Home Alone: How to Keep Your Parents from Moving to a Retirement Home

Speaker A: 00:01:04

Foreign.

Speaker B: 00:01:09

Welcome to around the House with Eric G. Your trusted source for all things home improvement.

Speaker B: 00:01:15

Whether you're tackling a DIY project, hiring it out, or just trying to keep your home running smoothly, you're in the right place.

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With over 30 years of remodeling experience, certified kitchen designer Eric G takes you behind the scenes with expert advice, industry trends, and the latest innovations for your home.

Speaker A: 00:01:36

Home.

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It's everything you need to know without the fluff.

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Now let's get this show started with our host, Eric G. And John Dudley.

Speaker B: 00:01:45

Welcome to the around the House show, your trusted source for home improvement information.

Speaker B: 00:01:50

Thanks for joining us today.

Speaker B: 00:01:53

I'm sitting here with my buddy Johnny Dudley.

Speaker B: 00:01:55

Good to see you, brother.

Speaker A: 00:01:56

Hey, man, let's talk some turkey.

Speaker B: 00:01:59

What's in the corner exactly?

Speaker B: 00:02:01

I don't know if we want to call these people turkey, but I wanted to talk today about how to keep seniors in their homes since your mom asked about this one.

Speaker A: 00:02:09

Mom is, mom's always got her back with some, actually some legit ideas.

Speaker B: 00:02:14

She's.

Speaker A: 00:02:14

Hey, this would be good to talk about on the show.

Speaker A: 00:02:16

Hey, this would be.

Speaker A: 00:02:18

She's a sharp cookie.

Speaker A: 00:02:19

Still.

Speaker B: 00:02:20

She is.

Speaker B: 00:02:21

Still.

Speaker A: 00:02:21

I say still.

Speaker A: 00:02:22

She's young.

Speaker A: 00:02:22

She's young and viral and healthy.

Speaker A: 00:02:24

She's great.

Speaker B: 00:02:25

Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:02:26

My mom's not young and she's doing the best she can in the mid mid 80s.

Speaker B: 00:02:30

And you get up there where it's either doing really good or you're doing not so good.

Speaker B: 00:02:35

Yeah, it's either or.

Speaker B: 00:02:37

Usually.

Speaker A: 00:02:38

Yep.

Speaker B: 00:02:38

And that's.

Speaker A: 00:02:39

The poor kid had me at 17, which is paying benefits now.

Speaker A: 00:02:42

But at 17, I'm sure she wasn't thrilled.

Speaker B: 00:02:45

My parents were in the 30s, so it was one of those things.

Speaker B: 00:02:47

I was late.

Speaker B: 00:02:48

They wanted to get into their careers and do that stuff.

Speaker B: 00:02:50

And that's awesome.

Speaker B: 00:02:51

You're getting the benefit of that now.

Speaker B: 00:02:52

And.

Speaker B: 00:02:53

But that kind of shows into our topic today.

Speaker B: 00:02:56

It's a nice little segue into that about how to keep people into their homes because you and I are the same age and we've got two moms that are in totally different positions in life.

Speaker A: 00:03:08

Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:03:08

And it can go either way.

Speaker B: 00:03:10

And there's so many things you can do really, to make it seem a lot easier without it making it look like it's a retirement home with ugly metal grab bars everywhere and making it look like a hospital.

Speaker B: 00:03:23

Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:03:24

And she, my mom does an amazing job.

Speaker A: 00:03:27

Like her, first of all, she's always working on it like non stop.

Speaker A: 00:03:31

She's painting walls, she's carving a path.

Speaker A: 00:03:34

She's planting a tree.

Speaker A: 00:03:35

She's.

Speaker A: 00:03:36

But it always looks like some kind of retreat getaway.

Speaker A: 00:03:39

Like, she's just.

Speaker A: 00:03:40

She's got a great eye for stuff.

Speaker A: 00:03:42

She works a little harder than I think she needs to, but that's kind of.

Speaker A: 00:03:48

It's a.

Speaker A: 00:03:48

Keeping her healthy gets her out of her head.

Speaker A: 00:03:50

It saves her from all kinds of different stuff instead of just slothing around.

Speaker A: 00:03:54

Yeah, she'll get up one day and just tear out the damn countertops in the kitchen and then go, what do I do?

Speaker B: 00:04:00

What do I do now?

Speaker B: 00:04:00

Yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker A: 00:04:01

Always experimenting, always coming up with ways to make things a little easier to live in.

Speaker A: 00:04:06

And yeah, she runs into all kinds of stuff.

Speaker A: 00:04:09

Like the gravel thing we were looking at the other day.

Speaker A: 00:04:12

She's, man, she's got a big giant ass yard out on lake taps and she doesn't necessarily want to tame the grass and tame the weeds at all corners.

Speaker A: 00:04:21

And she's throwing that up at me like, hey, if I just get a bunch of pea gravel and pour glue on it makes these cool pathways.

Speaker A: 00:04:28

And I'm like, what's my mother doing?

Speaker A: 00:04:30

Sling pea gravel?

Speaker A: 00:04:32

First of all, you know, the other day she's, oh, I'm busy cutting up some carpet.

Speaker A: 00:04:36

I'm like, mom, what are you doing?

Speaker B: 00:04:38

What are you doing?

Speaker A: 00:04:38

Painting baseboards.

Speaker A: 00:04:40

So she definitely runs into.

Speaker B: 00:04:42

She needs to get goats.

Speaker B: 00:04:44

Yeah, yeah, I would love to throw goats in there.

Speaker B: 00:04:47

Never have to move along.

Speaker A: 00:04:48

Rent the goats.

Speaker A: 00:04:49

Rent the goats, Exactly.

Speaker B: 00:04:51

It's a money making deal.

Speaker B: 00:04:53

One of the things I wanted to talk about here is some of the most important things that we can do to really keep those homes in the right spot, just in the space.

Speaker B: 00:05:01

And a lot of the stuff we talk about is the basics.

Speaker B: 00:05:05

Installing grab bars and all those things.

Speaker B: 00:05:07

And yeah, that works.

Speaker B: 00:05:09

And I will say that grab bars that you put in the bathroom and stuff now can look super decorative instead of the ones when you're the last hotel room at the hotel room that you get, that's the ADA one, and you're like, looks like I get the wheelchair accessible unit.

Speaker B: 00:05:23

And it looks like you're staying in a hospital room for the weekend.

Speaker B: 00:05:26

But really, a lot of those basics do count.

Speaker B: 00:05:30

When you get over the age of 65 and up of taking care of the loose cords and the rugs and those kind of things, or the trip hazards and all those things clutter, making sure the furniture's up against the wall.

Speaker B: 00:05:42

These are all super important things.

Speaker B: 00:05:45

But some of the things that you have to work towards is, okay, what if you live in a multi level home and the bedrooms are upstairs.

Speaker B: 00:05:53

And this is something I figured out just a month or two ago.

Speaker B: 00:05:57

If you've got a multi level house and the bedrooms are upstairs, you see those stairlifts that are out there that you know, you can ride up the stairs on the side and they're not pretty.

Speaker B: 00:06:06

They're about three or four thousand bucks for those things.

Speaker B: 00:06:09

Brand new maybe, plus installation, depending where you are.

Speaker B: 00:06:13

The best deal to find those is on Craigslist or, you know, Facebook Marketplace or any one of those online places because you can pick them up after someone needs them.

Speaker B: 00:06:24

Maybe somebody moved into a retirement community and they're like, hey, we're going to put the house up for sale.

Speaker B: 00:06:28

You can get those things for 500 bucks to a thousand bucks almost every time.

Speaker A: 00:06:33

And there's a lot of those not to break in.

Speaker A: 00:06:35

Sorry.

Speaker A: 00:06:36

There's a lot of those used medical equipment places as well that are actual stores.

Speaker A: 00:06:41

You know, needed a walker for six months, don't need it.

Speaker A: 00:06:43

It's 10 bucks instead of 110.

Speaker B: 00:06:46

Damn.

Speaker B: 00:06:47

Absolutely.

Speaker B: 00:06:49

Certified.

Speaker B: 00:06:50

Yeah, they've got them certified where they've gone through to make sure they're golden and they'll come to style them for you.

Speaker B: 00:06:54

Now you're talking about: 1500

Speaker B: 00:06:57

There's a lot of ways to get around this without making it the right way.

Speaker B: 00:07:02

And especially today when you know someone was going to go into assisted living.

Speaker B: 00:07:07

Holy smokes.

Speaker B: 00:07:08

That can be 7, 9, 10,000 bucks a month.

Speaker B: 00:07:12

And we're not even talking memory care.

Speaker B: 00:07:14

And some of those things, they eat even more than that.

Speaker B: 00:07:16

So anything you can do to keep someone in their home just a little bit longer, that pays for itself really quickly considering what the costs are to put somebody into an assisted care place where they don't have to worry about these things.

Speaker A: 00:07:29

Yeah, there's a lot of just basic maintenance things that a lot of folks just don't think about.

Speaker A: 00:07:34

My grandpa was a bit of a maniac.

Speaker A: 00:07:37

He was still up on the roof at 88.

Speaker A: 00:07:39

Got to repair this roof.

Speaker A: 00:07:41

Still chopping down trees.

Speaker A: 00:07:42

He's still, I imagine he was legally blind, but wouldn't cop to it.

Speaker A: 00:07:47

Still riding a scooter around.

Speaker A: 00:07:49

Go down to work on his boats at the docks and he was just like constantly splicing flowers together.

Speaker A: 00:07:56

Had a huge garden.

Speaker A: 00:07:57

The guy never stopped.

Speaker A: 00:07:58

Yeah, that's not your typical retired 70s, 80s couple.

Speaker A: 00:08:06

But there are certain maintenance things that don't have to be difficult that maybe save bigger problems down the road, whether that's considering some roof repair or considering air leaks for efficiency with heating bills or.

Speaker B: 00:08:22

Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:08:23

Are the window seals cracking or the like just things that you can take a look at and check and then follow up on the ones that are easy for you.

Speaker A: 00:08:32

But also we start getting into where do I find these 23 year old handyman that'll come do this at a fair price and do it right and not take advantage of a senior.

Speaker A: 00:08:42

And I think that's a real big issue for some of these folks.

Speaker B: 00:08:45

Sure.

Speaker A: 00:08:46

As you and I will know many years in the construction industry they're like oh, they're old people and they've got money and they live with a view of Lake Washington and I'm going to choose to wash their windows on the outside.

Speaker B: 00:08:59

Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:09:00

Do I want my grandma or grandpa up on a ladder washing windows two stories up, 60 years old?

Speaker A: 00:09:06

No.

Speaker A: 00:09:06

Do they got to get washed?

Speaker A: 00:09:07

Yes, at some point they do.

Speaker A: 00:09:09

Like it's just basic household chores that the less mobile you get as an aging person, the harder that stuff gets and the more it gets behind unless you take care of it.

Speaker A: 00:09:22

And I think what I'd like to see us do Eric is create a list, really touch on certain items of that list.

Speaker A: 00:09:29

We don't have that prepared currently but I think just going forward, even just making a little segment that's hey, senior tip for the day, use a mop pole to wash your windows or I.

Speaker B: 00:09:40

Don'T know what it is like that.

Speaker A: 00:09:42

I'm just babbling at this point so.

Speaker B: 00:09:43

I'll be quiet but have been ranting here for a while.

Speaker B: 00:09:46

We've run over.

Speaker B: 00:09:47

Let's go to break real quick and we come back.

Speaker B: 00:09:48

We'll talk more when around the House returns.

Speaker B: 00:09:51

Don't go anywhere.

Speaker B: 00:09:53

To find out more information, head to aroundthehouse online.com don't change that dial around the House.

Speaker B: 00:09:59

We'll be right back after these important messages.

Speaker A: 00:10:29

Sam.

Speaker B: 00:11:07

Welcome back to the around the House show.

Speaker B: 00:11:09

Your trusted source for home improvement information.

Speaker B: 00:11:13

Johnny and I are sitting here having a great time talking about some things that you can do to stay in your house longer for the people out there that are aging in place.

Speaker B: 00:11:20

Or maybe even you got mom or grandma coming in to move into you, into your place to figure out how to keep her safe and under control and happy and comfortable.

Speaker B: 00:11:32

These are some great tips for you out there and it's really interesting.

Speaker B: 00:11:36

Johnny.

Speaker B: 00:11:37

There's some technology out there man that's really starting to change things out there and there's different ways to do fall protection with Technology used to have the, you know, I've fallen and I can't get up.

Speaker B: 00:11:50

Right.

Speaker B: 00:11:51

You hit the button and you know, you get somebody or whatever.

Speaker B: 00:11:55

Now it's gone so much farther than that.

Speaker B: 00:11:59

Now there's a company out there that uses the WI fi signal in your home.

Speaker B: 00:12:05

So if you've got like a, let's say you've got a mesh network they can put into the wet.

Speaker B: 00:12:12

They can put a program into the mesh network and you can see if someone is walking around inside of the house where the signal is being disrupted of someone walking around.

Speaker B: 00:12:25

So if you have your mesh network and they put the program on there, you know, each one of those transmitters is putting out data waves.

Speaker A: 00:12:33

Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:12:33

Now read what the signal coming from the other one is back from those repeaters basically.

Speaker B: 00:12:39

And it can tell if someone is moving in the house.

Speaker B: 00:12:42

And so it can even do a fall sense that if somebody falls, you know, it's brand new technology, but really cool.

Speaker B: 00:12:49

Using those waves of the, you know, that 2.4 gigahertz as that Wi Fi is going out, it's using that to measure, to see where it's bouncing and where it's bouncing off of.

Speaker B: 00:13:01

Almost like a radar.

Speaker A: 00:13:02

Wow.

Speaker A: 00:13:03

So then somebody falls and some alert.

Speaker B: 00:13:05

Goes out and well, it'll say, hey, warning someone might be laying on the ground.

Speaker B: 00:13:10

Now it does that.

Speaker B: 00:13:12

Now there's a ton of stuff too from watches.

Speaker B: 00:13:14

Um, you know, it's lifeguard uses the non intrusive sensors.

Speaker B: 00:13:19

You know, there's a lot of different things that you see out there that can still give you that privacy.

Speaker B: 00:13:23

You know, lots of different GPS and fall detection.

Speaker B: 00:13:28

Even my.

Speaker B: 00:13:29

Sheesh.

Speaker B: 00:13:29

Even my iPhone watch.

Speaker B: 00:13:31

If I go out there and go on the ladder and if I fell off the ladder and if I get the right G force on my watch, it goes, hey, are you okay?

Speaker B: 00:13:39

And it'll buzz me and it will buzz me until it'll keep buzzing me and get louder and louder.

Speaker B: 00:13:45

And if I don't respond to it, it calls my emergency contact or 911, however you set it up.

Speaker B: 00:13:51

Which is kind of cool.

Speaker A: 00:13:52

Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:13:53

Yep.

Speaker A: 00:13:54

Especially if you can't move.

Speaker B: 00:13:56

You know, we've all been there.

Speaker B: 00:13:57

We were laying on the ground going, oh man, I'm in trouble.

Speaker B: 00:14:00

And be kind of nice to have that on your wrist.

Speaker B: 00:14:02

Even though you're probably lost your phone in the fall.

Speaker B: 00:14:05

You got something on your wrist.

Speaker B: 00:14:05

At least that's telling you you're okay.

Speaker A: 00:14:07

Yeah, had a couple of those where I'm like, nope, I'm just not Moving.

Speaker B: 00:14:13

Yeah, well, we're talking about that today.

Speaker A: 00:14:15

I'll be here in a minute.

Speaker B: 00:14:17

Yeah, I laid there on that concrete floor with the fire extinguisher for, like, five minutes going, yeah, I think I can do this.

Speaker B: 00:14:23

I think I can do this.

Speaker B: 00:14:25

So, you know, it's one of those things.

Speaker B: 00:14:26

It just really, really can make a difference with that.

Speaker B: 00:14:29

My son has seizures, and he's got a watch that senses the seizures.

Speaker B: 00:14:33

And before it comes on, it senses it and will, hey, go.

Speaker B: 00:14:36

Hey, you sit down.

Speaker A: 00:14:38

You know, grab on to something.

Speaker B: 00:14:40

Yep, you're going for a ride.

Speaker B: 00:14:42

And so a lot of things that I say, and here's another one I think it's super important as well, and that is using, like, electronic door locks for the same kind of thing.

Speaker B: 00:14:55

If you've got, you know, like, my other house, I had the bald one.

Speaker B: 00:14:58

You know, the door locks.

Speaker B: 00:14:59

There's better technology stuff now, and they've got some new stuff coming out here in the next few weeks.

Speaker B: 00:15:04

But what's cool is, is that you can take on your phone and unlock your front door.

Speaker B: 00:15:10

So let's say.

Speaker B: 00:15:12

Let's say you are, you know, 75 years old and you go take a nice hot bath and realize, oh, man, my legs are jello.

Speaker B: 00:15:22

I can't get out of this tub.

Speaker B: 00:15:24

Now you can call for somebody to come help you and unlock the door with your phone, and they're not having to come break a window trying to get in, you know, Trying to.

Speaker B: 00:15:33

Because, you know, what's one thing that seniors usually do is they lock themselves in pretty tight.

Speaker B: 00:15:38

And so that's one of those things that I think is important.

Speaker A: 00:15:41

Yeah, no, that's.

Speaker A: 00:15:42

That's a good idea.

Speaker A: 00:15:44

I mean, even again, even if it's just you can't move, you know, even if it's.

Speaker A: 00:15:49

I'm too sick in bed and can't even get up.

Speaker A: 00:15:52

Dad, you need help there?

Speaker A: 00:15:53

I've been there.

Speaker B: 00:15:54

Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:15:54

I'm not old.

Speaker B: 00:15:56

Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:15:57

Like, yeah, I've been in the.

Speaker A: 00:15:59

I hope nobody knocks on the door, because if they do, I can't.

Speaker A: 00:16:03

I'm not even getting out of this bed.

Speaker A: 00:16:04

I can't move.

Speaker A: 00:16:05

And, you know, they're going to be stuck there.

Speaker B: 00:16:08

Yeah, that's one of the roughest situations I was in.

Speaker B: 00:16:12

There was this girl I was dating up in Seattle.

Speaker B: 00:16:15

I'll just leave it at that.

Speaker B: 00:16:16

Her dad had stage seven Alzheimer's, and she was living.

Speaker B: 00:16:21

They had a kind of a daylight basement that was an adu, and he was in the house.

Speaker B: 00:16:28

And.

Speaker B: 00:16:28

Oh, man, I really learned A lot about dealing with people with those degenerative mental diseases like that, because he would go out and try to drive his truck.

Speaker B: 00:16:42

Well, he was smart enough that if I disconnect, we hit his keys.

Speaker B: 00:16:45

He would go find them, or he'd have an extra set hiding someplace or whatever.

Speaker B: 00:16:50

So finally I took a car battery and took all the guts out of it and put the shell of the box back in the truck and hooked the battery up.

Speaker B: 00:16:59

And he just thought his truck was broken and couldn't ever get into it.

Speaker B: 00:17:03

But that's how he did that.

Speaker B: 00:17:05

But here's one of the problems that we've run into, and I know this is a touchy subject for families and for seniors out there as well, is there comes a time when it's not safe for you to drive on the road and, you know, you're just not as fast as you used to be.

Speaker B: 00:17:21

Some states, like in Washington, where you and I used to live, we went to go try to get his license taken away, and they're like, well, there's no way to anonymously do it.

Speaker B: 00:17:34

If you wanted to have them reexamined, you're going to take the fall for it because they're going to tell them who reported you, and now you're going to have the family fight.

Speaker A: 00:17:45

Those are sticky issues, man.

Speaker A: 00:17:47

And I've gone through similar situations.

Speaker A: 00:17:50

How do I put this eloquently, where, you know, that the greater good would be served by government, hospital, law enforcement, et cetera, taking some action.

Speaker A: 00:18:03

And it's.

Speaker A: 00:18:04

It's been in my past, extremely surprising to me how unwilling they are to back you on that.

Speaker B: 00:18:12

Right?

Speaker B: 00:18:13

Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:18:14

Almost kind of like the.

Speaker A: 00:18:15

Well, he's first got to take the truck out and crash it before we can do something like that.

Speaker A: 00:18:21

Like, okay, I had that, man.

Speaker A: 00:18:23

That makes sense.

Speaker A: 00:18:24

How take the car out and kill a pedestrian.

Speaker A: 00:18:28

I mean, not to be morbid, but, guys, it's a problem.

Speaker A: 00:18:31

We're telling you it's a problem.

Speaker A: 00:18:33

You can probably visibly see it's a problem and you're not willing to take responsibility.

Speaker A: 00:18:40

And.

Speaker A: 00:18:41

And I think that.

Speaker A: 00:18:42

Now, granted, I don't believe anybody should just be able to walk in and say, you know, John Dudley's crazy.

Speaker A: 00:18:48

You need to, you know, lock him up.

Speaker A: 00:18:50

But if it can be demonstrated by example or examples from the past, there's gotta be.

Speaker A: 00:18:58

There's gotta be a responsibility there where.

Speaker A: 00:19:01

Where, you know, government agencies.

Speaker A: 00:19:04

Pull the.

Speaker A: 00:19:05

Pull the line.

Speaker A: 00:19:06

Come on, guys.

Speaker B: 00:19:07

Yeah, we're gonna have to go out to break.

Speaker B: 00:19:09

But I tell you what, in that Same exact instance we had, you know, this grandfather, this father, actually father that was, that was had it and his spouse, his wife, she took her big old Cadillac and made a hard ride into McDonald's.

Speaker B: 00:19:25

Except there was off the four lane road.

Speaker B: 00:19:27

Except there was no entryway there to into the parking lot.

Speaker B: 00:19:31

Except there was a five foot retaining wall between the the curb and the parking space.

Speaker B: 00:19:37

So she jumped this Cadillac Dukes of Hazard style into the McDonald's parking lot and went, oh, I thought there was an entrance there.

Speaker B: 00:19:46

There might have been 25 years ago.

Speaker B: 00:19:48

Hey, we're out of time here for this segment, Johnny.

Speaker B: 00:19:50

We'll be back after these important messages.

Speaker B: 00:19:52

Guys, if you want to find out more about us, head to aroundthehouse online dot com.

Speaker B: 00:19:56

We'll see you in a second.

Speaker B: 00:20:06

Welcome back to the around the house show.

Speaker B: 00:20:08

If you want to find out more about us, head over to aroundthehouse online.com and while you're over there, make sure you subscribe to the YouTube channel and all of our social media stuff.

Speaker B: 00:20:17

It's all right there.

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You can find out more about us, including messages with anything new.

Speaker B: 00:20:23

Like you got questions, you want to hear a subject we're talking about.

Speaker B: 00:20:26

Like this one.

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This was a special request.

Speaker B: 00:20:29

So we want to make sure that we're getting you all the new shows that you're looking for.

Speaker B: 00:20:33

So message us there.

Speaker B: 00:20:34

And Johnny and I have been really talking about just how to keep seniors in their homes longer.

Speaker B: 00:20:39

And one thing I wanted to bring up, and if you want to help out in this situation, there's a lot of great people out there doing this.

Speaker B: 00:20:48

I have a non profit here that's kind of similar to a Habitat for humanity store where you can take all those extra pieces from your remodel or you're cleaning out the garage and go down and donate it.

Speaker B: 00:21:03

And they have a big warehouse that they sell it out there so they can, you know, really get stuff back into the community.

Speaker B: 00:21:10

It's a great reuse thing.

Speaker B: 00:21:12

But Johnny, tell you what, the cool thing that I like about them that I haven't seen anybody else doing is one, they have a wood shop, electrical shop kind of thing and they hold classes like every day.

Speaker B: 00:21:26

So how to fix the toaster to how to fix the electrical in your house.

Speaker B: 00:21:31

And they have all these different classes.

Speaker B: 00:21:33

So if you don't know anything about home improvement and you can't afford to get somebody in there, then maybe you got a chance to fix it yourself.

Speaker B: 00:21:42

And more importantly, the money that they make there, they give back into the community so they have all the time, these community events where they will find, you know, 85 year old Mrs. Smith down the street that can't keep is having a hard time staying in her home.

Speaker B: 00:21:59

Taxes are high, you know, she's on Social Security, all that kind of stuff.

Speaker B: 00:22:04

And literally they go out there and they see your porch is broken, they go out and fix the porch and they go around and do these community projects and people will nominate them in the neighborhood, that kind of thing.

Speaker B: 00:22:16

And they go out and fix it and they'll have these weekend repair things.

Speaker B: 00:22:20

It's super awesome.

Speaker B: 00:22:22

And I like what Habitat does for building homes, but I wish they did more of that.

Speaker B: 00:22:28

Yeah, you know, I mean, I get the housing thing, it's cool.

Speaker B: 00:22:33

And they build a great house.

Speaker B: 00:22:34

I mean, in Lake Oswego where I was living there, I had six houses being built on a funky lot that they had there for Habitat and beautiful builds, quality builds.

Speaker B: 00:22:50

The crazy thing was quarter mile away, just down the street and around the corner is one of our big builders in the area.

Speaker B: 00:22:57

He's building a two and a half or $3 million house.

Speaker B: 00:23:01

The quality of construction and how they built it was 10x of what the $3 million house was.

Speaker B: 00:23:08

It was beautifully done and really shocking.

Speaker B: 00:23:13

The level of quality.

Speaker B: 00:23:14

I mean, just driving by and seeing it, you know, the, the lakefront house had Tyvek that was put on incorrectly and flashed backwards and all these other things.

Speaker B: 00:23:29

Where the Habitat house did the sprayed on membrane look like bed liner.

Speaker B: 00:23:35

They sprayed the entire structure with.

Speaker B: 00:23:37

There was a liquid membrane and you were going to have no water intrusion through that period.

Speaker B: 00:23:43

And I'm like, and that's Habitat.

Speaker B: 00:23:45

And then I see go down the street and I see this Tyvek hanging off a house.

Speaker B: 00:23:50

Like, I'm not the best rapper of Presence, but this looked like my worst day of rapping.

Speaker B: 00:23:56

You know, things were flinging around and no window too.

Speaker A: 00:24:02

So that's.

Speaker A: 00:24:02

Yeah, enough said.

Speaker B: 00:24:04

Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:24:05

So you know what I mean?

Speaker B: 00:24:06

It's one of those things you go, come on guys.

Speaker A: 00:24:08

So, so let's save the world here for a minute, right?

Speaker A: 00:24:11

We've got Habitat for Humanity that goes out and builds homes, provides livable conditions for folks that are in need.

Speaker A: 00:24:21

Where is the or, why isn't there a Habitat for Taking Care of Seniors Maintenance?

Speaker A: 00:24:30

Why isn't there a Habitat that goes around and replaces porch lights they can't reach or you know, brings in their solar lights in the wintertime so they don't get destroyed or you know, clears leaves out of the driveway so they don't slip.

Speaker A: 00:24:47

I mean, maybe that's a little.

Speaker A: 00:24:49

But you know what I'm saying.

Speaker A: 00:24:50

Hey, it's winter time.

Speaker A: 00:24:53

We need to wrap your water heater and some pipes we need to.

Speaker A: 00:24:58

Right, where are those on the front, right?

Speaker A: 00:25:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: 00:25:04

Where are those?

Speaker A: 00:25:06

You know, and those are needs that are changing on a daily basis depending on your age.

Speaker A: 00:25:11

You know, you might, who knows, you know, twist your ankle in the garden.

Speaker A: 00:25:19

And now getting up those front four steps is a lot harder than it was two months ago.

Speaker A: 00:25:25

Your ankle's healed, you still get pain, and now it's winter and it's really giving you trouble.

Speaker A: 00:25:30

And you gotta open the garage door every time and go through that way or there's a million scenarios I won't babble on.

Speaker A: 00:25:37

But, but where is the, you know, save the senior maintenance guys racing out so that they're not getting jacked by people that they have to call out of the phone book or the Internet or, you know.

Speaker B: 00:25:54

And they're scattered out.

Speaker A: 00:25:55

You like to think like my mom finds a couple of decent people and she uses them and uses them because she can count on them.

Speaker A: 00:26:02

They're tour.

Speaker A: 00:26:03

Right, but there's plenty of folks that can't find, that don't even know where to look or how to find that and are watching, you know, whatever their garden fence fall apart and they know that next year, you know, the pit bulls on the other side of it are going to be able to get into their yard.

Speaker A: 00:26:20

And they have three cats and they know they can't afford $5,000 for a new fence, but they could afford $800 for a young kid to go out there with a tool belt and a good attitude and strap that thing back together.

Speaker A: 00:26:33

The replace a few rotten boards and they're safe for another 10 years.

Speaker A: 00:26:39

Yeah, those are the people we need to find and recruit and put together as a coalition that says, hey man, let's not let our old folks live with a bunch of simple stuff that we could fix easily.

Speaker B: 00:26:52

Exactly.

Speaker B: 00:26:53

But here's the thing, man, and here's the thing.

Speaker B: 00:26:55

You're right.

Speaker B: 00:26:56

There are small groups locally in certain areas, like we have here refit, they do ramps, they do a handful of ramps, half, you know, a handful of bathroom rules for people to make them accessible for wheelchairs, things like that.

Speaker B: 00:27:11

But they are only a small group of remodelers that donate time and they get people to donate stuff.

Speaker B: 00:27:17

But you're right, we need to have, if you look at the cost, we almost need to have that, you know, that repair and remodel group for seniors be as big or more.

Speaker B: 00:27:28

Because now that's keeping people in their own homes and they don't have to sit there and.

Speaker B: 00:27:34

Or we don't have to sit there if they're on Social Security or anything like that.

Speaker B: 00:27:37

We don't have to pay for them to go into assisted living care for years.

Speaker B: 00:27:41

And so it's way cheaper to help these guys out and spend, you know, five or ten grand of materials and donated work to help them stay in their home and then they're out of that home for a few years until they really need it versus them trying to reverse mortgage it and figure out a way to get the value back out of the house.

Speaker B: 00:27:59

And maybe they outlived that route, they outlived the plan on the reverse mortgage and now they got somebody else owning the house they live in.

Speaker B: 00:28:06

So it's a slippery slope.

Speaker A: 00:28:07

Happens all the time.

Speaker A: 00:28:10

And you know.

Speaker A: 00:28:12

Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:28:12

And not to make it personal, but yeah, my mom got herself stuck in one of those and it got her worried every day.

Speaker A: 00:28:20

And we're trying to talk ourselves out of that ridiculous fix because it's just a sham and.

Speaker B: 00:28:26

Yeah, well, they can be, they can be useful in the right situations.

Speaker B: 00:28:30

But it's, it's kind of rare, you know, like if my mom and in her mid-80s ran out of time and she wanted to get a 20 year reverse mortgage, well, guess what?

Speaker B: 00:28:42

She's gonna outlive that.

Speaker B: 00:28:44

That house is gonna outlive her.

Speaker B: 00:28:46

And.

Speaker B: 00:28:47

Right.

Speaker B: 00:28:47

She's not gonna get into that point.

Speaker B: 00:28:48

But if you do it at age 55 or 60 and unless you know what I mean, that could end eating money.

Speaker A: 00:28:56

Eating money.

Speaker A: 00:28:57

And.

Speaker B: 00:28:59

So again, some of those things where it works and where it doesn't.

Speaker B: 00:29:05

Now when we come back here, I want to kind of talk about a few things here too.

Speaker B: 00:29:10

About, you know, some of these things I think are hopeful is getting with financial planners and getting in and talking with people in that are seniors to balance out their money so they can see, okay, what's my Social Security going to be in five or 10 years and what income it's going to take.

Speaker B: 00:29:28

You know, taxes go nutty everywhere in the country.

Speaker B: 00:29:33

And so these are things I look at and go, man, we need to do some planning for these folks.

Speaker B: 00:29:37

And I'm sure there's some people out there that can really help with that.

Speaker B: 00:29:40

When we come back, I want to talk about that as one of the tips too because I think it's super important so they know where they're at at all times.

Speaker B: 00:29:47

We'll do that just as soon as around the House returns.

Speaker B: 00:29:50

Don't change that.

Speaker B: 00:29:51

D welcome back to the around the House show, your trusted source for home improvement information.

Speaker B: 00:30:10

If you're just joining us, Johnny and I are sitting here having a great time talking about things we could do to get the seniors lined up.

Speaker B: 00:30:17

Maybe it's you, maybe it's an aunt, mother, father, uncle, whoever out there getting them set up so that they have got the easiest life moving forward.

Speaker B: 00:30:27

We've talked a lot of, a lot of great stuff here, but the worst, most embarrassing thing is to have someone having to ask a family member to help them in the bathroom.

Speaker A: 00:30:38

Never thought of it.

Speaker B: 00:30:39

And putting in a bidet.

Speaker A: 00:30:41

Never thought of it.

Speaker A: 00:30:41

And I've also always been afraid of bidets.

Speaker A: 00:30:43

I don't know why.

Speaker A: 00:30:44

I've never tried.

Speaker B: 00:30:45

Yeah, I used to be and now.

Speaker A: 00:30:46

I'm like, I've installed them, but I've.

Speaker B: 00:30:48

Never tried with the new ones.

Speaker B: 00:30:50

I like the heated seat, and that's another one too, with people that have sensory things and cold winter day and you go sit down on that cold toilet seat in that bathroom and it's, whoa, wow.

Speaker B: 00:31:00

Light you up.

Speaker A: 00:31:01

Always take a heated seat.

Speaker A: 00:31:02

I'll take a heated beach.

Speaker B: 00:31:04

Yeah, it's one of those things that you go, okay, that's a good thing.

Speaker B: 00:31:08

And the ability to clean, dry, wash yourself and do all that without help.

Speaker B: 00:31:13

You could be buying years of in home help for.

Speaker B: 00:31:17

I mean, I was looking at the Toto Washlet.

Speaker B: 00:31:19

It was at Costco for 300 bucks when I was in there last week.

Speaker B: 00:31:23

On the shelf.

Speaker A: 00:31:23

Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:31:24

Grab it, take it home.

Speaker A: 00:31:24

Nice.

Speaker B: 00:31:25

And if you've got an outlet back there that's close.

Speaker B: 00:31:28

Not expensive to have an electrician come in and add an outlet right there.

Speaker B: 00:31:31

It can be done.

Speaker B: 00:31:33

A lot of times they can take it from the bathroom and extend it into the vanity and out the other side or whatever.

Speaker B: 00:31:38

But it's huge.

Speaker B: 00:31:40

One of the things that I wanted to talk about was, and this is a really important one, I'm getting technology at least, so it's an understanding for them.

Speaker B: 00:31:52

Make sure that they know how to run their Facebook, their Instagram, their banking app.

Speaker B: 00:31:57

Because the more education we can give there, the less time they're going to end up on that YouTube channel, Scammer Payback, as they're getting $25,000 taken out of her, out of their account from the scammers and Bengali, you know what I mean?

Speaker A: 00:32:13

And yeah, going on, oh, it's crazy.

Speaker B: 00:32:18

They call up going, oh, I'm from Amazon.

Speaker B: 00:32:20

And we charged you too much and we want to give you your money back.

Speaker B: 00:32:24

This is one of the most basic ones I've seen out there for seniors.

Speaker B: 00:32:27

You'll get somebody calling up from Amazon or Microsoft.

Speaker B: 00:32:31

It's not Amazon or Microsoft, of course, but they're going to sound like they're from some call center.

Speaker B: 00:32:36

And they do this.

Speaker B: 00:32:38

And then as they go through and get you to log in, as you're changing the putting in the number so they can give you the money back, you have to do something on your banking app and they make it look like you added a couple zeros.

Speaker B: 00:32:52

Hey, wait a minute.

Speaker B: 00:32:52

You refunded 30,000 out of our account, not 300.

Speaker B: 00:32:58

So now you need to go to the bank and get them a bunch of gift cards or whatever or crypto or whatever, and you need to send them back their $29,700.

Speaker B: 00:33:11

That's just one big scam to get 29, 700 out of your banking account.

Speaker A: 00:33:15

And yeah, it's pretty incredible, man.

Speaker A: 00:33:18

I've you say from Amazon and actually there are people in the real Amazon, like pulling maneuvers like that.

Speaker A: 00:33:26

I watched that document, document all I want to speak Spanish documentary.

Speaker A: 00:33:31

One was in Jamaica, one was in Dominican, pulling exactly these, hey, we'll give you a new Mercedes.

Speaker A: 00:33:37

We just need blah, blah, blah.

Speaker A: 00:33:40

And they'd even send them a key.

Speaker A: 00:33:42

They'd be like, oh my gosh, crazy stuff.

Speaker A: 00:33:45

And they're totally just breaking these older folks that they don't know.

Speaker A: 00:33:50

Sounds good, you know.

Speaker B: 00:33:51

Yeah, if you want.

Speaker A: 00:33:53

Yeah, probably some younger folks, too.

Speaker A: 00:33:55

Is it good at it?

Speaker A: 00:33:56

That's the worst part.

Speaker A: 00:33:58

They're really good at it.

Speaker B: 00:33:59

They are.

Speaker B: 00:34:00

If you want to get an education on this and you want it to be entertaining, go over to YouTube, check out Scammer Payback.

Speaker B: 00:34:09

And that channel is so amazing.

Speaker B: 00:34:12

And the guy on it is pierogi.

Speaker B: 00:34:14

And what he does is he sits around.

Speaker B: 00:34:16

He's a hacker.

Speaker B: 00:34:17

He sits around and when these guys call him up, he makes his number known.

Speaker B: 00:34:22

When these guys call him up on his phone number, and he probably has a phone bank of those numbers, but when they call up, he turns around and pretends with his voice changer that he's 90 years old.

Speaker B: 00:34:34

And as he does this, it's crazy, he goes back, gets them on the phone, they hack.

Speaker B: 00:34:40

They basically give you give them permission to get into your computer on the screen.

Speaker B: 00:34:45

And while he's doing it, he's hacking into their system and formatting their hard drive.

Speaker B: 00:34:51

He's locking down with passwords, their hard drives.

Speaker B: 00:34:55

And he's running them on a scam.

Speaker B: 00:34:57

One time I heard him do this, and he was doing it, and he turned on their security cameras in the office building.

Speaker A: 00:35:05

Wow.

Speaker B: 00:35:06

And he recognized the person working next to him and went, oh, tell Benjamin I said hi.

Speaker B: 00:35:13

I had no idea.

Speaker B: 00:35:13

He sat next to you in the cubicle.

Speaker B: 00:35:16

And then they're freaking out, looking around.

Speaker B: 00:35:19

So anyway, cool stuff.

Speaker A: 00:35:21

So much of it out there.

Speaker B: 00:35:23

And I think it's really important to really get that education out there, because I think that's one of the biggest problems we have right now are the scams that are going out that.

Speaker B: 00:35:30

And it's just absolutely brutal with that.

Speaker B: 00:35:35

And I hate to see people losing money that they've.

Speaker B: 00:35:38

They're depending on.

Speaker B: 00:35:39

The other thing I wanted to talk about too, is some of the other smart home pieces as well.

Speaker B: 00:35:46

Right now it's so easy with Lutron Casita, their smart switches.

Speaker B: 00:35:51

Very common, very simple, very easy to use.

Speaker B: 00:35:54

But you can turn all the lights on and all the lights off in your home with a simple app.

Speaker B: 00:36:00

And what's cool is you can set it up so if you know you have to go and get up and go to the bathroom between 1 and 2 in the morning or something like that, you could actually have it.

Speaker B: 00:36:11

So there's a sensor in the hallways you walk over.

Speaker B: 00:36:14

If you walk towards that, then it'll turn it onto the low light.

Speaker B: 00:36:18

You could put a motion sensor, and if it sees you get up, it'll turn on like the low LEDs in the bathroom for you.

Speaker B: 00:36:24

So when you go in there, you can run it in low light without waking yourself up, but without having to hit all the switches and that kind of stuff.

Speaker B: 00:36:33

And I think it's really smart with that to do that, because any of those smart home tech things like that, you can give yourself more light if you need it.

Speaker B: 00:36:41

And by the way, guys, if as you get older, you need more light.

Speaker B: 00:36:44

I'm in my 50s.

Speaker B: 00:36:46

I need twice as much lumens or light output as I did when I was 20.

Speaker B: 00:36:54

And watch me try to sign a restaurant receipt in a restaurant.

Speaker B: 00:36:57

It's so dang dark, I'm getting my phone out, can't see it.

Speaker A: 00:37:00

Problem handed to my girlfriend.

Speaker B: 00:37:03

There you go, There you go.

Speaker A: 00:37:04

What's something like that you're talking about?

Speaker A: 00:37:07

Start running some of this smart stuff in your home.

Speaker A: 00:37:10

If I'm 80, and that sounds like a good idea, what's something like that cost on an average basis for me to get set something like that up?

Speaker B: 00:37:18

Pretty easy you can be to Keep it real.

Speaker B: 00:37:21

Yeah, you can be.

Speaker B: 00:37:22

You can get a whole home kit where you get two or three pieces for like 100 bucks.

Speaker B: 00:37:27

You can get a single switch for 40, 45 bucks, 50 bucks, depending on what store you get at.

Speaker B: 00:37:32

If you get online and get some of the wholesalers, you can buy packs of 10 and things like that where you get a really big savings, but it's really not.

Speaker A: 00:37:39

Maybe you need four or five or something.

Speaker B: 00:37:41

Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:37:42

Not talking much bucks.

Speaker B: 00:37:43

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker B: 00:37:45

And then you can just run it on there.

Speaker B: 00:37:46

I had my lines in my.

Speaker B: 00:37:49

I had tall blinds I could never reach.

Speaker B: 00:37:51

The bottom of the window was like 10ft high.

Speaker B: 00:37:55

And I'm not jumping up there to run these things.

Speaker B: 00:37:58

So I put one of the Lutron Smart shades in there, and it just.

Speaker B: 00:38:02

I had it turned on.

Speaker B: 00:38:03

So it would come.

Speaker B: 00:38:04

It would close up at this time.

Speaker B: 00:38:05

Close up at that time.

Speaker B: 00:38:07

One hour.

Speaker B: 00:38:08

One hour before sunset, it would close or whatever, and boom.

Speaker B: 00:38:12

Or one hour.

Speaker B: 00:38:13

You could set it up to the sun.

Speaker B: 00:38:14

You can set to the time, whatever.

Speaker B: 00:38:16

And it always just did what you wanted to do, which is really cool.

Speaker A: 00:38:20

So nice.

Speaker B: 00:38:21

It makes a big difference when you're doing that kind of stuff.

Speaker B: 00:38:24

And really, the other thing that I think is important is just to spend some time like you were talking about when we first started out, really just go through and make sure that things are safe.

Speaker B: 00:38:38

The maintenance is up.

Speaker B: 00:38:39

There are ovens and stuff.

Speaker B: 00:38:41

Now there's.

Speaker B: 00:38:42

We've talked about it before.

Speaker B: 00:38:43

There's a lot of smart home appliances that'll make sure that you're not keeping that stove on all day unless you want it to be.

Speaker B: 00:38:49

There's a lot of things that will really help you.

Speaker B: 00:38:52

And I think the other thing that's important, too, is to make sure that they have enough technology in there to be able to sit there and do a zoom with their doctor in something like that.

Speaker B: 00:39:00

Even though they're not techie, spend some time with them and make sure that they've got the ability to run a zoom meeting to show up and talk to the doctor, things like that.

Speaker B: 00:39:10

Because sometimes that's way easier than trying to get on.

Speaker B: 00:39:13

To get a ride to the.

Speaker B: 00:39:15

A ride to get to the doctor for that.

Speaker A: 00:39:18

And even there's another one.

Speaker A: 00:39:19

Here's an app where you can call a car that will take you to the doctor.

Speaker A: 00:39:23

Like it.

Speaker A: 00:39:24

Simple things.

Speaker A: 00:39:25

Right.

Speaker A: 00:39:25

Set up with an Uber in drive or whatever it is.

Speaker B: 00:39:29

Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:39:29

Here was an interesting one.

Speaker B: 00:39:31

So my mom lives in Kennewick, Washington, and she uses their transit system, and she used their kind of dial a ride program to get to her doctor or not, because she hadn't been able to drive for a long time.

Speaker B: 00:39:41

Yeah, they wanted her to go to her doctor to get approval again.

Speaker B: 00:39:48

Every year, they send her to the doctor to fill out a form to say, yeah, she's not able to drive so she can have that service for next year.

Speaker B: 00:39:54

But I'm like, wait a minute.

Speaker B: 00:39:56

These people can't drive.

Speaker B: 00:39:58

You're having to take them to the doctor to get your forms filled out.

Speaker B: 00:40:03

Wouldn't it be smarter that you just said, hey, she's 85 years old.

Speaker B: 00:40:07

She's not going to regain that ability to drive?

Speaker B: 00:40:10

Why are you sending to the doctor every year?

Speaker B: 00:40:12

That sounds like a government program.

Speaker A: 00:40:14

The redundancy in medical is just.

Speaker A: 00:40:18

Yeah, I have no words, guys.

Speaker B: 00:40:20

If you've got anything that you're working on like this, trying to help parent yourself, you know, your grandparents, staying at home, and some other tips like that, feel free to send us a message.

Speaker B: 00:40:30

Give us a ring over there@aroundthehouse online.com and we can try to help you as best we can from here.

Speaker B: 00:40:35

Get your loved ones taken care of or get yourself set up for the future.

Speaker B: 00:40:39

Well, guys, we're gonna go out to break for Johnny D. I'm Eric G. And you've been listening to around the house.