Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Kerry Morris, CFP® Founder of HonorShield Discussing Care for Spouses & Aging Parents

Episode Date: July 9, 2023

Kerry Morris, Author of When Retirement Goes Bad, Life Sucks, Certified Financial Educator, and CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional.Kerry Morris has been serving families for the past twenty-five years as a financial planner and advisor. He has recently launched HonorShield, LLC., as a way to challenge the current thinking and behavior of consumers and financial advisors preparing for the potentially high cost of aging.He has spent several of his twenty-five-year career advising hundreds of families experiencing the nightmare of paying for care. The question, always, was “How to make the money last”?Morris has watched too many families, too many men and women not be fully prepared for retirement. The financial industry has put this cost-of-care issue on total “ignore” mode, often shoving it onto a small-but valiant band of “insurance specialists” around the country. Only about 1 in 100 Americans embrace this model. That is a problem for American families and our country.Morris found a better way, a win-win solution that more Americans could feel good about embracing. It’s a whole new way to approach and solve this problem: the LCAP—the Longevity Care Allocation Plan. Every person, every family deserves to know how an LCAP works. Kerry Morris has made it his life’s goal to ensure that those he helps can hold their head high and know that no matter what curve balls retirement throws at them, they will be prepared.“One of the most important things I’ve learned in my 25 years in the business is that a great life is supported by three areas, Health, Relationships, and Money. My job is to make sure that a family’s money is working effectively to accomplish that job.”Learn More: http://www.honorshield.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-kerry-morris-cfp-founder-of-honorshield-discussing-care-for-spouses-aging-parents

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of influential entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have back with us, Carrie Morris, who's the founder of Honor Shield, and we'll be discussing financial survival for families in the grip of demand. Mention. Carrie, welcome back to the program. Thanks, Mike.

Good to be back. Yeah. You know, I like that title, grip of because I feel like a lot of people don't even know what all dementia is and they feel like they are trapped in in the grip of dementia. So let's start off with, first of all, defining what is dementia? I think a lot of people think it's one thing, but I think it's a lot broader than most people would suspect. Yeah, I mean, to oversimplify it, it would be really there's like, over 70 different kinds of, it's cognitive decline, right? It's where we cognitive decline, cognitively decline and get to a point where we need supervision

because we're unsafe. And the interesting thing about many types of dementia is that it tends to, it's not the dementia that you end up passing away from eventually. It's the various physical things that are developed along the way as well as part of it. Of course, Alzheimer's, when we say dementia, what do people always think of my Alzheimer's, right? Yeah. But is that different? Is there a category of Alzheimer's and then a category of dementia?

No, Alzheimer's is one type of dementia. And this is where, of course, we say, hey, I'm not a doctor, right? Yeah. But I've been around this for many, many, many years and was involved in local Alzheimer's associations and things. So, yeah, good clarification. Alzheimer's being one form of dementia, Parkinson's. being one form of dementia. You hear...

ALS, maybe? Yeah, I mean, there's just many different kinds. Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good point because you feel like, you know, like MS. That's a disease and it is, you know, tightly defined or, you know, cancer or things like that. But dementia is broad and encompasses a lot of those maladies. So that's a really good point. What is some of the impact?

You know, when you think about someone like, oh, so-and-so was diagnosed with dementia or they're starting down the path of, what is some of the impacts that it has on families, both emotionally, spiritually, physically, definitely, you know, emotionally too. But then it's going to start rolling into there's cost dollar-wise. So let's talk a little bit about impact. Yeah. So every 65 seconds, there's a dementia diagnosis in our country. And I'll tell you, comparing that to, say, like, heart disease, between 2000 and 2017, deaths from heart disease have decreased 9%. Right?

Modern medicine is great. While deaths from Alzheimer's disease, just even just that one form of dementia, which seems to be the most commonly diagnosed, right, have increased 145%. Wow. So it's definitely on the rise. And, you know, I'll mention again about the fact that our country's in a shift demographically from about 15, 16 percent of our population being 65 and over up to around 25 percent. That's an extra 30 million people in that stage of life. Now, as I've also said before, different programs, it's great to have more grandmas and grandpas.

Okay. That's a good thing. But what it does is obviously we're longevity and living longer like that and more people in that zone definitely creates more of that impact that you're talking about on us as families in America. And so like you mentioned, emotional the impact, the relational impact. I mean, we see a lot happen between siblings, right? So it creates all these different challenges that goes along. with, I mean, it's already hard enough, in other words, just dealing with a loss of function, whether you're the older person or maybe you're not so young and you have a loss of

function or you're a spouse or you're a son or a daughter or a grandfather, I mean, a granddaughter, or a neighbor, you know, I've seen in my career, I've seen neighbors lay down their lives to help. They're a neighbor who didn't have any kids and things. So that impact, it demands resources. So anytime you have a loss of function, it's going to demand resources. And those resources can be human. They can be financial. I talk about this in the other book,

and retirement goes bad. And so there's what we call an elder care journey, Mike. And so there's kind of five stages of that. And so while we're talking about this impact, let's just kind of note those stages. And so because each stage is different and has a its own set of issues. So the first stage is going to be that mental or physical decline. And you know, while we're talking, we're focusing on dementia today for sure. But hey, mobility issues,

all those other things like that cause us to need the assistance of another person on a regular basis are really part of this conversation as well. But dementia seems to be something that people are more and more aware of and feel like they definitely, I'll give you an example. of seniors say that it's important to have their thinking or memory checked, but only 16% say they've received regular cognitive assessments, right? Yeah. Yeah, we know it's important. We're just not doing it. We're getting it. Yeah. So part of this stage one is this mental and physical decline in stage one is really recognition. I know in my career working with hundreds of families who were at that point of having to pay for care, I would see the older person,

maybe their spouse, being really a, their awareness level was about six months behind of where their actual level of function was. And the kids would be like a year behind. So that first stage is really hard because, you know, there's nothing that just jumps out and says, hey, you know, this is happening. This is, this is an issue right now. People have to. And then that old river, you know, that river that's easy to fall into is that river of

denial, right? Yeah. And so you add all that up and you just have this really confusing, frustrating time sometimes and you'll have one sibling think that mom and dad's at one place and we should do this and you have another sibling at another place and think we should do that. And so I could go on all day about this, Mike, about even just that one stage because I've watched it happen so much. But that's stage one. Stage two is needing help at home. Really just that point. where somebody says, okay, we got to get some help. Well, maybe it's not a professional paid caregiver because they're, they don't want that yet. They're pushing back on that. And, you know, I kind of consider that having kind of like a small to moderate level. But usually that's a family caregiver stage or spousal caregiver stage right there. And then stage three is where

they're actually paying for some home care in a smaller, moderate way, all the way up to very large home care situations where, and just for the sake of making sure we're clear here today, that's really based on hours, right, Mike? You know, do I need 15 hours? Do I need 25 hours a week? Just that alone is confusing. You know, do I need 30 hours? Do I need 40 hours, et cetera, et cetera?

And so I know we would connect families with geriatric care managers and different people who are trained to assess that. Because I'll tell you, the better level of support that we have that's appropriate, and in the book, when retirement goes bad that we talked about in the last episode, I go over what's called the danger zone and how when somebody's care need exceeds the level of care that they're getting far enough, they get in the danger zone where they can have events happen that cause them to go backwards. And events can happen either way, but they're just more likely when we don't have that level of care matched up there. So that's just some bonus material I

can't help but share today. Right. You know, so that stage three is that is the small to immediate home care all the way up to assisted living, really, or memory care in that stage three. So they're cooking along and everybody thinks, okay, it's settled down, it's settled down. And all of a sudden, bam, what we call the interim stage happens, where an event of some kind of fall, how often do you hear that, right? Osteoporosis is huge. A stroke, even something as simple as a urinary track infection, can majorly rock the boat or a dementia stage change, you know, there's some dementias like vascular dementia is known for, like,

extreme changes. That's what I experience with my own dad. I mean, literally, my mom always talks about this one 24-hour period where, you know, It literally changed in him in 24 hours. And then just to finish up, let's talk about it a little bit. The last stage is where someone progresses to that skilled nursing care or that nursing home stage. And a lot of times it's stage four, though, that what happens in that interim stage, an event that occurs, that then precipitates them moving on to that. But yeah, it's a lot of impact there.

Yeah, it really is. And when you think about impact too, I think we could probably have a four and a half hour long conversation going deeper on the shock, the confusion, the emotional impact, the interpersonal, like you mentioned, siblings going, who's going to take care of mom and dad? Because I don't have time because it, you know, like if you just needed, hey, drop in and help them with their meal, you know, in the morning and at night, that's easy. But if they don't know what's going on and the parent is confused because of dementia, that's a whole other level. So I think that whole emotional toll. knowing that you can't ever check off in your mind. Mom and dad are fine for the rest of the day. I'm going to get back to my life and then I'll check back in them at night. It could be just moment by moment. So I think that's a big, big piece of impact. What about the money?

And I know you can't put a specific dollar figure, but there's a point where it's like you've got to realize that this actually is going to take time and it's also going to take money to care for the elder parents, right? Oh, absolutely, yeah. So the human resources are huge. We just talked about that. And by the way, quite frankly, 99% of all financial advisors, I'm talking about attorneys, investment advisors, CPAs, my colleagues, no disrespect, but they're not qualified at all in this area. You know, they just not dealt with it. And we'll get into that a little bit more. And so I took the liberty of actually pulling up a couple stats here. You live in Colorado, right? I live in Tennessee. And so Colorado as a in general, if we look at say monthly cost of 44 hours a week of home care today in today's dollars is about $6,400 a month. That's, that's an average across the state of Colorado in today's dollars. If we go 15 years down the road, though, that all that goes from $6,400 bucks all the way up to over $11,000 a month, a month. Now, if I click on just Denver, for example, so that's where I just want to show you geographically, it changes a lot.

That 44 hours a week of home care in today's dollars goes to 68, 64. So not too bad. And then 15 years from now, it goes to 12,000. But assisted living jumps quite a bit more, though. So state of Colorado, 4,700 today. And then Denver goes up to 5,500. So, you know, it's not thousands of dollars difference, but there's some areas that you see a big, big jump and others are cheaper. So the cost-wise, you're looking at numbers that aren't sustainable.

And, you know, as I talked about in the first episode as well, in some of our education pieces, and even in the book, When Retirement Goes Bad, I talk about a show a million dollars go in three years of just normal income. coming out, cost of care and taxes and some market fluctuation, a million bucks goes down to 428,000. So that's the mission that we're on at Honor Shield is to get the word out that your nest egg is not prepared for this financially. It will not sustain. And so that's why it becomes so devastating. This is a multi-generational issue, right?

So what happens if mom or dad runs out of money? what happens, you know, it affects everybody. And the thing is, is this can last between 12 and 20 years. Now, somebody listening to this is going, wait a minute, Carrie. I heard it was like 3.2 years, you know, well, you know, there's myths and misconceptions out there. And the thing is, is that that figure comes from claim information about nursing home policies, you know. that figure does that you hear thrown around for years doesn't in any way include the whole elder care journey.

And that's why we say, you know, anywhere from 10 to 12, 20 years from the time someone starts having a loss of function until they actually pass away is not uncommon at all. And so some of those numbers you are bringing up, of course they change all the time. And of course, it's different for different parts of the country. But there's a dollar figure that goes into. care, whether it's three years or 12 years or 20, whatever that time frame is, how in the world do families pay for this? Yeah. So, you know, the first thing that happens is that it's, it very easily can destroy and devastate their retirement savings. And like I said, I'll say it again,

99% of advisors are not qualified advice on this. I'm going to sound like a stuck record. It's no disrespect to them. It's just how the industry is. It's not like the medical industry. where in the medical industry, there's a very clear referral system to specialists when there's a need. Like, you would never consider your nurse practitioner doing heart surgery on you. You know, you would just never consider that. And so families pay for it in all kind of different ways, right? I mean, it's good to bring that up relationally and those kind of things. But, you know, I talk about the rest of the industry not being qualified because

I'm a CFP and certified financial planner. And I was one of those unqualified people, okay? I was there. I saw it for myself. And as I began to get educated myself, I knew that something had to change. And that's what we're working towards. And so, for example, they don't know what pre-planning is, middle planning, crisis planning, and post-planning, you know.

And so families tend to just react. you say, well, how do they pay for this? Well, it's really kind of a knee-jerk reaction a lot of times, Mike. You're scrambling around. You find out you need this. All of a sudden, here comes this bill, and you start scrambling, and it kind of makes me think of this. You never want to go to the grocery store shopping for the meals for the week when you're starving and hungry, because you're going to just grab stuff. So you should not make plans to pay for this kind of need when you're in the midst of the shopping.

of, oh, we got to do, it's got to be that PRE word, that pre. Yeah. And then you see siblings, you know, one thinks we should pay for this, one thing. And then you run into those issues where mom and dad have never discussed their finances with the kids, right? So it's just like this avalanche and fire hose of scenarios where the kids are scrambling, really even to understand what mom and dad have, or maybe a spouse is navigating. it on their own still doesn't even want to talk to the kids about it sometimes, you know?

And so the spouse is maybe picking the exact wrong asset or account to use. I'll give you a perfect example. So let's say that somebody has two types of accounts. One is an IRA and all that money was saved pre-tax, right? So they have requirement on distributions and they know, okay, once a year the IRS makes me take some money out of that. But other than that, man, I don't want to take any money out of that. That hurts my tax return.

Well, then they have this other account over here. Maybe it started out at 100,000, and it's at 600,000 today. Okay? That's $500,000 worth of taxable gain. Well, a common example of, you know, something that we see is that they're tempted to use that $600,000 account that's not the IRA because, but they don't realize that that $500,000 worth a gain. If they still own that when they pass away, all that gain goes away.

and the kids inherit that completely tax-free under current law. It's called a step-up and basis. I'm just giving an example, right? And so they don't realize that the IRA in my example here, not across the board, right? But in my example, the IRA is really the best asset to use. That's just a quick way of giving out a visual that it really takes a care funding specialist. So let's take a minute, Mike, and let's divide folks into two. bunches. We'll take those four stages of planning and at least split them down into two.

The pre-planning and the crisis planning. Okay. Just talk about those two. Because there's one way to help the crisis planning and there's one way to help the pre-planning. And so when people are at different stages, they tend to still have that same behavior of just knee-jurking, okay, what's in the bank account or should I sell this piece of property. So they're not coordinating different tax laws and things together, unfortunately. Yeah. And it's kind of like, if this, then that. If I do this, then here's what will happen, whether it's the tax consequence or a penalty or

something that they didn't think about. And I think that, like you said, most CFPs certified financial planners, they don't know all the ins and outs of these things. So certainly, brother, sister, sibling child of the, the, elder parent, they don't know how this works. So being able to get with someone that knows what's going on so that they can pay for some of these solutions without going broke is just, to me, I think this is that pre, pre, pre. You got to make sure that it's being done ahead of time. We've been talking about some stats. Do you happen to know about what statistically the chances of someone developing issues like dementia or Alzheimer's? Yeah, I mean, the basic number that we tend to look at in the industry, and this is just needing care, period, it's about seven out of ten, you know. Wow.

And we mentioned some in the first episode as well. So if you haven't, if you listen to this today and you haven't listened to this other episode, make sure you listen to those two. But, yeah, seven out of ten, you remember, I gave that example. If you're sitting in, let's say you're sitting in church and there's 100 people in the room. well, 70 of them are going to need some type of assistance, you know, during their lifetime, the assistance of another person. And so, again, I'm not trying to pick on my fellow colleagues in the business. It's just, bottom line is they're just not qualified.

And, you know, they would normally, so it's not just CFPs, it's CPAs. It's everybody. Insurance agents, yeah, the people in the financial services that typically someone would go to, they might know just enough to talk logically, but it's not enough to know these strategies. There's just no way, yeah, to know. And we'll get into that, you know, we'll finish up with that today. But yeah, it's just a matter of being able to look at the situation, because don't forget, we're talking about a moving target. Yeah.

Okay. Remember the five stages. Well, how do you know when person A, B, and C is going to change stages or go through each stage? Yeah. I mean, you see how there's so many unknowns. knowns. And so the planning part of it, the way to plan, you have to be able to think about terms in, okay, what's the least common denominator? What's the one or two things we can do that it helps the family out if they need care, but it preserves things and doesn't waste anything if they

don't need care. Right. So, well, can't someone just buy one of those long-term care policies that you see advertised? Wouldn't that take care of this? Yeah. So that is, I'm glad you asked that because that seems to be still kind of in the public consciousness, the first thing that comes to mind. And, you know, those policies are still around and they still provide some leverage. The thing that we noticed a long time ago, though, is that they are use it or lose it. So if you never need care in your life, if you happen, you know, if you're one of those 30%, then those premiums are gone. The other thing is the price is never locked in. So they do pretty much have a reputation now that people know they're going to go up.

And you have to be pretty darn healthy. So there's a large part of the population that are not going to be able to get those. So no disrespect to that particular solution. But we just really feel like that there's so many other options out there that are more of a win-win. So, you know, again, that's where a lot of your just investment advisors, brokers, They would knee-jerk to just say, okay, well, let me get one of these quotes on the table. I call it slapping a quote on the table. And that just doesn't cut it anymore.

Maybe 25 years ago, that would work. But there's five stages of aging, four stages of planning. There's a lot of different moving parts there. And so it really requires a specialist that works in this area all the time, which after seeing what I saw and working with my own parents and seeing what I saw there, that's why I decided to, start on her shield and change my whole practice to help expose, you know, the issues, the problems, and the solutions for this. So, you know, in the pre-planning stage, the goal is to prevent families from having to spend any of their money to pay for this. And there's other things like VA benefits for veterans, wartime veterans. And so that's why

we created an asset allocation strategy to pay for it, you know, to help. to help. Let's predetermine. So it's kind of like this. We like to ask these two questions. If you got sick and needed long-term care, where would you want to receive your care? At home, assist a living, nursing home. And the next one is- I expect most people would say home. At home, yeah. 88% of folks say at home, right? That makes sense. Number two, if you got sick and needed long-term care, which asset would you liquidate first to pay for care? So you make them think about, let's think about that way ahead of time, like you said. Our best decision making is certainly not in the heat of battle.

So let's think about that. So if we identify which account or which asset we would liquidate first to pay for care, is that the smartest one? And what if there was a way that in the pre-planning stage, we could allocate some of that account to a solution that all of a sudden gave them, say, for example, four times the money? So there's options these days for certain age ranges and demographic that if they put $100,000 in it, it can be worth $400,000 for care.

If they never need care, then the family gets the $100 that has a little growth on it down on the end, too. So it's just a quick example of the type of solutions, you know. And then the last thing is a lot of times people say, well, I'd use my IRA. And so we say, first of all, that's very smart, okay, because you guys, have medical deductions if you're in care to offset some of that taxation. Number two, we say, well, if the government had provided a better way to use your IRA, basically where we could switch it into a complete big bucket of tax-free dollars to pay for care, isn't that something we should talk about? So those are the kind of things that, you know, solutions to not go broke,

paying for all this. But it's not just the money. It's impacting the decision. making. It's impacting the relationships amongst family, having a plan, having a direction. You know, think about it. I'll give you a quick example. I myself, so I was sidswiped a couple weeks ago on my way to the airport. And so I was already, you know, I wasn't running late to the airport, but I was already, you know, on a timeline. All of a sudden, this one lady knocks this other lady into me. I had that moment, Mike, where I was like trying to process so many things at one. I literally just grabbed my phone and called my agency where I have my insurance. And I was like, here's the deal. You know, what's the minimum of my need so that I can get what I need and go

my way? And of course, collect information. I didn't have time to wait for the police. You know, and fortunately, nobody was hurt. So we were able to move the cars off. I'm just saying, like, really, that's a really good example. I know because I know what I went through mentally in that moment of what we're talking about today. And it's already chaotic enough to do all that and not have a financial plan of how, okay, what are the resources? We're going to tap this. Then we're going to turn this on. And if you've got another payor, some of the solutions we have where we can literally turn on another income stream once they need care, and we can turn on three, four, five, six, seven, eight thousand dollars a month. And in many cases that the person needing care cannot

outlive, that's amazing power to keep that family settled and on track and not affect all those multiple generations at once, you know? Well, I'll tell you, Carrie, it's just been eye-opening to understand that there's so much vastness that goes into this when you hear about dementia and elder care and then all of the ramification. So what a great amount of information you brought. Thank you so much. And if someone is interested in kind of seeing what their options are and getting some of that pre-care.

Because that's the time to do it, not in the midst of, not in the heat of the battle, but well ahead so that you make these wise decisions. How can they learn more and pick up a copy of your book and reach out and connect with you? Yeah. So we actually, the title of this is financial survivor for families in the grip of dementia. And that's actually the title of the new book. And also, just so people hear this loud and clear, there's amazing options for people in, care now too. We talked a lot about pre-planning today, Mike, but the options for people in the crisis stage, we're very excited about some of these options we just got back in this last year

that we had a few years ago, then they went away, but now we just got them back. And so that's amazing. But, you know, what they can do, so they don't get lost on our website or the internet, you're welcome to contact me, and I'll help direct you to the right people. And that's the main thing is just take action, you know, get some education. That's really, you know, looking at the books we have, like you mentioned, getting that education. This book, Financial Survival for Families in the midst of dementia, in the grip of dementia, sorry, is, it's a toolkit book.

You know, it's for the people who want to see those options and read a little bit about all those solutions. So happy to help. Awesome. Well, we'll make sure to have the link to you website and the show notes. And thank you so much. for coming back on Kerry. It's been a real pleasure talking with you again today. Thank you, Mike. God bless.

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