The Longevity Paradox with Michael Banner — Full Episode Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of the Caregiver's Compass. Today we're joined by Michael Banner, the founder and host of the 62 Who Knew podcast, one of the largest retirement planning platforms in the country. He's dedicated to helping Americans prepare for the last 30 years of their life. Michael focuses on one of the most important realities facing families today. Longer lifespans are a gift, but they're also financial and healthcare challenges that come if you're not prepared.

With over 40 years of experience in housing and retirement planning, Michael brings powerful and emotional insight into how individuals can protect their independence, build lasting financial security, and navigate retirement with confidence and clarity. Mike is an incredible asset that you can find at 62 Who Knew and on LTCareNav, but it goes even deeper. LTCareNav will be joining 62 Who Knew as a national sponsor. And I will also be joining Mike on his podcast on February 16th. I'm so excited that we met and we have this newfound partnership and we're doing all these things. So let's get started and welcome Michael to the show.

Thank you so much for having me, Lindsay. I'm also so excited. Meeting you a couple of weeks ago on a professional level has been incredible. You're like a breath of fresh air, quite frankly, and you really could be that missing link to so many — not thousands, but maybe hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people that need what LTCareNav is doing and is going to be doing now on a national basis. It really touched me. It's incredible.

Thank you so much, that means so much to me. But you're doing some amazing things too. You really are. And your podcast is brilliant and so is all your offerings on your site. And I think one of the things that I really loved about what you and I talked about was really about how longevity is becoming a double-edged sword. That's something you really focused on. And would you just tell everybody what you mean by that?

Well, you know, I used to start my show with this, but as we got bigger and better, I guess, a lot of my sponsors said, you know, the beginning of your show is way too long, Michael, just get to it. But the truth of the matter is, as people approach retirement — 62, some people 65 — my parents, my grandparents, your parents, your grandparents, great grandparents, everybody kind of has those same questions when they get to those early mid-60s.

You're literally questioning your mortality for the first time, because at your age, you're invincible and blah, blah, blah. But you learn in your 60s, you're not. Should I have paid off my house quicker? Should I take Social Security? Should I defer it to a later date? I don't love my job, but I don't hate it. I wonder if I should keep working longer. Should I have invested more? All our parents and grandparents and their parents had those questions.

But my generation, which is the older baby boomers, and most certainly your generation and your children's generation, have one other obstacle that no generation has ever had to face. And that's longer lifespans. My parents retired in their mid-60s, and dad and mom kind of had a plan for the next 10 years. My grandparents probably had a plan for the next eight years. I'm trying to retire in my mid-60s, upper 60s — let's not tell anybody that. But I have to plan for the next 25 or 30 years, because the odds are I'm going to live to be 90.

And it took some personal losses from older relatives that I felt on a personal level for me to really see the depth of that problem, and to see that really and truly only the top 2 percent of the country can afford to retire in their early to mid-60s living to be their 90s with a high quality of life. And the rest of the other 98 percent of us, we're going to be working, and that might be a great thing. But if we didn't make those plans in our 40s and 50s to be 90...

Those last 30 years could be very, very difficult, or they could be great if they plan for it. Sometimes as you get older, it takes that personal loss for the light bulb to go up. And that's what kind of happened to me with someone.

So you keep mentioning 90s, and I think, you know I adore you, but you're probably looking at 90s. My generation, right? We're probably looking at 100. They're talking about people who are going to live to 110. How is it going to be possible for us — me, my children — to be able to afford care? What does that look like? Because you can't really work till you're 100. What is that going to look like for people, both affording your healthcare and your long-term care? What are your predictions about that?

That is the question of the millennium. Because yes, you're not only going to live to be 100 or 110, and your children even further. What's more important is at 110, you're probably going to be playing tennis or pickleball or water skiing. It's not just living now, it's living with quality. And you really hit the nail on the head.

If you go back to the 80s, which is only 40 years ago, maybe 90s — let's do some real examples. God forbid you got AIDS, you tested positive for HIV. That was a death sentence. Now you take pills and you live as long as anyone else. Prostate cancer, which almost all men in their 60s and 70s go through — 20 or 30 years ago, that was life threatening. Today, literally, if you catch it in the first two stages, it is 95 percent curable. And from the woman's point of view, which was one of my personal losses, whether it's ovarian cancer, uterine cancer, breast cancer, if caught in the early stages, you live. And you don't live badly, you live.

And the modern technology and scientific breakthroughs of the last 40 years are going to be dwarfed by what's coming in the next 20 years. Just dwarfed. It'll look like Fred Flintstone days. So I wish I had an answer for your question, but there is a plethora — I've loved that word since before you were born, I use it whenever I can — there is a plethora of problems coming with these longer lifespans.

Right now in America, the greatest country in the world, there's a shortage of senior nurses, a shortage of doctors, a shortage of homes for seniors. What's going to happen when we're living another 20, 30 years? Where are the nurses and the doctors coming from? Where are the homes coming from? How about a food shortage? And insurance? If premiums cost X, because the smartest people in the world, which are called actuaries, say we're going to live to be 90, how much are our premiums going to be if we're going to live to be 110?

I don't know. I know that we have to prepare for it, unless mommy or daddy or Uncle Ralph are going to die and leave you $10 million. You have to prepare for it. And quite frankly, most of America doesn't know this, but they can prepare for it by making their proper investments in their 40s and 50s, by buying long-term care insurance in their 40s and 50s while they're healthy. 40s might be a little early — 50s, while they're healthy and the premiums are low. There's all sorts of things they can do to prepare for this schism, this great unknown of longer lifespans.

And I know, because you and I have spoken, that some of the things you have to really address are not just financial. Healthcare and financial have to kind of go hand in hand. If you have one tip on each — one for healthcare, one for financial — what is your number one tip for each of those that families should plan for?

A team. It just kills me sometimes, even me with 40 years experience, when close friends and relatives... You know: have you been talking about long-term care insurance? You're 52 years old, you're a nonsmoker, you're healthy. Yeah, I've been talking to my wife's brother-in-law. Oh, he's a long-term care insurance expert? Well, no, he just got his license a few weeks ago, but holidays would be really rough if I didn't buy my insurance from him.

Have a team. Have a financial expert, even if you're not a millionaire. There are great financial planners out there. There are people that will create a plan. Have a team of people that you trust and that have the expertise to help you with this plan, health-wise and financially. Put that team together. They're easy to find. You'll help them find it. Personally, I'll help them find it through 62 Who Knew.

There's no shortage of help. But it's like all these people I know that need dental work, and dental work is so expensive, so they go to the dental college because it's cheaper. And I go, yeah, I don't think so. I'm not having somebody put a drill in my mouth that has never really passed the class yet. Don't do that with your financial plan. Use an expert.

So you are an expert in a bunch of these things. But one I want to talk about, because I think it really is super misunderstood — people hear it and see commercials on AARP — is reverse mortgages. And I know you and I have talked a little bit about how it's a changing market, but can you tell our listeners a little bit about what that is and why there are so many misconceptions around it?

Well, the reverse mortgage — we might lose viewers as soon as you said reverse mortgage, but don't go away. Lindsay would never steer you wrong.

The reason why the words reverse mortgage strike such fear in people's lives is because the product was introduced really in the early 60s. People don't realize that. People think, oh, it's only since the Great Recession of 2008, 2009. No, it's been around for 65 years. And the truth of the matter is the first 50 years — five zero — it was not a very good product. It just wasn't.

Every false rumor that you hear today that is false, that is scary — oh, they're going to take my house, my children are never going to get their inheritance, my God, my children are going to owe a fortune if I live too long — that is not true. But it was, and it was for five decades. And it started changing right around 2009, and then there were more changes in 2013, 2016, 2018. No changes since then, but today's reverse mortgage is one of the finest retirement planning tools, long-term tools for aging in place, ever created.

Forget Mike Banner — there are Nobel Prize winners out there in economics that will say it's the finest thing since the Social Security Act. But when you do bad for 50 years, when you're overpriced and all sorts of other bad things happen, people don't forget. I always use the analogy: you and your husband and your daughter go out to a new restaurant tonight and you've never been there. And the service isn't that good and the food was bad and the bill was high. You're probably going to tell 20 people tomorrow about it.

That's the reverse mortgage. I've given speeches to rooms with as little as five people, as much as 500, and had people raise their hand and go, Mr. Banner, I know they paid you to be here, but I'm just telling you, you're not telling us the truth. I remember when I was a kid, my grandmother losing her house to a reverse mortgage. And you just said that can't happen. And I'm going to say, okay, I'm not going to embarrass you and ask you how old you are in front of this crowd.

But how long ago was that? Oh, it had to be at least 30 years. That's not today's reverse mortgage. I believe you, but that's not today. So right now, for people that are equity rich and cash poor — which in my age bracket, 62 and above, I'm above that — there are so many millions of seniors that have $500,000 in equity in their house, but they're waiting for their Social Security check to go to Walgreens or CVS to get their pharmaceuticals.

People shouldn't have to live like that. When you use an expert like yours truly — and this one I'll say I'm an expert — you can increase your quality of life, increase your cash flow, without increasing your debt structure, because there are no mortgage principal and interest payments on today's reverse mortgage for as long as you live. And your children are not exposed to the liability. That's a show unto itself, but to your viewers: please don't let what you've heard about the reverse mortgage of yesteryear affect your opinion today.

And I think that's really important, because long-term care is really expensive. It's getting more and more expensive. People want to stay in their homes, right? And it's not affordable. And when you plan a little later, there are fewer financial tools available. Long-term care insurance might not be an option. And to know that there is something like a reverse mortgage, when you find someone who's credible and really good at what they do like you — it gives you options. And I think options are important, because when you're forced into something, it really pulls away your comfort in whatever your decision is, when it's a last minute decision. So I really love that that is something that you make available to people.

Any decision made in panic — any decision: health, financial, personal, waking up one day and going, when did I decide to marry her? — any decision made in a panic is a bad decision. And again, very close to my heart, and one of your areas of expertise, is long-term care insurance. If it's done in your 50s when you're still healthy, it is not expensive. It just isn't.

There are many ways to fund long-term care insurance. You can get payments for five years, 10 years, 15 years. You can do it in a lump sum. If you can't afford a lump sum, a good financial person can show you how to access a lump sum. There are so many incredible things. And again, sort of like reverse mortgages — these two products, reverse mortgages and long-term care insurance, they're so similar in that the consumer has so many misnomers about them. So much misinformation.

Oh, it's so expensive. No, it's not. Oh, that's nursing home coverage. I don't want to go into a nursing home. Long-term care insurance is not nursing home coverage. It's anti-nursing home coverage. It keeps you home. And like you said, every study, every survey, by the AMA, by any hospital — people live longer at home. So to prepare for that, you have to start preparing 20 or 25 years before you need it. And that's a big thing for Americans. God love us, we're very, well, I'll take care of it when I need it. No, this is something you have to take care of a couple of decades before you need it.

Yeah, and that actually brings me perfectly into what I was going to ask you next. There are all of these options. You know them, I know them. People in this space really understand. But most of them require that 20, 30 years of really thinking ahead. Why do you think, as Americans, we're not doing that? What do you think is keeping people from making these decisions?

It's people your age, Lindsay. I'm just saying it. Because when you're in your 30s and maybe stretching to your 40s a little, you're invincible. You look in the mirror and you see that. And that's normal. You feel that way. It sometimes takes a medical emergency or a loss of a loved one, like it did with me, to go, wow.

I need to think about this. It's also very emotional for the family. And this is probably number one to me. I remember with my dad, who you know I wrote a book about — we were the closest father and son in the world, and he was just the best man and the best father in the world. And I remember even when I was a teenager and in my 20s, I always would say that when dad needs to be taken care of, that's what I'm going to do.

And my mom was the greatest mom in the world, and I just loved her dearly. We lost her too early to cancer. She used to say to me, yeah, I know you keep saying that to your dad, but what if he goes first? And Lindsay, you're going to relate to this — maybe some of your viewers who have had a Jewish mother. I said, mom, I love you with all my heart, and I promise you I'll put you in the finest facility possible and we'll visit as often as possible.

I don't know if I could live with my mom, but be that as it may. Another story. When dad did need me, I was sorry that he did need me at 81 years old, but I was elated. We both sold our houses. I bought a house with two master bedrooms. Down here, we call that the mother-in-law's bedroom. He moved in with me. He was still ambulatory, sharp in the head, but he had congestive heart failure and time was probably limited.

We loved the same TV shows. He loved going to see my children do their karate and their competitive cheerleading, and everything was just great. But as things got worse — and he probably wouldn't like me telling this story, but I am, for the first time, Lindsay — he had an accident at like three in the morning. The house didn't have an intercom system, so I had a baby monitor, which he hated. World War II man's man. But he could just say something and I would hear him.

And he went, get up. That's what he always called me. Got a problem. It was like three in the morning. So I walked in: are you having a heart attack? No, I'm not having a heart attack, don't worry about it. I could see how frustrated he was, how embarrassed. I helped him out of bed. I had no problem with this. I helped him clean up. I cleaned his bed, cleaned his sheets. He sat in his chair, just steaming. I could see it, so I didn't say anything.

When he got back into bed, I said, what's the matter? And you've read my book, you know how close we are. He's like, this is not right. I said, what do you mean it's not right? He goes, this is not what you're supposed to be doing. I said, dad, we've been talking about this since I'm a kid. I'm going to take care of you. Everything's going to be fine. And he went, no, you don't understand. I need you to be my son this next year, 18 months — not my nurse. I don't want you wiping my — I won't say the word because you'll have to bleep it. I don't want you helping me in the bathroom. Get help. That's not what we do. I want to go watch Stacey do her cheerleading. I want to go watch Josh in his karate tournaments. I want to do everything with you. I want to sit down and watch NYPD Blue on Tuesday nights with you in the living room. I don't want this. This is not the way a man goes out.

So I hired people to do this. And we weren't millionaires, Lindsay, far from it.

But we did well. We owned a father and son mortgage company. And I thought — I didn't consider myself naive, but one day when I was sitting there with one of the in-home care workers... My father was a highly decorated POW from World War II, and he had the best insurance money could buy and a Medicare supplemental policy. And in-home care — he was 6'1", 220.

Once he fell down in the shower, it took my son and I all our strength to help him up. The in-home care was costing me about $6,000 a month. And that's after all the insurance. And thank God we could afford it. Even if we couldn't afford it, I would have mortgaged the house. Who cares? But one day I said to one of the in-home care people, who are just angels, I said, I feel like an idiot here, but what do people do that can't afford this?

And she said, well, he could go on Medicaid, and he would go into a home and they would take care of him. Not the way you want. And she said, yeah, they go into debt, or they get second and third jobs, or if they were smart, they bought long-term care insurance 20 years ago. He passed away on May 5th, 2005. So this was probably February 2005. And here I am, president of a mortgage company, but not a financial planner yet. I mean, what's long-term care insurance? What an idiot.

And that's what made me do what I do now. It just changed the way I looked at everything. Because you're so proud when you're in your 40s to say, I'm going to take care of mom, I'm going to take care of dad. And you're a wonderful son or daughter for saying that and doing it. But you're not taking into consideration, if you're a dad...

You don't want your son or your daughter coming into the bathroom to help you. If you're a mom, you don't want your son helping you with your private things. They want — they need you to be their loved one, not their nurse. And people don't get that. I didn't, until I was helping him off the floor in the shower. Excuse me, I'm getting a little...

Yeah, it is. It's really hard. It's hard for families, especially when you're not sure. And as somebody who's aging, if you're thinking about that as your children, I think what your dad said is really poignant in the fact that you are my son. When you become the main caregiver, sometimes you lose that primary father-son relationship, because it becomes caregiver and care recipient.

And one of the beautiful things that planning allows you to do is ensure that there can be a caregiver. And even if you have to do some care, that your primary relationship stays intact. Because that's really important to remember.

That's what they want to be. Yes. And there are so many other things. Again, I don't want to take too much of your time on the show, but there are so many other constraints — I shouldn't say constraints, it's almost like an octopus with the tentacles. A couple of my guests on 62 Who Knew — we might do a panel show and bring you on at the same time. Most of the time, the caretaker is the daughter, not the son. In this case, it was me. I have a wonderful sister. She's a wonderful human being, but the bond between my father and I — it was me.

Women usually do this because they're the caretakers of the family, and there are many books about it. I hope you'll have some of these people on your podcast. Husband and wife are both working in today's world, both making good money, not like my parents — mom was a greatest generation stay-at-home mom. Now the parents are in their 60s and ready to retire. And dad has X amount in his 401(k) and mom has half the amount. Wait a minute, mom made as much money. This is the 21st century, what happened? Mom took eight years off to take care of his parents and her parents. She wasn't earning income. She wasn't contributing to her 401(k). And 50 percent of marriages end in divorce.

Suddenly mom's going, my God, I took care of everybody and now I'm in my mid-60s and I can't afford to retire. There are so many ramifications with this longer life stuff, of becoming a caretaker for the caretaker. Sometimes caretakers get ill. The statistics would bring tears to your eyes if you knew how many times — or maybe you do — the caretaker predeceases the person they're taking care of, from stress.

So we're in for a strange new world. We're boldly going where this country has never gone before. I always use Star Trek references when I can. But this one's going to affect everybody. We've got to plan for it.

Yeah. No, you're right. And it is going to be really interesting to see what's ahead. And there are so many moving pieces, like you just said, about the wife who maybe took a couple of years off to care for the in-laws, their own parents. It really is — every piece of our financial security is going to be touched by long-term care, be it our own or our parents', in some way over the next 10 or 15 years.

So with that, if you could only give one piece of advice — because there's so much information, so many options, so many financial tools, and it gets confusing — your number one piece of advice of what to look for, what would that be?

Wow. That's a rough one. It would be to have a discussion with the family. Don't put this off. Of all the things, don't put this off. And this sounds self-serving, but I promise it's not: subscribe to people like yourself. Subscribe to people like myself at 62 Who Knew. Even if you never talk to us or use our services, learn.

They say knowledge is power. I'm going to be probably the first person to say this to you: that's actually crap. Knowledge is not power. Knowledge is the beginning of power. Acting on that knowledge, that's the power. I've run across so many people — I've been looking into long-term care insurance for eight years now. What are you waiting for? A heart attack? Because then it's too late. So knowledge is not power. The use of that knowledge is where power begins. And I guess that's what I have to say. You know it's going to happen to you. You're going to get old. You want to live. You want to live with quality. Take the knowledge and act on it.

I love that so much, not just for this podcast and for the listeners, just in general. I may have to write a LinkedIn post about that, because it truly is. Both you and I on our sites provide some knowledge on the front end, but I think what you and I do that's really the most impactful thing is we provide people and services that can help you act on that plan, that knowledge.

I am so glad you said that, because I really do think that that is so important. I hope our listeners can take that as: go to 62 Who Knew, come to LTCareNav.

That's right. What do they call it? Host swapping.

Yeah. So you'll find either of us on the other one's site and podcast. And I really do think that we're both here to help. We're really providing a service that truly is coming from our heart, from our experience. And I'm just going to say, everybody, Michael is amazing. Some of those tools are great. And you'll be able to hear more from Michael on my show, and I will be on his. We both are out to help you. So thank you so much, Michael, for being here, and I can't wait to have you back.

Me too, and I can't wait to see you later on my show. Everybody be good. Thank you.

Awesome. Yes. Thank you.