Prolonged care’s cost to retirement
With longer lives and higher medical costs, retirees need to plan for how they’ll pay for the likelihood of long-term care in their later years. In a Money Talk Video, Adam Baley points out that especially for retirees, health care can be a financial issue. Here is a transcript of the video.
Bob Landaas likes to tell the story that thirty years ago, when retirees would sit down and put together their brand-new retiree budget, that the cost of healthcare was barely even a line-item in that monthly budget.
Today, the cost of healthcare can consume a significant portion of retirees’ assets. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, if you make it to the age of 65, there is a seventy percent chance that you’re going to need some sort of long-term care services in your lifetime.
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So the question is will your retirement plan be able to handle the cost of long-term care?
The need for health care, especially prolonged care, is more than just a medical, social or a personal issue. It’s a financial issue, too. The potential exists for the cost of prolonged care to consume a significant portion, if not all, of retirees’ assets. It’s usually this very scenario that causes retirees to consider insurance to help offset some of the cost.
Ultimately, long-term care insurance is meant to help cover the cost of prolonged care. But it can do so much more than that. It can also help give you and your family the flexibility to decide how much care and where you want to receive that care. And on top of that, it may even allow you to free-up some capital that you have in your savings, capital that maybe you had mentally earmarked for the cost of a nursing home. If you had a policy to help assist with that cost, you could then repurpose that capital to other financial objectives you might have.
More resources
Please click here to connect to the National Clearinghouse for Long Term Care Information, developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Long-term care insurance is just one of the many tools that we have available to us. It’s a tool that we use to help make sure that your retirement plan lasts as long as you do.
Adam Baley is an investment advisor at Landaas & Company.
Money Talk video by Peter May
(initially posted April 22, 2013)
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