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Coasting in Retirement Ep 20: Long Term Care Thumbnail

Coasting in Retirement Ep 20: Long Term Care

Coasting in Retirement Financial Planning Life Insurance Long Term Care Pre-Retirees Retirees

Episode 20: Long Term Care 

Segment 1 (Show Open):

Good afternoon, everyone! Welcome in. Welcome to Coasting in Retirement! That’s. Right. Thanks for joining us today, we’re excited to have you! I am your host, Josh Null…now, normally, I am joined by my co-host Michelle Lee Melton, but Michelle is at home recuperating from recent breast cancer surgery. If you’re listening Michelle, we are all sending prayers and love your way. Fortunately, I’ve got the greatest guest co-host replacement available on speed dial, a guy that has been a part of my life both professionally and personally for the past several years and has crucial to my success, especially in the early years….let’s give a warm welcome to Mr. Jay Stubbs! Jay – how are you doing? 

Listeners: Jay serves as the Director of the Gulf Coast for Providence Partners, and he and I are here today to discuss financial topics relevant to those of you in or near retirement living your best life along our part of the gulf coast. If you’re just tuning in to our show, welcome, you’re listening to Lower Alabama’s most interesting and dynamic financial radio show. Here’s what we’ve got in store for you today: First segment – deep dive on our topic of the day. 2nd segment - at about 20 minutes past the hour - fan favorite, “News of the Week”. 3rd segment, roughly 40 minutes past the hour, ”Josh’s Crystal Ball and Big Mouth”.  So buckle up, we’ve got a lot to get to!

Quick background on me for those new to the show. Again, my name is Josh Null, I am a fee-based financial advisor, I hold my FINRA Series 65 securities license, and I am the owner of Gulf Coast Financial Advisors, an independent investment management and financial planning firm with offices in Fairhope and Orange Beach, Alabama. You can find more information on me and Gulf Coast Financial Advisors by visiting our website gulfcoastfa.com, or feel free to give us a call at 251-327-2124. If you missed that, don’t worry, we will repeat our contact info several times throughout the show! 

Quick housekeeping for compliance, Jay Stubbs and Providence Partners are not affiliated with Prime Capital Investors, Qualified Plan Advisors or Gulf Coast Financial Advisors, and Josh Null is not affiliated with Providence Partners. 

So, Jay, as we laid out in our opening, the point of Coasting in Retirement is to discuss financial topics relevant to folks in or near retirement. When you and I discussed what we thought would be one of the most important topics we could discuss for this audience, we both landed on long-term care. So today listeners, Jay and I are going to discuss in detail the things you need to know about Long Term Care, sometimes called an Extended Health Care event, and give you some practical ideas and concepts to help you handle what can often be the greatest destroyer of wealth known to a retiree. Before we get into our discussion, let’s talk about our bona-fides, or why you should listen to Jay and I give our opinion on long term care. Jay, you go first: 

So, listeners, we obviously know our stuff…so now let’s dive into our topic. Jay – if you had to make the case as to why folks in or near retirement should dedicate time and money to address potential long term care issues, what would you say?  

Jay – let’s discuss stats. Let’s also discuss the ways to pay for long term care: self-insure, Medicaid, traditional long term care insurance, asset-based long term care insurance and hybrid life insurance. This will take up the majority of our conversation. 

Listeners, if you’ve been considering having a conversation about long term care, especially if you would like to see how it fits together with a comprehensive financial plan, then we encourage you to reach out ot us. To set up a no pressure, totally free, no obligation conversation with us, click our calendar link on our website gulfcoastfa.com, or simply call 251-327-2124. Repeat.

Alright folks, coming up next! Every week we scour the interwebs for helpful financial articles related to our topic of the day, especially articles that pertain to those in or near retirement. Join us after the break to hear Jay and I discuss this week’s relevant headlines in our “News of the Week” segment. Stay tuned!

Segment 2 - News of the Week:

Josh: “Welcome back to Coasting in Retirement, your host Josh Null here! As we discussed before the break, every week we scour the interwebs for helpful financial articles related to our topic of the day, especially articles that pertain to those in or near retirement. Our job is to help you all understand how these headlines impact you, especially when it comes to your money! Normally Jay, Michelle reads the headline and I react, but in her absence, I’m going to read the headline then let’s discuss. So without further adieu, here’s…Josh?...with the News of the Week: 

1. Josh: So, Jay, Michelle is a creature of habit, and typically pulls here headlines from sources such as InvestmentNews, CNBC, Forbes, Kiplinger, Barrons, Bloomberg, etc. I had asked you to find a few news headlines you wanted to discuss, and in doing so you found a site we haven’t referenced before: Farm Forum. They have a fresh off the press article titled “Why we put off planning for long term care”. This article talks about some of the cognitive biases that keeps so many folks from addressing their long term care planning needs, including the obvious bias of procrastination, but what I like it is goes a little deeper on the underlying reasons why we hesitate to plan ahead. Jay why don’t you give us your thoughts on this article and how to help people over come their own inertia when it comes to long term care planning?  

     https://www.farmforum.net/story/news/columnists/2023/09/26/rick-kahler-why-we-put-off-planning-for-long-term-care/70970948007/

    2. Josh: Next up is CBS News. Another very recent article, CBS News asks “When should you buy long-term insurance?” Now, Jay, you and I have some experience with this question, we definitely get it asked a lot. A major figure in our industry is Dave Ramsey, and as I’ve done a handful of times on this show, I’ll politely push back on some of what Ramsey says. For example, Dave has done a great job of convincing people that they need to buy LTC at some point, but he encourages people to wait until their 60 to start looking. I hold that because traditional LTC has made underwriting a little stricter over the years, you may be waiting until you have an uninsurable condition, and you should at least check out your options by your mid-50’s. Let’s pivot from my opinion back to this article Jay. When do YOU think someone should buy long term insurance, and do you agree with the decision factors listed in this article? 

     https://www.cbsnews.com/news/when-should-you-buy-long-term-care-insurance/

    3. Josh: Back to a site we referenced often on the show, Forbes. This is a headline I think we can all agree on, “Why Medicaid Shouldn’t Be Your Long-Term Care Plan”. I appreciate that this article takes the time to remind folks that it’s asset and income based Medicaid that handles long term care expenses, not Medicare, which is intended for more traditional hospital and medical bills. Now Jay I think it’s fair to say that many folks that end up on Medicaid didn’t have a lot of options going in, but I also think some folks think there is a broad governmental safety net if they experience an extended health care event, and unfortunately, accessing Medicaid can be a very expensive and frustrating experience. What are your thoughts on this article? 

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobcarlson/2023/05/23/why-medicaid-shouldnt-be-your-long-term-care-plan/?sh=62cdeff529ce

    4. Last article Jay, this one from one of Michelle’s favorite sites, SmartAsset, or SmartAlec as she likes to say. SmartAsset asks and answers the question, “What is Asset-Based Long Term Care?” Of your many areas of expertise, I feel like you have as firm a grasp on this part of the industry as anyone, so would you mind to walk our listeners thru asset-based long term care and the options available? 

    https://smartasset.com/financial-advisor/asset-based-long-term-care

    Josh: Well Jay, we did a great job with the headlines in Michelle’s absence, and as always, these are all important topics that impacts those in or near retirement! Listeners – if you have questions around the topics in our headlines of the week, or questions related to your investment strategy or financial plan, you can set an appointment by calling us at 251-327-2124 or by clicking calendar link on our website, gulfcoastfa.com. It’s in the upper right-hand corner. Remember - it’s a free, no pressure, no obligation meeting. 

    So Jay, our next segment is called “Josh’s Crystal Ball and Big Mouth” where I get to pat my back on some of any accurate opinions or predictions, and of course Michelle gets to bust my chops whenever my big mouth was way off. With you filling in for Michelle, I thought it might be fun to look back at some of the things we said on our very popular podcast “Every Dollar Counts”. Ha! Don’t worry, we were mostly right, but boy did we whiff on a few things. Listeners – join us after the break to hear Josh and Jays! Crystal Ball and Big Mouths! Stay tuned! 

    Segment 3 – Josh’s Crystal Ball and Big Mouth: 

    Welcome back! Your host Josh Null here, along side guest co-host Jay Stubbs, filling in for Michelle. So, I am opinionated, I have strong opinions at times, I would say a radio show host that isn’t probably wouldn’t be very interesting to listen to. And I am paid in my profession to offer professional guidance and opinions to my clients, otherwise what use am I? Sometimes I feel so strongly about something that I talk about it publicly, on the various podcasts and radio shows I’ve had, sometimes I’ll even make predictions, and while I usually proved right, there are times I swing and I miss. And guess what?! There’s someone else here in studio that  often joined me in expressing these predictions and opinions on our wildly popular podcast, Every Dollar Counts. That’s right, Mr. Jay Stubbs himself. So Jay, I went back thru our Every Dollar Counts podcast catalog and picked out a few of our predictions and opinions.  Let’s see just how right and wrong we were. 

    1. Josh: I’m going to get one of the bad predictions out of the way right off the bat. And to be fair, this is more on me than it is on you, you actually pushed back a little on my bloviating during the recording. Back in July of 2022, we released an Every Dollar Counts episode titled “We’re living a country song” where yours truly said that it was nearly mathematically impossible for inflation to keep growing at the rapid pace we were experiencing at that time, and that I thought it would be just a few months until inflation eased. Now, to be fair, apparently pandemic related inflation actually peaked in June of 2022 at 9.1%, so I wasn’t totally off, BUT, as anyone knows, we are still dealing with high inflation well over a year later, and the fed funds rates is at a decade’s high. Also to be fair, we referenced a Hank Williams Jr country song that said “the interest is up and the stock market is down” as well as the “Mississippi river, she’s a running dry” so maybe our crystal ball was pretty accurate. Jay – what are your thoughts about inflation moving forward, and how have you seen that impact the insurance industry? 

    2. Josh: Alright Jay, let’s pivot to an opinion we both shared that looks like it played out just as we thought it would. On June 28th, 2022, we recorded an episode titled “Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). In this episode, we discussed the social pressure applied to investors to not “miss out” on certain investments that were held to have super high upside potential, such as penny stocks, meme stocks, and of course crypto. We compared and contrasted some of these investment bubbles with what happened back during the dot.com bubble, and I must say, listening to the episode again, we were right on, particularly with crypto. Our main point was there gambling, then there’s investing, and retail investors need to understand the difference. Anything happened in the last year and half to change your opinion? Josh – picked on crypto for a while and was right.

    3. Josh: So Jay, here’s one episode topic that ties into our topic of the day of long term care planning, particularly the morbidity and mortality risks that insurance companies factor into their decisions. Way back in February of 2021, we had an Every Dollar Counts episode titled “How Covid has impacted life insurance underwriting”, then we updated ourselves via a follow up episode in December 2021. I’ll be honest with you, Covid feels soooo long ago, but I know that it is still impacting people everyday all across the world, so let me ask you, do you still see the effects of Covid as it relates to insurance underwriting processes? 

    4. Jay: Last one Jay, this one ties our discussion about inflation together with interest rates. Back in March of 2022, we had an Every Dollar Counts episode titled “Interest Rates and Income Annuities”. Now fortunately, I didn’t stick my foot in my big mouth like I did recently on this show, asking the listeners about 2 months ago if this was “as good as it gets to fixed interest investments” when clearly it wasn’t, but you and I avoided predictions in this episode and focused more on how a rising fed funds rate affects insurance products, particularly annuities. You’ll laugh Jay, but back when we recorded that episode, the fed funds rate was .75% to 1%, while it is now 5.25 to 5.5%, and set to possibly rise further, so my question to you – how as this affected the different classes of annuities? 

    Well listeners, I hoped you enjoyed our stroll down memory lane. If you want to hear more from Jay and I, go check out the Every Dollar Counts podcast catalog, you can find us on spotify and on my website, gulfcoastfa.com. And Jay, should we announce it? We are in discussions to bring the show back, this time as an industry facing experiment to help independent and semi-independent advisors and agents better serve investors like you. Back to our segment - listeners – if you have more questions about the various investments and topics we discussed in this segment, we invite you to reach out to us. Call us anytime at 251-327-2124 to make an appointment or find us at on our website at gulfcoastfa.com. 

    Folks, that’s it for us this week here at Coasting in Retirement! I want to give a huge thank you to Jay Stubbs, filling in as co-host for Michelle while she recuperates, a thank you to our awesome radio station FM Talk 106.5, many thanks to the provider of our show music, local band Sloth Racer, and as always my sincere appreciation for all of your out there that have been listening and joining us on this journey. We would love to be a part of your journey as well. Until we talk again next Sunday, have a wonderful and productive week. This has been Coasting in Retirement with Josh Null! 

    Disclosure:

    Advisory products and services offered by Investment Adviser Representatives through Prime Capital Investment Advisors, LLC (“PCIA”), a federally registered investment adviser. PCIA: 6201 College Blvd., Suite#150, Overland Park, KS 66211. PCIA doing business as Prime Capital Wealth Management ("PCWM") and Qualified Plan Advisors (“QPA”). Certain services may be provided by PCIA affiliates. In this format, Josh Null provides general information, not individually targeted personalized advice, and is not liable for the usage of the information provided.  Exposure to ideas and financial vehicles should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any of these financial vehicles.  This information should also not be considered tax or legal advice. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Investments will fluctuate and when redeemed may be worth more or less than when originally invested.