This is How an Aged Care Financial Advisor Can Make the Process Easier

The good news is we are living longer.

This may give you more time in retirement to tick off your bucket list. But at some point, you might expect to slow down and take things easier. At that point, you could find yourself needing additional help around the home or with some of your daily activities. Or, in more critical circumstances, you or a loved one may need to make the move to residential aged care.

Whatever your needs and choices, identifying your options and making effective decisions can become overwhelming without specialist aged care advice and an informed plan.

Three key mistakes we see people make when they don’t get the right aged care advice:

• Selling the home without understanding the implications
• Being afraid to pay a lump sum (refundable accommodation deposit) for residential care accommodation and missing out on Centrelink concessions
• Not generating enough cashflow.

Accredited Aged Care Specialists

An aged care advisor will assist you to navigate through the process of engaging with aged care, quicker and more effectively.  Engaging an aged care specialists is useful especially if decisions are being made in a time of crisis and emotions are running high.

As aged care financial planners, we can use our extensive network and experience to guide you through the process.  Financial advice isn’t just about superannuation and investments.  Aged care advice can help find the right home, complete the relevant paperwork to show you how you can afford the care you need and provide clarity to understand how it all works. 

You might be looking for aged care advice for yourself or a family member. Or you might be planning ahead for the future so you can plan for quality of life.

Don’t accidentally fall into either of these traps:

1. Leaving it too late to have the conversation – e.g: once Mum or Dad can’t return home from the hospital, you’re in crisis mode. This is not the best time to be making life-changing decisions for anyone.

2. Thinking it will never happen - unfortunately the statistics say otherwise. On average, we can expect to live 17-25% of our retirement with a profound disability that may threaten our ability to live independently without care support. With those odds, you at least want to have a quality conversation with an aged care specialist about the options for aged care and importantly, how you would pay for it.

Making an informed decision about aged care is incredibly important. Making the wrong decision can have far-reaching consequences for the whole family. When aged care decisions go badly, the stress can lead to family conflicts.

However, not all advice is good advice. Aged care financial advice is a specialist area. The rules change constantly, as do the available strategies. You don’t need extra stress wondering if you’ve received quality advice!

As your team adviser, we can help you and your family to understand the range of care options and how the aged care system works, and outline the steps ahead to help you find and access the right type of care.