Chronic care could happen at any time. Being a caregiver for one or both of your parents can be difficult. Especially if kids are fighting with nurses and each other over the inheritance money.
So planning in advance is the answer. The question is how do you go about doing that?
There are three ways to pay for elder care. You could be rich, insured, or poor. There is no wrong answer here, it’s just figuring out which is the best option.
Listen now to find out the 3 ways to take care of your parents’ elder care
Show highlights include:
- Why retiring at a nursing home in Texas lets you keep your retirement account (and spend time with friendly people) ([4:35])
- How having a partnership qualified long-term healthcare insurance policy covers your parent elder care (even if they are perfectly healthy) ([6:01])
- Why being broke in Texas gets you great long-term chronic care ([8:17])
- The counterintuitive reason keeping your wealth lets you use government health programs ([8:50])
Transcript:
Now kids are fighting, not only fighting with this nurse, but fighting with each other. Nobody wants that situation.
Do you want a wealthy retirement without worrying about money? Do welcome to the Retire In Texas Podcast, where you will discover how to enjoy your faith, your family, and your freedom in the state of Texas. And now here’s your host, financial advisor, author, and all around good Texan, Darryl Lyons.
([00:31]): Hey, this is Darryl Lyons. Welcome to the retire in Texas podcast. I’m the co-founder of PAX financial group in San Antonio, Texas, and PAX is the sponsor of this program. So visit PAX financial group.com. Before I get started, I need to share the legal disclosure. This material contains general information only and is not intended to provide specific investment tax or legal advice. Visit PAX financial group.com. Investment advisory services offered through PAX financial group, LLC. Okay. Today’s show is kind of sombering, but it’s very important. I want to make sure we talk about elder care in Texas. We had a client recently whose father passed away unexpectedly in June. And the biggest challenge is she’s juggling life with kids and family and siblings, even taking care of her own health. But the problem is his dad was the caretaker for mom who has advanced dementia. So who’s going to take care of mom now.
([01:19]): And the problem is, is that you’ve got siblings involved. So they’re pointing fingers. I’ll take care of mom. I’ll do you take care of mom who pays for what? I mean, it’s a real challenge and this is happening all of the time. It’s the sandwich generation and we’re seeing it over and over again. Nurses are quitting. Medicare is getting more restrictive options are not getting better, but those that plan will be treated well. And those that don’t will be neglected as much as I hate to say that. And so the topic of this show is really focused on chronic care. And we often think about aging is the so, time to think about chronic care, but it could happen anytime, anyone strokes or accidents, and there’s different types of facilities that serve people who need chronic care, the inability E-bay dress, toilet transfer, bowel movements, cognitive issues.
([02:05]): You can get in-home care, hourly, respite care, independent living, hospice assisted living, nursing, home care. There are all different types of care to support you, your parents or your family, the grandparents we’ll talk about various types of care, mainly leaning into the nursing home care. Now you can break that down a little further and say semi-private room or private room. And it does vary. The cost varies across Texas for private home nursing home care. For example, El Paso’s $93,000 a year for nursing home care, private room. Houston’s 91,000 a year. Austin’s 84,000 San Antonio is 80,000. Dallas is 80,000 a year or private room nursing home. This stuff is expensive. I had a client who’s a big hat, all cattle kind of guy, big bell, buckle boots, Shaw, and the jaw, all kinds of that. He’s pure Texas. And he told me when I talk about this stuff, right, I’ve got to, I’m a financial advisor.
([02:58]): I got to talk about your health care. And I said, let’s talk about that. Let’s plan for it. He says, I’m not going to plan for that. Just put me on the pastor, shoot me. I’ll give you the gun. That’s what I said. I go, well, I mean, that’s, that’s not something that we’re going to do. I mean, that’s not how it works. I mean, by the time you need care, you’re not really in a position of authority anymore. Unfortunately, that’s why we got a plan in advance. And if you still have life in your lungs and you need care because you can’t transfer, that doesn’t mean life is ending. It just is a new chapter. So we gotta surround parents and grandparents, people. We love with a community of people who can care for them, who can serve them, who could love them. And that happens in Texas very well, but it can happen all across the world.
([03:47]): If you’re intentional about it. For example, this lady in Ireland, she’s 79 years old and she decided one night she was going to sneak out of the nursing home and get some fresh air. Actually, she got some fresh ink. This lady named Sadie thought 80 was the new 20. She went and got a tattoo. She got her heart or a heart on her arm. And she said, the only thing I was disappointed in was that it didn’t hurt more. Now I’m gonna put this link in the video, but there’s a video of a nursing home community in Ohio that shot like an MTV clip of Beastie boys fight for your right to party with all the nursing home residents. It was hilarious and you can’t help, but watch and smile. That’s the type of life that we want to live, surrounded by people who still breath in their lungs that care.
([04:34]): And there’s a community. Now there’s three ways to pay for this stuff. You can be rich, you can be insured or you can be poor. And I use that just to be straightforward with you. If you’re rich, I just told you that in El Paso, it’s 93,000, let’s round it up to a hundred thousand average cares, three years as $300,000 a year or $300,000 total, let’s say that you’ll need for chronic care. I’ll do it again. A hundred thousand per year. Cause I rounded it up times, three years. That’s the average stay in a nursing home more or less 300,000 is what you’ll need. So if you’re rich, you just have to look at your plan and say, okay, where’s that 300,000 come from. And if you run the numbers, you have to inflate this stuff at about a 6% inflation rate. But if you say, okay, I’m 65.
([05:17]): Now it’s 300,000 today at a 6% inflation rate, it’ll be, I don’t know, I’m making this up 1.5 million. If I spend 1.5 million on my nursing home care, will I still be able to accomplish my life goals, not running out of money and leaving a legacy. And if that’s the case, then you’re good. You can cover it. You can be rich. You can cover it. And that’s okay. That’s perfectly okay. And I hope that’s a consideration. And frankly, Texas is a good place to do that because if you look at Texas, Texas is the 50th very bottom in terms of cost of nursing home care. That’s for private rooms about for semi-private rooms. We’re still near the bottom at 43 out of all states. So if you come to Texas and you want to pay for it out of Texas is a good place. The costs are low and the people are friendly.
([06:00]): It’s perfect. Now you can also be insured. Now that means buying a long-term care insurance policy. And I’ve been doing this awhile now. In fact, my first long-term care insurance policy was about 20 years ago. I go to this guy’s house again. I was doing kind of doing house calls cause I was hustling. I was trying to find clients. I go to his house and this is a guy who was a railroad executive and he’s watching, CNBC’s done retired by now. And I’m trying to pitch him that I know investments better than him and he’s not buying. And he knows I’m a rookie more or less, but he liked me and I was thankful and he decided I’ll buy a long-term care insurance policy from you. And so I sold it to him. It was probably my first one. I was just figuring it out.
([06:35]): And I insured him and his wife. And about a month later, his wife got dementia and that insurance company paid and he called me later and said, man, you couldn’t have earned me a better rate of return. You really took care of my family. He was really, really appreciative, really appreciative, made my day. Really gave me a little hope for my role. Now, you know, you get beat up as a financial advisor when you’re first starting out a lot of nos, right? And so just to be able to serve somebody, well, it left a mark because now I always talk about long-term care insurance. I always talk about how are we going to take care of it? I don’t know if you need it or not, but how are we going to cover this piece? And Texas is really cool because if you buy a long-term care insurance policy in Texas, the state of Texas will match you with a what’s called a partnership program.
([07:17]): Very cool. So suppose again, go back to, let’s say you buy an insurance policy and it has $300,000 worth of coverage. And you can use this as a nursing home. The state of Texas will match you another 300,000 in coverage before you have to spend your own money and that’s called a state partnership program. So if you’re going to get long-term care insurance, make sure it’s partnership qualified, not difficult to do, but if your advisor, your agent’s not really smart about it, they might skip over that. Make sure that if you buy Texas insurance policy for long-term care, it is a partnership qualified program. Now you can also get some hybrid products with life insurance annuities. I’m having a hard time with that. A lot of them are confusing and high costs, but products adapt and evolve over time based on consumer demands. So maybe they’re getting better and maybe something will come out that I like.
([08:03]): I just haven’t seen it yet where it’s a kind of this hybrid Swiss army knife of life insurance annuities, and long-term care all wrapped in one. I just haven’t seen it exactly the way I would like it. But now that could change, but those are out there too. So you can be rich. You can be insured or you can be poor. Now I say that again, tongue in cheek. But what I mean by that is that you’ve spent down all your assets. And now you’re relying on the state of Texas to pay the long-term care insurance bill or not insurance, but long-term care. Bill nursing, home bill, and that’s called Medicaid. Now don’t get that confused with Medicare, Medicare covers your hospital needs where you have a cold or you break your arm. Medicaid is a state federal program that covers chronic needs, inability to eat.
([08:47]): They dress toilet transfer bowel movements, but to get Medicaid, you’ve got to spend down all your assets. You can’t have more than 2000 bucks in the bank and you can’t have more than about 2300 in income. If you do, you don’t qualify for Medicaid. You going to say, well, okay, well great. Then I’ll just, that’s no big deal. I’ve got a lot of assets, a lot of cash. I’ll just shift assets to my kids. Yes, there’s a five-year look back period. It used to be three. Now it’s five. And I haven’t heard this before. It’s kind of because I’ve never seen somebody go to jail for it, but I’ve heard it’s very punitive. Even a felony to try to trick the Medicaid system. Now you can find an attorney that can set up some trust. [inaudible] Trust beyond the scope of this conversation. But if you can plan five years or beyond, I think working with an advisor and attorney to look at what those options are, I think it’s very possible to get Medicaid.
([09:34]): Tennessee has something called Medicare and there’s main care. And there’s Medi-Cal, there’s different states have different programs, but Texas has Medicaid. Again, I say this over and over again, but those that plan for this stuff are going to be treated well. But those that don’t plan will be neglected. And I hate to say that, but that’s so true. So get your wills done. Think about this. It’s the power of attorney done power of attorney for healthcare. Talk with your families, get the families involved and the kids can fight over this stuff. I there’s a very rich guy here in town, lots of money, lots of houses, all that stuff. He goes to nursing home. Kids are just running their lives around. And then all of a sudden this old rich guy in a nursing home meets this hot nurse. This hot nurse knows he’s got money and they ended up getting married.
([10:12]): The inheritance goes to this hot nurse. Now kids are fighting not only fighting with this nurse, but fighting with each other. Nobody wants that situation. You don’t want to work your whole life to leave a legacy and then leave it in the last five years full of chaos or kids are mad at each other over, who’s going to pay what bill. This is not how it’s supposed to work. Legacy is so important and we are living so longer and we’re an aging population. 93% of adult children surveyed said that if their parents just had a plan, not insurance, not cash, just some type of plan. It would reassure them. In other words, it’d give them the peace, but their life is not going to be out of control. The next few years, nurses are quitting. Medicare is more restrictive options are not getting better, saying it over and over again. There’s the plan there’ll be treated well, but those that don’t want to neglect it. Okay. Visit PAX financial group.com. We’ve got an eBook on their retire and Texas hope. This was helpful for you today. Be thinking about this a little bit more, and remember you think different than you think long-term.
This is ThePodcastFactory.com.
References:
*https://nypost.com/2015/07/21/badass-grandma-sneaks-out-of-senior-center-to-get-tattoo/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ6ZrJUNQG4
https://www.genworth.com/aging-and-you/finances/cost-of-care.html
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