Inside Marcy's Mind
Having hosted the Aging aint for Sissie's podcast for two years, I wanted to expand what I could discuss. This podcast will touch on the fun of aging and whatever has crossed my mind! Please join me as I walk through life! #retirement #travel #fun #aginggracefully Link in my bio! Listen now!
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#aginggracefully
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Inside Marcy's Mind
Dead Marcy Notebook episode repeat from my old podcast!
Ever wondered why "Aging ain't for Sissies"? Join me, Marcy Backhus, as I embark on an exciting journey from a sprawling California home to a cozy Chicago high-rise. As I navigate retirement, sobriety, and city life, I'm on a quest to find a new, happy place, all while embracing my love for crafting and creating Disney-themed treasures. You'll meet my family, including my supportive husband Craig, our grown kids, and our adorable feline companions, Pickles and Patrick. This episode is packed with heartwarming stories and playful critiques of terms like "senior citizen," as we redefine aging with grace, humor, and a touch of sass.
Unlock the secrets to organizing life admin like a pro in our empowering segment focused on consolidating essential personal and home information. I'll guide you through creating a comprehensive notebook filled with mortgage, insurance, and utility details, along with indispensable documents like wills, healthcare directives, and pet care plans. With tips on managing retirement information and recording critical contacts, this episode ensures peace of mind and practical utility for you and your loved ones. Get ready for engaging conversations with experts on aging, and discover resources like joincake.com to streamline your journey. Let's embrace aging together, with style and laughter as our partners!
Welcome to the Aging Ate for Sissies podcast. My name is Marci Backus and I am your host. Again, my name is Marci Backus and I am your host. Welcome to episode one of the Aging Ate for Sissies podcast. I'm so excited about this podcast. It's been in the works for a very long time. Never seemed like there was enough time to do it. It's not so much the recording of the podcast as it is the editing. Editing is hard and I had to learn how to do that and I've been working on it. So I hope that this podcast is edited to your standards and, if not, please give me the next few weeks as I work hard on getting my editing skills honed.
Speaker 1:I am 61 years old. My birthday is in January, so I'm going to flip that 62 pretty soon. I am retired and I am married to my husband, craig Backus. We have been married for 31 years. In December it'll be 32. I'm also a sober person. I've been sober for 34 years and it shapes a lot of who I am. Yes, I still attend meetings and yes, I am Marcy and I am an alcoholic.
Speaker 1:My husband and I just uprooted everything and moved from California. We left behind a lot a church, friends, a 4,000 square foot home and we have moved to the city of Chicago, straight downtown, in a high rise, in an 850 square foot condo. So do I know how to downsize? Do I know how to organize? Absolutely, and you can imagine that there's going to be a lot of episodes dealing with that. I did a great job. If I say so myself, I have two children, kyle and Alec. Both of them are adults. Kyle lives in California and Alec lives in Colorado. I would say, probably after the move, I miss my friends and I miss my children. I do miss my church. I miss a lot of things. As I mentioned, I've been thinking about doing this podcast for a very long time and never seemed to have enough time. But now I'm retired and I do, so I'm sure I have a lot to do and a lot to talk about as I navigate the world of moving, leaving everything behind, including my friends, my job, and starting fresh.
Speaker 1:I'm proud kitty mom to two kitties, pickles and Patrick, both of who were adopted one year ago Actually, this month they were adopted one year ago. They bring a lot of love and joy into our home. We did lose both of our big dogs and our kitty last year within months of each other and it left a really big hole in our hearts and these two little kitties have filled that hole right up. They're perfect for a high rise and they love their high rise living again. I'm going to have information um in one of our upcoming episodes about aging pets and also how to prepare everything so your animals can be taken care of when you're gone. It's something that a lot of people don't think about and we actually had to deal with it when my mom passed away and her little kitty we had to rehome and it wasn't easy.
Speaker 1:I do have a few hobbies. One of them is crafting. I do love to create embroidery items with my machine embroidery. I have this great machine and it's licensed to Disney and my son got me into thrifting, so I'll thrift really cool pieces of clothes and then they kind of tell me what character they need on them.
Speaker 1:Living in Orange County before, I went to Disneyland all the time and it truly is my real happy place I do miss it a lot. I think it's good to have a happy place. I do miss it a lot. I think it's good to have a happy place. I think everyone needs a place that they can go and just not think about the outside world. It's especially important to have that little place and your little sanctuary. Life is very hectic and very crazy and I'll tell you, disneyland. I walk through those gates and I don't think about the outside world at all. I'm going to have to find something here that does the same thing for me.
Speaker 1:What can you look forward to in upcoming episodes? I have several experts on all kinds of aging topics, especially Medicare and Social Security. Anytime you have to fill out information for the government oh lordy, it is not easy. It never seems like you do it right. They get it sent back. But I do have some experts that have helped me navigate a lot of those um government agencies. I did have to do it for craig, or help craig, but actually I did it for craig, so I do have some experts to help us with that.
Speaker 1:I'm going to be talking about technology a lot. I love technology. I find technology a great way. It makes my life easier and I'm hoping to share in the next couple episodes how to make your life easier with technology. If you're noticing, everything has technology components. There seems to be an app for everything and I think it's important to understand that that's the way the world is going and we definitely need to fit in. How about health, diet, exercise, cbd what is it? Why do you need it? Keeping up with the things in the news about senior citizens is another thing we're going to do. I'm going to have a senior moment at the end of each episode and in that moment we are going to talk about something that's in the news for senior citizens.
Speaker 1:Speaking of senior citizens whoever came up with that name? I don't know, I don't like it. I looked up some other names. There's other things to refer to a senior citizen. Let's talk about that ancient elder, geriatric, goldenager, oy, oy, oy, oldster, old-timer, the old-timer it's me think of cartoons. A pensioner that always makes me think of England. Oldster Rusty Over the Hill, graybeard, old Foggy this is one of my favorites Cop and Dodger, old Codger. And then I saw this one Superior Citizen instead of Senior Citizen, and you know I really like that. I think it's a much better name, considering that we've been on the planet longer than our younger counterparts and we know a lot more Well.
Speaker 1:This weekend I went and saw Diana Ross in concert out at Ravinia and outside of Chicago. Let me tell you something. She's 78 years old. She not only looks amazing you can fix that, and looking amazing isn't that hard with all that there is today but she sounded amazing Her speaking voice, her singing voice. Watching her walk across the stage, she certainly didn't look like a 70 or eight-year-old woman. It does show you what clean living and taking care of yourself does. I thought about Liza Minnelli, and I had seen her recently and she does not look the same and does not act the same, and her voice is not the same when she sings it is, but not when she speaks and, believe it or not, she's two years younger than Diana Ross. So it really made me think about.
Speaker 1:I know there's genetics involved and I know there's all kinds of things involved, but I think really taking good care of yourself and staying active is so important, and that's what I'm hoping this podcast will do is encourage you to stay active, to be young, to look at your age as just a number and not that it defines you. It doesn't define you. I'm the youngest in my family and I think I'm never going to feel old. I always feel young. Well, when I get out of bed in the morning, I feel old, but that's another story. But I always think of myself as young and then I look in the mirror and sometimes it just scares me. There's an old saying that is if I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself. Isn't that the truth? I think I changed so much between 50 and 60 and didn't realize that it was going to be such a change, and a lot changed, and I'm working on correcting some things that went one way and I definitely want them to go another way. So that's a little bit about me.
Speaker 1:Now that you know who I am, I am going to dive right into our subject. Today we're going to be talking about what I call the dead Marcy notebook. What is the dead Marcy notebook? Well, anyone that knows me knows I have one. My children know I have one. My husband knows I have one. Even at my job I left them basically a dead Marcy notebook. When I retired, I left them everything that I knew in my head and made sure it was written out for them. When I was gone, I actually heard that my supervisor, tracy, had asked one of my co-workers to create a dead Tracy notebook and that co-worker had just started before I left and didn't realize that it was an endearing way of saying I need to get all this stuff in one place so that anybody can access this information. And that's basically true about yourself. I don't know if it's you or your husband or your wife whoever in the house holds the key to all the information. They need to make sure that that information is accessible so that you can get it.
Speaker 1:This came about for me basically 12 years ago. I got a really serious infection in one of my hands and I had to undergo several surgeries. Our kids were young then. Craig was working all the time. I really was the only one that had been handling the home, the finances, all of those types of things, if anything were to happen to me. I thought Craig is in big trouble because he doesn't know anything about the house. He's an extraordinarily smart man but doesn't always necessarily pay attention to the finer details in life, and I thought, gosh, I have all this information in my head, I've got passwords on the computer, I have this and that, and I don't think he knows any of it. Does he even know where the sprinklers are, if there's a problem or how to adjust them for the seasons. I thought about all the things I do in the house the changing of the filters, the people that come and work on our house, the housekeepers, the gardeners. Does he know how to get in touch with them? And the answer to all of that really was no, he didn't.
Speaker 1:I had to fly to Denver and during my hand surgeries and all of that, and I was there for two weeks and that's when I came up with the dead Marcy notebook. There's so many other things the bills, when things get paid, how do they get paid? Are they on automatic payment? Do you have to send the payment in? These are really important things. You start doubling up on payments. Nobody wants to pay more than they have to.
Speaker 1:So I created the dead marcy notebook, but for today we're going to call it the just-in-case notebook. Just in case and it could be just in case anything, and this is something living in California and the wildfires we had to be ready to go all the time Food for the cats, extra medications, things like that just in case of wildfire. This notebook is just as important as all of that. You want to keep it with you. You want to keep it with you. You want to keep it somewhere and you want to share with people where it's at. I did create one. I created a skeleton for you. So if you're listening to this podcast today, you're going to be able to email me at the end of it and I will send you a blank copy for you to fill in and start your own just in case notebook or, if you want to be like me, the dead notebook. I personally like the dead notebook, but that's completely up to you.
Speaker 1:So what do you think you might need in a dead person's notebook or a just-in-case notebook? You're going to need a lot of things. First of all, you're going to need personal information, personal information, address, contact information, driver's license numbers, social security numbers, medical contact numbers, and you're definitely going to need a will or your trust in this notebook. Believe me, this does not take a place of that. It just fills in all of those gaps. So the first thing you want is definitely that personal information.
Speaker 1:The next thing you're going to look at is your financial informationing putting in your bank accounts, your bank account numbers, your online if you have a banker that you work with, your banker and your banker's phone number. Make sure you have all of that information Credit cards, your numbers, the codes, the expiration dates. In that section you could also put if there is a balance on there, what the balance is. Remember that this is a living document. This is something that you're going to look at every six months and update. You can't just make it once and let it just sit there because things change. Under your financial information, you're definitely going to want your investment Again if you have an investment broker their name, where your investments are, what investments there are savings bonds, other savings and then you're definitely going to want to record your debt If you have a mortgage, auto debt, those types of things. You want that down there again as a living part of your document so that you can change it as things get paid off.
Speaker 1:The next important piece of information in your notebook is insurance information. There's all different types of insurances and here we're going to focus on this section life insurance, health insurance, dental insurance, what the websites are, what the passwords are, policy numbers. All of that information definitely needs to be in there. If you have other insurances. If you have, oh, I can't even think of them, there's so many insurances out there but if there are other insurances you're going to want to put them in that area too. We have another area for your home or auto. So think about all your different insurances and that's where that's going to go.
Speaker 1:The next section is home and auto going to go. The next section is home and auto. If you have a mortgage or a title, you want to put this information in there. You want your home insurance in there. How is it paid? Is it paid monthly? Is it paid biannually? Is it paid annually? Think of all of those things again with your auto insurance. Have that in there for each vehicle's information License plates, vehicle IDs.
Speaker 1:If you have a title, the title for that automobile. I don't know about you, but this information comes up a lot when I'm doing different things and to have it all in one place makes it so much easier. You're not calling your spouse. What is your driver's license number? What's your vehicle ID? You can put other things in there. If you have toll tags, how are the toll tags paid for? What is the website for the toll tags? How are they paid? Do they automatically update?
Speaker 1:If you think about the information that you know as the home information keeper, or information you don't know because you're not the keeper. There is a lot of information. Next thing you're going to think about are your home utility bills gas, electric, garbage, cable, internet, cell phone, anything else that's in your utilities. How are those paid? What is the website, the username and password. That information is extremely important. The next section I have is retirement information and you're going to write down your policy number for any of your 401Ks, your 403B, your pension. All of that needs to go in there. Iras, if you have those, that information, policy number, contact information, who is the person that you can talk to and any other. There's a space for others. You just put in other information who is the person that you can talk to and any other. There's a space for others. You just put in other information. Now, this is a really important section.
Speaker 1:The next section is more passwords. Anything that is important that has a password. You need to put that information in here. I know we are taught oh, someone could get a hold of this notebook and they'll know all my passwords. Well, who's going to run into your house? Let's be real and grab this notebook. You can hide it, you can put it somewhere that's locked up, but, to be honest, the chances of anybody that shouldn't have this notebook. Getting a hold of it are very thin and I think it's important to write down passwords and have this information available for your next of kin so that when things happen, if they can shut down your social media, if you have social media and if there's accounts that need to be shut down they need all this information. Could you imagine the hours of wasted time trying to figure out all that information?
Speaker 1:Now, this next section may not be pertinent to you, but it was pertinent to me when I created this the how-to section how to turn off the sprinklers, how to turn off the pool, how to turn on the pool, how to turn on the sprinklers, how to turn off the pool, how to turn on the pool, how to turn on the sprinklers, how to, how to, how to. Again, if you are the person at home that does all this, that would be me. You want to make sure that there's some basic information there so that the person left behind isn't left totally in the dark. So I've created a how to section and, again, that can be customized to whatever you think. Your family members need to know how. The next section is tradespeople you may have a housekeeper, you may have a gardener, you may have a pool person, you may have any number of, you may have your favorite electrician, your favorite plumber, air conditioning person all of those should be in this section trades people. I know for my mom this was a really scary time when my dad was sick and she really thought years ago I don't know enough. Joel knows everything and I think my dad should have had something like this for my mom.
Speaker 1:You don't even have to pass away for this to be important. I was in the hospital for two weeks last October. That's a long time, and for me to not have to think about all the things that need to get done, craig could look at the dead Marcy notebook or the in-hospital Marcy notebook and know exactly who to contact Doesn't mean he still wouldn't call me. If I was dead he couldn't call me, but in the hospital he could call me. So you have this notebook and it has all these really great things in it, but there's other things that you can add to it. You can put a copy of your will or your living trust. Again, that's going to be an episode that we're going to do a will versus a trust, power of attorney, life insurance policies, birth certificates, marriage licenses, loan documents, titles, property deeds, copies of keys to safety deposit boxes, automobiles when are all those? If you don't want to put them in the notebook, then leave a note on where somebody can find them.
Speaker 1:Plans for your pets what will happen if you become ill or you die before your pet passes away? There's a lot to think about there. I've given you all of that information. Healthcare directives, very important Business agreements If you have businesses that are going, where are those agreements? Do your partners know what those agreements say? What is there? Is there a life insurance policy tied to those business agreements? You need to know that information. Employee benefit Are you still getting employee benefits? How does that work? Loan transfer provisions your end of life decisions and this is one that we'll talk about in depth at some point.
Speaker 1:But pre-planning your memorial having all the details, having it the way you want it, what are your favorite songs? Details, having it the way you want it, what are your favorite songs that type of information is super important. So there's a really great website that kind of accompanies this notebook I found, and it's called joincakecom, and it is free, and it is also written down on this fabulous notebook that I have created for everyone. That's pretty much what goes in a Dead Marcy notebook. I'm really hoping you find that helpful. It is something that's important. It's something that we don't all like to talk about, obviously, but I have created again a skeleton. I have it in a PDF form, a Word form, and if you just email me at agingfast1, the number one at gmailcom, and I'll be happy to get a copy of that to you Again, that's agingfast1 at gmailcom.
Speaker 1:Today's senior moment. I thought we could talk a little bit about Queen Elizabeth. I had something else planned and then, as we all know, the beloved queen has passed away and I started thinking about that and I really started thinking about her and all of the amazing things people are saying about her, and this has to do a little bit with women. I'm wondering why we are still questioned as leaders, why she reigned for 70 years. That's amazing. And she did it well, and she worked. Up until two days ago, she was still working, and that was her goal. Her goal was to work until she died, and she worked up until two days ago she was still working and that was her goal. Her goal was to work until she died and she did that she brought in the new prime minister two days ago. She stood up, she was there, she showed up and she was ready. I want people to know that women can be leaders, we can lead out there. We can do many things and I don't think it should be a question anymore. I want the young women of today to know that they have whatever it takes to do excuse me and be whatever they want.
Speaker 1:I want to thank you for listening to my very first episode of Aging Ain't for Sissies and that is a fact. It is not for sissies. On next week's episode, we're going to explore what is called the Swedish death claim. No, I don't have obsession with death, but it happens to be called the Swedish death claim. I think it's kind of informational. It's important. I think it's a neat concept. I think if we lived by this concept a little bit better, what I just did three months ago and breaking down an entire large, overly sized and overly stuffed home wouldn't be such a problem. I want to thank you again for listening to the Aging Ain't for Sissies podcast. Before we go today, please show some love for your favorite podcast. Please rate, review and subscribe to follow our podcast on Apple, spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening. This is your host, marci Backus, and have a great week.
