Episode summary
The Long View: Sally Balch Hurme: Getting Your Affairs in Order as You Get Older
The Long View
· · 51 min · Hosts: Ben Johnson, Christine Benz, Amy Arnott · Guests: Sally Balch Hurme
Summary
Sally Balch Hurme argues that getting older is less about preparing for a distant end than making life simpler and more manageable now. Drawing on nearly 50 years in elder law and her experience caring for a husband with dementia, she says the practical work of organizing affairs becomes essential once health or capacity changes start to appear. Her checklist approach covers personal history, family roots, legal documents, beneficiary designations, medications, real estate, powers of attorney, and digital accounts.
A central theme is that families cannot honor wishes they do not know. Hurme says writing things down reduces conflict, speeds up decision-making, and gives loved ones a gift of clarity when medical or funeral choices arise. She also emphasizes that the right first step is often the easiest one: start with your own story, then move on to records, accounts, and beneficiaries. The goal is not perfection, but enough structure that a spouse, child, or caregiver can find what they need quickly.
She also warns against common mistakes, especially adding a child to a deed without understanding the consequences or assuming a generic power of attorney will solve access problems. For online life, she says the answer is messier: make an inventory, create explicit authority for digital access, and check each platform’s rules.
Key takeaways
- Hurme says the most valuable planning step is to make your wishes known in writing before a crisis or death forces others to guess.
- She recommends starting with your own personal history because it is familiar and helps people build momentum.
- Beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insurance should be reviewed regularly because they control who gets assets outside probate.
- Adding a child to a home deed can create tax, divorce, bankruptcy, and benefits problems for both parent and child, Hurme says.
- For digital accounts, Hurme advises a secure inventory, a specific authorization for online access, and account-by-account review of legacy-contact rules.
Notable quotes
“your family really can't carry out your wishes if they don't know what they are”
“It's really a process and not an end result”
“I consider that this gift of knowledge could be anything from who you want to have your pearl necklace or favorite fishing rod to what hymns you want sung at your memorial service”
“The reason why you want to do this is because whomever you designate as the beneficiary will automatically get whatever is in the account when you die”
“This is a big mess and there really is no easy solution”
How the episode opens
Please stay tuned for important disclosure information at the conclusion of this episode. Hi and welcome to the long view. I'm Amy Arnut, portfolio strategist for Morning Star. And I'm Ben Johnson, head of client solutions with Morning Star.
Our guest on the podcast today is Sally Balch Hermy. Sally is the author of Checklists for My Family: A Guide to My History, Financial Plans, and Final Wishes, as well as several other books. She worked at AAP for 23 years and has written more than 20 law review articles on topics related to elder law.
She has also served on the boards of the National Guardianship Association and the Center for Guardianship Certification where she helped develop standards for guardians and reformed guardianship policies and procedures. Before moving to AARP, she was a partner in a private law firm and held several other legal roles. She also served as an adjunct professor at the George Washington University Law School teaching elder law for eight years.
She received her BA from Tulain University and her JD Kumlai from the Washington College of Law at American University. Sally, welcome to the long view. I'm glad to be here.
Well, thank you so much for joining us. We wanted to focus mainly on your book, Checklist for My Family, A Guide to My History, Financial Plans, and Final Wishes. But before we get into that, we wanted to start out with some background on the work you've done and how you first started getting interested in this area.
Can you give us a quick overview of your career and how you first became interested in working on elder issues as an attorney and legal advocate? And how did that kind of transition into writing a series of these checklist books for the American Bar Association and AARP?
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- eldercare planning
- final wishes
- designated beneficiaries
- power of attorney
- digital assets
Watch the episode
Watch “The Long View: Sally Balch Hurme: Getting Your Affairs in Order as You Get Older” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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The Long View, this episode and its artwork belong to Morningstar, Christine Benz - Director of Personal Finance and Retirement Planning, Ben Johnson - Head of Client Solutions, Amy Arnott - Portfolio Strategist. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
