Long-Term Care Planning

When you're planning for your future, the ultimate goal is to retire with enough money to live comfortably for the rest of your life. An unexpected need for long-term care for you or your spouse is one of those events that can derail even the most carefully planned retirement strategy. Long-term care can cost thousands of dollars a month for basic care…even more for skilled nursing care. Having a plan to address this need is one of the most important strategies you can put in place. It doesn’t have to cost a huge amount and it doesn’t necessarily have to involve buying a long-term care policy. Think of it as spending pennies on the dollar to protect the rest of your retirement portfolio. Talk to a specialized advisor about how to handle this risk.

What is Long-Term Care Insurance?
As we age, we become more likely to encounter physical and mental conditions that may require us to get help with certain Activities of Daily Living like Bathing, Toileting, Dressing, Transferring, Eating, Transferring. This could be for a short time, for example, following rehab after surgery or for a longer time as we age.

Should You Consider Long-Term Care Insurance?
It’s important to know that Medicare and Medicare Supplement insurance do not cover these types of long-term care services. If we don’t plan for a way to provide these services, then it’s likely our spouse or one of our children will be forced to provide them. This can lead to a lot of family emotional and financial stress. Wouldn’t you rather your loved ones supervised the services needed rather than provided them? One of the greatest gifts we can give our family is to provide for our own Long-Term Care needs, should they arise.

How likely is it that I will need longer term care at some time in my life?
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Administration on Aging, around 70% of adults over the age of 65 will require long-term care services at some point in their lives. With life expectancy increasing every year, people are living longer, healthier lives. However, as we live longer we’re more likely to require assistance for chronic or acute conditions. Therefore, it's very likely that we will need LTC at some point in our lives.

How should I plan in case I or my spouse ever need long-term care?
Talk to a specialist advisor about strategies for providing long-term care. It might mean buying long-term care insurance. But it could be just setting aside certain assets to be used for this purpose, or buying an asset that has long-term care benefits that come into play only if needed. These days there are lots of very good strategies. Have this important conversation without delay! Allocating a small percentage of your assets to a strategy to cover this risk could protect all of your other assets from getting dissipated should you or your spouse ever need long-term care. This is a way to effectively leverage the assets you have for your retirement and for your surviving spouse and heirs.