognitively and physically, or just because of the layout of the home. Having that information presented by a neutral third party always seemed to go over easier than coming from the children. It helps to have it come from a third party who has independent training in it and those are invaluable resources.
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Protecting your parents in a digital world
Jaleigh White: Chris, for firms like yours, what's the baseline for things we can do to help protect our parents? What are some of those specific action steps that we can take to monitor or make sure we've done some of the basic protections?
Chris Pierson: That’s a great question. Let’s think about them in a few quadrants.
First, on the privacy side. What you want to do is make sure that less cyber criminals – less adversaries – are able to reach out to your mom and dad. The way you do that is by removing their information from databases that are called data broker websites or data broker databases.
If their name, address, phone number, email, date of birth, etc., are not in those databases, they can't be preyed upon as easily. It's like parking your car. If you have a hundred parked cars, all of them could be stolen and broken . But the 99 that have the red blinking light on, the windows up, and nothing on the front seat, likely won’t. When you've got the one car that's got the windows down, some money and a computer on the front seat, that's the one that's going to get broken into. So, what we want to do is make sure that mom and dad are a harder target to hit because their information is not available on those data broker websites.
The second thing on privacy is going to be identity theft and putting a credit freeze in place on Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion which is going to freeze their credit. No one is going to be able to apply for a credit card, a new bank account, etc., in their name. We're not talking about credit monitoring, just credit freeze. It's free to do. You can do it with your parents. You can do it for your parents. It does take some time, but that's a really good first step.
The second quadrant is going to be on the devices side – making sure all their devices are virus free and are protected, is going to be absolutely critical. But the thing that people forget a lot is it's not just about the device.
The devices today are a keyboard and a monitor. There are different sizes, different types, but it's just a keyboard and monitor. All the information is in the cloud. All the information is in their email account. So the one thing we want to do there is make sure on their Gmail account for example, that they have dual factor authentication turned on. They might have a weak username and password so you can try changing it but just keeping it simple – if you have dual factor authentication turned on so you get a code texted to your phone, will raise you up from 5 percent secure to 80 percent secure. So, having that code texted to you before you log into your Gmail, will prevent a cyber-criminal, who has your username and password, from also logging in because they won't get that code. So dual factor authentication there.
The third quadrant is the home. The homes are living, breathing entities. It doesn't matter how old or young you are, everyone has a smart home these days. You got Disney, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon coming in through the TVs. You got the Ring doorbell cam, probably insisted your parents get the Ring doorbell cam, insisted that they have the Nest Thermostat and even insisted that they have some cameras outside the home. All of that is great – it's great technology. What you got to do is protect it. The way you protect it is, number one, make sure everything's set to automatically update, automatically patch. Two, back to what I just said, username and password alone aren't going to cut it. You have to have dual factor authentication turned on. Once again, that’s a code that gets texted to you for that login.
Those are the three main pieces. The one from before that I mentioned is really the saving grace. It is to harden the human. Harden the human means talk to your family about scams that are going to happen.
The FBI is not going to come calling you. The sheriff is not coming to your front door and hauling you away for those unpaid parking tickets. The IRS, similarly, they're not coming by either. Your Apple account and your bank account – they didn't lose your social security number and they're not going to shut you down. None of those things are going to happen. So tell them, “Hey, mom, dad. When you get anything that brings you to an immediate action – account closure, account being turned off, losing money, losing this, losing that, people in blue coming over to arrest you” and stuff like that, Jaleigh, to your point, get a person in that family that is in charge of these things that are coming to them. We want you to hang up with the person who is scamming you and phone a friend. You may need to literally say, “It is not rude to hang up. You're going to call me. We're going to talk about it and it probably will be fake. If you’re worried that Acme Bank is really legitimate, you and I will get on a third party call with them together and we'll call the known 1 800 number that's actually on your bill.”
Finally, especially around the holidays, matters of the heart are hitting really hard. We're living longer than ever, and people are having new romantic relationships later in life. Sometimes, widows and widowers. We see a lot of people preying on those emotions.
We actually just had somebody pass off $500,000 to two mystery gentlemen. The kids really wanted the individual to get some kind of companionship but ended up putting out $350,000 in one instance and $150,000 in another instance. It finally took a third party to convince mom that it was fake. Back to the point of having that third party that Jessica mentioned earlier. Sometimes you need that third party helper. We were able to go through the scam and tell them exactly what was happening, and she's like, “Yeah, that actually happened.”
We said, “Go ahead and email back. This is what the next ploy will be and boom, it was the next ploy. We were able to gain a trusted relationship and able to cut it off there. But we got to really focus on that.
The fact of the matter is that these things, holidays, being lonely, being alone, different life changes, these really can weigh on people. So be there. Like what Jaleigh said, be there for your family. Make sure they know. Don't assume or presume they know.
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What will the future of aging and caregiving look like?
Jaleigh White: Great advice, and it kind of leads me to one of the other things I want to talk about today and that's the future. People are living longer than they were 20 or 30 years ago. So that brings with it a whole host of new issues.
Chris, I certainly want you to talk about AI and what that means and also what things might be happening in the future that might be helpful as we age. In my situation, I'm counting on no one ever taking the car keys away from me because self-driving cars are going to be real and they'll take me wherever I want to go. So that's one of the things that I hope will be out there in the future to make it better to age.
Jessica, from your standpoint, when you think about the future as we're all aging. What do you see as innovations, cultural changes and things that may be helpful? And then other things that may make it even more challenging to take care of the elder members of our family when you look out into the future.
Jessica Bell: Like you mentioned, Jaleigh, our population is rapidly aging. According to the census starting in 2030, when all baby boomers will be over 65, there will be more seniors at that time than there are children under 18. So that's a huge shift in demographics. And of course, with more people living to older ages, there's going to be just more opportunities for innovation. So, one of the big things that's going to happen that I'm looking forward to seeing what innovations come about is a change in living arrangements and caregiving arrangements.
I can pretty much guarantee you the baby boomers are not going to go down quietly into a nursing home. They want other options. They don't want that and so I think there's going to be a lot of innovation around that and I hope there is. I hope there are more respectful living arrangements or ones that people actually want to be in - maybe community living but I think there'll be a lot of innovation around that.
Then I would say on the opposite side, you know, from the threat side, elder abuse and fraud is only going to increase. I mean, like Chris was talking about with the romance scams, those are going to get more and more prevalent. That is something that I saw in my practice, and that we see at Baird too. We see people trying to prey on seniors trying to get their money. So a lot of times it's a caregiver or a new romantic interest who sees the opportunity and it's just going to grow and grow. So, I think putting all of the tips and practices in place that we've heard today will really help.
Jaleigh White: Chris, the future. What does your crystal ball look like? What is going to be helpful to our elderly population and how is it going to be harder to protect them going forward?
Chris Pierson: The ability to finely target individuals and convince them to transfer money, to log into different accounts and download software, or whatever it is, is increasing.
It's basically all transcended and with three seconds of audio and one picture, you can create a 30 second clip using a Chromebook, by just uploading it to a random website and create a picture, create a video, create a voice. You can do live, real time chatting with somebody over a video medium where you actually can make yourself look like someone they know, love, or trust and it's going to fake people out rigt?
We are seeing, and have seen a rise of voice and video impersonation. It has hit this population, and it will only grow in terms of the impact, of financial take. And cybercriminals are onto this – you got to be super careful.
I will tell people, right now, there are a few different solutions that you can go in and deploy here. One of the easiest ones is back from when you were younger and your parents would say, “Hey, in case you’re kidnapped...” You remember the old stories, you know, the car pulls up at the bus stop and yanks you in. Or it's like, your parents ask you, “what is the key word? What's the safe word, if I get into an accident and I have somebody come and pick you up,” because we didn't have cell phones, we didn't have any of that stuff. So back to the safe word, what is that one true safe word that you can ask or that your parents can ask whoever is calling them, pretending to be you? You can do that. You can set it up so you have a different one every month or you can pick a different one after you use that one. That's one really simple suggestion.
Bottom line is, yes, the adversaries are using this technology to target us more and more. But on the positive side, we have the ability to go live – real time video – on our phones immediately to our loved ones.
We have the ability to call them or text them saying, “Hey, show me that you're actually at home. Walk around your home so I can see that it's you. Walk outside. I want to see Fluffy the dog.” You're able to do that in a way that can defeat a lot of this type of technology. We have technology in our hands and in our pockets that can actually help sustain us through this increase of targeted AI and deepfakes towards this population.
The other thing is that this is a great time and place to have that conversation with our parents, with the elderly, on these different attack methods, and really make sure everyone is trained.
All that they have to do is stop time from moving forward.
That means pausing a conversation. using a different line to a well-known number. hanging up on the call and doing something else. Even if it really was you on the other end, you're not going to get offended that they hung up on you. You're going to praise them – good move, great move. There are ways around this, and it is the human mind stopping, slowing down time, and getting help from somebody else, that can give you an objective viewpoint.
Then there’s educating people. I hope a lot of people are going to watch this. Getting this out there in front of folks and having the conversation to Jessica’s point – it's all about the conversation. got to happen early and often so that it builds up that natural defense to say, “something doesn’t seem right.” That I know that my son, my daughter, private wealth manager, my connected person here has talked to me about this and told me about it. I can recognize the pattern and as a result, I'm going to pause, take a few minutes, think about it, and go in a different direction. that's really going to be, huge in terms of defending those attacks.
Jaleigh White: Such great advice. I love that safe word.
Jessica, something that you said when you're thinking about the future. about, whether you think people will want to live in different types of communities. So much of that is in keeping with the research that's coming out now, about people's wellbeing.
As we age, one of the most important components to that is socialization. Especially for men where their socialization happened at work mainly and then they don't work anymore. Some people would even say more important to your wellbeing than exercise or eating well, is youru socialization. So hopefully there's things coming that will foster that in a more natural way. But, you know, even as Chris said, just the virtual environment we live in, to be able to reach out and have live conversations with family members and with friends will help that.
So, are there any changes you see happening or proactive things that families are doing to help with the loneliness that's out there? Especially in a post COVID world.
Jessica Bell: Well, I think one of the things is to keep in contact. If the family has grandchildren, any way you can keep in contact with them. FaceTime is great for that. Some sort of digital photo receiver where you can easily upload photos and they can see what the grandkids are doing, see what the family's doing. Even if they have a grand dog, get the grand dog on there so they can see what's going on. that helps them feel connected.
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Steps you can take to protect your family and future
Jaleigh White: Well, we'd like to end with a little bit of a lightning round. I always like to have action steps at the end of every conversation. So, please share two or three things that are action items everyone should take either for themselves, or for their parents when they are through listening to this podcast today.
Chris Pierson: First and foremost, have a meeting, have a conversation. Get everyone together. I love the idea of assigning every person to a different topic that they're expertise in. One could be on the healthcare side, another on the real estate side, another on the finances side. Somebody on the cyber and IT side, right? We need someone there. So figure that out amongst yourselves, what the racy chart is, so to speak, about who's accountable. Who's responsible? Who's consulted? Who's informed on the different life buckets that we could do there among that. that's number one.
Have the conversation, get on the same page., biggest thing ever to defeat any of these things. Problems are going to happen. Cyber, trust and state wise, health wise, life wise. Gotta make sure everyone is on the same page, rowing in the same direction. So number one.
Number two. On the cyber security and privacy side, we've given good tips on how to shrink that attack surface. You’ve got to focus on shrinking the attack surface so you're less likely to be a victim, less likely to be someone that is attacked and less likely for an attacker to hook their teeth in you, so to speak.
And so we've given some good advice there in terms of credit freeze and data broker removal and such. I think that's going to be critically important.
The third one is going to be talking about how you personally are going to be resilient to the different attacks – cyber-attacks, scam attacks, fraud attacks – that are coming in, because it's not going to be possible for someone to be always available.
We have got to have those conversations now. have them early, have them often, and make sure everyone's on the same page. Much better to do it now than later on. The attacks are happening but you can remain so much more resilient to them and defeat them.
So, let's do those three things and we'll be in a really good place for 2025.
Jaleigh White: Appreciate that great advice. Jessica, from the standpoint of people that say, “mom and dad never talk about their estate plan or what their financial assets are, so we don't know what’s going on with them.” What are the action items that people can take to start to get their parents comfortable with sharing that? Also how to increase their level of understanding to be able to help that?
Jessica Bell: Well, I think we go back to opening the door to that conversation.
The techniques we talked about earlier boils down to what's going to speak to mom or dad. You want to think about their personality – what they fear, what they trust, what motivates them – before having that conversation.
Then find out what they have.
I'm an attorney, so I hammer this home all the time – we need basic estate planning documents in order. Most people think of a will or a trust in that situation and those are important, but a lot of times what's more important than that, are what I call ancillary documents. That's your power of attorney for finances. your health care power of attorney for health care decisions. Possibly a living will, so that they can state what sorts of interventions they do or don't want at the end of their life. Could even be a standalone HIPAA release so that you can actually talk to the doctors and your siblings can talk to the doctors, before that healthcare power of attorney is contacted.
So, those are all really important foundational documents that everyone needs. Without them, if your parent loses capacity, especially with the durable power of attorney and often with the healthcare, you'd have to have a guardian. It's called a guardianship in some states. It's called a conservatorship in others.
Once you have those foundational documents in place, make sure that the beneficiaries on their accounts align with their overall estate plan. Things like their IRAs, 401Ks, 403Bs, insurance policies, bank accounts, anything that's transfer on debt. Double check those and make sure it's what they think it is.
Finally, one thing I want to point out is that some people don't have children, and they don't have siblings that are younger who they can rely on, and so what do I do in that situation?
I would encourage them to find some sort of group to get involved with. Like a faith community, a group of hobbyists like bird watchers or just a group of people that have like-minded interests with you. And develop those relationships so that there's someone you can trust. Potentially, one of those people, if they're trustworthy, could act on your behalf.
If there's really no options there, there are quite a few corporations that can act in these capacities. So there are resources out there. Don't feel like all is lost if you don't have family members to help you.
Jaleigh White: Great advice, Jessica. Angela, I don't know about you, but I've been taking notes and I've got a long list of things that I want to do, both with my mom and dad. This is great advice from Chris and Jessica today. Thank you all so much.
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How to connect with our guests
Angela Pittman Taylor: Absolutely. Thank you so much for joining us. What a fantastic conversation. Chris, if people want to hear more about your advice or connect with you online, where can they find you?
Chris Pierson: Visit to blackcloak.io, and you can download materials about BlackCloak. Find out what we do and how we help high net worth individuals on their cyber security and privacy journey.
Angela Pittman Taylor: And Jessica, how about you?
Jessica Bell: The best way to reach me is through your local Baird advisor. They know where to find me. If you want to connect with me outside of that, I'm on LinkedIn as well, it's Jessica Bell.
Angela Pittman Taylor: Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us.
Jessica Bell: Thank you, Angela. Thank you, Jaleigh, this has been a lot of fun.
Chris Pierson: Thank you all. This has been great.
The information offered is for informational purposes only and should not be regarded as information or advice sufficient on which to make a financial decision. Baird is not a legal or tax services provider and you are strongly encouraged to seek the advice of the appropriate professional advisors before taking any action.
All investments have some level of risk and this should not be considered a recommendation of any products or services discussed today. The opinions are those of the guest and not necessarily those of Baird.
Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated. Member SIPC. All rights reserved.
The statements from Chris Pierson are that of a Baird Capital portfolio company executive who has worked with and alongside the Baird Capital team in operating a portfolio company in which Baird Capital maintains an interest. He was not compensated for any comments about Baird or Baird Capital.
