In this episode, financial advisor Noah Doyle of SoundRidge Private Wealth breaks down one of the most avoided—yet most important—conversations families can have: long-term care planning. He explains why the ideal time to start is in your 40s or 50s, how open communication prevents painful conflict between siblings, why long-term care insurance matters even if you don’t have children, and how to keep your advisors, attorney, and family informed so a plan actually works when it’s needed.

Transcript:

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Well, Noah, it’s great to see you. Thanks for joining us on the program this morning.

Noah Doyle, Noah Doyle of SoundRidge Private Wealth

My pleasure, Jeff.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Really appreciate it. Long-term care, let me start off with asking you a basic question. I think most people underestimate, I want to get your perspective on this, underestimate the importance of having long-term care.

Noah, we’re all going to need some type of care as we get older.

Noah Doyle, Noah Doyle of SoundRidge Private Wealth

I couldn’t agree more. I’m a huge proponent of talking about long-term care with families. There’s a bunch of different options of how you pay for that care, but it’s better to talk about that in advance with your family rather than having it happen to one of your family members and not having a plan.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

And that’s really, I think, the thesis of your piece. Many of us who have parents and loved ones that are maybe a little bit older, we may not have engaged in those conversations, and you may not know whether or not your parent has a long-term care policy, but it’s important that you do know.

Noah Doyle, Noah Doyle of SoundRidge Private Wealth

Look, these are really tough questions for children or adult children to have with their parents, right? Asking your parent about where their will is and asking your parent if they have long-term care insurance or if they ever thought of how they’re going to pay for it opens up a ton of emotions.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Yeah, I certainly, I mean, in my own life, I can empathize with that. I can’t think of my parents as vulnerable. I still think of my parents as me being five and them being in their 20s or 30s whenever they had me.

So I can certainly relate to that, but go ahead.

Noah Doyle, Noah Doyle of SoundRidge Private Wealth

No, and also in your parents’ defense, also being willing to have these types of end-of-life questions with their children is also a realization that we all have an expiration date and that also makes things really uncomfortable. So these conversations are really uncomfortable for parents to have because they have to face one’s own mortality. And these conversations are also uncomfortable for children to have because they have to think about their parents in different ways, almost in which the role is reversed, where one day they may be parenting their parents and they also might be of the same generation that currently has young children.

So these are tough, tough topics to talk about.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Yeah, they are. But we need to make it easy. We need to make it, we need to remove the stigma, right?

That you gotta get through that because at the end of the day, if you need to take care of your parent and they have a long-term care policy, isn’t this gonna fall to one of the children? So, you know, a caregiver, this is gonna fall to, it’s gonna land on your desk.

Noah Doyle, Noah Doyle of SoundRidge Private Wealth

So it’s really important to talk about this because what I’ve seen in my work as a financial advisor is that when you don’t actually have these conversations and let’s say there are, you’re not an only child, you have siblings, like the last thing any parent wants is their children to fight when they’re sick or approaching end of life because you haven’t thought about how are we paying for this? Do we agree on in-home care or whatever the host of issues are? So, you know, step one is really just having that conversation so the information is open about it.

Then step two is once you actually learn, you know, you have many different options. In some cases, the one child is a lot wealthier than their brother or sister, right? And so I’ve seen many times where that sibling just raises their hand and says, look, I’m just gonna cover for mom and dad.

No cost is too much. You know, we want mom and dad to have best possible care. So that’s sort of option one.

Option two is both children or all the children don’t have the means to pay for it and mom and dad might not have insurance and they might have minimal means. And so there is something called Medicaid planning for those very limited cases that people should consider or talk about. But if you aren’t so wealthy that you can just completely write the check to pay for your parents’ care and, you know, your parents have assets that, you know, are more than these certain government limits, long-term care is a great way to take the, long-term care insurance is a great way to take away the stress and anxiety for families of what is always, no matter what, a very, very high stress time period in one’s life.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Yeah, it’s a lot of emotion, to your point, a lot of stress. What, you know, when you look at the timeline, when do you begin these conversations? I mean, you wanna have it when you’re in your 20s and your parents are in their 40s or do you wanna have it a little bit later?

I guess it’s gonna vary.

Noah Doyle, Noah Doyle of SoundRidge Private Wealth

Yes, every family is different, right? And so in my work as a financial advisor, you know, when my clients turn a certain age and let’s say 40s or 50s are optimal, most people I’m, you know, younger than 40 or 45 is probably not thinking about long-term care insurance and clients who are older than 65, 70 are usually have a tougher time getting underwriting. So there is a certain sweet spot that we start talking to people about long-term care insurance.

And what we talk about it is in the context of their own children’s situation, where, you know, do you want your children to have to make these decisions for you or do you wanna just pay for the insurance now while your children are young? So if you ever reach the point where you need the insurance, it’s really easy because you’re like, mom and dad paid for this over a 10, 20 year period when we were younger, just use it, just spend the money. It’s not an issue.

And if the client or family is all on board at that age and getting long-term care insurance for themselves, then usually it’s a great way to talk about their parents because we just talked about in the scenario of them planning their own kids. Then we say, well, do you actually know whether or not your parents have talked about this? And, you know, it’s a coin flip.

Many times those same families, you know, I always say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. So the clients who are thinking about getting long-term care for themselves because they don’t want to make their children be put in uncomfortable situations with this stuff, usually have the parents a lot of times who have already purchased it for themselves, but they might not even know of it. So it’s good to have that conversation because they need to get that information.

But it’s also good because if they don’t have it, you know, then we can start figuring out, well, what are the planning options that are most suitable?

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

A question has occurred to me. What about people who don’t have children? There’s a whole subset of people that maybe decided they weren’t going to get married or maybe they’re not married, they have a partner, or maybe they don’t have children, they have nieces and nephews.

It would seem to me that, what do you do? Well, it wouldn’t seem to me. What do you do?

Noah Doyle, Noah Doyle of SoundRidge Private Wealth

No, no, no. Look, those, I’ve had many of those conversations and it’s fine. We, you know, in my work as a financial advisor, we use life insurance, we use disability insurance, and we use long-term care insurance as part of a holistic plan.

Again, the majority of work we’re doing is their overall financial plan, but insurance is an important component, at least talking about that. And usually the, you know, the individuals, you know, what I would say is this, is if they’re married, usually what’ll end up happening is one, we’ll get it on one spouse, I’ve seen. So you have no children, but you’re married, and, you know, one spouse always is like, well, look, I’m gonna take care of you, and then you’re gonna outlive me, so we’re gonna get you on the insurance.

That’s where I’ve seen it many times. And then someone who’s not married, no children, they are more likely to purchase, I find, long-term care insurance than they are to care about life insurance for those exact reasons that you just mentioned.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Yeah, I mean, you’re thinking about that category of people, that would be, you know, as you start to have these thoughts in the back of your head about the expiration date to use, you know, to paraphrase what we were just talking about, it would seem to me that I’d wanna have those things answered because something could happen, a catastrophic event could happen, you could become disabled, you would need care, someone would say- Well, it’s also like, the thing is,

Noah Doyle, Noah Doyle of SoundRidge Private Wealth

is that, look, if they have the assets, what I always tell people is like, look, they can just spend the assets and pay for your care that way, right? Like the purpose of those assets are paid for the care. But, you know, if you don’t have children, you’re leaving the decision potentially, you know, to someone who may be slightly conflicted, slightly, okay?

As opposed to saying like, all right, I have X in assets, I’m gonna allocate this small sliver to paying in advance for long-term care insurance. So the person who I have put in these documents that is supposed to make these decisions isn’t ever faced with the question, you know, is it the right time to spend down the assets for my care? Guess what?

Use the insurance, I paid for it, I bought it. If it’s available, that’s what it’s for. I earned this money, like, it’s my choice.

And so that’s usually the way in which I talk to people without children. It’s just, you wanna control that decision or you wanna leave it to a third party?

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

My last question for you, I mean, I could talk about this for hours, maybe not hours, but beyond our show time and we’ll have to bring you back in the future. Thank you, Jeffrey, I’d love to come back. But let’s talk about the team.

So I know that you are a financial advisor, you advise clients, you talk about the assets, you talk about a holistic plan. But I’m thinking, what about the legal or the accounting aspect? Are they part of the team that has to weigh in here?

Noah Doyle, Noah Doyle of SoundRidge Private Wealth

So again, in my work as an advisor to high net worth families, we work very closely with the family’s trust and estate attorney, and we work very closely with the accountant. And so we wanna make sure, and if you’re a listener or viewer of Jeff’s show, is that your entire team should know your policy numbers. They should know how to apply for these benefits.

Because if A, you never know when people are gonna quit or retire or switch jobs. But B, if you’re actually trying to file a claim with any of this stuff, there’s real information that insurance companies cannot disclose to you for all the privacy concerns that you would expect. And so after these policies are purchased in consultation many times with your trust and estate lawyer and or your accountant, you absolutely should share that information, not just with your financial advisor, but with the full family team.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Yeah, and this doesn’t, I mean, I know that your clientele seems to be in one category, but really these are questions that anybody should probably have answered. They should have answers for, right? I mean, it’s irrespective of the income threshold, right?

I mean, you have to, we’re all gonna- 100%, that’s there.

Noah Doyle, Noah Doyle of SoundRidge Private Wealth

Again, if you are able to afford and pay for a wealth manager or financial advisor, you would expect that him or her is thinking about these questions to keep this information organized. There’s a lot of people who are sort of do-it-yourself type when it comes to financial planning. Again, all I would say to those viewers is make sure it’s really detailed and make sure the information is not hidden because when the time comes, whether it’s life insurance, whether it’s disability insurance, or whether it’s long-term care insurance, that information is so crucial.

And the last thing you want family members or friends doing is trying to search for a phone number or a policy number.

Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Noah, we’re gonna have to leave it here. Like I said, it’s a big topic.

Hopefully more and more people are getting educated about it and they’re gonna prioritize it in terms of their future needs. Great to see you. Thanks for joining us.

And we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon, sir.

Noah Doyle, Noah Doyle of SoundRidge Private Wealth Thanks, Jeff. I hope to be invited back to the program and look forward to continuing the conversation on another topic.