Reverse Parenting – Episode 282

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[00:00] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast, fresh alternative personal finance talk for independent thinkers who prosper outside of Wall Street. Here’s your host, bestselling author, Kim DH Butler. Hello listeners and welcome to another episode of the Prosperity Podcast. Today we’re navigating some, let’s call it murky waters of understanding a life challenge. So what happens is the life cycle works like this. Parents start to have children, they pay for their children, they grow up, they get a job, they begin to prosper. They have children and then all of a sudden children have to pay for their parents. And that’s something that’s overwhelming. Wouldn’t you say Kim? Yes. And it’s happening more and more.

[00:56] And I think we’ll continue to see a lot of that going on. So how can we be prepared? That is the golden question of the day. So I think first we have, I first want to cover this, which I don’t hear often. I hear the tactical ways to do it, but I think we have to dive a little bit deeper. Let’s get to the roots and think about the mindset. What mentally do we have to prepare for emotionally? Where do we have to go there? Well, I think one of the biggest challenges is when you, as a adult in their 50s, 60s, 70s, you know, whenever it is 40s, even sometimes when you realize that you have to start parenting your parents and I call it reverse parenting because you find that they’re not maybe able to remember something you’re having to remind them kind of like you

[01:45] would a child or maybe there’s even physical issues that you’re needing to help them with again, similar to like you would a child. There could definitely be financial issues that you’re having to help them with. If they’re not able to keep up with paying their bills or you find that maybe they’re not handling their money or maybe they’re being conned by TV programs or somebody that has called them on the phone and they’re tempted to maybe give more or spend more than they really have available. And all of those are issues that the elderly deal with. I think also it’s super important to identify that there’s a very common view in our society that one gets older, declines and dies. And it does not have to be that way.

[02:39] I’ve used the mantra before of die healthy. And I mean that 100 percent. And healthy means healthy physically, emotionally, financially, mentally. It is not the truth that we have to have a decline mentally or physically and then die. And I know that we think that we see that all the time because we see that all the time. But those are our human eyes seeing that. And I just want to challenge that notion to realize that we do not have to physically, mentally, emotionally decline and then die. That doesn’t have to be our experience. And that may be a little bit of an abrupt challenge for people. But that’s OK. We’re here to really talk about the truth in all things. And when we look at our parents and we have the lens or the point of view that we

[03:39] think they’re going to decline mentally, emotionally, physically, then that’s what they’re going to do. If we instead shift that point of view and not be looking for them to do that, then chances are good everybody will have a different experience. You know, that’s so true. And they’ll last that much longer as well. You know, if we look just at history itself, we can see in history that a lot of people, they were around years and years ago. And those people, our founding fathers, were in their 80s and they were in their 70s. They were still doing the work that would last generations. And it was so valuable. Absolutely. It’s just a shift in dealing with a number because, especially in America, our

[04:31] society focuses on 65 in an extremely unhealthy way in my mind. And we’ve gotten lured into thinking that, oh my gosh, most people will be dead by 85. That’s not accurate at all. Somebody in their 50s and 60s that’s healthy today will easily live to 100. And people that are younger than that, in fact, we’ve even talked about this on the podcast before. I think there’s a billboard in New York City, apparently, that says that somebody born today will live to 120. And I know the life insurance companies are all using now 120 as their perspective. So this shift mentally must take place. OK, so the million dollar question is, how do I pay for the million dollar bill? Because, you know, that’s really what happens.

[05:20] I talk with people that own home health care agencies. And the fear that the agency owners have right now is the government and the fear that us that are preparing for those bills is the health care system. So how do we navigate this, Kim? Yeah, and I’m not sure I have good answers, but I certainly have some ideas. And the first is to keep saving, keep saving, keep saving. It’s amazing to me people want to not only retire at 65 when they should be retiring at 75 or 80, but they want to stop saving. And so that’s not going to work. And especially the quote sandwich generation, which is people that have to care for both their children and their parents, saving is going to be critically important.

[06:05] I also think it’s interesting to look at what those home health care environments can create, because home health care is so much more reasonable in terms of its price than a care facility is. And you have these care facilities that are like a five star hotel, and they are unbelievable in terms of their expense. And I’m sure they’re unbelievable in terms of what they do as well. And yet I think families need to be really conscious of making a decision because you don’t want the sandwich generation, the people in their 50s as an example, to get caught spending a lot of money to care for their parents at the detriment of their own savings ability any more than we want parents of children that are in college to get caught spending a whole

[06:58] bunch of money for a college experience at the detriment of their own ability to save for their own future. So both of those things, both the caring of the parents and the caring of the college age kids are expenses that we just need to be conscious of and smart about and get everybody together and start to have discussions. It’s very, very sad to me how little we talk about money in families in America. It’s still some taboo subject, which is not healthy. Absolutely. You know, to me, I look at it and there’s a short window of time, or I should say snapshots of time when life expenses are out of control. So for example, the birth is expensive, incredibly expensive. And then you fast forward up to the college age.

[07:52] And that’s a compounded period of time that’s extremely expensive for life. Then you get another one of those periods, which is towards the end of life. If you’re getting home health care or going into a retirement home, we were talking minimally thousands a month, if not 10, 20, 30,000 a month for one of these places. That’s that’s a lot of preparation. So what are some of the first steps you would tell a person to begin preparing? I know, yes, you have to have the conversation. What does that conversation look like and how do we start to have that? One of the most helpful tools that I’ve become aware of in this space is a website with an offering that does cost a little bit of money. So worth it because it supports the discussion and the figuring out

[08:45] of what that person wants. And it’s called five wishes dot org. And it’s F I V E wishes dot org. So F I V E W I S H E S dot org. And I don’t remember the price. It’s a small price to get a document that enables the elderly person to think about their wishes for the end of their life. And I encourage everybody to do this because we never know what might occur that wouldn’t be, quote, at the end of life in terms of age, but more sooner if something occurred that would be an accident that would cause us to have problems, physical problems where we needed help. So at five wishes dot org, you’re basically forced to think through five specific areas that you want care in and around or not, because, of course, a choice is no.

[09:45] But then that will facilitate the discussion and give the family members something to work on. And this is so much easier to do when everybody is healthy. It’s why it’s so important that families go today to five wishes dot org, pay a little bit of money, download the document, start the discussion, fill it out for family members, including the the parent level. So the 50 and the 60 year old as well as the 70, 80, 90 year old and enable everybody to have clarity around that document and around that discussion. You know, that’s really well said. We’ll make sure to put five wishes dot org inside of the show notes. And on top of that, I think that, you know, depending on the circumstance, people are going to have their unique questions.

[10:37] And it’s great to start now. You know, you ask a farmer, when’s the best time to plant a tree? And, you know, you would look and say years and years ago. But the second best time is right now. And don’t wait until it’s too late. I think another thing that’s really valuable for our listeners is they can ask you personal questions. And the best way to do that is to send a question to the email address. So do you want to share that with our listeners, Kim? Absolutely. That’s hello at partners, the number four prosperity dot com. And I’m happy to answer specific and individual questions the best that I can. And of course, if it warrants a conversation, then we can open the door for that as well.

[11:19] So hello at partners, number four prosperity dot com. Thanks again for spending time with us today on the podcast. And we’ll bring you another one soon. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you. Visit us at partners for Prosperity dot com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.