FINISHING WELL

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trainapaster.com Get it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. day on Finishing Well. the show is actually titled Finishing Well, which I think it's Hans and mine prayer. And I hope it's your prayer too that with our lives, right? That as we come to the end of that, as we know it on Earth, as we know we're going to live on for eternity. But as we come to life on earth, we know that we are actually going to become the bride of Christ.

And we want to reflect him as much as we possibly can. And it's a beautiful thing that God has put Hans in our life and this thought process to begin to think of, wow, when it really comes to finishing well, like, you know, the last months, the last days, the last hours, whatever the case may be, this is going to be a crisis for your family, right? It's going to be a change of who is handling things, who's taking care of things, whether that's now I'm no longer able to take care of myself and I have to go into some kind of facility or some type of home healthcare or all these things. And so there's decisions and there's changes.

So how do I process this so that I finish well? And I was thinking about how beautiful it is in a Jewish wedding. And so it's a picture of when Christ puts the ring on you. This is this thing that they recite and they say that, you know, from my perspective, this is what Jesus is offering to his bride, that I'm going to support you physically. I'm going to support you financially. I'm going to support you.

And that has to do with the letter of Psalm, which is really beautiful in Hebrew, but I'm going to support you physically. I'm going to support you financially. I'm going to support you emotionally and often think about that as a husband. How can I support my wife emotionally? And then how am I going to support?

And then I'm going to support you, which Jesus does his best of all spiritually. So as husbands or as spouses of any kind, right, we've been there supporting our families, our children physically, financially, emotionally, and spiritually. So now there's going to be a changing of the guard.

And what is the plan to put these things in place? And quite honestly, Hans, as we were thinking about this in my own life, you know, I have a short-term care policy, so I had the financial thing worked out like most men. But I really, as I began to process today's show, I was like, oh my goodness, I have not put things in place to help my family both emotionally and spiritually. So this is really a movie that we want to play. I know it's not easy to listen to, but so that we can all think about really what the show's about, how can we finish well?

Sure. And this is a huge part of finishing well. I mean, I deal with clients, most of them coming into me in their 60s, a lot in their 50s, late 50s, and then many in their 70s, but for the most part in the 60s. And one of the first things I have to do with individuals and couples is we've got to talk about dying and leaving the other one behind, and we've got to talk about when the second one dies, what do we want to happen to all their stuff, their earthly stuff?

How do we want – what do we want things to look like? And most clients, especially at that age, they don't have any problem talking about death and passing and going on, because you know what's going to happen. Change the subject to long-term care, and change the subject to having a period of – because long-term care is almost too sterile, and change the subject to long-term care is when somebody can't – somebody needs to take care of you. So you're in a state of being either from a stroke, a car accident, a fall, just generally your mind and dementia, just advancing age. You've reached a point, like your dad got there, your mother got there, my mother was certainly there with dementia for many, many, many years.

My father got there at 70 with a stroke. When you're at that point in your life where somebody's got to take care of you, somebody's got to make decisions for you, or certainly help you and make decisions with you, and then just flat take care of you. Yeah. And what – yeah, Mohans did a beautiful, beautiful video on this subject, and what he brought out was all of a sudden this crisis is on your family, and they're in a crisis, and this is a beautiful time to have put some planning in place because there's no time to – like when you're in the rapids and you're going down the river at 10,000 miles an hour, it's a tough time to make difficult decisions. So one of the most basic things that you talked to me about was just get your – I mean, get your paperwork straight so that you can begin to be thinking about decisions of who's going to be the decision maker because – See, and you've already done that part of it, and actually what I would – would bring me a lot of joy is to influence a number of you to just get to where Robbie is, so if you could get into the subject, because Robbie's got the financial – we don't want to say like totally taken care of because nobody has that, but he's certainly got a year to two years' worth of coverage on both of them that when this crisis happens, we're going to just be able to take financial off the table as you've got the money there from the insurance company to pay for home health care, and you've got the money there to pay for an assisted living for a period of time to the point when you're – this just happened and the whole family's gathered that you're not having to have a financial discussion because if that hadn't been planned for, that's going to be the whole discussion along with this other more important stuff.

So you've taken care of that. You've also taken care of the legal documents, so you've empowered your spouse and your adult children who will hopefully when this happens are much more adults. I mean this could be 20 years from now, 30 years from now, 25 years from now, but whenever it happens, if it happened 10 years from now, your children are empowered to make decisions with your wife, okay, legally empowered. We've set that up, and that is so important so that you're going to have a decision-maker. I mean it's going to be your spouse and your wife first, but she's going to need the help of the kids, and even if she doesn't need the help of the kids, she's going to need to gain agreement of the kids, and you've got them listed on the power of attorney in a particular order, and you need a decision-maker in these times as well.

And I think what you discovered at lunch as we were preparing for this is you really discovered that there were a couple of elements that you haven't really thought about and prepared for, and those were the spiritual, and then where we talked about is the emotional, is to go through the movie what it looks like when the family is sitting around, and if your daughter who's 20 now, she's going to be 40 then, and your daughter who's 30 now, and I don't know their exact age, is their 20-year advanced in age, and they're all sitting around there, and they're all going to have different opinions about what we need to do for dad and with dad, how dad needs to be cared for, and it would just make a lot of sense to have this all planned out, not even so much in detail, just to have you have your wishes written down. Darrell Bock Yeah, the other thing I was personally thinking as far as finishing well is I need some people outside of my family because I know my family, and when you put them in the fire together, they grew up together, and I don't want them to feel like they don't have any representation, that there isn't somebody there that listens, and as I began to pray through this immediately when I realized, wow, God's put people in my life, dear friends, that my children and my wife would respect to come in and say, can we pray together, guys, and don't you think that just help, for lack of a better word, a referee, I mean, I don't know how else to call it other than – Darrell Bock Sure. They're called a mediator, where we've got God up here, and Jesus, and all of them. Darrell Bock Yeah, I like that mediator. That's better.

That's more kind. Darrell Bock Yeah. Darrell Bock But, you know, my kids are all Dilmores, every one of them, and they all have the ability to go Bob Dilmore on somebody and say that something needs to be done, and I'm just like, man, I want them to be who they are. Don't get me wrong. I want them to be strong like they are, but I also think this would be a really good place not for them to be separated more as a family, but be united more as a family, and, again, that's a spiritual need.

Dave Chilton Listen, it is, and they're not all on the same page spiritually either, and so the whole – the show here, and they're not any different than anyone else. I mean, I get into families just because of the work I do. I mean, I find out all the stuff that they don't tell everyone else, okay? I mean, you just kind of have to because we're preparing for this. We're preparing for estates. We're managing their money, you know, writing wills, writing trusts, doing all kinds of things. I mean, the attorney's doing that, but we're – I mean, so we find out your stuff, and it's just all – your family is like every other family is, is that there's going to be some conflict, and it's also – conflict is a safe place to go in a very difficult situation. I mean, when there's – people go in, and they start talking about, you know, the meat prices in China, as they used to say, and they're going to have disagreements about things that don't have anything to do with the fact that Dad's over there, and he needs help, and he needs caring, and he needs love, but more importantly, he needs somebody to come in here seven days a week, three or four hours a day, and just take care of him so the family can be here for emotional support, and then we need the money to do that. I mean, this is an insurable risk. So I'm not going to talk about that today.

I just – I really wanted to have a show where we just like, what are we really talking about? And we're talking about long-term care. We're talking about finishing well. We're talking about having a plan for this, and sitting down, acknowledging that this might be years off, it possibly could never happen, but we're going to prepare for it.

Yeah. You know, God is a very kind God, and he wants everybody to be loved well through, you know, whatever stage they're in, and so I think it's really loving, and a picture of Christ as we can be, as we can begin to think through how can we best love our family through our actual finishing well. So when we come back, we have more – believe me, we have more, and I know you're going to enjoy that. So again, this show is brought to you by Cardinal Guide, and Hans' book, The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning for and Living Retirement, has everything to do with finishing well. It can be found there at cardinalguide.com, and again, when we come back, we'll be more and finishing well is actually what we're doing today, is finishing well. Hans and I would love to take our show on the road to your church, Sunday school, Christian, or civic group. Here's a chance for you to advance the kingdom through financial resources by leveraging Hans' expertise in qualified charitable contributions, veterans' aid and attendance, IRAs, Social Security, Medicare, and long-term care. Just go to cardinalguide.com and contact Hans to schedule a live recording of Finishing Well at your church, Sunday school, Christian, or civic group. Contact Hans at cardinalguide.com.

That's cardinalguide.com. So welcome back to Finishing Well, Finishing Well. Today's show is actually that title, as at some point in time, we all actually will be finishing, and we would like to do that well. And many times, I don't know, for whatever reason, I had friends that were at the point where they found out that they had hours to live, and whether it was the doctor or the spouse of the person that was passing away, they would come to me and they would say, Robbie, would you go tell this person they only have hours to live? And I don't know if you've ever been in that position, but I've had that opportunity now with a couple of very dear friends, and all of a sudden, you turn to the only source of information when you really are in this crisis, because the crisis is upon you. And so I can remember praying, and I remember when I prayed, the first time that happened to me, God was very clear that there's nothing like the 23rd Psalm when you need a shepherd. And so I remember, and God was telling me, there's a beautiful, beautiful book on the 23rd Psalm called The Shepherd's Guide to the 23rd Psalm, and the shepherd had talked about what David was referring to with the sheep, and the sheep, when they are faced with fast-moving water, they won't drink, because they're afraid they're going to drown, because their fleece gets wet and they go right to the bottom. You know, if you want to have a sheep die of thirst, you know, just have it be by fast-running water. And so God is a loving, kind God like that. He doesn't want the water to overcome you. So when crisis has come, a shepherd will help get the sheep to slower water. Or like when God didn't want to blind Moses with his glory, even though he put him in the cleft of the rock, he put his hand over to cover him. And so it's an interesting thing as a shepherd, which you are in your family, you know, either spouse or shepherd's in different ways.

You know, how can I shepherd my kids, how can I shepherd my grandkids, and all this through this transition of this through this stage of my life. And we've talked about, you know, financial records, and clearly the documents. But, you know, one of the things is that our kids and our family members are going to want to go into denial, right? Well, absolutely. And they're going to start saying, denial is there to protect you from loss put there by God.

And it's a defense mechanism. I would say that when we bring this subject up, many of the clients that are coming in to see me, and we're visiting this, when I bring the subject up, they're revisiting when this happened to their parents. And it, you know, it obviously didn't go very well, because this is an awful time.

And so people just shut down. And I think that, and they're not really in a good place to make good decisions. And if there's ever a time that you really need to make good decisions, you need to invite God into the situation through prayer is, it's when one of your parents or you yourself, your kids making the decisions, and your spouse is you just had a stroke, or you just had something and you're down, and they need the emotional guidance to make good decisions. One of those decisions is going to be like, where is dad going to be cared for? If we're going to care for him at home, and we're going to provide the care, that's just not a reasonable thing to do. It sounds reasonable. And I don't really want to take that away as an option, because certainly many people provide care to their parents or their spouse in a very loving way, but you certainly don't want them doing that just because you don't have the money, or you don't want to spend the money.

And so it becomes a financial thing, and it's a physical thing. I mean, a person that's needing care, they need a whole range of care, and if they live by themselves, they need to be brought to doctor's appointments, and they need to be brought out to socialization, or socialization needs to be brought into them, and there's a whole range of professional services, and there's a certain part of this that's just better hired out. So I don't want to get into teaching so much about all of that, because we want to stay on point here where we're talking about the emotional, physical, spiritual, and financial consequences to the family, and these are all made much, much better by having a plan.

And I love what you say in your video, that frank discussions with your family about these are what I want, so that they know, well, you've had a talk with the, this is, I know it's not the easiest thing to talk about, but it's something that needs to be talked about and people know, okay, well dad, this is what dad wanted, this is what dad told us he wanted, and it gives you a sense of, you know, a chance to shepherd your family before you, you know, actually are not in a position to shepherd them. What I'm going to tell you is that, you know, I've been through, I was trying to put a number on it, because I probably should have counted them, but let's say a minimum of a hundred of these situations that we've just been talking about. You know, two of them were right in my own family, so, you know, that leaves 98 that were with other families, but I'm sure it's probably larger than that, but let's just say a lot of situations, I've been in the business 44 years, and so I have some clients that have gone all through the, they were in their 60s and then they're in their 80s and then they needed care and, you know, I met their kids all along.

A lot of these situations are, I'm being called in by a new client, but my new client is the person in their 60s or 50s, and I'm being called in because their parent is in one of the situations. So now I have a relationship with one of the siblings. I don't know the other two, and then they sit down and they start describing their brother and their sister and then their other sister, and, you know, that's really interesting, you know, and then what I kind of have some fun doing is after I listen to all that and ask questions, then I say, so what is your brother, the one you were just talking about?

I always put names, what is your brother, Joe, what does he think about you? And then I shut up, and, you know, it's not really nice to do that, but it just is kind of what I need because I'm just getting ready to go into a hornet's nest here, and who I'm most concerned about and God wants me most concerned about is this lady's mother, my parent's mother, and my client, and all the brothers. I mean, I'm concerned for everybody, and God wants me there to try to make some good decisions to make mom finish well when I'm walking right into the crisis meeting these people, and my point is that I want to make is that many of these people do not even have a clue what home healthcare is.

They just don't know what it is, and then they certainly, since they don't know what it is, they maybe can take a guess, oh yeah, isn't that the something that I see? Well maybe, but, you know, like who to call, what it costs, who's going to pay for it, what the people do, how they differ from the physical therapy and the speech therapy and the respiratory therapy, and the families and people, they don't know about all this stuff, and we do, so when I'm talking about a plan, it's actually easy for us to do the financial part. That's why so many people specialize in that, and it's easy for the people. We can just talk numbers and money and deposits and premiums and benefits, and, you know, we just get stuck in this whole number solving a math problem.

That's really safe. It's not emotional, and that takes us away from what do we really need to talk about, is these people, you know, if 20 years ago they'd accepted the reality of this and the possibility of this and consulted a professional like me, then we can sit down and lay it all out for them and try to make some of these decisions while mom's of sound mind. We can look at her money, project what it's going to be, decide how we're going to pay for it and, you know, have the financial taken care of, even if that's using her own resources.

We can decide about the physicals. You can put her wishes. No, I want to stay home if it's any way possible, and some people say, no, I want to go to that assisted living. My friend's over there, and that place is nice.

She's happy there. I mean, and to know that. And I would say, you know, now having done it, I haven't done it yet on the emotional and spiritual level, which I will do, but your children, my children, certainly, they were like, we don't want to talk about that. I was like, okay, just so you'll know, because they're witnessing, or have witnessed, what we went through with my father and what I'm going through with my mother-in-law. And so, you know, they're seeing something, they're seeing the movie kind of in action, and I'm like, okay, here's what your mother and I, this is what our thing, you know, here's kind of what we're planning, and here's what this looks like financially, and here's who's been made power of attorney, and here's what, you know, and so I didn't get any pushback from my kids on that. None whatsoever.

In fact, it seemed like those were good things. But you know, there's more to the puzzle as we're coming in for a landing here. I've got a friend of mine, his mother's 79 years old. She's been just, they hadn't done any planning for this. Father's deceased. Mother's been through some financial difficulties where she basically had some money scammed from her, but anyhow, he's kind of gotten through all that, and he consulted me, really, for some help with the scammers and the creditors. Then we got down to, you know, she's got like, I don't know, $80,000 left. She sold her house, and she's living in a rented place. She's happy, close to her church.

It's not real expensive, small town in South Carolina. She's got this money, and so we're protecting that, so she doesn't lose that. But I started talking to him about, you know, if your mom goes down, and I've been dealing with her, she's sharp now, but if she has something, which could happen like any time at 79, 80, 81, 82, she isn't gonna wanna go to a facility, and she's got a good income because she's a retired teacher, and she's got a pension from dad and a good social security check. She's got a good income, not a lot of assets, but I said, you got a problem, buddy. You live in a different town than her, and your sister lives in a different town, and we started talking about this, and I just put him in the situation, and then we set her up with the home healthcare piece of the same policy that you bought it, a smaller benefit because it was more expensive at 79, but 750 bucks a week for 52 weeks paid as an indemnity for home healthcare, about 30, $40,000 worth of benefits, and that cost her about 150 bucks a month, and we signed her up the issues immediately.

That's all they talk about. We're putting the other assets into a whole life policy and a single premium whole life. Basically we're stashing the money so that it's there if we wanna get to it, but creditors can't get at it, and it'll go right to her kids if she passes, so we're simplifying things, and those are much larger issues, but all they wanna talk about is how happy they are knowing they got that home healthcare insurance, that if something happens, he's gonna call me, and we can get a home healthcare agency out there, and she can stay home for a whole year based on that money they're sending.

Yeah, which I can tell you, that movie plays out financially. It's gonna be hard on your kids, and so what an opportunity, I think, as we pray about finishing well. We ran out of time, as always, but it's definitely worth praying about for your family.

What does that transition really, really look like? And again, this show is brought to you by Cardinal Guide, so Hans' book, The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning for Living in Retirement is all there at cardinalguide.com, really help you along the way you plan for this with your family to finish well. Thank you, Hans.

Thank you. We hope you enjoyed Finishing Well, brought to you by cardinalguide.com. Visit cardinalguide.com for free downloads of this show or previous shows on topics such as social security, Medicare, IRAs, long-term care, life insurance, investments, and taxes, as well as Hans' bestselling book, The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning for and Living in Retirement, and the workbook. Once again, for dozens of free resources, past shows, or to get Hans' book, go to cardinalguide.com. If you have a question, comment, or suggestion for future shows, click on the Finishing Well radio show on the website and send us a word. Once again, that's cardinalguide.com, cardinalguide.com. This is the Truth Network.