Caregiving 2025: AI, Wills, and Scams

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Okay, we're ready to go for the new year. Happy New Year, man. [00:00:04] Speaker B: How are you, man? This is great. [00:00:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:00:07] Speaker B: You know, 2025 is already messing up checks and messing up dates. [00:00:12] Speaker A: You're still writing checks? [00:00:14] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, we got two elderly people, so you have to help people write checks. [00:00:19] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. [00:00:22] Speaker B: It happen. Foreign. [00:00:36] Speaker A: So. Wow. So it's 2025, and we're getting started with. I wouldn't say it's a new season, but it's a new year. And today I think we're just going to talk about a little bit of everything. But first up, I'd like to know, like, how's your mom? How's your mom doing? [00:00:52] Speaker B: Mom's doing good. I just talked to her a few minutes ago, actually, and she's doing great. She's. She just came back from the eye doctor, so that'll tell her what. What day this is. She won't. I don't even know if she's listening, but. But anyway, so, yeah, she's coming back. She's doing an appointment. She's having a good relationship with her catch like her, which is great. And if she listens to this, tell them she knows who she is. So I don't say thank you out loud. [00:01:17] Speaker A: Cool. [00:01:18] Speaker B: And, you know, the other thing going on with us is that, you know, Snowmageddon has happened. You know, we hadn't had snow in this part of the area and what, years, and now they're threatening snow everywhere. So all the milk. [00:01:29] Speaker A: Hear this. It will already. [00:01:31] Speaker B: It would have already arrived. So. Yeah. [00:01:34] Speaker A: Yep. So I think we said. I think I saw something that said that we haven't had snow in South Carolina in over a thousand days. [00:01:43] Speaker B: It is something long like that. So that's what three years? [00:01:46] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:01:47] Speaker B: Feels like. [00:01:48] Speaker A: So I'm kind of looking forward to it. So. But, you know, maybe a lot of you out there aren't looking forward to it. Maybe you're covered up in snow. I know a lot of our listeners are in Chicago. I expect y'all are cold off all the time, but there's probably some people. [00:01:59] Speaker B: In some of our listening ears who are going, snow. I know y'all get a little dusting, toughen up. So. [00:02:06] Speaker A: But we can get excited about it because we can. [00:02:09] Speaker B: Because, you know, you know, if you live in south, girl, that's. No, it's real. That's. [00:02:14] Speaker A: That's how you do. [00:02:15] Speaker B: That's how you do. [00:02:16] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, that's good. I'm glad your mom's doing good. How about Your. How about your father in law? [00:02:23] Speaker B: Father in law is coming along. He's in assisted living. For those of you who hadn't been listening to our podcast. So we are having a wonderful time dealing with those rules and regulations. I'm kidding. But yeah, he's settled in and hopefully he'll start making some progress. For those of you don't heard, he had an incident in August and is recovering from it, but he is doing well. One of my adventures was venturing into the veterans center in, in South Carolina, finding out about that. So that is an adventure. If you haven't done that before, prep, find out what building you need to go to and if it's regional or district or something like that because there are very different places. The nice thing is that when I walked in the door, there were lots of people in some buildings where they're, they're bending over backwards to try to help you. So expect that you'll get help. [00:03:17] Speaker A: Oh, that's good. That's good to hear too. I know there's probably a lot of listeners out there who do have relatives who are veterans and sure, they could hear. Love to hear more about that and get your insights on it. For sure. [00:03:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Just make sure you get to the right place. Really important. [00:03:34] Speaker A: Oh, goodness. Well, gosh. Well, my mom, my, my dad is doing great. He's. I just, we spent a good bit of time over Christmas with him and actually saw him just a day or two ago. He's, he's doing all right and he's getting all prepped up for the snow. He, he has a, his house is, you know, it's central heating, but he also has a wood stove that he, it's kind of his hobby wood stove. He loves to crank a fire up in that thing from time to time. So we made sure his wood box was all full up so he could do that and just in case the power goes off, made sure his generator was running and you know, that kind of thing. It's all good. My, my aunt who I do some caretaking for, she's, as a lot of you know already she's in assisted living. But she's doing fantastic. She's glad to be there for, especially in the winter in the snowy times of the year because she's. Well, actually the last big snow in South Carolina, her husband and herself at the time, they had to move out of their house because the power was off for about a week and they ended up living in a hotel for that week. And I think that was one of the formative things for her that said, when it was time, I want to get out of here. I want to go somewhere where somebody else can worry about that I don't have to worry about. Snow's going to turn the power off to my house and all that kind of stuff. So she's good. We. I went up and saw her for a gosh a day or two ago and helped her install a new lamp on a wall in her. In her place. And she's enjoying that and just kind of handled a few things. We're depositing checks and filling out forms and all that kind of stuff. Oh, speaking of forms, do you want to hear something kind of cool? Sure. You know, a lot of y'all out there have heard of Chat GPT, I'm sure. [00:05:22] Speaker B: Oh, ye. [00:05:23] Speaker A: Because, you know, it's. It's the new AI that everybody's kind of excited about, and it's doing kind of crazy things, and it. It's really. It really feels like magic when you're working with it. I don't even pretend to understand all the math behind how the thing actually works, but what I do is I use it for things that work really well for me and things that are language intensive. So what I ran into when I was talking about filling out forms with my aunt, I had to fill out a Social Security form for her. And it's one of these forms that I'll go ahead and I forget. It's Social Security SSA 10. And the gist of this thing is to let a spouse whose partner has passed away, let that spouse be able to get that partner's Social Security benefits if it was more than what the surviving spouse's is now. So, you know, so it's. The concept's not all that complicated, but the form is. What they really need to know is all the details about the person. They need to know the details about the deceased person. They need to have some proof that the person had been married all this time and a few other details in there. But the questions in the thing are so complicated and circular and repetitive that I had a hard time figuring out what they wanted. And, you know, I mean, we all. I'm sure we all consider ourselves fairly intelligent people, but, you know, I. This thing was blowing my mind. And so what I did was, is I went over to ChatGPT. Anybody can go there. I think you can just type in OpenAI.com and you'll get there. And ChatGPT is one of the options. And basically you get a little box that you can type in a query or you can type in a question or whatever you want to. And another thing it'll let you do is upload files and it can look at those files. So what I did was, is I grabbed a PDF of that Social Security SSA 10 form and I said, hey, if I upload this form, can you take a look at it and help me fill it out? I would really like it if you would come back with a wizard style set of instructions that help me clarify what this thing really wants me to put in place. [00:07:38] Speaker B: So let me stop you because I think it's really important for people to understand what you just said is called a prompt. [00:07:45] Speaker A: A prompt, Exactly. [00:07:47] Speaker B: And that prompt is used. You type it in to the question. So the more you give information you give in the prompt, the better the answer that comes out. So you don't just say make a chart, you say make a chart for me that I would use in a presentation for this thing on this day and this way. And it will try to find information that's in context with that you get a better answer. So the better prompt you give, the better answer you get. So for the layman who has never done this before, what, what he just said is exactly the prompt you put in, in there you describe, it's like you're describing the, the situation as much as you can to another person who's going to help you. And it actually takes that and makes a better answer out of it. So it's really important to note to people that you don't just say make a chart. Why didn't you do it? Right? No, you actually can tell it that. And the other thing you can do with that, that people don't know is it doesn't give you the right answer. You can say, no, I want you to change it this way. It's a conversation and it can remember context and come back and give you a better answer. [00:08:57] Speaker A: Oh yeah, that's the beauty too is that I ask it that at first and it a good job it went through and said, okay, for these are the questions and for this is, you know, 1 through 20 or something like that. And for each one, and it told you roughly what you should put in place. And there were questions where, you know, if you made, made this amount of money under this thing in the previous year, you need to do this thing, or if you made over that amount, you need to do this other thing. There's a lot of, a lot of, a little nuance to it. And even with the answers that it came back with. And told me how to do it. There were some of what I was unclear about and I said, well, okay, can you give me a little more detail on question 2A? And it said, oh, yeah, okay, here's what you need. Let me explain this further. So it's like having a conversation with a really, really smart person and you can. Who understands language really well. So the gist of it is, is it really helped me fill out that form where otherwise I would have to call the Social Security Administration, grab somebody on the phone who understands this thing and go through it question by question with that person, which I don't want to do. And I'm sure they don't want to do either. But yeah, it takes a long time. [00:10:09] Speaker B: To find somebody to do that. Right? [00:10:10] Speaker A: You have to. Yeah. [00:10:12] Speaker B: So, so did now what we should always say this, like every disclaimer that we're not lawyers or not doctors, but. And chat GPT is not always right. They make a mistake. So you need to trust and verify that kind of deal. But sure, yeah, it can really work for that. And you know what? As I was thinking about it, I talked about my journey into the veterans center. What happened with me was I went to get a form receipted to get something brought in and ended up in the wrong building. Right. [00:10:42] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. [00:10:43] Speaker B: Now, I got there eventually because I had to wait a while, sit in front of it. Some water walked into a receptionist who said, no, this is the wrong form. If I had done what you're talking about with the form I had, ChatGPT could have said to me, remember, this is regional. There's a different place instead. Yeah. So giving it as much information as you can, like telling your. The chat GBT how much. How much income your loved one is making or when you're. When that loved one died. There may be deadlines that go along with that. So you have to kick yourself out of the mode. And you know, this is you and I, Barry, do this all the time. In our early IT career, you had to simplify it to an essence. Right. I'm just making a chart now. You almost have to do the reversed. You have to almost turn it detail back up because things like this and you know, ChatGPT is one of those things. But there's also, you know, for Google and other places too. You can try them. Sure. So yeah, I think it was really cool. You can do that kind of thing. [00:11:48] Speaker A: Really, really cool. Really, really, really cool. And the. I highly recommend it if you're having trouble with something like especially understanding the language, if a set of instructions, it can help you clarify those big time. So, you know, like you. Like you said, crisp but verify, but. But give it a shot. It may help you over the hump on some things, you know, if you're. If you're. If you're stuck. So definitely worth doing. Cool. Well, all right. Well, this kind of reminds me of filling out forms and all that kind of stuff. I did want to say that yesterday. Was it yesterday? Yep. Or the day before. I can't remember. It's one or two days ago. We completed probate for my mom's estate. So it's taken, gosh, well over a year, almost a year and a half. And I don't think that's typical. We had a lot of trouble up front where my dad. The first appointment we had in the. In the county that she lived in. First appointment, we had to go. We could. We couldn't make the first appointment because my dad had a funeral to go to. He was. He's a. He's a minister, and he had to. To. To help out and officiate. And so that's the first one. We didn't get to go to it, so we had to reschedule it. So that push back several months. Second time we're getting ready to go to. To have our appointment. We go. We get ready the day before. Turns out my dad gets Covid, so couldn't make the second appointment. Pushed it back a few months because this. This department is very, very busy. And we made it to the third one. It was good. We got going. We were scheduled again about six months out to. To be finished. Turns out we got a note about, I don't know, a month before our second appointment says, oh, yeah, we. We can't do it this fast. We need to let the. Let the newspaper ads go for another three months because of some obscure rule. And then finally we. We got a. An appointment this week to finish it all up. Basically, we went in. It was signed two places on a piece of paper. They said, does this look like everything to you? And I said, yep. They said, okay, looks like everything at us. I think we're done. And now all we're doing is waiting on a official piece of paper that says we're done to say we're. We're over with it. But for the most part, it's a. It's a done deal. But. But that experience wasn't bad other than, you know, just the delays. But a lot of that was our own stuff or unavoidable but early on, it was a very. A little picky, and I think it was also a little mysterious because, you know, you're supposed to go do this thing, and you go in and bring a death certificate, and you start talking with the person about it. But the. But the process is opaque in this county, in that particular county. Now, in contrast, I did the pro. Started the probate for my uncle who passed away in a different county next door, the next county over. Night and day difference. I walked in, I said, I need to do this probate thing. Said, you got the will? I said, sure. Here you go. Let me make a copy of that. They grab it, they make a copy of it. They give me the copy back because they keep the original. I said, how about fill out this form right here? I went through, I filled out the form. They looked at, looked it over. They said, okay, here's one more form you need to take with you. Bring it back and have it notarized, and when you do that, we'll get started. So I did that over the next week, brought it in. They said, yep, this looks pretty good. You already notarized it. It's good. Looks like you owe $92 because that was the fee for the size of the estate and processing and all that kind of stuff. He said, okay, we're going to run a newspaper ad for you. You need to be back on this date in the future. And it's like six months from now. If you bring. When that's done, if we don't hear anything, then you'll be done with it. Bam. I mean, it was just that simple. [00:15:32] Speaker B: So that. That meshes with what I've heard, too. When I did. So my sister didn't have any property, not really just a car. So her probate was unnecessary, almost. So I had the deed. It was already owned. And when I went down there and did all the. And actually talked to a lady, she said, you don't have enough assets to even go through this process. [00:15:55] Speaker A: Great. [00:15:56] Speaker B: So it was even simpler than that. But what she did tell me was if you're standard, got a car and a house, something reasonable, probably under a million dollars, that the scenario you went through is probably the more common one, which is anywhere from six months to a year, and you're done. If you're more complicated than that, if you have land or parcels of land all over the place, or houses all over the place, or lots of money, over a million dollars, then you're going to get into a complicated situation, which you can do. The 92 thing and I think it'll be more than that. But you're probably going to end up with a probate lawyer or something like that because you're complicated, but most people aren't. So it's. Yeah. And again, disclaimer, we're not a lawyer. You have to go check on your own situation. But hey, probate isn't that scary. Now I'll say that you should avoid probate as much as possible because one of the things that made it easier for you is you had a will, right? Yeah. [00:16:54] Speaker A: Right. [00:16:54] Speaker B: And having a will that, that says this is what the person wants and intends their, their estate to do solves lots of problems. When you have people contesting a will or when you have people no will at all and many heirs, complicated errors. Now you're complicated. Now you have. [00:17:13] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a very good point. [00:17:15] Speaker B: Just to keep in mind, you know, if you're complicated, you should be getting a lawyer and doing an estate will and testament. [00:17:21] Speaker A: Yeah. When in doubt, if you could afford it, go get a lawyer. Yeah. [00:17:25] Speaker B: You know, and so, you know, I've heard fifty to a hundred dollars to do simple probate and that's. [00:17:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:17:30] Speaker B: Sounds like you were in line with that. [00:17:32] Speaker A: Yeah, it was, it was, it was along those lines and something that helped out, especially saying my aunt situation was that both of them were on the bank accounts. There weren't any bank accounts where it was just one or the other since they were both on them, that those assets were not considered in the estate for, for probate purposes. [00:17:58] Speaker B: So it's only singly assigned assets. So. Yeah. [00:18:01] Speaker A: Yep. So that was, that's a big deal. And, but, but that's, you know, that I got lucky in that they had done the proper prep for me not to have to worry too much about it. [00:18:10] Speaker B: So yeah, we say that because you might need to have difficult conversations. And I say this too because in our, both our situations, we've both been in places where, you know, our loved one that we're taking care of, it was fine and then all of a sudden they weren't. And so this kind of thing doesn't normally it may not come up on you as slowly, it may come suddenly. And so you need to have the conversation we're talking about when they're healthy, responsive, when they know what they want. Those are the times to have wills done to talk about what you intend. Because if you don't, the conversations that you'll have after something happens can be much more difficult. Difficult. My father in law is a situation where even Though he's fairly coherent, he can't write anymore because of the way his hands are. And so writing a check, signing a form is really difficult. And hopefully he'll grow to get beyond that limitation. But it just reminds you that it doesn't take much to take someone you love who is capable and, and able to do lots of things to a point where now they need help and assistance. So you got to get over your fear of having this conversation. You just got to have it, you. [00:19:29] Speaker A: Know, when they're health for sure and encourage them to. I was just talking to my dad today. Like I said, my dad's a minister and he ends up having to talk with a lot of folks about end of life sort of things. And we were talking about probate and he said he had just talked to this person who in his church who their mom was getting on in years and her health's not great and she doesn't have a will and is refusing to go make one. And I'm thinking, why? Why would you do that? And I don't have any context as to why this person would want to be that way. But it makes me think it's like if, if you have to have the conversation with someone, you might could even bring it around to say, listen, you're helping me by doing this. This is not a thing that's pushing you out the door or any of those kinds of things. If you care about me, do this because it's going to make my life a whole lot easier from now on. And it's going to take you 10 minutes to do this. I can even help you, or we can bring a lawyer if you want to do it and help you that way. But this is not a big deal. Let's do this and make it easier for your heirs because that's a tough situation. I'm sure people have their reasons for that, but I don't fathom right now. [00:20:48] Speaker B: It's hard to, to establish new trust when you're dealing with this disability and diminished capacity. Right? [00:20:56] Speaker A: So that's true. Good point. [00:20:58] Speaker B: You want to have the trust and the setup done beforehand. And I'm really lucky. My parents, despite some kicking and screaming from one side or another, did most of that prep work beforehand. And that makes it a lot easier now that I see it from the other side of it. [00:21:16] Speaker A: Right. [00:21:17] Speaker B: When you're in your 20s, this stuff doesn't hit you. You think your parents are going to be around on the same capacity the same way for the rest of your life. I got news for you that it will change, most likely. And so I'm not saying you have to be that mature and go with them at 25 and say, do you have a will probably look at you like you're crazy. But if you're in your 40s and your parents are getting in their 70s and 80s, you have to have this conversation. This conversation needs to be had. And it's a heck of a lot easier to have it when they're capable and have all the capacity than it is when you're trying to get through whatever incident medical issue they're having now. So that could be anything from memory to stroke to physical disability to frankly, even distrust and things down the road. Hey, if you've set this up, then there's no issue to fight over. Right? So it can make your life easier for your siblings and everything else. So I just, you know, speaking from one who has been through that. That tunnel, have that conversation on the. [00:22:24] Speaker A: Other side and don't worry about the uncomfort level. You know, I know it's good. It's going to be an uncomfortable conversation the first time. But if, you know, I think you may be misjudging your parents if you think it's going to be that uncomfortable because they're surely thinking about these things and if they're not, it's time for them to start thinking about them. But you know, if it would be a lot less, it's going to be uncomfortable, that's okay. But it's going to be a lot less uncomfortable than it would be if they didn't have one when they passed. So, you know, just, just help yourself out in that way. Go ahead and do it. [00:22:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I just think, and you know, it's been started the year, New Year's resolutions, you know, there's all kind of things you can do now. Have that conversation. So you at least know the main frame of mind that your parents are. You know, what do they want done and what do they don't want done? What is already done. You know, those kinds of things are really helpful to you if you're in a situation, unfortunately, when they're not there. So. And then of course, you need to do this for yourself too. If you're listening to us and you have children, you need to approach your kids and say, okay, it's time to have this conversation. Because I think in the end it takes away. It's already stressful enough when you have someone who's in this kind of situation. Don't add the stress of trying to figure out Financial issues and everything else. Now, I know that nobody's going to listen to us, right. And they're going to run into problems, but anything you can do that will make your life easier there, you will not regret it. You will thank yourself for that conversation, big time. It'll be a source of comfort. [00:24:00] Speaker A: So, yeah, so while we're talking about wills, the other day, I was thinking about some things around wills and leaving property to people and those things. And I wrote down. I wrote down a few notes about this, and I wanted to talk about it a little bit while we're on this subject. This is just my opinions. I'm throwing them out there, but they're things that I think are valid. Okay. You know, wills are about saying where your property goes or saying where your money goes and who gets this stuff. I have some opinions. One is don't leave something to someone that takes maintenance. All right. So speaking. I'm not gonna. [00:24:41] Speaker B: Go ahead. [00:24:41] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna say why this. But it was just. Or who or any of that kind of thing. But they're familiar with a, With a situation where some. An older vehicle has been left to someone and the or has been gifted to someone. Put it that way. There's a lot of. A lot of sentimental feelings around this vehicle. The vehicle is a classic automobile. It's. It's beautiful. It's a good thing. It. But it's old. It is way older than the person that it was bequeathed to. It requires maintenance. It requires. Vehicles that old actually take a lot of work just to keep running and they need to be run. But this thing has no power steering. It has no power brakes. It is a. It's not an automatic transmission. It's not even computer controlled. It's going to take maintenance. Think just in my ideas on this is just because you like working on it does not mean that your air will like working on this thing. [00:25:47] Speaker B: So, yeah, match. Match the asset to the. [00:25:50] Speaker A: To the. There you go. There you go. [00:25:52] Speaker B: Because, you know, hey, what you could be doing is donating that to a place or an organization which wants those kinds of things that looks for those kind of things. Even you can sell those kinds of things to make money for the, for the whatever social gold or aspiration they're trying to go after. There are plenty of places that do that. [00:26:12] Speaker A: And so chances are the heir would probably rather have the money than the thing. Absolutely. They're going to remember you different in different ways. Which brings me to the next thing I wrote was same thing for sentimental but useless things. Don't, don't do that. [00:26:28] Speaker B: So, hey, I've got something for this. So, you know, there's a. And I know, I don't think it's out of favor now. You know, the lady would come on and say, okay, it's time. Whether this has. Gives you joy or not, whether it does, and then you thank it for the joy and you put it on. So I'll tell you when you can. When you have something and a picture will do, choose the picture. [00:26:50] Speaker A: Yes. [00:26:51] Speaker B: So yeah, you gotta, you gotta a thing in your closet that you can't wear and you just look at and just sits and stares at you for the most part. Take a nice, good, good quality picture of that and put it in your book and you can look at it all you want and it doesn't have to be in your closet or whatnot. And I know I'm saying this and my wife will probably hear this going, I got things I gonna hit him with right soon. But you know, as I get older and you know, Barry knows a situation I've been through where you reassess all the things that you have in your life and you go, do I really need this? [00:27:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:27:26] Speaker B: So for those who don't know, I went through a situation in my house where I had to empty out my house and put it back in. And believe me, as I was putting things back in, I was going, do I really need this? And. And so it turned me from a hoarder into a minimalist pretty quickly. Now I don't know if I'm all the way there, but I'm better. So, yeah, you need to think about that kind of thing and think about it for your loved one too, because sometimes they have a hard time dealing with that, especially if they're in any kind of diminished capacity where things are more meaningful to them than they are to you because they spare memories and maybe make them realize they're in the place they need to be. So, you know, you have to consider that too. But, but, but you need to have those kind of conversations in a way because sometimes you can be dragging on a lot of stuff that really doesn't have any value. [00:28:17] Speaker A: Yeah. If you're thinking about leaving stuff to somebody like it, think about the feelings of the person that you're leaving them to. Or are you leaving them something that they're going to be able to use, or is it something that you're. You're just hanging on to because you're some sentimental about it and you expect them to be sentimental about it, too. And that's just. Honestly, that's just unfair. Oh, yeah, it just is. And. And so that brings me to my last thing about this, is that I wrote, don't bequeath things that are valuable, but then say these need to stay in the family, because that doesn't. Again, that does not help anybody at all. So, you know, that was just some of my thoughts on it. There were things that kind of. That day was. It was bugging me. And I won't get into the details about why, but I thought, you know, I need to write this down before we. Before we talk again. [00:29:07] Speaker B: Well, you know, and part of this, for those of you who are listening, is that this podcast helps us out as much as it will help you out, I think, because we have these kind of conversations to. To give ourselves this. This moment to just to express these thoughts that. That roll around in both of our heads that we. When we had conversations with, before we started this podcast, we would go, oh, you think that too, don't you? And so we think that having this conversation with you guys again, community, has. Has lots of answers in it if you just only let it tell you. [00:29:38] Speaker A: It'S a good thing. So thank all of y'all for being our. Our silent therapist. But you know what? You don't have to be silent. I would love it. I would love to hear from you guys about your opinions about things that are willed to people. You know, do you agree with me or do you think I'm crazy? I would love to hear it either way. So if you get a chance, send us a email@care techandtipsmail.com or you could hit us on any of the socials, including YouTube at Care Tech and tips. So love to hear the feedback and love to hear any of your own opinions about that. And if you send me something, we'll talk about it next time, so just let me know. [00:30:21] Speaker B: And if you like what we're doing, you should go ahead and subscribe. You should write a review, you should give us a rating and tell us what we're doing right and wrong. And we will. That. We will very much appreciate that. So, again, the community so that we can have this kind of conversation in a way that makes sense not just to you, but to the larger group of people out there. So this is the month of beloved community. So if you don't know what that means, MLK was born this day in this month. He talked about beloved community and growing it. And I'm a big believer in that. So we're starting that here. [00:30:54] Speaker A: So that's great. That's a great sentiment. And yes, we love our community and we want to grow our community and love to hear more and more from you guys. All right, so we've talked a little bit about the holidays. We talked about crazy stuff like Chad GPT and forms and probate and wills. And we're all over the place today and we know it. We're just trying to kind of do a little bit of brain dumping and clearing the decks. But you know what? One of the things that we ran into over the holidays a lot or I saw a lot of was attempted scamming. Did you see a lot of that, Bobby? [00:31:34] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. So I had a lot of friends who have told me that they probably saw more scam emails than they ever have before and they're being assisted by AI, so they get clever. So I'll tell you what, let's do two things, Baron. So let's talk about a couple of the things. So we talked about doing a full blown scamming episode. And so rather than maybe do that all at once, I think you and I kind of talked. Let's, let's talk about one or two of them each episode so we can move on on that. [00:32:01] Speaker A: So the scam segment, here we are. [00:32:05] Speaker B: Maybe we can get a song to go with it. I don't know. [00:32:07] Speaker A: Oh, that'd be nice. I'll see if I can get us a little intro for the scam. [00:32:12] Speaker B: So the first two I want to talk about are tech scams and phishing scams. So tech scams. So this is when scammers pose as legitimate tech support agents and claim to fix your computer or press access remote access to your account, or maybe ask as payment for fake services that they may or may not have tried to provide. And there, there are lots of them out there most of the time you need to understand and you need to explain this to your loved one as much as you can, that most of the tech people who are legit do not call you unless you call them. They are not going to come out of the blue and say Microsoft just decided to call you out of the millions of users of Windows and we're going to fix your Windows machine over the phone just because we feel that like we need to take care of you. Most of those kinds of services are solicited services. You call them, say I need help. They put you in touch with somebody who's there who then provides help. Right. Yep. And knows probably a little bit about you because you called them and you gave them your information about what you're doing. So you don't need to give them a Social Security number, you don't need to give them a credit card number that's already taken care of by you calling. Usually you've already got that kind of stuff. And so I try to explain that to my loved ones that when Microsoft calls you up and says that they're going to fix your computer, most likely that's not them. [00:33:36] Speaker A: It is not micro, I'd say 99.9% is not them. For sure. [00:33:42] Speaker B: They have enough trouble just handling the people who call them. So that's not going to happen. [00:33:47] Speaker A: So can I add a wrinkle to this? Sure, absolutely. Like you said, a lot of times they'll just call you up out of the blue and say they've seen a problem with your computer and they want to help you fix it. Well, I've noticed too that there's a little wrinkle, a little different version of that where you get on a website and all of a sudden you'll see a, an alert pop up on your screen that says you have a virus, there's a problem with your computer, you need to call this 800 number immediately. And when you call that 800 number then you get that guy who's going to really work go, go to try to help you out. And sometimes not only do they just do it to help you out of their of their own free will and love, they do it because they, they'll still say oh yeah, we can help you out but there's going to be a fee for this and we're going to need your credit card number and it'll be the small fee of 1995 but you gave them the credit card number so they're gone with that and they're going to have a good time with it once you've given it to them. [00:34:42] Speaker B: So this brings the remedy for this kind of thing which is avoid unsolicited calls and pop ups because they use verified support. If you need help with something, find the Microsoft soft website. Find the number on that page. Make sure it says Microsoft.com and not Microsoft with two eyes and two S's or something like that and call them and make sure you know that particular number. Find the number you know someone you trust to find a number, that 800 number for the Microsoft support area which there those exist. And then you make sure you, you call that number. Don't do the unsolicited ones. Don't let the pop ups out of your, your computer lead you on that. So that's the real big number one to avoid that item. [00:35:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, got another one. [00:35:29] Speaker B: Got another. [00:35:30] Speaker A: Yeah, go for it. [00:35:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Phishing an email. Phishing is spelled P H I S H not the fish you like. Your like rod and wheel. This. That's what phishing is. What phishing means is they send you an email and they try to entice you to give them information that they can use to scam you. So fraudulent messages pretending to be trusted institutions like banks asking for personal information or financial information and directing victims to fake websites. Yeah. Okay. So what I'll try to say to you is that's increasing in nature and it's getting more complicated to know before you would get a message like that and someone would call, will send you an email and you could tell this isn't written by a person. This is written by something that doesn't understand or people in, in English as a second language. Misspellings and grammar issues all the way. Now we live in a world where AI and grammar checkers are about and they're getting better. So you can't just look for that. One of the surefire ways to look for that is to verify the sender information. Avoid clicking down on unknown links. Make sure that when you roll over that email address that it comes up and it's not a misspelling with Microsoft, not a misspelling of Apple. It actually goes to apple.com or Microsoft.com and those get handled that way. So that's the most important thing to do is to make sure that who you're getting the message from is a valid sender. And so that, and that could take a little salvage. So you do need to have a conversation with your loved one about how to do that or if they're all unsure, wait. Because none of these things should be instant gratification. They're all going to put some sort of, you have to do this now, you have to act now in a few days. And they're trying to put pressure on that person to act immediately because they don't want them talking to their loved ones about what that is so they can discover this is a scam. So, so if you ever get pressured to do something it's probably, it's probably a scam because they're probably is and. [00:37:40] Speaker A: Help out your, your loved ones by telling them all about this. And, and like I've been lucky that I've got my dad and my aunt both sort of trained. If they get Something odd out of the blue, a message. They're at the point where they wait and say, they give me a call and say, hey, I got this message that says this and they'll read it to me or I'll get them to send me a screenshot of it and I can tell them really quickly whether or not that's a legitimate thing or it's something that they can just throw away and be done with and report the junk, as they say in messages, when you try to get rid of it. You know, you brought a good point too. And when I want to add one more caveat to these things, you know when you say if you type in Microsoft.com and go get the telephone number off of their site. I ran into a relative the other day who likes to use the Google box on their, on their browser where they actually do searches as a place to type in URLs. And they typed in Google support was another thing that they tried to get to. So they did Google support. But weirdly enough, even in Google's own search engine, some scammer had bought an ad that showed up at the very top of that list. And it wasn't Google support that they got to. They got to some scammer who actually tried to take over the person's computer and open up their banking app and do several things like that. So, you know, there's, there's some knowledge transfer you got to do there about how to verify that even on Google searches, the place you're going to to make sure that it's the legit place. [00:39:17] Speaker B: And Google is pretty good about saying sponsored somewhere in that block where you can do that. And there are also other ways to do it, you know, like typing in Microsoft.com unless you have something that's hijacked your search title, which is possible, normally gets you there too. So again, this is the most important reason why you should have virus protection on your machine. Not so much that the virus protection that viruses are issued, but they are, especially in Windows machines, what really gets you are the redirects. So most of those virus protection products do a really good job of making sure the links you go to aren't. [00:39:59] Speaker A: Scams or the legitimate sites. [00:40:01] Speaker B: So if you're having somebody where that kind of issue is really a problem and they can't roll over their, their address to see if it's legitimate, then maybe a virus protection product that does protection on your links is worth the money. [00:40:14] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think those are two, two big scams right now that we all need to be be be on the lookout for and I know we got several coming up in the next next few episodes we're going to talk about. But if you guys out there have seen any scams and want to report them to us, we please, I'd love to hear more about them or if you've got questions about, about this kind of stuff, like what what can we do to help you understand what's a scam and what isn't a scam, feel free to let us know. Okay? [00:40:46] Speaker B: Yep. Absolutely. [00:40:47] Speaker A: Yeah. So let's see here. Okay. I've got one other little scam I want to talk about too while we're here. I've got a you. Many of you may have already seen this, but it around the holiday season there was a lot of worry from people about whether the packages they ordered are going to arrive. And the scammers know this. So what I've seen lately is the scam where someone sends a text that says, hey, the package you ordered has been delayed. If you need to reschedule the delivery, we need to verify your details. Click here on this link to go to the US Postal Service website and verify your details. I can guarantee you're not going to the US Postal Service website. If you click on that link, usually in a text message especially, you can look at it and see that it doesn't say usps.gov It'll be some random odd looking URL or something very close to USPS.gov but it won't be the actual URL for the thing. So whatever you do, don't, don't click on those things. That was one of the ones that my dad reported to me in fact, and I said good for you. Thank you for asking me that question. I think that happens in email a lot too. You'll see those sorts, those sorts of things. I've seen it be for US Postal Service, I've seen it be for ups. I've even seen it be for Amazon deliveries. But it's always that pattern. This has been delayed. We need more details from you to verify when it's going to get there on time. So look out for those kind of things too. [00:42:21] Speaker B: Most of the time we're talking about the U.S. postal Service. They are not going to reach out to you to tell you about delays unless you have gone and asked for those kinds of notifications for sure. So there are ways for you to do that. But unless you're, if you're not expecting that kind of thing, then for the most part they Are not. They are not legitimate. You should treat them as not legitimate. [00:42:43] Speaker A: So. Yep, that's a very good point. So treat them as not legitimate and just, you know, keep your guard up. [00:42:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:42:49] Speaker A: Yeah. So I think we're getting to the end of our time today, and I think this might be a good place to stop. We appreciate all you guys listening to us, and I've noticed in the. In our analytics lately that we're getting a few new. New cities here and there, I think. Yeah. Welcome. If you're a new listener, I'm trying to think of one of the. One of the places that was new. I think it was like, Carl, Colorado, I think, was what was a city that popped up lately? We're still. Still seeing a lot of. A lot of stuff from Chicago and New York. We see a few things again in Colorado, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, obviously, a few in Florida. We've got a couple. We've got a couple of outliers. We have one listener in Russia, one in Denmark. And it's just really cool to see the community growing and see it being at least country, mostly countrywide, but starting to get a little worldwide, too. So let's keep it growing. Tell your friends and tell us if there's other things you'd like to hear about. Anything that we can help you with. [00:43:56] Speaker B: Yeah, we're here to listen about that kind of thing. So Barry and I have a lot of experience about some of this stuff, and we're kind of living it right now through some of the loved ones we have. But I'll tell you, as the community starts to tell us more and more, we will talk more about more and more things. So happily, we are definitely listening to you. [00:44:15] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, too. And when you tell us things or if you send us things you want us to talk about, let us know whether or not we can use your names or not. We'd appreciate that. We don't want to out anybody for any particular thing so that if the relatives are listening, that they hear something that they don't want to. That you don't want them to know. But if you mind us using. If you'd like to use your names, we'll feel free to do that, but if we don't, we'll respect that as well. All right. All right. Well, I hope everybody had a good holiday, and we're glad to be back. And I hope you're glad we're back. And as always, hey, big time. Big time. So I guess we'll see you in the next episode. Take care everybody. [00:44:54] Speaker B: Absolutely. Thanks, everybody. And then grow the community. You. [00:44:58] Speaker A: There you go. Bye.