SMSF advisers asked to provide assistance for older clients looking at changing their housing arrangements should ask questions around how they will access aged care before considering how their super may be able to facilitate that move, an aged-care specialist has stated.
Aged Care Steps director Louise Biti said superannuation has a role to play as a source of capital to pay for accommodation or to generate income to meet ongoing living expenses, but before advisers look at the technical aspects, they should ask clients questions about what any move will mean for their future care.
“There are five aspects that you can have a conversation with every client about [and the first is:] where am I going to live? What is the location?” Biti said during a presentation at the SMSF Association Technical Summit 2024 in Sydney today.
“Why do they want to live there? What’s important about living there? You want to get down to those motivations to work out what makes most sense [for them].”
The second aspect to consider was: “How I’m going to live there?” which touches on what happens on day-to-day basis, she said.
She gave the example of a young couple looking to buy a farm from one of their parents, who would also live there, but it was in a remote location.
“This is out of town a little bit and so what are the challenges for her parents in later years? How will that affect how they get support?” she said.
“It’s hard enough to find homecare services when you’re living in a metropolitan area, let alone trying to get it in a remote area.
“So we need to think about where do they live and how are they going to live there and if that still works or whether they need to compromise, and you understand how you can help if you understand what they will compromise and what they will not.”
She said questions should also be asked about support networks, which can include people, but also access to paid services and the funding to pay for that as well, which in turn leads to the superannuation and estate planning issues as the remaining aspects of the conversation.
“How we finance all this is the trickiest part. It is expensive and becoming more expensive as more of the cost is shifting from government to consumers,” she said.
“So whichever age they are at, these are the five things that we really need to focus on as well.”
