Long-Term Care, LTC, planning is one aspect of retirement planning that many people overlook. They don’t want to cover the additional expense of LTC policies, and find it difficult to plan for care that they might not need for years down the road.
Before becoming a retiree, you tend to plan for those “someday” moments, a time when you finally get to start checking things off the “bucket list.” But before you get too consumed with your retiree activities, make sure you cover certain financial aspects as well. For example, how would you pay for long-term care if needed?
Increasingly, one of the most important considerations is planning for the possibility and costs of long-term care. It is becoming the cornerstone of new later-in-life financial plans for many retiring and retired Americans.
MarketWatch recently surveyed this concern in a article titled “Long-term care planning [is] too vital to ignore.”
You see, the math is fairly simple. People are living longer and, therefore, so are their financial needs later-in-life. Meanwhile, healthcare is still disastrously expensive, especially at that life stage.
As a result, if you only plan for your retirement and for your estate, but not also for your later-in-life and potentially long-term care needs, then you find yourself in financial jeopardy later. You could have more life left at the end of your money, to be blunt.
As the title of the original article notes, including long-term care planning as part of your retirement planning is simply “too vital to ignore.”
For more information on gift tax exclusions please visit my estate planning and elder law website.
Reference: MarketWatch (July 15, 2013) “Long-term care planning too vital to ignore”
