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Help! I Need an Adult Money -When You Suddenly Become the Adult in the Room with Dr. Jordan Grumet · High Five Hot Mess Podcast

• High Five Hot Mess Podcast: Nobody tells you the day your loved one suddenly becomes your responsibility. There's no ceremony, there's no handoff, just you standing in someone's kitchen realizing you have absolutely no idea where anything is. No account numbers, no checkbooks, no doctors' names, no passwords, no insurance information. You've got nothing. And I remember thinking, how is it possible that I'm suddenly responsible for all of this? I can't even remember my own passwords or where all my stuff is. If you spent your whole life assuming there would be an adult for this particular situation only to find out that you are the adult for this situation, you are not alone. But here's the good news. Lisa and I found an adult. Our guest today has spent his career watching what happens to families in the exact moment it all becomes real. The intersection of money, mortality, and the stuff nobody told you to plan for. He's a hospice doctor, the host of Earn and Invest Podcast, and the author of Taking Stock, The Purpose Code, and the Healthcare Heist. Jordan Grummet is our adult today. Let's get into it. So, Jordan, one of the reasons we wanted to have you on was that we have a lot of friends that are kind of going through all sorts of new life moments and challenges that they're having that are posing questions that they just can't answer or unprepared for. So you came to mind immediately because you seem to have such a diverse background. You were a hospice doctor. You also host a financial podcast called called Earn and Invest. So how did that happen? How did you get there? So it was kind of a winding road. When I was seven years old, my father died suddenly. He was a physician. He was surrounding at the hospital, got a severe headache, had a basically blood vessel burst, an aneurysm, and he died very quickly. And I was seven, and so I looked at the world through very personalized glasses. I thought I was responsible for everything that happened in the world. So I assumed I was at fault. And it left me feeling a little lost for months and months trying to figure out my own culpability. And what I eventually came to is the way to solve game of f ⁓ If I just became a physician like my father, it would solve all the problems. I could walk right in his footsteps. I could save people's lives. And that would r somehow relieve me of the culpability and the stress and the anxiety of the trauma. And that's exactly what I did. I had a bunch of roadblocks. I had a learning disability I had to overcome, all sorts of things. But I eventually became a doctor. And as opposed to filling me up and being as purposeful as I thought it was going to be. I actually burned out fairly quickly. After a few years I felt overworked. I was stressed about patient care. I had too much paperwork. And I started looking for a way out fairly quickly. And I didn't feel I had any other skill set other than being a doctor. It was the only purpose or identity I ever knew. And so I assumed that I just had to make enough money so that I could live off that money for the rest of my life and never work again. And so I went to my financial advisor originally and then my mom, who was my accountant at the time, and I kind of said, How much money do I need to never have to work again? Because I I can't keep being a doctor. And both of them gave answers that were kind of unsatisfactory. My financial advisor said, ⁓ you need to work for another five, ten years. My mom said, Well, you need ten million dollars. Neither of them quite explained why. But the numbers didn't seem to work out. So I put my head down and I figured I'm just gonna have to work the rest of my life and suffer through this burnout. And then something magical happened in 2014. I got a phone call from this guy, Jim Dolly. He's a physician. He runs a platform called the White Coat Investor. And he just wrote a book at the time in 2014 about physician finances. I was writing a medical blog at the time talking about what it felt like to be a doctor. I had a moderate following. And he was trying to get his book out there. So he asked if I'd review it for my blog. He sent it to me. I read it within one sitting and I completely and utterly understood my finances in a way I had never had before. I understood the concept of financial independence. And most importantly, I realized that I probably was pretty darn close or there already. And that if I really wanted to stop working as a physician, I could at least work a lot less or stop completely. And instead of being excited and happy, which I was for about a moment. I had a panic attack when I realized that I was about to walk away from my only sense of purpose and identity that I had ever had. So instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, instead of just quitting and walking away, over the years I slowly got rid of everything I didn't like in my practice. I didn't like owning my own practice, so I sold it. I didn't like the nights and the weekends, and I didn't like working in a nursing home. Eventually I settled on doing the one thing that still felt purposeful for me. The one thing I do, even if no one paid me for it, is I was doing A little bit of hospice imperlive of care. I was doing it almost as a side hustle because I had always been good at that kind of care. My father had died, so I was always very in tune to end-of-life care. And so I realized that was the one thing I liked doing. So I got rid of everything else because I didn't financially need to work this hard anymore. And so I was working 10 to 15 hours a week, and that opened up all sorts of time for me to start thinking about what do I really want to do with my life. Instead of worrying about helping other people or worrying about what everyone else wanted from me, I started thinking about what I love. And that was ⁓ things like writing. So I started writing about personal finance because that's what helped me get out of this place of burnout. Eventually that turned into a podcast. And I was interviewing all these people on my podcast, all these business people and financial independence experts and authors. And they could tell me everything about how to make money. But when I asked them, well, what's enough money or what's all this for? I got a lot of blank stares back. And so I started thinking deeply about these questions and realized that actually it was my hospice patients who had the answers. Like when they started talking about being at the end of life and realizing they only had days or weeks or months left, they started talking deeply about the regrets and what they wished they had done. ⁓ And many of them at some point said something to the extent of I really regret that I never had the energy, courage, or time to do something. And whatever n came next in that sentence was germane to their sense of purpose. And I realized that that was the exact message I wanted to bring to my personal finance people, these people who were figuring the money out, but hadn't yet figured the life part out. And I felt that perspective of the dying was just so important. So that led to all sorts of writing and podcasting and then eventually a book called The Purpose Code, ⁓ as well as another book called Taking Stock. And both of those are kind of what the dying can teach us about money and life and importantly how we kind of bring purpose into our financial picture. Yep. So Lisa has recently found herself as a caregiver ⁓ and kind of running And and not just Lisa, but literally Jordan, all of our circle of friends are suddenly finding themselves and mostly we're all Gen X, so we were kind of raised ourselves. And so now we're being asked to care for parents that don't want to share their checking account information. They don't want to share their credit card information because it's private, but they need our help. And we're we're like, I don't even know where to start. So Lisa's kind of dealing with this right now, like hot in the moment. ⁓ Yeah, real time. And I know that she's got some very specific questions. So Lisa, go ahead and get into that. Yeah. So Jordan, I was wondering if you had a perspective on ⁓ you know, if you're in a situation where all of a sudden you find yourself needing to ⁓ step in and help take care of financial details of your parents, ⁓ you know, a parent or two. Like, where do you even start? You know, where's a good starting point? So let me break this into two different time periods. ⁓ what's really important if you can is to start before you're in the midst of a difficult situation. So if you can, you really want to start having those conversations before, and I can definitely suggest some conversation starters and for you to start breaching that very difficult topic. However, if you're in the midst of something blowing up, a healthcare crisis, some other problem, there's literally one thing you need to do immediately that everyone needs to do is financial power of attorney. Because the minute someone who's elderly or someone who's sick loses the ability to make decisions, if they don't have a spouse who can make decisions for them, or if both people in a couple can't make decisions, If s no one has the financial power of attorney, it becomes a really, really big problem. You have to go to court. It takes months and costs thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. So, first and foremost, if you find yourself in crisis, the first thing you need to do before you do anything else is make sure that in case a person can't make decisions for themselves, that there is a financial power of attorney who can step in and start making decisions. Especially when you have just one parent alive. So if you have both parents, right, then both of them would have to have problems in order for a third party to become that financial power of attorney. But often one spouse has died and we're taking care of an elderly mother, an elderly father, and we don't realize, for instance, maybe the dementia is getting worse, or God forbid they have a stroke or heart attack and can't speak for themselves, it's already too late if you don't have the paperwork. Done. So first and foremost, if your family member can talk to you, start thinking about financial power of attorney. Okay. That is the first step. After that, it's a matter of trying to get them to open up the books or investigating yourself to make sure you're covering like the really basic big stuff, right? The insurance premiums, the mortgage, healthcare premiums, anything that if there is a lapse will cause immediate danger. And so that's kind of step two. Step one is financial power of attorney, so you can act on their behalf. Step two is things that if they go wrong immediately need to be addressed. And once you've managed step one, step two, you can start thinking about the broader things. Do they have a will? Do they have a trust? Do they have a state plan? Do we have a plan for their pets? Do we have a plan for basically everything else for their stuff? But those first two steps are gonna save you a lot of heartache. Okay. Great point. I mean, Lisa, I know that ⁓ you know, you were also in this situation years back as well with with your parents. ⁓ looking back at that, ⁓ and kind of understanding our conversations that we've had. Do you have any questions that maybe had come up for you back then? That now you wish you would have done something different. So this kind of takes us into our next section. So for me, Jordan, when my parents were got to the point my dad had stage four colon cancer, my mom had non-alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver. My dad was also addicted to opioids. ⁓ all this while trying to still work to maintain their health insurance. So they were literally living paycheck to paycheck, had been their entire lives and done just fine. ⁓ but when one of them got sick and then the other one got sick, when we by the time we got involved, it was they my dad needed a full time caregiver, his insurance had been canceled because he was he had a catastrophic illness, and my mom had to work, so there was no one to stay home and take care of my dad. ⁓ so ⁓ we inherited debt. That's what that was the first thing we walked into was there was no plan. ⁓ there was no savings, there was a house that had been mortgage three times three times what it was actually worth ⁓ and credit card bills and all of that stuff. So for us, we were like, what are we where should we start? Number one. And then we're two, what are we responsible for as the children of these of these parents in this terrible financial situation? ⁓ and I know that in talking to a lot of our friends, their parents are in similar situations. Like there's there's no financial planning. There's only what do we do when we are underwater? So one of the big things that we all miss out on is to try to start these conversations before we hit crisis. And so the first step, if you can, if you're lucky enough to have some foresight, is try to breach the conversation before things become so dire. And I get this question all the time. It's like, well, how do I do that? Because as you guys were saying, most people don't want to talk about their finances. They don't want to open up their books to you. And so I've found three techniques are really, really beneficial. ⁓ so this is three ways to breach this difficult conversation, hopefully before you're in crisis. So the first way is to deceive them. And this is how you deceive them. You go to your parents and you say, hmm, hubby and I were just worried about the kids. The kids are getting older, they're going to college, and we realize we haven't done any estate planning. So we're thinking about getting an estate lawyer and figuring out our wills and trusts. I really love your advice. What have you guys done? What's worked for you? What hasn't worked for you? It's a good you know, how how have you structured things? So basically, what you're asking is for their advice, but what you're really, you know, you probably don't even need their advice because you're probably better off than they are or figured it out. But what you're doing is you're trying to open them up to having that conversation because if they think they're giving you advice, they're going to be much more open with it and won't feel so guarded. So first and foremost, Ask for advice even if you don't need it. So that's a really good way to start. The next way, if that doesn't work, is to start with a story. So remember I was talking about financial power of attorney. Well, in my first book, Taking Stock, I tell a story which still haunts me today. I was a hospice doctor for a family, and the husband was taking care of the wife, and the wife became more and more demented, and the husband was totally on top of all of her care. And had all of her financial papers and everything done. And I even remember the son coming in. So we live in Chicago. The son came in from LA and we had this big family meeting. And he was like, I'm so glad my dad is taking care of all this. And everything was in place. And the mother we were putting in hospice. And I assured the son he could go home to LA and we'd let him know as things change and everything was going to be okay. And so he went back to LA and then found. Three weeks later, the dad got COVID and ended up on a ventilator in the hospital. And here was the problem. The dad had done everything, but he was the financial power of attorney and they hadn't named another person in case things went wrong. So now you have the mother who has dementia who can't make any decisions, the dad who's on the ventilator, and the kid comes from LA to go take care of his family members, and he has no access to their money, no access to their accounts. The mom had caregivers coming to the house to take care of her, but he had no money other than his own bank account to deal with it because even though there were tons of money earmarked in their joint bank account, he couldn't access it. And here's the sad part. We came to a sus ⁓ we came to a solution. The sad solution was his dad died. And once his dad died, actually it all reverts to the will and the trust. And the will and the trust had named the son. Okay. As the executor, so then he could access their money. So he was in the middle of trying to get conservatorship so that he could access the funds when his dad died. Then everything reverted to their will and trust, which was already written out. So once a person dies, a lot of times we know exactly who's supposed to take care of what. But before they die, if they're disabled or can't make decisions, unless you have that financial power of attorney. Why am I bringing up the story? Because what I tell people is go to your parents and tell them a story of a time when it didn't work. Like, hey, mom and dad, you'll never believe what I just read, this horrible story. Gee, I hope that doesn't happen to us. I wonder what we can do to make sure that God forbid, if anything happens to you, ⁓ we don't have this situation. So the first way to breach the subject is to ask their advice. The second way to breach the subject is to tell them a story where things went catastrophically wrong, to get them open to this idea of, ⁓ this could happen to us. Let's talk about it. And last but not least, maybe the hardest way to talk about this, but one of the most important is a lot of times people don't want to talk about these conversations because they think like you're trying to get at their money or you're trying to get something from them. What I often say is what you really want to do is say, you know what, the kids are getting older and I realize none of us lives forever. And I've been thinking a lot about what you want your legacy to be when you're gone for the kids and the grandkids and the rest of the family. Like How do you want them to remember you? What stories are important that you want them to tell? What pieces of you do you wanna be left over so they can see them and remember them? And so you start with the real gentle non-financial stuff and you're really talking about legacy and how they're gonna live on in their loved ones' life after they're gone. But eventually that transitions to, and yeah, what about that summer house that we all go to? Do you want us to keep going there after you're gone? If so, how are the finances set up to make that possible? Like all of that comes a little later, but talking about their legacy and starting specifically with their non-financial legacy and reminding them that the whole point of this conversation is to make sure that you're in our lives even after you're not physically here is a good is a really good way. So using those three conversation starters is a great way to breach because what you really want to do is start having these conversations long before. They have problems. Yeah. Long before you're in the middle of the fire, right? Yeah. Yeah. And 'cause it's just harder. Not impossible. You can forensically go back and if they give you their email passwords, you can look at all their accounts and you can get their sign ins to the electric company and the phone company and figure out how they pay their insurance bills. All of that's possible. It's just hard in the middle of crisis, right? Well, there's this emotional volatility when people are under stress. And then you layer it with the emotional volatility when you're talking to people about money. People often feel judged when you're like at least my people feel judged when you try to bring up, hey, you know, what is the plan for paying for your pets, paying for your children? So my brother and I, he sent me an email and he was he and we never had the conversation in person, Jordan, but he sends me this email and he's like, if something happens to me, I need you to make sure you understand. This is what, this is where I put everything, here is how it's all filed, here is where you need to go. And I was like, and I called him and I'm like, what is this? And he's like, You are the person that I am making responsible that if something happens to me, my wife and my kids are gonna be distressed and and I don't know how else to have this conversation with you. So I just sent it to you in an email. Here's the problem, and most of us don't realize it. We think this is a financial problem, we think this is a legacy problem. Usually it isn't either. It's an agency problem. You see, when you are a parent and all of a sudden your life spins out of control, you've been taping things together for years to try to make it work. And then whatever crisis happens and everything falls apart, you've lost maximal agency. And then what your child comes in and takes everything away from you and decides to run your life as if you were their children. Yeah. And so why is it important to have these conversations before? Because when you have these conversations before and you make some type of plan before, they still feel agency. It's exactly what your brother was doing. He said what he's saying to you is there may be a time in my life where I have no control, and that's gonna feel really horrible. And so I'm gonna assert agency now by talking to you before anything bad happens and putting a plan in place so that when I lose control, I can still be sure that my wishes. My plans are being carried out. The problem with not having that conversation before is we already have people who are suffering. We already have people who are losing agency medically, financially. And all of a sudden we're coming in and even taking more away from them by becoming the adult in the room and by making all the decisions. And so our goal really is we want to create that sense of agency in the things we can, because there's tons of things like health and all the rest of it that That we don't have as much control over. Yeah. Absolutely. ⁓ so Jordan, ⁓ we are again in the middle of ⁓ when you find yourself in the middle of a of a big fire storm, if that is your current situation, ⁓ what kind of additional things do we need to be looking out for? Like taxes, like you know. I mean, all the different insurances that are out there, you know, four ⁓ one case, pensions, like I mean, where do we we don't we only know what you only know what you know, right? Like you're only as good as the information that you have. But what would be your suggestion to kind of like find out what is even available, what they even have? Like the attack plan for taxes and insurance and health care, Lisa? Yeah. So first and foremost, you have to take a break and take a breath because this is one of those things you are not going to manage perfectly, right? And so first and foremost, you have to take a breath in and and realize that as stressful as all of that is, being with your loved one at the end of their life and being there for them is more important than figuring out all of that. Even catastrophe financially, as bad as that is. you'll regret more that you didn't spend the moment with them, that you didn't hold their hand, that you weren't at the bedside. That's like the most important sort of thing. So first of all, let yourself off the hook, realize it isn't going to perfect, and make sure that your brain and your heart are where they need to be first. That doesn't mean you're going to ignore the rest of the stuff, but it means at least you're going to say, hey, this only happens once. I might be losing a family member, a loved one here. Don't forget to be present for that. That's number one. Number two is is realize that perfect is the enemy of good. In these stressful situations where you have not had the luck of pre-planning and forethought, you're really just trying to make it good enough. Yeah. Once you realize those things, because most of this is difficult and unknowable, and I know plenty of financial experts who will write books about how they weren't prepared for any of us, even though they had been writing and studying finances forever, you really want to be connected to the right experts. Right? So you want, like, if you're lucky enough, a good elder care attorney can give you so much information about what you need to do. A good accountant who's dealt with people, older people or people at the end of life, or or people who've dealt with chronic medical illnesses. So a good accountant and a good attorney are going to save you so much time, energy, and frustration. It is a good use of your funds or your parents' funds or whoever you're taking care of to make sure you have those experts in place. Why? Because no matter how good you are, there are going to be things you miss. You're going to forget things, filing that last tax return. There are all sorts of weird and inane rules. Figuring out Social Security and how to cancel it, all sorts of weird and inane rules. All sorts of weird and inane rules about healthcare, healthcare insurance, and what's covered. And you're also going to go and uncover debts and things that you had no idea were there. And so I can't give you a single rule that's gonna fix all that and that's gonna protect you against all that, other than make sure you have some good experts on your side. They are gonna foresee things that you have no clue about. They've done this a million times. They're gonna do more to protect you and to get you to plan for the future. There are some great books out there. And you know, I off the top of my head, I'm not remembering any titles, but there's some great books out there where you can go and learn about all the things people deal with when it comes to estate planning and when it comes to taking care of someone at the end of life. But even those books are somewhat dizzying when you realize that it's pretty hard, especially for a lay person, to keep all that in mind. And so, yeah, what you really want to do is get connected and if if you have You know, if you're lucky enough also to have the money and and the wherewithal, getting connected to a good nurse manager, right? There's people you now can pay who will who will look at where's your loved one living? What kind of support are they gonna need? What economically works for them? How are you gonna hire caregivers to come to the house if that's what you need? So if you can afford and find a good ⁓ nurse manager, a lot of them now do this and you can pay them out of pocket. A lot of insurance companies don't pay for that kind of stuff, by the way. ⁓ Again, getting the right experts probably will save you more heartache than trying to become an expert yourself. It's a really good point. It's a really good point. ⁓ you know, kind of thinking also about the people that you're surrounding yourself with, right? You've got family dynamics that will come into play and ⁓ you know, a nurse manager if you can afford to do that. I mean, I know that we've been really fortunate to have ⁓ An opportunity to have a private nurse, and that's been wonderful. ⁓ but if you, you know, if you can't do that and you're having to make that decision on when do you ⁓ you know, place your loved one in a care facility, or when is it time for hospice and those types of things because financially I mean, those decisions play a financial role, right? ⁓ I don't think that everyone has maybe wrapped their brain around how much a care facility actually costs. Yeah. You know? And and how much and then what that looks like. So do you have any ⁓ any feedback or any experience on maybe what a good ⁓ gauge is? When kind of trying to make those difficult decisions, like when to move them into your home and and yeah, things like that. So let me give you a little background. First and foremost, believe it or not, the US healthcare system still will support just about anyone in any situation. The downside is it may bankrupt you, right? So if you are taking care of a family member, let's say your mother or your father, the US healthcare system will not. allow them to die without any support alone at home unless you so choose. So you can use your money to pay for all sorts of care. And when you run out, you can apply for Medicaid and Medicaid will cover things such as long-term care, nursing home care, those kind of things. So the American system as it stands today provides that emergency safety net. So that is always there. Using that as a background, saying, okay, if things got worse to worst, we could eventually spend down and our family member could go live in a Medicaid facility. And believe it or not, those are very reasonable. A lot of, for instance, skilled nursing facilities have a Medicare area or a Medicare bed, but are the same ones that people are paying $15,000 a month to be in. So and you're getting the same care. And so while people are like, ⁓ a Medicaid facility is horrible, a lot of facilities are mixed nowadays and you're getting the same care as the wealthy person next to you. So the system does provide an emergency safety net. Now, that being said, what you really want to do, and the hard thing that no one explains to you, is most of end-of-life care planning or long-term care planning is a mix of assessing dignity versus safety. And so what you're really trying to do is you're trying to look at your family member and figure out what looks most dignified to them. And that has to do with a lot of things. It doesn't only have to do with their wants, but it has to do with their needs. And so a family member might say, What looks dignified for me is to deal with this issue at home, but they also don't want their family members changing their diapers and they can't afford to have full-time care. And so then it becomes a question of, well, what's more dignity? Being at home and having a family member do all this work because that's the only way it's going happen, or being in a facility where you don't have the comfort of being at home. But you have other people can help you and maintain dignity when it comes to other things. So dignity versus safety. Why safety? Because sometimes what's most dignified just isn't safe. I mean, I've had or or even reasonable. I've had plenty of patients in the nursing homes who are like, I'm going home. And you're like, but it isn't safe. And your family members have said they can't take care of you and you can't even get up or get in a chair or move. And they're like, no, no, no, no, I'm going home. And at some level you say, okay, that's fine, you can arrange that, and it all falls apart because they don't have the wherewithal to arrange it, nor the physical capability, nor the money to pay other people to arrange it for them. But ultimately, safety is also important. So sometimes, no matter how dignified you try to give someone care, safety dictates that you can't give them exactly what they want. So, how do we know when it's time to give someone hospice? How do we know when it's time to put someone in a nursing home? How do we know when it's time to hire a caregiver at home? You have to measure a person's dignity, what they want and what they're telling you they want, versus safety and reasonableness, right? What you know, I'm sorry, no matter how dignified it is for you to live at home, it just isn't physically possible anymore. ⁓ and and that's kind of where it falls. The question of whether, for instance, to have someone get a hospice consult or not is first and foremost to Become a hospice patient, you have to have six months or less of life, which is certified by two different physicians. And so a person might be failing at home and may not have the economic wherewithal, but if they don't have the prognosis of six months, they're not really someone who will qualify for hospice. One question is, will they qualify? And your doctors can help you answer that. And then the second question is, is that look like dignity to them? Right. So some people will say, when I get sick, I don't want the chemotherapy. I don't want the hospitalizations and the blood draws and being waken up at all times and night. I want you to make me comfortable, put me at home or put me in a facility, make sure I'm loved and can be around the people I care about and don't bother with the rest of it. So again, a lot of it comes back to basic dignity, right? So you always have to lead with dignity and intentions. You can have your family members define what looks like maximal dignity to them. Now again, that might not be something you can deliver on, but it It's the starting place for us then to make some of these trade-offs and decisions. So I wish I could give you more specifics, but every case is so complicated. I've been in medicine for 20 years. I've done mostly geriatrics and I've done hospice and palliative care for a good 10, 15 years. And every case is slightly different based on someone's finances, on their capabilities, on their family members, right? One family might have five family members who are like, Come home and we'll take care of you and we'll change the diapers and we'll lift you to the bathroom and we'll do all this. And another family will be like, you know, I got my own kids. I I can't come over there and be there all the time for you. So, you know, the number of variables is huge. Dignity, safety, reasonableness, and you try to find the best plan you can within that. It's a really good point. And I think it also comes back to just having those conversations, right? And like being able to have those conversations as a family. Believe it or not, the one mistake I think people make is they make a lot of decisions based on life expectancy. So what they'll do is they'll say, Well, we're gonna do whatever keeps you alive longest. And that works on some level, but the problem with our medical system is it's like a runaway train. When we get our hands into you and this whole like quote unquote do everything, we sometimes can give you more time, but it can be really low. quality time. So yeah, you might get an extra few weeks, but the next six months are gonna have the nausea, the vomiting, and the discomfort of chemotherapy. Whereas maybe you'll get three months instead of six months, but those will be three reasonable months where you can be with your family and do things. Maybe even, you know, at attend some things that are important for you out of the house. And so a lot of what we have to help people realize is that often dignity doesn't necessarily meaning Choosing the line of treatment that gives you the most days or weeks. Sometimes it's what gives you the most life. Agreed. So I am thinking of a friend of mine that's kind of other like other than Lisa that has been hit by a double whammy recently. So she's an independent contractor. So she doesn't work, she doesn't get paid. That's important to note. And her husband runs a business that's moderately successful. Her dad three months ago was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and he is gotten it's progressed very quickly to the point where he forgets how to stand up and they have to call the fire department and help him, you know, stand up and be remember how to walk. So he's definitely gonna need long term care. And when she started looking into that, it looked like, and again, this is all very personal and I don't expect you to give me an answer, Jordan. I'm just kind of trying to give context. But you know, she's like, I'm gonna have to sell their house. In order to pay for this facility, and then my mom has nowhere to live. Like, what am I supposed to do? And again, this is the question that keeps coming up. What am I supposed to do with this? Yeah. So an elder care lawyer. I mean, they are experts at all of this. And there are some options, and sometimes a good financial advisor. For instance, in the right person, a reverse mortgage, something that got a really bad name, but if for the right people in the right circumstances. A reverse mortgage is a very reasonable thing for exactly that situation. It takes some of the equity out of the house, but allows one family member to still live there while supporting the care of the other family member. But it does get complicated because yes, there are all sorts of rules about spend down. So if someone needs skilled nursing facility, the way some people manage it is they spend down enough so that they qualify for Medicaid, and Medicaid covers all of that. Yes. But it does mean that you have to spend down, which could leave the other family member in a lurch. There are all sorts of rules that have to do with this. And there are even things that shield you from a spend down, but you'd have to start those five years before, because there's a there's a look back, a Medicaid look back, and there's questions about the ethicality of that. But that's why really your best friend in a lot of these situations is an elder care lawyer or an elder care accountant or a mix of both. 'Cause those are the people who are literally dealing with this all the time. And that's so smart. And I'm I'm gonna pass that on. And then the second whammy is her husband out of the blue got diagnosed with stage three colon cancer. He's very young, triathlete. It was a complete surprise to everyone. And so now she's trying to figure out what do they need to do for their business, what do they need to do to to plan for long term care. So If this were somebody that, you know, you were just talking to over coffee, what would be your best advice to this person? Like what is what do they focus on first? So not to this person, but to someone who's worried about such a thing. Things like disability insurance and long-term care insurance are very reasonable thoughts, right? So having a good disability policy alleviates some of this, right? So if he's in his own business, at least You have some disability coverage. And if they're in a business together, there's such things as key man insurance and all sorts of insurances that you can use to protect your business. So unfortunately, some of this is thinking it out beforehand and doing the right risk mitigation, especially if your finances depend on a business that you and a spouse run. I would say the answer still comes down to the same. When you're in the midst of this and it's too late to do all those risk mitigation things. It still comes down to those same things of dignity, safety, and reasonableness. You can spend all the time in the world wishing that you weren't in this position, but you can't do anything about it. So the better thing is to accept where you are today and then try to realistically look at your options. And so that again becomes a measuring of what does dignity look like, what does safety look like, and what is reasonableness look like, including economic reasonableness. And you are going to toggle between them. And so the key here first and foremost, and again, I come back to let's think people before finances. So your loved one is in distress, you're in distress. Let's think about how we can make this bearable, dignified, livable for you as an emotional being. And then let's step out of that for a moment, try to put our objective caps on and say, okay, let's let's look at the finances and what are our options? Who do we need help with to figure these options out? You know, what are the options? How can we rank them? What are the best and the worst? What costs the most and the worst and least? And how do we find some matchup that's at least livable for all of us? Yep. So one of the things that has come up, and I and we've addressed it a little bit here, Jordan. You've been great with kind of getting ahead of some of these things. But we we know that this happened to me where I showed up on the scene and there was no money. There was there were no documents. ⁓ Medicaid wasn't we did they weren't old enough for Medicaid when this happened to me personally ⁓ or Medicare. So Medicare. Medicaid has nothing to do with age. So you can always apply to Medicaid. Yeah. So it was okay, what how do we where do we even start? So what I did, again, this is back in two thousand eight, is I spent a lot of time at my local social security office. Yes. Getting to know people. They can be very helpful. Believe it or not, government agencies with this stuff because again, they see everything. Correct. And you had to be very patient. At some point I waited days to actually finally get in to talk to somebody. But when I did, they were very helpful. And then I also went to my local Medicaid office because my parents were destitute at that point. So I was able to really help them do that. But you know, this it's now 2026. Is there anything that's modern or more available that will help ease that? What people also don't realize is so if your family member is going to need, let's say, long term nursing, the nursing facility has social workers and they do this all day. They help people qualify for Medicaid all day and they want your business. And so, and if you're in the hospital, often there's a hospital social worker whose job is to help you with these transitions. And so what you brought up is a perfect example. They had no money. But there there is that safety net of Medicaid. And actually a lot of nursing homes will admit you as Medicaid pending, right? So you don't have to come in with any cash because they've assessed that you will qualify for Medicaid. And then they provide a social worker who helps you apply for Medicaid and gets you on Medicaid so they get their payments. And so most healthcare facilities, depending on what they are, have some version of a social worker whose job it is. To work with families on these exact type of problems. But also, as you mentioned, the government and Social Security and the Medicaid department can be maddening. ⁓ and unfortunately, the funding for a lot of that stuff has gone down during this administration, which means you have less help than ever. Yeah. Yeah. I mean those are good resources also. It's very helpful. And I mean, right now we're all using Chat GPT or we're We're, you know, using some sort form of AI to do the research for us. And we all know that does not always give you the right answer. ⁓ and so this is extraordinarily helpful to be able to talk to somebody who's actually lived it and has experience with it. ⁓ and this has all been good advice. So for me, what I'm taking away so far is power of attorney critical. I don't have power of attorney for my husband. That will be happening Monday for sure. I'm an elder care attorney if you can afford it. If you can afford elder care attorney, then maybe look up your local nursing social worker resources. That's a huge insight that I wasn't aware of that that's available. And I knew that the hospitals had them, but I I'd never really pursued that because I was so like grief stricken, right? Like you're hit with this this toxic environment and parents who are acting like drunk toddlers instead of parents. And everyone's upset about everything and every room you go into, you kind of like lose your way. ⁓ and then the insurance. So the long term care health insurance, that was something that, you know, if if anybody doesn't know, can you talk a little bit more about what that insurance is? Because it is it's expensive, but it's worth every penny. It's expensive and unfortunately it's become very difficult for people. So In the back in the day, long-term care insurance, the idea was a good deal of Americans at some point will need some type of long term care. So back in the 70s or 80s, there was this big push where you could pay monthly, and if you lost a certain number of ADLs, activities of daily living, so you got sick or got into an injury and you couldn't do, I forget what it was, three or four out of seven ADLs. You would qualify for long term care and you'd get a benefit and they'd give you four or five thousand dollars a month to pay for your care. What happened? Well, people used these ⁓ policies and the insurances started losing money, and so they started increasing the cost of the policies quite a bit. And so part of the problem is they are expensive, especially if you try to get one when you're sixty. Like if you get one when you're forty and healthy, it's easier, but then you gotta pay the premiums and longer. And don't Pis no, don't miss payments. What happens? You're paying your long-term care, you're paying your long-term care, you become disabled and you forget to pay because you're disabled and everything's going on. And then all of a sudden you lose your long term care, which is right at the time you need it. Wow. Obviously, there there's some issues there. So it's gotten more and more expensive. In fact, it's gotten prohibitive. And so what do you do now? So first and foremost, there have been studies about how we pay or There have been studies about how we spend in retirement. And they used to say there was a retirement smile. So when you're young and you're retired, you spend a lot. And then you go to those slowdown years where you don't spend as much. And then the spending increases again when you pay for things like long-term care or end-of-life care. What they've actually found is it's not a smile at all. It's maybe what happens is you get to the point where you're not spending very much and maybe you spend a little more, but You know, somewhere between fifty and seventy percent of people don't pay a significant amount for long-term care. And then even the people who do might pay somewhere between five or ten or twenty thousand dollars, which believe it or not, is not nearly as much as it could be if you get to the point where you're in a nursing home for two, three, four, five years where you're, you know, putting out $150,000,000 a year to pay for care. So it is still a very small percentage of people who truly need a huge amount of money towards long-term care. So if you can't afford a long-term care policy, you certainly can start saving and investing for possible long-term care when you're younger. So a lot of people will say, you know, the average spending at end of life, or at least the high-level spending at end of life, is let's say $200,000. And so if you're 50 years old and you start investing $1,000 a year, $2,000 a year, $10,000 a year, and you put it in the stock market and you leave it in this account that's only meant for long-term. It might grow over the next 10, 20, 30 years to eventually become two or three or four hundred thousand dollars. And you've been kind of putting a little extra away for that. So that is one way. There's some other really interesting ways to do it. So for instance, what my wife and I did is when we were 40 years old, we bought a specialized whole life insurance, which we have no interest in whole life insurance. We don't suggest it to people. But it had a long-term care writer. So we were actually buying it for the long-term care. So we plunked down a bunch of money at the age of 40, but that was the one and only time we had to pay for it. We had no premiums, we already paid a single premium, we were done. And now we will use that for long-term care. So there are some interesting ways to pay for long-term. Believe it or not, one of the ways a lot of people don't even talk about, but one way to get long-term care without. Getting insurance is something called continuity of care. So I don't know if you've ever heard of continuity of care. So there are facilities throughout the United States that are continuity of care facilities. So usually they have an independent living area, they have a skilled nursing area, and then they have an assisted living area. And a lot of times you either buy an apartment from them or buy in with a monthly payment. And what you get is room, sometimes you get bored too. And you can move into independent living. And as long as you start when you're in the independent living, if you eventually need assisted or skilled living, it might be a slightly increased premium. So let's say you're paying $5,000 a month to live there. Maybe when you live move into assisted, it becomes $5,500, or when you live move into skilled, it becomes $6,000. And so a lot of people are using continuity care as a long-term care policy because it assures that if you do eventually need the more expensive care. You don't have to pay $12,000 or $15,000 a month for it. You pay a slightly increased premium from what you were paying already to live there. And so actually, we find that wealthy people, there's all sorts of places like this for wealthy people, but there are also for non-wealthy people a number of places. They're not as nice, right? It's not as beautiful a facility, but they provide very reasonable independent care, assisted living and skilled care. A lot of times they have restaurants, they have services. So you enter a community when you're, let's say, 70, 75, 80. You live there while you're still pretty independent, and they have the ability for you to move up in care if something happens to you. And so a lot of people choose continuity of care, and that's a way of kind of self insuring. But you can do it even when you're not wealthy. So those are some ways you can think of long term care and prepare for it, even if you can't afford that original. You know, those premiums are pretty high nowadays if you want to pay monthly for long term care. They're really high. But for anybody out there who was like me who only learned about long term care through other people living in the moment. It's a good example. I'll just use myself. So Doug and I, my husband Doug, ⁓ we don't have children and we don't live near family. We are remote workers. We both work from home all day, and we don't have any close friends or family. We are literally in the middle of a desert. So if something were to happen to one of us that they became unable to work, even at, you know, our age fifty-five and fifty six, that would put an incredible burden on the other person who needed to be able to work, to also have to take care of that person who could no longer work for whatever reason, catastrophic illness, accident, you know, long COVID. I mean, anything like that that could have happened that is keeping them from being being able to work and to take care of themselves. This happens more than anybody would ever think. And it is one of my l greatest fears because, you know, what what would I do? How would I become a full-time caregiver, but also work full time to pay all the bills? ⁓ you know, and just and continue to contribute to my own personal retirement and now his retirement, or if the, you know, things are things are different. But I don't think that people really understand that there is an insurance plan kind of built for that scenario. And it is very helpful. Very expensive. But you guys, I mean, I can't I can't express to you enough to please at least look into it if you can, especially if you don't have kids or you don't have, you know, if something happens to one of us, you know, who who's gonna take care of us plan. ⁓ we we strong I strongly encourage that. And it but Jordan. I was just gonna say, and so the good news is at worst it will bankrupt you, but you'll get the care you need. At best, you'll have some plan in place. So, in the catastrophic situation, you pay off as many bills or hire someone until you spend down enough that your loved one can get Medicaid, and then they would automatically go to a skilled nursing facility. No most of them, I don't think Medicaid has many assisted livings. I think they're all skilled nursing facilities. And so your loved one would then have Medicaid. And once they had Medicaid, you could start rebuilding your retirement assets, rebuilding your wealth. But you'd almost have to go bankrupt or at least spend down s significantly. It's better than having no plan and then people just dying without support. ⁓ but it's fairly catastrophic. So ⁓ again, there always is a plan and there's always a survivable plan. But if you can start thinking about these things earlier and start saying, or you know, some people who actually have very little access to money. do decide to move into communities of people who are in a similar situation and then the community pitches in and provides care for each other when something goes wrong. ⁓ so there are really interesting innovative innovative ways to deal with this stuff, but it takes some real forethought. Yeah. Yeah. And I think to the flip side of of Lisa's situation is I'm a single mom and I have thought through this entire process of what have I done to prepare my child for something like this to happen, right? So do you have any suggestions on really what we need to do today to help our children? So there are a number of things you can do. First and foremost, probably most important, is something called an ice binder in case of emergency. So this is a binder and you can buy them commercially and it prompts you on all sorts of information. What are your insurance policies? What are your bank accounts? What Credit cards you have. What are your recurring monthly bills? You know, where is the safety deposit box? Where's the key to that? What are the combinations to your safe? What are the combinations or passwords to all your social media? You can actually codify all this in a binder. And then that can be available to your family if something were to happen to you, if you're a single parent, or if something were to happen to both you and your spouse, because that unfortunately also happens. That way there is a binder which directs your children or your parents or your powers of attorney exactly what to do. And when you codify what all your bills are, remember you're saying, well, we didn't even know what their bills were, how we paid everything. This gives you all the passwords, tells you all the bills, and it it these things are great because they prompt you. So you and if you update them every year, you actually leave a record that your family can use so that in the middle of the most horrendous stress ever, they have just a slightly less bit of stress. So that's number one, an ice binder. Number two are the family meetings. Like I know a lot of people don't feel comfortable, for instance, telling their kids their finances, etc. But my kids are 18 to 21 and I've been planning this summer because they're both home. We're gonna do a family financial meeting where I literally open up all our accounts, I show them where all the beneficiaries are, I show them where the safety deposit box key is, I show them where my ice binder is That's for my wife, that's for me, that's for both the kids. Everyone in the family now is old enough to understand how the framework is, what they should expect, what they should do if something happens to us. So, you know, if you have that kind of close relationship and you're not afraid to do exactly what many people's parents don't, which leaves us all in the lurch, if you're willing to open up the books, you can actually have these really great conversations with your family. And this is part of that legacy building we forget. When you open the books up to your family, not only are you showing your kids what to do if something happens to you, but you're teaching them how to structure their own lives. Like when I open up the finances, they're gonna be like, ⁓ I and you're teaching them. I think it's just part of an a healthy financial life so that we don't end up in the situations we began with where everyone's running around like chickens with their head cut off and no one understands or knows what people's plans are, what dignity looks like, and what to do. Yeah. So helpful. Lisa, did you have any closing questions? I really ⁓ I I think that Jordan just answered the question that I had. Is like I want to be able to leave that to our listeners. I know it's super helpful to me to know that it's starting those conversations early. It's it's it's being able to have them without an expectation of something happening tomorrow. It's not that we're saying that, ⁓ what's inevitable is someday it will. Right. And so having these honest conversations and just opening up about ⁓ where we are, being honest with where we are and where we want and what we want those days to look like as well. ⁓ I think the I think the point of you talking about making sure that there is a balance between the dignity and safety and what that looks like. I think it was really helpful for me to understand maybe to use that as kind of a compass of making some of these decisions and understanding that yeah, we're not we're not gonna be perfect. And but but what's important is is your family member and really what's gonna be the best ⁓ holistically for them. So I thought I really appreciate that. It it was I I'm gonna walk away with power of attorney. Like I said, that's happening. ⁓ two is the Icebinders Ice binder meaning. Yeah. In case of ice stands for in case of emergency and there are a number of commercially available ones. So do some internet sleuthing. ⁓ but you can find them. And most of them are fairly detailed. And yes, it is a little pain filling them out. I mean it's fifty, sixty pages of everything from who's your doctor and who are your kids' doctors to where the safety deposit box key is. I mean, you can make it as detailed as you want. This is my way of breaching that conversation with my brothers. I think that's a great idea that I'm gonna take away and that's gonna happen this summer for sure. ⁓ I think that we've gotten all of our questions answered. ⁓ Jordan, it has been an amazing experience talking to you. ⁓ we really genuinely appreciate it. And you guys, if if you're out there and this is relating to you and you feel like so overwhelmed, just take a breath and know that take a step back and take a look at the whole situation. And take it a bite at a time. We're gonna be fine. Just make sure you stay hydrated, roll those shoulders back, unclench jaw, high five somebody. We're gonna be fine. Yeah. Bye guys, have a great week. Thank you.