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May 16, 2018 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
11:21
You will need a FORTUNE to cover end-of-life medical care
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I don't know if you're aware of how expensive it is to grow old and need medical care or assistance or in-home assistance, nursing home care, all these different things.
You probably are because you either have parents or grandparents who are in different kinds of care scenarios.
But just to give you a little bit of personal sharing here, both of my grandmothers are still living.
One of them just turned 100.
And I celebrated her birthday with her at 100, which was just amazing.
It's not every day you have a family member who turns 100, and she's vibrant and aware and talkative and joyous, and she takes almost no prescription medications whatsoever.
My other grandmother is 97, I believe, or maybe she's 98.
And she's on, well, more medications because of the facility...
that she's in but these situations can be complex so you know it's not I'm not there running the show there are other people other people in charge of that operation but in in visiting both of my grandmothers and looking at where they're living and the help that they're getting and and by the way I offered to both of them to to live with me in Texas and that I would take care of them but that Neither one wanted to do that.
They're comfortable where they are.
They've got a good social life going on there in the community of the caregiving facility.
So, you know, they're both happier where they are.
I just want you to know, in case you're wondering, like, what kind of a grandson am I, I always believe in taking care of your parents and grandparents at home if you can.
So that's always my default offer.
That's less and less common in America.
And in Western cultures today, it's very common in Asian culture.
And as you know, I used to live in Taiwan, and I speak Mandarin Chinese, a fair amount of it.
And there are a lot of values that I have that come from Asian culture.
And one of those is taking care of your parents and grandparents, by the way.
But the American culture is very much about, you know, stick people in nursing homes.
And sometimes...
And I've heard these stories as well.
Sometimes the kids, or kids is not the right term, sometimes the sons and daughters of the elderly person going into a facility, when they're cruel, they will tell a doctor, just medicate that person to death.
Medicate them until they drop dead.
They'll do that because they want inheritance money, or they don't want to deal with the trouble of an elderly parent who is difficult to care for.
There are some very, very cruel people in our world, and they do that kind of thing.
But that's not the topic here.
There's just a tangent.
It's kind of sad.
But even providing, if you want to provide the best care possible and you want your parents or grandparents to do very, very well and to have good care and so on, The cost associated with that is extremely high, even in areas of the country which are not known to be high costs of living areas.
Now, it's not at all unusual for, especially if you're in California or if you're on the East Coast somewhere, you can easily spend $10,000 a month on a care facility for one of your parents, let's say.
Even in less expensive areas, you know, flyover America, middle America, it can easily cost $5,000 a month.
And if you go to the very high-end facilities, it's not unusual to cost $20,000 a month.
Now think about that.
$20,000 a month.
I mean, that's almost a quarter of a million a year, right?
And that's after-tax money.
So how do you pay for this?
How do you pay for this level of care?
And the truth is that a lot of the elderly people who are in these facilities or care situations or even just in-home visitations with qualified nursing and so on is very, very expensive as well.
But a lot of the elderly people who are in these situations are burning through their life savings in seemingly no time flat.
And very quickly they come to depend on their children or grandchildren to cover the costs for them.
And in some cases this creates an incentive for their children to actually hope that they die sooner or even make decisions that cause them to die sooner, which is a very, very unfortunate thing.
But the reason I'm bringing all this up is because it is crucial that you and your parents, let's say, Take steps now to protect your assets so that you don't lose money in the coming crash, so that you have some money to take care of you or them when that time comes.
Because all of us are going to grow old.
All of us are going to, at some point, lose the ability to care for ourselves in the way that we are used to caring for ourselves day to day in a healthy, vibrant environment.
At some point, we will need assistance.
And when that day comes, that assistance is very, very expensive.
Insanely expensive.
And it can wipe out a lifetime of savings in just a couple of years.
It is happening.
And it can happen to you.
And now, if you're devastated by a market crash that wipes out your savings, then you're in a very, very desperate situation.
And I look back to people who lost their life savings in the dot-com crash, which I was publicly warning people about it for years before it happened, that these price valuations were insane, that they could not continue, that things were going to crash.
And, of course, they did crash, and some people lost 90-plus percent of their savings.
And it's devastating when you are 55 years old or 60 or 65 because you don't have that earnings potential anymore.
You're not 25 or 30 anymore where you can start a new career, work the long hours, climb up a corporate ladder, so to speak, and pocket a bunch of savings along the way and live in a frugal manner.
You're not there anymore.
You're supposed to be at the end of your earnings curve where you've already earned and And saved away the money that you're going to need for the rest of your life.
And if that money is not put in a very wise savings location, then it can be wiped out.
You can be wiped out and it can be devastating and you could end up receiving no qualified care or very low standard care, which could be life-threatening and could end your life soon.
I mean, sooner than otherwise needs to happen or it could affect You know, your parent or someone else you're caring for.
I'm fortunate in the sense that both my grandmothers are in very, very good facilities, very good places.
I mean, almost like a home-apartment type of thing.
It's like, you know, home-cooked meals, very good, friendly professional staff, qualified medical assistants when needed, all these things, and lots of visitations from family.
So they're lucky.
There are a lot of elderly in America today, and All around the world who have no such benefits, no such, you know, capabilities.
And some of them are in dire situations because they lost a lot of their savings.
Some of them in the dot-com crash, by the way.
Some of them in the housing bubble crash.
Some of them in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme.
So to summarize, it's about protecting your wealth.
When you get up in the years, you need to protect your assets and shift your focus, in my opinion, away from earning returns on your money and instead focus on protecting your money so that you can't lose it.
If you do nothing, if you sit on cash, let's say you took all your investment money and just converted it into actual cash or gold or something similar and you sat on it as physical cash, You would lose roughly about 5% per year in terms of purchasing power, but no more.
You know that you're not going to lose 50% a year.
You know you're not going to lose all of it, as can happen if you're invested in a Ponzi scheme or you're invested in a mutual fund that goes under or you're invested in some kind of You know, some financial vehicle, bonds, for example, that are defaulted on by the issuer of the bonds, such as a city or a country, you can lose everything.
But if you buy gold, let's say, or precious metals or something similar, you can't lose everything.
You know you're going to lose just some small amount of value each year if it's cash.
If it's gold, you're going to lose nothing, because gold is always gold.
It's always worth the same, essentially, in terms of real-world value.
So this is just something to keep in mind.
We're all getting older.
We're all going to have financial needs to care for us in our later years.
And if you're approaching that time, you might want to shift your investment focus to preservation rather than rate of return.
Because if you have a rate of return, you have risk.
And risk, there's so much more risk out there than what people are willing to acknowledge right now.
There is systemic risk that is through the roof.
Many people are going to lose everything, close to it, and they're going to be desperate in their elder years.
They're not going to have, you know, the care that they need and that they deserve.
And they will lose their life savings.
It's very sad, but it's happened to many people and it will continue to happen.
I don't want that to happen to you.
And I want you to be safe with your money and I want you to be wise with your money.
So, you know, make your own financial decisions, get good advice, but keep in mind that the older you get, the more you should focus on simply not losing money rather than trying to earn money or make money.
If you've got a nest egg squared away somewhere, focus on how to not lose the nest egg, even if there is a systemic market crash.
You'll be glad that you did.
You can watch videos from me on similar topics, by the way, at counterthink.com, where you can hear more podcasts at healthrangerreport.com.
This is Mike Adams, the Health Ranger.
Thanks for listening.
Learn more at healthrangerreport.com.
Thank you for watching.
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