Today’s episode has valuable tips for caring for elderly parents as a member of the sandwich generation. Dr. Chris Pierson describes how to help aging parents avoid the ever-growing tech targeted towards vulnerable populations, while Jessica Bell emphasizes the importance of understanding elder law and estate planning. Communication is key to transitions and planning for the future.
Caring for elderly parents can be challenging in many ways. In this episode, we get expert advice from Dr. Chris Pierson, Founder and CEO of cybersecurity firm BlackCloak, and Jessica Bell, JD, Senior Estate Planner at Baird.
Chris describes how you can help your parents avoid new tech vulnerabilities like scams and phishing, while Jessica emphasizes the importance of understanding elder law and estate planning. Both agree that communication is key to transitions and future planning.
With structured family meetings, a secured online presence, and aligning financial goals, you can help set your aging parents up for success.
BlackCloak is the pioneer of Digital Executive Protection, providing online privacy protection, personal device security, home network security, and incident response to corporate leaders in their personal lives.
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CHRIS: When we think about eldercare in the area of cybersecurity or privacy, the number one topic is going to be privacy. How do you help harden your loved ones against scams, fraud, swindling, all the rest of that?
JESSICA: As a baseline, always have as much open and honest communication and healthy communication between you and your siblings and with your parents. That’s key.
CHRIS: First and foremost, have a meeting, have a conversation, hopefully with your Gen 2 siblings. Get everyone together. Every person is going ahead and figuring out a different area that they have expertise in. One could be on the healthcare side, other on the real estate side, other on the finances side. Somebody on the cyber and IT side, right? We need someone there. So figure it out amongst yourselves. Who's responsible? Who's consulted? Who's informed on the different life big buckets that we could consult for each “thing.”
JESSICA: It really boils down to what's going to speak to mom or dad, and you want to think about their personality, what they fear, what they trust, what motivates them before having that conversation, and then find out how to communicate using those motivations.
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02:18 - Chris’ role
02:44 - About BlackCloak
05:54 - Jessica’s role
07:33 - About Baird
09:09 - Today’s elder care issues
14:46 - The transition to new tech
18:00 - Taking steps for tech safety
32:30 - Forward thinking
41:54 - Today’s action items
48:32 - Where to find our guests
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Find Dr. Chris Pierson on LinkedIn
Find Angela Pittman Taylor on LinkedIn
Find Jaleigh White on LinkedIn
More about Baird
[00:00:00] Angela: 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?
[00:00:10] Jaleigh: Doing good, Angela. Thank you. I'm so excited for today's episode.
[00:00:15] Angela: Me too. So that brings us to the topic for our conversation, which is caring for aging parents.
[00:00:20] Jaleigh: Such an important topic. It's something we all hopefully get to deal with that we have parents around as they age that we get to help shelter them through that last stage of their life.
[00:00:30] Angela: Absolutely. And it's such an important topic. And, we have two very esteemed guests joining us today to talk us through it.
[00:00:38] Jaleigh: I'm so excited to introduce both Jessica and Chris. I have the pleasure of getting to work with them on different types of client scenarios and nothing that they're more passionate about than this topic in particular. So got to know Jessica in 2022 when she joined Baird as a senior estate planner, but prior to that she spent 15 years as a practicing attorney. So she's got great experience in the estate planning area. And we're going to talk about some of that, how this is such a big passion for her as well. And Dr. Chris Pierson, the CEO and founder of Black Cloak, Chris and I recently, got to meet in Chicago and So we're going to spend some time talking about all kinds of things, Chris, and we're going to have trouble today keeping narrowed down on just a few topics as it relates to this, but Dr. Pierson leads the strategic and vision for a concierge cybersecurity firm, helping people with privacy issues. Chris, I know this has been a very active time for you. And today we're going to talk about one of those areas in particular, but welcome you both. We're so pleased to have both of you join us.
[00:01:44] Chris: That's great to be here.
[00:01:45] Jessica: Thank you, Jaleigh, I'm really excited to be here.
[00:01:47] Jaleigh: And to start with, we'd like to hear a little bit more about your roles, that you have today. And I know you both have some unique aspects of it that make this topic important to you. So, Chris, let's start with you and just share a little bit about what your role is at Black Cloak and how you got here and what makes this a topic that you're passionate about.
[00:02:07] Chris: I'm the CEO founder of Black Cloak. And so Black Cloak is Concierge Service Security and Privacy Protection. My, my day to day as really the CEO is, you know, working a lot on strategy, vision. We're always trying to stay one step ahead of the cyber criminals. One step ahead, believe it or not, of nation states, that are looking to compromise family offices, compromise folks with a lot of assets under management. So really focused a lot on strategy and vision. Focus on our product. How can we actually build something better? We, Black Cloak, are a product company. We build, source our own software and technology to make sure we have the highest levels of security and privacy there.
[00:02:42] A lot is on brand. A lot is on our reputation, our name, how we're thinking about those items. And a lot is on what's actually happening out in the market. So it could be out in the market in terms of private wealth management firms, banks, private wealth banks, what's actually happening in on corporate America as well and boards and C suites.
[00:03:00] So always that outward facing role. I have a great team of really passionate leaders, that we've, built up over the years here at Black Cloak. And so I do, get to and enjoy a lot of the mentoring aspects of that and really helping folks as they're on their career journey and on their path.
[00:03:15] And really bringing Black Cloak out to market. The biggest thing that I really try to find a focus on is making sure that 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 in that where I can. So great to be here.
[00:03:30] Jaleigh: And part of your career before starting Black Cloak was really around food, fixing problems. As you create a black cloak, it was more to get in front of them, being more proactive and identifying those risks and mitigating them before the problems happened.
[00:03:43] Chris: It's absolutely correct. I started, you know, back in 2002, I started a cybersecurity practice at a large national law firm. It was all data breach and response related, which very much is, you know, massively needed, but you're running to a fire after it's already been burning with a fire extinguisher.
[00:04:00] When I moved over to the Royal Bank of Scotland as a Chief Privacy Officer there, when I moved over as Chief Information Security Officer for two different fintechs, And even in some government roles, it was always focused on, alright, we know that fires can happen, can exist, and incident response is really important, but can we actually go ahead and change the equation?
[00:04:20] Change the game so that we're proactive, we're protecting people before they have exits, before bad things happen, 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?
[00:04:39] And so really it becomes a lot in terms of movement. on prevention. Once again, we will absolutely put out the fire and make sure everyone's good in responding to the incidents, but we'd so much rather be there on the front end. And that's what excites me about today and today's conversation is that for the folks listening, this is a great time and opportunity to be there thinking about how does this apply to me? How does this apply to my parents? How does this apply to the ones that I love and need to keep right in good stead? And what can I do proactively there? So all the things meet in the middle and this is great.
[00:05:09] Jaleigh: Great. Well, we can't wait to hear some of those, topics in some of your, Insights on that. Jessica, one of the things I learned about you, we work on so many estate planning issues, but I didn't realize how early in your career that elder care really became important to you and some personal family reasons that really are behind that. Can you share a little bit about that?
[00:05:32] Jessica: Sure, Jaleigh. So, at Baird, I really work more in the estate planning realm, and so it's really a delight to talk about the 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.
[00:05:52] And that was just a fantastic opportunity for me to learn more about the subject. And I was interested because I really had a close relationship with both sets of grandparents growing up. And by the time I got to law school, I really, I had one set left and they were getting older and I wanted to help them.
[00:06:12] And I just have always had a heart for seniors. remember my parents taking us to nursing homes and we would go sing for nursing homes. And so I think that was instilled at a young age and somehow over time that became what my passion was. And so the Elder Law Clinic was probably my favorite class in law school and we got to learn how to work with clients with diminished capacity, how to really listen in a client intake conversation.
[00:06:44] And we provided, Pre legal advice to seniors, to folks over 65. And 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.
[00:07:00] And so I bring all that background with me to Baird and it's been really fun to work with advisors kind of on the other side of things.
[00:07:10] And I think my job here is, just to help them with wealth transfer techniques, to answer questions about trust. So 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? And there are a lot of issues that come up with that and so I really act as a coach to the advisors and their clients.
[00:07:34] And it's fun because I get to see advisors provide the best experience possible to their clients. And anytime I can be a part of that and help them look good and help them win, it's a great thing.
[00:07:47] Jaleigh: Well we're so excited to have you here and Angela one of the things you and I've been talking about with the whole task force around this women's initiative is that we really want to inform women who are often in that kind of CEO of the family role taking care of not only the children the people in our house but also parents and so we're looking forward to providing some good information around this particular topic to really help protect the elderly members of our family.
[00:08:17] Angela: Absolutely.
[00:08:18] Jaleigh: Chris and Jessica, I'd love to hear from both of you. When you think about, elder members of our family that are out there and in the world we're living in 2025, what are really some of the biggest issues. So we're gonna talk about some of the issues that they're facing, which even some issues that 20 years ago may not have been there, that we didn't have a roadmap because the generation before this didn't have those issues.
[00:08:43] What are some of those top things you think that are out there from an elder care perspective that we need to be aware of? And Chris, I'll start with you because when I say things that didn't exist 20 years ago, that's your whole world.
[00:08:58] Chris: It is. I mean, if you believe, right, believe it or not, it was the iPhone just started in 2008, so to speak, right around that timeframe and iPads. And, you know, just really things have changed. Look at, you know, when we think about eldercare in the area of cyber security or privacy, the number one topic is going to be privacy. How do you help harden your loved ones against scams, fraud, swindling, all the rest of that? So, they were all taught early on how to answer the phone. Hi, you know, Pierson Residence, this is Chris Pierson speaking, how can I help you? When people call on their cell phone, when people text and say, Hey, how you doing?
[00:09:36] They're responding. They're responding to the email messages. They're responding to phone calls. The amount of scams that we see each and every day reaching out to this population is just it knows no boundaries, right? Knows no boundaries. Really praise on persons that might be a little bit behind in lagging on technology.
[00:09:53] Praise on people that kind of start with just that really good, wholesome heart. And so they're willing to listen, willing to pick up the phone, they're 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 or fight or flight view and the elderly potentially susceptible to these things, whether it is a pandemic voice phone call, and it's some type of scam, we've seen that before. Whether it's a, smishing message, so something that comes over a text message and it's sent to them. Whether it's a phishing message and it's by email. Whether it's 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 going well. Well, the cyber criminals buy those ads and the 1 800 number was literally calling the cyber criminal directly. How do you think about those things? So the scam portion of this is how do you take a population that really does need tech help? And it could just be IT help. And how do you go ahead and make sure that they're not scared to ask for help?
[00:10:56] Not scared to ask questions? Not scared to reach out? Because what you don't want is It's 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. And I think it's incumbent upon all of us. Look, we're not just responsible for our parents helping them out on health care or helping out on trust and estate matters like Jessica is doing. We're helping them with financial matters and home matters. We are their tech support system. You don't have to be a professional in the area. We understand the tech. We have to go step up and make sure they know, under no circumstances are you to rush doing anything with MNOs. You can call me, email me, whatever, any point in time, I'm here to help you mom, here to help you dad. We got to get that out there. Second, one thing that we see a lot of here is right kind of on the financial side, but how are we actually talking to people about financial accounts, financial account access, financial account management, learning new systems and all the rest.
[00:11:47] Once again, incumbent upon us to help them. Move from highlighting in post it notes in the old expando files, like legal red files on filing physical, you know, tax returns, filing physical bank statements that come each month. How do we actually transition and shift them into this world so that they understand where they're operating and how they're operating? Really critical and important. 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, planning for future stages, who has account access, who knows who's the name of the insurance person, the trust and estate person, private wealth manager, who knows who the attorneys are, how is it all digitized, not in a book that nobody knows where it is and they once saw it, but how do you actually really help out on that other planning for wills, trusts, and estates, and kind of family planning?
[00:12:41] Because all the accounts are digital, it's not so easy to just go into the back closet and pull out and ah, I've got 10 physical statements here, the energy bill, electric bill, and whatever else for the home, all of those things are digitized. So you really do need to formulate a plan that is holistic around all those future life events, on how are you going to go ahead and navigate that.
[00:13:02] And the key thing I'll say there is, it's not just family partners. You gotta, and I mean it's just so great to talk to everyone today, you gotta have around the table the external partners that have your back, that understand the situation, that are there for you and rely upon them. That's the thing that I love the most is how do you actually go ahead and try to make sure that you can make that happen and deliver delight, deliver joy in those areas. It's all thinking about those things ahead of time. I'm going to stop there at the three things, but it's just such a great topic.
[00:13:32] Angela: 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 big assembly blocks that we ran into was going into some of the changes from the old way, the paper way to the digital way and the challenge of doing the new thing and the trust around, okay, now it just lives in the air.
[00:13:54] 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, how do you make that transition? How do you help them, them get into some of that, newer way?
[00:14:08] Chris: Yeah, I'll tell you, I mean, I really feel like the crux of this comes into that personal hand holding relationship. And so what it means is literally spending the Saturday, staying overnight on the Sunday, spend that day and a half. And walking down, right, the electric account, the cable account, the phone, the gas line, whatever it is, walking down all those accounts, walking down the financial accounts, walking down the health care record accounts.
[00:14:32] It's maybe some 10 to 15 key accounts, right, we don't want 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 go ahead and show and log in and show the access, get those into a password vault. Let's show how to navigate.
[00:14:49] Let's make sure the email addresses are correct, the phone numbers are correct. Make sure they're hardened. Make sure they know, because one of the biggest comforting things people want is they want the ability to print if they decide to do so. And on almost everything, you can go up and it's got the PDF right there and you can actually log in and say, Hey.
[00:15:06] Once a month, once every three months, you can go in and print out these statements and if it gives you comfort, provides you comfort, put them in a nice safe place in the home, shred them at the end of the year, you'll even come over at the holidays if they agree to get you a new pie or something, like arms together, but right, I mean, who knew we'd be talking about pies, but like arms together and 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 mode of at the half year and all the rest, but it takes out the tech and the scariness of the tech.
[00:15:38] It removes it from them. Another good example. So they're on the iPads. They're not on the computers as much as they were on the iPads. Drag and bring all the icons together for all the utilities. Bring all the financial icons in together in a folder. You have them there in the folder, you can show them once again how to do things.
[00:15:52] They can print from their iPad into the printer and see the PDF and all the rest of the stuff. There you go. If you want the paper, you get the paper at the end of the year, you come by, you grab it all up, and you shred it for the next year's stuff. These are all really easy ways to not say, No, you gotta do it my way.
[00:16:06] They don't. Let's have them do it in a way that makes sense. And 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. And of course it depends on where you live and private, but once again, let's go ahead and meet them where they are, they love the paper.
[00:16:26] They love being able to access the paper. Let's show them it's not that big of a deal and doing it in person, right? It's a great time and place. The holidays couldn't be a better time and place to do it in my mind.
[00:16:37] Jaleigh: Thank you, Chris. Some great advice and some things that you said that I want Jessica to follow up on, because what you started talking about, that collaboration, involves family conversations. So, Jessica, I know you've been a great facilitator of those. How do we start those family conversations with siblings and then with our parents so that we're still fostering their independence but making them feel safe and protected and making sure that they are. How do those family conversations get started?
[00:17:10] Jessica: Yeah, great question. And that is, I think, one of the hardest things for people to do is know how to start those conversations. From a baseline, always as much open and honest communication and healthy 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 and not just say, hey, this is the way we should do it. I try to open up conversations with people is to think about, what motivates that person?
[00:17:48] Jaleigh: And so you're going to have to do a little bit of thinking here, but say, hey, what's going to speak to mom on this? What's going to speak to dad? And take it from that angle. So, 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. So that could be one, you 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's in place? being in the sandwich generation, we have friends who are going through kind of, issues that are a few steps down the road from where you may be, and I think bringing that up, especially if it's a threat someone your parent knows, or your siblings know, or you can even just take it from your own life as well, and just say, hey, I, I heard this story and it really made me think we should probably talk about this mom, let's talk about it. And that's another good way to open the door And then the final way is to just use yourself and say you know what I just revisited my own estate planning. We're doing this, and it just made me think what do you have in place? So those. Are the basic ways. A lot of seniors are concerned about losing their independence, losing their dignity, 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, everyone at every stage.Sounds great. I was speaking in parables, but also from real life experiences has helped, and, I know in our family, one of the things we've done is to make them feel comfortable with asking questions, but we've actually assigned topics in our family.
[00:19:27] Like, no one's going to ask anyone in my generation a tech question. 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. And so everyone has a role in the family. My sister is the healthcare expert.
[00:19:45] She'll fight 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's family, and we all have our roles, and everyone needs to kind of play to their strengths.
[00:20:05] So,
[00:20:05] Jessica, one of the other things that's very difficult, is when 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 had to move out of her house into assisted living. And how, what a difficult conversation that was. When's the right time to start that conversation?
[00:20:26] So, I actually think having that conversation as early as possible and as often as possible is helpful, just 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.
[00:20:46] Jessica: 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 and, oh my goodness, what are we going to do? In that situation or where we're, you know, much closer to the time where someone may need to make a change in their living situation, I think it's really helpful to have a third party step in. And so one of the resources that I would use regularly was a care manager. They're called aging life care managers.
[00:21:32] You may have heard of geriatric care managers or just overall care managers. And that person would come and do an assessment of The senior do an assessment of the home and with their knowledge and background in geriatrics could say, okay, here is, here are the threats in the home, here are the safety issues and here's what we can do to mitigate that.
[00:21:56] If we change this, put in a handrail, modify this step, mom or dad can stay in the house longer. Or they might say, you know what, this situation is just not working out at all, either because of where the parent is cognitively and physically, or just because of the layout of the home. And having that information presented by a neutral third party always seemed to go over easier than coming from the child.
[00:22:27] it just helps to have it come from a third party who has independent training in it. And those are invaluable resources.
[00:22:34] Chris: I think,
[00:22:35] Jaleigh: yeah, that's a great idea, Jessica. Sometimes siblings have different views and that kind of takes it out. Let's just see what the expert has to say and, not have siblings sit around and debate it in front of mom and dad. I think that's a wonderful thought. Chris, firms like yours that really provide that professional help that may be appropriate in many situations, but what's kind of the just ground level things that we can do to help protect our parents,
[00:23:02] some of those specific action steps that we can take to kind of monitor or make sure we've done some of just the basic protections.
[00:23:13] Chris: it's a great question. But think about them in a few quadrants. First, on the privacy side, what you really want to do is make sure that less cyber criminals, less adversaries are able to reach out to, let's just say, right, your mom and dad, so to speak. And the way you do that is by removing their information from databases that are called data broker websites, data broker databases.
[00:23:34] If their name, and address, and phone number, and email address, and year of birth, date of birth, or whatever, are not there, they can't be preyed upon as easily. They're not a really as high profile a target. It's like parking your car over at O'Hare, let's just say. You have a hundred cars there, all of them could be stolen and broken into, but the 99 that have the red blinky light on, the windows up, nothing on the front seats, the alarms there, And then you've got the one car that's got the windows down, got some money on the front seat 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 they are a harder target to hit because their information is not available on those data broker websites. Really, that's one of the big number one things on privacy. Second thing there on privacy is going to be identity theft.
[00:24:17] Putting a credit freeze in place on Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion 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, we're just credit freeze. It's free to do. You can do it with your parents, you can do it for your parents.
[00:24:36] It does take some time, but that's a really good first step. Second area is going to be on the devices side, right? On the devices side, making sure that all their devices are virus free, are protected, is going to be absolutely key, absolutely critical. But the thing that people forget a lot is it's not just about the device.
[00:24:55] The devices really today are a keyboard and a monitor. They're 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 let's just say it's Gmail. One thing we want to do is make sure on their Gmail account that they have dual factor authentication turned on.
[00:25:16] So their username and their password, they're probably going to have a weak password and all the rest. You can try changing it, try this and try that, lots of things, but just keeping it simple. If you have dual factor authentication turned on so you get a code texted to your phone, it's not the perfect level of security.
[00:25:32] But it will raise you up from 5 percent secure to 80 percent secure. So, getting that code texted to you before you log into your Gmail, and you can just do it once on that computer and click OK. That's great, but what it will do is it will prevent a cyber criminal who has your username and password from also logging in because they don't get that code.
[00:25:50] So dual factor authentication there. The third area is the home. What we want to do is, look, the homes are living, breathing entities. 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 you've actually insisted your parents get the Ring Doorbell Cam, that they insisted that they have the Nest Thermostat, they've even insisted that they have some cameras outside the home and all the rest of the garage door so you can help monitor them.
[00:26:17] Oh, 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, a code that gets texted to you for that login.
[00:26:40] Those are the three main pieces. The one from before that I mentioned is really the saving grace. It is the 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.
[00:27:04] The IRS, similarly, they're not coming by either. Your Apple account, 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, 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 at best coming over to arrest you and stuff like that.
[00:27:31] Whenever you do that, Jaleigh, just at the same point, get a point person at that family that is in charge that these things are coming to. And it's just a, we want you to phone a friend, phone, hang up with the person, hang up, and it's not rude. You have to literally say. It is not rude to hang up. You're going to hang up on them.
[00:27:52] You're going to call me. We're going to talk about it and it probably will be fake. If you worry that Acme Bank was 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. But we're not asking you to be rude.
[00:28:13] You're going to just reach out to me to pass them all through me. Nothing's going to happen. That hardening the human one, is really, tough. And finally, especially around the holidays, matters of the heart are hitting really hard. We're living longer than ever. People are having sometimes new romantic relationships later in life, sometimes, widows and widowers.
[00:28:34] And we see a lot of people preying on those emotions. We actually just had somebody pass off 500 000 to two mystery gentlemen. and the kids really wanted the individual to, right, they wanted them to kind of get some companionship, but ended up putting out 350, 000 in one instance, 150, 000 in another instance to people that were trying to cross the borders but they couldn't and they got bills they had to pay and Department of State problems and all the rest of it.
[00:29:02] And it finally took a third party, the kids couldn't convince them, couldn't convince mom that it was fake. We were able to, back to the point of having that third party that Jessica mentioned, right? 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.
[00:29:21] And we're like, go ahead and email back. This is what the next ploy will be. And boom, it's the next ploy. We were able to gain the trusted relationship, able to cut it off there. But we gotta really focus on that. And of course, now when we're recording this. It's around the time of the holidays. The fact of the matter is that these things, right, holidays, being lonely, being alone, different life changes, these really can weigh on people.
[00:29:42] Jaleigh: So be there, right? Like what Jaleigh said, be there for your family. Make sure they know. Don't assume or presume they know.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. But let's look, Chris, certainly want you to talk about AI and what that means and also just what things might be happening in the future that might be helpful. I know in my situation, I'm counting on no one's ever going to have to take the keys away from me because self driving cars are going to be real and they'll take me wherever I want to go.
[00:30:27] So that's one of the things that I hope will be out there in the future to make it better to age in the future than it is today. Jessica, a little from your standpoint, when you think about the future, as we're all aging, What do you see as either innovations, cultural changes, things that may actually be helpful and then other things that may make it even more challenge to take care of the elder members of our family when you look out into the future.
[00:30:59] Jessica: Like you mentioned, Jaleigh, our population is rapidly aging, and I think according to the census that is starting in 2030, then that's when all baby boomers will be over 65. There will be more seniors at that time than there are children under 18.
[00:31:16] 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. And so I think one of the. 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.
[00:31:54] People actually want to be in maybe community living. I just think there'll be a lot of innovation around that. And then I would say on the opposite side, you know, from the threat side, and this is really Chris's expertise, but elder abuse and fraud is only going to increase. I mean, like he was talking about with the romance scams, those are going to get more and more prevalent.
[00:32:18] That is something that I saw in my practice, and we see it bared too. We see people trying to prey on seniors and, you know, Try to get their money. So a lot of times it's a caregiver, a new romantic interest who swoops in, sees the opportunity, 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, I mean, Chris had some great tips that I am writing down to you, so that will really help.
[00:32:51] Jaleigh: And Chris, future, what's your crystal ball look like and how is that going to be helpful, to our elderly population and how is it just going to make it harder to protect them going
[00:33:02] Chris: We'll hit the negative side first, but then we're going to do a little bit of the, hey, how do we get a glass half full on this thing? The ability to finally target individuals and convince them of whatever it is, right? Transfer money to go ahead and, log into different accounts to download software, whatever, is increasing.
[00:33:22] It's
[00:33:22] basically all transcended and with three seconds of audio, 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.
[00:33:45] And It's going to fake people out, right? And so we are seeing and have seen a rise of voice, impersonation and video impersonation. It has hit this population. It will only grow in terms of the impact, in terms of financial take, and cybercriminals are onto this.
[00:34:08] They're in the wild, they're happening, you gotta be super careful.
[00:34:11] I will tell people, I mean, right now there are a few different solutions and stuff that you can go in and deploy here. One of the easiest ones is back from when your parents were, when you were younger and all the rest, and they say, hey, in case you're kidnapped. You remember always the old stories, you know, the car pulls up at the bus stop and yanks in or whatever, it's like, you know, what is the key word, what's the safe word if I have to get in an accident and I have to have somebody come and pick you up.
[00:34:34] Because we didn't have cell phones, we didn't have any of that stuff. And you know, back to the safe word. What is that one true safe word that you can ask, that your parents can ask the, whoever is calling, purporting to be you, or whatever, about? You can do that, you can set it up so you do a different one every month, you can do a different one until you burn that one and use that one.
[00:34:52] That's one real simple suggestion. On the glass half full, look, bottom line is, yes, the adversaries are using this technology to target us more and more. But on the positive side, look, 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 and text them.
[00:35:13] We have the ability to, 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, right? You're able to do that in a way that actually can defeat a lot of this type of technology. So we have technology In our hands, in our pockets, that can actually help sustain us through this increase of targeted AI and deepfakes towards this population.
[00:35:38] So there is a glass half full there. 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 methods, attack methods, and really make sure everyone is trained. All that they have to do is stop time from moving forward.
[00:35:57] And that means pausing a conversation, using a different line to a good known number, hanging up on the call and doing something else. Your mom and dad, they're not going to get, right, if it was really you calling, you're not going to get offended that they hung up on you. You're going to praise them.
[00:36:10] Good move. Great move. Call the home phone. There are ways around this and it is the human mind stopping, slowing down time, getting help from somebody else that can give you an objective viewpoint. And then educating people. I hope a lot of people are going to watch this. I know a lot of people will watch this and really 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, some done seem right.
[00:36:38] 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, and I think that's really going to be, huge in terms of defending those attacks.
[00:36:57] Really huge.
[00:36:58] Jaleigh: Just a great advice. I love that safe word.
[00:37:01] Jessica, I love something that you said when you're thinking about the future about, you think people will want to live in different type of communities. And so much of that is in keeping with the research that's coming out now about people's well being.
[00:37:15] And especially as we age, one of the most important components to that is socialization. And especially for men where their socialization happened at work mainly and then they don't work anymore. Even some would say more important to your well being than exercise or eating well is your socialization.
[00:37:36] 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 any changes that, that you see happening or on the horizon or proactive things that families are doing just to help with the loneliness that's COVID world.
[00:38:06] Jessica: 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. And so 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.
[00:38:26] Even if they have a grand dog, get the grand dog on there so they can see what's going on and that helps feel connected. So those are my
[00:38:35] Jaleigh: Well, we'd like to end with a little bit of a lightning round. So I always like to have action steps at the end of every conversation, the two or three things that are action items everyone should take either for themselves, or for their parents when they are through listening to the podcast today.
[00:38:55] Chris: First and foremost, have a meeting, have a conversation, hopefully with your Gen 2 siblings, right? Get everyone together. I love the every person is going ahead and figuring out a different area that they're expertise in. One could be on the healthcare side, other on the real estate side, other on the finances side. Somebody on the cyber and IT side, right? We need someone there. So figure out it amongst yourselves, what the racy chart is, so to speak, about who's accountable, right? Who's responsible? Who's consulted? Who's informed on the different life big buckets that we could do there among that.
[00:39:27] No better time to do it at the holidays. With mom, dad, and the folks up there, make sure that we can go ahead and do that. So 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.
[00:39:40] Cyber, trusting 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, I think we've given some good tips on how to shrink that attack surface. gotta focus on shrinking the attack surface so you're less likely to be a victim, less likely to be someone that is attacked, less likely for an attacker to actually be able to kind of hook their teeth in you, so to speak, there.
[00:40:06] And so we've given some good items there in terms of credit freeze and data broker removal and the such. I think that's going to be critically important. The third one is going to be really talking about how you're actually going to be resilient to the different attacks, cyber attacks, scam attacks, fraud attacks, that are coming inbound because it's not going to be possible that always someone is available.
[00:40:32] And I think we gotta have those conversations now, have them early, have them often, and really find out more and make sure everyone's on the same page. Much better to do it now than later on. The attacks are happening, the thefts are happening, right? The harm is happening.
[00:40:47] But you can be so much more resilient to them and really defeat them. So I think let's do those three things and we'll be in a really good place for 2025.
[00:40:57] Jaleigh: Appreciate that. great advice. Jessica, from the standpoint of people that like, we really don't, Mom and Dad never talk about a lot of things, so we just really don't know what's in their estate plan, what their Financial assets that, we don't know. What are the action items that people can take to start to get their parents comfortable with sharing that and also to increase their level of understanding to be able to help that?
[00:41:22] Jessica: Well, I think we go back to find out what they have and open the door to that conversation. So the techniques we talked about earlier, it really boils down to what's going to speak to mom or dad, and you want to think about their personality, how, what they fear, what they trust, what motivates them before having that conversation, and then find out what they have.
[00:41:42] I'm an attorney, so I want to get this I hammer this all the time. We need basic estate planning documents in order. So most people think of a will or a trust in that situation. And those are important, but a lot of times what's even more important than that are what I call the ancillary documents So that's your durable or general 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.
[00:42:15] Maybe even 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 triggered. So those are all really important foundational documents that everyone needs because 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.
[00:42:39] It's called a guardianship in some states. It's called a conservatorship in others. And so once you have those foundational documents in place, make sure that the beneficiaries on their accounts align with their overall estate plan.
[00:42:52] Things like their IRAs. 401Ks, 403Bs, insurance policies, bank accounts, anything that's transfer on debt. Just double check those, make sure it's what they think it is.And then 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 upon whom they can rely, and so what do I do in that situation?
[00:43:18] I would encourage them to find some sort of group, get involved with a faith community, a group of hobbyists, you know, bird watchers, just a group of people that have like minded interests with you and develop relationships so that there's someone you can trust.
[00:43:37] And 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 in a professional capacity. So there are resources out there. Don't feel like all is lost if you don't have family members to help you.
[00:44:00] Jaleigh: 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, just some great advice from Chris and Jessica today. Thank you all so much.
[00:44:15] Angela: 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?
[00:44:24] Chris: Come to blackcloak, B L A C K C L O A K dot I O, that's blackcloak dot I O, and you can download materials about Black Cloak, what we do, how we help high net worth, ultra high net worth individuals on their cyber security and privacy journey, so happy to do that.
[00:44:43] Angela: Fantastic. And Jessica, how about you?
[00:44:46] Jessica: Well, the best way to reach me is through your local Baird advisor. So reach out to them. They know where to find me. And then if you also just want to connect with me outside of that, I'm on LinkedIn as well. So it's Jessica Bell, attorney.
[00:44:59] Angela: Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us.
[00:45:01] Jessica: Thank you, Angela. Thank you, Jaleigh, this has been a lot of fun.
[00:45:04] Chris: Thank you all. This has been great.
[00:45:06] 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.
[00:45:14] 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.
[00:45:31] The opinions are those of the guest, and not necessarily those of Baird. Robert W. Baird Company, Inc., Member SIPC.
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.