Why Aren’t Agents, Financial Planners, Or Other Advisers Talking About Long-Term Care?
We trust them to look out for things that can bite us – hard. We trust them to advise us on having enough money and cash flow to retire on. So why do we get blindsided by a $10,000 a month nursing home bill or a $4500 a month assisted living facility bill when chronic conditions require such care?
“Low comfort level makes advisers recoil” begins a new study on why advisers do not speak of this. http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20151020/FREE/151029993/advisers-shy-away-from-ltc-insurance-dialogue-study It’s simply an uncomfortable discussion nobody wants to have. The study further states that 40% of clients have asked about LTC financing, but only 10% of advisers have started the conversation.
Many advisers fear the solutions are too complicated and do not feel adequately informed to bring it up. These professionals work every day with one of the complex investments out there, variable annuities, but don’t want to address the uncomfortable and unfamiliar area of planning for physical or mental decline and how to keep it from devastating your assets. However, it’s also true that many consumers do not want to talk about this as well. Maybe if we don’t talk about it – it won’t happen.
Unfortunately, this leaves many consumers unprepared for the devastating costs of LTC. Fortunately, the LTC financing industry has been moving to specialists who do just this – finding ways to pay for care, finding insurance to pay for care, or strategies to protect some money from the Medicaid spend-down for those who did not prepare. Many financial professionals and attorneys refer their clients to people like myself, who has been doing LTC financing for 22 years.
There are many new products that can help when care is need, but some of them will not work well, years later when needed. When purchasing a financial product that may not be used for 20-30 years, an automatic inflation factor that increases what it will pay out to keep up with inflation is one of the most critical components, and many new hybrid “solutions” omit this. The ones that do include it may be much more expensive than the traditional LTC insurance products. Prices vary greatly, so someone with access to many products will benefit you much more than someone who can only offer one solution.
For those who did not prepare, there are a number of strategies that can help make money last much longer when paying for care, or protect some of it from the Medicaid spend down.
This is a special area of finance all by itself. It pays to consult an expert who knows what can work, or not, in each specific situation. For more information visit www.TheLongTermCareGuy.com
