Stephanie:        00:06    Welcome to Take Back Retirement, the show for women 50 and better facing a financial future on their own. I’m Stephanie McCullough. And along with my fellow financial planner, Kevin Gaines, we’re going to tackle the myths and mysteries of quote unquote retirement, so you can make wise decisions toward a sustainable financial future. Through conversations and interviews. You’ll get the information and motivation you need to move forward with confidence, and we’ll be sure to have some fun along the way. We’re so glad you’re here. Let’s dive in.

Stephanie

Hey, we’re excited today to welcome Lindsey Poeth, to the Take Back Retirement Podcast. Lindsey is an expert in senior living options. And she has a lot to tell us that is going to be super relevant to our audience. Lindsay, welcome.

Lindsey

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Stephanie

Absolutely. Could you take a couple of minutes and tell our audience who you are and what you do?

Lindsey

Sure. So again, my name is Lindsey and I own a business called Oasis Senior Advisors. I am a certified senior advisor, meaning I really specialize in everything that affects seniors and seniors can be maybe described as anyone 60 years and older. So, my job is really to help families find senior living options nearby. And this is a very personalized process that we do that involves the type of care that’s needed, the location, the budget. We really try to get to know the families, to give them the best choices to fit their particular scenario. Cause everyone is very different.

Stephanie

So, what we talk about on this podcast is women facing retirement in quotes, whatever that might mean and how it’s a complicated picture. In your experience, how has the need to become a caregiver affected women’s lives?

Lindsey

Oh my gosh, it’s huge. And it really is sometimes so life changing that that whole retirement goal they had envisioned is just put on the back burner. And what typically happens is this typically lands on the daughter, usually one daughter, even if there are more than one, to step into that caregiver role. And what happens is they haven’t usually discussed the process before in terms of what happens as mom and dad age, and they have a harder and harder time living on their own. So, it starts off usually with baby steps, right? I’m going to swing by see how they’re doing a day or two a week. Oh, maybe I’ll bring some meals a day or two a week, cause it’s getting harder to cook. And then it just becomes a little bit more and a little bit more until it’s all encompassing. And then all of a sudden what’s happened is whether that caregiver, that adult child has planned for retirement. Now it’s usually again, Oh, now I have to take care of mom and dad or they had to retire early to now take care of mom and dad. And that’s really frustrating and it takes such a huge toll really on both parties. So, that’s one of the biggest challenges I see, especially in this age range for women in particular.

Kevin

So, we see it happen a lot and it’s happening more and more because people are living longer, but everybody seems to be talking about how it impacts the parents. What are some of the emotional strains or issues that you see for the caregiver?

04:58

Lindsey

Oh my gosh. They’re just not appreciated all in all. The toll it takes is overwhelming in a sense of, let’s just talk about financial. Sometimes those parents don’t have those resources in place. So, then it’s, again, that daughter that steps up sometimes tapping into her retirement account to take care of her parents, not something that she hadn’t necessarily seen. An emotional toll. You’re watching your parents age and now you’re responsible. I mean, you don’t think about having to help your dad shower, helping them toilet. That’s not something that we envision as kids to say like, oh absolutely sign me up. I can’t wait to do this. But that becomes part of the everyday life, just physical. We see as the caregivers start to do this longer, more and more, they start to have physical problems, you know, backs.

Lindsey

They start to have all sorts of back issues, neck issues. They fall apart and then they become sick because they’re not taking care of themselves. Especially as parents get a little bit, maybe they progress and having a harder and harder time, this person can be up at all hours. They’re swinging by in the middle of the night, they’re picking their parents up out of bed. They have to oftentimes bring the spouse with them because if dad falls out of bed, it’s really hard to pick up 180-pound, 150-pound person and put them back into bed. So, n ow the spouses are getting involved. Then you start to see because all of this is happening, any sibling rivalry comes into play as well. So, there’s another emotional toll that there’s often not a lot of agreement in terms of the siblings on how to best take care of mom and dad.

Lindsey

Splitting up that responsibility is really hard. Cause people are like, I have a job, sorry, you’re doing so good that you don’t need my help. Then the last part that I really see as the trickle down into that caregiver’s personal family, their kids, their spouses. I have one where it got to a point where dad moved in with them and they ended up divorcing. The husband and wife who were taking care of him because they couldn’t emotionally find time for each other. And he became the priority instead of themselves.

Stephanie

Wow.

Lindsey

It’s heartbreaking. It really is.

Stephanie

Yeah. I think of when you mentioned it usually falling on the daughter, my mother was the caregiver for her father and then for her mother-in-law because my father was working.

Lindsey

Exactly. I’m working with a family right now. The daughter, the parents were still at home, but she, we start to have dementia, which adds a whole ‘nother layer of complication on top of everything else.

Lindsey

So, she doesn’t trust to call you can’t just call and say, Hey, what’d you eat today? Or, Hey, how are things going? Because you don’t know if you’re getting the full, accurate picture. So, then she’s swinging by she’s the one shopping. She’s the one cooking. She’s the one there all the time. And every time I talked to her, we’ve been talking for now six, eight months, she sounds exhausted. And she’s just at her wit’s end. But they can’t take the next step either because all of the siblings don’t think that it’s the right move to bring in anybody else or to get other help.

Stephanie

Uff. When I’ve seen friends go through it, having to make decisions for mom and dad, and thankfully I haven’t had to, and I’m knocking on wood right now, but you know, it’s that chronic level of stress that just there’s no escaping it. Either you’re doing something or you’re thinking about it, or you’re stressing about wondering what you should do. Or like you said, arguing with your siblings. That has to take a toll on your health.

Lindsey

Oh. And whether you’re doing it for a couple of weeks or you’re doing it for years, it just builds and builds, but it’s equally stressful because, like you said, it’s relenting. There’s no pause button. They can’t go on vacation. Right? Those family trips get sidelined because, “Oh, who’s going to stay and watch mom and dad?” There’s the guilt, which is the overwhelming driver of all this. This is what they would expect me to do. They raised me. So, it’s my job to do this. And it’s also that guilt of, I can’t let someone else do this because they’re not going to be as caring as I am. I know them best. We get stuck in that cycle.

Stephanie

Yeah. I think we can get in our heads a lot. Since you’re the expert and the solution person, what do you see people do that can help make this whole experience less stressful?

Lindsey

So, first off, plan ahead. Talk to your parents. Try to figure this out ahead of time as to even what their goals are. Where do they want to be? How do they envision, what happens if… We don’t talk about this as a society at all. We just don’t. So, just starting the conversation, even if they’re reticent and you’re reticent, to help understand what their wishes are. Even if their wish is to stay at home. Okay. But, let’s start to get that plan in place. So, if you’re at home and you’re the caregiver, there are actually quite a few options that are available to us. The very first is there are things called adult day centers. It’s something where they can even provide transport. Pick up your parents and bring them to, and from the center, they entertain them.

10:10

Lindsey

They’re engaged all day long. It’s a really nice opportunity for the parents to also get back into some socialization, which is another kind of sidebar about when they’re home by themselves or as a couple, their world becomes smaller and smaller, so they become less engaged. And that’s the number one aspect that really deteriorates our brain, our minds, and just exacerbates so much deterioration, both physically and emotionally. So, adult day centers. They’re fantastic. You can sign it up two days a week, five days a week. They have one specifically for Alzheimer’s dementia patients. So, the programming there is all encompassing. Even if you’re a very high functioning parent, they have things there for them to do as well. Even if it’s just sitting and reading a paper, but among peers. That’s huge.

Lindsey

They also have meals there. So again, just taking a little bit of that burden off of the full day aspect of caregiving. The second one I would typically recommend is a home health agency. These are private duty individuals. They’re not necessarily nurses because it’s not necessarily that they need a nursing level of care, but home health can come and be companions. They can help cook, help clean. Usually, they have a minimum of about three hours a day, but that can go up to 24-hour care. You can even have live-ins. That’s usually a pretty extreme approach to take, to go 24-hour care, but maybe filling in the gaps. Maybe it’s overnight duty. Where’s the most stressful period of time for that caregiver and try to fill in some of that with somebody else. Because they’re experts in it.

Lindsey

And they’re good. They can still do all the things that the caregiver does, but it just allows the caregiver to take a step back and recover themselves and be their own person. The next step would be looking into more of an assisted living type of an environment. In Pennsylvania we call it personal care. They’re both fairly interchangeable terms that we can use. And again, we see a lot of my families – They don’t envision themselves going into, they call it the nursing home. Don’t take me to a nursing home. I don’t want to be in a nursing home because they have that nursing home of the 1960s, fifties in their head where their grandparents went. And that’s not the case at all. These are communities where there’s activities, there’s private residences. You have so many options that are out there really to fit almost any type of individual.

Lindsey

So, that helps take away all of the care needs because the care is there when they need it. If they need 24- hour care, fantastic, that’s taken care of. All meals, cleaning, cooking, linens. It really does allow the caregiver to turn back into the daughter. So that the parent can be a parent. The daughter can be, or the son or daughter can be, the kids can be the kids again and not have to be in that role that they really didn’t sign up for.

Stephanie

That’s a really good point because when I talk to people about the possibility of helping mom and dad move some place that might have care available, there’s this guilt that comes up and there’s this kind of like, Oh, I couldn’t do that to them.

Lindsey

And then we take a tour. Part of my job is to really narrow down the choices that again, are going to fit that, that individual or that family. But then we tour them and we go on tours with them and we say, see, just take a look to see that this is very different than what you might have in your head about what that expectation is. I have to say the number one feedback I get from families who’ve made, it’s a hard choice to move your family into assisted living. But the number one feedback I get is – we should’ve done this years ago.

Stephanie

You know, that’s what my grandmother actually said. So, she was living in Kansas. My mother, her daughter in law, had to drive her from Kansas to Pennsylvania to move into a community. And literally, I think the woman came kicking and screaming. She’d berated my mom the whole drive. So unhappy. And then she got there and she was happy as a clam.

Stephanie

She’s taking exercise classes. She’s going to concerts. She’s making friends, you know, has her table at meals of friends.

Lindsey

Yeah, exactly. And it’s a shame like the older… because we wait, right. We try to maximize that time at home for as long as we can. And then we move them. As much as I would love to be moving more 80, 83-year-olds, I I’m in the process of moving a 99-year-old right now. So, is it better for her to move at this point? She’s still young and fairly vibrant. So yeah, but you know, at the same time, the quality of life versus being home by herself, could have been so much better. And that’s the struggle we have as adult kids and trying to figure out what that plan is.

Lindsey

We’re trying to follow our parents’ wishes, but we take that at the loss of ourselves. It’s not usually a two- way dialogue. It’s like, all right, well, if that’s what you want, um, we’ll, we’ll deal with it for as long as we can. And then the kids are at the breaking point and then parents move.

15:29

Stephanie

Well, and from what I’ve seen, some of the communities you might want to live in, there comes a point where they won’t accept you anymore. Is that true? If your health is not good.

Lindsey

That’s correct. So, a lot of families think, Oh, this one down the street, all my buddies went there. That’s where I’m going to go. And then to your point, Stephanie, their care level is too high. And while if you had gone in younger, more vibrant and gotten to that point, that’s okay, but a lot of communities won’t take you if you’re already too far down the continuum. Not all of them. So, I don’t want you to think like, Oh, we’re too far. Now we can’t do anything. Communities in Pennsylvania are really great because they can take a very high level of care. Which means that you don’t necessarily have to ever go into a skilled nursing environment. In fact, I believe only one in five seniors in Pennsylvania have to go into skilled nursing for a long period of time.

Stephanie

Interesting.

Kevin

because I had a client and, she ended up developing dementia. He had Alzheimer’s and it was very important for her that he stay home and that took a toll on her. I mean, her kids did everything they could to help, but neither one lived all that close. She ended up developing dementia. Again, the kids are doing everything they can, they’re of means. So, they have the money for the round, the clock care, but you know, the dementia gets so bad. So, they make the decision, to move her into a facility and because she had dementia, it was a lot harder for her to get in. And there were waiting lists that they were battling with. She eventually gets in and her mood improves just because she’s around people all of a sudden. The kids didn’t realize, and the kids had been battling the guilt. So, would you say that’s probably the biggest impediment to moving parents is just the guilt?

Lindsey

Yes, absolutely. What we don’t realize because our guilt is so high. We don’t realize the toll it’s taking for them to be living alone. Or even if you have a couple alone together. I mentioned this earlier, their world’s gotten smaller, their friends aren’t coming by the same amount. A lot of times they can’t drive anymore or their keys have been taken away. So, they’re completely reliant on their family coming in and saying, hi. And they’re very, very good about saying, everything’s great. Everything’s fine. I have couples. I have one gentleman, his wife had fallen three or four times and he never said a word because he thought as soon as he did, the kids would take him right out. But she had been hurt, but he was so fearful of what would happen and the kids saw that and said, see, we can’t take them away.

Lindsey

They’ve lived in this house for 60 years. Why would we want to do that? But to your point, especially with dementia, it is, it just takes an unbelievable toll. It really does. Maybe a little bit on the other side, it does happen where we have early onset dementia. I had a husband and wife or the wife was 57 years old and he had taken care of her with early onset dementia. And she had taken care of her for two or three years at home. And this is a very fast progressing disease. They actually missed a lot of the early signs. They blamed it, they thought it was menopause. So, they just said, it’s fine. It’s fine. And then it wasn’t fine. But again, that guilt of taking her somewhere, finally, he got to a point himself to say, I feel guilty.

Lindsey

And, the rest of my family says, I shouldn’t be doing this. So that’s another point. But she’s, this isn’t the wife I married. This isn’t the person I married anymore. But in that situation, the kids said, no, you can’t put her anywhere. And he was actually kind of an anomaly where he said, no, you’re wrong. I can’t do this anymore. Yeah.

Stephanie

Oh, that’s so rough. So, you know, we’ve told a couple of, kind of, you know, scary stories, but have you seen a family that did it right? That really kind of got ahead of it early. Tell us a story of how you wish people dealt with it.

19:48

Lindsey

So, we did actually one where the family said, I’m not ready to move. I’m not ready, but I want to start to… My kids are making me get out there and take a look. I’m like, that’s fantastic. And what we want is we really want, one of the good strategies for the caregiver for these adult kids is to say, we’re not forcing you to do anything, but we want you when the time comes, you don’t want us to make a decision for you. We want you to make the decision. Let’s tour while you can. And so that was exactly what happened at the kids’ urging. I started talking with the couple, really try to understand, you know, again, what they like, what do we want to keep doing? What are they missing that now they’re at home and they’re not doing anymore? And they weren’t ready to move. They said, you know what? We’re not going to move. And till we’re 90, maybe 10 years, eight years we’ll see what happens.

Lindsey

So, we actually went through, we toured and they said, when the time comes, this is where we want to go. We’re like, sure, no problem. Not two months later, the husband fell and broke his hip, had to go to rehab. But now home wasn’t appropriate for him anymore. Like it would need to be retrofitted like so much needed to happen in order for them to go back home. So, even though that wasn’t their plan to move that soon, they could. And they were like, you know what, that’s what they needed to realize that this was the time to do this. And so, they ended up moving and they didn’t have to make the decision under stress or duress and say like, Oh, we can’t go home and have that whole conflict. They did it on their terms.

Lindsey

They had made a decision for when the time came. The time just came earlier than they thought. But now they’re there and they were like, this is great. It’s really great. We have friends, it’s everything we wanted to do that we were missing out on being at home.

Stephanie

That is a great story. Kevin and I, on the financial side, we always talk to people about, let’s try to think things through before it’s a crisis so that when the crisis hits, you’ll be like, oh wait, Nope. I talked about how I was going to handle this. And you’re saying the same thing.

Lindsey

Exactly. There’s this misconception of where we’re putting our parents away and guilty and it’s not, we’re trying to open up their world. We’re trying to put them in an environment where they’re safe. So, you can actually have peace of mind as a caregiver, but they’re doing the things that they want to do that they can’t do. They’re so reliant on the caregiver, you know, I’d like you to take me to church. I want you to…we need to go to the grocery store. I need to do this. This is now off their plate completely because the community handles all of it. So again, we’re trying to open their world, not close it down.

Stephanie

So, we can’t avoid this question because here we are in May of 2020, when we’re recording this talk and we are living in the world of COVID-19 and pandemic. So, there’s a lot of talk about retirement communities and the pandemic. What’s the actual reality of what’s going on?

Lindsey

Sure. There’s a lot of misconceptions going on and it’s not surprising. Information is hard to come by… Real information.

Lindsey

It’s a scary time, right? We don’t want to put our families at risk any more than we need to. All of these different options that we talked about before, home health has its own associated risk with it. You’re bringing in people from the outside, moving to a community, you’re now entering into a new kind of community with a whole new set of germs. So, what we are seeing and what we’re probably going to see, not just now, but probably for the near future, is that when you do move into a community, they do require a quarantine period where you’re staying in your room. Not ideal. A lot of these families are in their rooms anyway, in their homes. But at least the care is still there. The meals are still there. Everything else is taken care of. It’s just for a short period of time where they do have to quarantine upon moving in. Other than that, you know what, it really depends week by week and because everything changes. So, my job is again, to stay up to date with all of that and help families navigate the process.

Kevin

In your experience, how long does it take from the time you say, well, maybe we should think about this to the time you actually move into a place? Now I’m sure every situation is different, but are we normally talking six months, two months, 12?

Lindsey

I would say it depends on how long they’ve waited at home. Many families, on the short side of things. Many families have not done any planning. And now someone’s in the hospital and they’re getting discharged and the family realizes they can’t go home. So those types of conversations we know they might have two or three weeks of rehab, might take as little as two to three to four weeks. For the most part, when we really plan it out, I would say Kevin, you’re right – Probably closer to four to six months. Usually there’s some impetus, not a lot of families are doing this, you know, five years out because they just don’t. I wish they did it. It’d be a lot easier. So, I would say probably around six months. The only exception to that is some who are very early and want to move into retirement community. You know, the 70-year-olds, early seven, who’ve just retired. That process maybe starts a lot earlier because it’s a bigger financial decision early on going into a community like that.

25:19

Stephanie

So, talking about the finances, you talked about the financial burden that often falls on the caregiver, who is more often than not a woman. What is your experience with long-term care insurance and whether having it affects your options when you’re out there looking?

Lindsey

It’s a godsend. It’s so rare that I have anybody with long-term care insurance, but it makes life so much easier. Then again, in Pennsylvania, the assisted living is all private pay. It’s not funded by Medicare Medicaid. So, it becomes dependent on means by a large part. So, you know, we start looking at pension, social security, any type of income that we can use to help fund a move into the community. And if we have long-term care insurance, it just makes everything so much easier.

Stephanie

So even if there’s a policy that will pay just for a few years, at least there’s some certainty there?

Lindsey

Exactly, exactly, and you know, when we see it, the community’s Tuesday, yay. It doesn’t require such a burdensome financial background review more often than not. Even if it is just a term for, you know, two years, three years, it really does give that peace of mind to the family as well.

Stephanie

Interesting.

Kevin

How frequently does selection come into the conversation? Meaning we’re moving mom or moving dad; we’re moving our parents and you have to ask the questions. Will these communities, will these facilities take them? How often will you be denied for whatever reason, either because there’s a waiting list or finances?

Stephanie

Finances, health.

Lindsey

Finances. Again, part of my job is to really kind of flush some of this out before we start going too far down the continuum. The last thing I want to do is waste people’s time. The community’s time trying to bring someone that really isn’t qualified, be it financially, medically, and everyone’s a little bit different too. So, I would say finances, that’s probably one of the bigger ones that we see in terms of they just can’t afford, or they had no idea the one that they had their heart set on, that all their friends went to. They had no idea how much it cost. So, then they get that price back and they go, Oh, well, we can’t go there. The other thing we see is some communities don’t do as much care as other communities.

Lindsey

State to state. There are some differences between Delaware and Pennsylvania. So, I know that like Pennsylvania is a little bit looser in terms of the person it can take in assisted living personal care versus a counterpart, maybe over the border. I would say care is not such a deterrent. Usually unless the individual really is really, really sick and they are bed bound, they require a mechanical lift to transfer, getting out of bed into a chair, into the shower. Those are the types of situations where not every community would be able to accommodate that individual.

Stephanie

So, the big takeaway I’m hearing is even though we, as a society, don’t really like talking about this stuff and uncomfortable situations, start talking. Start talking to your family and thinking about it either for yourself or people that you know, whose care might fall on you.

Lindsey

Absolutely. You can never start talking about it too soon. I have a checklist I can send you guys. We can post it afterwards about 10 signs that you start to recognize when it might be time to move, you know, is the yard work, is the house starting to look pretty messy inside and out? Are they not keeping up with just showering and bathing because it’s hard? Those are also signs that maybe we’re too far, it’s probably really time to start thinking about it. But it helps just to really get our thoughts processing on, wait a second, am I missing the boat? Should we have been talking about this before? Because we become so accustomed to, you know, we’re with our parents, maybe not so much right now, but we’re with our parents so often that we miss the small changes that are happening over time.

Lindsey

So, you might see, you know, as you get together at a big family event and someone goes, mom really doesn’t look very good, or I don’t remember your dad being so weak. Is he okay? And that’s where you go. Oh, I really didn’t even notice that that was a thing. Um, those are all the types of triggers that we should be seeing the, say, my gosh, we need to be moving this process along at least thinking about it.

29:59

Stephanie

Yeah. That would be helpful. We’ll definitely post that in the show notes. Thank you.

Lindsey

No problem.

Stephanie

So, one of the things that I’m always talking to people about is not only to prepare your own documents, estate planning, right? Your wills and your powers of attorney and your healthcare directive, but, make sure you talk to your parents or siblings or other people where you might be called upon to be that person making decisions for them and find out, do you have the documents? Are they up to date? Where the heck are they? Right? If you’re going to become financial power of attorney for someone, where can you find where the assets are? I know a lot of folks in the older generations are not as open and don’t want to talk about how much money there is, but if they don’t want to now, how can you find it when the time comes?

Lindsey

And that’s a huge challenge. So again, when we start talking about… Okay, now we’re ready for the move. My parents are onboard(ish) and we’re moving forward. But then they pause and that pause might be a day to dig through and find the right paperwork. I have a poor daughter right now, she’s in week three. She’s like some of it’s on a computer. Some of it’s in files. Some of it’s in an addict, some’s in a basement. She’s like, I have no idea what their net worth is, and I don’t know how to reconcile it. And that’s a big factor. Again, moving into assisted living is private pay in Pennsylvania. So, you know, options for $3,000 a month are very different options from what you can get for seven or $8,000 a month. So again, you’re trying to set this up for success and having all of that information as accessible as possible really does help the process along.

Stephanie

Excellent.

Kevin

And I would imagine you have like a checklist of all this to say, these are the things that everybody’s going to be asking for or the stuff they’re most likely going to be asking for?

Lindsey

Yep, exactly. Oftentimes they might say, Oh, there was a pension you’re right. There’s a pension out there somewhere and we’ve got to find it. Um, long-term care insurance comes up. They’re like, we have no idea. You know, we have no idea what our parents have been paying for. Um, uh, one other option too, if they are veterans and they’ve had an active, they did an active duty at least one day or during a war, actually they might qualify for some VA benefits as well. So, discharge papers, that type of thing. Again, just trying to find it all. If we have some resources to help move them along, like with the VA in that example. But the more information they have up front, the easier it is.

Stephanie

So again, it’s back to have the conversation if at all possible, before…

Kevin

Have it when you cannot, when you have to.

Lindsey

That’s a perfect way to sum it up. Absolutely. Yeah.

Stephanie

Any last thoughts that you want to make sure we get in, Lindsey?

Lindsey

Oh my gosh, this has been great. I think Kevin said it best, you can’t start looking soon enough if even just to rule out what you don’t like, but knowing too, and from that caregiver perspective, being upfront that this, in that role, if you’re in that role, it’s okay to say this is hard. Again, we weren’t trained to be caregivers and it’s hard when you tie in the emotional that this is your family. So, it’s okay to ask for help. It really is. No one’s going to think any worse of you.

Stephanie

And for most of us, it’ll be the first time we’ve done it, right? Like anything. So, it, it feels stressful. So, if you can find people to support you.

Lindsey

Exactly, you don’t have to go it alone. You don’t have to go the caregiving aspect alone. You don’t have to go the search. If you’re ready to search for other options, you don’t have to do that alone because that’s very overwhelming. Try and fill in the financial pieces. There’s help. There’s so much help that’s available. And I think people just because again, Stephanie, to your point, we’ve never had to do this before. So, every aging parent is the first time that we’re all going through this.

Stephanie

So, Lindsay, some people might be asking how much does a service like yours cost?

Lindsey

My service is free.

Stephanie

So how do you get away with that?

Lindsey

So, I’m actually paid by the communities, the assisted living, personal care communities. It doesn’t matter to me. I have the same contract with everybody. My goal is to get the family safe and get them in the right environment so that they can have a higher quality of life. But it is really nice to say that the service is free. You’re so personalized, it really is quite concierge. And it’s a godsend for some of these families who are in over their heads.

Stephanie

So, we’re in suburban Philadelphia, are there people like you and other areas of the country? Absolutely. Actually, Oasis Senior Advisors is a national business. So, we have, I think we cover 40 or 42 States. So, our website is OasisSeniorAdvisors.com. You can just plug in your zip code, and find the local advisor.

Kevin

Great.

Stephanie

Any other tips on how people can find or follow you?

Lindsey

So, the website, OasisSeniorAdvisors.com/MainLine, since we’re a suburban Philadelphia. There’s also a phone number. It’s area code (484) 947-4266. We’re on LinkedIn. We’re on Facebook. Really, we try to connect in so many different ways.

Stephanie

All the places.

Lindsey

We just want to be accessible.

35:17

Stephanie

I think that’s the thing, right? Start dipping your toe in it. Start demystifying some of the words and phrases and just understanding. And even if you’re not quite to the point of broaching it with mom and dad yet, prepare yourself for how to have the conversation.

Lindsey

That’s almost the first 15 minutes of every phone call I have. It’s just education.

Stephanie

That’s great. That’s awesome that you’re around and we’re so glad to have had you on the podcast. Thanks Lindsey.

Lindsey

Oh my gosh. This is so much fun. Thank you for having me.

 

Stephanie:        Be sure to subscribe to the show and please share it with your friends. Show notes and more information available at TakeBackRetirement.com. Huge thanks for the original music by the one and only Raymond Loewy through New Math in New York. See you next time.

 

Disclaimer:                   Investment advice offered through Private Advisor Group, LLC, a registered investment advisor. Private Advisor Group, American Financial Management Group, and Sofia Financial are separate entities. The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual security. To determine which investments may be appropriate for you consult your financial advisor prior to investing. This information is not intended to be substitute for individualized tax advice. Please consult your tax advisor regarding your specific situation.