Home Care Marketing & Sales Mastery by Approved Senior Network®

The Senior Care Industry Netcast: Holly Lane- Northwestern Mutual & Long-Term Care Insurance

January 25, 2022 Valerie VanBooven RN BSN Season 3 Episode 154
Home Care Marketing & Sales Mastery by Approved Senior Network®
The Senior Care Industry Netcast: Holly Lane- Northwestern Mutual & Long-Term Care Insurance
Show Notes Transcript

The Senior Care Industry Netcast: Holly Lane- Northwestern Mutual & Long-Term Care Insurance
https://www.asnmarketingplan.com/holly-lane-northwestern-mutual-long-term-care-insurance/


#homecare #longtermcareinsurance #ltci #northwesternmutual

www.hollylane.nm.com

Senior Care Industry Netcast where leaders with 3 or more years in the Senior Care Industry share their advice.

Be a Guest on Our Show: https://www.seniorcareindustrynetcast.com/netcast

About Valerie VanBooven RN BSN: https://www.asnmarketingplan.com/about-us/

Podcast Website: https://seniorcareindustrypodcast.buzzsprout.com/




Valerie VanBooven RN BSN:

This is Valerie VanBooven with The Senior Care Industry Netcast, where leaders with three or more years of experience in the senior care market share their advice. So let's get to it. In a few sentences, tell us who you are, and what you do.

Holly Lane:

Hi, my name is Holly Lane. Thanks for having me. I am with Northwestern Mutual as a financial representative, and it is a recent career change for me, as I spent five years in the senior living industry, spent some time in sales and marketing and assisted living memory care communities, and then in private duty home care. So with the need of flexibility of schedule, I moved careers, and after researching time and interest and still being able to serve people, landed here.

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN:

Awesome. So tell us, what is one of your specialties that we're going to talk about today?

Holly Lane:

One of my specialties and the main reason I decided to join the world, as a financial representative of long-term care insurance and working in the senior living industry, seeing the benefits that it added to a senior's quality of life when they needed either a move from home or even better yet to want to stay in their home and need that support. Having those policies in place really improve that quality. And seeing the families who didn't have it, the struggles and hearing the adult children who said, I don't know that it's attainable for me. I don't know what to do. And I wasn't a resource then. And now I know the answers and I'm excited about it.

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN:

Yeah, absolutely. When you work in the field and you have seen all of the different scenarios that come through the door, whether it be assisted living or home care, and then you start and you understand the value of long-term care insurance. The stories are endless, about how much it has helped people over the years. And I've always been an advocate of long-term care insurance. And I certainly wish, and I bet you do too, that more of our senior care providers understood the value, and would promote the value of long-term care insurance.

Holly Lane:

Absolutely.

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN:

Because once you need care, it's probably too late to get long-term care insurance. But for all of those adult children who are staring right at their future, and we always hope that we have better health than our parents, or if they've been sickly or whatever, but there's so many hereditary factors that go in there. So if you know your parents have Alzheimer's disease, or you know that they've had vascular issues, and maybe now they suffer from vascular dementia or diabetes or high blood pressure, whatever those things are, if you're headed down that same road, it's time to really think about it, right?

Holly Lane:

Absolutely. And that's the key thing is to start thinking about it because you want to get it. You want to think about that before it is too late, as you said, the age and your health are all determining factors on what the future support looks like for you. So we have to ensure our car, we have to ensure our home. Why don't we ourselves for the future too? It's just not something that people think about.

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN:

No, no. It's hard to think about it. And most of us are accustomed to planning in a crisis.

Holly Lane:

Yep. Reacting.

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN:

And so we are our crisis-driven, because nobody really wants to talk about this. It's not our favorite subject. It's not something you want to bring up at the dinner table, but it's important to bring it up at the dinner table. And I've had many conversations with my parents about this. My mother does have long-term care insurance. And she's very healthy, and she's 70, but you don't know what the future will bring. And I'm glad she has it.

Holly Lane:

Yep, absolutely. And the beautiful thing are the different products that are available now, because a lot of people are like, well I won't need it. So I don't want to pay for it. Where if you can look at the timeframe of getting life insurance, a whole life policy that has a rider, hopefully that's the best thing that you invest your money in is not needing it. And then you still have some value that you can use living a healthy lifestyle. So just being educated. So that's really my mission when I decided to take this career, my mission is just to educate, I want to educate as many people on what's out there and then you have the information, instead of just going blind or assuming it's not attainable, it's not reasonable, it's not effective.

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN:

Yeah. Yeah. I think that the valuable piece of knowledge too, that you just shared is that straight long-term care insurance is one option, but hybrid policies, life insurance that includes long-term care, all kinds of different ways to handle this that aren't as, I mean, long-term care insurance is not cheap. But neither is a nursing home, and neither is home care. You're talking about... It depends on where you live, 5,000 to $10,000 a month for 24-hour nursing home care. That's a lot of dough.

Holly Lane:

That's a lot of dough

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN:

That is going through your entire, potential your entire everything you've ever saved or earned or, or put aside in a very short period

Holly Lane:

Of time. Absolutely. And you want to protect that. You don't want you, you worked hard for that and you want the best quality of life for you. And if you have a family to share with, if you want to leave a legacy, if you want the best quality of care, it isn't always just the assets that allow you to get that. So I'm glad you said that as well. And it really is more attainable than we think of an annual premium is pennies on a monthly rate at an, at a community.

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN:

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. There, you have to look at this with perspective and understand that the alternative is way more expensive. There is no, there is no, there's no alternative. Especially if you want to leave a legacy now for folks who are cannot leave a leg, they can't, they're not going to have anything left. There there's other options. But for those who really want to leave something for their kids, this is, this is important. It's an important topic.

Holly Lane:

Yeah, it is. And just the, there is a different standard when you can pay for the quality of care as to when you don't get a choice and you have a Medicaid option that the choices are just

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN:

Different. Yes, yes. They are different. I, I, and I, I will, can attest to that as well. My, my father, he was in a nursing home for two years now. His wife brought him out of the nursing home and is successfully caring for him at home when COVID hit. He, he, we were about eight months in and, and, and it just wasn't good for him. So, but having said that he was in a Medicaid bed and the Medicaid bed that we could find that was acceptable. And we did tour a couple of them and I'm a nurse by trade and I've been down this road with other people many times. So I get, it was the one we found was 40 miles away and I would make, and of course his wife actually moved out to be closer to him in the scene within five miles of the, of the nursing home.

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN:

But I would make 40 mile one way, you know, 80 mile round trips to see him every other weekend or so. And, and that's a long way. I mean, I didn't really mind it that much, but you have to remember that if a Medicaid bed and he was treated the same as everybody else there, whether they're private pay or not. But the challenge was finding a Medicaid bed in our local area that was in a facility that we thought was providing good care, or it appeared your new tour, you get a pretty fast sense of what's going on. And so he ended up 40 miles away. I was very happy with the facility. We were all very happy, the staff was great. And it was in a small town, which was very helpful. But again, if he had been private pay or had tons of assets and he might have been right down the street in a very luxurious, private pay place. So that is not how it worked. So you do have to remember that your choices become limited and you might not be right down the street.

Holly Lane:

And the great thing with the long term care insurance piece is you don't have to be literally a millionaire. You don't have to have all that in peace, but having that extra asset of that insurance piece to support your existing assets allows you to have that luxury. Yes.

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN:

The luxury of choice and a luxury of being close to your family. And you know, and some of the, the places that even, let's say you have a five year policy or a three year policy, I don't know how it works right now. You know, more you're the expert, but I know in the past you could buy like a three year plan, a five year plan and you could kind of, you know, I, I guess, gamble on how long you're going to live. Right? Right. So a lot of places that are private pay, if you start out private pay, they will morph you into a Medicaid bed in the same facility, after a certain number of years, if your assets run out, they'll still let you stay there. And they do have a, a, you know, they have a waiting list that's three years long. But as long as you private pay for the first three years, they'll morph you into that Medicaid bed. So something is definitely better than nothing at

Holly Lane:

All. Absolutely, absolutely. That's right. And then I ran into a lot of that moving people in, I've got this policy, but I don't want to activate it yet. It's only good for two years. You invested in it, use it. Give yourself that benefit now because you don't know, you don't have a crystal ball. You don't know how long you'll need it. So use what you have while you do need it. Take advantage of the investment. Rather it run out than never open it and never use it.

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN:

So what is the best thing about serving aging adults? It sounds like you've been in different jobs over the years. So what do you find great about serving, and their families?

Holly Lane:

Yep. Selfishly, the stories. I love everyone's stories. The stories are great, but serving, I love being the resource. I love making that match, finding the right community, finding the right caregiver, giving the family peace of mind that they are family, they don't have to be the caregiver. They don't have to bear the burden of the stress, and the same for the older adult that needs the care, giving them that freedom of not feeling like a burden. And having an answer, giving them a confidant that they can, of new friend, even just having the answers. It's the best feeling.

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN:

Yep. The stories are amazing and everyone could write their own novel about their interesting life, even if they don't think it's interesting. It really is. So let's see in your lifetime, in your adult life and in your career, and you've made some career changes, what organizations have had an impact on you or other leaders or other people in your life have had an impact on you? You've it sounds like you've kind of been in the circle of senior care for a long time. So I

Holly Lane:

Really respect geriatric care managers. I've met so many in my role. I love the, again, being that resource and their expertise on the cognitive piece, it's not so much always just physical. It's the emotional, not even just dementia, just emotional part of aging at all. So anyone being able to, to support that directly has really supposed to, to me and really given me inspiration that it's not just getting physically older. It's getting emotionally older too. So Maria Misca, I adore her learn so much from her.

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN:

And what piece of advice would you give to other senior care providers out there? Folks who are in the trenches, you've been in the trenches, you're now trying to help people prevent that crisis. What would you say to other folks out there who serve ...

Holly Lane:

Just be persistent. No one ever wants to admit they're in crisis. No one skips into assisted living. Or admit they're old. My favorite is a 92-year-old who says I don't want to live with old people. So just be supportive and understand and try and put yourself in their shoes.

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. They were once that 20-year-old hopping around doing things and having fun with friends and family and they definitely deserve our respect.

Holly Lane:

And if you're not the right answer, be a resource, find the right answer.

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN:

Yeah. That's a great one. Absolutely. Okay. So when you have a win in life or in business, you know you've made somebody's life better, you know you've made somebody's day better, whatever that is. How do you like to celebrate?

Holly Lane:

Oh gosh.

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN:

I know we have a hard time with this. It's supposed to be fun. Sometimes people hold up a bottle of tequila. Some people dance in their living room. I think sharing the story with someone else going through it, just sharing someone else's success and, and win, giving them hope that they have that chance to

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN:

Yes, absolutely. Sharing our stories is a great way to celebrate good news. Good news all around. Absolutely. Tell me more about what areas you service so that when folks see this video and we have your information there with it, they can get ahold of you. What states are you licensed in? Where do you service?

Holly Lane:

I'm currently just in Missouri. So I can get licensed anywhere. So as I have a conversation with clients, which I have had outside of the state, so just when it comes to that decisionmaking process, I can get licensed anywhere. I'm glad you asked that because I want to have the conversation with the out-of-state children. This with whoever is just to educate because it is a, you know, it's worldwide products that everyone needs to know about. Sure. So ages ranging from, you know, forties to sixties. It's not in your sixties, it's not too late to look at it and consider long term care insurance. So don't ever think it's too late for me to talk about it.

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN:

Great. Awesome. And you have probably because Northwestern mutual is such a long respected company and they are nationwide. I'm sure if, if you needed to, you had colleagues almost everywhere that you can turn.

Holly Lane:

Absolutely. One reason why enjoying the culture of supporting each other is incredible. You can call anyone and say, "This is what I've got going on, can you help me with this?" That's great. That's great.

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN:

That's great.

Holly Lane:

I'm glad you mentioned it.

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN:

Well, thank you, Holly. We will make sure that your contact information is with this video and that it gets out to as many eyeballs as possible. Because I agree with you, the importance of this can't be understated. And if you want to protect your assets and you want to you give your children I think peace of mind, knowing that you're taking care of if something should happen to you, this is the route to go. It really is. It's been this way for a long time.

Holly Lane:

Well, I appreciate you having the conversation. Thanks for having me Valerie.

Valerie VanBooven RN BSN:

All right. Thank you.