Foreguard
When my husband, Mike, was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia at 29, I thought the hardest part would be the caregiving. I was wrong. Within weeks, my mother died suddenly and my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's — and underneath all of it sat a financial crisis nobody had prepared us for. We didn't know what Medicaid actually covered, what SSDI required, or how VA benefits might apply to us. By the time we pieced it together, we'd already lost our home and drained our retirement savings.
I've spent the years since turning that experience into something useful for other families — first through caregiver education and advocacy, and now through Foreguard.
What Foreguard does
Foreguard is a free, nonprofit planning tool for families facing a serious illness diagnosis. It helps you map Medicaid eligibility, understand SSDI options, navigate VA benefits where they apply, and size up private coverage against what you'll actually need. It's entirely educational — no cost, no sales pitch, no data collected. Just a clear starting point for a conversation most families don't know they need until it's too late.
Why I co-founded it
A diagnosis is disorienting enough. Nobody should also discover, mid-crisis, that help was available all along and they simply ran out of time to find it. Foreguard exists so families get that runway back — it's the resource I wish someone had handed me the week Mike was diagnosed.