Thank you for listening to the second episode, prequel, number two of the Boom X Show podcast, the laws of money I’m Darol Tuttle. I just wanted to take a second to point out that the episode that you are about to listen to is out of order. I recorded this particular episode several months before episode one pre-call number one that hopefully you have listened to the episode that you’re about to listen to is a unguarded, an edited, very frank exposition of my feelings about my father, my son, my family, my outlook on life really.
Six hours after I had learned, my father had passed away. You will quickly realize I was not close to my father at all, but what you will not be able to detect from the episode is that after recording the episode, I began a long process of reflection about my profession, about my place in the world, about my family, about what is important to me and decided to close my law firm, a successful law practice of 25 years since 1996, I’ve only had job. One email address, one phone number and one website. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Just realize that back then this episode was intended to be part of a podcast that was really much less mature in a sense, much less authentic. I hope you enjoy the episode without further ado. Let’s get started.
Welcome BoomXers. Let’s throw out the old playbook. It’s time to tear down the traditional way of looking at your life and money and leverage the laws of money to our advantage. That’s right. There are laws of money and those who learn and leverage the laws of money win. And sometimes win big. Stay tuned as asset protection attorney Darol Tuttle, educator, and leader of the Boom X Nation shows us how. Beginners, investors, entrepreneurs, fellow attorneys.
Are you ready? Are you ready? Let’s arm this bomb. Now here’s the Boom X Show the laws.
About six hours ago, got a text from my cousin. She works in a big law firm in Portland, Oregon which has a background there’s context to why I say that. And she said in the text, can I call you? And whenever a busy person, especially in a big law firm wants to call you on the phone, in the middle of the workday.
That’s not a good sign. And I said when now I thought, oh, that’s never good. And I texted back and said, why? I didn’t say it that way. I texted why in my mind, I was like why? And she said, it’ll only take a minute.
The long silence you just heard was a reenactment of the contemplation of it. It will only take a minute. So I said, sure. And she’s crying. I said, Hey, what’s up? And she’s crying. And I’m like and the funny thing is I guess I was thinking maybe my grandmother died. Who’s 98 years old and is the toughest Prairie woman that’s ever lived.
That woman has been in and out of hospice. And when she comes out, she’s practically cooking fritters and wringing chickens with their bare hands. The next she used to my grandmother Prairie woman grew up in the depression on a ranch. She used to just prepare it a chicken by wringing off its head. And I’m like that, that, that woman please tell me she didn’t die because I just don’t believe it.
I was wrong. It wasn’t her. It was my fault, my father, and before long she’s crying more. And I asked her this question with the following emotion. Why are you crying? Now that’s a question with a certain tone of almost contempt. And it wasn’t because of men’s basic disdain for expressions of weakness at a time like that.
I was curious she hardly knew my father, every encounter that she had ever had with him had once again, proven emphatically what a jerk he was. And so why are you crying about almost stranger to you? Who was nothing but a pill? And of course she said, I don’t know. I just am. Now I have debated throughout my career.
Should I be authentic? Or should I have a demeanor that is appropriate for a professional setting as society dictates? Should I conform to that? Throughout my career when I was younger, I wore suits and ties and tried to impress everybody and think, and act a certain way. And as I’ve aged, I have just really embraced the Instagram posts that quote inspirational things from famous people about authenticity. Just be yourself. Okay. The real Darol is pretty direct, pretty blunt and speaks his mind. And so I thought I would just express how I’m reacting to the death of my father. It’s not a topic that you hear on a podcast very often.
I can see that, but I’m an elder law attorney, elder law attorneys. I’m here to tell you we’re in the business of helping people die financially sometimes, and business is good. I say that expression all the time when I’m being cute and candid and among my friends. And I know a lot about hospice.
I know a lot about the final phases of a person’s life in my capacity as an attorney. And, I say you get a certain familiarity with the process and business is good. We have a lot of people aging at the same time, my father was a baby boomer and he died younger than he should of. He died in age 74 years old.
And his death was not unexpected, but it was a surprise. My father had a personality trait in which he liked to stick his finger metaphorically in everybody’s eye. He had an opinion about everything and he wasn’t afraid to tell you about it. And he was incapable of changing his mind.
I’ve never heard him consider a fact presented to him that contradicted his belief that made any impact in his thinking. By the way we call this confirmation bias, it’s a cognitive bias and this means that you will tend to disregard facts that do not confirm your beliefs. And so you’re just always stubbornly looking only for cherry picking the things that support your position.
And he went through life and he just agitated a lot of people. Now as an elder law attorney, I have been in conference meetings with families. Going through the process of the parent dying and have wept. I happened to be an emotional person I’m of Irish American ascent, but you would think I’m Italian-American who are very emotive and expressive and Irish have a reputation not so much, but I just damn, I cannot watch that movie Shakespeare in love without crying.
Every single time. I took a army buddy of mine to see that movie. We were on a mission in Charlottesville and that’s where the United States army JAG school is. And JAG is the judge advocate General’s Corps for lawyers. And so we have it. It’s a Kush man. When we have a mission to the JAG school it’s Charlottesville.
So we’re out one night and bored, what are we going to do? Go to a movie? The only one that was worth watching was Shakespeare. I love that. Maybe I’ve seen it before. And my buddy west point graduate had not, and of course I knew how this was going to end. And so I’m sitting over there in the movie trying my best, not to display any emotion.
And of course it’s a failure. And so I’m trying not to betray the fact that I’m over there whimpering like a child. And then I must have succeeded because he apparently didn’t know that I was a sentimental. And so when I get out, he’s man, that was a waste of $4 and 50 cents. And his reaction was what you would expect from a dude.
My father died today and my reaction was to a person who was crying and upset about the news. I what are you crying about? And I thought at the time and after, and for the last six hours, I’ve thought I feel no emotion about this. And it’s odd because I’m a sensitive person. I cry in movies and the elder law attorney, I get attached to clients who come into my office four or five times, and I freak out when they suffer, but not with my father.
And I have met people in the long-term care industry who believe that as a matter of morality, it is important to always, no matter what your parents have done to you, blood is thicker than water sort of thing. And when push comes to shove, you got to step up and be there and supportive and all that.
I didn’t do that. I made a different decision. And I have been told that everyone understood the reasoning for my decision. And I’ll tell you the reasoning here in a minute, but that I would have deep regret that after my father was gone, I wish I would’ve spent more time with him or, had conversation, been there in his final days.
We’ll see maybe I’ll have a, an anniversary episode on this day and I will think differently about it. However, right now I have been mostly thinking about, I gotta get this podcast out. I made a commitment to 90 podcasts in 90 days, and I started recording this thing at midnight. So I missed it.
I hope that you forgive me because my father died. I’m, I’ll play that card because even if you don’t care, it is disruptive. I think how horrible. Man, I hope to God, I never, I don’t live my life in such a way that nobody attends my funeral, that my own son only son. Does not shed a tear.
And when you’re a parent and have children, you naturally turn your thoughts to your son. My son’s name is Benjamin. And am I a good father? Now, when my father was born, must’ve been born in the, after world war two, baby boomer. He was the son, the oldest son of four kids. And, but his parents apparently had always been had mental health problems, most likely some sort of personality disorder, bipolar thing.
She could be mean as a snake. His father was an alcoholic. That’s a bad combination, by the way. And this is, he was, he graduated from high school in 1960. His teenage years was back in the fifties man, the Fonzie happy days. And he was poor. They were poor, very poor.
And the family legend, which I’ve heard from every one of the kids, my dad and his siblings. Their father used to drive downtown and leave the kids in the car all day while he drank alcohol in the local dive saloon. There’s worst things that can happen to you, but that’s not, he had no positive male role model in his life. Now I am a believer. Apparently I am have been wrong about this. I’m changing my opinion that your childhood shouldn’t affect you in your adult years. It’s not true. I have a similar personality trait with my father in that I am not shy about sharing my opininon. And I can sometimes do so in a way that risks losing a relationship.
However, I thankfully inherited a personality trait from my mom. I guess in which I value the truth. I value sound reasoning, and there’s no greater offense than being stubborn when you’re wrong or illogical. And so at the end, I’ll think thank goodness I have a personality trait of putting my finger in somebody’s eye a lot more with a lot more respect and etiquette.
I have definitely agitated people with my advocacy for my position, but I also have embraced being the opposite of my father. And that is saying, hey, wow, I was wrong. I thought the sky was red, but apparently I’m colorblind. Which a fact that was real. You don’t have to be reminded of this. Every once in a while, I went to a movie the other day and they were showing those little snippets at the beginning that shows the producers in the sub, all the little companies that work on that film. And one of the snippets in the beginning of the film, I don’t even want to call those things was a colorblind test. And so there’s all these red and green dots. And I lean over to my wife. I go, was there a word on that? And she just laughed because I inherited from my father, a colorblind gene and one from my mom.
So I am colorblind red, green color blind. And as I’ve learned a lot about marketing, I can tell you that using a colorblind test pattern to promote your company automatically excludes 10% of the population. They can’t read it. And so if we are debating about whether the sky is blue or red and I’m colorblind, if it can be proven on colorblind and the sky really is blue, man, it is more offensive to me.
To be proven wrong and keep my position then to say, Ooh, wow, I was wrong. I made a jerk of myself when I said that we should outlaw all people who believe in a blue sky, but not my father. My father would go to his grave. And in this case, literally having alienated everybody in his life because he had to be right.
Now, as I’m saying all these things, I realize Darol, you’re being a jerk. You are sharing publicly the truth about your family. You are sharing publicly your emotion about him as a person and his actions. There’s no need for that. This show, the Boom X Show, estate planning and retirement planning and long-term care planning.
Get back on point. Nobody wants to hear this. Do they? This show is about estate planning. Do you know how many meetings I’ve been in, in my career? Looking across the table at a family, husband and wife, and at the end of everyone’s life, as near as I can tell. The only people that you have in your life are your kids.
That sounded very bleak. It sounded very dark, but it’s the truth. I know this because if people do not have children, almost every single time, there is a long agonizing silence. And this process of, I, the attorney saying, look who we’re going to leave the money to. Silence or resistance. And then I explain the golden age of estate planning.
By the way, dudes, you can’t take it with you. Didn’t you know that, the ancient Egyptians tried to take it with them. It turns out they were wrong because we found all their stuff.
And so who are you gonna leave it to? And how many client meetings have I had in my life, man? I was looking through the files yesterday of all the work I’ve done. And I’m like, oh, wonder, I’m grumpy. There’s a lot of games this year. There’s a lot of meetings. I have asked that question. Who do you want to leave the money to?
I bet a thousand times. So I’ve noticed a pattern, people who I think I said single people, but I met people who do not have children. Very few of them will end their life with close friendships. And even if they do their friends are their age, why would you leave your estate of a million dollars to a dude who’s 84 and you’re 83.
And just, and so this thing comes up. And so again, when naturally I have learned, I can choose to give advice and counsel to my clients only about the law and sit there, or I can give advice and counsel as a human being and a lawyer. Now, I know that those two seem incongruous human and the lawyer, but the law does not need to be sterile in there.
Let’s just face it. Man. Life is messy. Death is messy. Love, relationships can be complicated. My father grew up in a dysfunctional family. His personality trait was one in which he did not value harmonious relationships and he had never been taught better. And so when I was three he abandoned the family and on top of it never paid child support.
We call that a deadbeat dad. My mother was still is actually to this day. She is semi-literate and she, I dunno, she’s just horribly timid. She was just born unconfident and she was born shy. She was indeed. And so she’s married to this. Actually reasonably a charismatic, there’s this word I want to say, but I can’t, I guess I can, it’s my podcast.
Why can’t I say it? Okay. I’m going to say it for emphatic fact. There’s nothing worse than it. Charismatic asshole. My dad was an asshole and you know what that word means. It means a person who is egocentric and does not care about other people. And egocentric non-caring people tend to behave in such a way that is hurtful to other people.
And my mom was timid and unconfident, so that’s a bad combination. And so consequently I was raised by a single parent in a little crappy town in Eastern Washington. And by the way, when I say a little crappy town, a little crappy town. I opened an office in Tri-Cities Washington. So I have three offices now across the state, and don’t worry, I’m coming to you.
There’ll be an office of mine near your home pretty soon. I don’t care where you live. However, I had to drive past my hometown and man that when I graduated from high school, man, I was out of there, but I swung by it’s practically a ghost town now. That’s that town has died. Thank goodness. And it was a horrible place to be raised.
And, my father made it harder. My mom was a seasonal part-time underemployed person, so I was raised substantially below the poverty line and with no male figure. My dad didn’t have a male mentor figure in his life and either do I because it’s just like a pattern of generation after generation of bad fathers.
And so I fault him for that. Actually I don’t let me fast forward to the real problem. I think everything would have been fine except he chose to opt out of the family and, actually he reconnected with me. And at that point he was my biological father that I forgive actually.
I didn’t even know any better. I was raised poor. I didn’t know I could have been raised less poor. When I became older and then had kids of my own and felt so much love for my kids. I just couldn’t understand it. Like I have, come on, think about it. I’ll share this.
I have to support my family. Everything that I do or don’t do affects the financial wellbeing of my wife and my kids. And I’m working myself to death. That was a wrong expression to use. I’m impacting my health like all lawyers do trying to make it work. And so I, when I became older and love my kids just didn’t understand how a man could.
Did you not have a human heart like me? He didn’t feel the awe of holding a newborn son and that agitation of him not going to sleep.
And then the heart in shock when you drop the kid for the first time and don’t start with me. I know darn well, you’ve done it too. There’s not a parent alive that hasn’t dropped their kid one time or another and just all the crazy things kids do. I love my kids. I’m a good father. I’m worried that I’m not a good father.
Cause I didn’t, you’re a wonderful Dad, a wonderful dad. They just thought I was the bees knees still am. And so I don’t know why he made those decisions, but to me when I was in my twenties and midway through my thirties, whatever we are all in, we are human beings. We’re fallible.
Here’s the problem though. My mom remarried, but her husband passed away and she was alone and she semi-literate, and she’s older now and she’s timid and all these things. So my dad saw an opportunity and I’ll be, gosh, darn it. Those two didn’t remarry each other again. So now thinking about it, my dad will answer the phone when I call my mom.
That created a real problem. It ultimately ruined my relationship with my mom, which had been close. And the reason is because my dad is a charismatic asshole. And my mom is timid. And so she shrank back into the corner of her life and I, never had an opportunity like you would call and he’d answered the phone.
And he was always running interference. And around that time he started to express a desire to have a closer relationship to me as father and as son and I was okay. This’ll be interesting I guess I’m open to it, but he couldn’t help himself. And so the relationship got became more and more stressful and more and more.
I hate using pop psychology terms, but I’m going to, because it will immediately trigger something in you. It just became a toxic relationship. And as I became more frustrated and impatient. And appalled by my father’s moral compass, my mom would defend him. And so consequently, I reached a point about 18 months ago.
I just made the decision to stop talking to my parents. And it was not a decision that was not I can I had over analyzed my relationship with my father for years. And I have, since I’ve made that decision, I have been at peace with it. Now apparently I will regret it one day. However, right now I made a decision based on our long history and my life became much more pleasant and less stressful and less anxiety producing because of my decision.
And I was surprised that my decision not to communicate with my mom was as easy and I feel the same way about it. And you realize as they age, they will become more and more dependent upon other people like everyone. And then, you wonder how’s that going to play out? So here’s the way it played out.
My father has always been a glutton. He, as he retired, he began to eat even more and he just became obese and he also ignored any kind of suggestion that he should eat well, or watch his diet or exercise and all that stuff. Why? Because he’s a charismatic asshole and they do not listen to people. And so consequently, he developed diabetes and congestive heart failure and all these conditions that exist in humans who are defiant to their doctors.
But sadly it was not a quick death. He ended up in a nursing home because of diabetes related to his diet. And that was the beginning of the end. And not in the way you think my mom being timid, never knew how to drive a car. She got her license and when we lived in a small town in the 1970s, she could get sorta from point a to point B, but it was always with great stress.
And about one out of every 15 trips, there would be. Every trip, there was some anxiety producing event and one out of 15 trips in a small town, there would be almost an accident. Think about it. Now, the alpha male provider is in a nursing home and this woman who can’t drive is being asked to go visit her husband in another small town in Idaho.
Oh, of course, she jumps in the car and drives down there and she made it. Now here’s I don’t know if it’s a turning point, but my father asked my mother, Hey, why don’t you go get us some cheeseburgers. I want to repeat that. Why don’t you go get us some cheeseburgers? If you could insert into a podcast.
I guess I could slap my own head and you could hear the sound, but you know that emoji of the little guy and he’s slapping his head, like the weight. So of course, I guess it’s reasonable cause it was consistent with his lifestyle and his way of thinking about things. However it was dark.
It was a rainy day. My mom doesn’t know how to drive. She’d been asked to go out into the rain to get cheeseburgers. And of course she drove down a one-way road, the wrong way somehow and hit a semi and they had to cut her out of the car. And then she ended up in the same nursing home.
She was released from the nursing home and she was sent home. And my mom has always been physically frail.
And she has not had the kind of and she got to the point where she just depended on my dad for everything. And should I share this story with you or not? As an elder law attorney? I can tell you. That fact pattern is a result of being stubborn. That fat pattern is lethal. I can recall a client situation.
I have permission to tell the story, by the way. Mom, a woman in her early eighties was married to a man who developed dementia and she just had to ignore children’s warnings about a lot of things. I’m this is my husband. I love him. I’ve loved him for 57 years and I will provide his care until I die.
Okay, great. I want you to do that. And you know how this story ends. She’s a Prairie woman and she is going out there to do her very best every day to run the household and to also care for her demented husband. Unfortunately, she’s out in the garden one day, she falls off a ladder and she breaks her neck.
Now, see what went wrong there, the person that was responsible for everything failed. She’s in the hospital. Demented husband burnt the house down the next day and was burned on 60% of his body and passed away two weeks later. It was just horrible. And man, what kind of podcast is this? Like you could listen to the JLD entrepreneurs on fire podcast.
Instead you get to come here and listen to me talk about the death of my father. But in the context of, from the perspective of an asset protection attorney who candidly, I get tired of people. I understand it. I guess I’m a chore poor choice of words, but it is unnecessary and cognitive bias is a polite way of saying people who just refuse to accept reality.
Come on. And so my father had have a cheeseburger. My mom ended up in the same nursing home as my father. My mom can not take care of herself. Never has been able to. My father is in a nursing home.
Today he died, six hours ago, six and a half hours ago. And of course he ended up alone, except for my mom, but no one else. He was big into politics. Not politics, but he was one of these people that had to express his opinion on Donald Trump. He supported Trump and, you know, immediately what that means.
And he had to send emails that were offensive and mean, and stubborn and pick a fight with everybody. And just one by one by one over the years, his email list went from some people to absolutely no, no people, his own son included. I don’t know if I’ll be ashamed of the fact that my father’s email address is on my spam filter because at some point I can’t take it anymore, but I did.
And so he made decisions about the way he behaved in his life. And at the end, I just feel like he paid a heavy price. I could have let him off the hook, I guess, but I thought I’m going to dedicate my time in that compassionate is best. I can helping other people and being a good father to my children. And in a sense, he victimized his wife and for sure is my mom or he victimized us, maybe not intentionally, but he did. What a eulogy? I hope they don’t invite me to the Memorial, which there won’t be one.
My thoughts turned to myself. I do not want, this will not happen, but the day that I pass away, there will be people at my funeral. And it will have a impact on my children. I hope it’s 40 years from now. And they are so sick of me. They’re upset and they cry, but it’s a normal sort of. Go by where you say, God, I’m gonna miss him.
Miss you, dad. However, you were suffering at the end and most time for you to move along.
At the beginning of this podcast, I played a song by Elton John, my father’s gun. Today I own my father’s gun. I laid his broken body down. Ironically, I went to a movie about Elton John, Monday, a few days ago. And I had to leave the movie theater only about 10 or 15 minutes into the movie.
It turns out unbeknownst to me that Elton John had, it was an intense dude and he had was in an, a very emotionally neglectful environment. His childhood was, he was an only child just like me. So there were so many similarities between my situation and his that if I just triggered something in me.
And I say that just to give you an idea of the way in which childhood trauma, there were some other events in my life that were traumatic. Emotionally emotional neglect is not something that you just get over as an adult. I did not know that I honestly did not know that because when you have thoughts in your brain, you just assume everybody has those thoughts.
And everybody had, cause if we all had similar experiences. I know that you were raised in an upper middle class in New York, but still you were neglected by your parents and you don’t even know you’re neglected. I didn’t like when they describe my friends. I went to law school and I’ve met a lot of people and talk to a lot of people.
And then when they say about their childhood and you don’t understand what they’re talking about, it can have an impact. And I shared that with that those experiences I shared with my father, he suffered from emotional neglect. He did not recover from it. I suffered from emotional neglect and by, gosh, God is my witness.
I will overcome. And that’s going to be the episode today. I’m here to tell you that I have made a decision today to just lay it out there.
And if I had to make a teaching point, because it is a educational podcast, I would tie it in to my requirement is tip number eight. Do you remember these tips I’m doing every day. Tip number eight comes next and I’ll leave you with tip number eight for this podcast. And it simply this man love, love your kids. I don’t know how else to say it.
At the end, they will be the only ones there for you. Probably. That’s not true for everybody and these are just generalizations, but they will be there for you. Everybody else is optional. And even in your friendships that you have with other people realize that they are indeed important and you might have to change your behavior and your thinking to save it.
Sometimes things happen and you have to forgive. And I promise that tomorrow, which is actually today, we will be back on stride with the normal, upbeat Boom X Show music. And onto tip number nine, I’ll see you then in six hours.
