by Gene Guarino, RAL
Most investors will work their entire lives to build their business, a portfolio of assets, and retirement accounts in the hopes of “being set” in their retirement years. Unfortunately, many of them will live to see most or all of their estate being stripped away paying for their final few years of life as they are being taken care of in an assisted living facility. That is sad and avoidable too. There is a solution to that problem.
The solution is to own your own Residential Assisted Living home. When it’s time you can live for free. Simply doing that allows you to pass on your hard-earned estate or it allows you to spend it now any way you want to.
The term “asset protection” is used a lot amongst all wealthy people and in investment circles. The principles are relatively simple, it’s the application that is the problem. Learning from professionals who guide you and assist you in getting your asset protection plan in place is critical to your long-term financial health. I choose to have those AP professionals implement the plans that are designed for me instead of attempting to “do it myself” with the thought of “saving a few dollars”
THE ULTIMATE ASSET PROTECTION
“What is your most valuable asset?” I would answer that by saying, my life and my health. That doesn’t seem to have a lot to do with “asset protection” at 1st blush, but it does.
Ben Franklin is credited with saying “there are only two things that are certain in life, death, and taxes”. I will let others counsel you on taxes but I would agree those are both certain as is aging itself. What happens between now and “death” is what I will address here.
According to AARP, 70% of all of us will need help with our “Activities of Daily Living” for an average of 3.5 years. What does that look like? How much “help?” and who will provide that help? Who will pay for that help? Those are the questions most people will not even ask themselves let alone answer.
The average private room in assisted living is $3,750 per person PER MONTH. That is the “average” price for an “average” home. Most of us will be spending much more than that because we would not want to live in an “average” assisted living facility. Our care will be more like $4,000 or $5,000 or even $6,000 or more per month. That could be for years and years and can drain an estate a lot faster than it took to assemble it. After just a few years that will total hundreds of thousands of dollars and it could all be saved.
One of the keys to protecting yourself and your assets is to have the proper insurance in advance of needing it.
We all know the typical insurance products like Health insurance, Disability insurance, Life insurance and they all have their purpose. Some of these we will likely all use at some point in our lives like health insurance. Others, we will never personally enjoy like life insurance, which is designed to benefit those that are left behind after you pass away.
The most overlooked insurance or the least likely to be purchased is “Long-Term Care Insurance”. Most people assume it’s either “too expensive” or they choose to ignore the fact that they are getting older and will more than likely need assistance as they age. As families get smaller and spread out across the country, they are not as close geographically and they are busy and unable to take care of their aging parents like they could years ago. There is a solution.
The ultimate asset protection strategy could very well be to own your own care home. When it’s time for you or a loved one to get the care that you need, you can move into the master bedroom and live like a king or a queen for free. Thereby preserving your estate and solving the problem that so many people simply ignore.
In addition, you could be making hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash flow and profits as the owner of that home. The solution is simple and you cannot ignore the fact that we all will be getting involved in assisted living one way or the other. The question is how will you be involved?
And right now, that choice is yours.
