How Are You Prepared For Your Inevitable Demise?

Hey, it's Mark Podolski at the Landgate with the favorite niche real estate website, thelandgate.com and on this week's Roundtable podcast, we have almost all the usual suspects. We've got the technician, Eric Peterson, sans a rib in his mouth. Eric, how are you?

I'm good. This is our first time back together since the new year, so it's good to see everybody.

It's a great way to start 2022. We got dude buddy, the nightcap OG Scott bossman. Scott, how you keeping warm?

No, no, it's been in the. It's been below zero this week here in Wisconsin. So ready for it to warm up for sure.

Reminds me of that scene in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Like, how cool do you think it is? Like two. Yeah, we got the Zen master. Breathe in the mailing, breathe out the marketing. Mike Zano. Mike, how are you doing?

Great. Happy 2022.

Yeah, you're not starting 2022 on the best health foot.

No, I do have the COVID right now. I guess we broke the ground with Scott Bossman early last year, so we can talk about that now on the podcast.

Broke ground?

Remember we revealed his health status with COVID way back in 2021.

You don't remember the whole. You don't remember the HIPAA violation that you.

I do remember HIPAA violations. Yeah. I think it was more sensitive than. I feel like everyone now has the.

COVID Yeah, back then it wasn't as, I guess, prominent. Not as many people had it. But yeah, it's all good though, Mark.

There was more stigma to it. Like, how'd you get it? Now it's like everyone's got it right. Except for I love it when you call me Big Papa Tate Litchfield Tate, how are you?

Doing well. Yeah, happy to be here. Excited to start off the new year, right, with another podcast with all of you guys.

Yeah, we're starting off right now. Teria put in the reps. Hairs should be joining us. And there she is, Terea, putting in the reps. Harris, hello. How are you starting out 2022, right?

I'm great. It's been wonderful so far.

Well, Scott, Todd is on a plane right now, his plane, to come visit me. So I'm very excited. But unfortunately for listeners, he is not on the podcast. But we have a fantastic, uplifting, life affirming topic this week. What do you do if you die? I love this topic. Tria, of course, makes fun of me because I have the app that I love called Wecroak, which Reminds you five times a day that you are going to die. It is a Bhutan ritual and is actually a way to be more happy because when you're constantly reminded of your death, all this sort of little things in life fall away and you really focus on the more important things and nothing really bothers you because look, you're alive. What do you think? However, we do have to get down to business with it because if you are financing your owner financing notes and you're creating a passive income, you do have a responsibility to your family, your team, and also of course, the buyers that are owner financing their notes. Should you die, what's going to happen to the property? So of course we might as well let Mike get out of the way because he is not feeling great. Well, let us start with him. And he's arguably the one closest to death right now on the call. Geez.

Awesome. Well, I do love the idea of, you know, contemplation of death. I know I give you a hard time about it, but I think it's a, you know, I love reading about Buddhism. I think it's a very Buddhist thing to do and I think the, you know, it brings a lot of gratitude and I think gratitude helps us in our day. So, yeah, I salute that. But if I die and you know, this came up today because I really don't have a ton of preparation for this. So I'm excited to hear the rest of the of people on here, what they're doing. I mean, my business is I have two of them actually, and both of them, one of them is part of my wife and one's with a friend. So, you know, I guess we'd both have to die to really, you know, but that could happen if I'm traveling, my wife let's, you know, anything could happen. So I am going to explore this. This is now my early 2022 goal. I think that it's a worthy goal and I'm excited for it. Well, that's kind of weird. Excited to build my death file, but as excited as you can be to build your death file. But yeah, Mark, I think it's a great topic. I'd like to hear more about it. I know that it's important and shame on me for not being prepared, but I'll take the public shaming. I'll be the guy that, you know, that stands up and says, I'm not ready and see where we go from there.

I don't think there's any shame in it. I don't think it's a Topic most Americans embrace and talk about. When's the last time you're at a dinner party? We were like, yeah. Have you guys updated your kitchen file? How's your life insurance going, Bob? You up at this year? You're not looking so great. Right?

Like, it's just not Debbie Downer of the potty. Yeah, you know. You know, here comes that guy again. Don't invite Mark next time. All he wants to do is talk about death. Can you not invite him to the next get together?

That's right. That's right. Tastes like happy birthday. You're just another year closer to the grave. Pass the punch. So, dude, buddy, nightcap. OG what do you got going on? How have you prepared for your inevitable demise? Which, by the way, I'd like to just mention that we don't want anyone ever to have an untimely demise. But let's face it, we're all going to die. We need to be prepared.

Well, I think I might be maybe a little bit more organized than Mike, but probably a lot less organized than you. But I do have multiple files where my family knows to go to find information about, you know, passwords, life insurance, banking, birth certificates, all that stuff. I mean, right. I'm pretty organized as far as that goes. As far as the, you know, planning to, you know, what to do when I go. I have some of those things written down. I have an advanced directive through my health company to say, what if? Here's what my family should do. But one of my goals this year actually is to get things a little bit more organized in regard to my businesses and how that may look if I do unfortunately leave sooner than I want to. Definitely, definitely looking forward to getting some of those things in place this year. And, you know, reading up. There are a lot of great resources online for this, actually, that I've started, that I started getting into a few months ago. So try to put those into practice and start taking steps in the business realm of things, because I feel like the personal realm of things. I'm doing decent up.

Yeah, absolutely. And I forgot to mention. Well, I'll kind of talk about a little later, actually. We'll get to your crypto keys anyways, which I would like to have, God forbid. Right. Taria put in the reps. Harris, how are you prepared?

Prepared? Personally? Yeah. Well. So, Landon. So I guess we brought up a good point. In the event that both of us go, but in terms of if I went, we're prepared. He has all the passwords to everything. He understands how to get to Things where my life insurance policy is, how much it is, what needs to be done from a business perspective, I mean, other than call Tate and don't take the first offer, that's pretty much all we have in place. So we need to do better. I've spoken to my sons about, you know, running the business, and thankfully, the business kind of runs independent of us. We have to weigh in sometimes. So that's the good. The good side of our business. If my kids wanted to come in and take over, we've left really good documentation. We have really good staff members who can kind of get them up to speed if that's what they choose to do, and then option to call Tate and don't take the first offer. He'll buy us out.

I mean, no. No pressure, Tate. No.

Geez.

Get a start low, Tate.

Yeah, exactly.

Start low, start low.

The technician, Eric Peterson. Have you thought about this? Is this something that you have planned for?

Well, I must admit, it has been on my list for a long time, and I continued to push it out of the way and not do anything about it outside of one thing that I think is really important, especially if you're a sole member llc, and that is to have an operating agreement that outlines some process of what happens if you're no longer with us and who can take over, who can step in and run the company. Because without that, you're gonna have an awful. Well, your family or friends or somebody's gonna have an awful lot of headache trying to sort that out. So at least that's in place, the operating agreement. But beyond that, I need to do a better job, and I think it consists of a few things. Just making sure there's. There's kind of one resource that my spouse knows where to go to find all this information, and that there's. There's kind of a trail and a plan of like, okay, here's how you access these things. Here's, you know, who you can contact to help with this situation. All of those kinds of topics I feel like should be covered in that document. And it is actually something my wife and I talk about on occasion, and she kind of gets a little nervous about it because there's so much that she doesn't know. So I really need to do a better job with it.

Yeah, I'm glad we're bringing it up. See, it's just. It's just a way to prod you. Just another thing to put on the calendar to get done. Eric, put it on the calendar now, because I guarantee if you don't set time aside. I know this is, like, the last thing you want to think about.

Exactly. That's why it hasn't gotten done.

Yeah. Got brisket to make on the Traeger, chili on the Traeger, update, my In Case I die file. So all those things have to be scheduled out. Last but not least, I love it when you call me Big Papa Tate Litchfield. I mean, you're so young. This probably isn't something that you even think about much, but it is something you should think about.

You know, I've been hanging around with you for many years now, and so I am happy to announce that I do have a Book of Tate. That's what I call. It's the Book of Tate. If I die, it lives on Dropbox. My wife knows how to get in there. Now, she might not know what everything is in there, but it is organized in a way to where it's like step number one, you know, here's the. Here's my insurance guys, call them. Here's our policy.

Right?

You know, documents, birth certificates. I got young kids. And so this, to me, is kind of one of those top priorities for preparing for, you know, a family legacy kind of thing. It's not like mine's all polished and perfect or anything like that. But I do understand that, you know, a lot of information lives up here. And if it lives up here, that's bad. Like, that's really, really bad. Honestly, a lot of the videos. I have a lot of videos in my book of Tate, and it's just me talking on zoom to myself like, I'm dead. Don't worry. Here's what you do, right? Like, it's. It's pretty honest. It's pretty open, but it's always. I should be updating it more often than I am. I mean, I think about it, it's like, this is probably one of those things that should be done quarterly. I normally do it annually, and even then, it's not getting enough attention or love. But simple things like, hey, if I die. Allison, call Mark. Make sure this is his new updated contact information. This is Eric's number. If you ever have barbecue recipe concerns, call him.

Or.

Or, you know, here's how you get in touch with Scott Todd, because that guy's a myth. He's a legend, right? Maybe it's just his tail number to his airplane or something like that, so she could track him down and meet him. Something like that. But, you know, I do believe it's important to have this information. Living in one Spot. I'm working on it. It's a work in progress.

Yeah, no, absolutely. So I have a Dropbox file that I use in case I die, and my state knows how to access it. My state attorney knows how to. Knows how to access it. And from there, the most important password to me and for the business side of it, is how do you access geek pay? Because people are paying down their notes. When someone pays off a note, someone then has to go and sign off on that deed. Now, luckily for me, I've thought about this, and I actually have team members with limited power of attorney to do it. But what should happen if they should pass? So that's something that they would need to know how to do, because we would need to have that, you know, those properties convey properly and recorded properly. And so I want to have that in my. In case that I file. I have books that I want my kids to read. I have values I want to inculcate to my children, because right now, they're teenagers. They don't listen to me. Maybe they'll listen to me from the grave. These are all important things to me. Of course, life insurance, all that is going to be taken care of. As far as you know, who do you contact? You know, how does that work? When do they get the money? Right, so as you start building up your land business and you have a sizable estate, you need to do more estate planning to mitigate your taxes and the tax burden to your heirs as well. So leaving that legacy, my idea of leaving a nice legacy, because, let's face it, no one's going to remember me in three generations. But they might if in three generations, they're still getting a check for me with my signature. Right?

Mailbox money. Mailbox money.

There's three generations. So clearly I've thought a lot about this. And even as much as I think about it, which is five times a day, I have still, for 2022, not updated my in case I die file, which is one of the most important things to me.

All right, Mark, question for you, since you're the resident expert on this. Somebody's listening to this podcast. This is resonating with them. Maybe Mike Zano. Right? We'll use Mike Zano as an example. Where should he go to get started? Like, what is the first step in this process?

I think, honestly, the first step is you want to meet with a good estate attorney, get your affairs in order as far as that living will. What are people going to do as far as just all of the. Just the estate side of it. And then from there. I was joking about all of us have crypto. Well, I have a separate file with my estate attorney. Here's how you access the crypto with the crypto keys to do that. Because without it they're not going to be able to access it. There's. There's other sensitive information that they won't be able to access. Have access to as well. The one pass. So I use one password. Some of you guys use LastPass. Without that master password, no one's getting into anything. So I have that written down with the attorney. So it lives with the one trusted estate attorney. And from there everything that has, you know, you can access then the digital file and all the digital files as well. So I think that's the best place to start is just get everything sort of in order. You're young, so you have bigger decisions to make. As far as the children. Right. You know, I'm older so I don't have that. I mean I still have a 16 year old that I still have to think about. Just God forbid. Right. You just never know. So that I think is the place I would start personally. Would anybody disagree?

You're a lot further along than we are. So we agree.

I can't tell you how enlightening this is. Like my. The best topics like and what makes me think of Mark is the more simpler our life is now, which I really love the idea of being minimalist. Right. The more simpler it'll be to convey like so you have to do what you're talking about would involve, you know, simplifying everything, making everything accessible, understanding. So it really seems like it would really has reaches beyond our death. It comes to our life because it'll make things just much more, much easier now. Much simpler, much more enjoyable. And I have a great no movie now. I'm thinking of it said the Book of Tate. I could see Tate. Of course in the movie you die at the beginning, like all good Disney movies. But anyway, later, later on in life, one of the children seeks out Scott Todd who's like Obi Wan Kenobi. And they find him in some, some wing with some airplane and they crawl up and there he is taken on the plane. It's like there he is and you know, a book of tape. And you know, they're the little Padawan, he's the Jedi Master and start teaching about investing. What a great movie.

Yeah, Boss comes in with his jetpack like Boba Fett. Not bad.

You'll have a good death scene tape in the beginning Cool.

As long as it's epic, like, you know, I'm game. It needs to be definitely fire explosions. I want it to cost a lot to make, right? And I want it to be, you know, a long scene too. I don't want like a five second death scene. I want it to be like a couple minutes of just chaos, total chaos.

I like it.

I'm running from a building, struggling, right? I'm fighting somebody and then the building collapses and I'm out running the building and I outrun it before it smashes me, but then the plane falls out of the sky and squishes me.

Or you get on your bike.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

On that thing.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a good name, though. The Book of Tate.

The Book of Tate's great.

It is a good name.

Love it. As much as for some people, this is a very depressing, morbid topic. I do think it's an important topic and one that we should discuss and one that, you know, everyone needs to think about because as the cliche goes, okay, you know, the only two things that are inevitable in life, death and taxes. So there you go, and you have to plan for both. But we are now at the point in the podcast where we are going to ask for the tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book, something actionable for the art of passive income listeners to go improve their businesses, improve their lives. I actually do have a tip, but before I give my tip, I do want to give a shout out to our sponsor today, which is Flight School. Learn how the next 16 weeks can literally transform your life. Go up the mountain of land, investing quickly, safely and efficiently with Scott Todd as your Sherpa who's done it thousands of times. And oh, yeah, that flight school tuition is not going to cost you nothing, guaranteed. Learn more. Go to the landgeek.com forward/training because you're going to make back that investment 180 days or less. Thelandgeek.com forward slash training. Thank you, Flight School, for sponsoring the first podcast of 2022. It's actually not the first podcast of 2022, but the first time, 2022, that we've actually gotten together. Do you want to start with your tip? Then? I'll give my tip.

Yeah. So my tip is pretty basic. So I have thought about you and your death thing and I had it on my phone, right, the death croak, where it just sends you these death messages. We croak, we croak. So I offset that with like some I am statements. So I found an app and there are probably hundreds of apps out there, but at least three times a day I get an I am statement and I've customized it. So based on today, what do I want to empower myself with? You know, is it self improvement? Is it health? Is it, you know, financial? But I have these I am statements that kind of offset the weak croak. So, yes, I'm going to die, but today I am xyz. What? Fill in the blank. So I love the fact that we talk about death and we embrace death and we are prepared for death, but I also want to make sure that while I'm here that I live in the moment. So I have the I am apps that I use.

I love it. Well, I'm also going to give the antidote to death as well. My tip of the week is when you have a baby, the one of the first things you should do that week is give the baby. Let's say, you know, baby tatemail.com right? So now they have their own Gmail account. And then every week, let's say you put it on the calendar for every Sunday you will go and you email babytatemail.com a video of them doing something cute or something funny they said or something original they did. And you just email them every single week. And then when they turn 18, you give them the password and username to their email and they can go back and see how they've actually grown up and the cool, interesting things that they've done through the years, which are so life affirming. That's my tip.

I love that. Yeah. Yeah, I like that.

So pretty awesome. Thank you. Thank you. So I'm going to give to myself a statement. I am awesome, Terea.

You are.

And I am humble.

And you are still alive.

And I am still alive. These are my I am statements. So I want to thank the listeners and remind them that the only way we're going to come up with more morbid topics is if you do us three favors. Follow rate Review the podcast, send us a screenshot of that review. Supporthelangic.com I'm going to send you a signed copy of Dirt Rich, so please do it. All right, Are we good? You ready to do this? 1, 2, 3. Let freedom, freedom ring. All right, see everybody next week. Oh, wait for mention one thing. If you haven't registered yet for Boot Camp, January 21 to 23, go to the Landgeek.com Bootcamp. If you have the toolkit, you get unlimited boot camps now. So go to the landgeek.com bootcamp register. We only have 100 slots, so do it now. We still have actually spots available. But don't procrastinate. Don't procrastinate on your in case of die file, don't procrastinate on registering for Boot Camp. TheLangic.com Boot Camp. If you're in flight school, you also have unlimited virtual boot camps. The two live ones you'll see are going to be in San Antonio in August and Atlanta to rehearse his backyard in October, which is very cool. We haven't done an east coast one in so long. And I'm only doing it to appease, of course, Terea and Zaino and Scott, whatever. He's got a plane. What does he care where it's at? It's fun for him to fly.

Eric's east coast, Eric's midwest. Sorta. Sorta.

He works both. He works all over the country. So let's do this. 1, 2, 3. Let's get that again.

Here's a sign that. Yeah, I mean, there may be some dementia sitting in 51 this year.

I believe it's very, very good.

If you want to send me ginkgo biloba, that would help.

Anyways, I'm glad everything is documented in the textbook. That was on purpose.

I think this is a great podcast. Are you guys ready to do this?

It's like momento.

So.

By the way, if you're worried about me, you can email me@marketthelangic.com for any tips for mental acuity. But yeah, I'm going to need it. 2022. See you guys.

Thanks for listening to the Art of Passive income podcast. Are you ready to learn how you can start building a passive income without renters, rehabs, renovations or rodents? Schedule a free consultation@thelandgeek.com training let freedom ring.