Transcript:

Intro (00:01):

Do you struggle with what it means to be successful in your retirement? Trust us, you're not alone. Welcome to the Retirement Success in Maine podcast. Here you'll go in depth with guidance point advisors, investment consultants to hear stories about how retirees in Maine are navigating a successful retirement. Get insight into the inevitable challenges of aging and define what a successful retirement looks like.

Ben Smith (00:26):

Welcome everybody to the Retirement Success in Maine podcast. My name is Ben Smith and I'm one of your co-hosts here on the show. I hope you are all doing well today. We're recording April 1st, so it's a little April Fool's Day, but today's content won't be. If you want to join the conversation, you can email us at benSmith@guidancepointrs.com. You can find us on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, just search Retirement Success in Maine podcast, and you can kind of find more of us there. Burnout like to introduce the guide to my roadmap, Curtis Worcester, how are you doing today, Curtis?

Curtis Worcester (01:01):

Alright. I'm doing well. I'm doing well, Ben. How are you?

Ben Smith (01:03):

I'm doing well too. Yeah, it's getting to be spring, so That's right. Hope is eternal. The Red Sox are starting to play. We need Raffi devs to not strike out anymore, but yeah, things are going pretty good, but I know today's episode we're going to do a little bit of focus. It's really on one of the most complex and emotional decisions that retirees and their families face, and that's senior care. When the time comes to consider assisted living, home care or long-term care, we know from our clients families often feel overwhelmed by industry jargon, pricing structures, and then the uncertainty of choosing the right path.

(01:42):

So many seniors accept pricing presented to them by facilities without knowing there's rooms for negotiation or better suited options that might be available. Some struggle to navigate the differences between private pay and Medicaid funded communities unaware of how these choices impact their care and financial future. So today's guest specializes in helping families cut through the confusion and find the best senior care solutions she serves as a buyer's agent for senior living, advocating for families to secure the right care at the right price while ensuring their loved ones maintain dignity and quality of life. We're also going to explore the role of estate planning and accessing Medicaid, how senior care decisions vary from men and women, and the delicate balance of staying at home versus moving to a care community. So if you've ever wondered when to start planning how to navigate the system or what the real differences are between private pay and Medicaid options, stay tuned. This is a conversation you're not going to want to miss.

Curtis Worcester (02:45):

That's right, Ben. And just a little more background here on our wonderful guest today. Our guest is the founder of Maine Aging Partners. Our guest has dedicated her career to helping families map MI like that. That's clever there. Map out their next step. When navigating senior care, she brings a fresh no-nonsense approach to assisted living, home care and long-term care planning. Again, ensuring families make confident informed decisions without falling into costly traps. Our guest career began in politics where she mastered the art of communication and government navigation. She later transitioned to the senior care industry working as a top performing sales director for the country's largest independent living company before expanding into home care. Through this experience, our guest gained a deep understanding of how different ownership structures, corporate, nonprofit, and locally owned, affect care quality, pricing and availability. So now our guest is on a mission to empower families with knowledge cut through industry jargon and provide one-on-one guidance to those facing senior care decisions. She believes no one should navigate this process alone or feel trapped by fine print, unclear pricing or confusing eligibility rules. So with that, please join me in welcoming Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse to the Retirement success in Maine podcast. Kaitlyn, thank you so much for coming on our show today.

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (04:14):

Hi guys. I'm really excited to be here.

Curtis Worcester (04:17):

Well,

Ben Smith (04:18):

We're excited to have you, Kaitlyn, because I know, and we chatted a little bit on a little pre-chat and we went through a bunch of stuff. We were learning a lot as we were talking, so I'm pretty excited to dig into the topic today. But of course, Curtis read the bio here and you have a pretty unique background and we wanted to hear a little bit about how you started in politics before transitioning into senior care. Can you talk to us a little bit about how that journey led you to founding main aging partners?

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (04:46):

Yeah, so I was a college junior, located an hour from the New Hampshire primary for a candidate who spoke highly of hope and change, and I had an opportunity to intern on that campaign.

(05:03):

I met people who went on to work at the White House, and I recognized that if I could do that as a junior in a college that didn't care about politics at the time, then I could have access to a lot of people who wanted to see policies work. I took a while exploring different opportunities and different career paths, but then stumbled into senior living and it was an incredible moment where it brought together so much that I understood in politics, I've worked on multiple campaigns. I worked on a congressional campaign, I worked on a gubernatorial campaign, I worked on a presidential campaign, so I knew the field really well, and what I found was actually that the best politicians are the people running sales in senior living communities.

Curtis Worcester (05:56):

Okay, interesting. Okay.

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (05:59):

I made a lot of really good friends and I know the salespeople in all these buildings in southern Maine and I can tell you their stories and at the same time, what I know is that they all just want to see what's right for their older folks or the people that are coming to them. Unfortunately, due to policies and things that go on in places like Augusta, the system is a mess and families need help figuring out how to go from one thing to the next when it comes to senior care, and that's what I've done.

Curtis Worcester (06:30):

Wow. No, that's incredible. I appreciate you sharing that kind of journey there. And again, fast forwarding or we're here now and today, and we described you as a buyer's agent for senior living, which is a role that we know is lacking in the marketplace. Can you just kind take a minute and explain what that means and how you advocate for families during this process? So

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (06:51):

Buyer's agent is a really simple way of saying, I am not a referral agent. So there are referral agents, large corporate interests, oftentimes, whether it's a local franchisee or it's an inside salesperson for a huge corporation, what they do is they will talk to a family and say, based on what you're telling me, here are three really good options. You choose those three options and then if you pick one after they've communicated your name out to those places, they get 90% of the first month's rent problems with that the people using those references or resources are really only getting the information that those agencies get paid to distribute. And so at some point, it kind of occurred to me that in real estate you have sellers agents who work on behalf of the seller of a property. I work on behalf of the buyer and I don't have partnerships on purpose.

Curtis Worcester (07:50):

So

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (07:51):

My folks, the clients will actually pay for my services and I empower them to make decisions on their own in a way that best upholds their care needs.

Ben Smith (08:03):

Yeah, that's incredible. And Kaitlyn, I like how you put that there. I know when we chatted a little offline is we were talking about our business models is we as financial advisors and we're saying, Hey, we're trying to be fiduciaries for our clients and put their interests above our own. And that's a mantra that we're living by. And when you break out this, the real estate agent example is you start hearing this and you go, well, hey, if I think about that and if I'm getting paid by the level of value of the home and that's how I'm getting paid and I am the buyer's agent in this case, then maybe it's like heym really not looking to get the price down is actually I am better off by getting the price up. So you can see where if you follow the money, you can get where the conflicts of interests are. So what I think was really important that you just laid out there as a buyer's agent is your compensation is a little bit more independent than that. Maybe just expand that for a quick moment.

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (09:00):

So often the easiest way to describe this is if I am part of a family and I have been that is not able to pay privately for assisted living but needs assisted living and might need to qualify for MaineCare, there's not a great resource for them because on one side they're driven by profit, so they're sending folks who can't pay to, usually they send them to the area Agency on Aging, and then the area Agency on Aging is often beholden to a lot of rules, regulations, laws, whatever you want to call them. And so there's nobody really effective in the middle to help families make clear decisions. And that's what I

Ben Smith (09:42):

Gotcha. We had a previous episode on with a representative for Eastern Area Agency and Aging and Jean Alexia, and we went through Medicare a lot. So I know that was one specific areas that they were covering was obviously Medicare counseling, but they do a lot of really great work, I think throughout the state. So look that up as part of it.

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (10:01):

I live, they do Meals on Wheels and some companion programs and things like that are right in their sweet spot, but when it comes to advising folks, they may not always have the most information.

Ben Smith (10:15):

So Kaitlyn, kind of follow up question there too. Obviously we're talking about here and you in your role buyer's agent helping people navigate the system and what to do, and I know we're going to get to the topic, but just always want to start off with one thing is misconceptions that families can have when they start looking into senior care options. What are you finding are the top misconceptions and how are you helping people avoid those common pitfalls?

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (10:42):

One of my favorites is that there's always a wait list, and that's not true. There's not a wait list in most private pay facilities, but there might be a wait list for a certain type of apartment, a certain floor plan might be sold out, but they will usually have something in their building where they get sold out pretty easily is generally on the main care side of things. Folks who don't have a lot of resources have to scramble unfortunately. But what I would say is that no matter what kind of financial picture you have, it's a lot more complicated than you probably think.

Curtis Worcester (11:17):

Yeah, okay. That's a good one. That's a good one. Just to leave with people there in terms of misconceptions, the DIYers can maybe find themselves kind of falling for some of these traps probably. So I think that's where someone like yourself, the value is certainly there. Kaitlyn, we want to dive in today. I know we just kind of built a little background there for our listeners, but we really want to talk about navigating senior care here in the state of Maine, right? That's really where we want to dive in and to lead this off here, we know, we all know everybody listening probably feels that senior care costs can certainly feel overwhelming at times or all the time. So we know you in one of your roles is definitely helping families avoid overpaying. So I want to ask kind of general question. Where do you see people often, and I'll use in air quotes, people watching wasting money in this process? How can they make the smartest financial choice? And I know that's a loaded question, but just kind of a general overview.

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (12:15):

I think the first thing that you need to do is understand that there are, especially in a crowded market like Southern Maine is

Curtis Worcester (12:22):

There's

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (12:23):

Two types of care support that you end up paying for. One type is a buffet and one type is all a cart, and you pay by the menu item. And so there's always wiggle room depending on your business model. The larger, more corporate environments have a ton of wiggle room. The small nonprofits probably not as much, and it depends on things like occupancy and it depends on what people are paying at the moment. I'll tell you what, I met somebody the other day, it's a couple and they're at a big corporate facility. It's beautiful paying $20,000 per month. Okay, yeah. That's reality for some folks where if you'd hired me or you'd taken a step back and understood some of the policies that go into these places, you might have an opportunity to save a little money.

Ben Smith (13:16):

Well, Kaitlyn, to that example real quick. So say just use that as an example. This couple, they're paying a level a month. Is there an ability to renegotiate that once you've entered into that financial position?

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (13:32):

Usually, depending on your facility. Again, there are different types, but a lot of times the big corporate ones will negotiate with you on your annual increase.

Ben Smith (13:44):

Okay, gotcha. Okay, good to know. Well, I want to keep rolling, Kaitlyn, on kind of this next question that we have is because it's going to be a two-parter, ask the first part and have you go there and I'll kind of follow it up with a second one here. You help families decide between private pay and then Medicaid funded options. So I would love for you to take the highlighter and really highlight the difference between these two because I dunno, just in our conversations it seems like it just is. Well, it's just who's paying and that's all the differences. So talk to me about just what the differences are on, obviously we know that there's just different payment options on who's paying it. What are the care options and how are they changing between who's paying?

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (14:33):

So main care is required to support all care period. So if you're in an assisted living and your assisted living level, you go to a main care facility, you don't pay anymore for care. Where it gets hard is that there are facilities that have spend down periods. So you will spend privately for two to three years and then potentially go on main care. But here's the thing, if you've got a facility that's 130 apartments and four of them qualify for main care or are licensed through main care, you've got a crisis on your hands when 10 people come to you at the same time. So it's a balancing act. I often find that locally owned facilities have more licensing with MaineCare compared to the corporations. And when I say corporations, I mean some of these folks are publicly traded, so they're big, they're realtor,

(15:27):

But the locally owned folks always seem to have room for main care, and I really value that. But the care is maybe a little bit different. You might be getting a completely different product and you don't necessarily know it. So I'm working with a daughter right now who has come to me and said, my mom has an early stage diagnosis of dementia. I need to do something. She's middle income, what do I do? And I've said, well, look, there's this facility that's corporate, but you risk running out of beds when your mom needs it, there's a chance she may need to move again. Then we can walk her in to a straight main care facility, but it's more medical and it's less homey generally.

Ben Smith (16:10):

Gotcha. Okay. So with that then I think that's an important distinction. So one is, as you said, if there's a spend down period that's going on is obviously the better you negotiate your rate.

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (16:24):

Yes. The longer you can stay there,

Ben Smith (16:26):

The longer you can stay there before you got to the point where now I'm, I'm elbowing somebody out for one of these four rooms that are main care related. So that's one thing is just making sure I'm making a good buying decision. But I want to kind of ask a tangent of this is that Curtis and I have had many conversations with estate planners, especially on this show, but also for our clients about aligning finances to allow for main care, Medicaid senior living eligibility. So the goal is let's take our money and let's put all of our assets in a place, whether it be a trust or something that maybe is not as accessible so that we are then eligible for main care. And then when we have done that, now we can maybe preserve the assets for the spouse or for another generation or whatever purpose to then create eligibility straight to main care right up the gate. So this assumption is great, it's good for you, you've preserved your money and now you're on main care and then you're getting care. So you just kind of referenced this of they're different, they're two different things. So again, the assumption is for many families is that they assume Medicaid is going to cover kind of all this long-term care when the time comes. So I love to hear from your perspective here, what are the big misconceptions about that thinking and what should you think they should plan for instead?

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (18:00):

My gut instinct is to say, do you really want that? Is that really the life you want for your parent? Maybe, but in most cases, that isn't the life that's going to set them up comfortably. Main care rooms are shared rooms, private pay, you've got a big apartment. Main care rooms are more like nursing homes, private pay, it's touch and go as you need it, and it's just a different kind of lifestyle for sure. So what is your goal if you have financial power of attorney and if you don't, to the older people out there, I say, listen, find something that wants to give you all of the options.

Curtis Worcester (18:40):

Okay. Yeah, no, that's great. And I think a through thread, I think through this entire thing, Kaitlyn, I think it feels like is just going to be really slowing down and planning this out, right? Talking it through with an expert like yourself to really just make sure, I think you hit the nail on the head with that answer there to Ben's question is what do you want?

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (19:02):

But I'm going to just tell you the truth. I run classes around the state. I have some that are well attended and some that nobody goes to

Curtis Worcester (19:11):

And

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (19:11):

They're the same class, just different programs. And I'm thinking, how do people not understand why this is so important? But right now we're in a culture where people don't want to deal with it probably. I mean, Ben, you set it up really well in your question about main care. Why would you want to entertain these options when they're horrible?

Ben Smith (19:35):

Yeah, because Kaitlyn, I think just obviously, again, we deal with estate planners very regularly and it is very much financial driven is the idea of like, well, you work so hard for this money, let's do everything we can to preserve as much as we can instead of just letting it go to, so it's like you have just almost charitably donated it is the premise there.

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (20:05):

So depressing. My grandmother was like this and she just wanted to save every penny for us at some point you have to say, Graham, that's not really a healthy decision for you,

Curtis Worcester (20:16):

Right? Yeah. Again, it comes from I think good intentions most of the time, like you said, but you got to pay for yourself too. I want to pivot a little bit, Kaitlyn. So one thing that we hear all the time, and I'm guessing you do as well, is staying home is often the ideal situation. We love our homes, we want to be home. Now the backside of this is that's not always realistic for some people or most people even. I just want to ask you, how can families plan for care in a way that balances independence, which they're trying to seek right, by staying home, but also with what's practical and those practical realities out there that you see, is there kind of a balancing act that you can do with people?

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (21:01):

So I have been quoted it's $9,000 a month depending on where you are in the state to have someone live with you 24 7.

Curtis Worcester (21:10):

Okay,

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (21:11):

That's good for some people, it's not for others. Sure. There are things that I do with families. I will look at longevity in the particular family. How long did your parents live? Let's talk about that. Not that gives us a great idea, but maybe we can ballpark it.

Curtis Worcester (21:27):

Sure.

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (21:28):

Is it 10 years? Is it 20 years? How long is your body going to stretch? And then at the same time, there are some coveted spots, but there are some coveted spots through MaineCare and you can supplement those. You just have to, I would say you can have a private caregiver if your daughter is paying for it and a main caregiver if your qualifications are just such, there are particular things like that.

Curtis Worcester (21:55):

Good to

Ben Smith (21:55):

Know. Okay, so want to keep going, Kaitlyn, on a few of these things. One is that obviously I think that there's an assumption amongst families that all senior living facilities offer similar care, right? So the question is, so I want to ask, because you've mentioned this a couple of times about corporate and nonprofit, talk about how ownership structure impacts a resident's experience and what should families look for beyond just marketing?

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (22:25):

I worked with a family recently who were in a big corporate owned facility, and I don't think that made much of a difference to their experience. However, it was a facility that wasn't working for them anymore. So I went from the corporate facility with them to a locally owned, straight up one owner, and this one owner only owns this one place, and that's very, very rare. It might not be as rare in northern Maine, but it's in southern Maine. It's unheard. And what I found was that the owner in the local place would be willing to keep them in their two bedroom apartment, even past main care. So they could be on main care and they would stay in their two bedroom apartment. That's remarkable. And those are not necessarily the rules and the regulations, but the fact that that happens in local places reflects that. They just think differently about the residents that they have versus every apartment in a large corporate place is probably beautiful, but it might ask you to leave if they run out of main care beds or something like that.

Curtis Worcester (23:33):

It feels like zooming out, you see it. I think in a lot of different industries, the shop, local shop, it just feels like there's flexibility. It maybe feels like, I don't say that the larger ones don't care about you, but it feels like it's a little more personable maybe than the locally owned ones. Individualized.

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (23:53):

Yeah. That's awesome. I'm very focused on what happens in Maine right now. At some point I'd like to expand and move to other states, but right now it's all about here and from state to state, these policies are different. So I don't know how it happened that Maine is so top heavy, but that is the way it works generally in this.

Curtis Worcester (24:14):

Gotcha. Gotcha. No, that's good. I want to keep going here, Kaitlyn, with again, kind of these compare contrast scenarios we have. I want to talk about one. So in your work and your experience and what you see every day, are there noticeable differences in what men and women seek in senior living communities? Is there jurassic differences there? The widows or former caregivers have different concerns when they maybe start this process?

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (24:42):

I think it's been interesting for me in my career as a salesperson to see that a lot of times men don't want to touch assisted living at all, but if they understand that something might happen to them, they'll be more likely to pursue it because they don't want to leave their loved ones stranded. That is one tendency I do see. But generally I feel like no, everybody wants to have good food where they go. Everybody wants to feel like the maintenance person is paying attention to 'em. And I feel like it's very both sides, both women and men have similar interests when it comes to shopping for assisted living. That's

Ben Smith (25:32):

Good. So Kaitlyn, I want to ask this question. This has just come up a bunch is do you think it's different where it's like, okay, you have to talk about the shopping experience of senior care and if you have, say you have a couple and one of them is needing care, the other one is not, do you feel that that buying and shopping experience is different where it's like, okay, here's one of the spouses that, look, I care about my, let's use an example, say the husband's going into needing the senior care living first. So say here's the wife and so she's going, Hey, I'm negotiating this, trying to find this. I'm staying at home. I'm going to go visit him and take care of him, and then I'm going to go back to my home and and they go through this kind of back and forth.

(26:24):

But then I think the second part is, okay, say fast forward and then the wife then is widowed and now it's her turn to need senior care. Have you noticed the buying experience being different between the two? Because I could see where maybe from the perspective of the first to need care is that, look, I don't want to, and I don't want to use this as a bad nomenclature, but I don't want to then use all the money to then rob my spouse of care they need. So I don't want to use all of these resources and then what's left for her or vice versa, she's going, I don't care what I need. I'm going to take all the resources and give it to him because I care more about him than I do myself. Can you talk a little bit about that? A little bit? Yeah.

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (27:15):

And I suggest having a good care attorney for sure, for sure. If that's the case, absolutely. I don't have a ton of experience working with folks like that at this point, but there are possibilities you can explore. So where I used to work, it was independent living, so living with sistance but not assisted living. They offered meals, activities, transportation, housekeeping, basics, but not care. Across the street was an assisted living. So you might have one person live across the street from the other, and that proximity is really helpful. So a lot of you build facilities in that manner specific, or for example, when you have an assisted living that has assisted living on one side and a memory wing on the other side, that's pretty common too.

Ben Smith (28:05):

Yep. Gotcha. Interesting. Well, I want to ask another question, Kaitlyn here, because I think many seniors and people that we work with, they aren't aware that government funding for long-term care can be inconsistent or delayed. I know obviously there's just machinations in government and things that can happen there in terms of payment. So can you talk a little bit about here, hey, if we're kind of on track, we need main care or Medicaid to pay for us, depending on the state here and where we are. What are some of the risks or realities of relying on federally reimbursed facilities to take care of us? What are some of the concerns, maybe especially now, but maybe even long-term?

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (28:48):

Yeah, so I haven't seen too many issues where the government has footed the bill in the beginning. A lot of times you'll have your son or your daughter do it. And so one of the programs that's really hard to get access to at least initially is aid in attendance. Aid in attendance is a military veteran or a military benefit, excuse me. You have to prove that you have a certain threshold of cash that's going out of your bank every month for medical expenses, and then you have to show that you have two activities of daily living or ADLs that are in jeopardy or are not functioning the same way. But what they do is, and certainly programs are subject to change always, but what they have done for the last however many years, it's a long program, is that you pay out of pocket until they get your paperwork figured out, and then they, so you get reimbursed by the federal government and that program works for military veterans and surviving spouses. Gotcha.

Curtis Worcester (29:52):

Just a little tangent there. I'm thinking of the risks that we of doing something like that, how often do you see it where maybe paperwork goes through and they're not reimbursed? Right? Or at that point, once you're accepted in, is it pretty sure you're going to get accepted into the payment stuff? Yeah,

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (30:12):

I don't do main care applications.

Curtis Worcester (30:13):

Yeah, sure, sure.

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (30:14):

People, geriatric care managers in particular who do, and they often will shop for assisted living, but their perspective is of the medical model. That might be a nurse or someone like that where my perspective is focused on quality of living.

Curtis Worcester (30:28):

Yeah, absolutely. Makes sense. Absolutely. Yeah. So I have kind of a general planning question for you. So again, that's what we do. We're planners here. So I want you to kind of picture somebody who's either just starting to think about maybe their own long-term care options, or maybe I'm thinking about my parents, just that initial conversation thinking is happening at this point. What steps should they take today that you think would help them be proactive and ultimately avoid these last minute scrambles? Right? Something happens. How can we get ahead of this?

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (31:02):

So there's a few different ways. I would say call me, come to one of my

Curtis Worcester (31:07):

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (31:08):

And also you can research the laws around discharges from hospitals and discharges from nursing homes, because a lot of times that's one of the highest percentages of when someone will move into assisted living is based on a fall or they've been through the system. So these places are required by law to give you a certain amount of notice, and if you don't feel that's adequate, you can fight it.

Curtis Worcester (31:36):

Interesting.

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (31:37):

Be prepared for those transitions is what I would

Ben Smith (31:39):

Say. Yeah. Gotcha. Yep. So just thinking about just what Curtis was saying around looking at, here's where I don't want to then just be in the hospital then reading literature. I don't want to just be, I'm in the hospital room, I then had a medical event, now we're making decisions and we have to do things on a discharge. So we have a clock against us and we kind of don't know, well Ben, you'd be most comfortable in this sort of facility. I'm really looking for a one bedroom apartment and I'm looking for this and this. If we had done maybe some talking about this with family members or a spouse beforehand and going, Hey, if this happens, this is what I'd like to see. This is what I'd like to experience. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (32:30):

I saw it happen for the first time, and I don't know if it was a policy change or what, but I was thrilled by it. So I had a client recently who was hospitalized, and at the beginning of their hospitalization, they were handed a note that said, please tell us the top three places you would like to go. So that was fantastic because then I could go and research these places and bring them back to them. But it also got me thinking, if you can say, here are my top three places when you're 70, anytime after that you're going to be better off.

Ben Smith (33:06):

Correct. Yep.

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (33:06):

A lot of people don't start exploring these options until they're forced to, like you said.

Ben Smith (33:11):

So again, we live in the state of Maine, it's cold. Some of us say, I've had enough of living in the state of Maine for whatever reason, and maybe families moved somewhere else and we want to get closer to them. So again, a lot of people do consider moving to another state or even to another country for senior living due to cost, climate access to care. Talk a little bit about that, pros and cons of making that kind of move, and then what should people consider before making such a decision?

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (33:45):

I'm going to be blunt. Most people are blissfully unaware. Why not pack up and move? There are real considerations, unless you're someone like me who understands it from state to state, these places vary,

Ben Smith (33:56):

Right?

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (33:56):

You know what I do, and this is so foolish, but I'll stick it in chat GPT, and I'll say, look at the care system in Maine and compare it to the care system in Florida. How will Mary Sue or whatever we're going to call her fair in these systems if this is what she's up against?

Ben Smith (34:14):

Well, you got to tell us what Chachi PT says. Then what are some outputs there?

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (34:19):

Done it recently for the first time with a good friend of mine whose mom or dad is in Connecticut and dad had a significant fall, and they're at a loss for what to do, and she's a nurse in Maine, so she knows a lot about medical stuff, but the way it translates from Maine to Connecticut in assisted living is not medical. It's public policy and figuring out where the cracks in the system lie, and that's what chat GPT does really well. Interesting.

Curtis Worcester (34:48):

Yeah, no, it's becoming a part of our lives, I think, and that by it, I mean technology and chat, GPT, all of it. I want to keep going on this question for a second, Kaitlyn, I know you said a little bit ago your primary kind of care here when you're working with clients is quality of life is kind where you start. So from that lens, what are some warning signs that it may be time for a senior or maybe it's their family is kind of viewing their senior family member. I guess what can trigger this? Starting to consider alternate living arrangements rather than maybe staying at home? Again, I'm thinking from that kind of quality of life lens that I know you focus on.

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (35:31):

Yep. Lots of falls, mental health stuff, even if that's just isolation and feeling like you're not getting the socialization you might want or that your mom is struggling with socialization, that would be a tip off the inability to do things like tie your shoes or go to the bathroom on your own or prepare meals anymore. Basic activities of daily living ADLs is what that's called.

Curtis Worcester (35:58):

Gotcha, gotcha. Okay. I appreciate that. I appreciate this entire conversation. I do have one final question for you. It's going to be a little different though, so I want to just pause for a second. I'm also going to say, I know our listeners are probably used to this. We do. We will also have links to all your contact info. Kaitlyn, for everybody listening, I know we said earlier one of our answers was to call you. So we are going to have all that right in our show notes for everybody. But before we let you go, Kaitlyn, we do have one question that we like to ask all of our guests. Again, the name of our show, it's all about retirement success. So I have to ask you, when you get to that point, how are you going to find your own personal retirement success?

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (36:41):

So my grandmother was 94 and 363 days old when she died.

Curtis Worcester (36:45):

Oh my goodness. Two

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (36:46):

Days to die over 95th.

Curtis Worcester (36:47):

Wow.

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (36:48):

She had raised eight kids on her own, and she did it because her husband died young up in Pres, and they were just this amazing, amazing family, and she got lonely at the end because all the 95 year olds around her had dementia. Unfortunately, the sharpest could be, but the one thing she had was family and purpose in that family, and to me, that purpose in the community is everything. So I hope that I'm in a retirement village that is well connected.

Ben Smith (37:25):

Okay. Well, Kaitlyn, thanks for that answer. That's pretty great. Again, I think purpose here is we want to make sure we're connected to our family members, our loved ones being integrated. We want to make sure that we are able to express it, but also receive love as we go. So I think those are really important qualities. But I really want to thank you for coming on our show today and just talking about just your role. I think that's very unique in what we see in this marketplace of, I think it feels a little fend for yourself at times and people trying to become the experts in a day, which is, it's, as you said, it's a very complex system. Everybody's trying to sell you things. You're really not sure who to trust. So having an advocate that you can kind of go to and bounce questions off or what are you seeing, I think is a really important thing to highlight. So Kaitlyn, for that, I want to thank you just for your role and kind of what you're doing in the state and helping our seniors in the state of Maine get better outcomes. Whether it be quality of life or maybe negotiating maybe to get more of this quality over time. Things like that is really important. But we really appreciate you coming on our show today. Maybe down the line, we can envy have you come back on and give us some updates on what you see that's happening in the state of Maine.

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse (38:46):

I had a great time. Thank you guys.

Ben Smith (38:48):

Alright. Alright. Thank you, Kaitlyn. Take care. Episode one 11, Kailyn Cunningham, Morriss talking about navigating senior care in the state of Maine. So I thought she did a great job. Again, we've had Susan Habib talking about from the facility perspective and guiding people through and talking about, and she talked a lot about the late move of independent living at your home, right? Is waiting too long, right? And I know I think from a Kaitlyn's perspective is looking at this and saying what's the right facility versus going to, oh, I've heard good things about this facility. Then hearing kind of the sales pitch and then deciding amongst sales pitches. Again, good to see another side of this and other resources that are available for all of us out there as we're going through that. So again, I think Kaitlyn did a really great job. So you can go to our show notes.

(39:44):

You can go to our blog. It's in the web address is blog guidance point llc.com/one one for 111. You can find all the contact information for Kaitlyn. So if you want to reach out to her and have a conversation, you can certainly do that there with her email address. We'll have her website, her Facebook page, those areas there you can kind of dig into. And again, our transcript audio of this show, things like that will be there too. We really appreciate you tuning in. Again, I hope all these conversations just keep adding to our library of knowledge for you out there as listeners, we really, really value tuning into us and staying on top of the topics that we're doing. Hope you find them useful. We'll keep coming up with more of 'em and we'll catch next time.

Outro (40:36):

Ladies and gentlemen, you've just listened to an information filled episode of the Retirement Success in Maine podcast. While this show is about finding more ways to improve your retirement happiness guidance point, advisor's mission is to help our clients create a fulfilling retirement. We do financial planning so that people can enjoy retirement and align their monetary resources to their goals. If you are wondering about your own personal success, we invite you to reach out to us to schedule a 45 minute listening session. Our advisors will have a conversation with you about your goals, your frustrations, and your problems. Make sure you check out guidance point advisors on our blog, Facebook and LinkedIn, and you can always check out more episodes of this podcast on iTunes and Spotify and of course, keep on finding your retirement success.