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Do you really deserve the title of Fiduciary?
…

I ask that question because if you’re not factoring long-term care into the conversation you’re having with clients, even prospects, you’re really not doing your job as thoroughly as possible.

The costs for long-term care, as we know, are escalating phenomenally. We read a lot of articles about this. Recently I had a chance to see first-hand what is happening with these costs: my wife got involved with a lady who does adaptive clothing for people in healthcare facilities and long-term care facilities. It’s been interesting being able to talk first-hand with people who run these places and hear about the costs they’re projecting within the next five years, let alone the next fifteen to twenty years. The costs are getting out of control, and you need to address that with your clients.

Now the long-term care issue is not necessarily the most exciting aspect of financial planning or investment management. I get it! But it is vital for your clients!

In twenty or twenty-five years’ time, they’re not going to give a rip what happens to the market in the next five weeks, twelve weeks, or even this next year. It’s going to be irrelevant for them when they come to address the long-term care issues, and addressing those problems starts right now, with you the advisor.

So, [here’s] some verbiage to use in those kinds of situations, as I mentioned before, relative to the financial planning and investment management components of what you do for clients and how you help them, [to] bring it back to financial planning.

“One of the key aspects of financial planning that we want to get buttoned down tightly is the whole issue around long-term care. These costs are only going up. It’s like running a marathon – anyone can start a marathon, but very few people finish it. We want to make sure we’re finishing well.” Or “It’s like swimming a four-lap race. Everybody can start the race, but we want to ensure that on that last lap, we’re in the best condition, the best situation possible.”

“That’s why we are up front about long-term care and the costs. We take it very seriously, and we start working with people around that issue out of the gate. So, I get it, you might be forty-five, fifty, and these things might be twenty, twenty-five years down the track for you. Let’s take care of them now, so we know exactly what we’re looking at in the future.”

As an advisor, you need to be factoring in this kind of language into your dialog and conversations regarding both prospects and clients, to make sure you’ve taken care of everything well.

So,

1. If you don’t have your head comfortably around long-term care, learn it! Get comfortable with it. Maybe if you’re working with a group, have one person start becoming a specialist in that field.


2. Understand how you’re going to communicate it so it’s clear to understand from the client’s perspective. Understand how you’ll draw pictures, how you’ll diagram it out with what’s most important for them to take care of.


3. Make friends with the people who are supplying this particular aspect of the financial planning component for you. Get to know those wholesalers who are doing a great job in this space, and use them. Let them come in to talk to this topic. It’s a very specialized, yet vital topic that you make sure your client has totally taken care of before they come anywhere near actually needing it.

I look forward to bringing you another Distraction-Proof Advisor Idea next week.