Planning Ahead For Long Term Care Costs, Part 1

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

The following podcast is by Mr Jim Koewler, elder law and special needs attorney, helping and protecting those who need long term care, and welcome everyone to the answers for elder’s podcast network. There’s a lot of things going on with families as we start a new we’ve been around. Maybe I an older adult to love, one that maybe showing signs that it’s time to start planning for their long term care and they’re aging and maybe the step next steps in their aging journey. And we are very honored today to have back our wonderful Jim Koewler from the Koewler Law Firm. And Jim, welcome back. Thank you. Honored maybe a strong term, but I’ll take it with that. Hi, Hey, I always feel that way. And the other thing that I am really excited about for those of you that are listening to this podcast, maybe on apple or spotify or Google or wherever you are, please check this podcast out on youtube because there is a powerpoint presentation that is going along with this. So we want to make sure that you get all the top information. And so, Jim, I’m going to ask you first kind of explain for those of you. They may be driving in their vehicles or their cars or whatever. They’re not able to do that. But so if you can, maybe in certain situations I will ask you to explain what you’re showing everyone so that people know. But the point of the matter being obviously they we’re going to try to keep this as much verbal as possible. As for those that are listening, we would love to have you listen along. But the other thing is obviously please check out answers for elders on Youtube, and we will be popping that up on Youtube very soon. So Anyway, Jim, welcome to the show and wow, this is a big topic. So I’m going to just turn the stage over to you and started asking questions. So those of you who are who are listening but not viewing, I’m a lawyer. Don’t expect a whole lot of pictures on here. So if all you do is listen, then that’s fine, but if you want to check out and follow along with the slides, but they are it’s basically just an outline reduced a powerpoint slides. So right, great pie charts or anything. I’m not that creative. Okay, today we are talking about helping our older adult and this is the powerpoint is written for social workers. This is a training I use for lunch and learns for social workers. I’ve got a dozen or some of them. This is one of them that’s quite popular, but it’s also very good for the general public. But the social worker board in Ohio is very fussy about their titles, so this is a Social Worker Board compliant title. So helping older adult clients plan ahead for long term care costs and actually hit. This is my original Tagne I still use it protecting us in Hers Life Savings, but I’ve also added protecting seniors and people with special needs because I started to do more special needs work as well. Lots more of that. Okay, so the kind of rocky and Bullwick a moment. Here we have a subtitle helping people who are worried about long term care costs in the future. That’s what I’m talking about with preplanning. People need care now. Can Get a Medicai asset protection plan, but it’s at least among other law attorneys, at least those with whom I interact in Ohio, we call that a crisis plan. Someone needs care now. Okay, planning ahead, you’re trying to have things done in advance of needing care, and for part of these you want to be five years and dance of meeting care. Now we don’t have a crust of ball. We don’t know when we’re on to need care. Okay, but why? You’re still healthy or our parents are still healthy. That’s when we can talk about free planning. So let’s dive in. The goal that we’re talking about today is protection of someone’s assets from long term care costs in the future. Yeah, they’re worried about it. They want to do something about it, or the at least they’re thinking about doing something about it, and we talked about that in here. So that’s our goal, not protecting part of what they’ve got because they need care right now. Crisis Plan there. Okay, this is a tree planning. What can we set aside? How can we protect things? I then so the meaning of the goal. To most people with whom I talk, it means with their planning ahead, they want to not be a burden to their children. Many of them want to leave some financial legacy. That I’m want the cost of long term care to wipe them out financially. Someone to use the military benefits or their spouses military benefits. I want to make darn sure they’re ready to use those and may they’ve been earned. Yeah, and they and many don’t even know that they’re available. This is the crazy thing. Oh Yeah, it is tragic and you and I will have a podcast or two or three about the benefits at some point in the future because the a pension program most of caught. Aid Attendance is very, very important, but it does require now under some rules that were instituted in two thousand and eighteen that may or may not be legal under the law. We have found the right plaintiff to fight there was rule. Yet weathy elder law community who looks those rules and says I don’t think there’s illegal, but we start got to find the right person to take the court to knock them down. Okay, so preplanning is a bigger deal there than it used to be. And then many people just I paid my taxes, I want some of that back. I want to see the benefit of the money I paid to the government and some people don’t. But there you know, that’s the attitude to some people and that’s fine. So, yeah, underlying this in my view. Okay, I’m playing junior psychologist here and it’s worth all the money. My psychology is worth all the money you’re paying for it nothing. But many people, I think, feel that their life savings gives them a some sense of accomplishment. They’ve done something, they’ve contributed to the greater society, the greater economy, and they got rewarded for it. However bigger small that might be, it’s theirs. They earned it, okay, and some people preservation of the life savings is a present, at least some of it anyway, is a preservation of their identity, some of who they are. They earned that money by being something, being an auto mechanic, being an architect, being a teacher, being a member of the military. Okay, that is part of who they are. But after retirement the badge of who they are only shows up in their life savings or their pension. So if it goes away, if their life savings goes away because of long term care costs, I’ve seen this, and it’s not everybody, but I’ve seen this enough times that I think they lose a sense of who they are, or at least who they thought they were, and that’s that’s a bad feeling. Well, and what you’re saying is so valued because absolutely true. It’s like when one of the things that I look back at my father, my father, you know, he always had stuff going on. You know, he was a dealmaker. You know, he even at the very end of his life, in his s, he bought a business storage park, you know, and he he had rents and things going on. Even though he was, you know, I mean in his s, he still had that sense of purpose, I guess, is what we’re talking about. And when that goes away, we see a lot, especially in men, where they just sit and watch tv all day because they just they don’t have any sort of purpose in life and that can be so detrimental down the road. And so so grateful that you brought that up. Yeah, and even if they even if they do sit from the TV now. I wish they didn’t, but if that’s what they do, they still have, if they have some of their life savings, they can say that’s there because right such and so early. Correct, there’s an now I’ve earned my retirement. I’ve ruined the right to sit in front of the TV and watch sports all day. Fine, okay, you know, if you want to watch European Lacrosse at for in the morning, go for it. Exactly you know, fine, but if some of your life savings is there is proof that there was something you did. Yeah, you earned the right not have to do it anymore, but you were there, you were a contributing member of the economy and that’s part of who you are. That’s part of who all of us are. They know, I’m hoping that when I retire, should that ever happen, or when I die at my desk, people remember me as an node law attorney who cared about his clients and who cared about even those who needed help them weren’t my clients. Yeah, that’s the legacy I hope to leave, because she was telling going to be much of a life savings. There are three basic strategies to planning ahead. Do nothing, and by default that’s the one that anyone who doesn’t think about it falls into, which it’s always true. Right, if you got three choices of when I was, do nothing. Well, that’s the default and it’s a it’s a the least amount of uncomfortableness to do nothing. Oh yeah, it definitely plays into people’s denial that they will ever need long term care. Yeah, and it’s as we make a dressing your aging. Oh, denial is a very powerful drug. Opium’s got nothing on denial. True, and that’s okay. You know, if if people worry about long term care in their future, it impacts their quality of life now. So as much as denial may not be a good thing, maybe part of it’s a good thing, because we aren’t, with face of wrong, going to die and we all know people who are living their lives knowing that they’re going to die and their bummers to be around. Okay. Well, somebody who’s always heard about the long term caracous in the future is probably going to be a bummer to be around. So denial may not be the worst of things, but for those who have escaped denial or been trapped by, you know, not being able to do anymore whatever, however you got there. The other two things you can do to plan ahead, or at least to consider when planning ahead, are to buy insurance in some form for long term care, and there are a couple of ways to do that. We’ll talk about that. Or you can give assets away now, while you’re still healthy and hoping to beat that five year period, the five year look back. WHAT MEDICA? Okay, so the first question when considering this, whether to do anything to preplan is how worried are you? And I’m going to talk to you and talk about your long term care now. Ok I’m not from my uses. I’m talking about everyone out every audience exactly. I think, to you individually and your thoughts about your long term care. And if you are worried about your parents or your aunt, your uncle, your grandparents, whatever, please consider their point of view in this, because this is a personal choice. Okay, there is no one best answer for everyone, okay, okay, so the level of worry about long term care. If you’re worried about long term care in your future, then you ought to look really hard at buying insurance or doing some gifting, giving things away now. If you’re not worried about it, then fine, do nothing. I’m talking about your current mental state and preserving that. Or if your current mental state is worried, then let’s see we can do to make the worry go away. Being in a mental state of not worried is preferable to being in a mental state of worried. Okay, so if you’re not worried, don’t let me blow you up, okay, because I I’m not one of those that was to scare you into taking action just by playing on your fear. Okay, there’s a whole sales method about circles around that, and I just for law firms or over law or anything. It’s called the Sandler methods, a and Dli are, and every time I see here’s somebody talking about how bad things can get and I’ve got the solution. I know they were trained in the Sandler method. I was trained in the Sandler Sales Institute and I got invited to one and I lack in my day. No, this is not my stick, you know. No, I knew where there were coming from, but that’s now. I didn’t didn’t like that approach and that’s not who I am. Yeah, so these the criteria we’re going to use to compare these three different strategies. How much does it cost implement the strategy? Is there added risk, financial risk here? Okay, we’re not talking about added risk of needing long term care. It’s added risk to the money. Okay, now, I’m a lawyer. You don’t me talking to you about how healthy and how you can get healthier or anything like that. Okay, I didn’t go to MED school. Thought about it to the medical college admissions test. Skip the Stanford game to do that it and and then then I decided not to go to med school. I could have gotten in, by the way, that pretty good score. It’s fuss in physics, which is weird because I was a chemistry major. Chemistry was saying chemistry was right behind my physic score. How convenient is it to implement and carry out this strategy? How much control does it give you over some or all of your money, and how likely is the strategy to protect your assets from the costs of long term care in your future? Those are our criteria, so we’re going to look at those priortier for each of our three methods. Fabulous. And you know what, Jim, let’s do this in our next segment, because we’ve run about a minute and a half over. And everyone, please go to youtube answers for elders. You can find Jim and I talking about this strategy with the powerpoint presentation, and Jim will be right back for part two right after this state of Ohio residence, you have a friend to help you navigate long term care while protecting your assets. You can reach Jim at www dot protecting seniorscom or just email him at j Koewler afe. That’s j Taylor, AFE at Protecting Seniorscom