Transcript
A (0:00)
If you are the caregiver for someone with a severe developmental disability, you're not just planning for your own retirement. You're planning for how to take care of them for life, including how they're going to be taken care of after you've passed away. And that's pretty much the ultimate financial planning challenge. So we're gonna devote an episode to this. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that knows you can afford anything, but not everything. Every choice has a trade off. This show covers five financial, psychology, increasing your income, investing, real estate, and entrepreneurship. Acronym Double I Fire. I'm your host, Paula Pant. I trained in economic reporting at Columbia. Today's episode is different than what we normally do. Typically, our episodes are general in scope. The bulk of our episodes are designed to appeal to a mainstream mass audience. But I am breaking our usual format for just one episode, just this one. Because if you are caring for someone with a developmental disability, you have maybe the toughest challenge in all of financial planning, and that deserves some attention. So for those of you who this topic doesn't apply to, maybe you know somebody who is a caregiver for someone with a developmental disorder. If so, please send this episode forward this episode onto them. Today we are interviewing Keith Wargo. He is the CEO of an organization that's called Autism Speaks. He is the father of a 27 year old with autism. And while he in this upcoming interview is due to his role speaking specifically about autism, the interview is really designed to more broadly be about financial planning for anyone with a developmental disability. So if this applies to you, I hope you get a lot out of this. And if it doesn't apply to you, I hope you enjoy the interview still and I hope that you forward it on to anyone to whom it applies. Here's our guest today, Keith Bargo. Hi, Keith.
B (2:01)
Hello, Paula. Thank you for having me.
A (2:03)
Caregiving is such a tremendous responsibility. It often falls to the family members. Parents eventually age and and need elder care of their own and then may also have a child who also needs lifelong care. How do you even begin to approach that from a financial planning perspective?
B (2:25)
I think you're absolutely right. I mean, first of all, I'm the parent of two children and I think being a parent in any case is a great responsibility. It's a lot of work. There's great joys to it, but it's great responsibility. Right. When you have a child that has a disability, and again on a lifelong condition, the bar is that much higher. Right? And in the beginning, it's all about okay, let me find the right therapists, let me find the right treatment, let me find the right activities. You know, is it going to be swimming, is it going to be equestrian? I mean, we did all of this stuff with my son that is kind of above and beyond the norm. And then at school age and figuring out the right school and working through to make sure that all those things are being set up in the way that is going to lead to hopefully the best outcome you can hope for. And that's why financial planning and thinking about all that oftentimes gets a little bit pushed aside or doesn't get the attention that it probably needs or deserves. Not from any mal intent, it's just life's hard. What we try to encourage and why we have dialogues like this and appreciate the opportunity to talk about it is to get people to start thinking about that earlier. My son's 27 years old, diagnosed with autism at the age of 3. And if you met AJ, he struggles with social connectivity, he struggles with staying on task, but there are other things that he's highly skilled at. So the spectrum is very broad. And we have individuals who are able to hold fantastic jobs and be very successful and work through their challenges. And we have 27% of the community that is considered to be profoundly autistic where they need 24, 7 care.
