Preplanning to Celebrate Life with Shellsey Barnhart

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Interview Transcription

ADRIENNE: 
Welcome back. And thanks for listening to the team Lally Real Estate show home of the guaranteed sold program or we’ll buy it. I’m Adrienne, and I’m Attilio if you have any questions just give us a call at 7999596 or check us out online at Teamlally.com.

ATTILIO: 
Our guest today was born and raised in the beautiful island of Kauai. She moved to Oahu in 2015. Fell in love with the vast opportunities Oahu has to offer. She is a mother to three kids.

ADRIENNE: 
She’s been in the food service industry for 15 years and now is an advanced planner for the Valley of the Temples. Please welcome our guest, Shellsey Barnhart.

ATTILIO: 
Hey Shellsey.

SHELLSEY: 
Hi Attilio. Hi, Adrienne, how are you?

ATTILIO: 
Oh, hello. So you know, I mean, one of the things I gotta tell everybody we keep saying Valley of the temple, but when you’re local, you notice temple Valley. So I just tell people, we talking about the same thing. Valley of the Temples it sounds like like one of the episodes of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Valley of the Temples but okay, so yeah. Oh, and I and Shellsey, I was I was sharing with you earlier, we I was sharing you with your questions that we had asked Jeff when he was on the live stream, but then we got the questions for you too. So, you know, we will hit them all. And none of these are questions that no, not to worry, you know, all these huge expert on all these questions. But Adrienne, you want to give up the first question for Shellsey.

ADRIENNE: 
So well, I have a question that is not on in this. Okay, go ahead. But I know you’re gonna you’re gonna be able to answer this. So, so Shellsey, how did you get into this industry with, you know, this pre planning? And so how did you get into it?

SHELLSEY: 
So actually, I work I have a co worker at the airport, she opened me up to this, you know, she and I, we work at the local. And she told me, you know, I really like the service you give to your customers and I think you’d be very good and compassionate, speaking with people about what I do and like, what do you do? She was I’m a pre planning advisor for Valley of the Temples. I said, Wow. So you know, next next thing I knew it I was in training. I think it’s, yeah, I was in training. And I think it’s such a it’s such a needed service here in the islands. You know,

ATTILIO: 
I think, you know, you’re serving people and with compassion moving. Alright, so, let’s talk you know, we like to hit people right up the front with with the information that they’re wanting to hear. And a lot of times this topic is something that people don’t necessarily want to talk to talk about. Well, we know they listen to the show, so we’re gonna give it to him anyway, what when you say pre planning for funeral services, what does that mean?

SHELLSEY: 
So pre planning, pre planning for funeral service means that you’d go ahead and meet with one of us to discuss a plan, that plan allows you to basically prepay for your own funeral, you know, when somebody passes away, what happened, who takes care of it, it’s going to be the family members, you know, and that’s very burdening financially and emotionally for them. So what we encourage people to do is to come in speak with us, so you can get a plan in place, you know, we have so many options, we have beautiful property options, that you can also have the choice of having your loved ones with you, you know, planning ahead, it’s, you get the choice,

ATTILIO: 
the relatives, you don’t want with you, too, you can make that arrangement. So the other side of this of the cemetery,

ADRIENNE: 
no Shellsey, do you know that we’ve, we’ve been talking, we’ve got a, you know, a friend that is in need. And you were explaining that if you do the pre planning now, as opposed to after the passing, there’s a big difference in the cost and the cost. Yeah, let’s talk to that.

SHELLSEY: 
So pre planning gives you, you can see 1000s of pre planning. So pre planning, like right now are incentives for Valley of the Temples, there’s going to be a 2.9, interest rate, finance for up to 60 months, with 10% down in automatic pay. So you can you can go ahead and do property choice, whether it’s cremation, whether it’s traditional burial. Or say if you have property elsewhere, and you just need the funeral service, you can go ahead, we’ll sit down, make an appointment, we’ll look through what it feels service best fits your need, then we can go ahead and write a contract. And you can do like, like payments, you know, budget friendly payments for that. And that’s huge. Because when it becomes out me, it’s like anything that you that you buy last

ATTILIO: 
minute, is more expensive. Yeah. And then

SHELLSEY: 
with me, you need to pay before your loved one to rest. And it’s so hard on

ATTILIO: 
you. I think too, that when you don’t do the pre planning, and there’s nothing in place, then the relatives all have to is a big huge financial burden on top of the big emotional decisions they got to make. And that’s the last thing that you want your your your your kids, your family, your friends to be going through when you pass away or go on to glory. Talk about

ADRIENNE: 
I think that that that comment also ties into like, you know, everyone says, Oh, I’ve got the life insurance. Yeah, have the money saved. But then like this pre planning, how does that Yeah, talk about

ATTILIO:
life insurance or, you know, answer that question. Oh, I got life insurance. So what would be your response to that?

SHELLSEY: 
Life insurance is great. Everybody needs to be evicted. Especially for elderly we don’t know when when our time comes with the insurance that says not rates of inflation and reinsurance for 40 years from now that that is going to be different. You name Yeah. Why not? Feed now, you can lock in the term inflation that hey, the cost 35 years from now, insurance time you do need a certificate, some insurances. I know that I noted expense that don’t right away. But

ADRIENNE: 
I’m Shellsey I think we’ve got a bad connection, we might need to reconnect, we may need we may as we’re hearing every other word.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah. So you know what we’ll do? We’re gonna keep talking about these benefits. I’m gonna have you disconnect. And we’re gonna call you back again, and continue the conversation. So can you disconnect with us? And then we’re gonna call you right back. Okay, all right. Yeah. So, you know, we’ve had Shellsey on the show before. So we know. You know, I have excellent recall. So does Adrienne. And we know, for example, so one of the ways that you save money by locking in today’s rates, or prices is that the prices double every

ADRIENNE: 
day real estate, right? Every five to seven years, seven to 10 years. I mean, but the same thing like with our residential properties,

ATTILIO: 
right, a single family home on Oahu doubles every 12 to 20 years. So this is at a faster rate. You know, so if you’re gonna be around for another 50-60 years, that you know, think of that so like every five years, doubling today it’s 5000. 5 years now it’s 10. Then it goes to 20. Then it goes to 40 when you could have got that same plot for 5000. Today 10,000. Today, it could be 50 100,000 down the road.

ADRIENNE: 
And I know that they have, you know, a wide variety of, you know, for budgets between

ATTILIO: 
$2,000 to 3,000,000, 33,000,000,33,000,000, 33 million believe that so you can bury like, I don’t know, like 28 generations up there on their place, and it’s a beautiful site, it’s a good place to go visit. The consultation with them is is super high pressure. They put you in a headlock? No, no, it’s a consultation. It’s about informing you and educating you. And so, um, alright, so I think we we got Shellsey, back on, let’s see if we got a better connection. Go ahead. Adrienne, what’s your question for Shellsey?

ADRIENNE: 
So, so Shellsey, I know that when we were we got disconnected, we’re talking about the life insurance. And you know, let’s let’s elaborate on that. If they have like, why would we need to pre planning?

SHELLSEY: 
All right, so life insurance is a necessity, I feel like everyone should have life insurance at that layer of protection for Family Life Insurance. I know, there’s a couple different types of life insurance. But with final expense, I know that pays you off pretty quick, but with the final expense, smaller amount. And we don’t know, like how much funeral possible costs and funeral price will cost in 45 years from now. You know what I mean? And then also, by you being able to pre plan that locks into these price. Yes. That these your family with that final expense money to pay your bills, we don’t know what kind of financial situation will be at that time. You know, what, if you’re in debt, what if you’re not in debt, your family can use that money to pay down your debts to secure your property, they could use that as a final, you know, they could use that to put a down payment on a house if they needed to, you know,

ATTILIO: 
maybe send their kids to college instead of worrying about funeral expenses because the pre planning.

SHELLSEY: 
Absolutely, and then with the other type of insurance it takes. So first you need a death certificate, that’s going to take 14 to 60 days, we issue the death certificate. So your loved one needs to be put to rest before we issue out the death certificate. So you know, that’s gonna rock your credit card bill, or you might not even be you might not even be able to purchase all of that, you know, I mean, like I said, we don’t know what our financial situation will be at the time.

ATTILIO: 
Now, a couple unique things that you guys, do you guys have some special programs for the first responders, police, firefighters veterans?

SHELLSEY: 
Yes, we do. I think it’s so awesome. So we have a Heroes program. So we offer 20% off of property and 20% off of their funeral plans Nice. For the veterans, I know that they do, the government gives them a space. And it gives them Memorial placard or an engraving depending on what type of space you choose. But I also know that they only give $300 for funeral expense. So a plan is a necessity. So we do have a funeral plan. Fit to memorialize our heroes. Yeah.

ATTILIO: 
No. Another unique thing you guys have is one you got one spot for phyto.

ADRIENNE: 
Yeah. Tell us about that. The Pet Cemetery cemetery.

SHELLSEY:
We’re the only we have the only Pet Cemetery on Oahu. So you can bring your fur family and they can have their own final resting space with their own memorial placard. Their own flower vase, it’s absolutely beautiful. We have families that that sit and enjoy the day with their pet.

ATTILIO: 
Ya know, some of these pets become family members. You know, some you know, most people absolutely, they bury them in the backyard and you’d be like, Oh, we forgot where we were fatal, was young that

SHELLSEY:
you want to be a little clearer on something. The other week I had a friend he has a fur baby had her for about 20 years. But he asked me if we have cremation plans for pets. They told him we don’t so just want it to be clear. We don’t provide the cremation plan for your pet. But we do provide the burial space and the container we call it a vault to go into the ground to protect the urn.

ATTILIO:
that’s probably because it’s it’s you don’t want to be mixing the animal remains with human remains at the crematorium. Probably border health law or at the end of the day, that’s what it is.

ADRIENNE: 
I know. Most of that’s have options work because I had I’ve had some of my Yeah, well some of my animals have been cremated. Yeah, so they’ll

ATTILIO: 
slip because they do no any pets. That’s right, just the pets. Unless the veteran that veterinarian never do good job and we’re gonna have to do him too no the so the let’s talk about, like people hear this terminology. And it’s not something we talk about all the time. Hey, you know, how was your day? Oh, I was doing some pre planning know that people don’t normally talk about this talk about the difference between a cemetery versus a mortuary.

SHELLSEY: 
So the cemetery, that’s all property. So the cemetery would be the memorial park site. Okay. So that’s going to be your choice of property, whether it’s cremation traditional burial, it’s going to be your monument, or your memorial placard that goes above your space or the engraving on your niche. That’s going to be the cemetery side, including the container, which we call the vault that protects either the casket or the urn, from the elements, and then mortuary sites. So that is when a loved one passes, we come in and we bring them into our care. That’s going to be the mortuary site. We have funeral arrangers, we have our staff, we have the usage of our facility, and then the service itself. That’s going to be all on the mortuary side.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, I’ve been to services over this very beautiful, very peaceful, you kinda I think it puts people at peace. Being on that property with with having services there. Because it’s, you know, you got the I don’t know, what is it the Byodo-in temple in the back? And so it’s a very,

ADRIENNE: 
yeah, tell us about the temple, Shellsey, let’s put

SHELLSEY: 
the Byodo-in temple. So I just came there yesterday with my daughter. She loves it. But it’s one of the biggest tourist attractions in Oahu. So the Byodo-in temple that one is, it’s a replica from the Byodo-in temple in Japan. So this was founded in 1968. And it’s, like I said, one of the biggest tourist attractions, but you know, we have a beautiful nine foot Buddha sitting on a lotus flower covered in gold. And a lot of people come they meditate, you know, but they don’t really realize that we have behind Buddha behind a closed door that we have glass front niches. Yeah. I wanted to,

ATTILIO: 
well, real quick for people when we say niches, think of like that cubby hole. When you used to go kindergarten, you gotta go put your jacket in. So it’s like a cubby hole. We refer to it as a niche. And then what can you what tell us about these niches.

SHELLSEY:
So these niches can hold anywhere from two to eight family members. And it’s beautiful. I actually helped a friend of mine, he’s in his early 30s. I helped him pick out something he chose the Byodo-in temple because he loved the smell of the incense, the sound of the running water. And then he was close to Buddha. And that was so beautiful.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah. Yeah, so nice. A lot a lot of religious and spiritual connections to the valley. I noticed like being a Catholic, you guys even have a whole Catholic section. And. And in fact, we know that type of real estate is the most expensive per square foot on the planet. And I don’t know what you know about that other one, but what, what is the deal with that $33 million one.

SHELLSEY: 
So that is 1/3 of an acre. We call it the pinnacle. So that one is a customizable property. You could build a granite castle on there, if you wanted to, you could build 6000 glass front niches, it’s just pretty much whatever you could imagine we could put on there.

ATTILIO: 
Wow. Amazing. Okay, well and then the the new section if you do a bird’s eye view from it, it looks like a heart. Tell us about that section. That was really nice.

SHELLSEY: 
So that is our newest development that is Ocean View terrace. So that is a heart shaped garden created by our Feng Shui master Clarence Wallace, his name he created it, because it embodies all the elements of Feng Shui so it’s supposed to give you prosperity and peace in the afterlife.

ATTILIO: 
And I like those that

SHELLSEY: 
that burden right there. We have cremation, it’s all along the side of the river. It’s the longest water feature on the island. But we have some cremation properties along the river. We also have some granite front niches in the front of the at the bottom of the heart. And then we have customizable properties at the top. So those are going to be our built to suit those are built to suit your wants to meet. You saw the mausoleum at the top.

ADRIENNE: 
Yeah, until the family name that was on that was like wow, we went over and visited it looks like they had just put it up like just a couple of weeks ago, three weeks ago.

SHELLSEY: 
Yes, they did. And you could put something like that on that type of property. And then we have a semi private property which is called our hedge estates. That can house generations of families that depending if you want traditional or if you’d like cremation it just pretty much customizable to what you and your family want to memorialize. You know, memorialize your loved ones.

ATTILIO: 
So you know people can give you on call Shellsey and then is it like a hard sell or or what’s what’s that experience gonna look like? When when you sit down with people?

SHELLSEY: 
So what I like to do is I like to talk story. I like to get to know people What’s their wants? What’s their needs? What’s financially? What fits in your budget? Yeah, you know that that’s my goal. But I want to sit down and listen to what people want, you know, and how I can help them plan for, you know, their end of life plans. It’s not an easy topic of discussion, but I think it’s necessary. And, you know, I think once we get a plan in place, and it’s something less you have to worry about, you know, it’s something that’s not going to burden you, it’s not gonna burden your family. It’s just a part of life that we should cover, and you don’t really think about too much. But

ATTILIO: 
I know we have first hand experiences that there’s usually three times to talk about this stuff. One is when you’re you’re healthy, you know, you’re you’re you have good mental acuity, you’re, you know, you have your wits about you, then the third, the second time, the second phase would be like you’re terminally ill, that part, you’re really not in your best state of being psychologically. And then ultimately, the last one is just your relatives figuring it out. So we highly recommend that they give you a call now, to sit down with you and they got, you know, there’s nothing to lose to get educated. Yeah,

SHELLSEY: 
absolutely. I think that’s the one thing that kind of steers people clear from this conversation until it’s needed, is the it’s kind of the fear of the unknown, or the topic of discussion, you know, when really, this is just something that we set in place to protect your family, you know, to to honor you and your wishes, you know, you have a say, so what happens to you and where you go,

ADRIENNE: 
so Shellsey what would be the best phone number for our listeners to reach out to you? Yeah.

SHELLSEY:
So my direct line is 8082654947, 2654947. That’s

ATTILIO: 
2654947. And what, what’s the expectation there that they, you’ll set up a time to meet with them out of the Valley of the Temples?

SHELLSEY: 
So we can even have an appointment over the phone? We can have an appointment in person in there in the comforts of their own home or at Valley of the Temples? Yeah.

ADRIENNE:
So you’re flexible?

ATTILIO: 
Flexible? Yeah, absolutely. What about the zoom? Because, you know, sometimes people have, we can do a zoom meeting? Absolutely. Because the kids might be in the mainland. That’s why they want to be included involved with what’s happening with mom and dad. And, you know, sometimes it’s easier to bring your family along for these kind of, you know, kind of nothing the most fun is conversation to have, but it’s a reality of life. We all going out the same way. Eventually. Yeah.

SHELLSEY:
And bringing the family on board is such a huge support system, you know, they know what’s going on, there’s no surprises, you know, they know exactly what mom and dad want, they know exactly how to execute it. And you know, when they do the whole pre planning process, a truly relieves the stress of the family. Literally, it’s when the time becomes at meaning. We have everything we need to set up and execute all their wishes.

ATTILIO: 
I think you guys have a pre planning guide, and we was okay with Jeff 100 questions in there. And I’m gonna imagine that’s pretty thorough.

SHELLSEY: 
Oh, absolutely. It is very thorough.

ATTILIO: 
I think you guys probably end up asking questions that people don’t realize that you Oh, yeah, we should we should actually put that down. And then that way, I, you know, I think the biggest benefit, you know, I’m not I’m not I don’t do this type of business as you do. But if, for me, it’s like, I think the biggest benefit for the people doing it would be that you’re giving a peace of mind to your family, that they can focus on, not the minutia, and the logistics, of a funeral or services, but just on going through that grieving process together, or, you know, celebration of life, right. And we’d like to be more optimistic and positive about it by saying it’s a celebration of life. So, anyway, Adrienne, any last questions for Shellsey?

ADRIENNE: 
No, no, thank you Shellsey for being our guest and educating us and you’re sharing all of this wonderful information with our listeners. And I encourage our listeners to give Shellsey a call

ATTILIO: 
the number 2654947, 2654947 Thank you, Shellsey. Thank

ADRIENNE: 
you, Shellsey.

SHELLSEY: 
Thank you, Adrienne. Thank you Attilio. You have a good rest of your day now. All right. Okay.

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