Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders, MBA - Interview with James Kroshus President of Treasure Valley Retirement Shield Discussing Long Term Care

Episode Date: December 8, 2025

James has devoted his life to assisting, clients, friends, and family by protecting their assets through insurance and estate planning. James has been in the world of finance and insurance since 1979. As James matured right along with his clients, James became painfully aware of the need that comes at the other end of rainbow, when remaining assets are passed to the next generation. His focus expanded beyond just protection and accumulation to the distribution of wealth after the passing of loved one. With over 45 years of experience James has nearly seen it all.Learn More: [e-mail] or call 775-233-2203Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-james-kroshus-president-of-treasure-valley-retirement-shield-discussing-long-term-care

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 this James Crocious with the Treasure Valley Retirement Shield, and we'll be talking about long-term care. James, welcome back to the program. Thanks for having me. Hey, I know you are very passionate about teaching and educating and guiding your clients and being that trusted advisor.

So with the thought in mind of the educated client, a lot of times people think they're an expert because they went and Googled something or watched a video on YouTube and, you know, I'm educating myself. But that really doesn't tell the whole story sometimes in your experience. So let's talk a little bit about how you are helping. helping your clients understand fully all about the things they should regarding retirement. Well, you know, it's interesting. I literally, I have taken apart an LG washing machine and repaired it because of YouTube. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I'm blown away by all YouTube has help me with. But when it comes to finances and having a proper retirement shield, YouTube, everybody claims to have studied at the YouTube University and they know things.

Let me just share you an example or two about why having an experienced financial advisor can save you from a lot of pitfalls. Had Chad come to see me, a Chad was. 50 years old. He actually went to work for a local power company when he was 18. And when he was 50, he had over $750,000 in his 401k. So he decided he would retire. Yeah, great idea. And there's an IRS provision in the code called 72T. In other words, it doesn't matter how old you are, you can start taking withdrawals from your IRA or your 401k at any age, provided you take substantially equal payments until 59.5. So here he was 50, had 750,000 in his 401k, which meant his payment was $6,000 a month. Okay. And then 2008.

hit. Shortly thereafter, his 750,000 was down to 220-something thousand. Wow. The problem was he couldn't change the distribution. So that tells you that in about three, three and a half years, his money was all going to be gone because it had to be paid out in substantial equal payments. Well, guess what? When he saw that, he had to find a new career and start over at age 50. YouTube going to tell you that? That's why you need not just a knowledgeable advisor, but an experienced one. Had he come to see me prior to that, I would have prevented him from making that dreadful mistake, which brings me to what we call the, why the timing, the sequence of returns.

If the market continued to skyrocket, he probably wouldn't have been looking for another job. Let me tell you about Uncle Bud. Uncle Bud retired, 600,000 in his 401k, he goes to a broker, said, how much should I take out to where I never run out of money? 5%. So he started getting $30,000 a year, never opened a statement. Three years later, he decided to open a statement.

Guess what? He had under $300,000 left. Why? Because the market tanked. We have to know about the sequence of returns in a down market. Fortunately, when you have investments that have downside protection, you never have to worry about the downside effects. on your investment.

That's why being educated is, you know, educated clients are the best clients. You never have to worry about them. And do your point about the sequence of returns and being educated on your own matters, your own retirement accounts, open those statements and understand what's going on. But the sequence of returns when you're taking money out, when the market is going down, it's a double whammy. And so that needs to be factored in. And another hole in the bucket, so to speak, is the long-term care topic that we're talking about, too, because I think a lot of times people think, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it'll never happen to me until it does.

So let's talk about a little bit of some of the misconceptions and how can we educate people on long-term care. What do they assume long-term care is? What are some of the misconceptions and what should they really understand about it? Well, like you said, one misconception is it's never going to happen to me. Yeah. If you go into any long-term care facility today, you will see that about 70% of the people in long-term care are female. Don't ask me why. It's just the way it is.

And in seminars, I've said, why do you think that is, men? And they all, some of them would say, my wife's cooking. Bad answer. And they, I had a lady, you know, jab her husband in the ribs and said, okay, you're eating at McDonald's for a month. We don't know why. But it's something that we need to address because it is one of the biggest challenges to our financial stability. I had a client in Lake Tahoe.

The family spent $860,000 on her long-term care costs over an eight-year period. fortunately they could afford it but long-term care is the number one disaster waiting to happen and us we as spouses we want to be heroes until we can't because we can no longer lift and when we try we might become a recipient of those kind of needs as well and so it's something that we don't want we all just want to die in our sleep but sometimes we die it takes a long time sometimes to die. And that can be very devastating to an estate at, believe it or not, $6 to $10,000 a month. Are you kidding me? How many estates can afford that? Well, there are solutions. But let me just tell you about one. I have two clients, love them to death.

They were my clients. When I first started in the business and 25, 30 years later, they came in and just said, Jim, we want to talk about long-term care, Lee and Maryland. Lee didn't qualify, but Marilyn did. And they could afford about a $3,000 a month benefit. This is 25 years ago. And so I put a 4% long-term care rider with a four-year benefit. Eight, 10 years later, Maryland gets Alzheimer and has to be committed to a long-term care facility. He died in the 47th month of a 48-month benefit.

Lee told me, and the cost of living increase that was paying almost $7,000 a month, Lee told me, he said, Jim, had it not been for that long-term care policy, I would have lost my house. Wow. You see, long-term care, it's kind of like that spare tire in the trunk. Yeah. When you need it, there's no substitute. Yeah. But there are ways to mitigate the cost, if you want to stand-alone long,

term care policy, and it costs $10,000 a month, you might have to spend $10,000 a year, but there are other ways now. You can have a rider on a long-term care, a rider on a life insurance policy that will pay the death benefit out. You're going to die anyway. You just don't know when. That's one solution. But there are so many now.

There only used to be one, but now there's a handful of solutions. because, like I said, when you need that spare tire, there's no substitute. But now there's a donut we can stick back there. And I look at long-term care as a donut, you know, that old donut wheel under that doesn't take up a lot of room. It's going to get you down the road, but it's not going to be shiny and new like the ones on a new car when you originally buy it. So there are ways to mitigate that. And we talk about each one of those. You know, I think the overarching point here is plan ahead, understand, be educated, get

someone that you trust that can guide you through the process. Talk a little bit about what triggers some of the long-term care needs, meaning, you know, if you go into the hospital for four days, that's not long-term care. If you go in for, you know, four weeks, what are some of the things that would trigger long-term care policy need? well oftentimes they have a 60 to 90 day you know elimination period so basically if you can't perform two of the six activities of daily living over a three month period then you would qualify for long term care one of the things that mitigate that cost is to buy a policy that will also take care of you while you're in your own home yeah and that's a beautiful thing because you

There are situations where you can actually pay a family member to come in and take care of you. That lessens the burden on the family. Or you can have a professional come in and take care of you while you're in your home. Nobody wants to leave their home. I don't. Fortunately, I have five daughters and maybe I won't have to. And a professional of your choice, meaning this, the age-old objection is, don't put me in one of those places.

Okay, well, we can help you in the home. We can pay a family member. If it's not a family member, maybe we need to have a professional, but it would be a professional of your choice in the sense that, well, I don't like that person or I don't want to be forced to choose only these preferred providers. So having those options gives a lot of flexibility. Well, you know, you don't, you don't, if at all possible, you don't want to put mom in a home. I visited a number of, I mean, dozens and dozens of people in long-term care facilities.

And I remember Ruth, she was, you know, an 85-year-old Catholic lady, and she had nine children, nine children. And I never saw one of those children ever visit her. And it blew my mind that I know this is off of the cuff, but, you know, a little old lady, a woman can take care of nine children. and sometimes these kids don't, you know, their situation is they don't come to visit the way they should. But if they, if mom is at home, at least she feels like she's home and hasn't been abandoned. And so that's the first choice is let's do whatever we can to make sure mom stays in the environment that she's most comfortable with. Yeah, 100%. You know, I think that when we hear some of those numbers, 6,000, 7,000, 10,000, all of that,

how does the rising cost of health care, like, you know, assisted living or nursing facilities, impact how much coverage someone really needs? Like when someone goes, okay, I want to get a long-term care, you know, taking care of, I want to do it well ahead of when I need it. So I'm planning ahead. How much do you choose? How do you know how much coverage to choose? Well, you know, like you said, there's no crystal ball. But the thing that I like today is that we know we're going to die. if we spend $10,000 a year on a long-term care policy,

that money might be wasted if we don't need it. Now if we connect that to a life insurance policy, we know we're going to die. We just don't know how long it's going to take. So that's money well spent. We're taking the risk out of it. But, you know, none of us know what's going to happen in the future. So we plan for now hoping that the future is good,

a good cost of living increase on something you can't afford today may pay the majority of those costs later. And that's a lot easier pill to swallow than us having to write a checkout every month for $10,000. I don't know. You should be able to stay at the top of the Hilton for that. Yeah, you would think. That's a good point. But hey, like I said, I sell peace of mind.

Yeah. not just yours but also mine yeah huge so you've mentioned a few of those choices and i like the analogy you you gave like we're all going to die let's have something set up where there's a little rider set up to tap into the death benefit while you're still living for long-term care it seems to me like the one of the benefits of doing it that way is if you get one of the older kind of traditional long-term care standalone policies you're paying x number of dollars a month for the premium. And if three, four, five years goes by and you never used it, those premiums are out the window. You never get them back and it never went anywhere. But using some of the strategies you're

talking about, if you need it, it's there. If you don't, then it sits right in that same vehicle. So what are some of those choices that people need to be thinking about regarding? Here's the one I like the best. Let's say that you had $100,000 and you went down to your bank and they said, hey, we want you to put this $100,000 in our CD. And if you do, here's what we're going to give you. When you need long-term care, we're going to quadruple that amount. And we're going to pay this out an enhanced benefit by a certain amount. We're still going to pay you interest on the money, but we're going to give you a long-term care benefit that could actually pay your long-term care costs or a majority of them for five years.

Well, guess what? the bank won't do that, but an insurance company will. Yes, there you go. So the money sitting there earning whatever the rate of return is, and if you need long-term care, that provision is there. So it's a double-edged benefit. It enhances the benefit sometimes four or five times more than what you put in, and you also have access to the money if you need it for other emergencies.

It's a win-win situation. It's multiplying your dollars. yeah multi-purposing your money that's what we're into you know and when you're doing that it's also like what you've said in a previous conversation the ultimate gift of love to your family because if you don't plan the right way and like the one example you gave where the person could have lost their house you're impacting your legacy your family your heirs the money you can pass to them and when you put these protections in place it's smart but it also is a gift that you're giving to your heirs.

You don't want to, your children love you and they'll do whatever they can for you, hopefully. But really, you want to have choices and you don't want to have the only choice be, my kids are going to have to take care of me. Now, if that's the only choice, they'll grin and bear it and do it, but then it disrupts their family. Yeah. And if we, if we can avoid that, that's really the best solution.

That's really the type of retirement shield that we're looking for. well jim once again this has been real enlightening you've just got away with words and be able to educate and teach people on these topics if someone is interested in learning a little bit more and getting more educated what's the best way they can reach out and connect with you well they can send me up an email at tv r shield treasurer valley retirement shield tvr shield at gmail or they can shoot me a text or call me at 775-233-2203. Perfect. Well, Jim, thank you so much for coming back on.

It's been a real pleasure chatting with you again. My pleasure, indeed. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.com. Thank you.