Answers For Elders Radio Network

Tina Hall joins Suzanne from Aljoya Mercer Island to introduce Era Living and talk about its reputation and mission. Founded in 1987, it's a family-owned organization with eight communities in the Greater Seattle area. The founders wanted to establish retirement communities that respect and honor older adults by enriching the quality of their lives, a mission that informs and guides how Era Living...

Emily Schwarz from ElderLife Financial joins Suzanne to talk about the process of having a free consultation with ElderLife Financial, and goes over a variety of options that might be available to pay for senior care. Sometimes people reach out to them with questions about home sales, estate sales, and other topics. Life insurance can be an untapped resource. It's possible to sell your life insura...

Emily Schwarz from ElderLife Financial joins Suzanne to explain how her company helps seniors. ElderLife is a financial aid office for senior living, a one-stop shop to help families understand how to pay for long-term care. They have resources to help families understand long term care insurance, veterans benefits, how to monetize a life insurance policy, information on reverse mortgages, tax ded...

Emily Schwarz from ElderLife Financial joins Suzanne to talk more about financial resources for people who are aging. Among the common misunderstandings for veterans benefits: people think that the serving-in-wartime criteria means you have to have served in combat. That's not the cas. You need to have served a day of active duty during a wartime period, and 90 total active service days, but could...

Emily Schwarz from Elder Life Financial joins Suzanne to talk about untapped resources to help pay for senior living. She says veterans benefits are the most underutilized way to pay for senior care. What don't we know about programs? VA's Aid and Attendance Pension has just 300,000 veterans and spouses using this benefit, yet imagine how many retired veterans there are in the country. People ofte...

Kristen Christian from  Bee Organized joins Suzanne to talk about getting rid of clutter. Keep what you love, but there's a boundary to watch, especially if you're downsizing. "China comes up a lot, it's a hard one. There are lots of ways of looking at it, how to honor your memories without keeping everything." Kristen provides a couple of ways she's done that with heirlooms. The whole point is to...

Kristen Christian joins Suzanne to talk about downsizing and decluttering. The goal is to own less. Be a gatekeeper for your next chapter: only bring what you like, need, and use. Bee Organized takes clients through a power purge. About every item, ask yourself: Do I like this item? Do I use this item? Is this item valuable or irreplaceable? There's no loophole in the process, and the more you go,...

Kristen Christian joins Suzanne to talk about how to create the right mindset to start downsizing. When you think of creating art, it takes time, patience, and planning. You have to gather materials, have a purpose and plan, and intention. We use a different lens when we get people ready for downsizing, to arm themselves with the proper tools, just like an artist would, and it goes a lot smoother....

Kristen Christian joins Suzanne to talk about Bee Organized , a passionate company that helps people go from chaos to calm, and have seen many lives transformed through the process. Whether it's home organization, moving, remodeling, downsizing, rightsizing, or concierge services, delegate the details to the Bees. Downsizing is a matter of math, but it's hard because we have a relationship with ou...

Kevin Church , Chief Science Officer of Athira Pharma , joins Suzanne to provide an overview of what happens in a trial, how long they last, and the different kinds of clinical trials. In this segment, Kevin talks about how to find clinical trial locations, as well as what sorts of things the doctors are looking for in a participant. Talk to your doctor or neurologist, or a specialist at a clinic,...

Kevin Church , Chief Science Officer of Athira Pharma , joins Suzanne to talk about what happens in clinical trials, how long do they last, and what the different types are. There are 143 Alzheimer's treatments in various stages of study at the moment, including those in clinical trials stage 1, 2, and 4. Athira's trials last about six months long. They involve periodic visits to a trial center, u...

Kevin Church , Chief Science Officer of Athira Pharma , joins Suzanne to talk about what happens to the brain when someone has Alzheimer's. It's a very complex disease. Most people know about the amyloid plaques that causes neuro-degeneration. Other proteins also build up. These clumps interrupt memory formation, communication between nerve cells, and regardless of the clumps, the ultimate problem...

If you're concerned about memory loss, this show will interest you. Kevin Church , Chief Science Officer of Athira Pharma , joins Suzanne this hour to talk about Alzheimer's disease and developing treatments. Alzheimer's is growing, a critical unmet need, with 6.5 million American adults diagnosed, and byy 2050 there could be as many as 50 million patients. The average age of onset is between 70 t...

Lianna Marie , CEO of AllAboutParkinsons.com , joins Suzanne to talk about how to be both visibly and emotionally strong, even with our bodies becoming more frail over time. Holding on to inner strength and resilience, and retain our empowerment. She quotes Bob Marley: "You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice." For many people, this resonates, there's a lot to navi...

What does it mean to be empowered with Parkinson's? Lianna Marie , CEO of AllAboutParkinsons.com , joins Suzanne to address what to do as people with Parkinson's get older — and caregivers take more control over decisions — and feel a loss of autonomy. Lianna realized with her mom that she was making mistakes and had to course-correct, providing choices to empower her. We own our lives. It's the a...

Lianna Marie , CEO of AllAboutParkinsons.com joins Suzanne to talk about focus for those with Parkinson's and their caregivers. Lianna explains, "Focus is an interesting topic I decided to dive into in my current book that I'm writing, 'The Parkinson's Path.' It's a very complex disease, affecting your physical and your emotional side. We're losing our focus because we've just got so much going on...

Lianna Marie , CEO of AllAboutParkinsons.com , joins Suzanne to talk about her personal experience with her mom coping with Parkinson's disease, a trial by fire learning over time how to adjust to this chronic illness. Her mom had a type with slow progression and was able to live with it for 30 years. Lianna's book "The Parkinson's Path" will be coming out later this year. Currently, '' The Comple...

Retirement coach Larry Jacobson joins Suzanne to talk about inspiration, fulfillment, and satisfaction in our later years. Suzanne described her own experiences when she was downsized out of her career at 52 years old, and she found a calling to pursue the dream of starting her own company. Larry says most new businesses started today are by people who are in their 50s or over 60. He coaches entre...

If you're wondering about what you might do after you retire, check out retirement coach Larry Jacobson 's free retirement tools . The first tool is a retirement wheel to assess how you're doing in eight areas of your life, and connecting the dots shows how well balanced you can be in your retirement. The second tool helps decide what you might choose for your encore The third tool is a passion qu...

Larry Jacobson joins Suzanne to talk about his Sail Into Retirement self-guided video course, an award-winning life-style planning program that teaches us how to start living the life you always wanted to live. He'd carried a dream to sail around the world for decades, and then found himself taking a leap of faith. Larry says, "I ended up as CEO and then was able to sell the company. I bought a bo...

When we look forward to that looming date of turning 65, we wonder what happens next. Retirement and fulfillment coach Larry Jacobson joins Suzanne to talk about his project Redefining Retirement . He says most of our lives are scripted, from school to jobs, perhaps with a career, perhaps at the top of your career, and then you retire. Then you turn the page for the next segment of your life, noth...

Dementia family coach Faith Marshall joins Suzanne to talk about a hard subject, what happens to those in early stages of dementia.   Faith says, "I have one client specifically that is on the internet a lot, checks his email. He's recently retired. And so that's always been something that's been part of his routine, but one of the things that does happen in dementia that is helpful is a sense of...

Dementia family coach Faith Marshall joins Suzanne to talk about vulnerable or lonely seniors who are vulnerable to be taken advantage of. Scammers can falsify the caller ID. Faith described an experience with one of her clients that scammed him out of $2,500 over multiple days, and him thinking they were helping him with a computer problem. If a caller knows your name, that's not enough. If they...

Dementia family coach Faith Marshall joins Suzanne to talk about how to protect ourselves from senior scams. First, get seniors to be open with their families. Working with banks, online banking, helps with fraud alerts and unusual charges. Neighbors are a big help, if they see contractors or other unusual people arriving at the door. We have to be watchdogs for our families. You can have the bank...

Dementia family coach Faith Marshall joins Suzanne to talk about senior scams. Every family knows someone who's been taken advantage of. This segment goes into how and where scams show up. We used to worry about email links and phone calls, but now we even have to be wary of people scamming those who park in handicapped spots.  Suzanne tells a story about her mother being scammed by someone claimi...