Mable and Tom first became clients of Financial Foundations in 1983. Tom passed away in the late 90’s and Mable has been on her own ever since.

Both of their daughters (Janice and Clare) live in Gippsland, which is at least an hour away. This had never been an issue as Mable was happy living on her own, but also had a healthy friendship group whereby they would support one another whenever it was needed.

Mable called Janice late one night, telling her that she had fallen and hurt herself but couldn’t remember when, and didn’t think it was too serious, but that she also couldn’t get off the ground. Janice immediately contacted one of Mable’s friends and then called for an ambulance to go out and see her.

Janice and Clare rushed down to be with Mable. However, as it turned out, Mable spent the next three weeks in hospital, during which her doctors strongly advised them to make alternate arrangements as it was no longer safe for Mable to go back home. Janice and Clare had no idea what they were in for.

Mable had been managing her own finances ever since Tom passed away and had always been quite competent at doing so. Janice and Clare knew she had a financial adviser and thought she was doing OK, but aside from that, they were completely unaware of her financial situation and the types of investments she owned.

More recently, though, Janice and Clare had become increasingly concerned about Mable’s wellbeing as they noticed that she kept missing several appointments and was often repeating herself, asking the same questions over and over. Mable hadn’t been diagnosed with any cognitive impairment and while she insisted everything was OK, Janice and Clare had been planning to get her tested sooner rather than later.

Over the next few days and after rummaging around Mable’s home, they found in her filing cabinet her most recent review pack detailing some of her investments and our contact details.

They contacted our office. We made an appointment to see them the next morning.

During our appointment, we went through the following in details:

Step 1 – Next steps from here for Mable, the approval process, types of Aged Care available

Step 2 – The different fees associated with Aged Care such as upfront and ongoing costs and how her current investments might affect each other.

Step 3 - Option for Marble's home.

Step 4 – Marble's wealth portfolio in it's entirety including super, shares, and various bank deposits.

Step 5 –  Potential ways to fund her Aged Care costs and considerations/strategies to reduce her daily care costs.

Over the next 4-6 weeks, we worked closely with Janice and Clare to help them navigate the aged care financial landscape, which included selling part of Mable’s investment portfolio to fund her Refundable Accommodation Deposit (RAD). We also ensured there were enough funds available to cover Mable’s ongoing expenses.

They subsequently sold Mable’s home and we invested the proceeds in a deliberate way to minimise the impact on Mable’s Age Pension entitlements as well as her ongoing Aged Care costs.

Janice and Clare where forever grateful for our guidance and feel like they never would have been able to do this alone.  So much so that they have both since become ongoing clients of Financial Foundations.