Common Challenges Faced by the Elderly – Episode 296

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. In this episode of the Prosperity Podcast, we’re going to talk about what happens when you start to grow older or family members grow older. And maybe there is a way that we can start to reverse that aging process. Kim has some interesting things to share with us today. So Kim, we would love to hear from you. Oh, so happy to share because there’s some solutions coming to what are some serious challenges with the elderly and its technological solutions that I learned about at Peter D. Amanda’s Abundance 360 event. So let me share and I just so encourage people to follow Peter. He is one of those technology futurists, I guess you could call him. And there’s absolutely some things that he talks about that are just a little

[00:57] bit out there for my tastes. And yet most of what he shares is viable information available to us in the next 12 to 36 months. So very specifically in relation to senior living and elderly care and that kind of thing. First of all, all of us need to be saving as much as possible. We are going to live so much longer than past generations. I mean, 100 is going to be absolutely normal. 110, 120 all the time, you’re going to start to see people of that age. So one of the things I’m super excited about a couple of different companies that in the next 12 months, so let’s say by early 2020, they’re going to have available headsets that will let the elderly come alive from their bed or their wheelchair or wherever

[01:55] they may be sitting or standing or hopefully starting to move around a little bit. And so the companies are Magic Leap. These are companies that people have started to hear about. Another one HoloLens and another one called High Fidelity. And all of these companies believe that they will have a headset, a wearable headset. So these things are out there now. The challenge with them right now is because our internet isn’t quite up to the capability that we need it to be. Think 5G, which is still probably a year or two away in a lot of places, but maybe only six to 12 months in bigger cities. Because our internet isn’t quite up to speed yet. When you speak or watch or do a lot of the things that we do over the internet,

[02:46] there’s an issue called latency, meaning if you were watching a video of me right now, my lips might be just a fraction of a second ahead of the sound or my eyesight might not be quite in line with yours. And it makes it very awkward to communicate or observe or be involved in anything over the internet. Even things like FaceTime is awesome, but this latency issue, the delay issue is not as effective as we would want it to be. This is going to be solved. And the studies are showing that it will help the elderly immensely because they can be engaged. They can put a headset on and they can very easily communicate with a family member way easier than even FaceTime is now. They will literally feel like that family member is in their room with them. And they can go see the tombs in

[03:44] Egypt. We actually saw an example of this. Or they can go on a tour of Buckingham Palace. Or they can go see the presidents that are carved in the side of the mountain in the United States or whatever it is that they want to experience. And this is going to transform their lives. And of course, as we know, when people are mentally engaged, it helps them be more physically active and upright and forward-thinking. And I am trusting that this is going to make the senior citizens in our country much happier people, which of course then impacts their physical self as well. Yeah, absolutely. As hearing these different pieces of technology, I have tried out what they called Google Cardboard. And you put on a headset

[04:33] and you can become a part of the Google Maps walking tour. And so I have walked virtually through the streets of London and I have seen other parts of the world. And I think of the senior piece and they are going to be more engaged. Their minds are going to be sharper. Wouldn’t you think that that would mean they are going to live longer and maybe happier? Absolutely. And so it’s definitely going to be interesting as we figure out what to do with serving those people. There is a company that I absolutely love and it’s called Seniors Helping Seniors. I think it’s dot org. So Seniors Helping Seniors, either dot com or dot org. And our challenge is, okay, these people are living longer. They’re definitely more

[05:17] mentally and physically capable, but they might not be capable of living on their own as an example. Well, there are going to be all kinds of seniors helping seniors. I mean, this company has been around a while actually, but there will be people that have time, be willing to give time. And then there will be other companies that pop up like pad split. So P-A-D like dog, S-P-L-I-T. I think you would call it an app. I don’t think it’s an actual website. I think it’s pad split the app where maybe there’s a lady that wants to live in her home, but she really needs to have somebody around, maybe not 24 seven, but just somebody. And it doesn’t need to be skilled care. It just needs to be the presence of a human being. And on pad split, you could go on and create a co-living

[06:07] environment request and then match people to that. And just like Airbnb is today, there’s a vetting process. There’s all kinds of documentation and trust that is developed through the app that enables those things to be the best of the best instead of a potentially scary situation. And of course, not that it’s maybe 100% perfect, but they’re going to get it close to 95 or 96 or 97, which I think we all have finally realized that Airbnb is. Yeah, absolutely. So with seniors having additional options, making their cost of living go down, their life expectancy longer, and their overall enjoyment much better. How is that going to affect their finances and the way that they operate on a day to day basis?

[06:57] Well, that definitely is the $64,000 question. And as I’ve indicated, families need to be saving and it’s going to be so critical that us that are still working. So the younger generation, whether you’re 20 or 50 or even 70, please keep working. Please, please keep working. If you are capable of working, you need to be working. And if you do not love your job, then go on to Udacity, go on to Upwork or the myriad of sites that you can either just offer your talent and get paid for it like drawing or graphic arts or editing or whatever. And if you don’t feel like you have a talent, then places like Udacity, U-D-A-C-I-T-Y, it can help you get retrained. And seniors could do some of this work because so much of it

[07:53] is done virtually at a laptop that they could literally do sitting in bed or sitting on a couch or what have you. Of course, I’ll restate that we need to keep moving physically too. So keep your money moving and keep your body moving. And so by keeping your money moving, for those of us that are still working, save, save, save, save, save. Being in a position of cash has never been as important as it is today. And continuing to create cash flow and the growing of savings where it will not shrink and where it is in your control, nothing more important than in today’s world. Please, please find work you love, keep working. And then for those that are already retired, if you can find something to do,

[08:39] maybe you go on seniors helping seniors. Some of those people get paid to do the work, some of them it’s more of a trade. Maybe you go on Udacity and get trained and get a nanodegree and get hired for a part-time position that you can do from your laptop because human beings were made to work. You know, we’ve got this thing in our society sometimes that says, ah, work is bad. That’s not true. Work is lovely. I know the days, if I go too many days of not working, I literally am mentally impacted. I remember right after the holidays, I had taken about 15 or 16 days off. And I know better than that, that’s about three days too many. You know, I can handle a couple weeks max, max, max, but I was literally just sluggish, mentally and physically sluggish because I wasn’t doing

[09:34] what God made me capable of doing. I wasn’t giving. I wasn’t active. I wasn’t involved, engaged, moving things forward, et cetera. And believe me, I’m a huge believer in free days, you know, the Dan Sullivan method, no business activity, midnight to midnight. Yes, go take those vacations, those long weekends, what have you. But beyond that, get engaged. Find something that you love to do and do it in the service of others so that you can get paid for it. There’s nothing out there that is a love of a human being that can’t in some form be turned into a paid quote gig, right? GIG. That’s the term, the gig economy. And there’s even a book called that, that is just you doing the work that you love in the service of others

[10:23] that are willing to pay for it. You know, that’s a great point. I think, you know, if we take one of the words or the phrases you’re using, I’d say momentum, you know, because once we’re doing something that we know we’re really good at, and we keep doing that, it just becomes easier. We hone our craft in pulling aside, it just get that sluggish feeling. And I think the same could be for those seniors that we’re talking about. And it also comes very much as we’ve heard from you for episode on episode savings, you start saving and that momentum just makes it so much easier every single time. Absolutely. And when people are motivated by a future that has potential and the momentum is begun, or even has been going for a while, you’re absolutely right. It is so much easier.

[11:14] And I’ll be frank, it’s one of the reasons I love about using whole life insurance as the place to save. And I use save as a verb there to store to put away money because the bill shows up, it gets paid. And it’s a long term, guaranteed product. And there just isn’t much else out there that you can use the word guaranteed with. And we need to put ourselves in positions of control, where that momentum becomes on our side of the table and goes up, up, up, up, up consistently. You know, this is a classic example of the tortoise in the hair and the whole life insurance is absolutely a tortoise. And it will make a difference for people, for families, for the momentum of your money to have a place, not an investment, but a savings place where you are storing cash,

[12:15] you are in complete control of that cash, that cash is liquid, and you can use it, you can use the cash value, you can use the death benefit in the future. And of course, it acts like equity, meaning you can borrow against it. So that little acronym that I just walked through is CLUE, C-L-U-E, control liquidity, use and equity. And that’s what whole life insurance acts like. So if by chance you’re new to our podcast and haven’t had a chance to learn about it, open your mind, because of course, there’s lots of poor and incorrect information out there about this ancient product that is so boring and yet so effective. And it will help families and it will help with longevity because of the way that

[13:03] it goes up every single year. And it takes advantage of a two, three, sometimes 600-year-old industry kind of depending on what you pinpoint as the start of it. And it enables your family and possibly even your parents or grandparents, or if you’re of the older set, your children and grandchildren to have control of their money and not be abdicating that control to Wall Street, to the government, to other people. And when a senior citizen or a younger person has control of their money, there’s so much more peace of mind, which then of course generates so much more physical goodness. I mean, there are studies coming out showing that people that have annuities, and I’m not talking about the deferred kind of annuity where you put money

[13:55] in and wait, but the immediate kind of annuity where the paycheck is absolutely, positively for sure going to come. Those people have less stress in their life. So that is something too, that’s literally like the opposite of whole life insurance that people can be looking for. And you typically don’t want to start an immediate annuity until you’re in your 70s and 80s and maybe even 90s. And yet, if you do, then you have that peace of mind and that guaranteed income that will create less stress, hence your body handles things better and your mind handles things better. And if we’re going to live, let’s live a life that’s alive. Let’s not just sort of be sitting around waiting to die. I completely agree. And for our listeners,

[14:46] if you’ve been on this podcast many times, you know that one of the things you can do is ask kind of your questions. And if you’re new, well, here’s how it works. You send an email to hello at partnersforprosperity.com. And you can ask questions. It could be about the longevity of your health, how it’s going to impact your finances, or it can be about an array of different financial questions, or even demystifying some of these myths around life insurance. And so again, that email is hello at partnersforprosperity.com and Kim would love to answer those questions for you. And Kim, thank you for some insights from Peter and the stuff that’s going to help all of us live better lives. We appreciate that.

[15:32] Absolutely. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit us at partnersforprosperity.com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.