In this episode of The Greater Rockville Chamber of Commerce Podcast, host Eric Peguero sits down with Suzanne Scheer, a trusted Financial Advisor with The Meakem Group and an active member of the Greater Rockville Chamber of Commerce. Together, they tackle a topic that’s essential yet often overlooked: the role of long-term care insurance in securing a comfortable retirement.
Suzanne shares her expertise on how planning for long-term care is an act of kindness to your future self and your loved ones. Learn why this critical aspect of retirement planning matters and how it can protect your financial independence while ensuring you receive the care you deserve.
Whether you’re just starting to think about retirement or looking to refine your financial strategy, this episode is packed with insights to help you prepare for the future.
Suzanne Scheer, J.D., CLTC®*
Financial Advisor
The Meakem Group
4800 Hampden Lane, Suite 810 Bethesda, MD 20814
Phone: 240-743-4971Fax: 240-743-4972
sscheer@meakemgroup.comhttps://themeakemgroup.com/
Suzanne shares her expertise on how planning for long-term care is an act of kindness to your future self and your loved ones. Learn why this critical aspect of retirement planning matters and how it can protect your financial independence while ensuring you receive the care you deserve.
Whether you’re just starting to think about retirement or looking to refine your financial strategy, this episode is packed with insights to help you prepare for the future.
Suzanne Scheer, J.D., CLTC®*
Financial Advisor
The Meakem Group
4800 Hampden Lane, Suite 810 Bethesda, MD 20814
Phone: 240-743-4971Fax: 240-743-4972
sscheer@meakemgroup.comhttps://themeakemgroup.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, they're rock stars. This is Eric Paguerow, and in
today's episode, we're going to be talking about how to
be kind to your older self, the importance of long
term care insurance in retirement planning. And we have one
of our very own Susanne Scherer. She's a financial advisor
with the Meekum Group. Stay tuned. Hey, Suzanne, welcome to
(00:30):
the show.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hi Eric, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
It is so good to see you again. How have
you been.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I've been doing well. How about you?
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I've been doing great, playing a lot of pickleball and
staying healthy, you know, at least trying right.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
I'm very jealous, and you're a very good pickleball player.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
I will say you're too kind. Tell us a little
bit about yourself, who you are, who you work for,
and how long you been doing this?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Sure? So, I'm a financial advisor with the Megham Group
of Raymond James, and I started with them in twenty fifteen. Previously,
I practiced family law in Northern Virginia for about six
and a half years, and I stopped practicing when my
son was born. And not too long after he was born,
then my mom started having health issues. And then my
(01:11):
dad started having health issues, and so I found myself
in a long career break, taking care of my little son,
taking care of my parents. I was fortunate and that
they had planned well, so I didn't have to physically
do the care, but I was overseeing their care, picking
up prescriptions, groceries, doctor's appointments, you know, anything you could
think of, just to try to keep things going and
(01:36):
to try to help them as much as I could,
and advocating for them. You know, my mom was in
the hospital and then went to a rehab trying to
get her to the right place or just just checking
on them. So that went on for about eight years
that they both had a lot of health issues and
unfortunately passed in twenty ten. And in twenty fifteen I
joined the Make Them group and I started helping folks
(01:58):
with combrains of planning and insurance is a piece of it.
And in recent years I've really become a lot more
focused on the insurance part, especially the long term care
insurance space.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yeah, it sounds like because of your experience, right, right,
and you wanted to help people that that. I love
that and I know that a lot of people that
I've met who are in this industry get into because
of a personal experience with it. Right, Yeah, that's very good. Wol.
So you were a lawyer, I was, it's too nice.
A whole bunch of lawyers are gonna write me and
tell me that that is mean.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
But now, well it's funny. You know. I came right
out of it. I went to college, straight from college
to law school, and I was twenty five, and people
often did say to me, oh, you seem so nice.
What are you going to you know, are you gonna
fight for me? What are you going to do? And
I said, you know, I don't. I'm not mean just
for the sake of being mean, but when when it's necessary,
I mean, I've I've had a couple of people put
in jail before for not following a court order. So
(02:54):
so you know, when it's necessary, you you know, you're
a little tough. But you know I wasn't just mean
for the sake of the good thing.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
About your line of business. Now, there's no reason to
be mean. It's all about good planning.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Right.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
So, right now, long term care and just from my experience,
right is one of the greatest things to happen because
I think I don't know if you're a generation extra
just like I am. But we are the Sandwich generation.
You know, we're taking care of our parents and our kids.
Making sure that we plan ahead is such an important
(03:26):
thing and I cannot advocate that more on how to
do that. We ourselves have long term care in our
insurance policy. So, like I said, I'm very excited to
talk about this and help as many people who are
not informed about this to be able to talk to
you and get this done. So let's let the genie
out of the bottle. What is long term care?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
So, long term care is care that's custodial in nature,
So it's not medical care. It's not something that a
doctor would have to provide or you'd have to get
in a hospital or a particular facility. It's the type
of thing that you do. You just don't even think
about it. You take for granted all the activities of
daily living as they call them, things that you would
do to get through your day safely. So as an example,
(04:05):
you get up out of bed. That's called transferring in
long term care world. You go to the bathroom, you
take a shower or a bath, You get dressed, you
eat when you need to you go to the bathroom,
and for most of us, we're able to just do
those things throughout the day and we don't really give
it too much thought. But if you have either a
severe cognito impairment or if you have an injury or
(04:27):
an illness that doesn't allow you to do this thing
safely and that goes on for at least ninety days,
then that's considered a long term care event. And I
think people don't realize that it could be just that
you are ninety five and frail and you can't be
safe doing the things alone. It could be that you
had a stroke, It could be you were in a
car accident. It could be that you're recovering from cancer
(04:49):
and you're in treatment and you can't get around safely.
So there are lots of different things that could put
somebody in the situation of being, you know what, it's
considered a long term care event. And for the long
term care insurance world, those activities I just talked about
the sex activities of daily living. If you can't do
two out of the six, then you would trigger a
(05:10):
claim for long term care. Or if you have a
severe cognitive impairment, you would trigger a claim for a
long term care if you have insurance. So the thing
that's really important to realize is that these again, these
are not medical issues, and so health insurance isn't going
to cover it, and Medicare isn't going to cover it,
and most people think Medicare will cover it, and so
they get into a lot of trouble. What often will
(05:31):
happen is someone will have an event and they'll be
in the hospital. And if you're in the hospital for
at least three days, and then they say you need
to go to a skilled nursing facility out of the hospital,
let's say you need to get IVS or you need
some kind of treatment to recover from. You know, the
reason you're in the hospital. Medicare, if you're over sixty five,
they'll pay for the first twenty days if you need
(05:52):
care in the nursing home or a skilled nursing facility,
But after the twentieth day, then you have a copay
for the next eighty days and then after that you're
on your own. This all assumes that you're making progress
during this time, because the idea is that you're you're
going to hopefully recover from whatever the illness was to
put you in the hospital. But in a lot of cases,
(06:12):
somebody might be old and they were in the hospital
for I don't know, it could be all different kinds
of reasons, but they might go to the nursing home
or the rehab facility and then they don't really make
any progress after let's say twenty or thirty days, and
so then at that point they might just say, well,
you're not making any progress, so you need to go
home now. Well, but the person maybe still can't do
(06:33):
the activities of daily living safely, so they might need help.
But Medicare is not going to pay anymore because they're
not making progress. So that's where the long term care
insurance can come in if you need help. And another
thing that's really important is that the help that you
could get. You know, in this long term care scenario,
it's not necessarily that you can't shower by yourself. It
(06:53):
could be that you're a risk of falling and so
you need to have someone there to stand by to
make sure that you're safe. So maybe it's not that
they're actually doing anything to even do anything for you
other than just be there and let.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Me ask you a question. Now, I know, there's different
types of care that you know, insurance that kick in
after a certain number of days. I know there's like
a little duck running around somewhere promoting you know, short
term care, which is right after it, right, But when
does long term care kick in after? How many days?
Speaker 2 (07:23):
It depends on your policy, but most commonly ninety days.
So you have the first ninety days you would have
to pay out of pocket, and then after it's been
ninety days then insurance would start paying. It's it's basically
if you know, if someone's in the scenario of being
in the hospital and then going to the skilled nursing
(07:44):
or the nursing home after the hospital, like you know,
and there's that coverage like I mentioned up to one
hundred days. Yeah, that's that sort of jives with the
idea that you would you'd be getting some coverage up
until that point, and then after that you'd be on
your own. And so then that would you'd start to
be able to have of either rembursement or getting money
from the insurance company.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
So and here's one thing that I would tell everybody
who's listening is that you know, we're giving an overview, right,
but it is a little bit more complicated than that,
And I always my advice is always on anything to
start planning ahead. But when should people start learning about
long term care insurance?
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Well, I would say just to know about its existence
as early as possible, you know, in your thirties, especially
if you've got aging parents. It's really important to know
about it so that you can help them navigate when
they should have any kind of a need for care.
But I would say in terms of the time to
start shopping for it, I would say mid to eate
forties on up. The products that are out now are
(08:51):
different than they used to be, and so you really
you do want to get them earlier because you'll pay
less than premiums. And also the biggest thing of all
of this is that if your health is not good,
you might not qualify for long term care insurance. You
have to be insurable, and so sometimes people think, oh,
we'll wait till I'm sixty or a way to I'm older,
so I don't want to pay money, But you know,
(09:12):
you really have to think about, well, what if I'm
in a car accident, I get injured, or what if
I develop some kind of a condition that doesn't really
impact my life very much, but that from an insurance
company standpoint, it makes me not very attractive to them.
So the sooner the better. Because of the fact that
your health is what allows you to get long term
care insurance, I would say.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
As soon as possible. Right now, you just mentioned that
the products through out. Now I know something about the
insurance industry is that they're always coming up with different products,
different ways to repackage, you know, their offerings. And a
long time ago, long term care came as part of
a life insurance policy. Is that still the ways then.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Sometimes it's part of a life insurance policy. Around the
seventies or nineteen seventies, they came out with traditional long
term care insurance where it would just be a product
by itself, kind of like your car insurance or your
home insurance. So it wouldn't have any kind of cash
value to it. You would pay in a premium and
if you needed care then you'd have a benefit. But
(10:15):
if you never need any care, then you wouldn't get
anything back when you passed away. It would just like
with your car insurance. If you never have an accident,
they don't give you Unfortunately, they don't give you money back.
Or the home insurance if you never have a fire
or something. But so a lot of times people found
that to be problematic because they could be paying in
for quite a long time and if they never end
(10:36):
up needing care, they paid a lot of money for
something that they never got, and so people didn't love that,
and so these new products came out that are referred
to as either asset based or sometimes hybrid or combo
or linked benefit, where it's combining life insurance with a
long term care rider that was attached to it, so
that you're paying money in that would go back to
(10:57):
your estate if you never needed any care, but if
you geni care, you have that money that's in that
life insurance policy. And then there's this extension that goes
on beyond the life insurance policy, and there's leverage involved.
When you first get the policy, you'll put in X
dollars and all of a sudden, you maybe have X
times three or four available for care. And so it's
(11:20):
really attractive to there's a way to protect your assets
because you know, it's like you're buying the care for
pennies on the dollar. If you get it when you're
younger and healthier and and not needing anything, and you
can essentially plan to have this money for you later.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
That's I knew. I knew this discount many many years
ago down in Florida and he was in the insurance world,
and he goes, you know a lot of people have
this magic number that they're sold as far as how
much insurance, how much they need, and people just come
up to This is him telling me. They'd come up
to me and say, I need a million dollars, you know,
of life insurance. And it's like, why it's just you
(11:56):
and your wife, no kids. You know, you don't make
a million dollars, so you don't have a million dollars
worth their assets or whatever it is that I forgot
what he said. But long story short is that you know,
he said that one of the most important things is
getting with the right person because and imagine it's true
for you. You'll do an assessment, right, You'll sit down
with me and say, for example, just have me do
(12:18):
an assessment before you give me advice. And maybe that
magic number is smaller, number is bigger, who knows.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
But of course, I mean there's so many factors. I mean,
you know, I mentioned your health being a big factor
the way it is today with the different types of policies.
With a traditional policy, they're pretty strict in the underwriting
because you're not putting in a huge amount of money.
You could be Let's just say you someone gets a
policy and they pay a monthly premium and then the
(12:44):
next day's something happens to them and they go on claim.
The entrance company is on the hook for care for
this person. They've only made one monthly premium payment, and
so that's a big risk. With the asset based program,
it's nice because you know you're putting in a large
amount of money and your money is what comes out
first if you go on claim, So there's more leniency
(13:05):
with the underwriting with when they look at your medical history.
So it could be to someone who couldn't qualify for
a traditional product could potentially get an asset based plan.
Or there's also there are some that are based with
annuities where it's an annuity based chassis and then it
has an add on for the care and that's even
more lenient and underwriting. So there are a lot of
different options, and we have some that go up to
(13:26):
all we have to age eighty five and with an exception,
potentially eighty seven. So a lot of times people say
to me, oh, I'm a seventy and someone told me
I'm too old to get long term care, and I said, well,
it really it depends depends. It depends on your health.
And then you know, based on someone financial situation. I mean,
if if you have a very large portfolio that you're
(13:46):
trying to protect, it's a very big difference from someone
who doesn't have that much to protect. And so you know,
it's it's very fact specific, based on your health, based
on your circumstances, based on what you want. And then
once we get into the design of the plan of
there there's so many different variables that I won't I
love it well bore people with, but it's you can
really customize a plan based on what I.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Look what you just said when it comes to the
design of the plant, so you're you're helping us put
it together, design it to our lifestyle and what we
need rather than just this you know, one size of
it's all.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Oh no, absolutely not, Suzan.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
I mean I could talk about this all day long,
because again it's it's something that's near dear to the heart.
I truly believe in it. Like I said, we have
it and I try to advocate for it. Let's get
our members your number, your information, because they should sit
down with you and talk to you and and see
what they can design with you.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Right, that'd be great. My number is two four o
seven four three four nine seven one. The web address
is the meekumgroup dot com and then my email is
just as share at mek themgroup dot com. And I'd
love to talk about long term care insurance. It's one
of my favorite things to help people with. And you know,
I also more than happy to help people. If their
(15:02):
parents have a policy, or if they have a policy
and they don't understand it, please call me and I
will sit down with you and go over it with you,
and if necessary, we can call the insurance company together
and say, okay, well, what exactly are these benefits and
what Sometimes people only have a small maybe one piece
of paper that has a few little details, but they
don't really understand it, or they can't find a policy
so they don't know exactly what they even have. So
(15:25):
it's really important.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Absolutely, absolutely, there's so many reasons to talk to and
get some advice. So Suzanne, thank you. So much. Suzanne
is one of ours right here at the Greater Rock
Filled Chamber of Commerce, and please give her a call.
Suzanne's here. It's nice talking to me.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Thank you so much, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Eric H. Pleasure
Hey, they're rock stars. This is Eric Paguerow, and in
today's episode, we're going to be talking about how to
be kind to your older self, the importance of long
term care insurance in retirement planning. And we have one
of our very own Susanne Scherer. She's a financial advisor
with the Meekum Group. Stay tuned. Hey, Suzanne, welcome to
(00:30):
the show.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hi Eric, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
It is so good to see you again. How have
you been.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I've been doing well. How about you?
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I've been doing great, playing a lot of pickleball and
staying healthy, you know, at least trying right.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
I'm very jealous, and you're a very good pickleball player.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
I will say you're too kind. Tell us a little
bit about yourself, who you are, who you work for,
and how long you been doing this?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Sure? So, I'm a financial advisor with the Megham Group
of Raymond James, and I started with them in twenty fifteen. Previously,
I practiced family law in Northern Virginia for about six
and a half years, and I stopped practicing when my
son was born. And not too long after he was born,
then my mom started having health issues. And then my
(01:11):
dad started having health issues, and so I found myself
in a long career break, taking care of my little son,
taking care of my parents. I was fortunate and that
they had planned well, so I didn't have to physically
do the care, but I was overseeing their care, picking
up prescriptions, groceries, doctor's appointments, you know, anything you could
think of, just to try to keep things going and
(01:36):
to try to help them as much as I could,
and advocating for them. You know, my mom was in
the hospital and then went to a rehab trying to
get her to the right place or just just checking
on them. So that went on for about eight years
that they both had a lot of health issues and
unfortunately passed in twenty ten. And in twenty fifteen I
joined the Make Them group and I started helping folks
(01:58):
with combrains of planning and insurance is a piece of it.
And in recent years I've really become a lot more
focused on the insurance part, especially the long term care
insurance space.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yeah, it sounds like because of your experience, right, right,
and you wanted to help people that that. I love
that and I know that a lot of people that
I've met who are in this industry get into because
of a personal experience with it. Right, Yeah, that's very good. Wol.
So you were a lawyer, I was, it's too nice.
A whole bunch of lawyers are gonna write me and
tell me that that is mean.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
But now, well it's funny. You know. I came right
out of it. I went to college, straight from college
to law school, and I was twenty five, and people
often did say to me, oh, you seem so nice.
What are you going to you know, are you gonna
fight for me? What are you going to do? And
I said, you know, I don't. I'm not mean just
for the sake of being mean, but when when it's necessary,
I mean, I've I've had a couple of people put
in jail before for not following a court order. So
(02:54):
so you know, when it's necessary, you you know, you're
a little tough. But you know I wasn't just mean
for the sake of the good thing.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
About your line of business. Now, there's no reason to
be mean. It's all about good planning.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Right.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
So, right now, long term care and just from my experience,
right is one of the greatest things to happen because
I think I don't know if you're a generation extra
just like I am. But we are the Sandwich generation.
You know, we're taking care of our parents and our kids.
Making sure that we plan ahead is such an important
(03:26):
thing and I cannot advocate that more on how to
do that. We ourselves have long term care in our
insurance policy. So, like I said, I'm very excited to
talk about this and help as many people who are
not informed about this to be able to talk to
you and get this done. So let's let the genie
out of the bottle. What is long term care?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
So, long term care is care that's custodial in nature,
So it's not medical care. It's not something that a
doctor would have to provide or you'd have to get
in a hospital or a particular facility. It's the type
of thing that you do. You just don't even think
about it. You take for granted all the activities of
daily living as they call them, things that you would
do to get through your day safely. So as an example,
(04:05):
you get up out of bed. That's called transferring in
long term care world. You go to the bathroom, you
take a shower or a bath, You get dressed, you
eat when you need to you go to the bathroom,
and for most of us, we're able to just do
those things throughout the day and we don't really give
it too much thought. But if you have either a
severe cognito impairment or if you have an injury or
(04:27):
an illness that doesn't allow you to do this thing
safely and that goes on for at least ninety days,
then that's considered a long term care event. And I
think people don't realize that it could be just that
you are ninety five and frail and you can't be
safe doing the things alone. It could be that you
had a stroke, It could be you were in a
car accident. It could be that you're recovering from cancer
(04:49):
and you're in treatment and you can't get around safely.
So there are lots of different things that could put
somebody in the situation of being, you know what, it's
considered a long term care event. And for the long
term care insurance world, those activities I just talked about
the sex activities of daily living. If you can't do
two out of the six, then you would trigger a
(05:10):
claim for long term care. Or if you have a
severe cognitive impairment, you would trigger a claim for a
long term care if you have insurance. So the thing
that's really important to realize is that these again, these
are not medical issues, and so health insurance isn't going
to cover it, and Medicare isn't going to cover it,
and most people think Medicare will cover it, and so
they get into a lot of trouble. What often will
(05:31):
happen is someone will have an event and they'll be
in the hospital. And if you're in the hospital for
at least three days, and then they say you need
to go to a skilled nursing facility out of the hospital,
let's say you need to get IVS or you need
some kind of treatment to recover from. You know, the
reason you're in the hospital. Medicare, if you're over sixty five,
they'll pay for the first twenty days if you need
(05:52):
care in the nursing home or a skilled nursing facility,
But after the twentieth day, then you have a copay
for the next eighty days and then after that you're
on your own. This all assumes that you're making progress
during this time, because the idea is that you're you're
going to hopefully recover from whatever the illness was to
put you in the hospital. But in a lot of cases,
(06:12):
somebody might be old and they were in the hospital
for I don't know, it could be all different kinds
of reasons, but they might go to the nursing home
or the rehab facility and then they don't really make
any progress after let's say twenty or thirty days, and
so then at that point they might just say, well,
you're not making any progress, so you need to go
home now. Well, but the person maybe still can't do
(06:33):
the activities of daily living safely, so they might need help.
But Medicare is not going to pay anymore because they're
not making progress. So that's where the long term care
insurance can come in if you need help. And another
thing that's really important is that the help that you
could get. You know, in this long term care scenario,
it's not necessarily that you can't shower by yourself. It
(06:53):
could be that you're a risk of falling and so
you need to have someone there to stand by to
make sure that you're safe. So maybe it's not that
they're actually doing anything to even do anything for you
other than just be there and let.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Me ask you a question. Now, I know, there's different
types of care that you know, insurance that kick in
after a certain number of days. I know there's like
a little duck running around somewhere promoting you know, short
term care, which is right after it, right, But when
does long term care kick in after? How many days?
Speaker 2 (07:23):
It depends on your policy, but most commonly ninety days.
So you have the first ninety days you would have
to pay out of pocket, and then after it's been
ninety days then insurance would start paying. It's it's basically
if you know, if someone's in the scenario of being
in the hospital and then going to the skilled nursing
(07:44):
or the nursing home after the hospital, like you know,
and there's that coverage like I mentioned up to one
hundred days. Yeah, that's that sort of jives with the
idea that you would you'd be getting some coverage up
until that point, and then after that you'd be on
your own. And so then that would you'd start to
be able to have of either rembursement or getting money
from the insurance company.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
So and here's one thing that I would tell everybody
who's listening is that you know, we're giving an overview, right,
but it is a little bit more complicated than that,
And I always my advice is always on anything to
start planning ahead. But when should people start learning about
long term care insurance?
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Well, I would say just to know about its existence
as early as possible, you know, in your thirties, especially
if you've got aging parents. It's really important to know
about it so that you can help them navigate when
they should have any kind of a need for care.
But I would say in terms of the time to
start shopping for it, I would say mid to eate
forties on up. The products that are out now are
(08:51):
different than they used to be, and so you really
you do want to get them earlier because you'll pay
less than premiums. And also the biggest thing of all
of this is that if your health is not good,
you might not qualify for long term care insurance. You
have to be insurable, and so sometimes people think, oh,
we'll wait till I'm sixty or a way to I'm older,
so I don't want to pay money, But you know,
(09:12):
you really have to think about, well, what if I'm
in a car accident, I get injured, or what if
I develop some kind of a condition that doesn't really
impact my life very much, but that from an insurance
company standpoint, it makes me not very attractive to them.
So the sooner the better. Because of the fact that
your health is what allows you to get long term
care insurance, I would say.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
As soon as possible. Right now, you just mentioned that
the products through out. Now I know something about the
insurance industry is that they're always coming up with different products,
different ways to repackage, you know, their offerings. And a
long time ago, long term care came as part of
a life insurance policy. Is that still the ways then.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Sometimes it's part of a life insurance policy. Around the
seventies or nineteen seventies, they came out with traditional long
term care insurance where it would just be a product
by itself, kind of like your car insurance or your
home insurance. So it wouldn't have any kind of cash
value to it. You would pay in a premium and
if you needed care then you'd have a benefit. But
(10:15):
if you never need any care, then you wouldn't get
anything back when you passed away. It would just like
with your car insurance. If you never have an accident,
they don't give you Unfortunately, they don't give you money back.
Or the home insurance if you never have a fire
or something. But so a lot of times people found
that to be problematic because they could be paying in
for quite a long time and if they never end
(10:36):
up needing care, they paid a lot of money for
something that they never got, and so people didn't love that,
and so these new products came out that are referred
to as either asset based or sometimes hybrid or combo
or linked benefit, where it's combining life insurance with a
long term care rider that was attached to it, so
that you're paying money in that would go back to
(10:57):
your estate if you never needed any care, but if
you geni care, you have that money that's in that
life insurance policy. And then there's this extension that goes
on beyond the life insurance policy, and there's leverage involved.
When you first get the policy, you'll put in X
dollars and all of a sudden, you maybe have X
times three or four available for care. And so it's
(11:20):
really attractive to there's a way to protect your assets
because you know, it's like you're buying the care for
pennies on the dollar. If you get it when you're
younger and healthier and and not needing anything, and you
can essentially plan to have this money for you later.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
That's I knew. I knew this discount many many years
ago down in Florida and he was in the insurance world,
and he goes, you know a lot of people have
this magic number that they're sold as far as how
much insurance, how much they need, and people just come
up to This is him telling me. They'd come up
to me and say, I need a million dollars, you know,
of life insurance. And it's like, why it's just you
(11:56):
and your wife, no kids. You know, you don't make
a million dollars, so you don't have a million dollars
worth their assets or whatever it is that I forgot
what he said. But long story short is that you know,
he said that one of the most important things is
getting with the right person because and imagine it's true
for you. You'll do an assessment, right, You'll sit down
with me and say, for example, just have me do
(12:18):
an assessment before you give me advice. And maybe that
magic number is smaller, number is bigger, who knows.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
But of course, I mean there's so many factors. I mean,
you know, I mentioned your health being a big factor
the way it is today with the different types of policies.
With a traditional policy, they're pretty strict in the underwriting
because you're not putting in a huge amount of money.
You could be Let's just say you someone gets a
policy and they pay a monthly premium and then the
(12:44):
next day's something happens to them and they go on claim.
The entrance company is on the hook for care for
this person. They've only made one monthly premium payment, and
so that's a big risk. With the asset based program,
it's nice because you know you're putting in a large
amount of money and your money is what comes out
first if you go on claim, So there's more leniency
(13:05):
with the underwriting with when they look at your medical history.
So it could be to someone who couldn't qualify for
a traditional product could potentially get an asset based plan.
Or there's also there are some that are based with
annuities where it's an annuity based chassis and then it
has an add on for the care and that's even
more lenient and underwriting. So there are a lot of
different options, and we have some that go up to
(13:26):
all we have to age eighty five and with an exception,
potentially eighty seven. So a lot of times people say
to me, oh, I'm a seventy and someone told me
I'm too old to get long term care, and I said, well,
it really it depends depends. It depends on your health.
And then you know, based on someone financial situation. I mean,
if if you have a very large portfolio that you're
(13:46):
trying to protect, it's a very big difference from someone
who doesn't have that much to protect. And so you know,
it's it's very fact specific, based on your health, based
on your circumstances, based on what you want. And then
once we get into the design of the plan of
there there's so many different variables that I won't I
love it well bore people with, but it's you can
really customize a plan based on what I.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Look what you just said when it comes to the
design of the plant, so you're you're helping us put
it together, design it to our lifestyle and what we
need rather than just this you know, one size of
it's all.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Oh no, absolutely not, Suzan.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
I mean I could talk about this all day long,
because again it's it's something that's near dear to the heart.
I truly believe in it. Like I said, we have
it and I try to advocate for it. Let's get
our members your number, your information, because they should sit
down with you and talk to you and and see
what they can design with you.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Right, that'd be great. My number is two four o
seven four three four nine seven one. The web address
is the meekumgroup dot com and then my email is
just as share at mek themgroup dot com. And I'd
love to talk about long term care insurance. It's one
of my favorite things to help people with. And you know,
I also more than happy to help people. If their
(15:02):
parents have a policy, or if they have a policy
and they don't understand it, please call me and I
will sit down with you and go over it with you,
and if necessary, we can call the insurance company together
and say, okay, well, what exactly are these benefits and
what Sometimes people only have a small maybe one piece
of paper that has a few little details, but they
don't really understand it, or they can't find a policy
so they don't know exactly what they even have. So
(15:25):
it's really important.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Absolutely, absolutely, there's so many reasons to talk to and
get some advice. So Suzanne, thank you. So much. Suzanne
is one of ours right here at the Greater Rock
Filled Chamber of Commerce, and please give her a call.
Suzanne's here. It's nice talking to me.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Thank you so much, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Eric H. Pleasure
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