The Get Ready Money Podcast

Long-Term Care Planning: Protecting What Matters Featuring Barry Fisher

• Tony Steuer

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On the latest episode of The Get Ready Money Podcast, I spoke with Barry Fisher, CEO of Blaze ’n’ Bear Insurance Services and host of the Protecting What Matters radio show about changing the way we think about money and protecting what matters.


In this episode we discussed:

  • Why long term care planning is an essential part of financial planning. 
  • How advisors can start to have conversations on long term care planning. 
  • Why long term care insurance is just part of the puzzle - it’s a funding mechanism.
  • The future of long term care insurance. 
  • How business valuations help with succession planning. 

Barry J. Fisher is the CEO of Blaze ‘n Bear Insurance Services, Inc. a firm dedicated to helping small and medium sized business owners achieve financial success by concentrating on matters pertaining to business continuation, succession and estate planning.  Blaze ‘n Bear’s business valuation service is the centerpiece of its planning practice. 

In 1999 Barry co-founded the American Association for Long Term Care Insurance (“AALTCI”).  As AALTCi's first president, Barry helped create the Long-Term Care Professional (“LTCP”) designation.  He is also past-president of the California Association of Health Underwriters (2001) and Chairman of CAHU-PAC (2004-2006) where he helped raise over $1,000,000 for political advocacy. 

Barry has served on the California Department of Insurance (“CDI”) Curriculum Board and on various CDI workgroups pertaining to legislation and insurance agent education. He is also a Past Chairman of the ILTCI Conference and served on the Society of Actuaries Long-Term Think Tank. He has been a frequent contributor to industry publications on a wide range of insurance and legislative topics and is a sought-after speaker at industry events.

Barry hosts a weekly 90-minute radio broadcast on KPRL (1230AM) called “Protecting What Matters”, and supports a number local & national charities and organizations dedicated to creating better communities.

Connect with Barry Fisher:


Website (here).

LinkedIn (here).


Radio Show:


Protecting What Matters Radio Show (here).


Mentioned on this episode:


Investopedia: www.investopedia.com

Real Clear Politics: Realclearpolitics.com

Planning for Long-Term Care survey findings (Lincoln)

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The Get Ready Money Podcast and its guests do not provide investment advice. All content is for educational purposes. Guest opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Get Ready Money Podcast and Tony Steuer.

Megan Ratto:

Are you looking to get ready, be prepared and transform your financial future? Then you've come to the right place. This is the Get Ready Money Podcast with Tony Stewart, where Tony has insightful conversations with financial experts who are changing the way we think about money. Catch up on the latest financial trends and hear practical advice from Tony and his expert guests so you can build healthy habits that work, Be empowered with tips for implementing small changes that can have a big impact on your financial future. So sit back and get ready to hear from today's guest. So sit back and get ready to hear from today's guest.

Tony Steuer:

Welcome to the Get Ready Money podcast changing the way we think about money. I'm pleased to be joined today by Barry Fisher. Barry is the president and CEO of Blaze and Bear Insurance Services and host of the Protecting what Matters radio show. In this episode, we'll be discussing Barry's insights on how we change the way we think about money and protecting what matters. Barry, welcome to the Get Ready Money podcast. Thanks for joining us today.

Barry Fisher:

Tony, thanks for inviting me.

Tony Steuer:

Yeah, I'm excited. I mean, we've known each other for a long time, but you know, let's not go down that road.

Barry Fisher:

Yeah for our watchers and listeners.

Tony Steuer:

You know, but there's nothing bad. You know, barry. You know let's get started. You know, tell me, you know, maybe share with the audience a little bit about yourself. What is your origin story?

Barry Fisher:

Well. So, interestingly enough, last week I started my 49th year in the life and health insurance business and I have no plans to retire. I enjoy what I do. Probably one of the best decisions I made in the long run was getting involved in this aspect of it. Basically because I'm a serial entrepreneur, you know, and I'm being an independent life insurance agent, a long-term care insurance guy. I'm my own boss and I've been doing it like this for almost 50 years now. So it's been great.

Barry Fisher:

I grew up in Southern California, but over the years I've lived in numerous places. In high school I got moved to Massachusetts. I lived outside of Boston for a few years. I came back to California, graduated from UCLA, got accepted to law school and business school and just decided again. I enjoyed working and being my own boss and I was done with studying. I'm more of a doer than a student, really.

Barry Fisher:

And then you know you've been in the life insurance industry, health insurance industry, for years as well. You know it's not an easy thing to do, and so I had good years and bad years, and I guess my claim to fame is that about 1990, I kind of fell into the wholesale side of the long-term care insurance industry and by wholesaling. That meant I was an intermediary between the insurance companies and brokers insurance agents and it was just the timing was right. California was just instituting its eight-hour requirement to be able to sell long-term care insurance. I was able to get a course approved. I was one of the first I wasn't the first, but I was one of the first to get the eight hour CE course approved for certification to sell long-term care insurance in California and I used it as a recruiting tool. It was before. It was before you know online stuff. It was before all the you know the you know online stuff. That was before all the you know the, the, the, whatever correspondence courses even. And it was. It was just the timing was right. You know I won't go into all the details, but I've been on boards of national organizations and and I'm an educator I view myself more as an educator than I do an insurance agent, even though the insurance is part of the education. So I was a wholesaler. I sold the agency. I had a national operation. We sold that in 2014, 2013 and 2014.

Barry Fisher:

I sold the agencies, went off to be a consultant. Covid killed off the business, the consulting business, and then I was sitting around my ranch here in the beautiful Paso Robles area of California one day and I just said, I got to find something to do and I decided to go back into personal production, and that has morphed into some new courses as well. But I'm really enjoying working with consumers. But I also primarily work with other financial advisors and property casualty agents who just don't want to sell life or long-term care insurance, and so it's been a fun. Started as a retirement gig, now it's become again another business that I get to build. So that's my origin story.

Tony Steuer:

Well, that's awesome. And where you and I met was we both served on the California Department of Insurance Curriculum Board, where we helped create the exam outlines and continuing education requirements for long-term care insurance, as well as other lines of coverage. Yep, absolutely, it was fun yeah and we were able to really make a difference. Yeah, I just want to back up for one thing because I know this comes up a lot for people is could you define the difference between agent and broker?

Barry Fisher:

Yeah, so it's funny. I had this conversation with somebody the other day. So there really is. You know, unless things have changed since we were on the curriculum board, there really is no such thing as a life or health insurance broker, a broker, the relationship of a broker, those are property casualty type guys and they really represent their clients directly and that's the term of art within the insurance code. Life insurance guys and health insurance folks are agents. So theoretically we are contractually obligated to the insurance company. But again, we're also independent agents. So we have the most of us are at this point. You know, back when I started 49 years ago, most of us were captive agents. We worked for Metropolitan Life, for New York Life, and that was our primary company. But what's happened is most of us who are still doing life insurance and long-term care insurance are independents and we have multiple relationships, but we're still insurance agents. We're not brokers life insurance agents, not brokers. Hopefully that made sense.

Tony Steuer:

Yeah, and it helps and, I think, for people watching and listening. The other thing to keep in mind, too, is agents are contractual agents of the insurance company and not of the consumer, and I think these are important because we use these terms interchangeably, and it's good for people to know who's who interchangeably, and it's good for people to know who's who.

Barry Fisher:

But again, you know, but along those lines, as you well know, independent life insurance agents, annuity we're selling annuities, life insurance, long term care insurance you know we're still obligated to operate in the best interests of our clients. Okay, so, even though we have a contractual obligation with the insurance company, you know we can't unlike a property casualty broker who can actually accept premiums on behalf of the from the client and is a conduit to the insurance company. We don't do that, we can't do that. But in essence, though, we still have an obligation to do what's in our client's best interest, and that's, I think that's an important thing for consumers to know.

Tony Steuer:

Yeah, definitely, and there are different rules and obligations for insurance agents. Also, you know by line of coverage, but there's annuity standards and you know. So, if you are looking and comparing agents, those are questions that you can ask and expectations that you can have of your insurance agent. And I think you said something that's super important, that I want to really emphasize, because this is a red flag for consumers. If you are working with an agent for life insurance or long term care insurance or disability insurance and they ask you to submit the premium to them, that is a no-no, you know. Don't do that. Report them to the Department of Insurance and find an agent, Because in the life and health side of the business, premiums are always submitted directly to the insurance company. Correct, correct and never make your check payable to the insurance agent.

Barry Fisher:

No, no, absolutely not.

Tony Steuer:

Those are some good things, so let's jump into long-term care insurance. Why is long-term care insurance really an important part of financial planning?

Barry Fisher:

Well, that's a really good question, tony, and I'm just going to put it out there like this An unplanned for long-term care event destroys people's wealth and it also destroys other people's wealth and I'll explain that here in a minute. But Lincoln Financial did a survey last year. Lincoln Financial Group did a survey of, I want to say, about 500 financial advisors and also about 1,000 consumers, and what they determined was 98% of financial professionals reported that clients who needed long-term care typically withdrew funds from their accounts at more than twice the amount that they should be pulling them out of. So the normal withdrawal rate if you're healthy out of retirement funding your retirement accounts is generally 5%. The financial advisors reported that it jumped to over 11% for people who didn't have a plan for long-term care policy and a plan really Okay.

Barry Fisher:

So it destroys wealth. Number one it limits people's care options. That's number two. And number three it negatively impacts the informal caregivers who are then required to take care of you. So it hurts your spouses, your kids and again, and ultimately it destroys their wealth, because anything that you were hoping to pass on a portion of what people they were hoping to pass on to their kids gets eaten up by these long-term care expenses. So it's a wealth destroyer basically.

Tony Steuer:

That's you know. That's so important because I don't think we were talking about that enough, especially as more Americans are aging, that the problems can become more magnified. So why do you think the financial planners aren't having these conversations? How can we encourage people to have these conversations?

Barry Fisher:

Well, and that's a great question I think what's happened is nobody gets trained to sell insurance anymore. You know, we're dinosaurs when it comes right down to it. You know you and I were trained to focus on risk as opposed to investments. So, while these financial folks who call themselves the younger ones in particular, but the folks who call themselves financial advisors, that's a much more transactional business. It's an important business, it's important to help people achieve their retirement planning goals and objectives, but the fact is, if you ignore the risk piece of that client's plan, then it's not a plan. Okay, so, and I just got off a call with an advisor that I work with in the Chicago area and we were talking to one of his clients and the biggest problem that financial advisors have when you're dealing with insurance products, you've got to do field underwriting. The last thing you want to have your client is have them apply for an insurance policy and have them get declined because it goes into the big database in the sky guy, and then their future choices for insurance risk products like long-term care insurance or life insurance is limited, becomes very, very limited. So this advisor had already done some work with this client, but he knew he needed some help. So he called me in and I uncovered a whole raft Because I asked the questions Financial don't have I have a.

Barry Fisher:

Financial advisories don't have a generally have a comfort level of asking people about their health and their and and and. What medications are you taking? Do you have cancer? Do you have diabetes? What's your height and weight? That was the first question I always ask. Women hate that question. You know what's your height and weight, but, but the fact of the matter is.

Barry Fisher:

Matter is you've got to get that information before you even have a clue of what insurance company you're going to go and look to. You've got to do the field underwriting. So bottom line is, even though the insurance companies have tried to make selling insurance, or at least the process of the application process and all that for an insurance policy transactional, the simple fact of the matter is the run-up is not transactional. And then there is all kinds of things that have to happen during the underwriting process, once you submit the application that you have to track to make sure the client doesn't, the case doesn't go off the rails. So in essence it's again. It's a different skill set. You know you buy a stock, you know you buy an ETF, it's a one and done deal right, or you sell it, but with insurance, it's a process, and people are just financial advisors today, are just not trained in that process, and that's why I work with a lot of financial advisors just to help them with that.

Tony Steuer:

Well, that's, yeah, I completely agree with you is I think you know, there just isn't that emphasis on selling insurance and people being trained in insurance, like when you and I were coming up. Like you were talking about is the insurance companies would train agents, give them a home, send them to class and help them become professionals, and today that just doesn't happen. So correct, you know, let's say you are a financial planner or an insurance agent and you want to learn more, you know, or start having these conversations, what recommendations do you give to the agents you work with?

Barry Fisher:

well, I mean, I think the recommendation is you need to start. You know insurance is just part of the plan. So whether you're talking to somebody about their succession planning, or whether you know for their business or their estate planning, for their taxes or their long-term care planning, you need to lay out all the issues. What do people want? What are their goals and objectives? You know if you want to stick to long-term care. You ask them where do you want to receive care? Who's going to provide the care? You have all your legal documents in place. You know your durable powers of attorney.

Barry Fisher:

Okay, if you looked and see what is the cost for long-term care where you want to receive it, the insurance piece is the last part of the puzzle. Once you get the plan in place, okay. The question then is how are you going to pay for it? Okay, and now in today's world, you know what happens is most people do a partial. They figure okay, I'm getting X number of dollars a month coming in from my retirement money my 5 percent, my 4 or 5 percent withdrawal rate. What do I need to buy an insurance to supplement that for the care I need where I want to get it? And then it's, and then it's a matter of OK, which is the best solution.

Barry Fisher:

You know, 20 years ago we basically were one trick ponies. We had traditional long term care insurance. Now we have traditional long term care insurance, along with the asset based solutions, the life and annuity based solutions. So we have, you know, different vehicles to to use today. To use today, so, and that's, and that's the other thing you know. And then one of the other things that I'm learning, because up until I I think you know this, but I started working with this group in in the Midwest. Well before that I did, 99% of my business was in California. Well, california is a country on its own from from a product perspective. Well, now that I'm working with all these folks in the Midwest, I'm on this very steep learning curve of all the other stuff that's available to people outside of California. So, yeah, I mean, it's a big world out there product and understanding what to look for and then figuring out how you could explain it to the client in English so that they understand it. You know not insurance. Try not to speak insurance.

Tony Steuer:

Yeah that's the thing and I think that's something that's true across the financial services spectrum is that we need to remember that we need to talk to consumers with words that they use every day and not expect them to become experts in insurance. You know, when we look at the medical field and people who watch and listen to this podcast you've heard me say this repeatedly our doctors don't come in, you know, when they're helping us deal with a condition and say, okay, well, you need to learn everything about knee surgery before you can proceed with it. They just they just help you figure out, you know what you need to know and answer your questions.

Tony Steuer:

They don't say well, you know, have you studied up? You know a knee surgery, it's not a thing, right.

Barry Fisher:

Absolutely.

Tony Steuer:

So you know, a lot of financial advisors and consumers have heard. You know issues in long term care insurance industry. We've seen pricing issues. We've seen huge rate increases. How do you see this going forward? Do you see the long-term care insurance industry stabilizing, fixing these issues?

Barry Fisher:

Yeah, I do. I mean I think let's go back to the traditional long-term care insurance policies that we were selling. You know basically post-HIPAA, because that's really the modern. You know basically post HIPAA, because that's really the modern. You know 1997 and beyond, that's the modern age of long term care insurance. When you know HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act established the standardized benefit triggers, you know benefit qualifiers and and standardized a bunch of stuff in these policies on a national basis.

Barry Fisher:

So those products basically, I mean there have been, there were pricing issues and I mean some of them. Some of them were self-inflicted wounds by the insurance companies, others were were unintended the self-inflicted wound. And again, I don't want to get too geeky here, but when you price a policy, when you price any kind of life or health insurance, a long-term care insurance is a traditional long-term care insurance. It's a health insurance product but it's more like a life insurance product because it stays in for you. You're expecting this thing to be in force for 20 or 30 years potentially before you ever make a claim on it, as opposed to the health insurance you buy every year that can be repriced. So it's like the insurance companies back in the late 90s and early 2000s were doing a moonshot. You know what's this going to look like. Where are we going to be 20, 25 years from now when this client goes on claim?

Barry Fisher:

So the factors that went into the pricing of these policies were interest rates, right, because about 80% of a long-term care insurance premium on a traditional product is reserved to pay future claims. So a 50 basis point difference in the long term rate of return on those reserves can absolutely throw off the whole pricing model. So what happened was we? So, just on that particular thing alone, the insurance companies were saying you know, we generally make five or 6% on our reserves over time. Well, unfortunately, we all know we lived through about a 15 year period of it of a no, unusually low interest rates. So instead of getting five or 6%, they were getting four or 5%. So that was a primary, a primary issue.

Barry Fisher:

On the pricing of those older policies they didn't get. So that was an unintended thing that happened to the insurance companies. They also figured the other big thing was lapse rates. Insurance companies assume that a certain percentage of people are going to drop their policies and when they drop their policies, when they drop them either because they die an involuntary lapse right or a voluntary lapse. They just decide they don't want the policy anymore. When that happens, those reserves come back into the reserve pool. Well, they assumed a higher lapse ratio than they got, which was also a big impact on the claims, on the rating rate stability, as it would be called. And the third big thing was they didn't get the claim right. They were dealing with dementia claims now, all of a sudden, which were lasting longer than they anticipated. So it was really a perfect storm of bad stuff that happened to the older traditional policies.

Barry Fisher:

Now, all that being said, as you well know, each individual state department of insurance regulates rate increases. Well, in some of these states, the states didn't want to allow for rate increases more incrementally, so they backed up. So they backed up. You know the insurance companies, especially in a place like California, I mean, it was, it was a nightmare, because they just wouldn't approve rate increases until, all of a sudden, they realized these insurance companies were potentially going to go broke if they didn't Kind of similar to what's happening with homeowners insurance in California right now, and that's a whole other topic too. So the departments of insurance dragged their heels. So ultimately, now we've seen all these big rate increases and people can adjust these policies.

Barry Fisher:

What we're finding is that as we get these rate increases in, you get on the phone with the client and you say, okay, you bought this with five percent compound inflation, you probably have more than enough benefits. Let's drop the inflation rider off or let's drop it down to three percent. So again, the client should not panic when they get the rate increase letter. They should either call their agent you know if they still if the guy's still alive or is still in the business or work with the insurance companies to adjust the benefits to keep that policy affordable. In fact I've got for one I won't mention the company, but I've probably got 30 of these all that are sitting on my desk that I know over the next year they're going to be getting their rate increase letter from the insurance company and because most of the agents are retired or passed away they used to write the business through my agency I'm going to be getting on the phone with all these people and communicating with them. I don't want them to drop their policies. It's a very valuable piece of protection that they have. We just need to figure out how to make it affordable for them, and that's what you have to do.

Barry Fisher:

As far as going forward and I'm probably going on too long for you here but the newer policies the asset-based policies, the combo policies, the life and annuity policies with long-term care benefits those have more guarantees in them. The rate structures are guaranteed. You're paying more, of course, because you're now on a life combo product. You're paying to ensure two risks You're ensuring life and long-term care, so the going in premium is higher, but again you're going to have more rate. There's going to be rate stability because they've built the guarantees into those policies. So you know, again, the industry is adapting.

Barry Fisher:

I think a lot of the business is shifting to the combo products and so they're very attractive, especially for people that can just reposition some underperforming assets or reposition an annuity. Okay that that you know they've got a, an annuity. That's an old style deferred annuity. It's out of the surrender charge period. They reposition it into a, a long-term care annuity that provides long-term care benefits, and then they're leveraging it up for long-term care and when they go on claim the money that comes out of that policy will be tax-free as opposed to taxable. So there's all kinds of good reasons to look at, especially if people have been purchasing annuities to repositioning an older annuity to what's called a Pension Protection Act approved annuity, which allows for a long-term care benefit within it.

Tony Steuer:

Well, you covered so many things there and I think at the end, what you're mentioning is a 1035 tax-free exchange of an old contract, and you can also use old life insurance policies. So sometimes if you have these whole life policies that have a really high cash value that you're not intending to use, those are a great source to fund a long-term care insurance policy. A couple other things you know in terms of pricing. I want to add one of the things in my mind that I think was a huge mistake on the part of the insurance companies was lifetime benefits instead of a defined benefit pool. Defined benefit pool is, you know, when you look at other types of insurance, the company is saying we're going to insure you for this amount and this is a maximum amount, and instead they said, well, we'll just pay you for a lifetime, but we have no idea what that's going to consist of. We're just going to guess. You know.

Tony Steuer:

Granted, actuaries are not guessing. You know, actuaries are a science, but at the end of the day, it really is a guess because they have no idea what was going to happen. And when we look at other forms of coverage, you know some of them have two, 300 years of experience that the insurance companies can go back and look at, so they engaged in risk-taking behavior themselves. Now that doesn't help people going forward, but it's important to understand that. You know the insurance companies, as you pointed out, are learning from their mistakes and coming up with different products that will hopefully perform better. Although you know my concern with the combo products. One, as you pointed out, is that clients are paying for a life insurance benefit that they may or may not need, but with the underperformance of so many life insurance policies, you've taken two products that have had pricing issues and combine them into one product, which means that if you do these asset-based products is that you do need to keep an eye on them and think about the costs that you're paying. So sorry, just to give your answer.

Barry Fisher:

Yeah, most of those, most of the life insurance based combo products are guaranteed. Now I mean they're either guaranteed universal life Okay, indexed or or fixed, okay, or it's it's a whole on a whole life chassis. So you know, the risk on the life insurance piece is not again the life insurance, you know again, and I again not to get doing the weeds, but I mean the life insurance benefit becomes minimal on those. It's basically used to identify, you know, kind of create that initial pool of money, that initial benefit that's paid out, and then the client pays for an additional continuation of benefit rider to take it past a two year type benefit. So yes, which are again guaranteed rates, so they're doing a better job on it, but again they're representing, you know, current reality in pricing, you know, and not reality from 1995 or 1996. But you're right, lifetime benefits with 5% compound inflation on riders were pretty disastrous, yeah, and who could have seen that coming?

Tony Steuer:

Well, it wasn't priced right, you know, it just wasn't priced right.

Barry Fisher:

It wasn't priced right.

Tony Steuer:

It just wasn't priced right, yeah. Well, that's the benefit with any type of financial services to start off conservatively rather than aggressively. And that's what happened the companies got out of their skis. We can talk about disability insurance in the 80s that's another great example but we should probably move on from this conversation. But I do want to emphasize one thing that you were talking about is that there are different contracts, and so it's important to work with somebody who understands the different alternatives and can explain them. You know.

Tony Steuer:

So, if you're a planner and you're working with an insurance agent, did you understand what the insurance agent is presenting to your client? And if you're a consumer, the same thing ask questions, be curious, make sure that the policy is going to do what you expect it to do. Right, Absolutely, you know. There's no guarantees, of course, but you can definitely ask questions. So, Barry, you know, before we get into the faster round of questions, you know of questions you're also working on business valuations. So just real quick, and I think this is becoming pertinent, as baby boomers are starting to sell their businesses and everything is age why should people and businesses consider getting a business valuation?

Barry Fisher:

Well, just by way of you know, again, historically my first love in the insurance business was working with small business owners. You know closely owners of closely held businesses I won't say small but closely held businesses, Because again, of my entrepreneurial spirit, I guess and one of the big aspects of doing that is helping people with their succession planning. You know you got a couple of partners, or you have somebody you want to pass your business on to your kid OK, or you want to sell your business. But you know all those things. Estate planning, you know the business is a big piece of most entrepreneurs' asset base. Now 72% of business owners say they plan to sell their business and use that to fund their retirement, but only 2% of business owners know what their business is worth. So when I restarted personal production, I was really focusing on the business is worth. So when I got, when I started, when I restarted personal production, I was really focusing on the business owner market and I started talking to people and you'd say to, you'd say to a business owner what's your? Well, okay, you need to do the succession planning. You need to do your buy sell agreement so you don't end up with with in business with your partner's wife or spouse, okay, that you have money there to buy them out of the value of the business. We need a buy-sell agreement. Okay, what do you think your business is worth? And people would look at you like I have absolutely no idea.

Barry Fisher:

So along that path, I discovered an online business valuation service called BizEquity and they market specifically to financial advisors and insurance agents who are in this market space and again, I won't go into all the details, but it's all online. It's driven off of the tax returns. It's a really cool program. It's not a certified valuation, but it's a credible valuation. The company's run by business valuators. It's a really cool tool. And so what I do is I talk to a client and I'll say listen, if you don't have an idea what your business is worth, before we even start talking about the succession planning stuff or the key person stuff, we need to do a business valuation for you. We need to figure out what your business is worth and with three years of tax returns and some other minimal information from the client, I can do a business valuation within a couple of weeks.

Barry Fisher:

Normally, business valuation is $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 or more. It takes a long time, you know, and again and it's very expensive, and so I've been using this as a way to help business owners. It's turned out that, aside from using it for the succession planning piece, I get a lot of calls now from business owners who say I'm ready to sell my business, I just need a business valuation. So I basically charge a very nominal fee to do the business valuation so I can get the right numbers. Very nominal fee to do the business valuation so I can get the right numbers, and it's been a really fulfilling. It's been.

Barry Fisher:

I've learned so much about my own business by looking at other people's tax returns and understanding how it all comes together in somebody's tax return and then seeing how the results on the platform come out for the client, and it's been very rewarding. So again, there's all kinds of reasons. If a business owner doesn't do business valuation, they're just flying blind. The other neat thing that this service does is it also provides key performance indicators to the client. So in other words, this is all tied into big data. That's how this valuation is generated and it's all tied to the business's North American industrial code number. So after we get the input done, they can actually see how they stack up against the competition on a local and national level on their key performance indicators debt to equity, inventory, turnover, all those really valuable management tools that most closely held businesses are clueless about. So it's a really great service. I really enjoy doing it. It's a lot of fun. That's awesome.

Tony Steuer:

And I think business valuations do tie into long-term care planning that all of this is a continuum, you know. So what money myth are you trying to break?

Barry Fisher:

The money myth. This is a great one and I have to say I didn't make it up. A colleague of mine wrote this up on LinkedIn and I took it to the next level, probably. But he talks about you know every, you know financial advisors and this you know. This is true whether it's long-term care planning or estate planning. You know this goes back a long way.

Barry Fisher:

It's like why do wealthy people buy life insurance to pay their estate taxes when all they have to do is write a check or liquidate a building? And the answer is it's because it's more tax efficient. You know it's more so. It's more. It just makes more sense. And here's so.

Barry Fisher:

He talked about the myth of self-funding, and you know self-funding is a myth because it, or self-insurance is a myth because, ultimately, insurance involves the pooling of risk, and when you're taking on the risk without insurance, there is no pooling with anybody else, okay. So again, insurance implies a risk. Now, you may self-fund, but don't call it self-insurance, okay. The other big myth is that people think well, again, I have enough money to pay for this out of my investments and all that kind of stuff. But most of the time, they don't take into account what I refer to as shrinkage. They have this event, whether it's death or whether it's long-term care need they don't take into account? What if the stock market's down? What if your investments are down?

Barry Fisher:

Bad timing what about the tax implications of liquidating assets? Capital gains Everybody's talking about capital gains again, right? Because the 2017 tax thing is coming up in next year again. So there's shrinkage. There's tax impacts of liquidation. So you know, there's shrinkage. There's tax impacts of liquidation, so they don't. The other big thing is that in a long term care planning scenario, you generally have a spouse, two spouses, right, one spouse goes down. You need to start liquidating assets or taking retirement income to pay for the the six spouses care. What does the well spouse live on? So, again, when you start taking apart the machine that's designed to carry you through retirement, the machine will break down. So some amount of long-term care insurance or whether it's life, whatever it is having insurance, sharing that risk with a whole big pool of other people with a tax-favored vehicle, life insurance, long-term care insurance those are all tax-free benefits and that's a huge, huge benefit to these policies and that's a huge huge benefit to these policies.

Tony Steuer:

Yeah, and I think you point out something that's especially important for people is the timing. You don't know when you're going to have these events and anything could be happening. You know, if it was a great recession and you had to sell your assets, you'd be selling them at a much reduced value or market's down, and you're heavily into stocks. So, barry, to start to close out, is what is your go-to resource on money? What is your number one resource? Is it a podcast? Is it a website? Is it a newsletter? What's the one thing you'd recommend to people?

Barry Fisher:

Wow, that's a great question Again, know again. I mean, as you know, with my, with my radio show, I every week I'm doing something about protection and I do a ton of research every week on various different topics. I guess you know again, I find one of the best resources. I think Investopedia does a pretty good job on a lot of on a lot of stuff does a pretty good job on a lot of stuff.

Barry Fisher:

I think you know I definitely stay away from Wikipedia, yeah, but again, I just read a variety. I, you know I will say that one of the best resources that I use for multiple topics is and I don't want to get it's a website called Real Clear topics. Is it's, and I and I don't want to get it's it's a website called real clear, real clear politics, real clear money, real clear investing, real clear education. They've got a. They do real clear investigation. I mean it's, it's so real it's. If you'll go to real clear politicscom is the name, is the actual website, but it's not political, it it's not all political and they always give you both sides of an issue, political or otherwise. So I really like that.

Barry Fisher:

And again, when I do a search, a lot of times on one of the topics, investopedia comes up, especially for consumers. It's understandable, it's clear, it's in bullet points. I love bullet points. You know people think in bullet points. So, yeah, that's probably my go to stuff. When I, when I think and obviously I look at the Wall Street Journal and I, you know Barron's and and all that kind of stuff, I find one of the things that I, you know, I find some of the stuff. I won't mention any specific magazines, but a lot of magazines will have, you know, stuff written in them that is basically the writer is paying for that space. You know, in one way or the other it's a sales pitch for that. They're market makers. Basically they're market making articles and so they're not necessarily research, it's just one sided. So that's where I generally go.

Tony Steuer:

Well, I think you said something super important at the end is that people, when you're looking at sources of information, even outside the financial spectrum, is think about is this biased information, as you point out? Is it presenting an argument on both sides? Who's paying for it? That's an important factor. So if you're watching TikTok and you see that video on Be your Own Banker, but at the same time that person's trying to sell you whole life insurance, that may not be your best source of information.

Barry Fisher:

Well, you know, again, I mean, yeah, I, every day I have more disdain for social media of all of all types. You know, I mean, probably one of the best social media sites that you and I are both use it is LinkedIn, right, but half the stuff, a lot of high percentage of this stuff, is advertiser paid on there. So, again, if you want to do your research and again, if you have a good financial advisor or insurance agent, that's a great source too, because especially somebody who's been in the business for a while, who has a deep understanding of their areas of specialization but also has a deep understanding of what they don't know, and can get you to the right place, because I think that's a really important thing to consider.

Tony Steuer:

Yeah, I love that. You know, I think the smartest people are the ones who are the ones who can say you know, this is not something I know. Right, let me find out for you. That's the type of insurance agent or financial advisor you're looking for. Out for you, that's the type of insurance agent or financial advisor you're looking for. Somebody will reach a point and say you know what, I'm going to have to check on this and get back to you because that's not something I know. Beware of the person who has an answer to every single question right off the bat. So that's a great tip. So, barry, to close out, what is your number one tip on changing the way we think about money?

Barry Fisher:

You know I don't. I think my tip for consumers would be that Listen, you know at some level. Again, we're going back to the same topic. What I find about working with with consumers is they read a lot of stuff online and whether they understand it or they don't understand it. Again, the number one tip is to find somebody you trust and you can work with I mean really because you know, ultimately somebody like me, somebody who's a financial advisor, you know, we're just here to help you. We're your Sherpa, basically we're there. We're here to assist you to sort through the clutter, because there is a lot of clutter out there. So and and so, and don't let, don't, don't get paralysis through analysis.

Barry Fisher:

If you know, if you're dealing with somebody you trust and seems to know what they're talking about, the insurance companies that they are representing are top rated companies. You know a rated companies are better. Um, it here here's. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is okay. I mean, again there's. I think we could do a whole show on this. But but there is this whole series of life insurance products with no cost benefits. They call them no cost benefits Critical illness, chronic illness, terminal illness. There is no such thing as no cost. You either pay the cost up front or you're going to pay it in the back. So if it says no cost, that's something to be concerned about. Anything good has a cost.

Tony Steuer:

Yeah, and insurance companies are not nonprofits.

Barry Fisher:

They are, Nor should they be. They got to pay. They got to pay. They got to pay their claims right.

Tony Steuer:

Yeah, and that gets back. You know I don't want to reopen the whole conversation, but I think that gets back to what we were talking about with the rate increases and everything else is at the end of the day, insurance companies have to be able to pay claims, as you just point out, and so when insurance companies you know they are regulated they do have to have their premium increases approved by various state insurance departments, but they have to make a profit at the end of the day.

Tony Steuer:

If they're not able to make a profit, they can't pay their claims and they can't stay in business. Um so, Barry, where can people learn more about you? Where can they tune into, uh, protecting what matters?

Barry Fisher:

Well, okay. So, uh, protecting what matters as a weekly 90 minute radio show on K show on KPRL in Paso Robles, california. It's live radio but you can listen in at 1230 on Tuesday online at kprlcom. But I also take the show at the end of the show and we cut out the commercials and I post it on my website so you can see all my past shows at wwwpwmradiocom and then you can see what else I do on my website. And whether it's long-term care insurance or business valuation or life insurance, I'm all about protecting what matters and I'm, you know, feel very, you know, blessed that I get to keep doing this for as long as I'm, as long as I I want to, and it can help people, so, okay.

Tony Steuer:

That's awesome and for everybody watching and listening. As always, there will be links to Barry's website, to the radio show and everything else, so you can get in touch with Barry, you can tune into the radio show and everything else. So you can get in touch with Barry, you can tune into the radio show and find him.

Barry Fisher:

So, barry, thanks very much for coming on the Get Ready Money podcast. Thank you for having me, tony. It's a pleasure and I have to get you back on protecting what matters. I should have looked up the date. You were on about a month and a half ago or two months ago, I think it was a great show. So you can hear Tony and I banter back and forth about financial literacy. It was great.

Tony Steuer:

Yeah, it's always a lot of fun Barry hanging out. We did a lot of work together but we won't open up that because I don't think that's very interesting for me watching this thing. But thank you everyone, as always, for tuning in to this episode of the Get Ready Money podcast. If you learned something today to change the way you think about money, please be sure to subscribe and to tell a friend. Until next time, let's change the way we think about money. You.

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Tony Steuer

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