By Eleonore Weber-Your Life Security, LLC
The holidays aren’t just an occasion to give thanks and eat until you pop — they’re also an opportunity to check up on the physical and mental well-being of older family members. When families are together, it really is an opportunity to help one another by observing the changes in behavior and mental functioning that we see in our loved ones.
It’s also an ideal opportunity for adult children to access older family members’ living situations and determining what their long-term care needs will be in terms of health and living situation.
Staying in their home is typically the goal of most aging adults. But the reality may be if there was no planning in advance to financially make that goal a reality, less desirable choices could be the only options.
Long-term care planning (Home-health Care) addresses the possibility of your changing health status and the possibility that you may need care someday. And because of the potential depletion of your future retirement assets since of the high cost of care, the hard truth is that your retirement plans are not complete until the topic is addressed up front.
While the cost of long-term care insurance as a stand-alone product is daunting, a combination of life insurance with a long-term care rider offers something different from a psychological perspective: even if buyers don’t need long-term care, the policy still offers flexibility to leave money to their heirs and/or take advantage of other living benefits. And having funds set aside to pay for care, if needed, alleviates the heavy burden on family members who may spend many hours providing care, often at the expense of their own health and well-being.
You may not want to acknowledge that you may need it someday, but it is a real concern as people transition into retirement. As difficult as it may be to get people in their pre-and early retirement years to focus on the subject, a long-term care discussion is easier when you are active, healthy and at an age when final illnesses seem remote. One strategy for addressing long-term care is to “plan backwards.” At “Your Life Security”, we can address your concerns and expenses of final years of retirement first and then move to the early retirement years when travel and other more pleasant topics are usually addressed. This way, you will more fully be able to enjoy your new life stage and have more peace of mind about the future. “Your family will Love You”
Next time, we will address the best combinations to secure your long-term care and a happier retirement!
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