“The best-laid plans of mice and men…” - you know the rest. No matter how well you’ve prepared for your well-deserved retirement, there’s always the chance that unexpected events can arise, forcing you to rethink the next 5, 10, or 20 years of your life.
How can you insulate yourself from the risks associated with these events?
The first, and perhaps most important, thing to do is to keep an open mind. If you’ve gotten to retirement age in the first place, you already know that nothing in life is certain - at least, you know it better now than you did at 22, even if you haven’t fully embraced the truth of the statement.
As the Baby Boomers have begun coming into their golden years, a major question has begun popping up. It’s being asked at doctor’s offices, nursing homes, and financial advisors’ offices: How can I cover the costs of long-term care?
It’s an important question to consider, as long-term care costs are already high, and continue to grow. Just look at these numbers from the Genworth annual Cost of Care Study: According to the study, the median cost of a private room in a nursing home is $91,500 per year, with a semi-private room coming in just slightly lower at $80,300.
Retirement: for some people it's the carrot at the end of a long, long stick, and for others it's a dreaded passage into a totally different way of life. Then there are those in the middle, who think of it simply as a chance to try something new and different.
Whatever retirement means for you, there are certain things that you need to consider before you punch out of your job for the very last time.
In 2015, the biggest technological innovation to hit the financial advisor industry seemed to be robo-advisors - automated portfolio management services that use algorithms to provide financial advice.
Well, the robo-advisors are still around, but they have not, we’re happy to report, replaced your friendly human financial advisor - and it doesn’t look like they will, at least for the foreseeable future.
So what’s next in advisor technology? Is 2016 ushering in changes as major as the robo-advisor, or is this shaping up to be a quieter year? Here are five tech trends we’re betting on that could affect the financial advisor industry.
When did you first become familiar with the life settlement market? Months ago? Years? Decades?
If it’s the latter, you’re in rare company. Many financial advisors today still feel that they’re on unfamiliar ground when it comes to talking about life settlements with their senior clients. There are a couple of reasons for this.
For one thing, life settlements have only become a popular option for healthy seniors in the past several years. For another, the industry is often misunderstood, characterized as a “Wild West” scenario in which regulation is lax and transparency is hard to guarantee.
While this characterization held some truth in past decades, today it’s a real misrepresentation of the life settlement industry. Life settlement brokers, like Ashar, are held to strict standards and life settlement transactions are regulated in almost all 50 states.
The image of a senior staring confusedly at a computer screen, wondering what on earth the contraption does, is about as dated as referencing Gordon Gekko in casual conversation.
Today’s seniors are often just as tech-savvy as younger generations. Baby Boomers text, email, tweet, and post on Facebook with happy abandon, whipping out their smartphones to check the news or the latest stock market developments.
And while many of these same seniors know a fair bit about what to share or not share online, the unfortunate truth is that online scammers often target seniors specifically. This kind of attention means that even the least gullible senior may find him or herself falling prey to an online scheme.
To help you avoid making any inconvenient or costly mistakes, here are some tips on how to protect your personal and financial information online.
Since the recession of 2008, more and more seniors have found themselves working further into their retirement years than they’d originally planned. Some do so out of necessity, others because they find they’re just not ready to enter the retirement lifestyle.
Enter phased retirement. This alternative to the traditional here-today, gone-tomorrow method of leaving one’s job has become fairly popular among Baby Boomers in recent years.
Essentially, phased retirement means shifting to part-time work for a few months or even years, before leaving the workforce completely. This could mean working shorter days, shorter weeks, or working unconventional hours - the system looks different depending on you and your employer.
Elder law attorneys, advisors who sell long-term care insurance, and organizations involved in elder care see the same unfortunate circumstances with their senior clients every day.
Among your clients needing long-term care, you've probably seen two scenarios play out many times:
In the first one, your client already has long-term care insurance, so they're able to pay for what they need fairly easily. The emotional and financial burden on both them and their families are greatly reduced.
In the second one, your client has no long-term care insurance and possibly has no funds set aside to cover the cost of care. If they're trying to qualify for Medicaid to help foot some of the bill, then they're likely trying to spend down their assets - and a life insurance policy, until recently, has been categorized as an unqualified asset when it comes to Medicaid.
I've been working in the financial services industry for many years. I've been in the life settlement brokerage business with Ashar for almost a decade, and before that, I was an insurance executive for 18 years. So you could say I'm pretty comfortable with how finances work - not just in the professional sense, but in the personal sense, too.
You might think that would mean that I don't need a financial advisor. If I've got all this experience with financial products and services, why would I need someone to help me manage my own personal finances?
Well, there are a lot of reasons. In fact, I wouldn't dream of moving toward retirement without the help of a good financial advisor - and in my opinion, no one should. Here are five reasons you should work with a certified financial advisor. There are plenty more, of course, but these will get you started.
It’s no secret that family caregivers have to manage a major balancing act, whether they’re working or not.
If the caregiver is at home with their loved one, they have to balance caring for their own families - and just as importantly, themselves - with taking care of their family member. That means scheduling doctor’s appointments around little league games or the school play, feeding both a family and a person who may have a restricted diet, and keeping the bills paid despite the ever-increasing costs of prescription drugs and medical care.
For a caregiver with a full-time job, those responsibilities still exist - but these caregivers also have to work 40 hours a week.
While having a life outside of caregiving can have many emotional benefits, dealing with the additional demands on your time can lead to a lot of stress - especially if your employer is less than understanding. And with the added financial expenses that caregiving often leads to, it’s rare that a person can simply leave the workforce in order to be a full-time caregiver.
