Shannon Davis - financial literacy

S1 (Speaker 1)

This is Studio One on Vision Australia Radio.

S2

Hello, I'm Matthew.

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And I'm Sam.

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And this is Studio One, your weekly look at life from a low vision and blind point of view here on Vision Australia Radio.

00:36

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On this week's show....

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Financial Wellness. Losing your sight can often also lead to losing your livelihood. We have a look at what to do to achieve financial wellness in the aftermath of sight loss.

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As we always say at this point, please do get in touch with the show. Whether you have experience of any of the issues covered in this episode of Studio One, or if you think there's something we should be talking about, you never know. Your story and your insight may help someone else who is dealing with something similar.

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Email us studio One at Vision Australia-dot-org. That's studio1@visionaustralia.org - and we also accept complaints and heckling through the medium of Twitter. Vision Australia Radio can be found at at Radio Network and I can be found at twitter.com.WhingingPom.

S1

This is studio one on Vision Australia Radio.

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Hello there Sam.

S3

Hello there Matthew. I understand we've got the actual episode you were planning on doing a couple of weeks ago?

S2

Yes. Due to injury, we weren't able to do this one last week. But yeah, this is this is very interesting. So. So we spoke to Shannon Davis a couple of weeks ago. Shannon is 46 years old. He was a very successful person in his professional life. He made it to a very senior partner level at PwC, the global business services firm.

S3

We know all about them at the moment. They're in the headlines.

S2

Well, indeed, he's clear of them, isn't he really, to be honest. But you have to be quite a sharp cookie to to get as high as he did in that particular company. And he's also a father of two six year old and a two year old. And then, as you will have heard on this show, he was he'd been nagged by his mother to go to the opticians. He kept bumping into things and he chose the opticians. He went to buy the well. He liked the frames in the window. He went inside and then the optometrist says to him, you said your wife's nearby, can you get her to come in? 

We've got, I've got some news to tell you both. And it turned out he'd lost 90% of his peripheral vision in one eye and 95% in the other. And yeah, due to glaucoma, which is something we talk about quite often on this show, which is an irreversible loss of sight caused by high ocular pressures on the optic nerve. That's about right, isn't it, Sam?

S3

Yep. And if you don't get it checked out, then sometimes, yes, it'll just sneak up on you, as they say it is the they describe as the silent stealer of light. Yeah.

S2

And sight.

S3

Yes.

S2

And Shannon, as I hope we've demonstrated, it isn't an idiot. But his brain, I think, was filling in the gaps for him. But of course, losing sight means loads of things, not just actual loss of vision, but you know, there's the stress of losing your mobility and your independence. And of course, unless you're very lucky with your employer or your choice of profession, if this hits you and it can hit anybody, you're likely to lose your livelihood. You're likely to lose your job. And this happened to Shannon. And I did say at the time, rather selfishly, I said his personal loss may be people living with a vision impairment in general's gain. 

And a couple of weeks ago, we got together with him to promote his seminar called Financial Wellness in the Aftermath of Glaucoma. And it was about three main things, really insurance, blind pension and other government services, including the NDIS and how to ring the most out of them. So it's really interesting that in this seminar, Shannon talks about the type of insurance that are part of your superannuation, the life insurance you have and the disability insurance you have that he didn't know about. And the CEO of Glaucoma Australia didn't know about. So there's lots of useful information in here if you lose your sight and as a result your job. But also some some good tips for those of us with sight loss in general.

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This is studio one on Vision Australia Radio.

04:49

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My background I guess the most important thing to share with you about me is I'm very family orientated and in the photo there on the screen you can see my beautiful wife and two young sons. They're everything to me and I guess you can take from that photo the things that are most important to me in life. My background in terms of my glaucoma journey is I'm currently 46, turning 47 this year, and I was diagnosed in 2020, so a few years ago now. It was an extreme shock when it happened. Inadvertently, on a routine check of my eyes at an optometrist discovered that I had advanced glaucoma, and significant damage had occurred to both of my optical nerves. So both eyes were affected, and up until that point, I had no prior symptoms or any knowledge at all that something was happening in the background. 

So that was a complete and utter shock. I actually went into the optometrist because at the age that I was, I assumed I might be getting close to needing prescription glasses, and I literally did it on the way to the grocery store, and within minutes, I was told that was going to be needing to see an eye surgeon urgently the next morning, and my life was completely turned upside down from that point. From that point, I was basically went on the treatment journey. So I was more formally, clinically assessed by my treating eye surgeon.

And I went on the treatment journey and pretty much tried every single means to address the high pressure that I had when I was diagnosed. I had been walking around with pressures in the high 40s, unbeknownst to me, and as many of the listeners would know, I think the average range for someone that doesn't have glaucoma is kind of 13 to 21. And here I was walking around in the high 40s, and so I went on that treatment journey to reduce that pressure in both eyes, starting with various combinations of eye drops. 

We then progressed to a couple of rounds of laser surgery and both eyes and we were having some success, but not enough success to really satisfy ourselves that we were getting down to the target range, particularly because my glaucoma was so advanced and there had been so much damage done that I really have nothing left to play with in terms of my remaining vision. So we really needed to get it down as low as possible. We moved from laser surgery and drops into the decision to have trabeculectomy surgery done on both eyes. I must admit, that was one of the most scary parts of the journey and even deciding which I to do first was an incredibly difficult stage to go through. 

You know, my right eye is a little bit better than my left eye, but still very advanced glaucoma in the right eye. My left eye is kind of end stage glaucoma, so a lot worse. And certainly there's a lot more to a lot more work being done by the right eye in my case. So even even having a decision to make around with which I either get operated on first and then you go through the surgery, the recovery process of a few months and then having to go through it all again. So it's kind of like a 6 to 8 month journey to go through those surgeries. And, and so I guess got through that. And I'm pleased to report that as of today, we have been able to stabilise the pressures. I'm actually seeing my ophthalmologist on Monday, and it's been six months since I had my last checking. So touchwood that the pressures are still stable. 

And, you know, we can move forward to a on another six monthly checkup basis. But you never know. Things can escalate in the background. So hoping that everything's still stable. And certainly for the last 12 months things have been where we wanted them to be from from that perspective, thinking back because I tried to think, well, was there any time that I things happened that I might have been aware of, that something was affecting my peripheral vision so badly? And, you know, we can think of moments where I might have knocked my head on a cupboard door or walked into something or tripped, and I always thought I was just being clumsy in those moments like you do. 

You know, if I wasn't wearing prescription glasses, you know, my theory on my eyes was that I must be. My eyes must be healthy. If I've got. If I've got vision such that I don't need prescription glasses. So that was the biggest mistake in terms of my knowledge gap, because clearly that's not the case as I've since learned. And yeah, I mean, it really has had a massive impact on my life. I mean, I was very shortly after diagnosis, I was in a situation where I had to medically surrender my driver's license, and I medically retired from my work as a partner of leading professional services firm in relation to decision around work. That was a very difficult process to work through, especially because of the financial consideration. 

And I guess that's part of what we're talking about tonight. You know, I was eligible for some insurances and became aware early on in the process of being diagnosed, of where I stood in relation to those benefits. And so luckily for me, the stress, if you like, around the financial aspects to the decision, were kind of taken off the table because I was in a situation, because of my insurances, of where I was able to make a decision based on, well, where do I see myself spending my time with my remaining vision and my prognosis, given that I've got end stage glaucoma isn't great, and being so young it isn't great. And there is a very probabilistic outcome that could happen in the short to medium term around losing the remaining vision. 

And so for me, again, as I said at the outset, I'm all about family. And I was really clear that to me that having had a very successful professional services career, which lasted over 20 years, for me the decision was very straightforward to really align my time to creating very special memories with my family, with my wife and children. Now, whilst we can, and whilst I have vision sufficient to be able to really create those special memories and do the activities I want to do with them. And that's where we landed on that decision. We basically had a call to make on medical retirement, or try and push forward and continue to work in professional services, even though the prospect of going fully blind was was real. 

There's, I guess, three areas to think about this. One is the insurance cover that people may have. So in my case, I had, because I was a part of the firm that I was with, I had certain insurances, so I had TPD insurance, which was attached to a life insurance policy. I had trauma insurance, which is all about getting a benefit paid on diagnosis of certain conditions. I think there's 40 to 50 conditions that are listed in those types of policies. And then I also had income protection insurance. And I guess as I mentioned to you, and we spoke about this, Richard, one of the key takeaways for me here is that prior to all of this happening, I didn't really have an appreciation of the structure of that insurance, particularly the life and TPD policy. I knew that I had life insurance, but I really didn't realise that I had this TPD policy that was attached to it and built into it. 

And I guess the key takeaway, I guess, for our listeners tonight would be that, you know, if you have a superannuation balance, which we all do, there's actually a requirement under superannuation law that people have at least one unit of life insurance in their superannuation fund. So if you're with one of the major superannuation providers, which most of us are employer funds and so forth, typically you'll find that you'll have some level of life cover within that fund. And attached to that life cover will be a TPD policy, total and permanent disablement. Now, within that total and permanent disablement policy, there will be guidelines and definitions around loss of vision. There won't be a specific reference to glaucoma. It will be loss of vision. 

And if those definitions, if you were to meet them because of vision loss due to glaucoma, which in my case was the position, then you would be eligible for those benefits. And so I think the big takeaway for me, the big learn from me was, you know, I wasn't aware that that benefit even really was there when I was first diagnosed. And it was actually through working through the PDS. I got a copy of the PDS in relation to the insurance policy, and all of my insurance policies actually had a read of the sections that related to vision loss, and started to have conversations with my treating doctors about where I stood in relation to each of those definitions. 

And it was very clear to me early on that I was well and truly over those thresholds to be able to move forward and make claims on those policies. The initial conversation that I had with them around this diagnosis was, okay, so you've lost your peripheral vision, so you are legally blind, but you still don't require prescription glasses. How could you possibly be eligible for these benefits when you don't require you have some central vision left and you don't require prescription glasses. So how about you? And I'm sure I'm summarising this, but the tone of the conversation was along the lines of, how about you call us back when you're fully blind? Really, what that represented, from my perspective, was a lack of knowledge on the other end of the phone about what glaucoma was. 

And so very early on in the process, I realised that I had to get the help of a solicitor to help me work through the process of claiming on these policies, because typically we were dealing with people on the other side that were assessing the claims, who had zero knowledge of glaucoma. And if there's one thing I've learned about vision loss is there's lots of different types and forms of vision loss. There's many different definitions of vision loss, and glaucoma is a particular way of losing your vision. Starting at the peripheral and working its way in. That has a particular impact on your life and your ability to function, and your ability to perform your employment duties, for example. That needs to be. In that context. 

And so I sought out the assistance of a solicitor who actually specialised in insurance claims early on to help me piece that together for the insurers. And once I was able to do that, it actually became a very straightforward process to work through. But I would say another learning on this was, you know, be ready for the fact that you may be dealing with some people. Naturally enough, someone who's got a financial background won't and may not even be like myself, didn't even really know what glaucoma was prior to being diagnosed. So I think you've just got to factor that in before you get really down the track, because obviously in relation to insurance claims, you want to be a little bit careful around lodging a claim and not giving them everything they need in order to consider it. 

The process starts from your ophthalmologist making the decision or making the call that you're over the required threshold. So it's really your treating ophthalmologists that will be able to tell you where you stand. And then the insurer will always have someone independently verify that through their own clinical assessment processes. But it is definitely a conversation to be having with your ophthalmologist, with the PDS in front of you, so you can both together look at the definitions. And the definitions, as I've learnt, are typically pretty standard across the different insurers. You shouldn't see variance. So the one that I quoted, the 20 degrees is actually pretty common across the insurance industry in Australia. 

So you'll find that your ophthalmologist will have a clear view on where you stand in relation to those thresholds.

S2?

And it sounds like once you'd actually compiled that information, the process then became much more easy. And you've got you've got a relatively fast positive outcome.

17:16

S4

Look, it it took time even oversimplify.

S2?

So yeah.

S4

Yeah. Look you know it took time. But I did find that the tone of the conversations changed the understanding from the insurers perspective on exactly the impact that was being had across the different requirements. So in relation to trauma, it's quite straightforward because you've either been diagnosed or not been diagnosed and it's payable on diagnosis. So that's kind of straightforward. And then total and permanent disablement is a more complex clinical assessment that needs to be done. You are getting assessed by occupational therapists and occupational physicians as well as your your ophthalmologist. And so all of that information does take time to collate, get together and then submit that through an assessment process. 

So that's probably one that takes a little bit longer. And then the income protection insurance kind of runs off the back of that. You know at the end of the day, if you're totally and permanently disabled and you're not returning to work, then your income protection kind of as a default would kick in after that. So that's kind of how the three policies interact. And it does take time. But the tone of the conversations and the willingness of the insurer to really appreciate the impact of glaucoma on someone's life, I found, did change once we were able to give them what they needed. Yeah, this is a really interesting one. So there was a process. 

There was a stage where I was consulting an eye surgeon for a second opinion. It was around the time where I was going through the trabeculectomy, and it was with the full knowledge of my ophthalmologist. He actually recommended that I go and speak to a few others, just so I can start to build confidence that this was the right step to take. So he was completely, completely aware of my desire to go and have those conversations and supported me in that process. And this particular specialist was in Macquarie Street. I remember the day and we went through the process, and basically he validated the strategy of moving forward with the Trabeculectomy. 

But the one thing he did say to me as I was leaving his office, he sort of grabbed me by the arm and he said, Shannon, when you get home tonight, I recommend you look into applying for the blind pension. And at that stage I hadn't medically retired. I was on sick leave, I hadn't made the decision to medically retire. And that process hadn't been finalised. And my initial reaction was, well, I won't qualify for that because my income level as a partner of a professional services firm would mean that I wouldn't be eligible, I imagine, for that type of government benefit. And he said, I don't know the the benefits most, if not all of the benefits from the government in relation to vision loss, the legally blind or anything to do with that area of benefit is not means tested. 

And in fact, it's not means tested around the world, Shannon. Because the philosophy is, is that governments want people who have lost their vision or are losing their vision to participate as much as possible in the community, including work, if they want to and can and are able to. And so they don't want to be in a situation where it's either or. They want you to allow you to do everything. And if that means you want to work and you can work and get this pension. So that was a real light bulb moment for me. I had no, no clue that that was even on offer for someone that would have a relatively high income level. 

And so I looked I began to look into that, that side of things and very easily came across the process of applying for it and realized that the definitions were actually very similar to the definitions that were in the insurance policies that we've just spoken about. And so the process of then getting my ophthalmologist to fill out the required form and me providing the necessary information, and then me going through the independent clinical assessment process to verify that I was legally blind, left me in a position where that actually ended up being something that I became eligible for. I must admit, that was that is a significant financial benefit because it's tax exempt income and it's paid every month, but it also has other benefits. 

And the most notable one, which I've mentioned to you, Richard, is access. It provides you with access to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. And for people that are not across what that is, that's essentially a significant discount on your medication, including your glaucoma medication. So I was paying in the hundreds of dollars at the time that I applied for the blind pension. I was paying in the hundreds of dollars almost weekly for my various eyedrop medications. And the week after I was when I was successfully approved to be a participant in the disability support pension process. The next time I ordered my eyedrops, they cost $6. Wow. So it was huge. It was just a huge change in terms of the cost of my medication. And it's it's it's a benefit that I would not have even been aware of. 

And look, that the other message that that particular eye surgeon gave me that afternoon was there are other government benefits, which I'm sure we'll talk about. And they're all not means tested. And he's he's philosophy on it was Shannon. Whether you think you need all of these things now or not is not the question. The point is, it's going to be a lot more difficult for you to apply. Look into these things and apply for them. If and when you do lose your remaining vision, you've got the ability now because you've got your remaining vision, your central vision in particular, you've got an ability now to actually go through the process, look into it, speak to the people you need to speak to get around in different places, fill out forms to be able to successfully get yourself plugged into these different benefits. 

And you should do that now to kind of prepare yourself for what might be worse times ahead, where it would be a lot trickier for you to get these things set up. One of the best pieces of advice I was given through the whole process.

23:22

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This is Studio One on Vision Australia Radio.

S2

So the blind Pension Sam Shannon said that actually if he hadn't had his sleeve tugged by the eye surgeon with whom he was. Having a second opinion that he wouldn't have known about the blind pension. You have experience of that system, don't you?

S3

Yes. I mean, like anyone with a congenital eye condition. I've been on that since I was 16. It's it's a wonderful institution because it does mean that you have an extra safety net. And also, whether you're working or not, you also get it, which is just a very handy little bit of money that you can spend on taxi fares or things like that, which you obviously need when you are trying to get by in the big bad world.

S2

And the other thing that he mentioned was, of course, that his glaucoma medication used to cost him hundreds of dollars a month, but now he has access to cheap prescriptions.

S3

Oh yeah, the healthcare card can come in extremely useful, to the point where quite a lot of blind pensioners don't have private health care because the they rely more on the cheaper medications and the bulk billing of GP's and things like that. 

S2

Yeah. Cheaper medication. It's not one of the things it's like when you see those signs that say bargain laser eye surgery, it's not really something you want to be saving money on, I sometimes think. But yeah, I know what you mean. 

S3

Well, I mean, it all does the same thing. I mean, if it was sort of off the back of a truck or in some dark alleyway, I hear you have some have some cool eye medication. This will help you see differently. That would be one thing, but no, this is as the chemists will always say, there are generic and cheaper alternatives there, and they pretty much do the same thing as the normal ones do. But the PBS, that's what it does. We're lucky to live in a country which funds medication to that degree as well.

S2

Yes, the NDIS is his next topic of conversation. You avail yourself of that, don't you? The National Disability Insurance Scheme, against something else that has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons this weekend.

S3

Exactly. And it's we've talked on this show before about some of the problems here and that is that a lot of organisations were deprived of funding, and so they forced people to go over onto the NDIS. And once you jump through those hoops, then you're not just going to have the 1 or 2 services that you initially had. So just the person to drive you down the shops, there's all these other things that are available and because you've gone to all the trouble, well, of course you're going to avail yourself of those services. So that's why we have a ballooning NDIS system now.

S2

Because they make it difficult to apply for stuff. And the general policy from people that I've spoken to who claim from the NDIS is, look, we're just going to claim everything because at some point in the future we might need it. I think that's.

S3

Exactly.

S2

That's that's what's going on. So people are over applying because of the fundamental way the system is set up.

S3

As a former bureaucrat myself, I understand I understand what they're trying to do. They're trying to prevent people. But it's a lame brained idea because it's a free system. And surprisingly enough, we talk to each other and people will exchange your opinions on something or and say, well, this worked for me and this didn't work for me. So no, it's a it's a half baked way of trying to save money. And it's ultimately meant that we have the scheme that we do, which is it does cost way too much. And yes, some of us do claim more than we should.

S2

Right. That's your OP for this week. A big thank you to Shannon Davis and to Glaucoma Australia for helping us put together what I think is the best piece of public service broadcasting this show has ever produced. He said so himself.

S3

And of course, thank you for listening.

S2

Links to Shannon's Financial Wellness Seminar can be found on the radio station website RVA radio. Org on our social channels and in the podcast description. Next week, Sam and I take on our worst enemy, the two ton silent assassins that you probably refer to as electric cars.

S3

Between now and then. Please do get in touch with the show. Whether you have experience of any of the issues covered in this episode of Studio One, or if you think there's something we should be talking about, you never know. Your story and your insight may help somebody else who is dealing with something similar.

S2

You can email Studio One at Vision Australia-dot-org, that's studio1@visionaustralia.org - and you can find us on Twitter. The radio station can be found at at Radio Network and I can be found at twitter.com/whinging pom.

27:55

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Vision Australia Radio gratefully acknowledges the support of the Community Broadcasting Foundation for Studio One.