The Long View Of Long Term Care

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Now, let's get started with Finishing Well. Oh, welcome to Finishing Well, with certified financial planner, Hans Scheil and Tom Griffith. And very fun today, we have the long view of long-term care, which is set up by a video that actually Hans and Tom did that is 90 minutes. And so, it's if you want to essentially a college course in long-term care that's now available at YouTube, but what, you know, we want to take some of the highlights of that because it seems like really, really some solid content that we want to provide you with on that subject.

And so, you know, the way that the video starts out and the way we're going to start out today actually is both Hans and Tom have really amazing stories about how long-term care, you know, became a big issue in their own lives. And I love, is it Evelyn Carter that you had talked about, Hans? Was that her name? Rosalyn. Rosalyn Carter, sorry. Jimmy Carter's wife.

Right. And the quote was, there are four kinds of people in this world, people who apparently will be caregivers, people who have needed a caregiver. What were the other, I just remember that at the end, everybody kind of fits into the equation, right? Yeah, it was people who are caregivers, people who will need caregivers, people who will be caregivers, and now I can't even say it. Yeah, I was in the same boat.

I was in the same boat. So, you know, always we try to look at, you know, what might the Bible say? And I love the idea that's in Deuteronomy, but Jesus mentions it several times as well, that it takes the testimonies of two witnesses in order to, you know, begin to give you something that would be, you know, considered the truth or something that could happen legally in court. It requires a testimony of two witnesses, which is often even used in our own court systems. And I don't know if you've ever given any thought to it, but God gave you, in your ability to receive information about the way that you sensed the world around you, he gave you two witnesses and that you have two eyes, two nose, two nose, I mean, two nostrils in your nose, you have two ears, two hands, and your tongue, you actually have two nostrils and a tongue all to help you get that sense of taste. And you may say, why?

Well, interestingly, if you think about it, because you're, if you cover up one eye and you try to catch a ball that somebody throws at you, you don't have any depth of perception. And so, and what we're going to try to offer up today as far as long-term care is to give you some true testimonies. Like this is, this is what happened in Tom's life.

This is what happened in Hans's life in order to show, you know, what an advantage it is to have this, this type of policy. And so in the video, I believe it was Tom that went first, wasn't it? And so Tom, you want to share your story?

Sure. And so, you know, a lot of people's experience with long-term care generally is with family, you know, it's parents, it's loved ones, spouses. For me, it was actually myself. I'm young. You probably, if you don't know me, I'm 31. So I'm much younger than you would think this, but back in 2018, I woke up one day and couldn't move my legs at all. I mean, there's a much longer story than how we got there, but you know, the short of it is, I was in the hospital for about a month and was in a wheelchair for the next three months. They, as part of all that, they diagnosed with me with an autoimmune disease. Fortunately, I've recovered well. I'm getting treatment now. So I mean, it hasn't ended up being a super long-term event, but I got to witness it firsthand, really the effects that it had one on me clearly, but also more importantly, my family. One of the things that we point out in the video, and we have a document that Jen Worth had put a study together, was how the caregiving really impacts families.

And personally, that was my experience, right? I mean, I was sick. I couldn't walk. I was the one needing care, but in a way, it was almost my wife that had to take on a lot of the work.

I mean, she's the one trying to keep the house running. We had an eight-month-old son at the time. She's having to take care of him, take care of me, you know, get me around the doctor's appointments, MRIs, and all the physical therapy and all of that stuff.

And the stress that it really put onto her, she ended up getting sick because of that. And we tell people all the time, but I've witnessed it firsthand what that can look like. It's not a good situation. And it's the family members that end up bearing the brunt of this. When we relate this back to a lot of the clients that we talk with, you know, it's normally the spouse is the first line of defense when something happens, if there is a spouse around.

And they're going to be similar age, you know, most likely. My wife was young and healthy and strong. I mean, she physically couldn't do the things that she needed to do. I mean, there's a somewhat comical story now. It was not real funny at the time, but I was in the hospital, had been about a week, you know, started, you know, getting a little bit better, but still couldn't walk very well. And I really want to take a shower. And so we made the great decision that we need to need to get to the shower. And I told her, I think I can make it. You have the walker here and you're here to help. And we get about halfway there and realize there's no way I'm making it to here. So I'm sitting here, you know, barely dressed because I made the great decision that it'd be better to get undressed before we got to the shower. But so I'm sitting here half naked with my wife trying to help me.

She can't do this, having to call the nurse. I mean, it was a scene out of a movie, if you can think about it. But it wasn't funny at the time, right? It was scary.

I could have fallen and really gotten hurt. Fortunately I didn't, but that's the kind of stuff that you're really asking your family to take on if you're not willing to have these conversations and do some planning around that. So again, just personally, I've dealt with it. I've seen what it looks like.

It's not a pretty thing. And really you want to do this planning really more for your family more so than just yourself. Yeah, absolutely. And Hans, you really have quite a story.

Well, I do. And so this whole 90 minute video that we're encouraging you to watch maybe in parts and fast forward through the parts that you're not interested in was really Tom and I doing CE training, continuing education training for CPAs and lawyers. And so this just got opportunity kind of came to me and I thought, well, we need to do this.

And then we need to figure out a way to get some benefit for our viewers because I don't really think all these CPAs are going to call us up and ask for help. So as we're getting ready to do this, 90 minutes is a long time to fill with a training class of long-term care. So Tom and I just decided, and it was really Tom's suggestion, is you need to tell your story about your family. And then he got me going on that and we need to open with that. And then I turned it around on him and I said, yeah, and you need to tell your story as well.

So that's kind of how we got here. And in my family, I mean, my father, he passed away at about 72. And he was really sick most of the time in his retirement. And he had several mini strokes or TIAs, and then he finally had the big one. And I tried to sell him long-term care insurance, even offered to pay for it, for both he and my mother, because I just knew that, you know, this is going to fall on us.

And I knew that we would want to have him in the best facility. Anyhow, I fell on deaf ears. I mean, he just wasn't having any of that. And he was even in the insurance business. So which is, those are the hardest people to sell as your family members. And my father was somewhat fortunate that he passed away three months after the big stroke, or three or four months. And when I say somewhat fortunate, because he would have been a very difficult patient. And frankly, they didn't really have the money to pay for a long extended care. And my mother still being, of course, I would have, and my brothers and sisters would have coughed up the money.

But just the whole scenario, it worked out for him, and for all best for everybody that he passed along pretty quickly. And so right after he died, I'm trying to sell my mother long-term care insurance. And my sister is like objecting like you can't believe it. I mean, she is no way, you know, and she starts telling me all these things that she's read about it, and she was a nurse herself. I'll take care of her. And so long and short of it, I ended up selling it to my mom and paying for it myself. And actually showing her the check a few of the months just so that she had verification that I'm paying for this. And what was really funny is years later, when my mom had Alzheimer's, that same sister who is a nurse, was trying then to collect off of the policy, giving my mom care as a nurse. And then she was rather upset about that. But anyhow, so my mom lived for the 10 years that she had the disease. She lived independently for like five or six of them and lived a pretty good life, and probably was doing some things that it wasn't safe to do. But, and it was the sister, Margo, that was really in charge of my mom's care down in Florida.

And then, you know, we didn't, this just came on as a shock. My sister Margo passed away with an aneurysm. And they had to take my mother to the hospital and show her Margo, where she was still alive, I guess on machines, but just to show her what happened because my mom wasn't really capable of grasping the fact that she had just died. So now, we have my mother living independently, relying on my sister, who's now deceased, in 500, 700 miles from the closest child.

And my mother is insisting on staying there. So what we did as adult children is we each took a week. And we, we went down there through, there's four of us. And so we got through four weeks where we were there for a week, each one of us.

And we got into the second cycle. And then she decided, my mother decided to move up here to the Raleigh-Durham area. And so, you know, I could go through a whole story of, and I was glad to do it as a son, and so is my brother and my sisters. But it was very difficult, in fact, more difficult on us providing the care to my mother. My mother had long-term care insurance. So she went into a facility, very nice facility. But it was, it was just a very difficult thing, let's put it that way.

And I'm really glad that we planned for it. So really just wanted to share my story in this piece of it. Yeah, and I, you know, have my own story for sure. And I've told my story about my dad before many times, and certainly about my mother-in-law.

But I don't know that I've ever on this show talked about my personal story. So as I was listening to Tom's story, I went, oh my goodness, you know, I had an experience of this when I was young. And what I put my wife, who's actually seven years younger than me. And so when I was 41, I got lymphoma, stage three, and ended up needing all kinds of care through that and had chemotherapy. And guess who was doing that was my wife, who at the time, I guess, wasn't but about 33 years old. But that wasn't the worst part.

Perhaps it was, I don't know. But shortly after that, we went on a Jeep Jamboree to celebrate my last chemotherapy treatment. And I got crushed between two cars, which nearly severed my left leg. And I, like Tom, was in a wheelchair actually for two years as they tried to put my leg back together. And eventually, you know, got all that done. But we got to go to a break. And so when we come back, we got more of this just to give you a taste of, you know, what comes at you that you may not see coming in order to take care of your family. These are strong considerations. And so we remind you that the show is brought to you by Cardinal Guide, cardinalguide.com, where you got the seven worries tab, which one of which is long term care. You can find out all about that even the link to the show, the continuous education show 90 minutes on the YouTube channel.

And we will be right back with a lot more finishing well. Investment advisory services offered through Brookstone Capital Management LLC, abbreviated BCM, a registered investment advisor, BCM and Cardinal Advisors are independent of each other. Insurance products and services are not offered through BCM but are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed agents.

Cardinal Advisors is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Social Security Administration or any other government agency. Well, welcome back to Finishing Well with certified financial planners, Hans Scheil and Tom Griffith. And today we're taking the long view on long term care.

We're starting out with our own stories. And so when we left our hero, me, we were talking about, oh boy, I went through a serious issue in 1996. And I ended up essentially with my wife being my primary caregiver for about five years really.

By the time I got cleaned up from all the stuff that came into my life. And I never had put this together until I was actually just listening to Tom. But literally I provided my wife with what now I know must be PTSD from a constant being under the pressure of being my caregiver, which seems, you know, at this point in time, she was a fairly young woman. But then fast forward to then she was the caregiver for my father, and then she was the caregiver for her mother.

And all this has left some real stuff, you know, that just wouldn't have been necessary had all three of us had the care, you know, had somebody to help us with bathing and feeding and all those things that just obviously people that are caregivers are going to need. And so we're going to straighten up that quote now, right, Tom? Because you have it right.

I do. I have this quote that we attempted at the beginning of the show. But so Rosalind Carter, this was a quote that she gave on caregivers. And she said, there are only four kinds of people in the world, those that have been caregivers, those that are caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need caregivers. So this affects everybody. I mean, it does not take very long.

If you just went to someone on the street, they personally might not have been one of those, but they've known somebody that has needed some level of care. So this is important for everybody. There you go. And so Hans, what do we do about it? Okay, so back to the CE for the CPAs. Okay, so we've got 90 minutes of material that we just, by definition, need to fill. And, you know, they really wanted us to talk about taxes.

These are CPAs and the tax considerations. And I said, Well, Tom, we can't talk about that for 90 minutes. And I'm not going to open talking about it.

So now we need to tell them a little bit about long term care basics beforehand and just give them a sense of what it is and how it pays and why you want to buy it. And then, you know, if we just talk about that, that's boring. Let's put on the front end, the why.

I mean, why are we in here talking about this today? And that's what we just gave you plenty of is the beginning. So there were four parts to this video. The why care planning, number two, the long term care basics, number three, the tax considerations. And then number four, which we're really going to talk is, how do you fix this? What is the solution? You know, what are these taxes based on?

And so we profile nine different solutions. And they're all in the show notes. This has the longest show notes of any of our videos, probably 150 some pages. And they're attached to the video on YouTube. And they're on our website. So please don't print those too much paper to print.

But if you could download them and save them, you could scan through there. And you can look at an actual proposal for nine different policies that we would use for different reasons. And so the first one is just a traditional long term care policy, which a lot of people think that that's really all that we mean when we mean long term care insurance. And the second proposal is a hybrid long term care that you actually buy with IRA money.

And we've talked about this several times in the past. And several of our YouTube videos are profiling are profiling that policy. The third policy is a life insurance long term care policy, like the second one. But the difference being is you have to buy it with money that's after taxes. And it pays out as an indemnity benefit. So you actually get a check every month.

You don't have to send in receipts. So help me out here a little bit, Tom. So I'm just not reading down a list. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things and on that back to sort of that traditional policy, that's what most people think about of long term care. It's like insurance, it's like homeowners insurance, where you pay for it as you go. If you never need care, not everyone does, then there's no benefit left, nobody gets anything, you've just been covered from that risk. And so that's what most people consider long term care.

I think what the show notes do, what we've done in the video is really outlined several different other options. Some of the policies and more often the policies we were selling now are these asset based policies, which fall under a couple of different categories, but they're all a little different. Some can use IRA money, like Hans was saying, some can use money that's already been taxed and have different benefits there. But those are the policies that we're most often selling today. And the nice thing about all of those types of policies is you don't have or if you don't need care, there's a death benefit that's going to go to your heirs. It's either going to go to your spouse if it's a single policy.

Some of these are joint policies, so that will go to your kids or whoever the beneficiaries are. But again, if you've never looked at those policies, we've done other shows on that, definitely consider those. Some of the other ones that were listed that we did in the show were some different types of annuities that provide long term care benefits.

And there's, again, a spectrum of how the policy designs are. One of the newer policies that we have currently started selling, they just came out with it the last year or so, is there is still an underwriting component, but everyone can buy some version of this policy. So even if you have a very serious sickness, you would be able to qualify. And so some people, one of the objections we'll get when we bring up this long term care planning is, I'm not going to qualify, I know this, I'm sick, I've been down this road. Well, we have one that even if you've been turned down for other coverage, even if you think you just had something serious happen in the last six months or so, this policy is available. Now, you get better benefits if you're healthy than versus sick, but it's still worth considering.

And so there's lots of ways, lots of strategies that we can use to plan for this. So if you've considered it and maybe have had a bad experience with applying for one and getting turned down or something like that, there are options available. So when people come into us, or we're doing financial planning, and we're covering the subject of long term care, we certainly don't explain nine policies to them. I mean, most of the time we have a discussion, and we find out what they already know about traditional long term care, which is the first policy. And then we talk to them about this hybrid life long term care insurance, which really involves taking some of your retirement money, or taking some of your savings and plopping it down on a policy that's going to pay out much more if you need long term care. And if you don't need long term care, then it's going to pay out to your heirs more money than you stuck into it.

So it's a, you know, it's a very popular way to take care of the, take care of the risk. But a lot of people, not a lot of people, but some people don't qualify for either one of these kinds of insurance. Too many health questions, they got too much of a condition. And it's usually people's health that drives us in to the series of the rest of the policies.

Okay. And so if you've got a health condition that you think prevents you from buying long term care insurance, not with us. I mean, we actually have more than the one option you were just talking about, Tom. Because, and we've talked about some of them on a show where we have a couple come in and one of them gets turned down for this regular long term care insurance, the other one gets accepted. And now we've got a problem, because we got to make sure the one that got accepted keeps the policy.

And the only way we're going to be able to do that is to show an alternative for the person that got turned down. And we've got these annuities that are really set up for retirement income that have a doubling effect on the income. I don't really want to get into the details, but we can put those on people with any health condition. And then we have this new product that we just talked about, we went over it a little bit on the, in the video for the CPAs.

And, you know, it's called Bridge. And it, you know, 100% of the people that apply for it get it, they get different levels of benefits based upon how they perform in an underwriting, or a video thing that they do a zoom call, and they ask you some memory questions. And so the whole purpose of going over nine policies was to show that we have something for everyone. And I know we went over the short term care there in the show notes, show notes, the short term care. I have that policy myself for the front end of a claim, my wife and me, and I know that's the one Robbie has. So you want to talk about that a little bit, Robbie?

Oh, sure. Yeah, I mean, because, you know, that was part of, because of my health conditions, numerous, and the limited budget, but yet I still obviously, under the circumstance, I want to make sure I protect my family, both my kids and my wife, right? And so these policies, I forget the word that you used, but you know, I have one for Tammy and for me, that just pay out. Is it indemnity?

Is that the word? Yes, it's an indemnity and it pays out one year, if you're in a facility, and it'll pay out one year at home. And those are separate benefits. So, you know, in other words, you could be home and collecting from this thing for 52 weeks. And then you will not have used a penny of your facility care benefit, then you could go to an assisted living or a nursing home. And then you have a whole another 360 days of benefit there. So obviously, your condition might not cooperate with the one year at home and the one year in a facility. But in effect, it conceivably could be a two year benefit policy. And in many situations, it's going to be paying you more than you need.

So you could extend it out longer than the one year thing anyhow by just banking the extra money they pay as an indemnity. I hate we've run out of time again, but we got to remind you that the show is brought to you by cardinalguide.com. You go to that website, and obviously you can see how to connect with Hans or Tom. And you've got the Seven Worries tab, which certainly has long term care, where you can get the 90 minute video. The show notes for the 90 minute video are in the course.

There's also Hans's book, The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning for and Living a Time and has all those involved in it. So we just want to thank you so much for listening. And thank you, Hans. Thank you, Tom. God bless you.

Thank you. The opinions expressed by Hans Shile and guests on this show are their own and do not reflect the opinions of this radio station. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable, although it should not be relied upon as such.

Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated are not guaranteed. Past performance cannot be used as an indicator to determine future results. Any strategies mentioned may not be suitable for everyone. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for you. Before acting on any information mentioned, please consult with a qualified tax or investment advisor to determine if it's suitable for your specific situation.

Finishing Whale is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject covered. Investment Advisory Services offered through Brookstone Capital Management LLC, abbreviated BCM, a registered investment advisor. BCM and Cardinal Advisors are independent of each other.

Insurance products and services are not offered through BCM but are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed agents. Cardinal Advisors is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Social Security Administration or any other government agency. We hope you enjoyed Finishing Whale 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' best-selling 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 Whale radio show on the website and send us a word. Once again, that's cardinalguide.com. Cardinalguide.com. This is the Truth Network.