Senior Finances: Family Cost of Care, with Daphne Davis

*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 provided by pinnacles senior placements LLC and answers for elders radio. And welcome everyone back to answers for elders radio and we’re back here with Daphne Ya. Daphne’s here. I love doing this hour with Daphnee because we just kind of flow together and it’s great. And but we’re going to talk today, and I think this is something that’s kind of a joint thing, because there’s some dramatic statistics out there of families that what is the cost of senior care, elder care? When it comes to you know we’re going to save money and bring mom and dad home and you know husband or wife are going to stay home and take care, and especially after we are last segment was just talking about the costep care, with very wide ranges right. But if any of you got like scared and said, oh my gosh, we don’t have that kind of resources, sit back, relax. There’s a way to figure everything out right. Good Point, and that’s very good. On the other hand, I’m going to throw out some statistics to our listeners and and certainly you know I’m should know the exact sources so I might be a little off, but I’m going to make sure that I get them out anyway. And Number One, did you know that the average family caregiver spends fifty five hundred dollars per year on out of pocket costs directly related to their caregiving of their loved one? That may mean purchasing medications, it may mean grocery shopping and may mean gasoline, it may mean any sort of things like that. On the flip side, the average caregiver, about forty percent of you out there, lose their jobs. Forty percent job loss, and that’s according to the National Alliance on caregiving, and that equates to loss in pension, long term care benefits, sols, security, all different types of things that that can affect you in your later life to the tune of an average of about a half a million dollars of income in your lifetime. Now, that really is overwhelming and it’s powerful and it’s powerful to understand that. Matter of fact, in our sage advice newsletter this month one of the feature articles that I personally wrote is don’t give up your life, no matter how much I you know, talk to families they say, well, I think I’m just going to stop working and I’m going to, you know, Take Care of mom and dad because we, quote unquote, can’t afford care. And what happens is inevitably is your you need to understand how this affects you as an individual, is a family member. So, Daphne, tell me a little, but I guess what. What do I heal about all this? I hear all of that as well. I frequently hear daughters say, well, maybe it’s something that I can, you know, work part time or come back on my job or quit my job and I’ll have mom and dad move with me or, you know, situation is such that I can move in with my parents. You know that that’ll help everybody and everybody’s situation. Initially that may sound like a perfect fit and it may feel like it’s the best economical fix. It is not. No, it is not the best economical fit. So what I see, also in my job, is is children who have done that with a previous family member and now they’re on family member two or three. You know answer. You know, mom and dad, whoever they helped, and they’re like, I can’t do it again, just on an emotional level. Let’s just go back to that. The beginning of the hour. We’ve talked about the emotional piece, which is completely overwhelming. Completely loses your self, your being. I don’t care if you think of yourself as Mother Theresa and you have this heart of gold and your natural personality is to be a caregiver and you you love to give of yourself. There will come a time when you are burned out. There will be. There’s also the piece, please hear me. It’s different being a caregiver for someone who’s not a family member than someone who is a famer man. Thank you for saying Oh, it is so important, because those people are you’re familiar with each other. You take risks with each other. You let the bad side of you show up, you lose your patients. I’m both Sayd Thea say you’re going to get the brunt of that perstruction. Yeah, it goes both ways. It’s not just you, the caregiver, it’s the other person too. That’s you know. They you’re the daughter and I can be and say whatever I want because you’re my daughter and I your you’re safe. So the emotional toll is great. The emotional, I mean, excuse me, the the financial toll sneaks up on you, because I also have daughters that are done caring for someone and they go how do I get back into the workforce? The Sun Becial when you’ve been out of it for three years? Yeah, technology is advanced or whatever. The average, I think it’s two and a half years is the is the average time frame. That’s a lot in this work world and a lot happens in two and a half years, no matter what kind of industry you’re you were in. Because of the advances in technology, it all plays together. I’m really stuck on this emotional piece, but you are going to feel lost very much. You’re going to feel lost. How do I even I mean, where’s my resume? How do I update my resume and what do I do to explain this? Two and a half years? And I really believe that caregiving changes you as an individual. I know because I pretty much lost everything in my life. I kind of was at the end of when my mother passed away. At all the things you’re saying absolutely true, but did I want to go back to doing the same thing that I did before? It was like there was something that it was just not it was not giving for me, and so there was this loss of now I got to start over again because I really wasn’t qualified to do the work anymore that I was doing. Plus I was older and of course, hate to say it, but aged discrimination in the workplace very much exists. So you get that piece too. So absolutely deafite. So it’s thing twice before you think of yourself as that primary caregiver, especially when it’s motivated from a financial point of view, when you think you’re going to be saving money or it’s our only option. I hear that a lot. There’s no other option. Yes, there is, let’s find it, let’s explore it. We’re talking about that time when we don’t know what all the assets are or how to maximize the assets of an estate or how to what resources are available. Right. So you know, Daphnitely, you’re the person, you’re such the best friend of a family caregiver. I loved one and you know tell you. You guys pretty much service everything, like you said, from Olympia up to Anna Cordis and and so tell us a little bit about how you would work with families again, we we come and meet with you. The first meeting is about an hour and a half. Just that’s it. It’s an hour and a half and we get to know each other as people. MMM, and I get to know what makes your family tick. Why? Why are we in the situation that we are in now? On a health level? It might be mom or Daddy, you know, real stubborn about what they want to do. Where did that come from? What? What does that mean to them to leave their home? Because we’re motivated to make decisions based on our emotional meeting that we give things and, sadly, finances. Sometimes we think we have the answers and we really don’t know. So what? There’s sometimes something called aiden attendance that’s through the the Va, so that if someone has served during more time, at least one day has an honorable discharge, a minimum or an honorable discharge, and right now the financial threshold of that is to having about a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars or less in assets, not including your home. Right so that’s something that’s still a lot of people don’t know about and absolutely benefit for a spouse to a to a veteran is about thirteen hundred dollars. In the benefit for the veteran right now is about one thousand nineteen hundred dollars and that’s per mount per month, and so that’s something that we can add to the coffers. We learn about how to have someone, you know, if they’re widowed or widower, how do we use their home value? If they’re still in their home, how do we make simize? And the other thing, will the home serve them? Huge issue if there’s a lot of stairs or in you know, it’s not easy to get in and out. There’s these are all considerations to think about. If mom or dad are going to stay home and I’m going to take care of them or they’re going to move in with me and all of a sudden you have to climb up two flights of stairs, that may not it’s not going to work. It’s not going to work. It’s just not going to work because accidents happen. In our health thing. I’ve talked about that in other segments, that it creeps up. All might be too small, and it might. A small bathroom might be fine for you, but, for example, if mom or dad have a walker or they need help to, you know, grab ours to get pulled up, you have to have enough square swootage in space for them to negotiate to move around or that’s a that’s a fall hazard. Yep, absolutely. So, you know, the finances are the driving point, but we’re getting back to the emotional piece all right, time right. And so to be making that phone call to, you know, pinnacle or that Third Party people, the referral company, that can help you know what questions to ask. You know, let’s talk about the other side that. You know, we don’t want to use mom and dad’s they estate. They highest value for them is they want to leave it to the kids. That’s an another diet, you know, another issue. Valuable, respectful, certainly should be honored, but at the same time quality of life for everyone is really important and I personally feel like that’s more important than the old Almighty dollar. I agree. Those are hard conversations to have within a family when there’s multiple opinions about how things happen. It can go to well, this is their wish, let’s honor mom and dad, or can go to I’m fine, I don’t need their money, don’t want their money. They earned it. They should spend it on themselves. And that, I see, is when a third party is very valuable to be able to have somebody talk about the elephant in the road. Well, and I think to definitely what you’re saying is is to understand really how the assets will play out in the future, because you know your mom or dad might have so much in assets that are might be get exhausted fairly quickly, but you realize down the road now that there might be a time when two make two years down that they’re going to run out of money and they’re likely to outlive that right. So in the next segment, I know we’re going to come back and talk about how do you project that out? I think a little bit and and really understand a little bit about how to look to the future, I guess, how to plan for that. Yeah, yeah, and what communities can work with that. And we’re talking about converting to Medicaid, right, and being able to to still maintain the quality of life, still stay in the same community that you’re at. I’ll talk about that. Awesome. The preceding podcast was provided by pinnacles senior placements LLC and answers for elders radio. 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