Speaker 1
Good Saturday morning, everybody. Welcome to your next chapter, a production of The Heights at Avery Heights, a one-of-a-kind senior living community centrally located in the most entertaining and historical spots in Connecticut. Folks, it is never too late to grow and enjoy new realms of the mind and heart. And this show will discuss exciting opportunities, important resources for older adults, financial well-being, senior living communities, and emotional health, and so much more, along with senior living specialist, Siobhan Mattingly. I tease her because she wears many a hat.

Speaker 2
It’s a tongue twister.

Speaker 1
It is a tongue twister. It’s like Sally sells seashells, right? By the seashore.

Speaker 1
By the seashore. That’s right. How are you?

Speaker 1
I’m very good. You look great. How was your week?

Speaker 1
It was awesome. You’re always busy. And you know what?

Speaker 1
When you love what you do as much as you do, and I, for that matter, we’re very blessed to be able to do that. How many times do you talk to somebody who are miserable in their job? It’s so hard.

Speaker 2
Yeah.

Speaker 1
They don’t feel like they’re… We actually talked about this a little bit last week, I think. You don’t feel like they’re contributing to successes or the benefit of…

Speaker 2
That’s the worst feeling.

Speaker 1
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2
Yeah.

Speaker 1
Yeah, sure.

Speaker 2
You just feel like, what’s the point?

Speaker 1
And I know, I don’t know if I ever told you this. I mean, I actually knew somebody that left not just a high-paying job, a ridiculously high-paying job. And the reason why they did that is because of illness.

Speaker 1
I mean, high blood pressure, stress, and took a job for less than half. Of course, if you knew what they were getting, an exorbitant amount. Less than half.

Speaker 1
I mean, they went from around $200,000 a year to about $75,000.

Speaker 2
Yeah. I can see that, though. And much happier, by the way.

Speaker 2
I think that’s worth it. I mean, it depends on what you have going on. A lot of times if you’ve got your kids and stuff like that, you can’t make that move.

Speaker 2
But if you can make the move, if you don’t have all that responsibility, if you can downsize, it’s worth it to be happy. What’s the point of being miserable? You just nailed it.

Speaker 1
Yeah. She goes, Gary, I know everybody thinks I’m crazy. How do you leave a $200,000 a year job for less than half?

Speaker 1
She goes, but I am, can’t you tell? I am much more happy. I am, you know, and she goes, I love what I do.

Speaker 1
You know, I didn’t love what I did there. The money was keeping me there. And it was, I should probably should have left this job a couple of years ago because of the high stress and everything.

Speaker 1
But I love what I do. Because you retire.

Speaker 2
You hear these stories all the time when people retire and they have a heart attack. I remember this one guy that called, his sister called into the community. He retired within a week, and then he fell down the stairs, ended up with a traumatic brain injury.

Speaker 1
Oh, my goodness. Are you serious? Right after retirement?

Speaker 2
Yep. Week after retirement.

Speaker 1
It’s like hearing about the person who hits the lottery and kicks the bucket a week later.

Speaker 2
It’s horrible. Good Lord. So life is too short. Be happy.

Speaker 1
You have a guest with us this morning.

Speaker 2
I do. And on the phone from Louisville, Kentucky. Yes.

Speaker 2
Tell us who our guest is. I have Mr. Ben Rao on the line. He’s written a wonderful book called Paying for Long-Term Care.

Speaker 2
He’s also the co-founder of Mom’s House, and we do a lot of work with Mom’s House, and he’s going to explain what that’s all about. He is actually kicking off our four-part series on paying for long-term care. So we have him this week.

Speaker 2
Next week we have Second Act is going to be here, and they’re going to talk about bridge loans. Show number three is Family Solutions for Care, which is going to talk about long-term care. And show number four is actually going to talk about veterans’ benefits, Patriot Angels. And I know that Ben kind of works with all those companies. And that’s actually how I got connected with all those companies, which is great. But he’s actually going to be speaking

Speaker 1
next Saturday at an open house. Last week, you spoke about that. Yes, on May 6th.

Speaker 2
We’re very excited to have him. We’re going to see him in person all the way from Louisville, Kentucky. By the way, my family’s from Lebanon, Kentucky. So you can wave and say hi to them

Speaker 1
for me, Ben. But please welcome Ben. He’s awesome. Ben, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3
Hey, thanks, guys. I’m glad to be on it. And thank you for having me. I am in Louisville doing a little business development here for Mom’s House, but excited to talk about paying for long-term care and trying to get this information to as

Speaker 1
many people’s hands as possible. That’s great. Tell us just a little bit about yourself before I start getting into the book and some other questions that I have for you.

Speaker 3
Yeah, so I’ve been a long-time entrepreneur, haven’t worked for the man for probably 20 years, And just I build businesses and marketing and senior living and group purchasing organizations. And I’ve been a longtime real estate investor. I love investing in houses and buying houses and rentals. So I’ve been doing that for a long time and really enjoy it.

Speaker 1
It’s great. This book, Paying for Long-Term Care, The Essential Guide to Understanding and Funding Senior Care. Why write this book? What was the story behind it in you becoming a senior care advocate?

Speaker 3
You know what? That’s a really good question because if you ever received a text message from me, you know I can’t type. So for me to be out writing a book was pretty incredible.

Speaker 3
But it was really – I got into senior living really excited four years ago. And I saw there was just, I couldn’t believe the gaps in information that was available for families that have a loved one that’s thinking about transitioning into some level of care or into independent living. And the conversations just weren’t happening.

Speaker 3
And it dawned on me that six or seven years earlier than that, my stepfather, Tom, who got sick really quick and was almost bed bound at home. Nobody wants to leave their forever home. But I didn’t know what to do.

Speaker 3
And so I had gone through all these different things and made all the mistakes about what do you do when a loved one needs to look at care? Where do I go? What does it mean?

Speaker 3
You know, Tom served in the military. Does he get veterans benefits? What do we do about the house?

Speaker 3
Just all these things. I don’t know what level of care. And I just said, you know what?

Speaker 3
Like any entrepreneur, I’m just going to go solve it. And so we set out to go write this book just to be able to get a resource in the hands of family, give them a framework, and just get some conversations going with the families. I think that’s really the biggest thing is how do we get families talking about this?

Speaker 3
Nobody wants to talk about when they’re leaving a forever home and going into some other –

Speaker 1
Well, it’s a tough conversation to have.

Speaker 3
It’s tough, but it doesn’t have to be that tough. I mean, it’s really – you’re really exchanging housing for housing. So, I mean, it’s something that if we can get people just having this conversation while everybody’s head is in the right place and it’s not under duress or stress or an emergency, it makes it so much easier for families to plan and how they’re going to pay for care and what the loved one’s best wishes are.

Speaker 3
Because sometimes this stuff happens really quick. Maybe it’s an accident. Maybe somebody fell.

Speaker 3
Something’s happened again. And it’s like, Mom can’t go home. She’s got to go into some higher level of care.

Speaker 3
And now the family’s under duress trying to make really big life decisions. And they haven’t talked about anything.

Speaker 1
Well, I mean, it’s swapping house for house in a literal sense. But there’s an emotional aspect to this as well. And, you know, there’s memories that are that took place within those four walls.

Speaker 1
You know, the first child you raised, the first meal as a husband and wife. And also, you know, even by memory, I mean, if you have to use the restroom at two o’clock in the morning and you know how to get from your bedroom to the bathroom in the complete dark because you know where it is. Even if your memory is not good, when you do something every day for 40 years, it almost becomes…

Speaker 1
Right, exactly. So there’s multiple reasons. It’s not, yeah, I guess in simple terms, it’s swapping house for house.

Speaker 1
But it’s not just that term that should be looked at. There’s an attachment.

Speaker 3
We talk in terms, it’s like a lifetime of memories. I mean, the Salt and Pepper Shaker collection that mom and dad collected, because every time they went on a trip, they got a new one. And now mom can’t necessarily take 12 boxes that are in the basement of Salt and Pepper Shaker.

Speaker 2
Or the piano. It’s always the piano.

Speaker 1
It’s memory, right? No, right. You know, I was looking at your book, and the first content section of your book is called Making Decisions on Your Own Terms.

Speaker 1
I mean, this is a great statement, but I wanted to get from you. Like, what do you mean from this? Why is this important?

Speaker 1
And really, how can this book help aid in making this all happen?

Speaker 3
Yeah, I think that, you know, in some ways we’re in denial that, you know, there’s always tomorrow. We’re never going to get older. And then you get into an uncomfortable conversation that the family doesn’t want to have, and so they put it off.

Speaker 3
I mean, who wants to go to their parent and say, let’s talk about what the next stage of care might need to be so we know what you want? It doesn’t sound like a very fun conversation, and people are uncomfortable because they don’t know how to approach it. You know, some people are planners, right?

Speaker 3
Some people aren’t. And so if we can stimulate these conversations earlier while the individual still is, you know, there and it doesn’t have to be in a hurry and you can have these conversations, you know, my stepfather, Tom, he was a really strange and funny man. You know, he didn’t trust banks, but he did store, you know, $100 bills wrapped up in foil in the freezer, which I found by accident.

Speaker 2
And where did he live? Exact address, please.

Speaker 1
I actually understood where he was coming from. Not many people trust banks right now. The part I don’t understand is what’s with the freezer, you know?

Speaker 3
You know, it’s where he was going to hide his money. And I didn’t know that’s where he hid his money. Or if I had found it by accident, I might not have known where it’s like, okay, somebody might hire somebody to come clean out the fridge and clean the house out.

Speaker 3
Clean him out. They throw away $10,000. So it’s like having these – I created this roadmap or framework for families to use to make it easier to have the conversation.

Speaker 3
And it sounds super simple, but it really is – I just wanted to get people tracked so they kind of had an idea about like – and you start out kind of like what – you’re trying to figure out. Everybody wants to go straight to the end as far as what do we do, where are we moving. but these conversations could be happening years in advance talking about what assets does mom and dad have.

Speaker 3
This could be a simple spreadsheet, a piece of paper, a Google Doc, whatever it is, to just start talking about. Let’s identify what mom has. Oh, Tom’s got $10,000 in the refrigerator.

Speaker 3
Check. Got it. Make sure we check the fridge.

Speaker 3
Oh, life insurance policy. I had no idea you had one. Stocks.

Speaker 3
I had no idea. He had like $12,000 in stocks. I had no clue.

Speaker 3
paper was in file cabinets in the basement it got wet without having an idea where everything is and that’s just one of those steps as far as defining and identifying what all the assets are so you’re not scrambling and not having that conversation as you guys know a lot of these family members we call our daughter Judy that adult child lives out of town they don’t live in the same city which makes it even harder I was going back and forth every weekend from Kansas City to Louisville to come in to Louisville to figure out what I was going to do

Speaker 1
and how I was going to help Tom. Let’s jump ahead a little bit to chapter seven, the cost of long-term care. Ben, what is the average cost looking like right now for care? I know you’re in Kentucky and

Speaker 3
Connecticut is a little different than Kentucky, but… You guys are crazy up in Connecticut.

Speaker 1
Yeah, you listen, you’re preaching to the choir here.

Speaker 3
I think where you don’t want to be is you don’t want to be in Alaska.

Speaker 1
Why is that?

Speaker 3
Well, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for care.

Speaker 1
Let’s not even get into skilled nursing.

Speaker 3
It’s even more.

Speaker 1
So we had a bad year.

Speaker 3
It really depends.

Speaker 1
What was that? I’m sorry.

Speaker 3
I’m sorry. I thought I lost you. No. It really depends on where you are. You know, you made a really great point there, Gary. If you’re in New York City in Manhattan, super expensive.

Speaker 1
Oh, very expensive.

Speaker 3
Very different. The Northeast, more expensive. But compare that to Indiana or the Midwest or some of the areas.

Speaker 3
So right now, it’s really depending on the level of care and what you need. It could be $1,500 to $3,000 a month, kind of at an entry-level point, which might still shock some people. But most of the time, you’re looking for, if we’re talking about assisted living, you It could be in that $3,000 to $6,000 range, depending on where you are.

Speaker 3
There’s some high-end care communities that are way, way in the stratosphere as far as what those monthlies are, but they’re providing so much more value in different things and amenities to their residents. So it really depends on level of care, where you are in the United States, and it’s going to range anywhere from a few thousand dollars to $20,000 a month.

Speaker 1
So I guess the inevitable next question or the logical next question would be, what are some of the ways to defray the cost or maybe help pay for this care?

Speaker 3
You know what?

Speaker 1
I should write a book on that. You know, I’ll tell you, I’ve got a good title for it if you ever do. Okay, all right. It would be called maybe paying for long-term care. We could start with that.

Speaker 3
I’m making a note. Speaking of which. So, I mean, there’s a lot of different ways.

Speaker 3
I think the family starts to start to figure out, like, how are we going to pay for this? They don’t realize that how much it’s going to cost. And depending on the family situation, depending if they were a veteran, depending on that they had pension savings, what their wealth is, it’s really all over the place.

Speaker 3
But there’s a lot of different ways to pay for care. You know, everybody thinks, not everybody, but a lot of people think that, you know, They say things like, oh, isn’t Medicare going to pay for my – and it’s not. And Medicaid might pay for some of that more skilled nursing.

Speaker 3
Some of the assisted living take some of that, too, depending on the level of care that they have. But we’re looking at the big places are savings. If they were a planner and they got a long-term care insurance policy – I know you talked about having family solutions for care.

Speaker 3
I know those folks very well. do a great job on how to unpack and figure out how to get the most out of your long-term care policy. Those are really the planners. You know, my mom was in senior living for her entire life. She was a planner. She’s got a great policy. I’m like, go mom. Yes, $12,000 a month. I can’t wait to get you moved into assisted living someday. And she’s going to have to pay, but a lot of people haven’t put that money aside. And so most of their money is wrapped up in their house, in their home. And so So they have to figure out how do we tap that equity in the home to be able to pay for care.

Speaker 3
There’s some companies out there that do loans, bridge loans, home equity lines of credit. Those are ways that some people kind of do that. Some people want to start similar to what I did with Tom where, oh, we’re going to put a Band-Aid on it and try with in-home health care because nobody wants to leave their forever home.

Speaker 3
And so they start there. You know, there’s companies out there that if you have a life insurance policy and it’s the right kind of policy, you have some opportunities to convert that policy into cash to help pay for care, depending on the type of policy that you have. You know, some people, depending if they’re going to age in place and they’re going to live in their home, a reverse mortgage could be a good fit.

Speaker 3
I don’t, you know, I’m not a financial advisor, but I have an opinion that I don’t think it’s a great fit if somebody is going to be moving into a higher level of care. And this is more of a kind of a, hey, let’s keep mom or dad at home for a short period of time and just figure this out. That may not be the good fit.

Speaker 3
It just might be expensive money to borrow against equity in the home. So there’s a lot of different health savings accounts. That’s one that’s kind of like people don’t, you know, if you’re putting money in the health savings account, that can pay for care.

Speaker 3
So there’s a lot of different ways to get out there and pay for care. But what we’re seeing is that many times the house is the family’s biggest asset unless they’ve got a lot of money put aside. And as they trade that house for new housing plus care, that’s really the move.

Speaker 1
I’d be afraid I outlive the money from my house. We’re going to sell this house or we’re going to take a reverse mortgage or we’re going to just put the house on the market and we’re going to put that money in. That’s going to be your senior living.

Speaker 1
Let’s say that’s great. I don’t know if it’s $5,000 a month times 12 months times 10 years. That money is gone.

Speaker 1
My luck is, I guess it’s a good problem to have, I suppose. The quality of life has to be factored in there as well. But then what happens if my money is all gone, but I’m still living, you know?

Speaker 3
I know. It’s a problem. And, you know, we talk about, you know, sometimes there’s a negative connotation, but we talk about the silver tsunami and the baby boomers that are coming at our care system.

Speaker 3
And we are going to have a problem. There is going to be, you know, we need a bigger boat. boat. I heard somebody say that’s like, hey, somehow we need a bigger boat. We’ve got to figure out how to age in place. And if we’re going to age in place, then we’re talking about modifying our existing home. Again, it’s back to the home. And if you’re in Gary good enough shape and you’re going to live 10 years, it may be surprising me that you’re moving out of your house that early, unless you’re moving into independent living. And that independent living is much more of that planning and it’s more of that apartment.

Speaker 1
Memory care could really occur, God forbid, at any age. I mean, we’re looking at Bruce Willis. We’re looking at, you know, just Robin Williams several years ago.

Speaker 1
Folks, you’re listening to Your Next Chapter, Senior Living. It’s a production of The Heights at Avery Heights, along with Siobhan Mattingly. I’m Gary Byron.

Speaker 1
Our guest this morning is the author of a book entitled Paying for Long-Term Care, Ben Rayo, who’s going to be over at the heights of, oh my goodness, it’s coming up. The date is May 6th. Yeah, May 6th.

Speaker 1
Next weekend. Next week, that’s right. So I guess my next question is, I guess, how should someone get started trying to figure all this out and how they’re going to be paying for this, any kind of care plan for the future.

Speaker 3
Well, the earlier, Gary, we can have these conversations, the earlier we can start the plan.

Speaker 1
True.

Speaker 3
You know, we’re living, if you’ve seen the, I’m sure you’ve seen the graphics that were the, it was the pyramid and the life expectancy, you know, pyramid is now changing to a column, you know, with healthier eating, technology, more exercise, people are living a lot longer, which means we’re going to need more. I don’t know how old you are, Gary, but I remember when I was a kid seeing people get balloons that 40 was over the hill. You know, they had those black balloons and they had a 40 and it said over the hill. And it’s like now, you know, 55, it doesn’t even seem to be over the hill.

Speaker 2
Thank you. Looking nifty at 50. Let’s get bumper stickers.

Speaker 1
That’s true. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3
My mom’s very active. She’s in her mid-70s. My father’s extremely active, and he’s in his mid-70s. Mid-70s used to be what seemed old 30 or 40 years ago. And this is just a better level of care. And I think COVID showed us something, too, that people want to be around people. Socialization.

Speaker 1
Well, we missed it.

Speaker 3
We’ve got to start these conversations early with the family. They need to be happening. People plan for, they’ll take weeks or months to plan for a family vacation to go to the beach, but we can’t sit down and have a few hours of conversation about, hey, God forbid, if anything happens, mom, dad, let’s talk about what you really want.

Speaker 1
All right, so Ben, what if a person is in, sadly, if they’re in an emergency situation, What advice can you give to them to get organized and pay for, you know, the long care that’s needed?

Speaker 3
Yeah, so the advice, if you’re an emergency, you know, take a deep breath. It is stressful. We’re trying to keep a loved one safe.

Speaker 3
And there’s a lot of great, great care communities out there that have great services that can help you kind of navigate and figure that out. There’s people that are out there, elder law attorneys that can help get things straightened out for you and get things organized as far as power of attorney and those kinds of things. As far as paying for care, that kind of becomes depending on, you know, you’ve got private pay and then you’ve got care communities that accept Medicaid.

Speaker 3
And so just depending on what level of care you need, you might, you have to spend all your money down before the government is going to help you to pay for care. So that’s one of the things that is a little bit scary. I’m going to rely on the government and be relying on it for the rest of your life.

Speaker 3
If you’re younger right now, one advice I could give you is get that house into a trust, and an LL attorney can help you to do that. And if it gets in there and gets seasoned for a period of time, then that will be considered an asset, and that will help your family have a little bit more on the inheritance side versus spending every dime of a family member down.

Speaker 1
That’s good. Go ahead. I’m sorry.

Speaker 3
No, no, no. Go ahead.

Speaker 1
Just because I’m running out of time, there’s a couple of things I wanted to bring up, and I know that this is rather important to you professionally as well as personally. What would be one thing that you could help a listener with right now who’s just perhaps beginning this process? I don’t have much time left, and I know that probably requires a lot of thought here, but what’s the first thing that comes to mind that you can help somebody with who’s just starting this process right now?

Speaker 3
If you’ve got time and you’ve got a runway here and it’s not urgent, have the conversation with your loved one. It’s the best thing that you can do for yourself, and you can take it from an approach of, Hey, Mom, Dad, I want to talk to you about this. And I want to talk to you about this not because I’m worried about it.

Speaker 3
It’s a morbid conversation or it’s a bad conversation. I have it because I don’t want to get to a point that something happens and we need to move quickly to get you to care to keep you safe. And I don’t know what you want.

Speaker 3
And I don’t want you to feel like guilty or stressed because you’re putting all this burden on me as your child. Let’s have that conversation. you know I heard somebody say something it’s like they they use the book as the platform to say let’s talk about it well you said earlier the better we need to talk about it mom dad then said we need to talk about it so let’s talk about it well I like what you said a little while ago I mean earlier

Speaker 1
the better don’t do it at a time when you you’ve got to start making decisions you know in the next few weeks or a couple few months have it well enough in advance where they’re they’re making these decisions of sound mind um and rational speaking of that book um i know you’re gonna are you me giving it away i know you’re gonna be over at the heights on may 6th for their open house um but you’re are you are people gonna get a copy of this book yes look at that i think i think i

Speaker 3
think they are gonna get a copy of the book if we can if we run and if we run out of copies we’ll give people a link to where they can get a digital download um if you want to get it at the book you I always go to Amazon. It was an Amazon bestselling book. And just look up page for long-term care with my name, Ben, and last name is Rayo, R-A-O.

Speaker 2
But he’s got to autograph these.

Speaker 1
Oh, look at that. Well, Stephen King’s got nothing on him. Siobhan, how does somebody sign up for this?

Speaker 2
You can give me a call at 860-953-1201, and I will register you. I’m looking forward to it. Or you can go to AveryHeights.org. It’s actually on our website as well. You can click the link and get in touch with me that way as well.

Speaker 1
If you don’t mind me asking, Ben, just how long did it take you to write this book? It’s pretty thorough.

Speaker 3
So I had a lot of help. Again, grammar and typos are right up my alley. So I had multiple people read it. I really built out a framework. But I think from start to finish, it probably took eight months.

Speaker 1
Yeah, it’s very thorough. I want to congratulate you on the book. And anybody listening to this, well, you’re going to get your free copy. I didn’t do it alone. No, I’m sure.

Speaker 3
I mean, there’s a lot of people that I admire in senior living that I asked if they would look at the manuscript and give me feedback, and they did.

Speaker 1
Well, you can pay for the book on Amazon or on the website, or you can get your free copy of the book, Paying for Long-Term Care. All you have to do is attend one of the open house events that Avery Heights is happening. May 6th, you’ll get the tour, a lunch, and a presentation from Ben Rayo himself.

Speaker 1
Ben Rayo, mom’s house, paying for long-term care. And let’s not forget the following week, May 13th, again, tour and lunch and a presentation which is downsizing what you must know before you move. And that’s with Amiston Home Transition Solutions, who we’ve had on the show in the past.

Speaker 1
I want to thank our guest this morning, the author of the aforementioned book, Paying for Long-Term Care, The Essential Guide to Understanding and Funding Senior Care, Ben Rayo. I greatly appreciate your value time this morning. Good luck with…

Speaker 3
Thank you so much, guys. I appreciate you having me on. And I did neglect to mention one other thing. If you’ve got a loved one that’s moving into care and you need help with the house and want options, MomsHouse.com is a great spot to go to get some options there. Anywhere in the country.

Speaker 1
Let’s check it out. MomsHouse.com. For Siobhan Mattingly, I’m Gary Byron.

Speaker 1
Thank you so much for listening. Until next Saturday morning, have a good one, everybody. So long.