 Aloha everyone. Thank you for joining me on Think Tech Hawaii. I am Shonda Park, your host for Money Talks. Last month was recognized as Bereaved Parents Awareness Month and I had the opportunity to interview Gabby Goveil from Let Grace In and Joan Nagua of Hugs. Gabby mentioned her own personal struggles with financial stresses and financial worries after her son Grace In had a life-threatening diagnosis which required her 24-7 care up until he passed away at only age five and Hugs actually mentioned financial hardships in their mission statement. So this is not a very popular subject however I truly feel that financial planning in terms of all members of the family really needs to be discussed. So today my guest is Raeanne Ischevez. She has been a financial educator for over 10 years. She is a wife, a mom of two sons. She is a respected leader in our community and she is a longtime friend and colleague. So over the years I have learned so much from this woman and today I still continue to learn a lot from her. So I am very grateful that she is here today to talk about health-related financial hardships specifically with children. So Raeanne, welcome back to the show today. Hi Shonda. You know I just want to thank you so much. It's always a privilege to be here with you and always great to see you. Always great to see you too and again you know it was great having you on the show. I believe you were here in April so again thank you for being on and this show you know I know it has touched you personally and I want you to share your knowledge and experience and just start off with sharing your personal story in terms with a child in your own family. Yeah so you know my the tender age of three years old my nephew was actually diagnosed with leukemia. So you know this topic that we're going to talk about today is very near and dear to my heart because at you know just three years old experiencing leukemia in the family it was tough you know. So when you talk a lot about the emotional burdens that come with you know battling this cancer it's something that my family and I lived through. So my nephew is my older sister's son and you know I still till this day he's 15 years old now but I still remember you know the countless emergency visits even when his even when his temperature would spike just a little bit you know we would rush him to the emergency room right the countless times that he was hospitalized the medications the surgeries you know all of the medical related things that we had to experience so you know I understand first hand the emotional challenges that comes with that but not only that you know it all leads to financial challenges as well right. So luckily my brother-in-law was in the military so they had really good care but at the time my sister was not working because she had to provide for my nephew and you know and I know we're going to talk a little bit more about that but there's just so much that encompasses with you know find not just the emotional hardships that we go through but you know like what we're going to talk about today the financial hardships that really go into what the families deal with. Yes and families do deal with medical bills right like you mentioned and luckily for your nephew with his dad being in the military so he had coverage and unfortunately you know not all families have that so even on the hugs website it states that medical bills can range from thousands to millions of dollars which health insurance may not cover so will you expand on that. Yeah thousands of millions of dollars that's a lot of money so I think you know I want to talk about two things I want to talk about the short-term implications and really the long-term implications right or impacts that the families go through so I mentioned like with my nephew right medications countless visits whether it was the emergency or the hospitals and for some kids like you know they go through trial medications or treatments right so thousands to millions of dollars that's a lot of money so can you imagine you know for some families they can be in this battle not just fight this battle of what they're going through health wise but also financially it could literally follow a family um through there in many many years because that's a lot of money we're not just talking a few hundred dollars right thousands to even millions of dollars so can you imagine the financial stress that adds to the family due to just talking about the medical expenses alone now let's talk about the loss of income like I mentioned my sister was not working at the time so a lot of families you know that's usually what happens right we we have to cut down our hours at work or we have to quit altogether to care for our family and especially you know today we're talking specifically about children we want to be there for our kids right so it's only natural that um we are going to prioritize uh caring for our children at this time but when we think about financially the impacts of that now we're talking about now we've lost that income in addition to the financial stresses with the medical bills what about you know our day-to-day bills right we're still worried about that we lost our income but we still have to take care of our other financial responsibilities and also what a lot of families don't think about is loss of opportunity so if we're not working that means that you know maybe at this time this the season of our life we're not able to um save or we're not able to invest you know so when you think in terms of the domino effects right the um the financial impacts the loss of opportunity millions of dollars really essentially that can impact a family so that's huge and I think it's important to talk about you know um like you said Shonda it's not necessarily a topic that's popular um but it's necessary because it's not like something families I don't ever want any family to experience what we had gone through or some of the families um and like Grayson or hugs you know and many other organizations out there and many other families that have experienced this we never want this um any family to ever um go through this however I think we need to talk about you know the financial impacts that it has on a family yes I agree and like you said this is not something that people like to talk about it's a very unpopular topic however it's very necessary to discuss and educate families and although you know nobody wants to believe that anything will ever happen to their child right but as we've seen with hugs who has been in in existence celebrating 40 years how many families over all these years that they have helped through their program however what can families do you know with financial education to take a more proactive approach you know Shonda that's a really great question and in the previous shows that I was in I talked about the financial foundation and I want to talk about that again and I think it's really important to when we're really thinking about financial planning to take a holistic approach right so when you see the financial foundation the first layer that we see is proper protection right so proper protection ultimately what it means is that we want to be able to protect our income right any anything that may affect our ability to generate income we want to make sure we can protect and let me I will go back to proper protection in a minute but the next step that we should take is also debt management right we want to make sure that we minimize our debts and liabilities and then also start to build our emergency funds so you know we talk about loss of income right when it with these families imagine if they have three months six months a year worth of income saved aside this is one of the reasons why you know we want to have an emergency fund for maybe four situations as as this right from medical and I think a lot of times we think in terms of our own medical like if something were to happen to us medically um however it could be any member of the family especially our children right and then of course investing for the long term but let me go back to proper protection because you know we always say the financial foundation is is like building a house right you want to build it from the ground up and the proper protection is your first layer so when we talk about you know protecting your ability to generate income and what we're talking about today it can mean again if something were to happen to you or even your family members right so one example of proper protection is insurance um you know when we think about insurance in general it's really just the transfer of risk right or being able to replace something financially and so one way that a family can start to plan is you know having insurance for themselves but also considering having insurance for their children because children's insurance you know um I think a lot of times this is also a controversial topic right some people don't believe that it's necessary to have you know life insurance on their kids but some of the reasons why you may want to have it in place is for one you know we talked about um medical expenses right that's one you know there's many different types of life insurance I think if I may backtrack a little bit first of all I think a lot of times when people think about life insurance and why they don't think their children needs life need life insurance is because you know we only think of it as okay it's a benefit that we would receive if um you know we pass away right and yes that's true and when it comes to children you know maybe we can think that think about it could cover some funeral expenses you know we we haven't even talked about that right we talked about the um medical treatments we talked about loss of income but there's also that component too right of funeral expenses um that can cost the family several thousand dollars so that's one reason I think most common reason of what people would relate to when they think about life insurance but another way that we can think about this too is you know um there is you can actually accelerate the benefits of your life insurance meaning that you don't have to pass away in order to use the benefits and there's a rider that's usually available that's available to all policies that you can ask that will pay you if you have a terminal illness right it's called a terminal illness rider so if your family is dealing with that you can actually use your life insurance while you're still living to pay for things like medical expenses or you can even and if it's related to your loss of income that can also cover right the income replace the income that you're not receiving while being able to take care of your family yes so talking about having proper protection for every single member of the family how old do you actually have to be uh in order to have something like this in place that's actually you know um it can be as early as 15 days old right I know it's not like one of the first things we think about is when you know we have our children um but I shared with you that you know my nephew he was he was healthy he didn't have any health problems when he was born um and in fact it was just that how we found out he had leukemia he was playing with my other nephew bumped his you know ran into something um his neck started to swell up and it never went down and then we realized that he had cancer so you know why you would want to ensure your child is early as like 15 days old or a year old right um again it's it's it's really all up to the family but that is the soonest available that you can um you know have life insurance available for your children um but again because we never know right um it happened to him at three years old and now unfortunately because he has a history of leukemia he can no longer qualify for for any type of insurance um now at this time so you know it's more you know planning ahead of time and really having peace of mind right and to have something available to you as a resource so that you can take away some of that financial burden that's added so that we can focus on the more important things like being able to spend time and and really care for our family right because you drove home a very important part is that now because your nephew didn't have anything in place when he was born up into the diagnosis he is no longer insurable so even when he starts his own family right and wants to put financial planning in place uh when he has his own kids and you know to protect his income in case anything happens to him uh he's no longer insurable yes yeah and you know I think that that's one of the reasons why we want to start to think about this early on and like you said um when in terms of finances we should really be looking at our entire family and you know there's so many different options um as far as you know with the family there's they you can get life insurance for the children or you can add them to your plan so there's many different solutions available out there it's just that you know I think again like you said Shonda it's a very sensitive topic and it's not something we want to think about but we want to have these conversations because we just never know right and I think again it's better to have something just like we would want to we want to make sure that we have a plan in place in case something happens to us I think we should have the same approach when it comes to our children I agree I really feel that every member of the family should be protected and again it's something it's a sensitive topic a lot of people don't like to discuss it but it's really important that we do because when a child is born like you said you never know right uh parents are ecstatic baby is born with 10 fingers 10 toes perfectly healthy and then just like your nephew right it happened at age three where he is diagnosed with leukemia and so you never know even if your child is born healthy right it can happen at any time so what are um you know some examples of cost because people especially in Hawaii right um cost of living is so high so it's talk in terms of cost versus value and and what um what is the value of having something in place it is as early as 15 days old absolutely I mean I agree with you you know living in Hawaii is very expensive right and especially in most recent times with everything that's happening um I mean you know you just go like get gas or grocery you know we see that our our financial resources are being pulled in so many different directions right and sometimes I think um when it comes to putting some financial solutions in place sometimes we kind of look at the the the costs or the dollar amount right but you know with life insurance especially children's life insurance um it's one of those things that actually get more expensive as we get older so we want to actually get it um as early as possible while we're still insurable right it's just one of those things that we know it's important and um when we need it we can't get it or you can't have it right does that make sense um so you know when and for children's coverage their own individual plan you know you you're looking at in terms of a dollar a day or even a few cents a day right um with a child's individual plan uh and so you know and I think we many of us already spend that right um we already spend that money it's just a matter of again you talk about value you know they say that when you you we tend to uh allocate our resources our financial resources to things that are important to us right things that we value and so I think when it comes to um this topic that we're talking about the value is is peace of mind and really just having a plan in place in case something happens so you know yeah I like how you said that to get it when you don't need it because when you need it you won't be able to get it and I think that's you know a really important statement and planning financially to have that in place so specifically in terms of terminal illness with children to say a family did have something in place and then the terminal illness diagnosis comes how does how does something like this pay out if a family does have it in place that's a really great question so you know again it depends on the it depends on the plan it depends on the company right but for example you know companies let's say you have um if the plan could pay 50% even upwards of 100% of your life insurance amount right so whatever that looks like 100,000 200,000 right so you know um a million dollars again it really depends on you know your plan and the life insurance companies how they pay out so you're we're talking in terms of you know 50 even 50% of a plan right that could be a few months of salary for a family that could be you know the co-payments for the surgery that the child needed to have right so um or you know that's that's a significant amount of money that you know the families can really again um not have to worry about where it's going to come from so the death benefit is then advanced into a living benefit and that pays out while the child is still living in order to be able to pay for their care with terminal illness yes yes absolutely okay um and then you said that it depends on the company so it could be 50% to 100% yes it really depends on how the company will pay out so you know again if you already have a plan look through your contract it will say it in your contract um it how much the company will pay if you ever have a terminal illness and what makes uh what makes a person eligible to be able to collect terminal illness so terminal illness if you again that also depends on life insurance companies right it could be um if you have 12 months to live or 24 months to live then usually the families have an option to accelerate you know um whatever the allowable amount is so if it's 50% they can take a lump sum payment of 50% um so it really just depends on you know the the life insurance companies and the specific type of plans and contracts so definitely something to talk to um a licensed professional okay i encourage families to talk with a licensed professional about thank you for that so this is something that again it's really it's a difficult topic so i really want to thank you ryan for being on the show today and just expand on solutions that are out there you know especially after the two interviews that i did last month right with let grace in and and hugs and just knowing that there's so many families out there that needs the services of these organizations and maybe if they had this type of education um they can help others put something in place so that different families that may experience it in the future won't have to experience it in the same way that that they experience right not having a financial plan in place um so if families are able to alleviate the financial stresses and worries how how does that help in terms of their physical health emotional health and so on yeah you know i know that's um it there's really when we look at the you know um really look at the scope of how it affects the family you know um we know that a lot of times stress is directly correlated right with our with our health so we're already going through a stressful time in our life right um and especially you know with um the families who are dealing with your children um being sick right it's it that in itself is such a huge um stress on the family and you know it and i'm so grateful to you shawna for bringing up this topic because again um like you said over and over it's not something people want to talk about but i think it's so important to be able to um bring awareness to the community uh that there are solutions that we can put in place um we can take more proactive approaches and you know what um even with like your maybe your existing plan right now there are things that you can do like adding your child to your existing policies right so just making those little adjustments you know um can go a long way for the family but it all kind of starts with um going back to that initial that awareness first right because if we're not aware of it we're not thinking about it and if we're not thinking about it we're not going to take any action towards it right and so um again it's not something that families ever um you know we never want families to experience this but the truth is it could happen and it can happen to any family and just like we want to prepare for financially for many other areas in our life right um this is part of it right and and we've seen time and time again um statistically over and over again and even personally how um financed emotionally and financially uh it can burden the family and again you know to back to your question you know all of that stress impacts our health and then you know when our healthy clients our ability now to work and generate income it's all a domino effect right yeah and when you talked about the long term short term versus long term effects financial burdens can last you know unfortunately the person's entire life if something happens that they did not plan for right it can follow them up until that person passes away so for instance something happens to the child you know that that financial burden can follow the parents throughout the whole their whole entire life yes so it's just I think about peace of mind right and um ultimately yes ultimately peace of mind so again what you said um putting something in place when it's not needed yet and so just in case right for the unexpected because when you do need it you'll no longer be able to get it and I want to thank you again Reann for coming on sharing again about a topic that's very unpopular nobody wants to discuss their children getting sick their children passing away before them uh anything that has to do with a topic like that however again over and over we see that it does happen I personally experienced it I know many other parents unfortunately that have experienced it as well so I just want to thank you again for sharing what families can do to ease some of the physical and emotional stresses by alleviating the financial ones so do you have any last words for the viewers today Reann I just want to you know again thank you so much for this opportunity to have this conversation you know um I think when it when it hits close to home right that that's when we really realize the importance but we want to be here for the community to um raise awareness so that we can um be of service out there so thank you so much thank you everyone I will see you next time on Think Tech Hawaii thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii if you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo you can also follow us on Facebook Instagram Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at think.kawaii.com Mahalo