And welcome everyone to Answers for Elders Radio Network. And it’s another exciting program today for those of you that are looking at the future and you know you see things in the road ahead and you hear that senior living costs a lot of money. You don’t necessarily know how that’s going to happen, especially if you’re trying to help a senior loved one, and it’s a real common problem out there for our seniors that have property. They might be property-rich but cash-poor because they’re on fixed incomes. They’re in a situation where they may not be able to come up with the money they or the buy-in scenario happens in a community. We are dedicated to providing resources to everyone, and on behalf of Morning Star Senior Living, they have brought forward an amazing organization that I’m very excited to introduce to all on our network, and that is Miss Emily Schwarz, and she’s the vice president of sales and Marketing for ElderLife Financial. Emily has some great news for all of our people out there that are listening about how can you bridge into senior living and how you guys help make families make that happen. So Emily, welcome so much to the show.
– Thank you so much for having me, Susanne, I really appreciate it.
– I’m excited you’re here because I was just talking to a family this morning. Perfect scenario: Dad is on a fixed income. Yes, he’s a veteran, but they don’t necessarily know when he served. They don’t know the years, they don’t know anything. They don’t know that Dad could potentially … if he has property or something like that. But he only gets a fixed income of $4,000 a month, and that’s not enough to afford “senior living” and the care that he needs so desperately. So Emily, first of all I would love to learn a little bit about ElderLife Financial and specifically what it is that you do.
– Sure. ElderLife Financial is a one-stop shop to help families understand their financial resources to pay for senior living, as you mentioned. A family might have a home to sell, maybe they’re eligible for VA benefits, maybe they have a long-term-care insurance policy. They have ways to pay for the community of their choice, but they don’t have the funds available today. What ElderLife does, when a family contacts us, we provide a free consultation and we will review everything that might be available to that senior, kind of like a financial aid office at a college or university, and will help them with resources to pay for the community that they want and need.
– That’s the thing that’s so important. I remember when I moved my mom into senior living. She didn’t have the cash to do it. One of the reasons why we moved her into senior living was because she was in this beautiful house, but she didn’t have the money to keep up the house. She was on a fixed income. She ran out of investment money that she was dealing with, and she needed day-to-day money. All she had was social security left, and so we felt like, Mom, it’s time to sell the house. But it takes a while. It took three months for us to get the house even ready to get be sold, and so what are you going to do with mom in the meantime? How can you deal with that? And, of course, at the time, the senior living community, they helped her with one month, the first month, that they would wait, but we knew it was going to take longer than that, and so we had to go to a family member and basically get a personal loan on her behalf, which was really hard for my mom because she was never like that, and so they got paid back out of the sale of the house. But of course this is what happens oftentimes with families, and it’s a hard thing to have to deal with when you have to go to somebody in the family and ask for a loan.
– Absolutely, so we are here to solve that problem. That’s what ElderLife Financial does all day, every day for families nationwide. We help them with the ElderLife Bridge Loan, and the Bridge loan essentially helps bridge the gap from the time the senior needs the care to the time the senior can afford the care. So in your family situation, what we could have done is, we would have talked with your mom and we would have talked with you, and we would have established a line of credit for that, essentially a life bridge loan. We would have provided the money that she needed for however long it took to sell the home, usually six months, even though I know home sales are slowing down right now, so might be towards that longer period. We could provide the money that she needed to pay for the community, to bridge the gap between her social security and the cost of the community.
– I’m sorry, but what you’re saying to is is there’s more expenses than that, because you sometimes have to buy new furniture. Sometimes you have to buy new curtains, You have to pay for a moving company, all of those different expenses that happen. I remember with my mom, we had to we had to go through so many things. Plus we had to pay for things to get the house ready for sale, there were some repairs that had to be done. We had to upgrade the light fixture, all of that stuff. It was like $40,000 by the time we were done that we had to actually access funds for because it’s not an easy process to go through that transition, is it, Emily?
– Well, we try to solve that problem too, as well. So we haven’t talked about this yet, but the Outer Life Bridge loan will actually allow the family to include moving expenses, perform home repairs, staging, whatever you need. We can provide those funds directly to family, and then we can also add in the initial community fee, so not just bridging the gap between Social Security and the cost of care, but also that initial community fee. All of that can get rolled into the bridge loan, and then you don’t have to ask a family member for that loan. When the home sells, you use the proceeds to pay off the loan, without having all those difficult family conversations.
– I am such a strong proponent of making sure that we do whatever we can as family members to maintain the dignity of our seniors, and especially those of an earlier generation. There’s a lot of pride factor in what they’ve built on their own. They don’t want to go and come from a position of feeling more vulnerable than they already do at this time. And I think that’s the amazing thing about what ElderLife can do, is that they can provide that bridge where they don’t have to put their hand out to family. They don’t have to figure out how am I going to do this. It’s something that’s easy, that certainly they can do. Because you do this, I’m very interested in the process. And you also do not only the bridge loan piece, but there’s other types of financial resources that you can help them access. And what is that exactly?
– Exactly. So when a family calls ElderLife, they will get a free financial consultation. They actually speak with someone called a financial concierge, just like you went to a hotel. It’s the same concept that concierge is going to work with them from start to finish. And what they’re going to go through is a whole menu of things that they could use to pay for their community. So, as we’ve mentioned, selling a home, VA benefits, taking the maximum advantage of their long-term-care insurance policy. Maybe it’s a reverse mortgage of one part of the couples remaining at home, selling a life insurance policy if they’re gonna lapse it. And we also educate about tax deductions, and personal loans. So there are ways to pay for senior living that maybe the family’s never thought of. And that’s what our concierge takes to the family.
– I think that’s so important. I don’t think the average family understands that there are financial resources out there, and they think immediately, what am I gonna do when I get older? And that’s the frustrating part, because there’s so many things out there that are available, and certainly we talk about the VA, the different forms in which we can pay for cost of care because it is so expensive and we do realize that, but there are options. And that’s the most important thing I think that you guys bring to our seniors. And that’s so important. So when somebody calls, they speak to the concierge, they have to have information available. Now, can the son or daughter call and talk to you?
– Yes, many times that is who we’re speaking with. In fact, we really want the children involved in all of the bridge loans, so, son or daughter can call, mom could start the conversation. It could be on speaker phone. But when they speak with the concierge, they’re going to go through all of the different possible resources, figure out what they might be able to take advantage of. If it’s the bridge loan, they can actually do an application right on that first phone call, and we’re going to try to help streamline that process so we can get there within date. Sometimes they need to move in tomorrow, if they’re coming out of a skilled nursing facility or hospital, and sometimes it’s three months from now. Maybe they don’t want to move before the holidays, or they don’t want to list their home before the springtime. You move at that pace, so whatever they need, we’re happy to move at the speed that they’re ready to move fast or slow, so we can talk to the kids, absolutely.
– Yeah. And then for you making sure that you have that kind of a foundation with families, I’m assuming you work in conjunction with the senior living community. What is your interaction with them?
– The senior living community is actually our best referral source. That’s typically where families hear about ElderLife. Besides this podcast or YouTube, will they have heard about ElderLife, probably nowhere. So the communities are the ones like MorningStar, who is connecting families with this financial aid office for senior living. So we get referrals from them all the time. Although your listeners and viewers can certainly just give us a call themselves.
– Absolutely, there’s families out there right now that are touring senior living communities. They’re trying to figure it all out. And I know that we have a lot of listeners out there that are listening to these podcasts because they’re in this process right now. And I think, for each and every one of you, it’s really important that we onnect our listeners with your resources. So, Emily, how do we reach you?
– Two ways, very simple. You can either give us a call to our family line, our financial concierge family line at 888-228-4500, or I would suggest visiting us online at https://www.elderlifefinancial.com/.
– Perfect. Emily and I are going to talk about how ElderLife assists families, the different resources, and all different types of ways their service helps families across America. We’ll be right back, right after this.
