[0:00] Welcome to Artful aging with your host Amy are you a senior or caregiver of a senior looking for so.
Direction best-selling author educator and expert in Senior Living Amy Friesen is here.
With the help you need while providing you with an important and valuable support network so now please welcome the host of Artful aging Amy Friesen.
[0:28] Morning everyone I'm Amy Friesen this is Artful aging with Amy thanks for joining us today we're coming to you live from Bold Brave TV.
On today's show we're going to be talking all about how to get your finances in order for not only your own life,
but for those that you might be willing to help out in their senior years like your loved ones a lot of different scenarios come up with money.
Many families tell us that they are needing to chip in to pay for care or for retirement living as their loved ones,
age and the might have had you know a job in the home or not had a pension or not save properly there's lots of reasons why people need a little bit of a boost in their senior years and so they need to be able to afford care over time.
My guest today is Jim climate financial advisor and wealth manager Jim works with seniors to develop strategies for their wealth estate and tax planning,
gyms also works with individuals who are looking at how they can loved ones financially
with the lowest impact on their own Financial lives which is all important all of us want to be able to have our own money and do what we need but also many of us want to be able to help our loved ones out welcome Jim thanks so much for joining us today.
Thanks for having me.
[1:44] So you know Jim as I mentioned there are many seniors who are finding themselves in a financial pinch or a financial pickle when it comes to their care and their living arrangements
I speak with families very freak about the struggle and how to balance their own family.
But also contribute to their aging parents needs in adding additional.
So Jim what do you feel are the main contributors to this lack of income or savings when seniors get to a point of needing more care or even a financial or sorry even a retirement.
[2:17] Yeah so there's really four main reasons for that in the number one is in
and we're seeing the full impact of inflation right now if you're doing your groceries or going to the gas station you've seen the prices go
up expected massively so the number one thing is 50 thousand dollars from.
10 15 years ago was not what it's worth today so when we're talking about seniors a 50,000 dollar pension.
Twenty years ago was significant but now your retirement home and you have retirement homes it's very common to see one that's 4,000 dollars a month,
so there goes your whole pension and that's not even talking about any extra spending so inflation is one of the big ones number two is we're living longer than ever so.
20 30 years ago you retired at 65 and you expected to live till 75 so you only needed about 10 years worth of savings,
and now we're seeing people retire younger it's common to see people retiring at 55 at 60 but our life expectancy is now past 85 years old.
[3:21] So you're looking at 20 30 30 plus years of expensive so if you don't have a pension that's a lot of money that you're going to have to be bringing in so people don't necessarily plan for that they saw their parents retire and pass away.
Shortly after and did not plan for that accordingly and that brings me to the next to the lack of planning
we often compare ourselves to other people we compare ourselves to The Neighbor Next Door who they're happily retired
but we don't know that they're sitting on to Big federal pensions when we're self-employed so we don't plan accordingly to it or if we do plan we
we invest instead of plan for retirement so you're putting money aside every single month so you're saying okay I'm putting a hundred dollars inside a been doing that for a few years it's all going to work itself out that's not necessarily the case you haven't looked at
where are you going to invest is if the right investment vehicle is it going to be right for your flexibility does it allow you to take advantage
of the government pensions that you are entitled for specially old age security.
If you invest too much in our SP that can cause your old age security pension in the future and make your savings dwindle a lot faster so the mayor's are inflation.
[4:33] We live longer we procrastinate planning for it and when we do plan for we don't necessarily have a plan we simply invest for retirement.
I'm wondering also because especially where we're at in Ottawa there's you know for the long-term care waiting there's waiting list for long-term care which is our public system.
And so what's happened in my career is that the retirement homes
have some of that care have started to offer that care in our area for instance and across the country really but I wonder if one of the other contributing factors might be the fact that
you know back when the seniors of today had their parents being seniors retirement living as it is today was not
what it was right it's obviously growing the markets needed and so whereas you know they might have been family Caregivers for their loved ones for the investment is on
their time not the investment in a retirement community that's going to take care of care we do you think that might be a contributor as well.
[5:30] Yeah it's also we used to have a lot bigger families you had if I take an example my on my father's side.
There Were Ten kids the both parents did not have a sizable pension but there were 10 kids to take care of them so you had money coming in from different Avenues different people could take the go in and do the care that they wanted to and they could live at home but now you're seeing families with,
single child or two kids they both have full-time jobs it's a lot harder to take care of a parent,
but like you mentioned as well we have the Baby Boomers who are all moving into retirement home that's a huge portion of the population so the amount of homes available is a lot shorter as well so.
The need for at home care which is not cheap that's going up as well and.
Like it or not current living facilities or at home care it is a business they're in there to make a profit as well so it's never going to become cheaper and like you said the alternative is.
[6:22] Public if public funded or non-for-profit homes which is normally is not necessarily the best.
[6:29] Way of life sometimes it's not the most delightful option I get you know there's they definitely get
a bad rap there's definitely lovely lovely Long-Term Care Homes but with covid let stuff and all the lights has been shined everywhere right it gives leaves a bad taste in people's mouths and they hesitate right and then retirement living from that end could go
you know like you said it could be 4,000 it could really could range in our city from 2500 up to 15 thousand dollars a month depending on
what their care actually looks like and how much the retirement home needs to supplement so you know as you know it's great.
There's a spot where they can do care for individuals and they can provide that care and take the
a little bit of the pressure of the family you know the family is always going to be a caregiver but
you know also it comes like you said it doesn't comes at a cost and yes they are providing the service and yes a lot of people can benefit from that but not everyone,
so for those folks that
you know are in that in between line it's a little bit more difficult and trying to figure out how do we help them because there's a lot more kids these days that are coming to us for help a tea and toast specifically saying you know I need to chip in
a couple of hundred dollars a month or it's not even some of them it's not even a ton of money right like it's a couple hundred from this,
okay it's a couple hundred from my kid just trying to you know meld a little bit to make sure that Mom and Dad are taking care of properly and so it gets to be.
[7:56] A little bit sticky especially the families are so much smaller like it's just me and my sister for instance or it's just you know my husband is an only child and so all of the burden of that financial responsibility then comes down on.
[8:10] One or two kids and not 10 right,
so let's continue this conversation in a minute Jim we're going to be back in just a few minutes on Artful aging with Amy will see you then.
[8:22] Welcome back to our full aging today we're speaking with Jim about all things Financial Jim can you tell our audience who might not be familiar with.
What a financial advisor is what some of the benefits are working with is yourself.
To sort out their not only their finances but also like what are their finances for the future all Realms of their life yeah so we just talked about.
[8:45] Purely about caregiving in the financial planning towards that and there's so many contributing factors to take into consideration so.
It can be extremely overwhelming to do it on your own and the fact of the matter is I've been in this business for I've been specializing in years now.
And there's still cases where we need to develop new strategies and new types of plans just to accommodate the clients so.
To do it on your own it's very overwhelming I don't know if you've ever been on CRA and try to make sense of,
simply how to utilize CPP and OAS if you started 60 at 60 years old whether you started 7 years old what do you do with OES how does OES clawback work.
Just taking that into consideration is extremely daunting but then investing into question so.
How do you plan for retirement planning how do you plan for caregiving it whether it's for yourself or for parents,
do you invest that in your arse be the event invest in your tfsa do you want to use that contribution room for your parents and for your care,
or do you want to keep it for yourself so there's so many things to keep in mind and using an advisor like ourselves.
[9:48] We're going to help sort all of that out for you and the common misconception is that you meet with us and it's like meeting with a lawyer and accountant where you meet with us and you have to pay us a bill simply for the consultation that's not the way it works.
[10:02] We're actually compensated by the companies that we deal with.
If ever you do decide to do business with us we built the plan for you we decide where the money's going to go how we're going to invest it how we're going to do our withdrawals how we're going to utilize that money later on.
And.
You don't have to pay me anything it's not out of pocket it's the companies that we deal with whether we take to a financial institution whether we take that money invested with an insurance company they're the ones who compensate us to manage the clients it's not coming from you directly.
And the last thing is a lot of people they say well.
I don't want to work with an advisor because they're going to make me a budget and I'm not going to be able to live my life well the way that we work is we try
to build the plan around your lifestyle so the last thing that we want is for you to be able to enjoy today so that you can enjoy tomorrow so we're not going to make sure we're going to make sure that you can still take those trips we're going to make sure that.
You're still going to be able to pay your kids education and
figure out your future care your parents care everything like that we're really going to make a plan that is holistic on all areas of your life we're not just going to take one plan and just focus it in One Direction so,
that's normally the biggest thing is purely that.
I don't want to work with one because one were too expensive and number two I have other goals I don't want to focus on that right now well let's take everything into consideration and let's take care of it so that's that's probably the biggest the biggest reason why somebody should work with an advisor.
[11:29] I think that a lot of people as well it's kind of similar to you know in my field and retirement living planning right planning general you know people again that have watched our show know that I'm all about planning but it.
Colt with planning Because unless you're putting it towards specific something specific like a trip or something like that right and you're like.
Very small-scale and you're trying to plan for your future it's all this unknown it's all this guess work that you're doing your best to try to figure out but then there's no.
[11:58] Substance to it almost it's kind of what I'm thinking it's like it's hard to like hey this might happen,
but people you know don't know if it's going to happen and then they feel like penis money for something that might not happen and it's all these unknowns does that cloud the vision a little bit do you find absolutely so I think the saying goes a goal without a plan is simply a wish.
So if you're simply trying and you you don't have anything earmark your simply like I said simply investing instead of planning your simply wishing you don't have a plan into place.
[12:27] Yep for sure and if you were joining us last week Sarah and I have taxes and benefits and today you know we're going to work with Jim to look more specifically on ways that we can plan out our path our financial path that can include
having some extra money for your loved ones or your kids or who else you want to make money rain on I guess I'm let's let's briefly discuss warning.
Money of the adult children we work with have no idea about their parents Finance because let's face it many seniors are willing to share that information it's a different generation,
they you know it's just hush hush more than anything so,
what are some of the warning signs adult children could look for that their parents may be getting into things over their head financially.
Yeah so you nailed it they don't want to talk about it that's the number one warning sign is they don't want to talk about and they tell you don't worry about it.
They grew up in a time where I was don't talk about money don't talk about religion politics well.
[13:26] There there it's very hard for them to break outside of that mold so they're not going to want to talk to you about it and one way that we figured out how to bypass that issue is.
You introduced us a you
tell them to speak to your advisor just say Okay so that way we're cutting the child out of it they because the last thing that they want to do is show weakness in front of their children they've been your
your caregiver for 50 years 60 years 70 years whatever it is they don't want to show weakness in front of you so if you put a third party in front of them to take care
of them that normally alleviates some of that some of that problem or you have a joint meeting where you meet with let's say myself but.
Caregiver the child and the senior parent and that way there is that impartial third party to break
the tension in those meetings because now it's a business meeting it's not an emoting but in talking to some clients who were worried
some of the signs are number one is food if you're going to visit and they're constantly eating canned food they're not going to restaurants they're not eating necessarily healthy
that means they're they might be nickel and diming their way through.
[14:35] So they're trying to Penny pinch wherever they can they're doing couponing buying a lot of canned foods one that's not good for their diet and number two that is a warning side that may be financially they're not as me and the same thing with the clothing if they're wearing
the same clothing over and over and it's becoming raggedy it means they don't want to splurge on 30 40 50 bucks worth of clothing.
So again it's just signs that they are penny-pinching and those are two that you can see if you go visit and you can see that the place is filled with just empty cans of food,
and they're still wearing the same clothing that you saw them wear 10 years ago those are some signs that maybe things aren't financially stable where you can bring up.
Hey listen we just met this advisor who actually specializes in senior care and Senior a senior income.
Do you want to meet with them and they might take that opportunity and say holy yeah I do need to meet with them and then you can have the conversation do you want us there do you want to handle this yourself and whatnot so.
Very sensitive topic but try to bring an impartial third party that's probably the best way to do it.
Yeah I find that as well and you know opening up that conversation so we're going to take a break Jim let's that will continue in a couple of minutes you're watching our play aging with a me on Bold Brave TV see you soon.
[15:44] Welcome back you're watching artfully aging with are discussing.
How children of seniors can help contribute to their senior loved ones lives how they can you know not go into debt doing it themselves we're going to talk about all of it.
Jim let's look at what adult children can do to have a little extra money to help their loved ones out what types of strategy should these folks may be look at.
Yeah so,
that can be very individualistic but there's a few strands of pop up and that normally you can do regardless of the situation and number one is it's a very underutilized not known product it's called long term care insurance
and basically what long-term care insurance is is.
It's just like any insurance policy you can pay for it for your parents and the benefit will be paid to your parents your parents can pay for themselves or in a lot of cases it's the child and the parent they split the premium if it ends up in a bit too expensive but it's a
insurance policy that when your when your parent that you want to get care to.
If they can't do any two activities of daily living so whether that's getting dressed getting fed cleaning traveling any of those,
they would receive a weekly benefit for a specific amount of time it can be or it can be for life but that's based on the budget we can build the policy.
To fit the specific need they would receive this tax-free benefit anywhere from a hundred dollars a week up to five thousand dollars a week so.
[17:10] If you say well we're probably not going to be able to build enough of a nest egg too.
[17:15] Build that that that value ourselves then you can buy a policy which.
I wish I could tell you how much it cost but again it's so individualistic whether it's we only need a little bit to subsidize maybe a little bit of Home Care
or we want to put them in the best facility imagine we really want to boost up boost their income and as soon as you that your parents starts to not get to be able to care for themselves
then they'll receive that benefit for however long it needs so utilizing long-term care insurance takes a lot of the pressure off the child to say okay I need to put money aside
now to be able to care for them they can simply rely on that insurance policy to kick in whenever the need arises and the other one is to build the nest egg so.
[17:57] You see your parent they are retired and they don't necessarily might not have a spouse they.
You can see okay well I saw my grandparents they need to care so I'm gonna put the money aside so let's say you put six thousand dollars inside and your tfsa every single year,
and that's your mark for the parent so you build that portfolio up for a hundred thousand dollars and when the time comes
okay now I need to put my mother and my father I need to put them in a care facility Well.
That money is earmarked for them so you know they're going to be they're going to be covered that way but the child still has to retire one day that child still is going to need
some sort of Nest Egg for themselves so what you do is you build that Nest Egg for the parent and you purchase a life insurance policy on the parent.
So as they're getting the care this next nest-egg is going down down down down down utilizing these funds for whatever need they have.
[18:52] And sadly one day the parent will pass away.
The child will receive a death benefit from the life insurance policy to completely replace that nest egg or build it up so it can be the 400,000
it can be 200,000 500,000 whatever it is
so now you're not stuck in the weeds where all those savings that you accumulated over the year to care for the parents now you're stuck with nothing and you know you have to build up your own savings near retirement age or and age so.
It's a great way to protect yourself on either side and if ever there is a case where the parent never needs the care let's say they live in their home happily happily for their entire life and they passed away peacefully,
that money still yours that nest egg that you built it's in your tfsa so it was your mark for the parent they never needed it now you can utilize it yourself for your own retirement needs for your own care and
so it's a very good strategy because it protects you from both sides.
Hey is a very good strategy actually haven't thought about that that's one of the things about the show too is that I learned just like everybody else and it.
[19:52] All the stuff when I talk to people so you know when.
I've worked with financial planners before and a lot you know some of this starting point is you know how aggressive do you want to be with your savings are you conservative are you young are you old all that stuff.
Is there any specific strategies that would be a better fit for someone that started planning earlier so like say
your your parents are aging and your younger like you're in your 30s or late 20s and you're really you know hip so what to do or you've got this you know influence and you know that you have to start saving
is there a different plan that someone younger like 30 would do then someone that's like 45 planning for the same thing is there a difference so the.
It's very simple the earlier the better so if you invest 30 thousand dollars over 25 year period so that's a hundred dollars a month you'd have twice as much money at the end of those 25 years then you can if you invested thirty five thirty thousand dollars.
Over 5 years which would be $500 a month,
so using that same 30,000 dollars over a long period of time you start to get the compounding interest so that's one of the reasons why starting early.
He's always best because we have people that come in all the time and they say okay I'm 60 years old I want to retire at 63.
[21:07] And I have no savings well it's really really hard for us to start building something unless we said okay you got to put two thousand dollars a month aside but somebody who's young you can start very small,
by doing that hundred dollar contribution your money is going to go a lot further because after a couple of years you accumulate interest and that interest starts to accumulate to accumulate interest and also you talked about the.
Start investing at 30 years old and you know this money is earmarked for long term it's an earmark for 60 years old you can go aggressive because even with the fluctuations in the market.
You're not going to have to worry about it if in five years the markets down 20% because there's a recession you know you don't need that money so let it go let it flow because that market will rebound.
The markets never gone down over a seven-year period so.
On the other side is if you tell me okay I need to retire in 5 years have to be much more conservative because you don't want to retire when your money is down.
So you can't assume the risk you can't get the same rate of return.
So not only getting the compounding interest by starting early you're also getting more investment options and you can utilize a tfsa if you're not ready and you don't know what to do with the money.
Just invest in the tfsa because later on you can transfer that to your rrsp in your later you're so it just brings so much more flexibility.
And the last is we talked about that long-term care insurance we talked about life insurance.
[22:22] It's only it's cheaper today than it's going to be tomorrow because the younger you are the cheaper it is so if that is part of your plan the earlier you get at the cheaper it's going to be so it's only going to be beneficial for you in the end to start early.
[22:35] Awesome yeah and that's kind of what I was thinking as well but sometimes I just like to say things so that people understand that you know there's definitely a lot of strategies and we've talked a lot.
You know utilizing professionals as well right and just having these strategy sessions and one thing that often comes up.
With individuals who are caring for their loved ones is that you know a lot of seniors don't want to be parented right and so there's a lot of different ways to do that and I think that you know having that investment,
on your own side and maybe just doing your own thing for their future times as a nice Bridge without overstepping but then
you know like myself I want to make sure that people are taken care of right and so that worries me on the financial level and so not everybody might buy into that and so what can I do personally so that I don't
fall down that rabbit hole later and and we can deal with it so we're going to continue this conversation when we come back
I'm going to pose this question to her audience do you have your finances in order to take all the people that you want to we're going to talk when we get back about the sandwich generation a little bit and if you don't know what it is I guess you're going to have to stay tuned we'll see you in a few minutes.
[23:45] Welcome back thanks for joining us I'm going to skip right to the question Jim the session on my mind
I am officially a member of the sandwich generation which means that I have a four-year-old and I have aging parents and I'm caring for them in various different ways and so
how do I save and help my aging loved one we have an old Bose.
And make sure my four-year-old gets what she needs for you no money savings and all that extra stuff what strategies can you give me.
Yeah so again you.
It's complicated because like you said there's the money has to go into so many different areas that normally people in this situation they are paycheck to paycheck a lot of money is going towards the care of the parent and a lot of money is going towards the child so,
they don't have time then they lose themselves and they don't have time to accumulate any types of savings and those are the generation that we're seeing they are getting close to retirement and they can't retire because they have no savings aside so this is we're using the strategy that we talked about earlier of,
using life insurance as part of the plan.
Can be extremely beneficial because you're going to be caring for that parent there the rest of their lives and when they pass away that's when you receive and boom now you have the savings that you haven't been able to accumulate because you've been living paycheck to paycheck.
And as far as for the kids it's really trying to maximize the benefits that we get from our government we do have the universal child care benefit which I believe they just change the name for it.
[25:14] But it's usually utilizing that to the full of it to the its full potential utilizing if education is important to use that 20% grant that you can get in our USPS to really try to stretch those dollars out.
For for your child but yeah like you said normally it's a tough situation you can't build your savings and then that is stopped.
The the the Chain Reaction so you care for the parents and then the parent passes away and then your child has to care for you and you're just pushing forward and pushing forward it is to use life insurance so that that way when the parent passes away.
[25:48] You're taken care of
really you that your child will not have to do the same thing for you because you will have that chunk of savings that will be left behind from the insurance policy so you can really focus and say okay if I'm living paycheck to paycheck for now because I'm taking care of my my mother because I'm taking care of my daughter at the same time because when the time comes you'll get something
out of it as well and you will have the significant savings so that you don't have to put your kid in the same situation.
[26:13] You're sure yeah let's stop that that process I think a lot of what many people are working towards right now that are our age two is that you know we're trying to stop
like I said stop that process and like Havoc stings so that
when were seniors we're not doing the same thing over and over right so I think that's really important let's talk a little bit more about insurance especially about when people pass away,
so we've been talking about insurance,
can you maybe give us a little bit more details you know is it ever too late to get insurance what happens when someone passes away with their insurance,
yeah so it's never too late you can purchase insurance up until your 80s there's a couple plans that you can get in your 80s,
but like I mentioned earlier the longer you wait the more expensive it is I literally every week I meet people that say I wish I would not have waited so long
either it's because his life insurance always serves a purpose so the number one purpose that we see is I don't want to leave debt behind,
so there's a kind of a crude saying it's leave behind a corpse you don't want to leave behind debt.
[27:20] Life insurance is the best way to do that because there are funeral costs if you cover your own funeral it's going to cost you a lot more than it would to Simply pay life insurance to cover your funeral costs but
there's yeah covering funeral cost final Arrangements that's the biggest one that we see something that people don't think about is
what's the taxes on your estate have you ever had a breakdown of how your assets are going to be passed down to your kids if you own a family call there's going to be capital gains on that Cottage They will receive the home they're going to receive some of the money but how are they going to cover the gains on that Cottage,
recorders that was bought in 1974 ten thousand dollars it's worth 500,000 today is not uncommon and there's
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in gains from that Cottage that the money's going to have to have to come from somewhere so whether that be need is for.
Funeral arrangements to cover any taxes on the estate.
[28:13] Too often we see people simply way too long so you can get a plan one thing that we do see we talked about the sandwich generation we see people buying Insurance on young kids that are three four five years old
so that that way they never have to purchase insurance for the rest of their lives and then on the other side we see people who are 75 who say.
[28:31] I should have done it earlier so no there's nothing to be it's never too late
but it's always going to be more beneficial to do it early and the way that it works it's simple one somebody passes away we receive a death certificate and a proof proof that they are deceased
and then the beneficiary receives a tax-free benefit of whatever the amount was it can be ten million dollars it can be ten thousand dollars they receive that benefit tax free.
Doesn't have to be earmarked for anything it's the beneficiary's money so hopefully the parents The Fishery had a conversation about okay you're going to receive this check this is what it's for there's going to be taxes to pay on the cottage
my funeral is going to be 25 thousand dollars and then the rest of the money I want the grandkids to be able to go to school and whatnot so that's why it's important to have a will in place I'm sure you've talked with somebody who was an expert in Wills to make sure that that
life insurance money is utilized properly and you mention to about the kids insurance we have that for Eva's.
Spoolie while not solely but you know generally I want to set her up better then I was set up like every generation we want to just do better by our kids right,
and then that life insurance is already going since you was like one and so we would hand it over to her at 18 and then she just doesn't have to worry about that stuff which I just think is such a.
[29:49] Hopefully she finds out it be a gift up and down the way but we'll see the other thing too is what happens to you.
I guess it would be at that point most likely a riff what happens to their risks and any of that type of saving stuff that they have when they pass away.
Yeah so the big the biggest worry that we see in riffs is people invest in ours piece their whole life regardless of what pensions they have what their situation is,
and then when they retire they don't want to take the money out because you're taxed on that money so they take the money out they lose their old age security or they get bumped up to a too big too high of a tax bracket
never utilize that money
when you pass away the day you pass away it's like you took every single dollar out at once so you can tap you can be tax it's very common to be taxed at 53% so all that money that you invested your whole life
you lose over half of it to CRA and you never got to see any of it so we encourage our clients to actually first before you invest in rsps
have a plan and over to take more than you need out because you can simply take it out of that riff pocket into another pocket that's more friendly to your state
because it's more it's way better to pay 23% in tax now than 53% later.
[30:56] It was your money that's a lot of what I'm telling a lot of people you too so all right well it's that time again Jim we're going to go for a break,
we will see everyone back here in just a couple minutes on our play gym with Amy.
Hello again my guess Jim and I have been speaking about ways that you and your loved ones can move around money to make it work better for you you're and any of your loved ones that you would like to spend money on.
I think now is a good time to ask you gym what are your top tips I know like what would you recommend that seniors and their children can look into doing and remember don't
I mean get don't forget the sandwich and you know where we want to make sure that we're putting were helping our loved ones that are seniors when we you know if we want to but also a lot of those same people have children that are young what would you say to them.
The number one thing and it's always the same it comes back whether we talk to somebody who's worth millions and millions of dollars whether we're talking to somebody who's financially strapped they always say the same thing I wish I would have started earlier.
It doesn't matter which situation you're is your in starting earlier will give you all the flexibility that we talked about but again.
[32:03] It's a gives you so many more opportunities and with the tools that we have available now there's no there's no reason not to start early because with the tax.
Account which we touched them we touched on earlier it gives you all the flexibility in the world it doesn't affect your taxes it gives you that emergency blanket and you can just start off by.
[32:22] Building that emergency fund a little and then utilize that fun in a bigger in a bigger in a bigger plan but that's the number one thing is getting started earlier and number two is don't go into it alone it's a you do,
try to do your own surgery you don't try to diagnose yourself if you have if you have an illness and if you do you go on Google and you type in your.
Your symptoms and you think you have cancer all right so same thing with telling you that.
No don't do that any same thing with Finance don't go at it alone don't think that because I'm investing in well simple which is not necessarily the worst thing in the world.
I don't think oh I'm all taken care of don't go into it alone utilize to help it out there
there's advisors like myself all over the place and there's advisors that specialize in maybe your specific situation you are the sandwich generation if you
caring about a senior go meet with an advisor that has a background in that specific area there's all this knowledge out there.
To to utilize so go for it it cost you anything it's not like dealing with lawyers and count as I mentioned so number one is getting started early and number two is don't go at it alone so that's that's probably the two best the two best recommendations that I would have.
[33:30] Yeah for sure and I think all of us every show tell everybody the same thing plan and use a professional because.
It's just too much information in the world to know everything right and you just can't you have to become an expert,
essentially a field that you're trying to learn and it's impossible you've got your own jobs and things you're doing you can't take on all sorts of different information same with the retirement home world you know what I do is like,
no one can know that much information unless you're specializing in it and so you're more likely to make a misstep which can cost a lot of different things.
[34:05] So maybe before we go I wanted to talk to you about bank accounts because there's a lot of misconceptions we train capacity episode that it might not be the wisest idea a lot of seniors that we work with.
How put their children on their bank account and so the thought processes is not only can that child then make decisions in the account but that
win senior passes away then the cow goes to the child can you just sum up maybe what happens there,
yeah so the main reason why people do that is to save my nude feed when you pass away your whole estate
she always going to want to list of all your assets and all your accounts that you have and they're going to look at it and say okay everything's there and they're going to charge you 1.5% on top of it on everything that's there.
So they're trying to save that that's called probate fee and then there's also the legal fees of transferring all the accounts transferring all the assets and then there's the executor fee which is the executor of the estate
to settle the estate they're allowed to take three to five ENT of the valuation of the estate so worst case scenario
with those accounts by putting your child as a co-owner you're saving six to nine percent in fees that's it.
[35:16] So they name a child is the co-owner so that that way can bypass those fees but
in doing so it opens you up to their whole liability so if your child were to get divorced legal troubles bankruptcy or creditor creditors come.
[35:32] Your assets are now available to their.
Creditors Ex-Wives or any or the court so you're opening up yourself to so much liability only to save six to nine percent
when on the other hand if you're same accounts if those same accounts that were at the bank
if you invested them with an insurance company so that doesn't mean buying life insurance that means investing your funds with.
Couple operator's manual life Sun Life any of those companies because your funds are held with an insurance company
they bypass probate executor and lawyer fees there they go directly to your beneficiaries so you still keep access of these accounts you still have the rights to all the money you can take the money out and put money in you can do whatever you want
simply when it's time when you do pass away it's going to go directly to your beneficiaries as opposed of going through.
Lawyer and executor fees and then going so not only does it save you that six to nine percent it also saves you about 4 to 18 months of legal work and paperwork and all of that to actually transfer those account so there's a much easier way and we talked about.
[36:39] Why utilize the financial advisor because this is a simple simple thing that harms nothing in your day-to-day but saves you that six to nine percent and saves you all the potential liability having a co-owner on your.
[36:51] Yeah I think that maybe I'm going to ask the question because I'm a little lost when we have a couple of minutes but when you are saying to invest it Insurance you know so if you put a daily bank account or whatnot and it holds whatever money probably like sometimes it doesn't hold very much.
[37:06] You'd still be opening yourself up for that risk like you said and so how would that investment work like like again we only have like a minute but you know I'm questioning the ultimate speed too.
Yeah so it your checking accounts probably not the biggest issue we're talking mostly about savings that one not but if you have gics or mutual funds.
[37:25] At the bank they have to go through probate and executor fees and everything like that but if you have the exact same thing they simply be called segregated funds and G iOS because they're held with an insurance company that way they bypass
the estate and the probate fees so it's simply moving money from one pocket to the to save
that whole headache so normally the checking account you shouldn't have more than five thousand dollars in a checking account so if it is built up more than that.
Think about investing in segregated funds in Gi Oh so that that way you can be processed quicker for your estate but yeah it changes nothing in the day-to-day it just it simply is a clerical thing to help you save six to nine percent.
Okay yeah that cleared it up at all but I was just a little little lost for a minute so I mean that's a location for everyone as usual with my guess we could talk for days at this point and I'm sure everybody,
hopefully we didn't overwhelm anybody but I'm hoping that they got a lot of information from the show today
Jim thanks so much for coming on I really appreciate it all of Jim's information is over at Artful aging with a me.com all the links to get ahold of Jim is there and as Bayou so Jim thanks again for coming on today.
My pleasure.
[38:33] And after the break we're going to talk top three things I see families struggle with on their financial Journey stay tuned you don't want to miss it on artfully Aging with Amy.
[38:42] Welcome back to artfully aging with Amy I hope that you've enjoyed to do as many of you know I run a company called tea and toast
where my team and I work with families who have all different Financial situations and also being in the community we see so many different situations between families and their finances.
Some have only what's been given to them by the government like OAS and CPP in Canada While others have pensions and savings and so I thought it would be good to share my top three concerns families so that if you are also struggling you may have some.
So number one my parents needs care and wants to stay in the home but doesn't have the budget to allow it.
[39:23] This scenario many families look at public care to prove
provided by our government and this could be in home or long term care the trick is with this scenario is that your loved one needs to qualify that for this care and sometimes there's a waiting list so
if this sounds like your situation sitter speaking with someone sooner rather than later to get all your options outlined so that you're not caught off guard when things change.
[39:46] The second scenario is my parents need to make a move to retirement home and I need to help supplement them until they get accepted into law.
[39:53] As Jim and I were talking a lot of people go to retirement homes while they wait for long-term care homes and there's a cost obviously for retirement home.
[40:01] In this situation is important to have accurate Nation about the monies that are coming in are being brought in and where they're coming from.
How much retirement living is and how much the care is going to be and how the retirement home offers care there's something called Alec Lockhart packaging and there's package care,
and so how does that differentiate in it's important because the cost is different.
How much can you afford to contribute as well not until you look at all the pieces can you make an actually accurate plan so this sounds like you again your comes down to plan and so that you're not caught off guard.
[40:39] And the third scenario is I see a senior who is sees the price of a retirement home and care and assumes that they can't afford it
this is most often caused by sticker shock many people who are currently seniors and have lived through the depression and often very Thrifty.
I have trouble with this however my philosophy is that you that you've been in your home all these years you most often have savings
from somewhere or you have different money coming in and although many people want to leave money to their loved ones
most if not pretty much all of our families tell their loved ones hey Mom and Dad please use this money that you have saved it so that it doesn't come to us we want to make sure that you're healthy because where else is the money going to come from and less from
kids so you know keep in mind that many families actually want you as a senior to use your money,
they don't want to see you in squalor they want to make sure you're taking care of because the most value is to have you in their life.
[41:41] So there you have it on next week's show we're going to be speaking with therapeutic.
Canada to teach why animal therapy is so beneficial and seniors lives in different situations and different care aspect.
It's going to be very informative so hopefully you'll tune in for that.
[41:58] For extra information again on today's show and upcoming guests as well as past guests and their video links.
Head over to Artful aging with a me.com there you'll also find links for extra things like free downloads and and blogs extra information to help you on your journey.
If you found Today's Show valuable please think about sharing and liking our YouTube page and our Facebook help other families find this information
it's very tricky to put all the pieces together on your senior living journey and to make sure that everything is in place so
share us with your networks to help them as well thank you for joining me on our full aging with Amy who I hope you have a wonderful day and from me to all of you I hope you also have a wonderful Wednesday.
[42:48] You've been listening to Artful aging with host theme.
Many folks just like you feel they're alone in their journey and helping a loved one or.
So tune in each week and let a me show you that help is around the corner and it's just one conversation away here on Artful.
%20(1).jpg)
