by Joe Hearn | May 30, 2013 | Housing, Insurance, Medicare
“Should I buy long term care insurance?” I get asked that question at least once a week. As you prepare for retirement, I’m guessing that question has crossed your mind a time or two as well.
Well, you’re in luck. I do my best to provide useful resources for my readers (who, like those in Lake Wobegon, are all strong, good looking and above average), so I called one of the country’s foremost experts on long-term care and asked her if she’d be willing to spend some time educating us on the ins and outs of this important area.
She agreed and we scheduled a conference call for June 12 at 11:00 a.m. Central Time. You’re all invited to attend. The first part of the call will be informational and then we’ll reserve time at the end for Q&A. The purpose of the call will be to provide you with information and options. It will not be a sale pitch.
What we’ll talk about
- Preparing for when your health changes.
- How does long term care work?
- What is the range of care options available today?
- Who should consider buying a policy?
- How do Medicare and Medicaid factor into your decision?
- What types of things should you look for in a policy?
- When is the best time to apply?
- How can you protect yourself against the rising cost of care?
- How much will a policy cost?
- What percentage of people will need some form of long term care (spoiler alert: 50 percent of men and 75 percent of women)
Call in details
- The system I’m using has a limit of 96 people per call. Access will be on a first come basis.
- The information is free. Your only cost will be whatever your phone company charges you for a normal long distance call (sorry, but I can’t pick up the phone bill for everyone)
- The call will be June 12 at 11:00 a.m. Central. Call in 5 minutes early so we can get everyone situated and start promptly at 11:00.
- The call in number is (712) 451-6000.
- After calling the number, you will be prompted to enter your Participant Access Code. Enter 256869# and you will join the rest of us on the call.
- If you plan on sitting in on the call and would like a reminder, just email me at joe@intentionalretirement.com and I’ll try to send out a reminder email a few hours before the call.
If you have a specific question you’d like to make sure we cover, email it to me sometime over the next week or so at joe@intentionalretirement.com. Thanks and I hope to see as many of you as possible on the call.
~ Joe
Quick Note: The material on the call will be for general purposes only. For specific legal, financial or insurance advice you should contact your attorney or financial adviser. You can also contact the guest speaker on the call (Marlene Lund) at 402-896-9193 if you have specific long-term care questions. FYI, I refer clients to Marlene and she and I work together to help them with their long-term care needs. Because of that, if you end up doing business with Marlene, I will likely receive some sort of compensation. I just wanted to make that totally clear. Thanks.
by Joe Hearn | May 24, 2013 | Lifestyle Design, Pursuits
“You don’t have to find out you’re dying to start living.”
~Zach Sobiech
It’s been a busy “News” week, and I wanted to point out a story to you just in case it got lost in the shuffle. Last May, Zach Sobiech’s doctors told him he only had a year to live. He was battling a type of bone cancer called Osteosarcoma and, despite everyone’s best efforts, the cancer was winning. Zach died on Monday. He had a brief life (he was only 18 when he died), but he made the most of the time he had.
One of the core tenets of our philosophy here at Intentional Retirement is to get off the deferred life plan. Zach embodied that so well. Rainn Wilson (a.k.a. Dwight from The Office) made a short documentary about Zach and I thought it offered a great reminder to the rest of us to live an intentional, full life. If you haven’t seen it already, I promise you it’s worth a few minutes of your time. You can watch it on YouTube by clicking the link below:
Before I go, two quick things:
- Have a great Memorial Day weekend!
- I just finished a new eBook that I will be releasing in the next week or two. It will be free at the site and will go out automatically to email subscribers (i.e. anyone who received this email). Keep an eye out for it. I think you’ll really enjoy it.
~ Joe
by Joe Hearn | May 17, 2013 | Lifestyle Design, Retirement
How retired are you? For most people, that question has one of two answers: They are either retired (100%) or not retired (0%). They associate retirement with a particular age (65+) or work status (not working) and if they can’t check those boxes, then they’re not retired. They see life as a timeline and retirement comes at the end, somewhere between Medicare and Forest Lawn.
If you’ve read much of my writing, you know that I think a bit differently than your average bear about retirement. I define retirement with one word: Control. I don’t view life as a timeline with retirement at the end. I view it as a pie chart, divided between time I control and time controlled by others. Retirement is a gradual transition from doing what I have to do to doing what I want to do.
The upside to my philosophy is that, for each and every one of us, retirement begins today. It is no longer some sort of “Promised Land” that we hope to survive long enough to see. Instead, it starts now, and evolves over the years as we gain more control over how we spend our days.
How much do you control?
Management guru Peter Drucker was fond of saying: “What gets measured gets managed.” In order to make something better, we need to be able to measure it. That way we can track progress and see what works and what doesn’t. This is why our world is so full of ratios like earnings per share, body mass index and miles per gallon.
With that in mind, I’d like to offer a new ratio for each of us to consider. I call it the HRAY Ratio (or ‘How Retired Are You’ Ratio). It is calculated by adding up the Time You Control and dividing it by Time Controlled by Others. The bigger the ratio, the more retired you are.
Your assignment for the weekend is to calculate your HRAY. Download the Time Budget Worksheet from the Retirement Planning Toolkit if you need some help figuring out how much of your time you control (Remember: Subscribers just enter your email address and hit submit and you’ll go straight to the Toolkit).
Once we all know our HRAY, then we can focus our time and energies on improving it (a.k.a. Becoming more retired). That will be the subject of a future post. Stay tuned.
Quick Favor: Can you (as Dennis Rodman might say) do me a solid? If you enjoyed this article can you forward it to a friend or two? More than just a blog, I’m trying to build a movement of people who are serious about living life intentionally. There are probably people in your circle of influence who would be a good fit for our little community and I’d love for you to send them a quick invite. Thanks!
Have a great weekend!
~ Joe
by Joe Hearn | May 9, 2013 | Retirement
When you signed up for updates at Intentional Retirement, you received a detailed Retirement Countdown Checklist. That sign-up bonus has been the same since I started the site, so I decided to change it up a bit.
Rather than giving just one resource, I decided to give a whole toolkit full of them. Plus, I plan on adding more all the time.
The good news? You automatically have access to the new retirement planning toolkit. Just visit www.intentionalretirement.com/toolkit and enter your email address at the bottom of the page. Since you’re already a subscriber, you won’t need to go through the initial confirmation process that new subscribers go through. Instead (assuming everything works correctly) you will be taken directly to the toolkit after entering your email and clicking submit. Whenever you want to return to the toolkit, just enter your email address and you’re there.
I want to make sure everything is working correctly, so feel free to test it out and let me know if you have any problems.
Thanks!
Joe
