Do you hate the thought of working past 55 or 60? Do you hate not being able to live the life you deserve today? Do you hate not knowing what your financial future looks like? It's time to stop doing what you hate, here's your host, Mr. Harold Green.
(00:20): Everybody. This is Harold Green and Brightree financial group, and it is time to stop doing what you hate. I hope you are having a fantastic day. Today's a Saturday for me sometimes. I don't think people really care what day it is, but it's the last day of the workweek for me. I usually work six days a week because the market is open on Monday. And then on some Saturdays I'm seeing clients getting caught up with them because I just really want to make myself available to my clients because I know they just can't always make it in here Monday through Friday, you know, and during the week, and I decided that I'm not going to work late evenings anymore because it was just not going well for my health, my physical health, and you know, also my mental health. And so I decided that I was switching my day up and start early in the morning and get done at a decent time when the sun is still up and be able to go home and enjoy the rest of my day.
(01:14): But I wanted to talk to you guys about something very, very serious today. I want to talk to you about long-term care insurance and there's many different types of long-term care insurance out there. And I really want people to be careful when they do look into long-term care insurance. And so, you know, and that's going to be the title of my show, long-term care insurance, what to watch out for what to buy, what not to buy, but I'm going to start with this. There's a lot of things that money can buy, but there are just some things that money cannot buy. And I'll give you an example. Once you ruin your health, you know, unless you're going to go on the black market and buy a kidney or go on a black market and buy something that's illegal to do, it's pretty much done.
(01:59): And so money can't buy you health after you ruin it. But here's what money can do. Money can act as a form of preventative medicine. If I'm saying that right. You know, my wife was getting on somebody one day about my supplement game. And I was telling my sister that my supplement game is on point. My wife was like, why aren't you taking so many supplements? And I said, because they've stripped down our food these days. And you know, there's all kinds of stuff that goes into our food. And so a lot of times we're not getting the right nutrients or a write-up the right amount of you know, whatever, whatever. So I started Yolie a little while back and I do take some Yolie products and man, that stuff does cost some money, but it's an investment. So, you know, I take a multivitamin, I'll break this down for you.
(02:50): I take a multivitamin, I take zinc, I take berberine, I take fish oil. I take two different types of Glucosomine. I take a couple of other different supplements just to help keep me, you know, going where, you know, keep me going. And a lot of times the multivitamin should be enough, but you don't get fish oil in your multivitamin, right? You don't get flaxseed oil and your, your multivitamin. And then I also take greens in the morning and some mornings I take spinach with my shake, a protein shake or eat some yogurt. So I try to eat pretty light throughout the day because I want to get my body and what they call a fat burning mode so that you're not just storing carbs when you take them. So I would just encourage you to hire a trainer or hire somebody dietician or whatever, and help you figure out how to get your, your health as strong as you can get it, because I tell you once it's gone, man, you know, it's, it's a horrible thing, but I want to, I'll tell you guys a quick story about a long-term care situation for my family.
(03:53): You know, my grandmother and my grandparents, them, you know, they're no longer with me today with us. You know, they didn't have a longterm insurance plan. They just figured that things would work out or maybe they would, you know, die and not need not need help. And so my mom acted primarily as their caregiver running them to the doctor's appointments and all the different things to it until it got so bad, she ended up having to give up her job and give up her career that she worked so hard for just to care for them. And you know, she sacrificed a lot in order to, to make sure that the end of their days was, you know, it was okay, but I want to get into why long-term care. Insurance is so important now I'm not going to talk to you about long-term care insurance and the traditional sense of long-term care, but all of your different options out there for having long-term care insurance.
(04:54): So you guys ready? All right. 1, 2, 3, let's get it. So the most common type of long-term care insurance plan out there is the standalone long-term care insurance policy where you pay a monthly premium and you choose a benefit. You choose a benefit period and you choose an elimination period. So a lot of times the elimination periods are, you know, basically 90 days. Some of them have no elimination period, which means the amount of time that you're waiting before the, the policy kicks in. So let's say on January 1st, you enter into the long-term care situation. And 90 days later, which basically is up into March, your long-term care plan begins to pay well, what's happening in the meantime, a lot of times the medical insurance you're in the hospital or whatnot that's being covered and, and, you know, therapy, rehab, all of this different stuff.
(05:48): And then, you know, by the time all that's over with, you know, you're ready to go into that long-term care situation. Now, in order for the long-term care policy to kick the, you have to not be able to perform two or more of the activities of daily living like transferring using the bathroom by yourself, you know, feeding yourself, combing your hair, different types of things like that. So you can look on the internet and find the different types of activities of daily living. But once you, you know, you're diagnosed and you can't operate, then that plan will begin to kick in either 90 days later or six months later, depending on your elimination period. Now, the shorter, the elimination period, the more expensive the premiums also the higher, the benefit, the more expensive the premiums. And so they have this thing called the daily benefit, which means once the plan kicks in long-term care facility or provider will begin to get payments on a monthly basis.
(06:46): And they, you know, they call it the day of the rate, which means they'll take and give you so much money per day, divided by, you know, 30. And then that's what gets paid out to the, to the long-term care facility. There's a quote out there or a stat that shows that three out of five people will enter into some sort of long-term care situation, whether it's an adult daycare facility or, you know, an actual long-term care facility. And over the years, you know, I found that a lot of the long-term care insurance policies, don't people don't use all the benefit. And the average stay in a long-term care facility is basically three years. And you know, the most common thing I see is dementia, where the person basically goes in because of the mental capacity and depending on how old they are, sometimes they deteriorate really quickly.
(07:38): And sometimes they last, you know, quite a while. So once you get in that situation, there's no telling how, how much long-term care insurance you're going to need, or, or how long are you going to need that, that plan for? So I had a client who ended up having to retire recently from her job to care for both of her parents. And so we had talked about this for, I think, three years and she became a client and was working with me. And then I said, you know, you might want to get your parents on board because they need some help because I knew the company that the parents were working with. And I kind of knew that everything was not in order, but the parents came in and, and planner's credit. They did something phenomenal. They convinced this couple to purchase the type of long-term care insurance policy that will last them their entire lives.
(08:32): I mean, you can't find stuff out there like it that like this anymore, they paid a certain benefit every single month for the rest of their entire lives. And they also had a provision in there where at a certain point they could cash in some of the cash value of that long-term care policy and do other things with it. I mean, this was a phenomenal plan. They don't even make the stuff anymore. I can't find it anywhere else there. And, and I said, do you know to that, to that planners credit, all the other stuff you guys got, Matt, not so good, but this one right here, this is awesome. We're going to keep this, we're going to keep it in place. And so this client retired to take care of her parents. And so the, also the neat thing about this plan is, is that it pays the benefit directly to the client.
(09:18): Yeah. And that client can pay the benefit to whomever they want and the person providing the care does not have to be certified to do. So. That's amazing to do a little research. And I found that basically the type of plants that I'm re not requiring, but, you know, asking my clients to participate in are the critical illness riders that are attached to different types of life insurance policies. Okay. So critical illness, rider, terminal illness rider, or once you hit one of those situations, that's deemed to be either a terminal illness or a critical illness. They will begin to pay out payments. You can get the payments on a monthly basis, or you can get the in a lump sum amount and those payments will be paid directly to you. And then you can turn around and pay those payments directly to whoever's providing care for you.
(10:18): I think that's a phenomenal thing. Now. I also liked the fact of tying the long-term care riders onto the life insurance policy. Because a lot of times there are no premiums for the long-term care riders, because essentially what they're doing is they begin to eat into your death benefit to provide the care. I think that's phenomenal thing, because if you don't use the rider, then you don't necessarily have to pay for it. I think that's phenomenal because my philosophy is dual purpose dollars. So when you're looking at your long-term care plan, is it a purpose plan? Can it do more than one thing? I'll give you another example. Some of the long-term care policies have what's called a return of premium rider so that after so many years, if you don't want the plan anymore, they'll give you back all the money that you paid into it.
(11:10): Some of the long-term plans nowadays also have cash value that accumulates in the longterm plan long-term care plan. But I kind of too much, don't like that idea due to the fact that the premiums are so expensive because you're paying for the ability to get your money back. I'd rather just put it in the life insurance policy that has the critical illness rider attached to it. So therefore you have control of the cash value. You can take the money out whenever you want. You can do different things with the money. And I just love having that as a part are of the, what I will call the, the structure of the financial pyramid, where we're covering the risk. A lot of people don't have long-term care insurance because we, you know, because they can't afford it. But I want to give you an idea and you need to sit down with your financial planner.
(12:00): If you have one, if you don't feel free to get in contact with me, and we'll talk about this stuff, how do you afford long-term care insurance when you don't have the cashflow to do so right now? And again, this idea, I want you to vet this idea out, put together a financial plan that encompasses this idea. A lot of senior citizens have tons of home equity in their home. And at the end of the day, they end up taking what I, what we see is reverse mortgages. Why? Because they need the money for care and different things like that. That's because they took all of their money and their whole philosophy was paying off the house, paying off the house. They put all their eggs in that one basket of just paying off the house. They didn't think about anything else. They didn't think about what happens if I need long-term care.
(12:54): What happens? You know, I'll be honest with you. I have invested too much money in my kids' education for them to give up their careers, to take care of me. I've invested my wife and I have invested way too much for them to have to give that up all because we didn't put together the appropriate long term care plan to take care of us in the event that we go downhill. And, you know, we live in a incapacitated state where we can't do everything ourselves, and that's very important. Okay. But what if you could take part of your home equity and buy these types of plans that have the long-term care rider attached to it? Yes. You're going to pay interest on that, but what's worse. Tang the interest or getting into a long-term care situation where you got to sell the house. Anyway, you end up losing at the end of the day.
(13:46): Anyway, you end up having to take a reverse mortgage at the end of the day. Anyway, the kids ended up having to come back home or move you in with them. Anyway, we want to avoid all of those things. So if you're out there and you're thinking about long-term care, you're thinking about, can you self-insure some clients have so much money when they retire. The projections are, they don't long-term care. Insurance is just, they necessarily, they don't need it. You know, if you've got five, six, $7 million in your retirement accounts, you really don't need long-term care insurance. You can self-insure. But if you're not there yet, and you're on your way there, it makes sense to have your long-term care riders attached to your life insurance policy, because one of the two are going to happen. One for sure one's going to happen for sure.
(14:42): Okay. The death benefit. If you have a whole life policy and you don't terminate it, it's guaranteed to get paid out someday long-term care. On the other hand, that's a 50 50 ball right there. You may go into a long-term care situation. You may not go into a long-term care situation. That's a 50 50 ball, but having that dividend paying whole life or whatever type of whole life insurance policy that you have with the riders attached to it, that's a surefire thing because the cash value is guaranteed. The death benefit is guaranteed. And some people that will, what happens if the life insurance company goes out of business? Well, here's the thing that happens when life insurance companies go under and that never happens in and of itself because although the life insurance company doesn't exist, the book of business still exists and different companies will come in and they will bid for that book of business or that block of business.
(15:39): And they would take it over. They would, they would buy off the asset. And now that's why you see your long-term care policy was with SunAmerica. And I was with John Hancock and then John Hancock sells the block of business to MetLife by law. These are unilateral contracts, right? You pay a premium, these contracts are protected by law. They cannot terminate your policy for other than the fact that you don't pay your premium. That's it, you pay your premium. These companies are guaranteed to make sure these policies last, as long as you do, or as long as the term does, they can't be taken away from you. That's why it's so important to make sure you have this type of asset in your arsenal. If you're not a multi, multi multimillionaire, right? And if you are a multi-multi multimillionaire, make sure you have these, this language written out in your trust account, or make sure your executives of your estate understand how, how to facilitate your care, what you would like to see happen, because you don't want them just to stick you in some rinky-dink hole.
(16:43): That's $500 a month, just so that they can get the asset when you die. You don't want that, right? But if you have dementia, you will know, but at the same time, there's something called dignity of life. And you want to protect that by all means necessary. So, thanks for allowing me to share with you guys today about long-term care insurance. If you want me to talk to you about it for free, we'll do a free consultation, click in the show notes, and we'll have a conversation about it. But if you want me to analyze your overall financial situation, that's going to be 3 75 an hour. And I can package bill that for you and give you a couple of hours for the price of one that that's where I'm evaluating your overall financial plan, running numbers, and then giving you an action plan on what you need to fix. Whether you do that with me, or you do that with somebody else, I would pray to it for me because, you know, I think I have the inside track on a couple of different things, and I'm sure you will be quite pleased, but again, thanks for allowing me to share today's show with you about long-term care insurance. And so until next time, everybody, 1, 2, 3, that's good.
(17:46): This is ThePodcastFactory.com.
