IPFC 03: How to Protect Your Finances Through Aging and Critical Illness

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Why Critical Illness Need to be Part of Your Financial Plan

Christine: Welcome to Its Personal Finance Canada! I’m Christine Conway, and I’m Cameron, Conway, and this podcast is a very personal look at personal finance in Canada. Hi everyone and welcome to Its Personal Finance, Canada. Today we’re going to be talking about two of the most important living benefit insurances that you can buy. That’s critical, illness, insurance and Long-Term Care Insurance, and this is kind of our follow up to our talk about disability insurance on our last podcast.

Cameron: That’s right, we’re trying to make sure you are set up for the long run. It’s one thing to tell you about budgeting and how to cut here and safe here, but until you get these core pillars in place. A lot of these other things are a moot point because of how chaotic and unpredictable life is. So we want you to get this kind of stuff set up in your own life, so we can go into the real meat potatoes later so something does happen. It doesn’t ruin your entire financial future.

Christine: That’s right! Disability insurance was about protecting those pay checks and also it’s the premium that you pay to essentially secure your hopes and your dreams and your plans for the future. So when we were talking about it last week, we were talking about making sure that there’s money available to cover the every day these are for different periods in your life, so critical illness insurance, like the name implies, is when you have been diagnosed with and survive a critical illness. And typically in a contract, you’re going to see about a thirty day, waiting period that you have to fulfil before a benefit will be paid out. But the big point is survival, and I think when you look at the statistics these days, more and more people are recovering and wonderfully so and continuing on with a good long life after receiving a devastating diagnosis. Whether that’s cancer or heart disease, or any of these other horrible things that can kind of happen unexpectedly, at any point in time in our lives,

Critical Illness Strikes Close to Home

Cameron: Yeah, that’s true! Well, we both know people who have survived strokes and heart attack and it’s been five six seven years for some of the others. It’s been almost two decades.

Christine: And that’s the thing. Anyone you talk to these days has a story about someone that they know and they love that has had one of these major illnesses. The big ones in in most critical illness contracts. So the ones that pay out most commonly are heart attracts stroke, so any kind of cardio vascular issue as well as cancer. Those are the big ones as well, and besides our personal story, I mean you can always see the heart and stroke foundation or cancer. The Canadian Cancer Society they’re always providing us with updated facts and figures about the number of people that that this sadly impacts. So did you know nine out of ten Canadians have at least one risk factor for a heart condition, whether that’s a stroke or a heart attack down the road. Like that’s pretty scary, and when you look at the Canadian Cancer Society, their statistics they’re saying it’s, cancer, unfortunately, is the leading cause of death for Canadians up to twenty eight percent. This is 2019 stat people sadly passed away from cancer. And think the scarier part for me is when they’re doing these projections into the future. they were saying a couple years ago now that 44% of men and 43% of women are expected to develop cancer at some point in their lives. I mean that’s, that’s terrifying. You know there’s two of us in the room here today. That’s a pretty scary thing. But I think the even scarier thing is out of the 44% of men of men and 44% of women, 26% of them and 22% of women pass away. So that means every one else survived and that’s what this benefit is all about.

Cameron: Well, that’s true, like we hear about new developments for gene therapy and all the other kind of things, but there’s no guarantee it could be there in time. And there’s also no guarantee we could have that kind of treatment here in Canada. They could have developed in other countries first or we could be waiting for something made a happened or it could just be too far in the future. So we need to take a serious look of what’s possible good. What’s possible bad and especially something like this critical insurance. It could help us get treatment somewhere else other than Canada if need be.

Christine: Well, that’s exactly what it’s for so critical illness is a lump, some benefit it’s tax free if you were paying the premiums for it yourself, meaning not your company or not an employer paying for it for you. But I mean we know firsthand we’ve seen stories of people who’ve had a cancer diagnosis trying to go over to the states to get a a treatment that was not yet available here and the cost it can blow through some one’s entire life savings so quickly. But when there’s no other option, people will spend the money right, they’ll sell whatever they have to sell, because the value of a life, the value of that person they’re trying to save, is worth so much more than any stuff. You have anything anything at all, so critical illness insurance is trying to prevent that worst case scenario you’re already in a time of incredible stress and you don’t want to add more financial difficulty on top of it. So this is how a policy like this can really really benefit you today and not just you, and you know the people that you love. Your parents if they’re getting older, your family members, even friends. Cancer heart attack all these other illnesses they are so common these days. You know you hate to think of it from that point of view, but in terms of the ability to claim on on this type of insurance, it’s getting very, very high and critical illness claims. They are very easy to claim on if your condition is covered in the contract. All that you have to do is you and your doctor, just just prove to the insurance company that you do have this diagnosis. You wait the thirty days or whatever your contract stipulates, and then the money’s in your hands and the best part is there’s absolutely no restrictions on how you spend the money when or or for what reason. So, we’ve seen people do everything from pay off the mortgage because they didn’t want their partner to be burdened with that down the road. Or put some money aside for a family vacation. You know if recovery, the prognosis is looking really good, but the most common, I would say, is spending on getting better now trying to take that uncertainty in that financial stress off, so that you can explore other options and, unfortunately, for us that means going south down south, quite quite a bit.

Cameron: Or you go down south or if you’re, really desperate, you go further south or if you get extremely desperate, you go east to like Serbia Eastern Europe if you’re, really desperate. But still these are all cause that you have to pay for somehow. It’s just the whole game of I’m trying to survive, but if I don’t have that lump sum to try and do it, then you don’t really have hope.

Christine: It’s giving you options and options that are not attached with a big payment later or the financial worry that you’re going to burden someone that you love, whether that’s your partner or you know if you’ve still got young kids at home. That’s something you want to avoid!

Cameron: Yeah, you don’t want to just go into like a home equity line of credit and just burn through all of your equity and just make things harder for your family later on.

Christine: That’s right! You want to make sure that your partner or anyone who’s dependent on you can maintain that standard of living and that they can still have that lifestyle that you’ve built that you’re accustomed to. and we’re trying to to keep it keep in normal. A certain sense of you know what this has gone horribly wrong, but if there’s kids involved, you know you want to make things feel as normal as possible and it takes money to do that. So that’s that’s! How this helps that’s how this can benefit? It’s one, less thing to worry about, so that you can put all your full attention into recovering or, if you’re, the partner or the spouse in that situation, you can use your time and energy to help your partner recover. I mean we’ve seen situations where the person who has the illness will get on a disability contract and the month to month is covered, so they may choose to use part of their lump sum from a critical illness policy to have their spouse stay home and help, because that makes a huge difference in terms of managing young children managing household duties. I mean we all have to cook and clean and- and you know, try and keep our homes as comfortable and livable as possible. So that’s not necessarily something you might think of right off the Bat, but having your partner available. If you can kind of pay their wage quote unquote or not need that wage for a year or two years or whatever that period of time might be. It can make a huge difference just to your own peace of mind.

Finding a Critical Illness Provider

Cameron: Well, all that sounds good, but how does someone actually get this kind of insurance? You just kind of click, your heels and hope for the best, or what do you talk to and how can you actually qualify for something like this.

Christine: Yeah, so critical, illness insurance, it’s a huge market here in Canada as well, and there’s a number of insurance companies, life insurance companies that provide critical illness insurance coverage. I always recommend that you speak to someone that has a certification in this area. We have the certified health insurance specialist, that’s something that I have. But we also always recommend that you speak to an independent professional with an independently owned and operated firm, which is, of course, something that we are over at Braun Financial. But what that allows us to do is to shop the market for you and look at the pros and cons of all the different carriers, as well as the pricing structure, because it can vary quite a bit more than you might think.

Cameron: So do all these carriers only cover these two or three things, or does it vary?

Christine: Oh there’s. Definitely different contracts out there, there’s kind of the quick and dirty approach where you’ll get like a shorter list of more common critical illnesses. Those policies typically cost a little bit less, but there’s also much more comprehensive policies. That’ll cover the big ones like cancer, heart attack and stroke, but also a much longer list of potential things that can go wrong, so we’re just kind of talking about the ones that are the most common today. Just because that’s that’s where the stories are, you know that’s what people seem to very, unfortunately relate to. but really there’s a lot more out there that, unfortunately, people do get sick and and eventually, unfortunately, pass away from sometimes right. So it’s protecting all of these instances and all of these different things that can go wrong. So critical illness insurance when you look at it and when you’re kind of deciding how much you want to spend on your different types of insurance, because let’s face it money and budgeting, it’s tough these days with inflation, with the cost of everything going up, our dollars are always competing for for something right, whether that’s food or whether that’s having to pay the car insurance. Sometimes it’s hard to reach into the pocket and pull out a little bit extra money for something like a critical illness policy. So that’s when you can look at structuring it in different ways, and what I mean by that is, you can look at again what’s covered under the contract, but you can also look at the length of time that you want to be covered for and that will determine a large. It play a large role in the cost.

Cameron: So is this like a ten year thing twenty year things: Can you get it for life?

Christine: Yeah, so think of it similar to life insurance? You can cover a temporary period of time so for most people and like we spoke about in the last one, a lot of people really what they’re trying to cover is their working career right, because that’s when, typically you have the most expenses, that’s when most people will have their mortgages. Although you know these days and mortgages going into retirement is becoming more and more common and is something that has to be planned for as well, but that’s a story for another day.

Cameron: Oh, we can’t talk about the multi million dollar, the shacks anymore.

Christine: Well, Oh, we definitely will, but, but maybe not today, so most people might want to choose a policy that covers them to age, sixty five or even to age. seventy five because that kind of gives you a good enough time where you’ve, either discharged the majority of your debts or for most people or you’ve at least earned all the money that you were going to earn during that period of time. And if you receive a diagnosis while you’re still working that lump sum can be used to either pay down the mortgage put into an RRSP. Maybe start a conversation about early retirement or any of the other things that we’ve kind of discussed already, but a shorter term will always cost you less so ten year term insurance is the least expensive initially, but that comes with a kind of a big star at the end of it, where a policy that is cheap to begin with will often cost you more over the long run. So if I’m thirty seven today and I buy a critical illness policy and then I’m forty seven when it renews well they’ll, be basing my renewal at my age ten years down the road, so naturally it’s going to cost a little bit more right and then the older you get so for people that choose cheap up front. They may end up having to give up this coverage if it gets prohibitively expensive down the road, which is what can happen with term insurance, whether that’s life, insurance or critical illness insurance.

Managing the Costs

Cameron: Is there a way to kind of level off the cost if you’re going the really do want to hold on to this for a long time?

Christine: So we can look at those term costs two age, sixty five or to seventy five. But again that is temporary coverage with the term insurance plan. You’re expecting the contract to end so you’re basically saying I want to be covered for x amount of time, and then it will stop. There is also permanent insurance, although I will say a lot of the providers have that we deal with here in Canada, have backed away from permanent critical illness insurance and that’s because of the cost. So, yes, you can still get it, but there are fewer providers here in 2021 then there were when I started in the industry sixteen years ago. And that’s just because people are claiming too many people are claiming and that affects the premium and it also affects how these insurance companies managed their risk and if they decide they want to shoulder that kind of going forward.

Cameron: What about the other side, though? Let’s say I drink my super foods and I get my exercise and I never claim on this, do am I just throwing my money away?

Christine: There are return of premium features, so there can be a return of premium on your passing on the surrender of the contract. If you decide, I don’t need this thing any more. You know I’ve saved enough money.

Cameron: My brain could be uploaded to neural net.

Christine: Oh, jeez or on expiry of the contract, not on expire of Yourself, Oh yeah. I guess that’s return of premium on death. But those of course extra features cost a little bit more, but it does guarantee that some of your premium will come back to you if you don’t claim during whatever period of time, you’ve specified. The other thing that I should mention for critical illness insurance is that it is very, very heavily waited on what you just mentioned: lifestyle and also family history, because when you apply for a policy like this they’re going to be looking at, are you an active person? Do you have a job that requires you to kind of sit on your butt all day, or are you kind of out there moving around moving things? You know they? They won’t ask if you your vegetables or not, but they will be looking carefully at your BMI, like your body, mass index they’ll be looking at your weight, your height, if you’re kind of within what they view as being a healthy range, and they may ask about the types of activities that you engage in as well.

Cameron: So, like skydiving, Bungee, jumping that kind of thing.

Christine: Those are actually questions on pretty well all of the major insurance application questions.

Cameron: What if I fly my own by airplanes?

Christine: That’s a life insurance question. Those are life insurance.

Cameron: What if I fly my own RC airplane planes?

Christine: Oh dear, I don’t think that’s going to affect your ability to claim, but a family history will so family history is in your family. Is there kind of a reoccurring theme of something going wrong and what I mean by that is some families might have like a reoccurrence of people getting breast cancer or prostate cancer, and you can kind of see it go generation for generation and well, of course, that’s not the kind of thing you want to pass to your loved ones. It is something that does seem to happen whether it’s lifestyle related or genetically related. You know, I don’t know, I’m not that that advanced in that in that way, to give any kind of prognosis on that, but but it is something that the insurance companies will look at. So if this is something you’re aware of just no going in that, they will ask you, you know, has your mother, father, brother sister, he you know anyone that you’re directly or closely related to have they had any of these covered conditions, and that is something they will consider before, making you an offer. Just because there’s a higher likelihood that you may need to claim as a result of that.

Cameron: So then, it’s probably a good idea to get this as young as you can, or stuff creeps up or other relatives have somethings happen it’s best just to get to get this dealt with early.

Christine: Exactly and you know what, when you’re, looking at any type of insurance, especially critical illness or life insurance, it’s not just changes in your own health that you have to worry about its changes in anyone else’s health that you’re closely related to so so you know in in our family, my mom had a breast cancer diagnosis and she she had it before I applied for a larger policy, I had a smaller one, but needed more with changes to our circumstances with buying the business that kind of thing, and that does have an impact so t all of a sudden. This is something I have to disclose and now there’s follow up questions, okay, who else have you known that have had cancer or specifically breast cancer? And as soon as you mentioned, something like that on an insurance application, the insurance company is going to dig a little bit deeper.

Cameron: Again are those the actuaries hiding in the basement?

Christine: They are.

Cameron: The mole people as we like to call them.

Christine: Or in the software be nice to them, they determine whether or not you’ll get a contract. And that’s that is what they’re assessing. So they are trying to see if they’ll give you a contract at all. If they’ll give you a contract at a higher cost than someone that they would put in a normal health category or if they’ll exclude some particular condition, so they may say you know what your mom had: Breast Cancer, your Grandma had breast cancer. Your Great Grandma had breast cancer, we’re taking breast cancer off the table just because the probability is too high. So when all of those events have happened in your family, it becomes something that you just can’t cover. It’s always worth it to try and I would say as well. This is the benefit of having someone able to shop this around for you something that we’ve done in the past, for our clients is, we can go to multiple insurance companies before you apply and just say, here’s the situation. What do you think and they’ll give us the thumbs up thumbs down and what that does is, rather than you getting kind of a black mark next to your insurance history, because you’ve been declined. And side. note if you weren’t aware there’s something called the Medical Insurance Bureau, where all of the results of any application for insurance that you’ve applied for are documented. So the companies can kind of check and make sure that you’re not shopping around and got declined, declined, declined, and then someone takes the risk. So you want to give us a chance to get some answers for you ahead of time before you take the plunge, from that point of view. The other part of that is, some companies will do what’s called reinsurance and from this point of view, it’s actually a good thing. Reinsurance is when an insurance provider ask another insurance company to take some of the risk for you, and what that can do is it can allow you to either get a policy that you might not have been otherwise been able to get or get a larger amount than the initial company that you are working with, would otherwise offer you. Because they feel that the risk is too high for them, particularly to shoulder. So it’s kind of like a risk sharing it’s spreading off the risk. Your premium only goes to the one place that only goes to the insurance company that you’re contracted with you only ever see their name on your statements. Things like that, but behind the scenes there may be, someone else also sharing responsibility for potential of a claim.

Cameron: Well, I guess, at the end of the day, with these insurance companies, they know they’re going to pay up, but at the same time they don’t want to lose money off of everything. So they have to do a little bit here, do a little bit there. Share the risk with the third party sometimes, or just make sure that their own stuff is shored up so that they can pay out and they can cover themselves. As bad as it sounds as they can pay out the person on claim and still pay their shareholders at the same time

Christine: Right and the most important thing for an insurance company to maintain its credibility is they need to have the money to have claims paid out in a timely manner right so there’s factors that they all have to have. Those actuaries have to be on top of just to make sure that there’s enough money and reserve to play pay the claims as they come. That’s why they’ll segment down different people that are similar in nature in a similar type of policy so that they can manage that risk for those particular individuals.

Cameron: So they’re like match makers for risk tolerance.

Christine: Something like that.

Long-Term Care Insurance

Christine: The next thing I wanted to talk to you about was long term care insurance, and this is becoming a bit more of a hot topic now, just because we’re seeing so many more people, a big lump of the population getting older all at the same time, the baby boomers are all retired, now, they’re just about they’re, retired, a retiring, and you know not just them, but also their parents. People are getting into that phase of life where they retired, they had lots of good years. You know they traveled. They hit that bucket list hard, and now things might be changing a long term care Insurance is all about a loss of independence. It’s what happens when you can’t take care of yourself any more or maybe otherwise stated who will take care of you if you can’t take care of yourself- and this is a question that as people are aging they’re starting to ask themselves, because you don’t want to put your kids in that position, I mean kids are grown at this point. They have their own kids, they have their own lives.

Cameron: And they may not even be in the same city or province as you anymore.

Christine: That’s true, you know the support system, especially from a family point of view, may not be what it had been in previous generations, where there was maybe more of that expectation that people will take care of of the older generation but long term care when we’re having that conversation and when we’re talking about the loss of independence so think about this in terms of your parents or, if you’re a little younger your grandparents and maybe for yourself down the road, but really when people are in that older age category, that’s when it’s really needed. So it’s looking at. What will you do when you can’t take care of yourself? Do you want to stay in your home? Do you want to move to a facility and kind of receive care around the clock? I mean here in B C, if, if you don’t have anything in place- and you cannot take care of yourself and you mid all meet all kinds of tests and things like that and your doctor and their assessor’s kind of agree that okay, you know you don’t have the money to pay for this privately, but you absolutely need something. The province here does have something for you. It’s an income tested program. What they’ll do is they’ll take right now, it’s up to 80% of your after-tax income paid monthly. So they’ll be looking at your income up to eighty percent of your after tax income. So, whether that’s your pension or your registered retirement income funds they’ll be taking into account kind of all of your hard work up to that point in time and taking eighty percent of it and for a lot of people that becomes the option if they hadn’t self funded, something through a long term care insurance or you know, sometimes people will sell the house. Sometimes people don’t like the idea of selling the house but get to the point where they have to because their care needs have increased and not only does that have an impact on their standard of living, but it also impacts the inheritance and the legacy that they’re going to leave for future generations. Because now an asset here which I mean we’re in B C. now, let’s be real: it’s over a million dollars for most people right.

Cameron: You own. a square foot of grass it’s over a million dollars.

Christine: And that’s getting started and who knows where we’ll be five ten fifteen twenty years from now, but your legacy will change if you’re selling that because we’re in in a reality now where a lot of the younger generation unless things change drastically from the time that we’re having this conversation in November of 2021. A lot of young people just won’t be able to do this themselves right without help. So if, if your help or if everything that you had accumulated over your lifetime, that you were planning on using to benefit your kids and give them the only fighting chance that they may have to get a property of their own, that can just be gone, it can be eaten up by medical costs. And if, if you haven’t looked recently and of course, this changes as well and it can vary by the facility. But we’ve personally seen- and I know this is in a correct ballpark. If you need 24-hour care in a private facility and you want your own room, you’re very, very, very easily, looking at between eight and ten thousand dollars per month.

Cameron: That’s about triple what an average mortgage is out here.

Christine: It yeah and people, don’t think that end of life and it’s not even end of life. You know, if you have a cognitive impairment or let’s say you had a stroke and there’s just a few things that you can’t do for yourself any more. This may become a very real part of your life and, like I said, if it’s in home, that’s great, but where does the money come from and if it’s in facility? Yes, it’s probably coming from your house, but man, you can sure burn through ten thousand dollars a month, pretty quick if you’re spending a hundred and twenty thousand dollars minimum a year, not counting you know, medication or other changes or modifications that you’ve had to do to parts of your living space or to your vehicle if you’re, driving or even just like, if you need wheelchair or other assistance like that, those are all costs that add up to right. So we’re just talking a roof over your head, meals, prepared and nursing coming in a few times a day to help with medication check on you make sure that you can move from one place to another bed to chair, chair to bed chair to table that kind of thing.

Cameron: That’s even if you’re worse off, there’s still a lot of people. where there’s just a couple things they need help with look kind of going to these in between facilities where they have some independence, but they still need some assistance and even those the cost can be pretty high.

Christine: That’s the bottom line. Long Term Care can very, very quickly drain your savings. And that’s why this is becoming part of the conversation now I’ll side note right here once again and say that a lot of insurance providers here in Canada have actually pulled back offering this product just because it’s.

Cameron: And this is before everything has happened in the last two years.

Christine: Yes this is pretty COVID. You can still purchase this product, there’s just less choice available on the market now. So we’ll get into a little bit about how the most common version of this product works. Just to give you an idea of what it is that you’re getting at. But for whatever reason, a lot of the major players in the insurance market in Canada have pulled away completely, while they’ll still honor the contracts that they have on the book, but they’re, not writing any new ones. So who knows what’ll happen to these products in the future? But I do know that we’ve had a big big shift in the market place and you know there’s nothing to say that that doesn’t continue or that this product may not be available at some point in time during the future. Again, anyone that has one can keep it, but if they’re not allowing us to write the new business, then then people are kind of stuck with the self funding model and that’s kind of what we were talking about. Where does the money come from?

Cameron: So you say it’s a lot of these carriers have bailed out, so there’s what five or six carriers that still carry this?

Christine: It’s more like one or two, it’s a much smaller space right now and there’s a lot less selection and even the product that you can get on the market today, it’s written in their contract that they can make changes in the future right. So, even if you purchase one today, they have left it a little bit open ended so that you know if a risk category is not performing as well, your premium might go up. In most cases they cannot cancel the contract on you again. You have to really watch for that, because you don’t want to be a surprise, but they can make modifications, so that is something to be aware of in this space. So let’s talk for a minute just about what are we talking about when we’re talking about loss of independence and when you’re, looking at a long term care insurance policy you’re looking at six things and the six things are called the “activities of daily living,” and it’s essentially a list of things that we kind of do without thinking about day to day. But if you can’t do them, it materially impacts your quality of living and your day to day experience. So this, the six things are bathing, eating, dressing, toileting, transferring and continence. So seems pretty basic right like these are all things that we do every day. These are all things we kind of take for granted, but deterioration of health usually happens in stages. So policies like this: It’s not like all of a sudden. You know one day bam, unless you’ve had an event or something that’s happened where your health has changed quickly. Of course that can happen as well, but for a lot of people, it’s gradual and you’ll see a phase in their life where they need a little more help in home and then it’ll slowly transition to needing more than what they can get from. You know a few visits a day.

Cameron: They can start off with just getting harder to roll at a bed in the morning because you’re back or it could be harder to chop your vegetables to make your dinner, but it can kind of start off in these little areas and just progress.

How Long-Term Care Insurance Works

Christine: Right. So what Long Term Care Insurance is in its most common form and the there are variances, but we’re just going to talk about the main one. It’s what you usually purchase is access to a pool of funds. So what I mean by that is, let’s say you decide I’m going to need five hundred thousand dollars or two hundred thousand or a hundred thousand, whatever the number might be for you. You’re purchasing the ability to access up to that amount at any point in time during your lifetime. If you meet these six definitions is usually you have to lose functionality in two or three of them, depending on what your contract says and then there’ll be a split in most long term care contracts, so it will actually specify in your contract. If you need care at home, we will give you x amount of dollars per month, and if you need care in a facility, I will give you x amount of dollars per month, and often these are on a reimbursement basis. So in this case, unlike critical illness insurance, where you’ve got a blank check- and you can just spend it on whatever you want- this is more of a reimbursement basis. So they’re looking for proof that you actually needed this and that you actually have someone coming into your house- and this is what it’s costing you or you’ve actually moved into a facility, and this is what it’s costing you. So if you think that it’s even a remote possibility that you or a parent or grandparent or someone that you love could be in the position where they’ll be needing help, either in home or in facility down the road, this is something that you might want to think about or speak to. You know about for the person that’s involved and if you’re a power of attorney or even if you’re, an executor, I mean powers of attorney more than more than executors.

Some decisions may fall on your hands as well, and you’d want to make sure that there’s funding available it’s hard enough when you’re trying to manage someone else’s finances, especially when you have siblings and it’s much easier when there’s cash available and you’re not faced with a decision like do we have to sell the family home. Or how angry is my sister or brother going to be when I tell them that mum and Dad’s inheritance is now spent, and you know for all the right reasons, because it was their money, it was spent on them during their lifetime to give them the highest quality of living possible.

But getting older, unfortunately, can come with a huge cost, so the whole conversation today was just to make sure that you have a little bit more information about what’s available, even in this limited market that we’re finding ourselves in just so that you can start thinking about how these things will get paid for or start having, the conversations with your loved ones or even with yourself. If you’re going to be a power of attorney one day and you think there might be some difficult decisions, it’s always best to get these things out in the open on the table ahead of time. And what that means is it gives your parents a chance to kind of have their own say? What did they want? Did they want to stay in their home as long as physically possible? Are they okay moving into care under what situation, and if there are multiple assets which assets do they want to have sold or how do they plan on paying for it? A lot of parents? Take it very personally with the idea of having their kids have to come and help them out with some of these very personal things like toileting and things like that right, you know, you don’t want to put your kids in that position or you don’t want to be an adult child in that position, where you’re trying to do right by your parent, but maybe their cognitive ability has gone down, and you know they’re not even necessarily appreciating the effort that you’re putting in by no fault of their own, of course, but just because circumstances have changed.

Conclusion

So I would encourage you to day just consider critical in this insurance or long term care insurance for yourself with all insurance products. The best time to take a look at this is always now. If you want our opinion, feel free to give us a call. We’ve got our email contact information on our website, BraunFinancial.com and we’re always happy to meet new people and have these conversations. We try and make it as personal as possible. So we’ll get to know. You you’ll tell us about the people that you love and will tell you how to help protect them and take care of them. That’s our motto, that’s what we’re here, for we want to help. You take care of the people, you love, and we want to be here to give you the knowledge that you need to do. So until the next time take care and all the best.