EP75-Thank you to 2024, 2025, A lot to Come!!!

"You want to have fun. You want to go on vacations. You want to do stuff. I get it. Again, by planning, you can hopefully still do those things because you figured out how you're going to help Mom, how you're going to help Dad, how you're going to help Grandparents, how you're going to pay for it, and still have time for a life. When you wait and do things in crisis, it's much harder....."

So, folks, here we are, December 31st, 2024. Wow, it's been quite a year. We've done almost 50 episodes in the podcast this year and have had a lot of wonderful guests. We thank all of them and their time in spending it with us, and we thank you, the listening audience. You know, I get asked all the time why I do this, and what my thoughts are moving forward.

Kind of simple. When this all happened to me and we wound up taking care of all four of our parents, we had no idea it was going to last 14 years. I didn't know anything. I mean, my wife and I were still working. We had the two small kids. I had four older parents, two of which were in their 80s, and I really wasn't thinking about something happening to them and having to care. I get it. Most people don't think about that either. We go about our lives, and our lives are very busy. You know, we're in a job, looking for a job, or hoping to keep a job. We may have another individual, a wife, spouse, a partner with us. We may children, we have activities, they have activities- our lives are are really busy. We talked about this a million times that many of us don't live really close to where Mom and Dad live. We moved away for school, we've moved away because of another person or job, or maybe because of all the above. And like in our case, we're not thinking about them getting older, and to the point of needing care. So when I started putting the podcast together after all the years of doing the education through Points of Life, it's been, as I say, kind of simple: It is to help people really understand the complexities of aging and care. I know we don't want to think about this, I know. Getting ill, falling, accommodation there of, is not fun, but it's reality. It happens.

We're living longer than we used to live. I mean, I'm 71 now. When I was younger, I mean, parents would move in with the kids and maybe they got to mid 70s and that was about it. The last of our four parents, who lasted until 96, President Carter just passed away a few days ago at 100 years old. That's becoming pretty common. So we talk about

• A. How are you going to afford to live that long?
• B. What's going to happen if you need care? Who's going to care for you? How you going to pay for it?

Something that most of us don't think about, and then all of a sudden, like in our case, it kind of smack, it hits you right between the eyes, and then all of a sudden you're dealing with it. So again, I thank all of our guests that we've had this year. We are working on new guests in 2025. It's going to be a big year. A Plan 2 Age, and we'll talk about that more in a minute. So I really, really, could say really again, want to really focus on this level of education and trying to help folks understand, like my wife, like me, like you if you have older parents, or grandparents. Those you care about that could be in their 80s or 90s or even older than that. Just the realization that at some point something is probably going to happen where they're going to need help, and they're going to need care. And I've said this a million times, getting ahead of it...Understanding what's coming. Understanding, "OK, I live 100 miles away. I live 3 states away. How am I going to help? I have a life, I have a spouse, partner, I have a boyfriend, a girlfriend, I have kids, etc...How am I going to kind of wrap up my life where I live and go move back with Mom and Dad or Grandparents?" Whatever the case may be, it's challenging.

• Can I bring someone in the home?
• Do they want to move someplace else?
• Do we have the finances to pay for that? I mean, it's probably, and we've talked about this, only going to get more expensive.

So this education. We have over 100 million people 50 and older, if everybody, would just educate another, ONE other person, or another family- Think about that- All 100 million plus people that are 50 and older, educate yourself...

• Listen to this podcast.
• Listen to others.
• Understand what it means to have loved ones who are aging.
• Understand what it means to have to help them understand what that four-letter word "CARE" is.
• And that four-letter word "COST", and to be prepared.

If we educated one other individual, one other family, and everybody did that crazy idea, I know I've had a lot of them (crazy ideas), but if we educated one other individual, one other family, and they in turn educated another individual, another family. That would really help. Because the problem is, when I've stood in front of thousands of people or educated them online, I mean, reality is most people are like my wife and myself: They never talked about this. They don't understand it. They don't think it's that big of a deal if someone gets ill or someone falls, they'll help them. But they don't know really what that means. And we need to understand what that means so we can plan, prepare... we've talked about this, you know, we'll go to Hawaii, we'll go to the Bahamas, we'll go to Europe, we'll go someplace and we spend 6 months a year planning that. All the places we want to see. The beaches, the car we rent, the restaurants we go to, the sites we see- all of that... Because it's fun. And I get it, this isn't fun. But it is reality. So again. Everybody educates one other individual or one other family. And that individual or family educates another individual or another family. Is that too much to ask? Think about that- Over 100 million people in this country 50 and older, and if we all did that-

• How would this change?
• How much more prepared would we be?

When I had this crazy idea, called "a national conversation about aging", which is morphed into Aplan2age.org. The foundational piece of that site is built now and we're going to add a lot more to it. We're providing the education, we're providing the knowledge, we're literally showing people what a plan looks like and what to talk about. Learn how to have those conversations, find resources to help you, and we're going to add a lot more to the site. And so many people are already in crisis, so then what? Well, we wanted to make sure that when we built this site, it was there to help in planning, but it was also there to help if you're already in crisis. The assistance. We are making it easy to find resources and trying to help people really understand what they're going to need again- whether they are planning or they are in crisis. We're building an Advisory Council, that will be top people in the senior care industry, health care industry, state planning, law firms, financial planning firms, hospitals, government officials, and many, many more around the country. We're going to be having that ongoing conversation with them probably once a quarter. And something that I'm announcing today, we're probably going to have video calls, like a zoom call or something similar, for the public as well. We want to hear from the public.

• What do we not have in our site?
• What are we not talking about with our Advisory Council?
• What should we be talking about?

We want the public's input. We understand with over 100 million people 50 and older, we're going to walk into a time frame that we've never seen in this country. It's going to be challenging. Because even with all the advancements in medication, and in medicine, we still got ill. As we get older we shuffle our feet more, balance is more of a problem. We fall. When we fall, things happen, stuff breaks. It can be challenging. So we want people to understand this is what we're walking into as a country. When you have so many people that are 50, 60, 70, 80 and older, and we have a lot of people living past 90 past 100 years of age. We'll be meeting with top folks in these organizations and companies, most likely, once a quarter, really trying to understand what's working and what's not working in the senior care industry. But. we'll also be communicating and dialing into the public.

• What do you guys seen out there?
• What's driving you nuts?
• What could we do better?
• How could we make this easier?

We want that input. As I've said, we are literally trying to change the senior care industry. How it functions and how it works for you. With www.APlan2Age.org. Again, planning, or in crisis- either one. Hopefully we can get a lot more people to plan, but if we don't, and most people still are in crisis, OK, I get it, so how do we make this easier? How do we help them find all the resources they need? How do they get the assistance? How do they simply have someone they can talk to that can walk them through this and make sure they're doing the right thing for Mom, for Dad, for a grandmother, a grandfather? We've talked about this, when something like that happens, it can affect the whole family right down to the grandkids. My kids were 11 and 7. It affected them because it affects us and our effect has an affect on them. It changes your life, especially if someone is ill or incapacitated from a fall for a lengthy period of time.

We are going to keep bringing a lot of guests to the podcast. Our whole goal again, is to educate. To bring that information to you, talk about the resources, talk about what's out there and to make sure people can find those resources. Again, hopefully people plan, but if they don't, how do we make this whole process easier? And we want you to be involved.

We literally want to change this industry. We want to make it as easy as possible. As this many people age. I've talked about, we've never been here. This is a new adventure for this country. The problem is, most people aren't aware of that. Why would you want to be aware? You want to have fun. You want to go on vacations. You want to do stuff. I get it. Again, by planning, you can hopefully still do those things because you figured out how you're going to help Mom, how you're going to help Dad, how you're going to help Grandparents, how you're going to pay for it, and still have time for a life. When you wait and do things in crisis, it's much harder.

But ending on a real positive note, again, almost 50 episodes downloaded this year in 2024. Want to do that many, if not more, in 2025. We want to keep bringing this level of education to the public. We want to get the public involved through our video calls with Aplan2age.org.

Look for information in the next couple months about that as we start figuring out how we're going to do that and setting that up. We'll get the information out to you so you can join those calls

Folks, have an awesome rest of your day and 2024. Have a very safe New Year's Eve as we move into 2025. I hope 2025 for everyone listening is a fantastic year.

We're going to try and do our part from this end. We're going to try and help you. We're going to try and help you understand that if you have older loved ones, getting ahead of it is the right thing to do- It will make their life easier, your life easier and we're just simply trying to help.

Have an awesome day. Have a safe New Year's.
​And we'll talk to you in 2025.